doubting thom

Wednesday evening, as I had reported, I reconnected with an old friend at Craig’s pre-Europe trip get-together. I was telling her about my car woes, my pending decision to buy a new car, and my continued sense–first noted in one of my comments on Gene’s journal–that my choice will be between the MINI Cooper and the Toyota Prius. After telling me that she and her husband had bought a Saab, which is what I also currently own, she said that they too had looked at the MINI, and she was urging me to get one; also encouraging style over function, W– at work has been encouraging the MINI over the Prius as well.

When I got home that night, there was a note in my mailbox that a package had been delivered, but the concierge was making his security rounds at that time, so I wasn’t able to pick it up from the front desk. I stopped downstairs Friday morning on the way to work and picked up the package, which was from Roger; he had told me he was going to send me some video of his and Raymond’s trip to Long Beach and Disneyland, and of Raymond’s most recent concert, and that he had put in “some extras.” The box contained three video tapes, a music CD of the Jekyll and Hyde soundtrack, another MP3 CD of a variety of music, a pin of a cute animated Disney guy (especially interesting given Roger hadn’t even read my Audblog entry about my attraction to animated hotties)… and a 1:32 IR remote control scale model of a MINI Cooper, with which Alex and I have had a lot of fun playing.

I had first assumed that if I bought a MINI, I would get it in green, my favorite color. But there’s been a yellow one in the parking lot at work, which looks particularly sweet and has more of an impact than the green; the model that Roger sent also was yellow.

In the meantime, Craig offered to lend me his car–a Hyundai Santa Fe–while he’s away in Europe. He dropped it by Friday evening, and I drove him to the airport. I had planned to drive it out to the MINI dealer yesterday, but in addition to another day of bad weather outside, I was feeling under-the-weather inside–with a headache, earache, sore throat and fatigue all day– so I stayed in and rested. Perhaps next weekend I’ll finally get to take a test drive in a MINI.

Craig joked that he wants to get me hooked on his SUV so that I’ll join the ranks of the gas guzzlers. To be fair, the Santa Fe’s gas mileage actually is pretty good, almost as good as my Saab. And while there are aspects of the ride I quite like, including being up higher on the road and the amount of room, after taking it Friday evening to the airport and today to church, I find that I’m feeling rather uncomfortable and hypocritical driving and being seen in an SUV. So the Santa Fe hasn’t supplanted the MINI or the Prius.

Alex, my cat, almost never seems to be interested in television, though the soundtracks of any programs broadcast in surround sound, and especially those in Dolby Digital, often do produce a reaction. However, he is often fascinated by animated computer games–The Sims Online especially captures his attention.

I recorded the new Lifetime program, Meow TV, allegedly for people and their cats, but Alex showed great intelligence and taste through his complete and almost disdainful disinterest in what turned out to be not just bad but dreadfully and almost singularly wretched.

At the moment, though, Ice Age is playing from the TiVo, and something about it seems to have drawn his interest.

I almost didn’t go to my friend Craig’s informal pre-trip-to-Europe get-together last night; at rush hour, and given my car’s increasing state of disrepair, I didn’t want to drive into DC and try to find parking in Dupont Circle, so I knew if I went I’d need to park somewhere out here and take the Metro. Driving home from work, I took a route that was the starting point for either a Metro station or home, and at one point turned off toward home but changed my mind en route and went to the Metro, and then on to the gathering, instead.

I was a little nervous, specifically because a former co-worker and very good friend during my dot-com days had indicated that she was going to attend. Immediately after my department was abolished and I was laid off along with my staff, she and I had made plans to get together, but the first time she had to postpone and the second I did, and then we never communicated again. Over time, I started to realize that I felt some anger at her, in that I felt she had been complicit in her silence while the company’s CEO–her fiance’s friend and college roommate–committed a number of dishonest, potentially illegal and, in my opinion, absolutely immoral acts in his oversight of the organization, and in his cavalier treatment of staff. So by the time last night’s event rolled around twenty months after I had severed ties with the company, I just wasn’t sure I wanted to see her again.

And, of course, when she showed up and people shifted at the table to make room for her, the empty seat available was right next to me. I have to admit that I was a little cool at first, though not, I think, unpleasant. But as the evening wore on, the situation continued to ease and my demeanor to warm, and by the time she and I were readying to leave at the same time, we were absolutely pals again–and I realized that I had indeed missed her very much–and we had exchanged new contact information and pledges to get together soon.

