California, here we come...

Next month, love-of-my-life Michael Leleux and I are going to California to get married! Of course, Michael and I have been married for the past twelve years. At least, we’ve considered ourselves married since we first fell desperately in love in small town Texas (during a community theatre production of West Side Story—it’s basically the gayest story ever), before hitching a plane to New York City to build a life together. (See my book, The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy.) So it’s odd, really, how much getting legally married means to us—on a really private, validating level—to have the world give its nod to our life.
Of course, that’s what our upcoming wedding means on a political level.

But in our daily life, it means the chaos of any wedding. Our mothers are going mad making plans and driving us crazy. And really, it’s just amazing how expensive even the simplest wedding—a courthouse, a couple of new suits, a hotel and travel arrangements—becomes in no time. Especially if the wedding requires transporting a few people thousands of miles away for a few days. But as my mother keeps telling me, “You only get married once”—even though that’s something most people only say in order to avoid seeming cynical, because lots of people (my mother included) get married and married and married, and never get carried away (as the song goes). But right now, Michael and I are busy being bowled over by something we never thought we’d be lucky enough to get in the first place. What an adventure! What a head-ache! How high the moon! Stay tuned…

My Mother-In-Law

My beloved mother-in-law has been through a really rotten patch. It’s been building ever since the death of my father-in-law several years ago. It was a terrible time: there he was, wilting away at home, and she was in the hospital having this awful heart surgery. She was too ill to even attend his funeral. Just the worst. After that, there was the tragic, but startlingly swift, development of her ebay addiction. So that she was, seemingly overnight, buying things like forty-seven pairs of white satin jazz shoes, in assorted sizes. Or, dozens of those velvet fingers they put the rings on at those cheap jewelry stores in the mall, so that when you laid them all out together it looked like hundreds of people were behaving very rudely. After that, things took a darker turn, with a slow shutting down of her joy and energy, until everything culminated a few months ago in a really lousy couple of months where I believe she sort of drove her inner sedan into the drainage ditch of despair and hopelessness. It was the saddest thing I ever saw in my whole life, and absolutely nothing about it was funny.
But now, let me tell you what is funny.
She’s back.
With the help of some mountain-flattening anti-depressants, she’s Doris Day.
She’s laughin’ and kickin’ and doin’ everything but the Black Bottom, and life is one grand sweet song again.
AND this sweet old Catholic lady, a lady who once told me that Ronald Reagan caught Alzheimer’s from thinking too hard, has discovered Eastern theology, and New Age spiritualism.
This is how she spends her time now. Reading Kahil Gabran and The Secret and all of these Oprah-y books about how to unleash your inner power, like it’s a dog or something. So that now she telephones me, and says things like, “Robert, are you aware that your third eye is located behind your pituitary gland?” Or, “Darlin’, when you’re lookin’ for my birthday present, honey, try to get me somethin’ in purple. I understand it’s a very good Chakra color.”
Or, she puts strange Catholic spins on these New Age concepts, for instance: “You see darlin’, in order to have anything you want, you’ve simply got to appeal to your upper mind to intervene with your middle mind, so they can intercede on your behalf with your lower mind. And your lower mind’s happy to oblige your middle mind, because they just love one another, and everybody seems to think the world of the upper mind anyway.”
I think she’s praying to have her ebay account restored.
Anyway, I’m so grateful Mom’s been revived by something. Anything. Who’s complaining.
But the other day I did invite her to lunch, and she told me, “Oh, darlin’, I don’t know about that. I’m not sure I’m feelin’ up to goin’ out.”
And I said, “Well, you see, Mom. It’s simple. All you’ve got to appeal to your upper mind to intercede with your stomach.”
And I didn’t even mind that she didn’t find that funny at all.

Notes from the Road

Dearly Beloveds,
I have been touring the country promoting my book.
With my mother.
Which some may consider an act of unqualified bravery, but which has been, nevertheless, a great deal of fun.
We began in New Orleans—a town I adore, filled with the kindest people I’ve ever met.
Here’s a typical day.
Mother and I were scheduled to be interviewed on the radio.
Upon entering the radio station, I proceeded to regale the station manager with stories about just how much I love public radio. About how I’m just one of those people who sits out in his car until All Things Considered is over, no matter how much grocery shopping I have to do.
And she said, “Oh, that’s so nice. But this isn’t public radio.”
And I said, “Oh. Well then, what…. What is this…?”
And she said, “This is The Radio for the Blind.”
No fooling.
And I started saying how radio for the blind was God’s work. And then I asked, “But, ummm. And forgive me for being naïve, here, but can’t the blind listen to any…any radio station?”
And she said, “Well of course blind people can listen to any radio station, but we are The Radio for the Blind.”
And I said, “That’s very important.”
And she said, “We read books to the blind over the radio.”
Which really made me perk up my ears, and ask, “Oh. Well, uh. Well, are you going to read my…. I mean, are you planning to read my little book to the blind?”
“No.”
It seems that I'm a real wash-out with the blind.
But she was very, very nice about it.
Well, you can’t win ‘em all.

Like Halley's Comet, Only Cheesier...

