Censorship.

I have a new friend I haven't written about here, because he reads this blog and, every time I start to write about him, I get self-conscious and I chicken out. I certainly have other friends who read what I write about them, and I'm less concerned about what they'll think, but still I do catch myself -- to different degrees, depending on who it is -- being less than completely frank.

I think I'm fairly transparent when I write about J. After all these years, that's just how we are with each other. I am pretty frank about Z, but he doesn't know I have a blog. Even so, if he were to stumble upon it, there's nothing I would be horrified for him to read. Embarrassed maybe, but he's a big boy, and he appreciates honesty more than most people I know.

My family doesn't know about my blog. They, especially my mom, tend to worry about me, so I don't always share every little disappointment and hardship. I don't want to confirm her view of my life as a minefield. I can write more freely, knowing my family won't be reading it.

But this new friend: he was a regular reader here before I met him. We met back when I was battling the bugs in the garden. He posted a comment telling me he was an organic gardener and would be happy to give me advice on the bug problem.

I think by now organic gardener has usurped fireman for Sexiest Occupation for Gay Men, hasn't it? In my Book of Lists, it has. So I emailed him and said I would love some help with the bugs. We made a date to look at the garden and go out for coffee.

Not only is he an organic gardener, he's a former helicopter rescuer. His resume is sexy before you even meet him. But then he looks the part, too. If you were making a movie and you had to cast the role of an organic gardener and former helicopter rescuer, he's the guy you would cast. He's handsome. He’s the guy your straight sister would find sexy. (I just got goosebumps when I wrote that, thinking about him reading it. Maybe I have the air conditioner on too high.)

I told him over dinner the other night that I feel a strong urge to flirt with him but a corresponding confusion as to whether that's the best way to act in this case. He lives with a long-term partner, and I'm not looking for a boyfriend anyway. His take on it was so clear and simple, and helpful. He said, more or less, "A lot of friendships between gay men start with some sexual attraction. Sometimes you end up having sex, sometimes you don't. So we're attracted to each other. It doesn't have to be a big deal."

Here's where I would say, "It's all good," if I didn't absolutely hate that expression.

Pickles.

I was just now in the kitchen making pickles. We have a serious cucumber glut here, and, though I've already made 3 quart jars of bread and butter pickles, we got a bunch of small cucumbers in our box from the farm on Saturday, and they taste too bitter to eat raw, so I decided to try one jar of sour pickles, what they call "half sours" in New York.

Anyway, while I'm doing this, a young man wanders into the kitchen from the front of the house (J's room) looks around, sees me, and says, "Is there a bathroom back here?" Not "May I use your bathroom?" or "Hi, I'm so-and-so, a friend of A's. May I use your bathroom?" Not "Hi, are those pickles you're making? Can I use your bathroom?" Just "Is there a bathroom back here?" Like this is a gas station convenience store where some random guy is making pickles in the back room.

I kept my rebuke to myself -- that is so not the person I want to be -- and pointed him to the bathroom. When he was on his way out, I said, "Hi, I'm Steven. Who are you?" and he introduced himself and shook my hand. Whatever. He was cute.

Hospitality.

Someday I want to see the footage from one of those secret video cameras installed in a women's bathroom. Not because I have a prurient interest in women with their pants down, but to find out what they're doing with all the toilet paper.

J is in New York for two weeks and he invited a friend to stay here while he's gone. A is a very agreeable college student -- he goes to school in Boston, but he's here in his home town for the summer, and, I think or maybe I just made this up, he's couch-surfing to avoid staying the summer at his mom and dad's house. At any rate, for a 20-year-old, he's quiet, considerate, does his dishes, makes an effort to get the garbage in the right container, etc. (he doesn't always rinse the beer bottles before he puts them in the recycling bin, but that's such a minor thing to complain about).

