Our pool season is alway happily longer than our summer season. Andy will open the pool as soon as he detects a stretch of warm days, often in April or early May, and then we’ll keep it open until October, sometimes until there is snow surrounding the pool ladder, bending the grasses gone to seed so that they fall right into the water. It gives us what almost amounts to five months of swimming options – though that’s in theory only, as weather and whim play important parts in how much use a pool gets. As mentioned previously, this year was not a year in which I spent substantial time in the pool, which is somewhat of a sad thing to realize by the end of the season. Some things can’t be helped, and if there is an opportunity for some sort of last-minute reprieve, it’s worth making the attempt.
Still, I felt guilty for trying to go right back into the fun and sun of a summer which had taken such a toll on our family. In some strange way, it felt wrong to indulge and enjoy, and though my head understood that should not the case, I wanted to keep this summer as a somber and sacred space of time to honor my Dad.
That said, there was always something somewhat sad about swimming in the fall, and I understood that swimming now would be less of a celebratory jubilee and more of an exercise in closure. I didn’t want the pool to end on such a sadly-open-ended memory – the last time I swam was just as Dad was beginning his final decline. Part of me wanted to keep that as the last time I swam this year. A bigger part of me wanted to give some sort of finality to this pool season, and this summer, so as to not have it hanging over my head the entire winter. Better to break that sorrowful spell now and address what heartache might result before a fall and winter of mourning set in fully.
The weather confirmed the decision, and in the middle of the week I took off a few hours early from work and made my way to the steps of the pool. The sun was just about to drop behind the oaks and pines, but in the shallow end its light and warmth still filled the space. Faded remnants of the feeling of summer resurfaced as I hesitantly descended into the warm water. It felt good against my skin – warm and enveloping and comforting – and I walked deeper into the water. Floating into the deep end, my back felt instantly better, as gravity released some of its hold in my suspended state. The weight of the past summer lifted a little. I looked up at the sun, dappled through the leaves of an oak tree that had existed before I was born, a tree that looked to continue after I was long gone.
A bit of my sadness seeped into the water, but it was ok. No, it was good. It was proof that there could be sorrow and celebration coexisting. It was a way to say goodbye to this summer, and a way to see ahead to the next one.
This summer our pool hasn’t gotten much use. My last time in was mid-July, just before Dad took his final turn, and since then, thanks to a combination of rainy weather and lack of any sort of celebratory reason for taking a dip, I’ve not gone into the water. At first it wasn’t intentional, just a rotten stretch of simply not feeling up for it. Then it became a thing, where I felt almost guilty about indulging in something that once brought me pleasure. Foolish all around, I know, but that’s where my head was at.
Now it’s October. And the days have soared into the 80’s with lots of sun. Andy had heated the pool back up and went in a few times, easing his back and making the most of this throwback to summer. I held back for a bit while I listened for the whispered invitation of the universe, beckoning me to rejoin the living.
My therapist said if I’m having a good day, and it feels right to indulge in fun things again, I should go with it. I realized she was right. There would always be time to grieve, while sunny and warm days in October are rare. And my father had a pool not for himself, as he rarely went in, but for the enjoyment of his family. It would be nice to continue that dream for a while. The next day I went in…
When my Dad’s health aide was working with him, back when he still had good days here and there, she would get him to engage in various art projects, some of which involved him drawing and painting – things he would never have done in his younger years, but which he took to with his usual precision and perfectionism, making sure each was just right. She also got him to work on letters to me, as she saw the letters I’d written coming in every week. One of these she gave to my Mom to mail many months ago, but my Mom had put it away in a bag and forgotten about it until it resurfaced the other week. She gave it to me when I last stopped by, and I put it on the passenger seat of my car as I left her house.
