On a recent cool spring day, I went deep on the cologne selection, daring to trot out Tom Ford’s ‘Plum Japonais’ – a decadent blend of plum fruit and plum blossom for a fruity, warm, holiday-like devastation. It’s not a light, ephemeral fragrance; it leads with a punch of fruity power and lands strong, lasting for hours and warming the air around the wearer. There’s some spice to its fruity sweetness too, and a bit of smoke that lends it a coziness ideal for a chilly spring spell.
These plum blossoms carry the tender, delicate essence of spring, when it’s barely strong enough to hold onto the warmth of a day. Our fleeting sessions with the sun prove equally weak, yet still the blossoms stand, fluttering in the wind no matter how cold it gets. The plum blooms brave every end-of-winter, honored in a fragrance that lends some heat before the sun returns.
Jaxon Layne and Uncle Andy are already forging a bond that is adorable to watch and witness – in the same way that Jaxon has forged a lovely connection with all of us, bringing a family together when the state of the world is questionable at best. Seeing two of my favorite people getting along so swimmingly is a soul-enriching happy thing, and I’m feeling all kinds of gratitude and thankfulness.
This year something happened to our previously-majestic Kwanzan cherry. After last year’s boffo-bloom, this season there was literally one single bloom on the entire tree. I noticed all the other Kwanzan cherries were bereft of blooms as well, indicating that some climate event had diminished the blossoms. There may have been a stretch of late cold weather that killed off the flower buds – that does happen sometimes. Or maybe it’s simply an off year for them, similar to the way lilacs occasionally take a year off from heavy blooming.
Instead, we look to the hothouse blooms to cheer our chilly days. Warmth in hue, warmth in the greenhouse. And soon, warmth in the outside. Have faith.
When I made a recent trip to Boston to see my spirit animal (shout out to Riley and the snack batch!!) I donned this spring beauty for her sake, and after walking through the city with it on, I collected a wide range of accolades, the majority of which came from what seemed to be straight men. That was a cultural shift in my experience of fancy coats and sparkle, the effect they had, and on whom the effect made an impression. Back in Albany, the same strange thing happened. One guy driving by my office building on Broadway actually slowed down to shout out the window that it was a sharp coat.
For far too many years I averted my gaze from straight guys in fear of how they might take it, and how they might attack. Maybe it’s ok to let down my guard. Maybe there have already been changes made for the better in spite of what the news and the media would have us believe. Maybe I need to be open to accept the joy that exists in the world.
Somebody’s finally singing my song, as this year’s Met Gala seems more notable for the men walking the vaunted steps of the museum than the women, who traditionally steal the spotlight. While I usually spend this evening feverishly clicking through links and videos and photos of the red-carpet arrivals, frantically trying to see everything as soon as it happens, I’m no longer in such a silly headspace. Not to knock those who still thrill at such events – I’m simply ok with letting it all play out and catching highlights of it later. Fuck FOMO and give me a calm night. Here are the looks that struck me from fashion’s biggest night, inspired by the theme of Karl Lagerfeld. Featured photo is Lil Nas X, who wore body glitter and crystals and not much else, but more on that below.
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs strikes a Lagerfeld pose and carries the basic structure of that style, like a sartorial soldier gantry striding into fashion battle. I’m torn on this one, and I think it’s because the cape isn’t working for me – and I usually adore a cape.
Conan Gray stays true to Lagerfeld obsession with black and white, and a pearlicious twist on that ubiquitous fan.
Bringing up the rear, literally, is the king of the year’s ball – and while it’s nothing I could pull off, kudos to Lil Nas X for upping the ante yet again. This is what the Met Ball is all about, like it or not.
With Mercury in retrograde and a full moon coming up later in the week, things seem to be a little topsy-turvy, and I’m doing my best to lie low and stay out of the wrecking ball’s path. Putting on ‘Evening Song’ first thing in the morning, on a Tuesday that already feels burdened by clouds and rain, is how I will endeavor to begin. Philip Glass has a way of lulling one into a state of hopeful resignation through his undulating patterns, and that’s the sort of vibe we need today.