A has a girlfriend who is here pretty much whenever he is here. (The deal was one college student, not two, but she's nice.) The other day, after they had breakfast together -- either she made him oatmeal or he made it for her -- she washed their dishes, but didn't wash the two plates and a coffee cup of mine that were in the sink, which I thought was a strange choice. Still, any negative reaction I might have had was obliterated by the overwhelming sweetness of two 20-year-olds sharing a breakfast of oatmeal after spending the night together. I'm not a parent and don't imagine that I will be, but I'm at the age where, if I were a parent, my kids might be their age. I wonder sometimes if it's hardwired in me, this sudden, abundant affection I feel for people now in their late teens and early twenties.

J and I have known each other for so long, and we live together with so little effort, that it is disproportionately jarring to suddenly have someone else in the house. I find out how dependent I am on things being familiar in my home, on knowing that things are in certain places. I like how this domestic regularity makes my life simpler, how it makes my day flow smoothly. No peanut butter in the fridge or jars of spaghetti sauce on the spice shelf, stuff like that. When all the little household objects are in their places, my mind is free for other things. But A is a guest, and I want to make room for him in my tranquil abode. (He commented, as he was moving in, on what a wonderful home we have and how grateful he is to stay here.)

So I try to keep my incipient annoyance in check by reminding myself of all the people all over the continental U.S. who offered J and me hospitality during our years on the road, some of them sharing their homes with us for weeks on end.

But what do they do with the toilet paper? Though I can't say I really keep track, I would guess that it takes J and me more than a week to go through a roll of toilet paper. It takes long enough that I don't notice it getting smaller, it's just there until it's gone and then one of us replaces it. If we buy one of those big 16-packs or whatever, it lasts for months. But when there's a woman staying with us, like when J's friend C visited last month or like now, we just fly through it. It goes so fast that I notice and keep track. This week, with A's girlfriend staying here, one roll lasted a day and a half. Now, I know women use it on both ends, so to speak, so I can understand that they would use more. But that much more? What's going on in there?

Okay, now I feel like I'm doing a bad Richard Lewis monologue -- Have you ever noticed ...? -- so I'll stop.

Funeral Kissing?

Z and I hadn't seen each other in a couple weeks, since my trip to Nashville and his trip to Japan to climb a mountain (Fuji? I'm not sure). So he came and picked me up and we had dinner at Thai Kitchen. I had a red curry with tofu and vegetables and he had a chicken curry. Good food there.

Afterwards we walked around the U.T. campus for a long time, stopping to sit here and there and talk. We have wonderful long conversations that wander and veer, swoop and dive from topic to topic, love, sex, politics, culture. Not so much art. Though I'd given him a draft of my new screenplay to read on his flight to Japan, and we talked a bit about that. He was impressed.

Z has been a little low because the last of his heroes, Lady Bird Johnson, died this week. (The other two were Ann Richards and Molly Ivins, all strong Texas women.) We got to talking about Lady Bird's body lying in state just a few blocks away at the LBJ Library. It wouldn't have occurred to me that it would be open to the public at 11:00 p.m., but Z seemed to think it would be, and I was game to find out. When I'd read in the paper that there would be a public visitation at the library, I immediately wanted to go, mainly just to see the corpse of a famous person. Not sure why. I pictured a glass-topped casket, like Snow White.

So we went, and they were open, and there were lots of people there filing in. The casket was not open, it was closed and covered with a beautiful gold brocade cloth. Two very tall gaunt very old people stood next to it, somberly watching the parade of mourners. They looked like a 19th century farm couple all dressed up, and I wondered if they were family or just who they were. The man was wearing a dark suit, but the woman, whose long white hair was piled on top of her head, wore a pale blue dress. I was more intrigued by them than by the casket.

After paying our respects, we loitered outside the complex of buildings. It reminded me of Lincoln Center, big modern white stone buildings with a huge, white, practically featureless plaza connecting them. There were hundreds of people milling around quietly.

Z and I sat on the stone wall to watch the fountain. I'm not a big fan of public fountains, but this one is striking. There's a huge geyser in the middle of a large, round green-lit pool, and the water splashes dramatically over the edges of the pool. We were holding hands and chatting. We kissed. Just a peck. We were enjoying each other's company, feeling a little emotional about Lady Bird, and we kissed.