My first visit to Dad’s resting place was sadder than expected, and as I drove out of the cemetery I was feeling empty and forlorn. I couldn’t feel my father there, and I wasn’t ready to let him go. It left my heart aching and my head struggling to keep him alive somehow. Driving out of Amsterdam, I passed the same route we used to take to church on Sunday mornings and Christmas Eve. Those days and years felt far away, yet I still needed my Dad. As I drove over the bridge that connected the banks of the Mohawk River, the sun was nearing the end of its descent in the sky. Instead of taking the left to the Thruway, I continued on the road that would lead into the rural areas near Florida. This was the way to the veterinarian who used to treat our first dog, a German shepherd named Crystal that Dad had raised when she was only a puppy. That dog, like my father himself, would protect us religiously until the day she died, not allowing harm to come to any of us on her watch. There was still an animal hospital where the vet’s office once stood – a small comfort to know that some things carried on.
I started to feel my Dad’s presence again, on these back roads flooded with late afternoon sunlight, banked by fields of corn and the odd pumpkin patch. Super-saturated with the colors of autumn, this humble section of the world kept its beauty and its grace mostly to itself, content to simply exist and provide a backdrop to the scant intermittent parade of cars that sped in search of more exciting destinations. Turning onto a side street, I suddenly remembered the card my Mom had given to me. I pulled into the empty parking lot of a little library – closed for the day and empty at the late-afternoon hour – and slowly opened the envelope.
“Hi…” it said on the front, over a collection of birdhouses and their inhabitants. I knew my Dad hadn’t chosen the card, and yet somehow it came directly from him. I began crying a little – the simple declaration of ‘Hi’ felt like a message he managed to send in the most unexpected way, at the moment when I needed it the most. Inside, a generic message, “Hope everything’s going well in your little corner of the world!” was written above a picture of two birds near their home.
Beneath that, in a scrawl not far removed from that of a child, my Dad had valiantly attempted his signature, connecting his spirit to this page, connecting his heart to this letter – and a letter was always the way I connected to someone most profoundly. My Dad knew that, understanding and recognizing the love in all the letters I had written to him over the years, and in the occasional ones he would write back to me. In some ways, this last letter to me was probably not unlike my first letters to him. Our circle had been completed, and once completed, a circle continues on forever.
After feeling that my Dad wasn’t here anymore, I held a card he once held, a card that he meant to reach me, and I felt him near once again. He was in this letter, he was in my car, he was in the land and the sun and the sky and the trees. Mostly he was in my heart, and I felt the reassuring comfort of that, as if he was still here guiding and supporting and loving me.
A sense of gratitude washed over me then, whispering that it would be ok, reminding me that Dad would never truly leave my side.
Everyone deals differently with death. For most of my life, I’ve shied away from it, changing the topic whenever it came up and actively dismissing it from my mind. The thought of losing someone I loved was too terrifying to do anything else. It was my way of coping with something that felt insurmountable. When Dad started to decline several years ago, I had to face it, whether I liked it or not, and it wasn’t easy.
His journey was a long one, and in many ways that helped. We had time together – time to become closer and talk before it became impossible, time to confront what was happening as every door closed and options dwindled. I had a good few years of dealing with impending death, so when it finally happened, I was as ready and prepared as one can be, even if one can never truly be ready for that. During his last two weeks on earth, I embraced the process as best as I could, managing to find the beauty and grace in what was happening, and finding solace in family, and the love that would continue even after his physical form departed.
Last weekend marked the two-month point since he died – something I hadn’t taken notice of – and I found myself in Amsterdam dropping off some food for Mom. Dad’s cemetery marker had been engraved and up for a few weeks, but I hadn’t been to visit. It was something I was consciously avoiding. Part of me was waiting to make it meaningful, to visit with intent and purpose, but as I left Mom’s, dirty and sweaty from putting up some fall decorations, I found myself turning down the road to the cemetery, almost without thought.
The afternoon sun hung just above the tree-lined horizon, dappled and divided through evergreen boughs. It was warm, and it was the last day of September. Turning into the cemetery, I passed rows of gravestones, looking at the various names, wondering at the families and the people who carried those names onward. There were names I recognized, though I’m sure not all were related to the people I knew. At the bottom of the hill, I stopped the car and got out. Along the edge of the cemetery a section of unchecked growth allowed for a little bit of wilderness to establish itself. In this wild area, stands of cattails stood tall in the wet ground, while groups of asters and goldenrod lent a surprising jolt of color to the end of the day. Wild roses gone to seed gave off a fainter warm glow in their bulbous hips. It was a trio that only God could have put together, so I made a little bouquet of asters, goldenrod, and rose hips to bring to Dad. As I plucked the rose stem, my thumb met a thorn, tearing the skin and releasing a tiny drop of blood. A primal reminder that I was still alive, that my body’s blood still pulsed through its veins. It pricked a bit of my heart too, as I realized with full certainty that my Dad was not physically alive.