A sense of transformation informs some of his work, the way the world changes from shades of gray to full color when certain people enter and exit during the course of a day. Some speak more in their absence than with their presence, and I’ve always wanted to be one of those people. The ones who leave an impression so astounding that they are talked about more when they are not in a room than when they might be in it. The ones who elicit a sigh or a click of consternation when you catch their fragrance. The ones who matter when so many of us simply don’t.
A year ago I wrote this post which ended up setting free a ghost that had haunted me for thirty years. At the time, I didn’t realize what I’d done, and only now on this anniversary do I realize that the ghost of my childhood friend hasn’t visited for the duration of the entire last year. That post is worth a revisit, and since I no longer feel the need to write about Jeff those posts are all I have to offer for the moment. Revisiting such items, when thoroughly investigated and worked through, has the power to heal the past. The magic of words, the magic of writing…
One of our favorite months is at hand, Mercury in retrograde be damned! I also hear a full moon is rising later this week, so let’s see what mayhem results and try to keep things as calm and collected as possible. It appears April showers will be bleeding into May, and I shall endeavor to embrace the rain because what other choice do we have? Stomping around in a state of tantrum because of the weather was so three years ago… on with the weekly recap!
The May sweeps period of television used to be when the shows put out their best rating-grabbers, often ending with a dramatic cliffhanger to keep people talking and guessing for the rest of the summer, hopefully enough to insist that they return in the fall. I loved the drama of it all, and I have no shame in aging myself to say that I was just coming into childhood cognizance when the big cliffhanger of the 80’s left everyone wondering ‘Who killed J.R.?’ on ‘Dallas’. In fact, that whole scenario informed a substantial part of what I would later do in life in that I would do my damndest to be the person who was on everyone’s lips, the guy who, if knocked off, would inspire a frenzy of suspects too numerous to narrow down because he’d created such a stir his entire life. It’s not easy to cull that kind of broad and sustained hatred, not the kind that makes people actively want to kill you – but that didn’t stop me from trying, whether intentionally or subconsciously. All these years later, I remember J.R., but not the would-be killer, because sometimes that’s how life works. The villains get all the glory, even when they become the victims; I learned that dangerous lesson and ran with it the wrong way.
The cliffhanger from this previous post found my much-younger self having just procured the phone number of a gentleman who was the first person to show any interest one following the fallout from the first man who kissed me. That fallout was more damaging than originally understood, and if there is any excuse to offer for my bratty behavior, it’s that. And it still won’t exonerate my guilt at how I treated another human being. Back then, I simply didn’t care. Not about him, and certainly not about myself.
Once upon there was light in my life
Now there’s only love in the dark
Nothing I can say
A total eclipse of the heart…
Back to that train platform on a glorious spring afternoon, where I stared down at the name and phone number written by a man I’d not even exchanged a word with on the train. In neat block figures, it was such a simple and seemingly-insignificant thing, but at that pre-internet time it was the only way I would have of finding out who he might be, the only way of making a tenuous connection. Fate and destiny and luck and coincidence informed so much of our lives before it was all so readily available online. It made things more difficult in many ways, but oh so much richer and more meaningful. It was as if the stars guided us rather than manipulated keystrokes to research and become who we thought someone might want us to be. All I had to go on was his smile, already fading in my mind’s memory, a name and a phone number. And somehow it was enough.
Never one to indulge in playing the hard-to-get games (as later suitors would unfortunately discover) I only waited a few hours to call him, because there was never any question on whether I would call. (Cliffhanger my ass.) The question was what I would say or do when I did call.
Without deliberately intending to do so, I kept my aloofness and distance, mainly from habit but also from the recent wounds that part of me realized hadn’t even started to heal. When I dialed the number from my dorm room, it was more of a dare to myself, a challenge to get back into the dating pool, and a gauntlet to see how bad I might be.
That spring and summer I was completely channeling Linda Fiorentino’s ferocious character in ‘The Last Seduction’ (not at all a worthy romantic aspiration by any stretch of the imagination) – my heart was on guard and safely barricaded from the previous fall’s romantic fiasco, and this gentleman, sweet as he might be, would pay the price of stumbling into such wayward behavior.