A few seconds later a woman approached us and said, "My son is gay, and you're not going to like this, but this is a place of respect and it's very inappropriate to kiss here." According to her, it's poor etiquette to kiss in a place where people are mourning. Touching is okay, kissing is not. She was upset.

Z told her to get lost, not in those exact words but close. I wanted to let her speak her mind. I was curious enough to ask her if this was a rule that applied to heterosexual kissing as well, and she assured me it was. (I guess that's why she prefaced her remarks by outing her son.) She kept repeating herself, getting more and more frantic, seemingly wanting some outcome, wanting something from us, an apology? an acknowledgment of our transgression and a promise to be better from now on? I don't know.

I was willing to admit I might be ignorant and to take responsibility for offending her, but I was skeptical that this was an actual rule, this kissing thing. If it is, it's a very strange rule. It's not like we were making out in front of the casket. We were sitting quietly at the edge of a big public plaza, and we exchanged one dry kiss.

I told her I wasn't experienced with occasions of mourning and that this was the first I'd heard of the kissing prohibition and thank you for enlightening us, but get lost. (I didn't actually say that last bit, but I was pretty well over her, too.) Z was more direct. "Thank you. Goodnight. Please be on your way." She hugged him. That made him madder. She wanted us to like her, I guess.

Anyway, she had ruined the mood, so we left. We went to HEB for a pint of ice cream, brought it back here, and ate it in my room. Z and I have never spent time at my place; if we stay home, it's always his home. We listened to music, played with his new iPhone, did some other stuff, fell asleep, woke up at 4 a.m. I brushed my teeth and asked Z if he wanted to stay, which he did.

This morning we read the paper together in bed. We'd never slept together before.

I'm Not Saying This Has Ever Happened to Me.

If someone, say, in a bar, offers one a ride home, and one feels fairly certain that there’s an expectation of a sexual favor attached to the offer, and one needs a ride home and doesn’t really mind having his dick sucked by someone he’s not attracted to otherwise, or even enjoys it -- is there anything wrong with accepting the ride home and accepting the blowjob? It seems like an even trade win-win to me. Is it a state of innocence that lets me accept that transaction without compunction, or is it a state of corruption? Really, I don’t know, and I want to.

Wildlife.

We have a nighttime visitor. A couple days ago, J noticed a bite taken out of an apple that was on a plate in the kitchen. There's a gap about an inch high between the baseboard and the floor along one wall of the kitchen. It's an old house. Most of this gap is filled with some kind of extruded foam, a quick and ugly painted-over landlord repair, but there's a spot where the foam must have come out and it's stuffed with rags and Brillo pads. J noticed that part of the stuffing was missing and Timmy the cat was staring at the hole.

But this bite out of the apple didn't look like a mouse bite to me. And there were no mouse droppings anywhere. Mice always leave poop. So what could it be? J stuffed another rag on the hole.

This morning there was a big chunk missing from one of the avocados I bought last night and left on the table. The teeth marks were very clear this time, and they were much bigger than mouse teeth. And again no droppings. My first thought was Rats!, but rats leave droppings, too. (Another time, I'll tell the story of the rat that came up from the Brooklyn sewer through the toilet, terrorized me, trashed the bathroom, and left the way he came.)

I guess I'll have to buy some steel wool today. Whatever this creature is -- could a squirrel get through a 1-inch hole? a raccoon? -- he's eating Timmy's food.

Garden.

This morning I picked three big cucumbers that had ripened while we were away, and one bright red, shiny jalapeño pepper. There are about a dozen more on the plants and they're turning red as well. I pulled up the tomato plants and the bell pepper plants that never produced fruit to give the cucumber and watermelon vines more room to spread out. Last week before I left I put up 3 quarts of bread and butter pickles. Between our garden and the CSA farm, we had cucumbers coming out our ears.

Nashville.

J drove to Nashville (leaving last Wednesday) and I flew on Friday. I rode back with J. We left yesterday and planned to take two days, but we were on the road by 7 a.m. and J just kept driving until we got home at about 10:30 last night.

