Today, etc.

I got a rejection email from a literary journal yesterday but the good kind, the “we liked your essay, we just couldn’t make it work this time but please submit again” kind. It’s a small sign of life, a glimmer. I’ll send them something else soon.

The thought came into my head last week in the thick of a nasty respiratory infection that, without Christmas and heart disease, I might by now have completed a first draft of my book. More like “without Christmas and heart disease and a million other things every day that pull my attention away from writing, I might blah blah blah.” I don’t know. What I do know is that I was on a serious streak of progress in mid-October when I started feeling chest pain and saw a cardiologist on October 20th, and now I haven’t written a word in two and a half months.

Watching Devil in Disguise, a new series about the John Wayne Gacy murders, has lit a small fire. The series is, among many things, a corrective to the usual true crime forensic approach to telling these stories. It takes a longer view that includes the communities and families affected by the murders and makes the case that Gacy is not alone responsible for these deaths, that the police and community’s hatred of gay men are also to blame. That the murders are a product of not just a maniac, but of a time and place that was viciously and reflexively homophobic. Because of the cops’ revulsion toward anything having to do with gay men and boys and gay sex, they didn’t care about the crimes or the boys enough to do their jobs. Those boys didn’t stand a chance. Which is what I was trying to get at in writing about Larry Eyler, whose spree took place in the same area 6-8 years later.

Being away from the work isn’t just a loss of 2 1/2 months’ writing time, it’s more like a 6-month setback. I look at the piles of notes and papers on my desk and remember how, in October, I knew what every pile was, what it contained, how much and what was still to be done, how it would fit together, the flow of it, and now I don’t know any of those things. It’s just piles of random stuff.

These things on my schedule, making a return to regular, disciplined writing days feel impossible — among them this cold, which thankfully after nearly two weeks is on the wane (last night I blew my nose and a clot of blood as big and shiny red as a newborn gerbil flew out onto my hand, which was simultaneously horrifying and also maybe a good sign, like an exorcism almost), and also the heart rehab program I start soon which will require 3 months of thrice weekly trips to a hospital in the East 30s — I’m beginning to realize will not abate. Aging has me buffeted by a litany of things I now need to be worried about: look after your brain health, and your heart health, your skin care, bone mass, muscle mass, all requiring attention to your diet and activity, and each carrying high stakes. It’s not: you’re 25 and somebody says start moisturizing now so you have great skin when you’re 70. It’s: eat more fish and legumes so you don’t have a heart attack and die next week. Swallow handfuls of pills twice a day to keep yourself alive and don’t forget to take your pill containers when you travel, along with backup bottles of everything in case your flight gets canceled. And remember that shot has to be on ice and in your checked bag not your carryon. In my twenties I was sure, as sure as people in their twenties are sure of things, that I would die young. Maybe at 30. As 30 came and went, I kept revising the number up until at some point I realized I didn’t mind getting older. There was a window, my forties and much of my fifties, roughly, when being “older” was cute. I felt smarter, more confident, handsome. Now I’m almost 65 and taking Zepbound because I’m fat and I have high cholesterol and heart disease.

I know it doesn’t sound like it, but I am grateful there are drugs and other ways and technologies available to keep me ticking. I truly am. But you know what else is ticking? The clock, and I just want to finish this damn book.