I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can

In a Panglossian world, all a writer would have to do is sit down, write a book, send it off to a publisher, and cash royalty checks. This, as you may have noticed, is not a Panglossian world. The old saying, "If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door" regrettably has no basis in reality. If nobody knows you've built it, you and it are just going to sit there looking out the window watching the grass grow. And if nobody knows you've written a book, I wouldn't expect much in the line of royalty checks.

"Name" authors writing for big publishers need only scribble an idea on a cocktail napkin and be deluged with huge advances for the book. How "name" authors get to be name authors has largely escaped me. Exactly how/why their books hit it big when dozens, hundreds, or thousands of books by equally talented writers slip silently beneath the surface leaving not a trace is another mystery. 

I am not a "name" author. Though I have a name, relatively few people know it. I don't have a monolithic publishing house behind me, sending me on book tours or booking me on the talk shows. And trying to get my name better known is, frankly, equal parts time consuming and frustrating.

As a result, I must constantly walk around with my little drums, kazoos, and flags, taking every opportunity to call attention to my work.

Like many authors on the lower levels of the literary pyramid, I find the struggle to let potential readers know that I even exist, let alone convincing them to read my books, to be a monumental one. On any given day, I spend several hours working on whatever book I'm writing at the moment, and even more time doing my little "Yoo-hoo! I'm here! Look at me, please!" number. I do it through any means available to me...such as blogs like this one, and trying to make my presence known on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, MySpace, AuthorsDen, Open Salon and a sometimes dizzying number of places on the internet.

There is, of course, a strong element of narcissism in all this. I don't know of any writer who does not write to be read. I certainly do. But even the most avid of readers can only read so much. One report says that in 2007, the last year for which such figures are available, there were 407,000 books published. The mind boggles.

Far more people write blogs--an estimated 133 million in 2009--than write books, so on one level, the "competition" for readers is infinitely greater. Blogs, of course, are much shorter than novels, and people can therefore read more of them, though I haven't been able to find any figures on how many people read blogs. But for "C" and "D" level authors, blogs have several potential if unmeasurable advantages. They are an effective way for writers with limited financial resources or with little promotional backing from publishers to serve as their own publicists and introduce themselves and their writing style to prospective book readers. And the informality of blogs enables the writer and reader to establish something akin to a personal relationship. I've always believed that a potential reader will lean toward books by someone with whom he/she is familiar on some level.

Still, all the odds mentioned above gives me something of a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. How can I possibly expect anyone to select mybooks from all the others? Don't get me wrong...I have no false modesty on my abilities as a writer. Great literature they're not, nor are they intended to be. They're light entertainment, but each addresses a subject of some general importance to the human condition without beating the reader over the head with it. In my opinion and experience the world could use a lot more light entertainment and a lot less head beating.

Unfortunately, there is no real way I or any writer can be sure just how effective all these efforts are, which lends yet another small element of frustration to an already frustrating situation. So all I can do is keep doing whatever I can to prompt someone who has never read my books to take a chance with me, including putting the first chapters of all my books  on my website  (http://www.doriengrey.com).

As I say, I'm dancing as fast as I can.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 )                                           

The Uncaged Bird

The mind is a bird, confined in the cage of the body. Reality is the room in which the cage hangs by an unbreakable chain.  The wise bird realizes that the door to the cage is left open, allowing it to roam free whenever it chooses; the timid bird, even if it knows the door is open, seldom ventures outside the cage. As long as the uncaged bird is not so foolish as to fling itself headlong into the solid wall of reality, there is ample room to create its own form of reality.

I choose to live as much as possible outside the cage of my body. It is, of course, important that even while ignoring reality as much as possible, one must never forget that reality does exist and that in any life-and-death struggle between the two, reality inevitably wins.

In keeping with the birds-and-cages analogy, I like to think that most people can be likened to specific species of birds. Probably the majority are members of the  sparrow or wren families: quiet, timid, going about their business largely unaware of or unconcerned by the world around them other than its effect on their day-to-day lives. Some are more venturesome; robins, bluejays, macaws, peacocks, or parrots, all with their human equivalents. (Politicians, to my mind, tend to be vultures.) But almost without exception, most people, like most caged birds, are totally unaware of the concept of their cage, and as a result seldom leave them even when they can.

There are those like me who, though aware of the limitations of their cage and the immutable walls of reality beyond, do their best to create their own versions of reality within those walls, tailoring them to fit themselves. I consider myself blessed in that, being a writer spending a good part of every day in the unreality of writing allows me far greater freedom than is afforded most people. 