One of the things that makes regular blogging possible for me is that I don't require myself to narrate every event or episode in my life. I would get bogged down in it and eventually lose interest. So forgive my skipping the Nashville trip, except to say that we visited many great friends, finally found some marijuana, ate Southern food, and drove around to look at our old apartments. (In two years in Nashville, we lived in 3 different apartments, our exit from each of them surrounded by unpleasant circumstances. Some day the whole story will be documented on the "Whatever Happened to Y'all?" blog.)

On the way home, it dawned on me that I have a shitload of work to do on the Lizzie Borden show and not much time to do it. Tim, my collaborator and I, will spend a week together in August (possibly at an artist's retreat in the Berkshires, maybe in New York) rewriting the show, but I need to get a head start since there are several new songs to write.

I'm re-reading A Private Disgrace, the book that gave us so much inspiration for our first version of the show. And I just checked out another Lizzie Borden book from the library; this one, Forty Whacks, by David Kent, came out after we wrote the show.

Milestone.

Did I mention here that I finished a first draft of my screenplay? I can't remember. This is the story with all the sex in it. Until this draft, I was calling it Anonymous Sex, but I was never too crazy about that title, I just couldn't think of anything better. Now I'm using Public Sex, which is more descriptive of the story, as a working title. I like the sound of it better, too.

I applied to the Sundance screenwriters lab program with this script. They only ask for a two-page synopsis and the first five pages of the screenplay, so I was able to submit it before I finished a first draft. But if you make the first cut, they want the full script pronto, so I wanted to have it ready. The Sundance program is a long shot, but I think the subject and approach are provocative enough and the writing good enough that I have a chance. I should hear from them around the middle of this month.

The other reason I wanted to finish it is that when I start school in the fall my priorities will take a sharp turn. I won't be doing much discretionary reading and writing.

All other considerations aside, I think I've written a really good script.

Jungle.

It's been raining on and off heavily for several days now, over a week. Every day, at the least we've had a downpour around dawn and another in the afternoon. If it were about 20 degrees cooler, I would swear I was in San Francisco.

I love the rainy weather, and I especially love that this very wet spring has postponed the arrival of the summer heat.

My room at the back of the house is surrounded by tall bamboo, and I have big windows on two sides. All I see is dripping wet green.

I'm reading A Private Disgrace by Victoria Lincoln, a book about the Lizzie Borden case. Her telling of the story, especially her account of the day of the murders, is mesmerizing. If you're interested at all in the Lizzie Borden story, this is the book to read first. I think she was the first to connect the murders with Lizzie's temporal epilepsy.

B.O.

I spend way too much time thinking about my armpits.

I can't wear deodorant. Well, I can and sometimes do. I put some on this morning, which is why I'm thinking about this. I shouldn't wear deodorant, because my armpits break out in a painful rash that can take weeks, even months, to heal. This only started happening a few years ago, and it conveniently coincided with a general relaxation of my attitude about my appearance and hygiene. I don't care as much as I used to, but I still care too much.

I think my mother introduced me to deodorant before I even had armpit hair, and I remember that terrible feeling those mornings when I realized on the school bus that I'd forgotten to put it on, and worrying all day that someone might smell me.

I used to use antiperspirant when I was performing regularly, and it didn't bother me much. Sometimes I'd get a little itchy, but it seemed worth it -- I can't imagine what my costumes would have smelled like otherwise. I tried switching to Tom's and other "natural" brands, I even tried "the stone," but they were more irritating than the big name brands, so I switched back.

Mitchum was my favorite for a while -- it was so astringent I only had to put it on every 2 or 3 days, which was very nice when we lived on the road and couldn't always take a shower every morning. I can't imagine what that stuff is made of -- glue? Eventually even the brands I'd always used started to irritate me.

When I was cooking for a living in Utah, in a very hot kitchen, I tried again, but I had a severe reaction, the worst ever. (That was the rash that took almost all winter to heal.) It was similar to the breakout on my legs that I got in my twenties and then again a few years ago, bright red blotches that itched so severely I wanted to jump off a bridge.

Doctors never know what things like this are. They call it eczema, which, translated literally, means, "I have no clue."

