Summer.

Summer snuck in behind all those storms last week. I know because I walked to the post office today and by the time I got there my shirt was completely soaked. And the office building that the post office is in was air conditioned like a walk-in fridge. I'm not complaining, in fact, I lingered in the lobby for several minutes, got out my book and read for a while, it felt so good.

Hot weather makes me cranky. It makes me feel anxious and desperate. It makes me mad. (My friend M has the same response to the smell of fish.) But I live in Texas now, so I'm trying to make peace with it. It doesn't help that, when I bring it up to people who live here, they say, "You think this is hot?" It's not unbearable. It's barely poking up into the 90s the last few days. But knowing that from here on in it's only going to get worse, with no break until mid-October...

I don't want to turn on the air conditioner until I absolutely can't stand it any more, because once it's on it'll be hard to turn off. We have window units in our bedrooms, but nothing in the living room, kitchen, or bathroom. I was thinking I would try to live without it until it gets over 100. The forecast says 99 tomorrow.

Trash.

I'm coming very late to the Holly Woodlawn fan club, but ... here I am. J and I watched Trash last night. Why am I 46 years old and seeing this film for the first time?

When I moved to New York in 1981, I lived for a few months in the Parsons dorm, on Union Square at 16th St., just across the street from Andy Warhol's original factory building, but he had already moved by then. I went through a short Velvet Underground phase. I still love that first record, the one with Nico. I saw all the John Waters films back then, but I missed the Andy Warhol/Paul Morrissey stuff. Maybe we considered it outre already. When I look back I find that I had so many strong opinions that had no basis in anything I can remember.

So, Trash. Obviously, the secret, maybe it's not so secret, is that if you put somebody as beautiful as Joe Dallesandro on screen, people will watch it for a very long time no matter what else is going on around him, especially if he's naked. (The sequence with Jane Forth as the psycho newlywed was nauseating, not because of how long it took him to stick that needle into his vein, but because of the sound of her voice. She was like a combination of Little Edie from Grey Gardens, the blond debutante in Auntie Mame, and bleach thrown in your eyes.)

But every time Holly Woodlawn was on screen, I found it hard to pay attention to anything else. She's luminous. And so funny and affecting, and always completely committed to the scene. I don't know if it was intentional, but one of the things that made the film interesting to me was the sense that everyone is playing make-believe. Putting on a show. Except for Holly. She lived there; everyone else was pretending to live in her world.

And not just the big stuff, like when she's masturbating with the beer bottle, but the smallest gestures and facial expressions. The scene with the welfare caseworker should be shown to everyone who wants to be an actor. In a scene that could hardly be more contrived, she's hilarious and heartbreaking and totally real.

New Idea, Old Story.

A story for a musical film has been tumbling around in my head the last week or so. I think it could be a very small film, something I could make myself with the help of friends. It makes me smile every time I think about it, so I'm assuming it's a good idea.

There was a guy in my hometown with a peculiar notoriety. He was sort of a hanger-on, I'm not sure what he did for a living, he was just always around. And he was, to put it bluntly, the town queer. In fact, for a while when I was in junior high school, his first name was used as a synonym for queer.

So, in some sense, everybody knew. But just what did they know? Did they know that there was practically a line of teenage boys in and out of his efficiency apartment on weekend nights? Did they know that he was showing them man/boy Super 8 stag films on his living room wall, having sex with them, and sending them home with porn magazines and a list of all the other gay kids in town?

This went on for many years. He was probably in his 30s when I knew him, in the late 70s. He was not what I would call an attractive man. But the knowledge he had, the access to a world of pleasure, was obviously a magnet for homosexual kids with no other role models. Call him a sexual predator, but he provided a service no one else was providing.

Some years after I grew up and left Indiana, I heard that he ran for mayor and lost, and then that he was arrested and put in jail. I don't know what he was charged with; the story I heard was that it had to do with his sex life, but I can't verify that. I can't find anything in the web archives of the local paper.

The fact that he ran for mayor is what most intrigues and inspires me -- and makes me laugh -- about the story, and it's also what makes me think: musical! If I can get an audience past its revulsion toward a character who takes advantage of sexually inexperienced, confused, and affection-starved teenagers, there's a lot of humor and small-town charm in the story. Shades of The Music Man.

I also really want to write without judgment (I should say, without disproportionate judgment) about sexual relationships between adults and teenagers. The hysteria about the Mark Foley congressional page scandal rubbed me way the wrong way. I won't say there's not a lot of room for exploitation, harassment, and abuse when there's a big age difference, but it irks me when people make no distinction between sex with a 15-year-old and sex with an 8-year-old. This guy was not dragging boys to his apartment. They were going there because he had something they wanted, and they knew they possessed something he wanted in return. It was a simple transaction, a fair deal.

Here's the issue I need to resolve before I get too far along with this story. The guy's name, his real-life name, is so perfect I'm having a hard time contemplating changing it. I just can't come up with anything near as good. But of course it should be changed, not just because the guy is probably still around somewhere (not that I plan for this story to be unflattering) but also because there was a well-known baseball player with the same name. I want to have a name in my head as I work on the story, because it helps me imagine it, and it'll come in handy as I'm thinking of lyrics.

Gecko.

There's a lizard just outside my bedroom window. I think he must live nearby, because I see him frequently, always at night. I'll look up and there he'll be, stuck to the middle of the windowpane, waiting for who knows what. I don't know if he's aware that his glass-bottom boat is actually a window.