I don’t remember much about that first phone call. He had a deep voice and sounded slightly nervous. He still lived at home with his parents and was in Boston for an interview I think. He was also apparently not out yet, and in the debilitating way I had back then of comparing anything and everything, I realized that I had the upper hand there. I would give him his first book of gay literature, bring him to his first Broadway play, and introduce him to a world of pants entirely bereft of pleats. More than that, I would rain down emotional hell-fire, mental manipulation, and just plain meanness and cruelty. It would amaze me how much a young man could get away with when someone was taken with his beauty, especially when he never felt beautiful.
With just a few scant weeks before the end of that spring semester, it seemed futile to me to start a new relationship, especially when I’d be away for the entire summer, but somehow we managed to meet at least once or twice, taking a couple of steamy car-rides and pausing for parking-lot make-out sessions where I felt keenly that he was way more into me than I would ever be into him. That was good though, in the warped way my mind was processing romance at the time. Better to be the object of desire and have some say in the way things went. At the end of it all, I gave him my home phone number, and throughout the ensuing spring and summer we’d share sporadic phone calls. I remember visiting friends in Rochester and sneaking out to the car on a rainy May night to call him. It was raining and ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ came on the radio and I wondered at what I was doing. Every call was a dangled promise, a dare to keep thinking of me – of us, if we could fathom such a term at sun an early point – and he held on, seemingly as lonely as I would never admit myself to be.
I’d told him about a gay novel I’d just read and he sought it out and read it, and the idea that I might have such influence on another person made him suddenly repellant to me. His pronouncement that he might be falling in love, pulled forcefully from his lips with the blunt lack of precision by my immature guile, only emboldened me to be cold and dismissive. Not seeing myself as worthy of being loved, I derided anyone else who saw the opposite. Yes, I was that far lost, that fucked-up. And the more I pushed him away, the crueler I could be, the more we both inadvertently played into ‘The Rules’. By the time I returned in the fall, torturing him by phone felt like a cozy habit, and when he presented me with a poster of the cover of the book I’d suggested to him, his earnest hope of pleasing me carried the whiff of everything repulsive to me. I hated myself instantly for feeling that, but knew no other way around it, or any way to hide it.
When met with such disdain, he didn’t fight or flee, but rather tried to wrap his head around it. I could see him sometimes trying to work it out in his head, and feel even more contemptuous annoyance toward him for that. Far from my finest moment, this wasn’t helping me heal, or helping me move on, and rather than be honest and cut it all off, I kept it going, trying to be sweet and kind when I saw his hurt, trying to temper and reconcile the lack of respect I had for him with the genuine kindness he tried to show me. To my detriment and shame, I strung him along as a plaything rather than anyone serious, discarding his feelings in a way strikingly similar to how I’d been treated a year or so before. It was so obvious I made myself sick seeing it all play out, and so I treated him even worse, seeing what horrendous things I could say and get away with, defiling and degrading him in and out of the bedroom. There was nothing precious about such a power play, and something in me knew it would harden my heart in ways that might not be undoable, but I didn’t care.
I’ll write about the rest some other night, later in spring, when the dander is up again – when I don’t need to sleep for the start of another week…
1: the quality or state of being assiduous : DILIGENCE
2: persistent personal attention
This little park in Albany is right across the street from my office building, and it’s a charming place three seasons out of the year. (Technically it’s closed from November to March.) Right now it’s filled with tulips and flowering trees, the way much of Albany is, and makes for a happy pause in the downtown work day.
It was only a partial eclipse, but it was enough to cast a spell of shadow across my afternoon walk back to the dorm. Near the end of my first year at Brandeis, we were in the midst of a celebrated annual eclipse – I looked it up, and it happened on May 10, 1994. I remember it distinctly; I was under the newly-leafed-out maple trees near Hassenfeld – my dorm building – when the event was happening, and while I noticed a slight dimming of the day, what I saw more vividly were the shadows of crescents on the path before me. It struck me how frightening such a phenomenon might have appeared to centuries of people before me. Knowing what was happening rendered it more intriguing than frightening, and I took a few photos of the shadows. Somewhere those photos are in an old shoe box, waiting to be excavated on a day when there’s time for such boredom.
(Turn around) Every now and then I get a little bit lonely And you’re never coming ’round
It would be a year later when a thumping dance cover of ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ by Nicki French would take the gay scene by spring storm, and it formed the soundtrack to the adventures with the second man I ever kissed. That’s the memory at work here, and it’s fitting that an actual eclipse kicked it off.