The first time it happened was in my late twenties in the late eighties. My shins were covered with burning red splotches. I was sure I had AIDS. It would get bad every summer, just in time for shorts weather, and recede in the fall. And then one year it didn't come back. A couple decades later it returned when I was living in Nashville. The free clinic I went to gave me two courses of steroids, which got rid of it.

I could go on about my skin problems, but I'll save it.

I put on deodorant this week because I've been spending the afternoons with a new friend, someone I don't know too well yet, or more to the point, someone who doesn't know me too well yet, and I want to make a good impression. I've been riding my bike to his house and arriving drenched with sweat. Sometimes I can get away with putting on deodorant for a few days. My skin doesn't break out right away; it's a cumulative reaction.

Going without deodorant is like becoming a vegetarian. No matter your reasons, lots of people will assume that it's about politics and that you're doing it just to offend them personally.

I don't have any reason to think this new friend is the kind of person to judge a man by his body odor, but these biases run deep. As comfortable as I am (sometimes) with the fact that I might smell, especially in this muggy weather, I usually have an involuntary negative reaction to another person's body odor. Is this aversion instinctual? A territorial thing? Or am I echoing the disgust my mother expressed whenever she encountered someone who smelled ripe?

However, if it's a man I find attractive, I like the smell. I want the smell. That's another story.

My New Home.

I went to the Texas Department of Public Safety today and applied for a Texas driver's license today. The woman who processed my application took my New York license and wouldn't give it back. I guess they figure once you're a Texan you don't need to be anything else.

Even with all the moving around I've done since 1998, I still had a New York license. It came up for renewal when I happened to be living in Jersey City for a year, in 2002 (after I'd lived in Nashville for two years and on the road for two years), and it was so easy to renew it by mail -- and I was almost living in New York, I was right across the river -- so I just did it. Since then I haven't really had a home anywhere, till now.

I love my new Texas home, despite the fact that, after just spending half an hour on the front porch reading and drinking a beer, I have 40 mosquito bites on my ankles -- really, forty. But, because I can sit on my porch at 7 in the evening in late June and drink a beer and read a book, I know my life is pretty damn good.

Security.

It struck me very funny today to think that I suddenly have this tremendous feeling of security knowing that I will be graduating from college in 2 years, about $20,000 in debt, with a liberal arts degree. I guess it says a lot about the course of my life that this is probably the safest choice I've ever made.

I feel secure knowing that I will not have to think a whole lot about where the money is coming from for a while, but there's also a bit of the traditional something-to-fall-back-on feeling mixed in there, because I find myself thinking that, with a degree, I can always teach to make a living.

I think in the past most of my resistance to finishing a degree came from a fear that I would relent, that I would give up my art and take a teaching job if I could. If it got too hard. Because I knew I would be good at teaching, and because I like school. And because it would be easier. Maybe now, after 25 years of not giving myself anything to fall back on, I have more confidence. I know that, even if I end up teaching, I'll still be an artist.

So I'm ready to introduce the possibility of security. But a liberal arts degree is a pretty flimsy security. Then again, is there any security that's not flimsy? (The answer to that question is "no," by the way.)

Fried Okra.

I just fried some okra, and it was about the easiest thing I've ever done that tasted that good. Cut the okra into half-inch rounds (they're not really round, but you know what I mean) and put in a bowl, sprinkle with salt, and cover with water. Refrigerate for an hour. Then drain the okra in a colander, but don't rinse it. You want it to be sticky.

Put some cornmeal on a plate with lots of salt and pepper, heat up about an inch and a half or more of vegetable oil in a pan -- use a wok, you'll need less oil -- over medium-high heat. The oil is hot enough when you throw a pinch of cornmeal into it and it goes bwishhhhhh and floats.

Dredge the okra in the cornmeal, try to coat it pretty well, and throw it in the oil in batches. Too much at a time will bring down the temperature of the oil. Move them around with a slotted spoon, try to flip them over, but don't worry too much if some of them won't. When they change color a bit, pull them out and put them on paper towels or newspaper.

Serve NOW!

(Save and re-use the oil. Put it in a jar in the fridge and it'll last for weeks.)

I also made a batch of pumpkin muffins which are just about ready to come out of the oven. And I'm soaking some posole to make a vegetarian posole stew tomorrow.