My little bouquet procured – no extravagant calla lilies or protea or hybrid roses – I got back in the car and drove back up the hill to where my Dad’s ashes were interred. Mom had already sent me photo of it, so I knew what it looked like, but it’s different when you see it in person. At the bottom of the columbarium, I found the engraved names of my parents. I ran my fingers over it, cool to the touch even in the dying light of the sun, and left the simple flowers beneath it.
Time twisted then, and I remembered my only trip to the Philippines, 27 years ago, when my cousin took me to the cemetery to visit her recently-deceased husband, and the markers of my grandparents. Seeing the Ilagan name there was jarring – not only because I never saw the Ilagan name anywhere in the United States, but also because it was on a gravestone in my father’s homeland. It struck me then, when I was only 21 years old, that one day I would be burying my own parents, and seeing their names engraved in stone. It was something that would haunt me forever after, right up until this present moment, as I knelt down and again felt the cold stone and the carved letters of my lineage. The moment I’d been dreading and fearing all my life was at hand, and though I’d always envisioned it blaring and announcing itself in frightening fanfare and debilitating noise, here it appeared in quiet, marked by distant birdsong, and the occasional rumbling of a car along the nearby road.
My Mom has said that she feels comfort visiting Dad here. For me, it was the opposite at first. As I backed away from their marker, I felt a profound sense of loneliness, a realization that my Dad was definitely not here. I knew his ashes were there in a piece of Wedgwood that once stood in our family home, I knew his name was forever embedded on the small square of stone I just touched with my own hands, and I knew his spirit lived within me, but in that moment I only felt his absence. It was the emptiness of being left behind, and as I got back into the car, I started crying.
Rather than fight it or try to collect myself instantly, I let it happen, allowing the grief to come over me in waves, catching the tears in the last tissues of a box I kept in the car for just such occasions. The sadness didn’t end, and the feeling of missing my Dad didn’t depart, but eventually the overwhelming sense of loss subsided, enough for me to start the car and begin the drive home.
Helming a production of ‘Sunset Boulevard‘ as Norma Desmond is no easy feat, and when a show so dramatically veers from its original theatrical conceit, it’s an even riskier business. All reports of Nicole Scherzinger as Norma Desmond in the current wildly reimagined version of the musical directed by Jamie Lloyd have her successfully making the role her own. Today she earns this Dazzler of the Day for having survived in show business from her days leading The Pussycat Dolls. Tickets for ‘Sunset Boulevard’ are available here.
It just barely caught my eye in the brilliance of an early October morning. A slight, barely discernible rustling in the high branches of a pine tree, lending one branch a distinction that set it apart from the others, is what gave it away. One of my few talents is being able to quickly locate when something is out of place – it’s a trick of the Virgo eye, and a bane to the existence of my friends when their hair is awry or they’ve got a piece of bacon on their boob (ok, in that case I didn’t notice right away since I’m gay and boobs don’t attract my attention).
On this morning, I detected the movement of one singular bough, the pinecones dangling at its end bobbing ever so slightly, and hidden in the shadows of the evergreen needles was a large bird of prey. I couldn’t make it out at first, as its back was to me. It seemed to be making a nest and working on something in the upper-echelon of its perch, and as it turned around I could see it bob its head up and down as if eating something. Circle of life, I suppose.
Standing there and capturing some of its motions on camera, my arms ached a bit as it went patiently about devouring its morning meal. A blue jay fluttered by at one point, squawking loudly in some vain effort to chase it away, but the hawk simply ignored it, continuing to enjoy its breakfast. After a while, the hawk stood then took off, flying across the sky to another pine tree nearby, where it was joined by another hawk. Two now perched upon the pine, resplendent and regal in their composure and power beneath the morning sun. What a sight to behold.