(Turn around) Every now and then I get a little bit tired Of listening to the sound of my tears
At the tail end of my sophomore year at Brandeis, I’d mostly given up on men before I even really started. The first guy who ever kissed me had proven to be more damaging than I realized at the time; his harrowing and haunting hold on me, no matter how much I disputed and denied it, was dangerously informing all the kisses that followed. And maybe I was a little more reckless than I should have been. Whatever the case, it was a warm spring afternoon as I waited for the commuter rail at Porter Square, which would take me back to my dorm room at Brandeis.
I don’t recall what I’d done in Boston that day, but I do remember the tall, blonde-haired gentleman who stood across from me in pleated olive pants (two hapless strikes in one bad pair of trousers). He’d noticed me too – I was keenly aware of such things – and I saw he held his gaze a little longer than necessary. In an age before Grinder and social media, this was how gay men met. It was a veiled world of codes and subtle cadences – entire histories and desires could be read in a few furtive glances, interest gleaned from the slightest nod or hesitation.
(Turn around) Every now and then I get a little bit nervous That the best of all the years have gone by
After Tom, I wasn’t really looking for men, in spite of how I talked and carried myself. It was easier to be saucy and sordid than genuine and vulnerable. Safer too. When he watched me my gaze was anywhere other than back at him. Nobody played aloof better than me and already it felt less like playing and more like the life I was actively and desperately carving out for myself. With practiced sighs of boredom, I wanted to appear as though I wanted to be anywhere other than where I was – mostly people left you alone that way.
(Whenever I indulge in looking back, the closest I come to regret is in thinking of how disdainful I could be to the world, and how much I pushed myself to being alone when it was the last thing I really wanted.)
(Turn around) Every now and then I get a little bit terrified And then I see the look in your eyes
We were both early for the train, and there were only a few other people around, so this went on for some time. Feeling his eyes on me was a different sensation than the usual notice I would garner from my sartorial arsenal. It wasn’t interest in a coat or a bag or a pair of shoes – it was interest in my person, in the physical shell of my body. I felt him size up my hair and face, my chest, the spread of my thighs as I sat on a rigid bench across from him. I felt him notice every motion of my hands, every shuffle of my feet. A few times I would pause and deliberately catch him staring to which he averted his eyes, pretending it wasn’t happening. Such games we once played, such silly wastes of time.
The advance of commuters was upon us, and more people filled the little waiting area. I shifted my backpack onto my lap as people squeezed onto the bench beside me. He continued to stare and study, drinking me up as I drank up his interest, until it was finally apparent what was happening. At last I looked into his eyes for a moment, holding on a little longer than almost any other man would have done for another man. He broke first, and smiled broadly before a quick chuckle that shook his shoulders slightly. I smiled back, but briefly, not quite willing, or, quite frankly, knowing, what to do next, other than keep my distance.
(Turn around, bright eyes) Every now and then I fall apart (Turn around, bright eyes) Every now and then I fall apart
Pushing the memory of that first kiss from my mind, I let the smile leave my face and took out a book. It struck me that the man had nothing with him – not a bag or briefcase, not a coat or jacket – only the billowy pockets of his pleated pants, and perhaps one on the front of his white baggy button-down shirt. What brought him to Boston on such a day, what had he done to land him at Porter Square, and where might he be going? Despite the fear, despite the past, I was suddenly interested, piqued by his surreptitious engagement with the college-age young man I was then.
The rumbling of the commuter rail left us scrambling up to the platform, and I followed him at a distance – keeping him just far enough away to not appear overly-zealous. He sat near the front of the car, and lots of seats were available for the taking. I took one a few rows back, where I could see him still but he couldn’t see me. I would be in control this time – if this ended up being a time.
(Turn around) Every now and then I get a little bit restless And I dream of something wild
He turned around to look at me, then beyond me, just once. And then I saw him take out a scrap of paper from his pocket, and a pen, and scribble something down.
The conductor called out Belmont, as the train tilted to its side – the memorable mark of Belmont in my mind – then we righted and resumed our journey. Next stop was Waverley, then Waltham, and as we neared the Brandeis/Roberts stop I wondered if this was all in my mind. I would have to walk by the man on my way out, and my brain was scrambling how to play it – and whether to bother playing it at all. Equally enchanted and exhausted by how humans seemed to have to work to connect, I felt a flash of utter defeat and hopelessness, and a relief at a life of solitude. And then something came over me as I slung my backpack over my shoulder and marched down the aisle.