The food at the drug trials makes me crazy. It's not that it's so bad. In fact, it's really okay. It could be worse. There are people, after all, who eat flour mixed with dirt every day. It's just all very processed and characterless. It's loveless nutrition.

Yet, when I'm there I look forward to meals. Sometimes, depending on the protocol of the trial, there will be periods of fasting, so I'm famished and can't wait for dinner, but even when we're not fasting, meals are breaks in the long days of ECGs and blood draws, or just long days of reading.

It's a cycle of disappointment. I look forward to the meals yet they are never satisfying. It's the samsara of drug testing.

I need some real food.

Laundry and Peeing All Over Everything.

This morning I woke up at a little before 7 from a dream in which I was spraying urine all over everything in somebody's house and couldn't stop. I pulled the skin of my penis up over the top and pinched it to try to stop the flow but it just turned into a fine mist. I thought if I could get the spray fine enough and keep moving so as not to spray too much in any one place, maybe no one would notice. But the finer the mist, the longer I kept peeing, all over a couch, chairs, a table, the floor.

In some of these drug trials, they collect your urine for a given period of time. Every drop of it. They send you into the bathroom with a plastic container and you drop it off on the way out. And then during that period, there are specific times at which you have to produce at least 40 ml of urine. We're always drinking lots of water anyway, to keep hydrated, which makes the blood draws easier, so we're peeing often, but still we have to be aware of the time and not empty our bladders too soon before those times when they want the 40 ml.

So when I woke up at 7, I had to pee but I knew I had to pee again at 8:10 and I was worried that if I peed at 7, I might not have to go again at 8:10, at least not 40 ml worth.

I was a bed-wetter when I was a kid, and usually the way it happened was that I would dream I was peeing and wake up to find that I actually had. It was a big deal when I started to wake up from those dreams not having wet the bed. I still fairly often have dreams of urinating in inappropriate places. And I still wake up extremely relieved that the bed is dry and I still have to go.

Which leads me to laundry. J and I got a washing machine a few weeks ago. Though trips to the laundromat have not been as onerous the last few years, now that I have so few clothes, still it's nice to be free of that. And I'm happy that we're air-drying our clothes, which is a big energy savings.

But it's been an adjustment for me. I was never one to separate laundry. I just threw it all in there, rugs, underwear, towels, t-shirts, everything. And it all came out clean. White t-shirts didn't stay white very long, but that didn't matter so much to me. Even the plastic shower curtain liner came out sparkling.

Not so with the our new washing machine. All my black pants and t-shirts came out with splotches of white powder from the soap and fuzzy lint from the towels. And my white t-shirts weren't just dingy, they had brown stains that weren't there when I threw them in. I tried the "extra rinse" feature and the "extra spin." I tried the "heavy duty" cycle. Same thing. For a while, I was washing all my dark clothes twice, the second time with no soap, just to rinse out the white spots.

Of course, J's laundry comes out fine. He separates, and that's what I'm going to start doing. Not just lights from darks, but towels from everything, to avoid the fuzz. I still don't know how he avoids the white powder problem. I've switched to liquid detergent, and I'm not happy about it because it costs more.

Newsy Week.

1. I got an email message from the U.T. financial aid office on Thursday with my financial aid package. I had imagined a letter, so the email threw me, and I had to stare at it for a while before I was certain it really meant what it said. Ta-da!

It's a generous package too, quite a bit of grant money, including a Pell grant, and two grants from the State of Texas. Using my rudimentary and marginally reliable math skills, I figured out that I can probably get by once school starts only working a few hours a week, or possibly doing an odd job here and there, to make a little extra money to help pay my credit card bills.

2. I'm in another drug trial this weekend. I checked in this afternoon. I'm actually an "alternate" subject, which means that if everything goes well with all the regular subjects, I will be sent home tomorrow morning. So, I'm praying for one of them to have high blood pressure in the morning or get caught having sex in the bathroom tonight. Just kidding.