Photos and video rarely do these magnificent beauties justice – the perspective is always askew without a frame of reference, but you can feel how enormous they are, and sense their size as they bend boughs that only sway in the strongest gusts of wind. Silently, one takes off again – danger and might gliding through the air – a warning and a reminder to keep one eye on the sky at all times.
The #TinyThreads feature used to be a daily item here, but such nuggets of wisdom are difficult to come by with any regularity. That said, perhaps it’s time to resurrect the category, at least as best as I might muster in these trying times. It breaks the posts up a bit, especially when things get heavy, and with the attention span of everyone dwindling and showing no sign of ever returning, these little jolts of nonsense and whimsy are the perfect amuse-bouche for the rest of your meal here. Eat up, chow down, and be happy – the #TinyThreads resume tomorrow!
Since it’s no longer a surprise, I can reveal that Andy and I will be attending one of John Mulaney’s upcoming shows (the Proctor’s one, released just after he sold out the Troy Music Hall). It’s a birthday present to Andy, who enjoys a comedian more than I usually do (he introduced me to Lewis Black) and after seeing several clips from Mulaney this looks to be a riot. It also comes as a recommendation from Suzie’s daughter Oona, whose taste in music and comedy is unrivaled. As for the man himself, Mulaney earns this Dazzler of the Day for his Emmy and WGA award-winning work as actor, comedian and writer. Check out his website here for the whole rundown.
For a certain segment of our wayward society, a section which I happily frequent and in which I mostly reside, lines from ‘Mean Girls’ are more significant than scripture. Today is considered ‘Mean Girls Day’ thanks to the opening quote from the movie. Personally, and wholly unsurprisingly, I’m more aligned with Regina George than Cady Heron, or even too-gay-to-function Damian. Regina has provided some of my most commonly used responses. There is no situation where I cannot work, “Whatever, I’m getting cheese fries” into a dismissive way of exiting a conversation. Try it. Happy October 3rd!
Hello little guy. This letter comes with no significant meaning or purpose, other than to mark this day in time. Yesterday our family gathered for a brunch two months to the day that we lost your Lolo, and you slept through most of it as you tend to do. You awoke when the eating was done, and you joined us for some crawling and almost-walking. I don’t blame you for taking your time – you have a whole life of walking ahead of you; make the most of these days when you can lounge and crawl – some of us spend our time figuring out ways to do those things, and most of us find it impossible. Hang onto your childhood days as long as you can.
I took the featured picture of you from outside Lola’s door. You were looking out at your brother mowing the lawn on a summer day. I took a similar photo of your brother and sister when they were about your age, standing behind a glass door at their first house. Now they are thirteen, and I wonder where the time went. One day many years from now I’ll try to tell you about this past summer, if I’ve made some sense of it by then, and I’ll remind you of how much you were a source of light and healing in a dark time.
YOU GOTTA HOLD ON
HOLD ON THROUGH THE NIGHT
HANG ON
THINGS WILL BE ALL RIGHT
EVEN WHEN IT’S DARK AND NOT A BIT OF SPARKLING
SING-SONG SUNSHINE FROM ABOVE
SPREADING RAYS OF SUNNY LOVE
It dawns on me that while I have promised to be your guide and guardian whenever you may need one, you may be the one guiding us as we fumble our way toward healing, finding our footing in an uncertain time when it feels like we’re slightly unmoored without Dad. It’s difficult to be sad when we see your smile and hear your laugh, and if you’re gently nudging us back to happiness, I’ll lean into that and try to feel the joy of the moment.
AND SO I HOLD ON TO HIS ADVICE
WHEN CHANGE IS HARD AND NOT SO NICE
IF YOU LISTEN TO YOUR HEART THE WHOLE NIGHT THROUGH
YOUR SUNNY SOMEDAY WILL COME ONE DAY SOON TO YOU
October dawned gorgeously, and this week looks to be a glorious one weather-wise. Taking a recommendation from my therapist, I’m going to embrace the good days as they arrive, so let’s have a sunny one, inside and out. On with the weekly recap…
Our first fall baseball foray had the potential to be as magical as Boston can be at this time of the year, but as we set off on our annual BroSox Adventure, it felt like the world decided to continue taking a dump on any fun plans I might have made this summer, and with all the obstacles mounting, this trip was doomed from the start.