I have to tell you about what is, perhaps, the most significant invention of the past twenty-five years.
I refer not to the internet, or the artificial heart, or the saline breast implant, but rather, of course, to the new Burger King Cheesy Tot.
Just when you think that nobody could possibly find a new way to combine cheese and potato, what happens? Some genius in the Burger King research lab figures out that if you inject what seems to be hot, gooey Velveeta into your run-of-the-mill tater tot, you end up with a little nugget of heaven.
You think I’m exaggerating.
I understand.
It’s because you’re cynical.
It’s because you secretly think there couldn’t possibly be, in the twenty-first century, an unplumbed potato/cheese combo, or that there isn’t really that much difference between injecting potato with cheese, and dipping potato in cheese, or drizzling potato with cheese.
But you would be mistaken.
Because injecting the cheese makes all the difference in the natural world, and that’s why I’m a mere writer, and you do whatever you happen to do, and neither of us is a cheese and potato genius slaving away in the Burger King lab, which I now think of in much the same way I used to think about NASA, before we all found out about NASA being a government-subsidized sex camp with adult diapers.
Ah, how to describe the cheesy tot? How to convey its particular ecstasy? It’s hot, crusty on the outside, mushy on the inside, except, just when you’re lulled into thinking that it’s a regular tater tot, WHAM! WHOOSH! ZOOM!
A gush of hot, fake cheese, far better than any legitimate cheese could ever hope to be, because, unlike the real thing, fake cheese is actually engineered for flavor.
And then, it passes. Which would be very sad, if they weren’t sold in sets of six, a perfect number.
And now, everyone, before rushing out to buy, remember, it takes two people to make a work of profound, selfless brilliance. The person who creates it, and the person who talks about it. So, text your friends. Call your relatives. Make amends with your past over the linoleum-topped tables of Burger King. Spare no expense. Take photographs, record diary entries. After all, it isn’t often in life we get to be part of an event of real historical importance.

Author? Author?

So, I'm totally loving Ugly Betty. It's got heart. It's got funny. It's got pizzazz. What it doesn?t have is a character who's a writer. I mean, I don't think there's been one character on the show so far who writes for a living. (Yes, I know that Salma Hayek's character had written a couple of books, but within the plotline of the show she was an editor-in-chief, so that doesn't count.)

And this is a show about a magazine!

A show about a magazine on which there's a character who's a receptionist, and a character who's a seamstress, and a character who's an accountant, but not one writer, for chissakes.

I mean, I know that writers aren't, as a species, sleek and glamorous creatures. I'm aware that we're not fashion models, but come on, we've got to have more TVQ than the accountants.

Otherwise, it's really quite a good show.

Hillary vs Obama, Prius vs Civic

Can somebody please tell me when the prospect of having a black president became cooler than that of having a woman president? I mean, I understand that Obama, personally, is a much cooler, spontaneous, infinitely more inspiring figure than Hillary, who always seems so studious and measured and carefully plotted. And I get that Obama seems anti-establishment, while Clinton is the ultimate insider. But buried somewhere inside the tone of our common conversation is the idea that having a black president is satisfyingly radical and different, whereas having a woman president already seems a tad passé. Well, Jesus Christ, since when? I mean, did somebody fundamentally reorder society, finally balancing out the power differential between women and men, and forget to send me the memo? Is it just that Civil Rights has always been cooler than feminism? So that, even now, calling someone a feminist has dreary, bluestocking implications, whereas calling someone, I don’t know, a Civil Rights Crusader seems dashing and heroic.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, having a black president, any black president, would be enormous—really symbolically powerful. A tremendous step towards culturally redressing our nation’s history of slavery and apartheid. But guys, the idea of a woman president is nothing to sneeze at.

Not to mention that this whole line of thought, about a black or woman president, has a sort of gross, lefty-boutique shopping ring to it. Like we’re choosing between Hybrid cars, or bottled water, or something. We should, of course, be looking for the finest candidate for the job. It’s just that Obama and Hillary are the only interesting candidates for the job.

St. Peter, Don't You Call Me, I'm in Line For Elaine Stritch

When I die and go to heaven, I want it to be Elaine Stritch at the Café Carlyle. No fooling. It’s the greatest. Maybe you’ve had the experience of sitting in a darkened theatre or nightclub or cabaret, and knowing, just knowing, that This Is Happiness. That this is one of life’s Great Good Times—a trip to the moon on gossamer wings, a moment of seamless bliss, and if the carousel would only keep spinning forever, you’d never, ever want to jump off. Or maybe you haven’t. But if you haven’t, then it’s probably because you’ve never seen Stritch’s cabaret act—and in that case, you should call the Carlyle pronto, and make a reservation for January’s show, which is sure to sell out any minute now.

I have friends who do understand what I love about Stritch, and I have friends who do not. Those who don’t tend to mention that she doesn’t have a “pretty” voice. That she sort of screams a lot, and often seems a tad, well, cranky. I suppose all that’s true enough, but then again, fuck pretty. I’m so goddamn sick of the tyranny of prettiness, which just tends to spoil the hell out of everything. So that the whole, twirling world ends up smelling like White Diamonds and sounding like Celine Dion and looking like People magazine, until the red beating heart of everything is dead dead dead. I think Truman Capote said, “Good taste is the death of art.” It’s the flat truth, and here’s my own epigram—“Prettiness is the death of beauty.” And Elaine Stritch, joshing and screeching and dead-panning away, has the same sort of divine off-kilter beauty as Garland and Coward and Cole Porter, and Diana Vreeland, and also, my grandmother.

That’s another reason I love Elaine Stritch—she reminds me of the women in my family—brilliant, witty, and furious. I suspect that many others feel the same way, and that this constitutes a large part of her appeal. In her pearls and cardigans and tightly rolled hair, Stritch is the upper-middle class suburban lady susperstar. She’s what all our mothers and grandmothers might have been had they’d hopped a train to New York City, and had an affair with Marlon Brando. It’s why “The Ladies Who Lunch” moves us so enormously—because Elaine is the lady who escaped that racket, singing about all those who didn’t. Tremendous.

All of which doesn’t do a lot to expain the good time aspect of her show, but trust me, she’s hilarious. The Carlyle is glorious, and looks just like something out of the Batista Regime. The food is so-so, but who cares? If you want art and truth and beauty, not to mention a fucking blast, go see Elaine. There’s no better show anywhere. If you have to, sell your children for a seat.