And I need you now tonight And I need you more than ever And if you only hold me tight We’ll be holding on forever And we’ll only be making it right ‘Cause we’ll never be wrong
I can’t describe what was happening as I walked toward the exit before the train had even come to its Brandeis/Roberts stop – whether it was a surge of adrenaline as I felt my heart thumping in my chest, or a last grasp at what might be something romantic. He was directly to my right, sitting by himself in a double-seat, and he looked up at me – the first time he would ever look up at me given his height – and I was about to let it all go when my body abruptly stopped. I turned to face him, and in one smooth, deft motion I unfurled the palm of my hand, into which he placed the piece of paper with his phone number on it. Closing my hand around it, I continued to the exit without saying a word. All these years later, it’s still probably the smoothest, scariest, and best-executed move of any of my romantic endeavors.
Clutching it madly, I walked away from the train platform without looking up at any of the passing windows, and only when it was gone entirely from view did I hurriedly open it up and gaze down upon his name and number.
Together we can take it to the end of the line Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time (all of the time)
I don’t know what to do and I’m always in the dark We’re living in a powder keg and giving off sparks
I really need you tonight Forever’s gonna start tonight (Forever’s gonna start tonight)
Once upon a time I was falling in love But now I’m only falling apart There’s nothing I can do A total eclipse of the heart
Did I call him? That’s a story for another post, as this has gone entirely more moody than a Saturday blog post should ever be. I promise to tell the rest when the dander isn’t up…
Vanity fashion lines come and go awfully quickly these days, but one of the most enduring and compelling has been the one started by Todd Sanfield, whose body walks the walk that his products talk. Sanfield created his underwear line 13 years ago, and has been modeling and promoting it consistently ever since. It’s expanded into swimwear too, and at the helm of it all is Sanfield himself. That sort of singular drive and determination is what sets him apart from those that have fizzled. Earning his first Dazzler of the Day (after having been named a hunk in several previous incarnations in these parts) Sanfield is still offering scintillating images and products to match. Check out his offerings here.
Happily spent from two nights of dining with our dear friends Eileen and Raph, I stumbled into the house well after 10 PM last night and heard the following music emanating from the local classical music station. It was mystical music, carrying calm and beauty and a sliver of mystery to it – shards of whispered secrets sounded across every pluck of the harp and strum of the guitar string. It was spring music, imbued with hope and a bit of tension, the way cold could still creep into the night and shock in the sunniest of mornings. Entitled, ‘The Spirit of the Trees’, it went perfectly well with the photos of our coral bark maple tree just coming into its miraculous chartreuse splendor.
Here we are already at the end of April, one more day of the month to go before the glory of May arrives, in apparently rainy fashion. Spring rains are somehow more maddening than the rains of fall – less depressing perhaps, but more bothersome. We waited all winter for some relief – it’s like stalling and hesitating and pulling back when you’re ready to go, go, go…
A little rain – or a lot of rain – won’t stop the show of the coral bark maple leaves. They will shine brightly even on the grayest days, brightening their corner of the yard with this magnificent shade, accenting themselves with that striking red bark. This fresh hue will last for a while, carrying its clarion call into the start of summer before ripening into a slightly deeper shade of green. Then, come fall, the reversal of fortune occurs, as the leaves turn bright yellow before fading to a ghostly pale cream color. By winter, all that will remain are the coral stems, which will burn through the months of slumber until they recreate this spectacular show all over again.
A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania, Atsushi Akera was a professor in the Science and Technology Studies department of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, during which time she wrote the book ‘Calculating a Natural World: Scientists, Engineers, and Computers during the Rise of U.S. Cold War Research’, which sounds as impressive as it is unlikely that I would understand a word of it. She recently retired in order to create Cafe Euphoria right cross the river in Troy. Cafe Euphoria is a transgender and nonbinary worker owned restaurant and cafe, which also offers community support, a safe space to dine and simply be, as well as a fabulously-curated thrift shop. Akera earns this Dazzler of the Day for her ongoing work to be supportive and inclusive of all communities. (Read more about her efforts in this article.)