It began with our rescheduled structure- we had originally penned in an August Red Sox game, when summer would be at its height, but reality intervened and made our original date impossible. Shifting to September thanks to a lovely birthday gift from Sherri and Skip, it sounded like we might make our very first fall outing. That was fraught with its own memories – my very first Red Sox game with my family was in the fall of 1986, when they were in the running for the series. That trip remains a happy family vacation memory, as much for the game as for the brown paper bag of four paperwhite narcissus bulbs that I had procured at Faneuil Hall prior to the game. A return that reminded me of that game could be a welcome reminiscence, or prove a tricky bit of sadness if it only recalled things I’d lost – either way, Skip was a safe friend to have along for such a moment, and the idea of a fall baseball game without heat and humidity was a refreshing change of pace.
As we finalized our tentative plans, Skip noticed that the tickets he ordered were not for the Saturday game as we originally planned, but for Sunday afternoon at 1:30. We’d usually be returning home to upstate New York by 1:30 on Sunday afternoon. He put those tickets up on SeatGeek, but at this point in a losing season, there were no takers for seats at half that price. The weather forecast was suddenly looking pretty awful too, so we ended up going forward with the Sunday game plan. Honestly, I didn’t mind as long as it didn’t mess up our traffic flow, which would already be disrupted by a Friday afternoon departure.
That drive into Boston was lovely. The sun was out and behind us, just like summer on its final day of the season, and we made good time right up until the end, when a sign indicated that the seven miles to Boston would take 28 minutes. Skip was driving by that point so I leaned back, let go, and let God, as the quasi-religious gypsies say. It worked, as we made it into town half an hour later, found a parking space, and were slurping on pho in Chinatown as a warm welcome to a cozy fall weekend. We walked off the soup and made it home for a quiet Friday night in.
The next morning was overcast, with rain encroaching on the rest of the weekend. After the short misty walk around the corner, a pair of counter seats at Charlie’s Diner proved available for a late breakfast, which included some of the best biscuits Skip claimed to have ever had. We made a customary walk along Newbury for the tranquility of Muji and provisions from Eataly. A welcome nap (as we are at the age of necessary naps, and grunting whenever we bend over to reach something) and some snacking passed the bulk of mid-afternoon. Our favored stoop-watching practice was derailed by the rain, but we had a loftier vantage point from the window.
Dinner that night was at the Smoke Shop BBQ at the Seaport, where we’d also planned on checking out the mini-golf scene at Puttshack. Continuing the doom and gloom of this particular trip, the whole evening was booked, thanks to the weather at hand driving people indoors, and all the damn college kids now inhabiting the city. That’s the most blessed thing about summer in Boston: they’re all gone. And yet somehow we had a grand time at dinner. More than grand, in fact, as I was aided by an edible, and time seemed to still as I got lost in laughter in a way I haven’t done since before summer began.
Outside, the rain came down, and we made hurried motions to cross the river back into Boston proper, where we found our way to the Langham Hotel for a moment in their chill lobby. There were memories here too – fall memories, coming at the same time of the year in which they were first made – and they should have proved at least slightly problematic, but thanks to Skip’s indefatigable attitude, we found fun in a hopeless place. When at last our Uber dropped us off, we sailed deep into the night playing Heads Up until we both crashed.
Game day dawned with the threat of rain. With the closing of our beloved Cafe Madeleine, Flour would have to stand in, even if it was a longer walk, and a more annoying line. We took our food to go, had a brief siesta back at the condo, and as the rain started in earnest we began our trek to take the T rather than get gouged by a $31 Uber trip to Fenway. By the time the above photo was taken, in the muggy “subterranean hell” of the Copley Station T-stop, both of us were thinking that $31 would have been a steal after some crazy person jumped onto the tracks and stopped subway traffic for half an hour.
We arrived to a rainy game already deep into the first inning. Our seats were soaked, but a friendly woman in the next row up gave us a wadded-up pile of napkins to wipe them off. Our raincoats were working overtime, but the seats were good, and as we sat down and soaked our asses, it looked like the sky was brightening.