A few minutes ago, I was reading, sitting in a chair next to the window, and I stood up to go to the bathroom. The thought popped into my head, "I wonder if that lizard is still around," because I hadn't seen him in a few weeks. I looked out the window, which just then was about 6 inches from my nose, and he was peering around the edge of the window frame. Looking right at me. "Yeah, I'm still here. What do you want?" It was spooky and hilarious.

I thought I should move him out to the garden, so he can work on controlling the insect infestation. But then I realized that his little hangout is very near the spot where I've been relocating the big black bugs. He must think I'm bringing him takeout breakfast every morning when I show up with my plastic bag of bugs.

The picture isn't him, but he looks just like that.

Wipeout.

We had a motherfucker of a thunderstorm last night. Knocked out the power for about half an hour, and tore up the garden pretty bad. Both tomato plants were nearly horizontal and several of the chile plants (which I thought were very sturdy) are at 45 degree angles. The watermelon and cucumber vines are all askew and covered with sand. You know, I always say that I love dogs but don't want to have one of my own because they're too needy. I'm starting to feel the same way about gardens.

Since this is the first time I've had a vegetable garden, I have to keep telling myself that each disaster is just a lesson for next year. Now I know when they tell you to stake your tomato plants, they're not kidding. Next year, I'm digging post holes and pouring concrete.

While the power was out, J. and I sat on the porch and watched the storm. Using the old trick of timing the interval between lightning and thunder, I'd say this one was pretty darn close.

It reminded me of a particular storm in Nashville in 2004. This was not the first time I lived in Nashville, when J. and I moved there from New York in 1998, but the year I spent there later editing Life in a Box. I rented two rooms from a lesbian couple in a big purple Victorian house with lots of gingerbread, a wraparound porch, picket fence, and a rainbow flag. I loved that house and my time there.

We had an investor and money in the budget for my living expenses while I made the film, and I was left to my own devices. I knew the task was gargantuan (300 hours of footage to be edited into a 90-minute film) so I had to be diligent and more disciplined than I had ever been in my life. I scheduled my days strictly. Not just the time I spent working, but everything, meals, meditating, barhopping. (For example, from 8 to 10 every morning, I sat on the porch with my coffee and rye toast with peanut butter, and I read the New York Times.)

Nearly every afternoon that summer, probably every summer in Tennessee, there would be a thunderstorm. The heat and humidity would build and build all day, then the sky would turn black and explode in a deluge of water and electricity for about 20 minutes. Then the rain would slow and the sun would come out. I would feel a giddy, yearning optimism that there would be a break in the heat and humidity, but it never happened. Right after the storm, it would go back to being just as miserable as before, or worse.

I always took a break from editing to go out on the porch and watch the storm. I always said it was because I didn't want to leave the computer on during an electrical storm, which is true, but it was mostly just because I love storms. One time the lightning was so close, the thunder so loud it made me yell out and the cat jumped 3 feet straight up, and I looked across the street and a tree was smoking.

Johns.

I just watched Johns, a film directed and written by Scott Silver, about two hustlers in L.A., played by Lukas Haas and David Arquette. There were some things that didn't quite ring true, seemed too self-conscious maybe, but there was plenty of humor and sadness and beauty, the things I look to films for. If you like your movies to be perfect, don't watch it; otherwise I recommend it. Heartbreaking performances by both lead actors, and some beautiful photography of seedy L.A.

I think, like most people, from time to time I romanticize prostitution. A certain type of prostitution, young kids on the street living by their wits, keeping their own hours. Whatever it really is, it looks like freedom.

Now that I'm older -- and desperate sometimes to possess something capable of generating income for me without much sacrifice or effort -- I look at young hustlers with some envy. I suppose it is because I'm older and experienced enough to apparently put very little value on sexual intimacy that I can see prostitution as not involving a great deal of sacrifice or effort. I guess I'm saying that if I could I'm not so sure I wouldn't.

My second job in New York, after I dropped out of Parsons, was in the stockroom of the gift shop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was 22. I made $4.35 an hour. My rent was just under $300. I got by, but it was tough. One of my supervisors was a very fat man, in his thirties, bitchy, dry sense of humor. A huge flirt.

I wasn't attracted to him, but I was very attracted to the effect I had on him. He was closeted in that disorienting way men seldom are any more. He was a big queen, but whenever he talked about his dates or boyfriends, he would use "they" or "she" when he meant "he."
He knew I was gay, I didn't hide it, and he purposely set up situations where we would be working together alone. It didn't bother me at all. I liked him, and I had some sense of the power the situation gave me. That is, I didn't have to work too hard.

He told me about the hustler bars he frequented. There was a notorious place called Rounds in the east fifties. I think it was sort of a piano bar for well-to-do businessmen and their rent boys. Definitely not street hustlers, these were well-groomed boys in polo shirts and chinos. I asked a lot of questions, about the boys, about the way it worked. It was new to me. At that age, I wasn't what you would call naive, but there were things I didn't know yet. I was unshockable, but there were still quite a lot of things waiting for me to be unshocked by.

He'd say things like, "You'd be very popular there. We'll have to work on your image a bit, artsy doesn't go over well with that crowd. But you've got a pretty face." I told him that I was curious, but intimidated, since I'd never done anything like that before. He said that, in that case, it would be best to try it out with someone I know first and see how I like it. I was a little freaked out. Turned on, but freaked out. I dropped the conversation and he didn't push.