Our minds give us the freedom to believe what we choose to believe, and to create our own little worlds. As long as we do not attempt to forcibly impose them on others, or infringe negatively and unfairly on their rights to do and think what they choose, what is the harm? I am quite sure that my attitudes, beliefs, and ways of looking at and interacting with the world would be considered as strange to others as theirs often do to me. But whatever gives us pleasure and harms no one else is valid. 

For example, I think of myself as a complete romantic, and while being gay is not the sum total of who I am, it is a very large and vital part of me. I take comfort in the assumption that every attractive man I encounter in passing is gay--not with any thought that it might benefit me in any physical way, much as I might like it to. That most of them are not gay isn't the point. What I enjoy thinking is. I like the TV show Supernatural. To me, the characters Sam and Dean Winchester are not, as the show claims, brothers, but lovers, and it gives me great--one might say childish--pleasure to imagine them so. I willingly grant them the happiness I wish I had for myself. I most certainly do that in my books. All my favorite movie and TV actors are gay; whether they actually are in real life matters not one whit. I don't, and never will have the chance to, know them personally, so if I choose to think they're gay, then they're gay. Period.

Oh, and if I may be allowed one other human/bird analogy in closing, it is that I sincerely believe that the soul is the song the bird sings.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

The Toddler's Creed

All humans tend to have, consciously or unconsciously, basic creeds, beliefs, and philosophies by which they live. Some are noble, others not so, and still others, well, just are. I recognized myself immediatly in a...what? not a poem, since it doesn't rhyme. Let's just call it a sage observation attributed to a Dr. Burton L. Wright. It's called “The Toddler’s Creed.” I delight in it because I see myself perfectly, and to be honest, a great number of other people, captured in it. I’m sure Dr. Wright won’t mind if I quote it here:

If I want it,
IT'S MINE!

If I give it to you and change my mind later,
IT'S MINE!

If I can take it away from you,
IT'S MINE!

If it's mine it will never belong to anybody else,
No matter what.

If we are building something together,
All the pieces are mine!

If it looks just like mine,
IT'S MINE!

If it breaks or needs putting away,
IT'S YOURS!

As I’ve often said, I really do think that on many levels I never made it past the “Terrible Twos” emotionally. I am totally and irrationally jealous of anyone who has some ability, skill, or trait that I do not have but want. And when I say that often my chest will ache when I will see someone who I think is physically beautiful, I am quite serious. It’s an actual, physical response.

We all have to grow up, and for the most part—though with great reluctance and resistance—I have, though as you have undoubtedly noticed, I have clung, and still cling, desperately to the past. “Growing up” has always terrified and revolted me because to me “growing up” in my mind also meant/means “giving up”…losing forever the wonders and openness that make a child’s life so enchanted and exciting.

There can be only one “first time” for anything, of course, and we run through them quickly as children. Unfortunately, repetition of experiences tends to have a sandpaper effect, wearing away the intensity of the emotions each of those first-time experiences evoked. The all-too-inevitable result, for most people, is to forget how wondrous so many things still are. To this day, I can pick up a pebble on the beach and become totally awed just staring at it, thinking of how it got to the moment in eternity when I picked it up…where it came from, and how very, very long ago, and the odds that I would choose it to pick up over the billions of other pebbles, and what will become of it after I return it to the beach. If I throw it far out into the water, how long will it take it to return to the beach, and what will become of it in the gigantic scheme of things?

For me, the Toddler’s Creed is my view of the entire world.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

Comparisons

My greatest problem, aired endlessly in these blogs, is that I simply do not understand other people, life in general, or my exact relationship to either--which of course implies that other people do. I have this clear mental image of a drawing of a gigantic, towering monolithic mass which is everyone else, with a tiny, tiny speck...me...about a mile from the base. Realizing that something is not true is quite different from accepting that it is not true. And perhaps the most fascinating thing of all is that it even would occur to us that it should be true.

All humans share the same DNA, yet each is a totally unique being, our emotional and mental makeup different from any other human's. In an attempt to make some sort of sense of it all, studies on those similarities shared by the largest number of people have been culled to come up with a very unreliable standard against we consciously or unconsciously compare ourselves. That we fail to match that standard...that no single human being matches or can possibly match it...means nothing. There is a standard, however unreal, and we do not match it. Period.

Other people are more talented than we, more physically attractive, richer, more intelligent, more socially adept, more well-traveled, kinder, more worthy of admiration and respect, more tolerant, more famous, etc. When making comparisons, we seldom consider that, conversely, infinite numbers of other people are less intelligent, less handsome, meaner, less tolerant, less fortunate. But the point is that no human being is or can possibly be all these things. Yet we tend to pick and choose, and the tendency is to overlook or disregard our gifts in favor of longing for the gifts of others.

