Flesh and Blood and Fur and Theatre

[When it all gets to be too much, there ain't nuthin' wrong with closing the blinds, putting the phone on vibrate (I don't turn it off: baby niece, parents in their 60s), and telling the world to go blow while you read Flesh And Blood in its entirety.]

[Not that there's anything wrong with the world. I've never seen a Broadway play (on Broadway!), but I can't imagine how the touring production of A Light In The Piazza I saw Friday night could've been bettered. Of course, I saw it with Allen, a theatre queen from the both sides of the footlights, and he had a few arcane suggestions. Whatever; for a simple creation, it was lovely.]

[Of course it was hell getting the rental car on Saturday morning. Of course Dollar was overbooked and understaffed, and though I arrived thirty minutes eary, it took me an hour just to get to the counter. Think lots of European families, Papa muttering gutturals and looking at his watch, Mama trying to hold it all together, and les enfants trying to use the stanchions and ballards that kept us in queue to kill and maim their siblings. If I see a boy attempt to murder his sister just because he's bored, do I want to hear his mother chide him in Serbo-Croatian? Probably.]

[I've patronized Dollar for years because they accept debit cards. (Me and credit cards? Never a great idea.) When I finally got to the counter, I discovered Dollar has instituted a new policy for their customers who wish to rent using a debit card. Starting sometime in the middle of July, they've started running an Equifax credit check. Credit check! Two words that strike fear into the hearts of the majority of my generation. And why? When you rent with a debit card, they hold like $300.00 in your account to cover costs. Who cares what your credit history is like if the cash is there? As I handed my card and license to the nice if monumentally harried counterperson, I fantasized about a class action suit brought by every undergraduate matriculating between 1985 and today against every "bank" issuing credit cards in the quad.]

[Somehow I passed the check (!), and only had to wait 45 more minutes for them to find a car for me, wash it, and fill it with gas. I'd reserved a compact ("Dodge Neon or similar") but ended up with a Chrysler 300. A free upgrade, true, but one which drives like a badly made tank, a tank rejected, say, by the East Timorese resistance army. I got Allen and me up to Guerneville only two hours later than I'd told my college friend Chris and his ball-and-chain Mark that I'd hoped to arrive. The plan was to hit one of the big poolside parties and mingle with the bears, but by the time Allen and I arrived, I was so burnt on people and places (and Allen was so enchanted by the boys' remodeled sylvan nest) that we just sat on C&M's deck, drank, snacked, talked, laughed, dined, and suddenly somehow it was 10PM. So it was to be bears in bars, not by pools.]

[In response to a surprisingly large number of inquiries, let me just say that, no, I don't consider myself a bear. True, I'm probably 15-20 pounds above my ideal weight. True, there is fur pretty much in a continuous streak from the top of my head to the tops of my feet. And true, I don't go in (much...always qualify) for those know-'em-when-you-see-'em attributes of the mainstream gay clone. I guess I'm not a bear because I don't want to be a bear. Or a cub or an otter. Not that there's anything wrong with them, but I feel like I did a lot of the stuff I imagine bears get into (from campin' to self-identifying as an some sort of faux-Native-American spirit guide) back when I was in the Boy Scouts. If I'm going to partially submerge my identity in a group, I want the submersion to provide me with something I haven't felt already.]

[What I do like about the bears, and especially bear weekend, is the relaxed attitude. I attended Dore Alley Fair the previous weekend, and it was not relaxed, and thus and therefore I didn't even try to get laid. People were just trying too hard to be sexy (or, rather, sexual), most came out the other side, and it all left me pretty cold. Here, (I'm suddenly writing a law school essay!) no one looked like they cared if you or they had sex (though of course everyone was looking), and I can't imagine anyone didn't get laid. While technically I'd broken the post-breakup seal a while ago, I can't say I've really enjoyed doing anything in this line with anyone post-Chris even a tenth as much as I did Saturday night and Sunday morning. So, yay me.]

[Allen came halloo-ing by the tent where I ended up with my end up, I said a quick but thorough good-bye to my tentmate, and got A. back to the city in time to work at 11AM. After getting Das Boot back to Dollar, I went home, performed the aforementioned motions to shut the world out, and just read. (OK, Jhames and I did have a lengthy text conversation, but that was it.) Michael Cunningham is again obsessed with the number three in F And B. Three siblings, three generations, families of three. The man writes the best soap operas because, while they're fantastic and coincidental like the best soaps, they never ring absurd. Now I'm in that horrendous position that I've gotten in with too many other authors: anotheranotheranotheranother!]

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