But a few days later, he offered me a ride home in his car, and he made it clear that there could be a stop on the way, and that there was cash to be made, if I was up for it. I said no. But I doubt that, had I stayed at that job making so little money and being so strapped all the time, I would have resisted his offer if it had come again. Very soon after that I got a job waiting tables in the cafe in the basement of Bloomingdale's, the first of many New York restaurant jobs. My life changed completely. I left work every day with pockets full of cash, and I forgot all about that guy and his offer to make me a star.

It's impossible to speculate. I think back then sexual intimacy really was something precious, despite my jaded pose. This was before my first real boyfriend, before my heart had been broken. And I know for a fact that -- though the prospect turned me on -- I didn't see myself as someone sexy enough to pay for. So who knows how it would have turned out if I hadn't got the Bloomingdale's job? What I do know is that I had that option -- then, when I didn't have the confidence or savvy or detachment to take advantage of it -- and I don't have that option now.

I'll Do Some Stupid Things for Money. The Question Is, How Much?

I've been doing these drug trials to pay the bills since last fall. It seems like I've done dozens of them, but it's really only two. I've gone through various levels of the screening process for several that I didn't end up going through with. My penicillin allergy excluded me from a couple of them, and once it was an arcane heart rhythm thing. Once I bowed out because the drug was an anti-depressant with psychosis being one of the possible adverse effects, and I figured I'm already fucked up enough to risk that.

I was all set to do one from June 5 through 15, which was really stretching my cash reserve beyond the breaking point. I had passed the first series of screening tests, and I had an appointment for the final screening physical this morning, but they called yesterday and told me I had been excluded. I had already decided that if I couldn't do that one, I would screen for an $8,500 study that runs from June 19 through July 31. Six weeks.

I'll admit, it seemed daunting. I would be locked up in a cold, sterile clinic for a month and a half, with no sunlight or exercise. I would miss the best part of the summer harvest in the garden. My life would be completely disrupted. I would miss my planned trips to Nashville and Indiana in June.

But, for six weeks I would have hours and hours, days on end of time for writing, reading, thinking, and re-writing. I would be in an air-conditioned complex for six weeks in the middle of summer in Texas. And, I would get a check for $8,500. That much money would make a big difference in my life. I could get new glasses, get my teeth fixed, and pay off about half of my debt, which would make my monthly expenses thereafter much lower.

The first screening visit was this morning at 8 a.m. I had to get up at 5:30 to catch a 6:45 bus. The buses here are clean and reliable, but it takes forever to get anywhere because they run so infrequently. J is out of town, or I would have asked to borrow his truck, in which case I could have left the house at 7:30.

I was up till almost 2 last night. I haven't been sleeping well lately. I took a nap yesterday afternoon, and last night I had coffee at about 9 with our friend S from Nashville. I don't what I was thinking ordering a large iced coffee at that hour. I guess I just wasn't thinking.

At the first screening visit for these things, they walk you through a pile of paperwork, and they read word-for-word a consent form which explains the study in detail. This is where you find out exactly what will be expected of you. I like the ones -- like the second study I did -- where you just take the drug and then they take blood samples and monitor vital signs periodically.

But some studies, like the first one I did, are designed to measure the drug's effect on heart activity, so you have to wear a portable heart monitor for hours on end, sometimes sleeping with it on, and most of the day you're lying down while they hook wires onto adhesive pads on your torso and connect you to a computer. It was exhausting, left little time for anything else, and at the end of the study my hips and back ached from lying on the ECG table and the pads left itchy, red spots on my flesh that lingered for weeks afterwards.

The study today looked fairly easy. Mostly dosing and checking blood levels. But then he got to the side effects. Usually the list includes headache, nausea, sleeplessness, stuff like that. Sometimes there are nastier things like diarrhea, vomiting, bloody stool. Icky, but, I don't know, I figure I can deal with diarrhea for a few days if it comes down to it.

But in one of the previous studies of this drug, a certain number of study subjects had heart attacks and strokes, and some of them died. Hm. I asked if they could give us a percentage. I was wondering about the odds. I mean, even Tylenol has pretty scary possible side effects, but statistically speaking your chances are pretty good that it's just going to get rid of your headache. But heart attack? Stroke? Suddenly it all seemed very vivid.

I actually sat there for a few minutes and pondered the question. New glasses, getting out of debt, peace of mind for a couple months of my life. What kind of risk will I take for that? A heart attack? Is it worth it?

But I got up and left. One other guy left too. There were a few scared faces in that room. Some people who do these studies do them because they want to buy a new car, or couch, or pay off a credit card, do some Christmas shopping. Some people, like me, do them because whatever it is they have chosen to do, feel called to do, doesn't compensate them with money for their time and effort. Some people do them because they have no other way to support themselves or their families.

How poor am I? I am almost poor enough to risk a heart attack for $8,500. Very close.

Dinner and Losing Sleep.

An old friend from Nashville is visiting Austin this week with two friends. They're all students at Bard College in New York State. We haven't seen our friend, S, in a couple years, maybe longer. We had them over for dinner tonight.

When J. and I lived in Nashville (1998 - 2000), we made friends early on with S's family. They went to our church. Her parents are a few years older than us, S was 13 at the time, and her sister was 11. Sometimes I find myself referring to the girls as "our friends' daughters," and other times I call their parents "our friends' parents." They came as a unit; it was more like being friends with a family than having individual relationships with them.