“That’s just the game lights,” Skip assured me. Oh, of course. And the longer we sat there, the more it rained.
The mind wanders at such times. I looked out onto the field and tried to remember the first baseball game that my Dad took us to – it was there, but the memory was different. That day had been crisp and sunny. We had been young. The world had felt hopeful. On this day, the rain came down harder. The world felt darker. But I was with a friend, and out again in the world, even if it had dimmed since earlier in the summer.
“Wait,” I said suddenly, as my eyes fell upon the other team going underground, “Is it called a dugout because it’s like ‘dug out’?” The revelation felt almost too simple – and what kind of simpleton calls a place such a stupid thing?
Skip laughed a little and said, yes, then marveled that the realization was coming 48 years into my life.
By the fifth inning, the rain was pouring down. We were soaked, but we hadn’t had our Fenway Franks yet, so we headed indoors, scarfed down the dogs, and walked around inside, heading upstairs as throngs of people began leaving.
“Where is everyone going?” I asked.
“They’re leaving!” Skip laughed.
“For good?”
“Yeah!”
We stood in the rafters looking at the scene below. A tarp had been pulled over the diamond, and Skip proposed leaving. The last time we left a game early, Neil Diamond came out and sang ‘Sweet Caroline’ live just minutes after we exited the park. This time, there would be no song and dance, and as the rain showed no sign of abating, we joined the crowds exiting into the pouring rain, and were back on the Mass Turnpike headed for home within an hour.
This should have been the worst BroSox Adventure we’ve ever had – instead, it was one of my favorites, and I don’t remember having this much fun with Skip in years. It was also one of the first excursions after the awfulness of this summer, and it was precisely what was needed. I think it was good for Skip too – his spring was as difficult as my summer, and we were both in need of letting loose. Looking at the pictures here, I am smiling because they don’t exactly portray the fun that was had, which cracks me up even more, and Skip would say the same.
I’d almost forgotten the powerful healing aspect of simply hanging out with a cherished friend. The older we get, the darker the world grows, and finding refuge in such a friendship is the surest method of finding your way home. Thanks Skip.
The original purpose of this post was to provide a nifty item to pin to the top of my Twitter, err, X account should that site’s idiot of an owner decide to start charging for new tweets, err, xeets (oh please). No way I’m paying for such nonsense, and should it come to pass I’ll just leave a link to this particular page up for posterity. Once that was decided, I realized what an onerous task I’d set up for myself in trying to encapsulate what this silly blog has come to embody over the past twenty years of its existence.
Earlier in the year I’d made some half-hearted attempts while looking back over its two-decade existence, such as in this post and this one, but nothing has ever come close to approximating everything this site has been. Truth be told, nothing ever could. It’s like trying to describe a person you’ve known for twenty years to someone who has never met them. Where do you begin? How do you capture their essence and what they mean to you? The only way to do so is to take time and slowly reveal, through action and stories and presence, what they are like.
This isn’t something that can happen in a single sitting, or in a few carefully-chosen words. It isn’t something that can happen in a lifetime of sittings, or in countless, rambling, limitless words. And so it is, practically speaking, an impossible mission. All I could ever do would be to approach some better sense of understanding, some approximation of knowing, but never the whole thing, never the entire story, never the definitive view. Still, a challenge is a challenge, and this one merits an attempt.
Perhaps the best way to begin describing this site to a newcomer is to go back to its basic structure – the categories which were assembled at the start to organize topics that would be visited and revisited over the years. Let’s get the salacious and gratuitously-skin-baring ones out of the way first, as that’s what most people have come to click on before reading a single word of any exquisite (or ugly) prose. These would be our click-bait and thirst-trap moments – the posts that bring all the boys to the yard (and the girls and beyond for that matter) in an effort to get some engagement and notice for more important matters. And, truth be told, beauty and sex are a happy end(ing) in and of themselves. Each of the following links will bring you to the last few posts from each Category, giving you a taste of what drives most of the traffic here:
Gratuitous Nudity: the name says it, and then some. I still haven’t quite decided what separates ‘Gratuitous Nudity’ from the more generic ‘Male Nudity‘ which is another category altogether, but everyone seems to have fun trying to figure it out.
