Visual Changes

Just for the few people paying attention here, I've made a few (slight) changes to the page format. I hope it's easier to read. I only show two posts at a time now. The others are archived. Also, I added my own photo to the masthead just to personalize things a little. If you noticed a difference, great. If you didn't, PAY ATTENTION FROM NOW ON! I'm just saying.

Connections...

I've been reading Little, Big by John Crowley over the past week, but only a little bit at a time. Usually I can devour a book in about a day if I have uninterrupted time on my hands. This book is different. Tonight, I thought about what it is that makes this book different. Usually, I can't wait to get to the end of a book, not because it's bad (usually), but because I can't wait to see how it ends. How will the characters I've come to know and care about (or in some instances loath) make out in the end.

Then there are books like Little, Big where I find myself lost in every single word on the page. The language, the pacing, the timeless nature of this book is astonishing to me. If there is a writer to aspire to, John Crowley is surely at the top of my list. He's created an entire world that somehow manages to be of this world, and yet, not be a part of it.

"Little, Big" is a gift that I have to thank Haven Kimmel for. She writes a blog (as well as some of the finest novels I've had the pleasure to read) and recommends books from time to time. Another book she mentioned in her blog entitled "The Dreaded Desert Island Decisions" (read this entry here: http://havenkimmel.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/ ) is South of the Big Four, by Don Kurtz. Haven says "Simply the finest novel ever written about the Midwest" which I have to admit I wasn't so sure about. Especially when I found out it is set in the farm country of Indiana. A place that I left long ago and had no desire to ever revisit. I was wrong.

Just into the first part, I found myself quietly weeping reading it. Weeping for a familiar place in both time and geography that I'm not sure exists anymore. A place before farming became big business. An age when a man's worth was measured by the sweat and time that he put into his land. A place where a man can screw up and still in the end find redemption at the edge of a corn field during a late autumn harvest.

Over the past month, I've probably read more books than I've read in the last five years. I could easily blame it on being in Chicago and having so much to do there. But the simple truth is, I just didn't have it in me to be a reader. Coming back to Indiana re-awakened something inside of me. Call it, searching for my roots, figuring out who I am by looking back at what I used to do/be. But there seems to have been many things leading to this. Random things. People popping up that I've not heard from in years. Ideas wafting in on a breeze making me remember what my aspirations used to be. A convergence of events that make me think the universe was/is trying to tell me something. Robbie thinks it's all just coincidence, and if it were just a few things I would agree.

That leads me to the biggest question about what makes a great writer and here's what I think. A great writer isn't totally of this world. They see and hear things that most people don't. The pay attention to the details like all good writers do. But the truly great ones have a knack for feeling and seeing the undercurrent, the charge in the air, the things in the shadows that most people only catch a glimpse of from time to time - if they are lucky.

There is a connection to things and people in this world. Great writers/artists only have to pay attention to those tendrils to see what others don't. There is some randomness I'm sure, but most of the time, if you look closely enough, you'll find something that loops around something else that loops around another thing and before you know it, you've circled right back to where you started.

In future posts, I'll talk about how, after my dad was killed in a horrific car crash, what our pastor said to me finally has been revealed. (George, you are so right about "the worst accidents happen on the most beautiful of days.") Dad crashed his car on a straight stretch of road in the middle of the afternoon on a gorgeous, sunny June afternoon. The pastor said to me that there is a reason for everything, that we might not know the reason right away (if ever), but God has a reason for even the worst of tragedies. I'll just end this with saying that everything I have, everything I am, can be traced directly back to that moment in time. And I have my reason.

(this post was updated/edited 9-24-08)

Anger

I'm angry.

Yesterday, for the first time as an adult, I had a stereotype lobbed at me. I don't know if it was meant to hurt me, but...

I'm angry.

I've been thinking about it since it happened. Someone I work with, hopefully out of ignorance, stereotyped me. Here's how the drive by shooting went:

"You're gay, right?"

"Um, last time I checked I was. Why"

"I need your help with figuring out what color would work well with these sheets."

"Why ask me?"

"Well you guys are good at that sort of stuff."

" 'You guys?!?' You know what? That's really offensive!"

"Jim, I'm sorry. I was just kidding around. You know what I mean. I just thought you'd be good at this sort of thing."

OK. Yes I am "good at that sort of thing." But not because I'm gay. It's because of my unofficial/undeclared art background in college. It's because I've watched a gazillion home decorating shows on HGTV, TLC, Discovery Channel, or any other channel that had a show about decorating on a budget over the last 15 or so years. And all because I was trying to make my surroundings as nice as possible for as little as possible. When you don't have much lining your pockets, you make do with what you're given.