But positive or negative, the fact is that comparisons help us define who we are.

We use comparisons to others as something of a GPS system to help us determine, in our own minds, just where we stand in relation to them. In this regard, comparisons are a device we humans unconsciously use to guide us through life and around obstacles--much as bats use sonar to avoid collisions with others. We use our comparisons to others as often to avoid as to strive to emulate.

Like everything else in life, comparisons to others can be healthy, in encouraging us to set goals and strive toward betterment as we see it, or they can be self defeating in the assumption of barriers which impede one's development. It's in recognizing and walking the fine line between realism and fantasy which makes the difference and largely dictates our individual success.

I'm not sure which is more difficult to deal with--self-deprecation, in which our comparison to others leads to the unrealistic denial of or refusal to acknowledge our own positive qualities (and at which I am a lifelong practitioner), or unrestrained egotism in which one assumes knowledge, traits, and qualities not evident to the degree claimed. Self-deprecation can be annoying; egotism insufferable. (In regard to my too-strong tendency to self-deprecation, I always remember what a college friend told another friend, "Roger keeps telling everyone how worthless he is until they begin to believe him.")

That humans operate largely on autopilot, unconsciously relying on built-in forms of mental and emotional sonar and radar is yet another of the infinite wonders of human existence. If we had to stop to think about every single thing we do and make individual decisions on whether or not to do it before we acted, we simply could not survive. Comparisons with others is just one of these often-unconscious tools in our vast mental toolbox. And as with all tools, its main purpose is to help us to build our future.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs My greatest problem, aired endlessly in these blogs, is that I simply do not understand other people, life in general, or my exact relationship to either--which of course implies that other people do. I have this clear mental image of a drawing of a gigantic, towering monolithic mass which is everyone else, with a tiny, tiny speck...me...about a mile from the base. Realizing that something is not true is quite different from accepting that it is not true. And perhaps the most fascinating thing of all is that it even would occur to us that it should be true.

All humans share the same DNA, yet each is a totally unique being, our emotional and mental makeup different from any other human's. In an attempt to make some sort of sense of it all, studies on those similarities shared by the largest number of people have been culled to come up with a very unreliable standard against we consciously or unconsciously compare ourselves. That we fail to match that standard...that no single human being matches or can possibly match it...means nothing. There is a standard, however unreal, and we do not match it. Period.

Other people are more talented than we, more physically attractive, richer, more intelligent, more socially adept, more well-traveled, kinder, more worthy of admiration and respect, more tolerant, more famous, etc. When making comparisons, we seldom consider that, conversely, infinite numbers of other people are less intelligent, less handsome, meaner, less tolerant, less fortunate. But the point is that no human being is or can possibly be all these things. Yet we tend to pick and choose, and the tendency is to overlook or disregard our gifts in favor of longing for the gifts of others.

But positive or negative, the fact is that comparisons help us define who we are.

We use comparisons to others as something of a GPS system to help us determine, in our own minds, just where we stand in relation to them. In this regard, comparisons are a device we humans unconsciously use to guide us through life and around obstacles--much as bats use sonar to avoid collisions with others. We use our comparisons to others as often to avoid as to strive to emulate.

Like everything else in life, comparisons to others can be healthy, in encouraging us to set goals and strive toward betterment as we see it, or they can be self defeating in the assumption of barriers which impede one's development. It's in recognizing and walking the fine line between realism and fantasy which makes the difference and largely dictates our individual success.

I'm not sure which is more difficult to deal with--self-deprecation, in which our comparison to others leads to the unrealistic denial of or refusal to acknowledge our own positive qualities (and at which I am a lifelong practitioner), or unrestrained egotism in which one assumes knowledge, traits, and qualities not evident to the degree claimed. Self-deprecation can be annoying; egotism insufferable. (In regard to my too-strong tendency to self-deprecation, I always remember what a college friend told another friend, "Roger keeps telling everyone how worthless he is until they begin to believe him.")

That humans operate largely on autopilot, unconsciously relying on built-in forms of mental and emotional sonar and radar is yet another of the infinite wonders of human existence. If we had to stop to think about every single thing we do and make individual decisions on whether or not to do it before we acted, we simply could not survive. Comparisons with others is just one of these often-unconscious tools in our vast mental toolbox. And as with all tools, its main purpose is to help us to build our future.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

Fun and Words

I've had a life-long fascination with words; with their sounds, with their origins, with their meanings. It amazes me how few people ever take even a moment to think about the words they use every day, when doing so can add layers of appreciation and delight to their use.