I’m glad that I decided to go. In addition to reconnecting with S–, I was also very happy that I had the chance to spend some time with Craig before his trip to Europe; and in the course of my conversation with him, he offered to let me use his car while he’s away, which will finally allow me to get down to visit my parents over the next six weeks since my own car isn’t suitable for longer trips, and he will borrow my digital camera for his trip. There was also a cute guy at the get-together, a new co-worker of Craig’s roommate, but I didn’t have an opportunity to talk to him at all–and akin to the fox’s grapes, he likely was straight anyway, despite being surprisingly well-dressed for a computer engineer, which probably was what threw off my gaydar.

On my way home from Craig’s get-together earlier tonight, I took the Metro to Pentagon City, where I’d left my car in order to take the train to and from Dupont Circle. When I left the club, and when I arrived at Pentagon City, the skies were gray but dry; I decided to spend a few minutes in Best Buy and Borders. Fifteen minutes later I left the store to walk to my car, and the skies had opened up in the meantime, and lightning was flashing all around.

I dashed to my car, about a block away, but my hair and clothes got pretty wet. Then when I got to my car, and stepped off the sidewalk into the street to get in, I noticed too late the deep puddle surrounding my car. My Kenneth Coles and the bottom three inches of my slacks were completely soaked. Meanwhile, the lightning was very close, with the thunderclaps practically simultaneous; the short drive home in the ragtop with the lightning arcing down all around was really rather exhilirating and a little adrenaline-inducing.

Adding fuel to my theory that Thoms-with-an-h are almost invariably gay, the list of bios for the “cultural experts,” the “Fab Five” queer men (as noted on Gothamist) participating in the upcoming Bravo TV reality show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy includes a Thom–along with a Kyan, a Carson, a Jai and a… Ted. Ted? What kind of homo name is that? Seems to me that one of the “Fab Five” needs a nameover. Maybe give that uninspiring “e”–which after all appears three times in the words “heterosexual” and “breeder”–a stylish little circumflex: Têd. Even the word “circumflex” has such a homoerotic ring, don’t you think, containing within it both cum and flex?

While lately I haven’t been experiencing the emotional downswing of my depressive tendencies, I still have been very much perpetuating my social withdrawal, both in the real world and in the virtual environments in which I participate.

This came particularly to light on Monday, when I received an evite from my friend Craig–whom I’d consider my best friend locally–for a pre-summer get-together tonight at a local beer and billiards hangout. The invitation said “Nothing formal!… Eliot [his roommate] and I just needed an excuse to get out and drink,” but seemingly contradictorily, “This may be the last time we get to see some of you for quite some time.” And Eliot, in his acceptance of the invitation, wrote, “Got to see my roomie go out with a bang!”

Confused, I wrote to Craig, and in his reply email he told me that he’s leaving this coming Monday for five and a half weeks in Europe. I’d been so out of touch with him over the past month or more that I didn’t even know he was planning a trip to Europe, much less preparing for an imminent departure.

And my out-of-town and Internet friends have been wonderfully patient with me through this bout of uncommunicativeness, for which I’m grateful. I’ve made some small strides over the past couple of months, having gotten back in touch electronically with three people very important to me, and in person with Sheldon and Lisa; given that it’s often a struggle for me to keep up my end, I’m very fortunate that my closest friendships have tended to weather these stretches of inactivity and inattention so well.

Based on some of the Pride month programming from the Sundance channel I’d recorded over this past week and a half, my TiVo now has been recording more and more suggestions with queer content on its own. Last night I watched “Daddy & Papa,” an episode of PBS’s Independent Lens series, and I found it very affecting.

Never having had any real angst about coming out and identifying as queer, for many years I did regret, however, what I thought was an implication that I’d never be a parent. More recently, of course, I’ve come to realize that I could become a parent–not necessarily easily, especially as a gay man living in Virginia, but it would be possible. I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about it, off and on, but haven’t done any more in-depth research, or joined any “maybe baby” groups. Five years ago I had told myself that I needed to decide one way or the other before I was forty, an arbitrary cut-off age in my own mind for bringing a baby or young child into one’s home. Now that I’m but six weeks away from 41, though, I’m not sure that I’m ready to cut myself off from the possibility just yet.