And it's because I pay attention to the aesthetics of my surroundings no matter where I am. If it makes me feel comfortable, then I analyze the shit out of it to see why and what it is that I can translate back to my own surroundings! Anybody can do that. It doesn't take a "gay" gene.

I'm angry!

I've been stewing on this for a little over a day now. Dammit! I hate being labeled something one dimensional! Yes, I'm gay. But that's not what defines me as a person. It's a part of me, yes, but just one part. ONE PART!!!

I make no efforts to hide my life. It's all out there for anyone to see. I freely talk about my partner, our daughter, and the life we make together. I don't offer up intimate details about our sex life - I don't think anyone should know details about ANYBODY'S sex life. Assume all you want. I ain't sharing and I ask the same of you. Funny, I'm a bit of a prude that way.

But, I'M ANGRY!

I'm might as well had the slur FAGGOT thrown at me. It would have had the same effect. It would have been more efficient.

And dammit! I just wasn't expecting it in this day and age. I thought (wrongly, apparently) that Indianapolis had grown beyond this over the past few years. And, yes, I know it was just one person out of countless others who have been far more gracious. But that's one person too many.

How ARE we to live?

On a friend's blog, the question came up this morning of "How are we to live?" For the past thirty to 40 minutes I've been pondering that question while reading other peoples responses. And it was humbling to read what everyone else had to say on the subject. Humbling because "My Brilliant Response" never came to me.

It did lead, however, to several things I consider essential. The first is: Make plans but expect them to change. I never wanted to be in another relationship after "the psycho". But then I met Robbie. All through that first summer I just expected us to be a fling of sorts. Oh, I missed him when I went on a vacation to Rehoboth Beach with my neighbors in August. But I wouldn't allow myself to realize that I was falling in love with him.

That all changed with four words from him the first weekend trip that we took together in October that first year. Robbie and I were standing in the parking lot of a flea market outside of Union Pier, Michigan waiting on my neighbors to finish buying some monstrous old castoff for their antique booth. I remember I daydreaming and looking at Robbie from across the lot. What brought me back to reality was me him looking me right back in the eyes and saying "I know, me too." And that was when my head caught up with what my heart had known for most of the summer. I loved him with every measure of my being. Eight years later, I still can’t believe how incredibly lucky and blessed I am to be with him.

That brings me to the second part: Live honestly. From an early age I had been taught that our lives are to be hidden from everyone. I grew up in an alcoholic household. I don't mean to garner any pity here, that's just the way it was. For those of you who aren't Adult Children Of Alcoholics, it's akin to having an elephant in your living room, but no one will acknowledge it. And you're not allowed to. EVER. So that gave me plenty of training to be able to deny any "elephants" in my own life.

As an ACOA it was easy to deny that I was gay. I denied it so well, that I ended up coming out twice. L-o-o-n-g story! I won't go into the details, but after several bad relationships (OK, all of them) I decided I couldn't live that way. So for many years after, I would always pick the wrong women to date. Or try to date anyway. They were either unattainable, mean, or just plain wrong for me. And the simple truth was that I picked those women because deep inside me I knew that I was gay and would one day end up cheating on them. And I just couldn't do that to another person. I didn't want to be one of "those guys", hooking up on the sly ( I think it's called "being on the down low"), hoping not to get caught. But eventually everyone does. So after much soul searching one evening, I came out. Again. And irrevocably.
(As a footnote to the above disastrous dating of women mentioned here, I did receive the gift of a very good friend. She's been there, supportive of me for 24 - 25 years now. Thanks for everything Kim.)

And that brings me to my third part of "How are we to live?": Live for the moment. I have a tendency to get way ahead of myself. I stopped writing years ago when a college professor of mine told me that I had talent as a writer and that while he enjoyed reading what I wrote, my grammar sucked! I also apparently had never met a comma I didn't like. (I think I would put in a comma where I would naturally pause when speaking. Not, such a great idea in print.) This was from someone who freelances and is published numerous times every month. So he knew of what he spoke.

Hey! Great! No pressure there! Now, I have to continue writing, learn grammar, and come up with new story ideas FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!!! I hadn't even had the first article written, let alone published. But in my head I had already won a Pulitzer and was agonizing over how I was going to follow that up. So I did the only thing I could, I walked away. Besides, how could I write the truth if I couldn't be honest about myself. [Ed. note: see previous paragraphs about being in the closet.]