It was a great evening. I almost always find people in their twenties fascinating, but S and her friends are especially interesting, funny, smart. It's such a great age to be. Pretty often I feel like I have much more in common with people in their early twenties than I do with most people my age.

The food was delicious and easy, since I had everything ready to throw together at the last minute. Or, I should say, it was easy to throw everything together at the last minute, because I spent the afternoon getting everything ready.

We had a panzanella with grilled asparagus, fire-roasted red and yellow peppers, arugula, picholine olives, manchego cheese, with a spring onion red wine vinaigrette. And then pasta with green beans, English peas, and gremolata (which is garlic, lemon zest, and Italian parsley minced very fine) with parmesan cheese. Everyone ate heartily and had seconds. (Hungry college students.)

The panzanella was outstanding, I thought. I'd like to do that one again soon, just for us. I started with a recipe from Everyday Greens, but substituted asparagus for the artichokes and altered the dressing a little. The pasta was very tasty, but I wanted it to be saucier. I was afraid to add too much water, because I didn't want to dilute the flavors. I love the combination of lemon zest, garlic, and parsley.

(I also thought the green beans were a little overdone and the peas a little underdone. J. would say I'm being silly, which, of course, is true, because the food was really very, very good. Still, I fret over the doneness of beans and peas. It'll be on my mind for at least several days.)

For dessert we had a store-bought apple pie with Blue Bonnet vanilla ice cream. I can't remember where the pie came from, but it was a great pie and there's still half of it left in the fridge.

I broke in the grill with the asparagus and peppers. We bought it last week at the hardware store, just a small, inexpensive table-top grill, no more than we need. It did a fantastic job, and I managed to get a nice fire going without using lighter fluid. Since I had such a nice hot fire still going after I'd done my grilling for tonight's dinner, I roasted some poblanos to peel and freeze for later. I like to have roasted poblanos around for sandwiches.

I didn't sleep at all well last night. I was running through tonight's menu in my head, over and over. I hate when I do that. Cooking, especially cooking for guests, is something I enjoy almost more than anything else I do, but for some reason it can also bring me anxiety. I want so badly for the food I prepare to be delicious, beautiful, perfect. Some of my most painful memories are of meals gone wrong, guests smiling and complimenting food that I know is not good. Humiliation, failure.

Speaking of humiliation, failure, and losing sleep, the other thing that kept me up last night was anticipation of my appointment this morning at the city STD clinic. This is the third time since I moved to Austin last fall that I have had to be treated for an STD. And yes, I know, I have been promiscuous lately. But Jesus, this seems really out of proportion. When I lived in San Francisco last year, I was having just as much sex, probably more, and I never caught anything.

By itself, it's unpleasant enough. Feeling morally corrupt, unclean, deserving of the punishment of the symptoms themselves as well as the unique discomforts of the clinic visit, all the things we're supposed to feel. It's hard to escape the neat God's-wrath justice of it. Have sex with too many people, and I'll make your penis hurt like a motherfucker. Show you.

But for me, the hardest part of the ordeal is the HIV test. No matter what you go in for, while you're there they want to take blood and run an HIV antibody test. Now, I just had an HIV test last week when I screened for the drug trial, and it was negative. So I shouldn't have been worried. But it's nerve-wracking every time.

I'm irrationally terrified of this test. In my head, as I try to sleep, I force myself to imagine over and over the moment of being told that I have tested positive, make myself feel that horror, make myself run fast-forward through the rest of my life with a horrible, stigmatized affliction, make myself feel the blunt, stupid shame of having a preventable but deadly disease, telling J., telling my family, taking on the pain and sorrow they feel for me. It's a fucking nightmare.

I put off my first HIV test until 1990, even though it was available years before that. Of all people, I should have been tested early. I moved to New York in 1981. I discovered the bathhouses in 1982, and I had a lot of unprotected sex during that crucial window: before anybody knew what AIDS was but when lots of people were infected. Back then, I justified my reluctance by saying that there wasn't much one could do. For a while, this was true. And back then (once we heard that "the AIDS virus" was transmitted sexually, around 1985) I was religious about condoms. We all were. No fucking without condoms. No question. That was just what one did. I was in a relationship from 1984 through 1989. My partner and I did not use condoms, but, when we had sex outside the relationship, we did. Neither of us got tested before we separated.

When I finally got tested, I was shocked when I found out I was negative. It didn't seem possible. I saw it as an undeserved gift. I had taken huge risks and avoided infection. I vowed to be safe always. If I had made it through my most promiscuous period in the early eighties in New York without contracting HIV, I owed it to myself to stay negative.

And that's a vow I have repeated to myself every time. Every time I have broken my rules, crossed a line, taken a risk I promised myself I wouldn't. Every time I contract some other STD and, while at the clinic, have to take an HIV test, I make the same deal with myself: "If I'm negative, I'll never do anything risky ever again." It's a bad deal. Any deal involving sexual abstinence is a bad deal. Sexual desire cannot be subjected to contracts.

This morning at the clinic they told me I didn't need to do the HIV test since I had tested so recently. They treated me for the other thing and sent me home feeling like a disappointing child.

I want to give up sex. For a while. I don't want to feel that feeling again.

Not Hardly Worth It.