Naked Male Celebrities: another pretty self-explanatory category, as ‘Nude Male Celebrities’ were all the rage in the early 2000’s.
Shirtless Male Celebrities: a more benign and less NSFW category for those unprepared for uncovered derriere.
Bulge: clear your throats before clicking that one. Only certain gents merit this designation.
Underwear: the favored garment of choice in these parts, one that has merited countless moments of inspection and introspection.
Now that the gratuitous stuff is out of the way, onto the real deep shit of the website: the frivolous and the fabulous! Even way back in 2003, the internet was filled with doom and gloom, and since then it has only gotten worse – way worse. This little hidden corner of the not-so-dark web was intended to be a frivolous and carefree space to entertain the meanderings of my mind, which has only grown more whimsical and lost over the years. Somehow I’ve managed to keep it that way, without succumbing to ads or monetization, because this is, quite selfishly, a place for me to find peace and creative expression no matter what anyone else thinks. And so, some of my favorite categories come up:
Cologne: oh how I love the sense of smell. It has often been said that one of the main triggers of a memory is scent – and I adore the idea of triggering memories. This has often been proven true, as there are certain perfumes that bring me instantly back to certain moments in my life – almost always good ones. Every spring the lilac blooms will recall my childhood in a way that no photo album ever could. Come December, the first morning after our Christmas tree has gone up I am immediately returned to running down the stairs on Christmas morning with that initial whiff of evergreen. The moment rekindled from certain colognes I’ve worn are too numerous to mention, hence this category.
Fashion: dressing up for the world is a sign of good manners. Those are in short-supply these days, and largely erased altogether. Everyone is out and about in sweats and t-shirts, and the battle for dressing things up was lost long ago. Still, it’s fun to try.
Dazzler of the Day: for those who inspire and enthrall me, this category was created to showcase their talents, their attributes, their accomplishments, their beauty, or their presence.
Broadway: because ‘Theater‘ wouldn’t be the same without it.
Male Models: perhaps this should have gone in the click-bait/thrist-trap section? Oh well, it’s here as a gift for those who waded past the initial thrills – consider this a reward. (See also David Beckham, Tom Daley, and Ben Cohen.)
Tom Ford: my favorite cologne designer, my favorite underwear designer, and my favorite fashion designer – he’s also a talented director whose first two films are absolutely devastating. He’s also a song by Jay-Z.
Delusional Grandeur Tour: an absolute exercise in the frivolous and fabulous, along with an unhealthy dose of the delusional.
Tiny Threads: little bits of whimsy, silly thoughts that run through the head.
Perhaps less flashy, but no less interesting from my perspective, are the categories that fall somewhere between style and substance. This is the magical space where beauty blends with something more serious, the space where I can delve a little deeper.
Travel: this category is one often forgotten, so there are myriad posts that are about traveling that simply didn’t get labeled as such. Oh well, there’s enough here to give an idea of all the places I go.
Sports: not sure how this category came into existence, but sports matter, and athletes can be heroes, especially when they take their clothes off.
Home Design: this is hilarious – I have no business having a Home Design category but every once in a while I’ll slide something in here because someone has asked.
FireWater: burn, baby, burn. It was just a project.
Every once in a while, things turn somber and serious here, and as the years pass these entries seem to come more frequently. I’m not thrilled about it, but such is life.
Homophobia: it still exists, and its proponents are getting louder and more emboldened.
Antiracism: racism still exists too, and it’s also getting louder.
Straight Ally: when things get serious, they can also get good.
Mocktails: one of the major story arcs of this site was how I went from ‘Cocktails‘ to mocktails.
The meat of the matter, and the real purpose for all that I’ve own here for the last twenty years, is to be found in the following categories, which form the bedrock of this website. This is what really matters to me, and it’s the heart behind all the hubris.
Putting a definitive cap on a life – even the life of a blog, no matter how short or long it’s been – is an impossible task. Still, it’s worth a try, and this little corner of the internet is where I’ll keep making the effort. You are always welcome to be my guest.