So, here's the last truth for today. I worry too much. I worry that all the things that are important and meaningful to me will be taken away. I worry that the people who mean the most to me won't be there when I need them the most. I worry that being a writer means success and failure. I worry too much (although not as much as I used to) about what other people think of me. And I worry that this is just an exercise in futility, that any talent I think I have is all in my imagination.

And now, I'd like to hear from you. Let me know your thoughts on all this. I'm letting go of my fear of criticism so that I can fully live in this moment, and with your help, become more of the person I'm supposed to be.

Running into old friends

I've been back in Indianapolis since the beginning of April. Robbie stayed in Chicago to wrap up things there until mid July. I don't think a week or two has gone by without bumping into someone we knew from 5 years ago. Or at least talking with someone who knows people we know. That hardly ever happened in Chicago. It's almost like our own version of "This is Your Life." It's been a lot of fun getting re-acquainted with old friends.

It's also a little freaky thinking about five years of our lives flying by as fast as it did. But a lot did happen in those years away. We got married. It's not legal, but we did it in a church with a real minister (and not by some weird person acting on behalf of the universe waving a switch around over our heads.) I've passed more kidney stones than Starbucks has coffee houses. I also had an emergency appendectomy (4 years ago today.) I would highly recommend it if you can avoid having one. Got a puppy that someone stole 3 months later. Got another puppy who is now 4 years old - and yes, he's spoiled. But best of all, we brought the love of our lives home a little over a year ago.

If we had not taken a chance on Chicago, we never would have found out about Adoption-Link. It was a long process, but as I've said so many times, Riley was worth the wait. She's been a joy to have in our lives. It's been a challenge too, especially working weird random hours. But at the end of the day, seeing her face light up when I walk into her room to tell her goodnight makes any difficulties all worth it.


And the girl loves to eat! There are days (most of them) where it seems like she'll never stop eating! Last night she used a fork all by herself, spearing grilled chicken and corn kernels off her plate. She was so proud of herself the first time she actually made it to her mouth with food still on her fork. And so were we. (The pictures above here were taken last week.)

Oh, and Happy Birthday to our nephew Parker! Hope you get what you want.

God? Is that you?

This last television season, I fell in love with one new show. Other than Lost, Eli Stone is the only show that I feel compelled to watch. A few weeks ago, I was watching a repeat of the show where Eli is arguing for a man whose wife was trying to have him declared mentally incompetent because he didn't want to continue his cancer treatments. The dying man said that God had told him to just enjoy the time he had left and not go through a painful procedure that would only add few more painful days to his life. He was asked by the opposing counsel what God sounded like to which he replied "it was only a feeling, I didn't actually hear a voice." The attorney then asked how he could be sure it was God and the defendant said that he just knew.

When it came time for Eli to argue for the man, he said that God speaks to us each in different ways. God spoke to the defendant through feelings. God spoke to Moses through a burning bush. And God speaks to Eli through George Michael. (You need to see the show to understand this. I could explain, but, eh, I don't want to take the time. Plus, I think you just might enjoy it.)

It brought back something that I had spoken to Robbie and a few others about. Just because we don't hear an actual voice doesn't mean that God isn't speaking to us. God spoke to me a few years ago through bouquets of flowers.

Now, before you start questioning my sanity, let me explain. Four years ago, on September 10th, I was supposed to go with Robbie (my partner) to visit his family in Warren, Michigan for his nephew's birthday and and uncle's funeral. A bi-polar weekend if there ever was one. I had awakened that morning with a stomach ache that progressively worsened throughout the day and decided to not travel with them. I went to bed early that evening.

The next morning I felt slightly better and thought maybe I was just kicking another kidney stone or two around inside of me. Always fun. Nothing like the feeling that someone is simultaneously squeezing and stabbing your kidney. But as Saturday progressed the pain got steadily worse until I finally decided that maybe, just maybe, I should probably go to the hospital. The problem was that I didn't know where to go or who to call. I know, I know! 911! By the time it occurred to me that something was seriously wrong I couldn't think clearly. I finally managed to find a number for someone Robbie worked with whom and whose name I recognized. She and her husband came over to drive me to the hospital. (Carolyn and Cliff, I don't think you'll ever fully understand how wonderful you both are. And not just for helping me that day.)