I harvested our soybean crop today. Five plants, about 30 beans. I boiled them and J. and I ate them with a little sea salt. They barely covered the bottom of a ramekin. Not exactly high yield. More of an experiment than a crop. Even before the bugs got to them, they didn't seem happy. Maybe it was the partial shade, or the soil. I'm thinking no soybeans next year.

About a third of them were destroyed by the big black bugs. It turns out they're suckers, not chewers, so I couldn't see the damage they were doing. It looked like they were sitting there doing nothing, so I left them alone, but, while I was giving them the benefit of the doubt, they were enjoying soybeans through a straw for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Speaking of the bugs, I relocated about 8 of them this morning. I've become very brave, chasing them up and down the tomato plant, grabbing at them with my fingers. There were a few on the Thai chile plant. Now that they're done with the soybeans, they're on to the next course. I guess they like spicy food.

Moving Day.

J. was in Houston and didn't get home until late, so I had to be a man and deal with the bugs myself. I knew I would lose sleep if I let them stay there until the morning.

I waited for a break in the rain and then I went out to the garden with a plastic shopping bag. The ones on the soybeans were fairly easy. I held the bag open underneath the leaf they were huddled upon and shook the plant until most of them fell into the bag. I saw a few fall to the ground and scurry away. "I'll be back," I said.

The tomato colony was trickier. The fruit they were congregating on is nestled in the branches of the plant so that I couldn't get the bag under it easily. By the time I got the bag situated, a lot of the bugs had left the green tomato and hidden under leaves. And these ones were holding on more tightly than the ones on the soybeans; they didn't fall when I shook the plant.

So I swallowed hard, took a breath, and started slowly picking the bugs off the plant with my fingers. After the first one I touched didn't fly into my face and start burrowing into my eyes, or jump on my arm and dig a hole and lay eggs, or even bite me, I became braver. They're not real fast, these bugs, so I was able to grab most of them and fling them into my plastic bag.

Then what? I didn't have a plan. When we've removed caterpillars from the bean plants or snails from the climbing spinach, we've just tossed them over to the other side of the yard, which is a chaotic, mostly feral garden of assorted perennial flowers and vines and ground cover plants, a cactus, and a few tropical tree-like plants that J. planted, which we haven't given a whole lot of attention after J. cleared the dead brush in March. A sidewalk up the middle of the front yard separates the two sides, and I'm sure eventually the snails and caterpillars can make their way back to the vegetables, but I guess we hope they'll find something over there to munch on, and, if they come back, at least the sidewalk will slow them down. But I wanted to get these black bugs farther away.

Eventually I set them free around the side of the house, almost at the back, in the grove of bamboo that shades my bedroom windows. I don't know if they'll find anything to eat back here. I also don't know that they won't easily make their way back to the garden. If they do, I'll have to take them on a longer trip next time.

The first season I spent in Utah, two years ago, I lived in an old RV that was parked on my friend's yard (when I moved there, she was just my boss and landlord, not a friend yet) under a stand of blue spruce trees. It was a little idyll, a perfect home for a long summer. The only problem was that all the ducts and storage spaces under and through this RV were the winter home of a city of field mice.

When I moved in, we cleaned the RV thoroughly which scared away most of them, but I moved there in March, and it was still very cold until almost June, so they weren't ready to give up their nice warm digs. They kept coming back. Every night I put out a live trap, and every morning there would be two or three mice in it. I carted them on my bike to a field about a mile away and set them free.

This went on until the weather was hot enough that they didn't want to be inside anymore. (I didn't blame them -- neither did I.) I wondered as I relocated mice every morning whether it was the same few mice coming back every day because they enjoyed their morning bike ride.

Anyway, this morning I went back out with my plastic bag and removed another dozen or so bugs from each location. I don't know if these were the ones that hid from me yesterday, or if they're the ones I moved and they found their way back.

Update: Bad Bugs.

I identified the bug. It's the leafrooted bug or Leptoglossus phyllopus. It turns out they're up to no good. Strange that they haven't started eating anything, but maybe they don't need to eat right away. I probably don't have much time now, though, since they've been there a while and they're obviously growing up and I imagine will need to eat something soon.

If it weren't pouring down rain, I'd run out there right now and get rid of them. But how? I hate to just kill them, but if I move them, how far do I have to move them to keep them from coming back? And how do I get them off the plants without touching them (because I will not touch the bugs)?

I'll ask J. when he gets home what he would do. He's more consistent than I about not killing things as a matter of principle. He won't even kill mosquitoes, whereas I'll kill one and feel good about it, thinking, "I just saved myself about 8 big itchy red welts!" Lately, the mosquitoes are light, maybe one or two will bother me when I'm sitting on the porch. I'll get a few bites on my ankles. However, when it gets warmer, there will be swarms of them biting every unprotected bit of skin, even my scalp. When it gets like that, killing one or two doesn't have the same emotional payoff because it doesn't have a noticeable effect on the number of bites I get.

Those fucking bugs better not eat my tomato!

Garden Horror.

About a week ago, maybe more, I noticed a gaggle of red bugs on one of the soybean plants. Maybe I wrote about it, I can't remember now. There were probably about fifty of them, the size and color of ladybugs, but differently shaped. They were mostly on the beans, not so much on the leaves. I couldn't find anything resembling them when I searched the Internet bug-identification sites.