I'm in the same facility as before but a different section. We're in a big room like an old-fashioned hospital ward with beds lined up against opposite walls. All our procedures will be done in our beds (ECGs and blood draws), rather than the other times where there's been a big procedure room and separate dorms with bunk beds. I like it better, it's not quite as chaotic and this sleeping arrangement feels better. Those little dorms rooms were so close and airless.

If I get sent home tomorrow, I'll only make $75, instead of $900 for the whole weekend. But, even more than the money, the best thing about being able to do the whole study is that I can stop trying to get into a study for a while, I can smoke some pot (if I can find any) for the next couple of weeks. If I don't get in this study, I have to keep at it until I do one!

Creatives.

In the Statesman this morning, there was a profile of a woman who is apparently a party planner and wardrobe consultant. The article led with the news that "creative" is now a noun as well as an adjective. Creatives are people who offer "creative services" (stylists, event planners, people who, because they have or are perceived to have some kind of rarified aesthetic sense, can help people sell products or sell themselves, or in some way be more successful).

Sorry to be a big curmudgeon on a lovely Friday afternoon, but articles like this are what convince me that the end is near. What more clear sign do we need that our culture has been corrupted by money? Our economic system can't support art because art is worth supporting. It can only recognize the worth of creative activity when it works in service of profit. So we end up with "creatives," who are, as far as I can tell, just deformed, stunted artists.

I hope no one will take my comments personally. I do not mean to disparage anyone who does this sort of work. God knows we all have to make a living, and it's pretty hard to do that these days without compromising. I doubt that I would say no if someone wanted to pay me to tell her which pants to wear this morning or which lamp to buy.

I also find this subject interesting in the context of the big argument we're having about immigration. "We" are angry at a whole class of people who, to oversimplify, come here to do jobs that nobody else wants to do. And, on the other hand, we've created a category of jobs that don't even need to be done, an industry that serves a false need. What's interesting for me as an artist is that my job choices mostly fall in one or the other of these categories.

Quesadilla.

We have a pile of green and yellow chilies in the fridge. A couple of them are poblanos from our garden. The rest are from the CSA farm; I'm not sure what they're called but they're the ones used for pepperoncini.

We also got a small bunch of sage in our CSA box, and I wasn't feeling inspired to do anything with it. I think of sage as a fall or winter herb, I guess because of sage dressing on Thanksgiving. But I was making myself a quesadilla for lunch and I was pulling out a couple of the chilies, saw the sage lying there on the shelf and pulled it out too.

I sliced the peppers and sauteed them quickly in olive oil, salt and pepper, with some of the sage, chopped. Then I threw a tortilla in the pan with the little bit of oil left, covered it with grated Jack cheese and the chilies and sage, and cooked it on both sides until it was slightly brown and crispy. I added a little Tabasco sauce before I ate it. It sure was good! Combining the sage with the chilies brought out the smoky quality of the sage.

My first boyfriend Eduardo, who was Mexican, used to make quesadillas for breakfast. I can still hear him saying it, pronouncing the "d" almost like "th." He made them with cheddar cheese and topped them with sour cream and salsa from a jar.

This was in 1983, when we lived together in an apartment on 11th St. and Avenue C in New York. One morning, shortly after I moved in, he told me to make sure I emptied out the kitchen drain trap after I washed dishes because the bits of food left there were attracting roaches. That bit of kitchen advice felt ominous to me, the first sign of discord in a summer romance that continued through a long, silent winter.

Our breakup was bad -- epic bad: he was the Latin one, but I, the shy kid from Indiana, was the one smashing glassware and kicking holes in the bedroom door. I learned things about my temper that I am grateful to have learned early and grateful didn't get me killed.

Very soon after the Eduardo episode, I got a job waiting tables at Bandido!, a new Mexican restaurant on 2nd Ave. It was a trendy place, one of the first 2nd Avenue restaurants with outdoor seating. Standard Tex-Mex food and frozen margaritas with plastic monkeys and mermaids hanging from the edge of the glass, back when that was a new thing. First there was Caliente Cab Co. in the West Village and then came Bandido! in the East.