The plan was for me to meet Carolyn and Cliff at the entrance to the building and they would drive me to a hospital. Robbie worked for the University of Illinois at Chicago at the time and they had provided housing for us on campus in their new residence hall. What I hadn't factored in was the fact that it is almost an entire city block from the front door of that apartment to the elevator leading to the first floor. By the time I made it downstairs I was exhausted.

(Lord, I could use an editor! I am getting to the point of this. I promise.)

We decided that I would go to the UIC hospital. Carolyn dropped me off at the front door with Cliff so she could park the car. I made it as far as the curb. From there the rest of the night is pretty much a blur.

A wheelchair was brought out, I was sent to an exam room then to x-ray, then back to the exam room. And in between was a lot of waiting around for days/minutes - I had no sense of time. During all this I made Carolyn wait until I had a diagnosis before calling Robbie. I didn't want him to panic and worry over something that was probably just kidney stones again. Boy, was I wrong. The next thing I remember was a doctor/intern telling that while I did have kidney stones, that wasn't my problem. An inflamed appendix was. And because it was evidently on the verge of bursting, they would admit me and do emergency surgery. Just before midnight on September 11th, 2004, I was anesthetized and had my appendix removed.

I came to later, hooked up to an IV with a morphine drip. I'm here to tell you that at that point in my life I thought that there isn't anything on this planet better for getting rid of pain than morphine. But you tend to sleep a lot. My best friend Kim had driven up from Indianapolis in the middle of the night to be by my side when I awakened. Robbie came home later that evening after attending his uncle's funeral. (Great weekend for him, huh?) He had called my family in the mean time to let them know.

That day Robbie's mom called the room to see how I was doing, Carolyn stopped by with a paper at some point and Kim was there for most of it. Kim only went home to take care of our 6 month old puppy and then came back to keep me company. And so I slept.

Another day passed before I heard from my own family. Just in case you didn't know, we're not very close. Not for lack of trying on my part. It's just the way it is. Probably has a lot to do with my dad's fatal car accident 35 years ago. My theory is that if they don't get too emotionally involved, then it won't hurt as bad when you are gone.

A few days go by. Robbie's family, friends of mine and even Robbie's boss had sent bouquets to me at the hospital. I remember looking at them thinking how awful it was that nobody in my family had sent anything and I fell asleep crying just thinking about that. Some time later that afternoon I awoke and looked at the flowers again. Only this time I thought, "How incredibly lucky I am to have all those people in my life who care so much about me."

There are times in your life when you know certain things with a clarity you never thought possible... even in a morphine haze. That was one of them. In that moment, I knew without a doubt that while God doesn't always give us what we ask for specifically - a family who shows how much they care. He does give us what we need - a family who shows how much they care. Through Robbie I finally got the family I needed and found that I have friends who will be there for me no matter what. If that isn't what a family is all about, then I don't know what it is.

That was the day that God spoke to me through bouquets of flowers. He was letting me know that while I might not get exactly what I want, He does give me what I need. There have been other times when I've felt his presence or seen him at work. But I think that was one of the most sublime and eloquent ways he has ever spoken to me.

If you've made it this far, let me know when and how God spoke to you. Comments are open.

First Post

Congratulations! You found me. Or did I find you? This place (I think) will be where I talk about returning home to Indianapolis after five years in Chicago. I've not mapped out exactly what I plan to do with this page, but then again, that's pretty much how I've lived my life so far.

There have been a few exceptions to that rule. Especially since adopting our daughter a little over a year ago.

Oh, wait. Maybe that's where I should start. I'm 47 years old. Been in a committed relationship for 8 years now. My partner and I adopted the sweetest little girl last year. We brought her home when she was just a month old and our live's couldn't be any better. (Well, I could be wealthy beyond imagination and writing instead of schlepping myself to work five days a week selling furniture of all things!)

But back to coming home... Indianapolis isn't exactly where I was born and raised, but it's been home for most of my adult life. I grew up in a small town about 40 minutes west of here. I still have some family that live there (hi cousin Tracy), but I couldn't wait to get out!

The only other places I've lived have been Muncie, Indiana and Chicago. I'd recommend at least giving Chicago a try if you're so inclined. Not so much with Muncie.

Muncie is where my college career was. Or as my brothers used to say, my professional student career. While I did make at least one lifelong friend while there, most of the people I encountered were ones any sane person should run screaming from. And one particular person I ended up getting a protective order against who forever will only be referred to as "the psycho".

As the days and weeks go by, you'll find out the rest of the story here, as will I. Enjoy. Let me know what you think.