I kept an eye on them all day and decided to leave them be, since they didn't seem to be eating the beans or the leaves. I know there are good bugs and bad bugs -- despite the fact that all bugs are creepy -- and maybe they're hanging out there because they like to eat other bugs that are eating the plant.

Still, they seriously creeped me out, all of them just sitting there. What were they waiting for? Even though they weren't moving around much, their little legs and antennae twitched. I just shuddered even as I typed that last sentence.

Days and days go by, they're still there. A couple times they moved en masse to a different part of the plant. Every once in a while I spot one brave little red bug separate from the herd, even as far away as the next plant, but mostly they're huddling together. It has rained on and off for several days, but they don't seem to be affected.

Then one day I see that one of them is larger and grey. Did she just appear, or did I just now notice her? And where did she come from? Was she, until that day, small and red, and she underwent a metamorphosis? She is always in the center of the cluster. Maybe she's the queen. Do little red bugs have queens?

Yesterday I noticed a bunch of them on one of the green tomatoes, the biggest one, the first to appear. The tomato plant is several feet away and on the other side of a large tree from the soybeans. This is a good sign, that they're hanging out on the tomato. It convinces me that they're eating bad bugs, probably aphids. Anything that eats aphids gets amnesty in the garden.

But when I went to check on them today, from afar the tomato they were hanging out on looked mottled with black, and my heart sank. I thought they had eaten it, or shit all over it, or somehow destroyed it. But, instead, the creepy but cute little red bugs have morphed into big, black, extra-creepy, not-at-all-cute bugs. The ones on the soybean plant have done the same thing.

I'm going to have nightmares tonight for sure.

My Body, My Self.

One of the perks of being a student, I thought, would be the use of the gym. I've never belonged to a gym, in fact I've been scornful of that whole culture because it makes people feel bad about themselves if they fall short of an arbitrary ideal. When I see guys with perfect muscle tone, usually my second thought is "If he's spending that much time at the gym, he's probably not spending much time reading or doing anything else that might make him interesting." (My first thought, if you can call it a thought, is, "God, he's hot.")

I've never had a great opinion of my body, as far back as my first memories of noticing boys' bodies -- around the age of 9 or 10? -- and finding myself drawn to them. At the time, I thought what I wanted was to be like them. They were male in a way that I didn't feel I was. They walked differently, talked differently, sat differently. But this gets into the unique homosexual problem which recently I heard a lesbian performance artist call BUFU ("Be You Fuck You," as in, "I don't know whether I want to be you or fuck you").

But around the time I turned 40, my negative but manageable body image changed subtly to include some real information, not just the crap my tricky self-esteem had been feeding me. I started to feel actually weak, especially in my upper body. I could see and feel a change in my strength, from aging, and from lack of exercise.

So, finally I had a "real" reason to try to get in shape, a reason that I wouldn't judge to be shallow and vain. I could work out without guilt. I didn't just want to look sexier, I wanted to be stronger. I flirted with yoga for a little while, but it didn't grab me, didn't keep my attention. I wanted something more rigorous. I started doing pushups and crunches and then some free weights. I built a little muscle. My arms and shoulders definitely got stronger and bigger. But I didn't know what the hell I was doing, so I'm sure I expended a lot more energy than was necessary. Without dramatic results, I lost inspiration.

And besides, if this is partly about becoming more attractive -- I can't deny it -- I don't really need a boost there. Somehow, now that I'm older, I'm getting a lot more attention. My theory regarding this development is that there are 3 factors involved: 1) My tattoos; I have visible tattoos now, and a lot of guys are turned on by tattoos, regardless of what the rest of you looks like; 2) I'm more relaxed and confident, more comfortable in my skin than I was when I was younger, and I think that's an attractive trait; and 3) I'm handsomer now, in some objective sense; my face has aged well, if I do say so myself.

So, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. If I'm already getting plenty of attention from the boys, why do I want to spend hours every week pumping iron? Well, a part of me just wants to know if I can do it. If I can actually impose my will on the shape of my body. Part of me is a bit panicked by the physical aging of my body. And there's the strength thing, which is what started me thinking about exercise in the first place. I feel weaker. I want to feel stronger. If I have to live with a totally hot body, then I guess I can make the sacrifice.

So, all that to say I was looking forward to using the gym at U.T. (Since I've never set foot in a gym before, I'll have to find a better homosexual than I to show me how to use all those scary machines.) I still hold out some hope of being able to enroll in the fall, but if I don't, I think I want to figure out some other way to start working on my body. Lord help me. I promise I won't stop reading.

Food.

That salad I made on Sunday was so good, I decided to make it again.

I sort of steam-roasted the potatoes -- is there a word for that? I cut them into chunks, tossed them in olive oil, salt, pepper, and a few whole, unpeeled garlic cloves, then put them in a square metal pan covered tightly with foil into a 400-degree oven for about half an hour, until they were tender. When they're cool, I'll toss them with green beans (all of them from our garden this time) which I blanched and shocked, arugula, minced spring onions, and a red wine vinaigrette with a little mustard.

Also today, I made the New York Times no-knead bread again. It was tasty last time, but I think too dense. This time it looks a little nicer, but still not as big as it should be. Coincidentally, it's been humid on both days I've made the bread, so maybe that's why. It's an extremely wet dough, hard to handle, and last time I think I deflated it when I was throwing it around trying to get it into the pan.