On the other hand, I’ve also come to realize that I’m not always even particularly successful at taking care of myself, my cat and my houseplants to the standards I think I should, so it might be best that I haven’t pursued the possibility of fatherhood more vigorously.

At one level, I think I’ve been hoping and imagining that someone who already has kids would fall into my life, and that I’d get the husband, kids and white picket fence all in one fell swoop. The armor and charger are completely optional, of course.

Kelly Wallace–one of the men in the documentary, who was single at the time of filming and according to the update on the PBS site is single still–just really tugged at my heartstrings. Earlier in the film, Kelly talked about his realization that bringing the two young brothers into his home would make it much more difficult to have a adult relationship of his own, and his conscious decision to become a parent even if it meant he’d never again be someone’s partner; but he also talked about how lonely the situation can be– “not for the sex, but just to wake up and have someone hold you.” Later, in a segment that even choked himself up–and I, who’ve been known to cry at fast food commercials, had tears streaming down my face as I listened, sitting there alone–he told about a story that his adopted son Jesse had told him:

Jesse woke me up and said, “You know what, daddy? When I was little I didn’t have a family… so I just walked around the street by myself and I went up to one house and I said, ‘No, that’s not my house.’ And then, Daddy, I came up to your house and I said, ‘That’s my house.’ So I knocked on the door and you answered it, and I said, ‘Would you be my Daddy?'” And I said, “You know, honey, I’d love to be your dad.” And Jesse said, “So then I moved in… and now I have a family.”

Too bad I don’t live in San Francisco, where Kelly and the two boys are… at the very least, I’d want to get to know them better. See? I do have a romantic side, surprising as that may be, albeit an unrealistic one (ah… the cynic you all know isn’t entirely absent today either). So… given that I know his name and his occupation, and therefore could probably fairly readily find his email address, would it be pro-active, friendly and bold–or creepy and invasive and stalker-like–to contact him and let him know that his words and actions touched me?

There’s another good reason today to emigrate to Canada. An appeals court ruled today that the country’s ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional, and Toronto’s city clerk was ordered to issue marriage licenses to the couples named in the original suit. This afternoon, following the ruling, Michael Leshner and Michael Stark were married.

Meanwhile, just a little more than a week earlier, six members of the U.S. House of Representatives (three Democrats and three Republicans) introduced the Federal Marriage Amendment, seeking to have the U.S. Constitution amended in order to permanently ban gay marriages from being recognized.

And those Canadian men and their accents are so cute, too. Anyone up there interested in hiring this Yank, eh?

Each month, Washington Post columnist Bob Levey posts a neologism contest. Last month, the challenge was:

What do you call the little shake that people give a packet of sugar or artificial sweetener to settle the contents before they rip it open?

I sent in two entries, and one of them– “dextrosterity”–was selected as an “almost and nearly” for the month. I had thought this was the poorer of the two, with “Equal-ization” being the one I thought was surely a contender for runner-up, if not the clear winner. But it didn’t even get a mention. I thought maybe it was because “Equal” is a trademark, but some of the other runners up included “Sweet ‘n’ Lower,” “Low ‘n’ Sweet,” “Nutraswing” and “Nutra Swat,” so that obviously wasn’t the problem.

And the “winning” entry?

Sucroscillation?!

Guess there’s no accounting for taste.

At the risk of jeopardizing my queer card or incurring the wrath of teenyboppers, I just do not get the appeal of Justin Timberlake. Sure, at times he demonstrates an interesting almost-fey quality to his movement and manner and, as Jeff noted in March, he has developed a relatively nicely gym-toned body. But I find his face–and I’m trying to be kind here–plain and uninspiring, at best (though I must admit that Herb Ritts did a great job of maximizing its strong points and minimizing its weaknesses in the Rolling Stone cover), and the current scruffy look, which I normally find attractive, on him really is quite unappealing.

Oddly, I was in the midst of posting this because Justin had come to mind both from my quick fast-forward through the TiVo recording of the MTV 2003 Movie Awards, and from Terry‘s numerous mentions of him. But when googling for a picture for him, the second headline of the three that Google returned as news was an article today from icWales, showing that results from a recent VH1 poll in the UK put Justin as the 14th sexiest person, one spot behind Elvis and just one spot ahead of Duran Duran.

I feel vindicated already.