I worked the day shift. I think the manager who hired me, hired me because he thought I was cute. It wasn't because I was a good waiter. He was cute too. (A few years later, my second boyfriend and I had an awkward 3-way with him, a night which mostly consisted of three guys making small talk and waiting for someone else to get things rolling.)

The daytime manager was a blond Midwestern girl who had grown up in Mexico and spoke perfect Mexican Spanish to the kitchen staff. I remember that she was impressed with my pronunciation of "quesadilla," and after she pointed it out I became self-conscious about it. I'd learned the word from Eduardo, and it still sounds strange when I hear it pronounced with a hard "d."

The quesadillas we served at Bandido! were not much like Eduardo's quesadillas. They were made with oversized tortillas folded in half, stuffed to the gills with cheese, seasoned chicken, and cilantro, and topped with guacamole and sour cream.

The owner of Bandido! was Russian and drank vodka like Texans drink iced tea in the summer time.

The Test.

Friday night Z and I made plans to get takeout dinner and watch a movie at his place. He had just returned from a 4-day business trip and he was tired from driving all day, but we wanted to see each other since he's leaving again today for several days, this time a vacation, a solo road trip.

One of Z's favorite movies is Sordid Lives, a very funny film about eccentric Southern people. So I suggested we watch Junebug, another very funny movie about Southern people, and one of my favorite movies from the last few years. (J and I were both obsessed with Junebug for a while; we still quote lines from it now and then.) Sordid Lives is a broad comedy; Junebug is subtler, but I still thought he would love it.

I think he liked it. But he didn't seem to find it very funny. His response was more along the lines of "that was thought-provoking." (I hadn't noticed what a quiet film it is until this viewing.) I was disappointed that he didn't love it the way I do. I've seen it many times, and I still hang on every moment. I can't get enough of it, especially Amy Adams's performance. I mentioned to Z that she was nominated for the Oscar last year for that performance, and he seemed surprised, whereas I was appalled that she didn't win.

Anyway, we probably all know that disconcerting feeling, that dissonant feeling. It's like a test. "If he doesn't get this movie, then what else is wrong with him?" It's silly, but real.

Then last night, J and I watched Days of Heaven, another of my favorite movies. I've seen this one a few times too, and it always takes my breath away. I rented it because I wanted to see it again but mostly because I wanted to share it with J, who hadn't seen it. He didn't like it much. He found it unconvincing.

Now, if anyone has passed the test, all the tests, it's J. We've known each other for 15 years and I've never been closer to anyone in my life.

Lesson: the favorite movie test is not a very good test.

Thai.

I used to say I don't like eggplant.

But my Italian friend in Syracuse makes eggplant Parmesan that I swoon to think about. He slices the eggplant very thin and stacks the slices between layers of paper towels with lots of salt. After they've released some of their moisture, they're dredged in seasoned breadcrumbs, fried, smothered with cheese and the best tomato sauce I've ever had, and baked. Oh, man.

And we used to make a grilled eggplant sandwich at Greens that I loved. The eggplant slices were tossed in garlic and olive oil, grilled, and stacked with roasted peppers, arugula, and basil aioli on toasted foccacia. Mmm.

Even so, it's a vegetable I approach with caution. Simmered in a stew or ratatouille, there's something about the slippery sponginess that puts me off. But we got two small eggplants in our produce box yesterday, and how could I not fall in love with them? That perfect purple, and they're so light when you pick them up.

So I'm making a Thai eggplant, cucumber, and tomato salad, because we also got 3 beautiful tomatoes, several cucumbers (as well as the cucumbers from our own garden), and a bunch of basil. And I'll throw in one of those fiery red Thai chilies, minced. The marinade is lime, ginger, and tamari. It's a Moosewood recipe, modified.

I'm also working on a curry sauce today. I made some vegetable stock this morning, and I'll put together the sauce later. It's a pretty standard Thai red curry with coconut milk. On my way home from Z's the other night, I snagged a couple leaves from his kaffir lime tree, and I think a few stalks of lemon grass in the garden are big enough to use. J will be out of town overnight, so I'll wait and put it all together tomorrow night. It'll be red bell peppers, roasted potatoes, basil, and summer squash from our CSA farm.