As I was prepping things for the salad, I thought it would be nice to heat up some of the marinara sauce I made yesterday, to dip the bread into, alongside the salad. But I got a little carried away, considering J. is on his way out for the evening, and I'm not really hungry for a big meal tonight since I had a late lunch. It'll all keep till tomorrow, or later tonight if we get hungry.

In Garden News.

We had a windy thunderstorm two nights ago, and both tomato plants were battered pretty badly. The bigger of the two -- the one that has a couple small tomatoes on it already -- took the worse beating. I learned my lesson: those metal cages are not big enough or tall enough. Next year, I'll use 6 foot stakes and tie the plants up as they grow.

I tied both plants to stakes and hoped for the best. The smaller plant seemed like it was going to be okay. There were several places on the bigger plant where the stalks had been bent, and those branches wilted as the day went on, but this morning they seem to have bounced back.

The first two little Thai chilies ripened. They're fire-engine red. Dozens more green ones are waiting in the wings.

Two sunflowers bloomed! They must be over 8 feet tall. And the zinnias continue to pop out all over. J. cuts them from time to time for the kitchen table.

Drawing.

I just read Craig Thompson's "illustrated novel," Blankets. I was going to take it back to the library yesterday when I returned the Judy Garland Show videos. (What a treat those are. Lena Horne, Mel Torme, the Count Basie Orchestra, all up close, not to mention Judy who blows me away every single time. She sings "Old Man River" -- "Old Man River"?! -- and you just think her heart is going to explode. Nobody comes close to Judy.)

But I decided to keep Blankets for a few more days, to savor the drawings. The story is so moving -- and moves so swiftly -- that it's easy to miss the beauty of the illustrations.

Blankets is the first graphic novel I've read. I just hadn't come across one that drew me in. J. read it and loved it so much, I thought I'd try it. (And his recommendation coincided with my discovery of some gay erotic comics that I loved, so I'd been exploring that whole world. Sex and drawing are two of my favorite things.)

I'm a big fan of good drawing, and Craig Thompson's book is relentlessly full of beautiful drawings, pages and pages of them. It's almost overwhelming.

It dawns on me. Maybe everybody but me already knew this. Sometimes I'm late to the party. But it seems to me that the comics world is where good drawing is happening now. It's not happening in the contemporary art world. Not that it doesn't exist there, but it's not the rule.

I'm basing my theory on a dilettante's understanding of comics. I've barely skimmed the surface. And I don't keep up with the art scene as thoroughly as I used to. But it's pretty stunning, a work like Blankets, with hundreds of pages of really fine drawings compared to most of the sloppy, ugly stuff you find on contemporary art gallery walls.

Wisdom.

I spent Sunday evening (yesterday) with Z. We walked the trail around Town Lake, which I think is about an eight mile walk. I thought, since it was Sunday and a beautiful, almost cool evening, the trail would be mobbed, but it was more like deserted. Z. speculated there must have been a season finale of some show or other on TV last night. (Z. -- maybe even more averse to crowds than I -- checks the TV listings to plan trips to the grocery store.)

After our walk, we went to Magnolia Cafe. I had a beer, a Sierra Nevada, and the "Martian Landscape," which is roasted potatoes topped with cheese, scallions, and jalapeños. Z. had some kind of turkey taco thing, a salad, and a root beer float. We lingered long enough that eventually I ordered a gingerbread pancake. Just one.

We were together for over 4 hours, talking non-stop. He works in a field -- I guess I shouldn't say what it is, since I don't feel comfortable revealing the identities of people I write about here -- that I am endlessly fascinated with, so we talk about that a lot. We talk about love and sex a lot, too.

Z. is a remarkable man. He's quite a bit younger than I am, but so smart about people and relationships. He knows things that I'm barely beginning to understand. Nothing escapes his notice, he reads the most subtle signals. He often knows what I'm talking about before I do.
What I most enjoy about the time I spend with him is that he is as committed to honesty, directness, clarity, as I am. He asks himself the same question I try always to ask myself as I move through life and try to make right choices: "What is really going on here?"

And he reads me like a book. I find this bracing, and a wonderful relief, because, when I'm with him, I am unburdened of my irritating need to explain myself.

Drag.

Last night at the bar I go to, there was a drag show. There's never been a drag show at this place when I've been there. It's not the kind of place where you would expect a drag show. On Wednesdays there's live music, but it's rock bands or, like last week, art noise. (Two skinny twentyish flannel shirt-type guys making extremely loud feedback by twisting knobs on some sort of electronic consoles mounted into old suitcases -- only entertaining when one of the guys looked like he was trying to close his head inside the suitcase, and when one of the queens sitting at the bar shouted "Take off your shirt!).

Anyway, the drag show. It was the Royal Grand Court of something or other, every city seems to have one. A bunch of older guys in matronly formal wear with lots of jewelry host events to raise money for AIDS charities. They were hosting the show, but the performers were another mixed bag entirely. One or two standard queens lip-synching disco songs, okay, but then some guy gets up there, just a guy, 50-ish, in jeans, shirt, leather vest, sneakers, and he lip-synchs a very bombastic rendition of "America the Beautiful," by someone who sounded like an opera singer slumming. He just stood there and guys were flocking to the stage to hand him dollar bills.

As if that wasn't weird enough, the next performer ("and just to show we don't discriminate, she's straight and she's a real woman!") barely made an attempt to lip-synch, she just kind of shimmied and smiled like a 6-year-old in a dance recital, wearing a plain, dark blue dress, no makeup or nothin'. And she got lots of tips, too! It was less a drag show than karaoke with no singing. Bizarre.

When I lived in Nashville for the second time, four years ago, I lived a couple blocks from a huge gay bar, or more like a complex of several bars, called The Chute (I never could figure out if its name was intentionally derived from "poop chute," which would be, well, tacky, but certainly no tackier than the names of a lot of gay bars I've seen. (There was one in Madison, Wisconsin called "The Rod," and in the neon sign for it the tail of the "R" extended down in an arc underlining the word with a neon penis.)

The Chute consisted of a piano bar in the front, then a small pub-type room which you walked through to a big open dance club, all painted black with a raised dance floor. Behind that was the Western bar, where they played country music. There was a smaller dance floor in this room, in case you wanted to boot scoot boogie or whatever. Then a darker, dungeoney room with a pool table, the leather bar.

And the crown jewel of the Chute was the show room. It had a fancy name that I can't remember now, maybe the Rainbow Room? It had a small stage with a curtain, a runway, and tiny cabaret tables and chairs, and a bar in the back. Every Friday and Saturday there were drag shows, two shows a night, by a troupe of performers. I lived for those shows, couldn't wait for the weekends.

The host was Bianca Page ("the pantomime rage of Miss Bianca Page!"), who had a voice like late Lucille Ball (really late, like death-bed), and a face like Imogene Coca. I was amazed by her every time. Her routines were sometimes very complicated comedy recordings from the 40s or 50s, or old novelty songs. She also did some pop songs and more current show tunes, because that's what the boys really wanted, but you could tell she loved the weird stuff more. At the mid-point of the show, she came out onto the catwalk and did a little stand-up, singling out any straight people in the audience, good-naturedly embarrassing them with her boozy scatological humor.

One of the queens was always introduced as "our very own choreographer, here at the Rainbow Room." Her name was Dakota something. Dakota Moon? Dakota Blue? She was a big, tall redhead, and she put together routines they would all do together. A little Bob Fosse, maybe? God, I wish I could remember some of the songs. They had lighting design, sets, what looked like very expensive costumes with lots of beads.

One of the girls was a little further along the transgender line than the others. She was a big sexy black girl with real breasts and hips. She usually wore skimpy sheer outfits, and she had piles and piles of shiny curly hair, which I think was her real hair. Her songs were usually kind of raunchy hip-hop or R&B. She had a polarizing effect on the crowd. Most of the guys seemed to love her -- she had some title or other, like Miss Gay Southeast Region 1997 -- but there were always a few grumblers, those disturbed that she had "taken it a little too far."

And Stephanie Wells, the Lena Horne of the Rainbow Room, very classy, always immaculately made up, tasteful wardrobe. Her songs were often Dionne Warwick, sometimes Anita Baker, you get the idea.

And a third black queen, this one skinny with huge eyes, and sort of a Carol Channing twitch to her face. She would do "Toxic," the Britney Spears song, and her arms and legs would pop when she danced, as if she were double-jointed.

That was a drag show. Come on. America the Beautiful? At least put on a dress.

Update: I found a link, but the cast is a little different now. Bianca Page is still hoofin' it, though.

A Farm Wife's Life.

A farm wife's life would be a good life for a writer.

Today we picked up our box of produce from Johnson's Farm, and I spent a couple hours prepping vegetables: washing everything, blanching and freezing chard and green beans (keeping a few out to make a salad with red potatoes, arugula, and green beans in a mustard vinaigrette), scrubbing and paring carrots and beets. We also got asparagus, summer squash, dandelion greens, red potatoes, spring onions, fennel, broccoli, and I think that's it.

If we were completely food self-sufficient (which would not be hard in this climate, if we had the land, the time, and a big freezer), I would be doing this stuff -- gardening, prepping, cooking, putting up -- every day for quite a bit of the year, since the growing season, if you plan it right, runs year round.

So much of writing is thinking, requiring time and some measure of quiet but not the use of my hands. And then there are periods of time when not much is happening in the garden, time for typing and revising, tasks that do require my hands and more focused effort. There would even be time to tend to a couple goats for milk, a few chickens for eggs.

Beans.

We have the most beautiful green beans, ever. The vines are in the narrow bed across the front of the porch, and they shade that half of the porch in the afternoon. I've been picking 6 or 8 of them a day for the last week. The more I pick, the more they grow. I used what I had accumulated in a green curry I made a few days ago, along with snap peas, turnips and rutabagas from Johnson's Farm. I also used one Thai chile (still green, but I couldn't wait) from our garden in the curry.

The snap peas, next to them, were killed off by powdery mildew, and I pulled them down a few days ago, so I think next year, since they did so well, we could plant green beans across the whole front porch.

The jalapeno plants are full of little fruit, and the poblanos have several fruit on them too. And there's one little green tomato so far.

I spent 10 hours today sitting with a friend of J.'s who has been dealing with leukemia and a bone marrow transplant for the last couple of years. Now he has some complications from the transplant, so he's been very weak and in and out of the hospital for the last week or so. He's home now, but needs someone with him most of the time.

I didn't do much all day but sit and read when he was asleep and sit and chat when he was awake, but I was exhausted when I left. When I got home, I drank a beer on the porch and then made myself a delicious omelet with some of the climbing spinach leaves, cheddar and garlic.