I have, for example, been making a list of words which are, in effect, their own definition. Some are so elementary as to be fascinating when you stop to think about it: "fly," for example. A "fly" is what it is, and "fly" is what it does.

A great many two-and-three syllable words contain their definition in the individual words of which they are comprised, and mentally breaking them into their separate words gives a new appreciation for them and their meaning:

lawnmower
blackberry
blueberry
foghorn
battleship
gravedigger
peacemaker
handkerchief
timekeeper
scorekeeper
bartender
nightclub

Many of the words we use have foreign roots which are self-descriptive in their original language:

parasol ("for sun")
mayday (mispronunciation of "m'aidez:" "help me")

Some common self-defining words are archaic and thus less obvious than others:

breakfast (refers to breaking the fast between dinner and dawn)
landlord (from the times when titled "lords" owned large amounts of land and had control over the people who lived on them)

The three primary American sports are self-descriptive, of course:

basketball
baseball
football

I'm particularly intrigued with words whose pronunciation has evolved to the point where it totally obscures the word's true meaning or origins. The despised racial epithet, "the N-word," is in fact a logical result of the combination of casual repetition and rapid pronunciation of the historically-acceptable word "Negro," which morphs into the "N-word."

Those of you who have followed my blogs for some time are already aware that when it comes to mispronunciation totally hijacking the meaning of a word, my personal cause celebre (literally, "famous case") is "President," and I have dragged out my soapbox innumerable times to point out that the correct pronunciation...and the true meaning...is "pre-ZI-dent": one who presides. Yet I'd bet that 9,999 out of 10,000 have never made this connection.

And so, as with so many things in life, I fight my own little battles and, as with so many of my little battles, lose them--though I have fun doing so.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

My Garden of Phobias

One of the things I love most about writing is that it often surprises me with small epiphanies…showing me things about myself I’d never acknowledged before. And so it was when I reached the bottom of the first draft of this blog entry, in which I talk about phobias, that I recognized a phobia which I can see now has dominated my life and contributed more than any other in shaping who I am.

We all have phobias…things which inexplicably and irrationally frighten or repulse us. I admit that I’m somewhat protective of mine. I’m not overly fond of snakes, for example, though I’ve gotten far better about being able to look at them from a safe distance. But that’s pretty much a garden-variety phobia, shared by probably the majority of people on the planet, so I can’t take any special pride in that.

I don’t, as I've mentioned in earlier blogs, like tattoos or body piercing. The former I’ve come to grudgingly accept since so many people nowadays have them. But I have found through experience that one can fairly accurately equate the number and severity of an individual's emotional problems with the number of his or her tattoos. (I can hear the screams of protest from the L.A. Ink fans, to whom I can only point out that this blog is my opinion and I don't demand you agree with me.) One tattoo is fine; a couple are okay, but beyond that…uh…, no thanks. Body piercings give me a severe case of the crawlies and are a slamming-door turnoff.

I have a phobia against using a bar of soap other people have used. (I know, it’s soap: soap kills germs. Yeah, but wet soap can be kind of slimy, and I don’t like slimy unless I made it.) I don’t like tasting food from other people’s forks or spoons or plates, or drinking from the same glass, can, or bottle—though I will do it to avoid appearing rude.

Okay, so a lot of my phobias are, indeed, fairly tame and shared by a lot of other people. But I claim to one phobia which sets me far apart from anyone else. I really hope my explanation of it will not convince you that I am totally ‘round the bend, though I am aware it might well offend some, and if so I am truly sorry. But the purpose of this blog is something akin to a pre-mortem autopsy, exposing parts of myself which may well better have been left unexposed.

I hate rings. My totally irrational antipathy towards them ranges from distaste to downright revulsion. This, if you will, is my prize hot-house orchid of phobias. To this date, I have never encountered another human being who shares it with me…though I’m sure there have to be some, somewhere. My reasoning may be seen as teetering dangerously on the brink of psychosis, but, hey, it’s mine and I’m stuck with it. Let it suffice to say that to me, the combination of ring and finger represents heterosexuality (think about it), and as a homosexual, I rebel against that concept.

For those who doubt my admittedly strange reasoning, I refer you to the wedding ring. Nothing more clearly albeit silently screams: “Heterosexual” to the world. Madison Avenue is painfully aware of the message of this symbol and uses it at every opportunity to subliminally say: “Hey, you can trust me! I’m normal. I'm just like you!” (The number of men displaying wedding rings in commercials is far out of proportion to the number of men who actually wear them in real life, though more and more people seem to be buying into it...even gays. And you will never see a TV commercial in which a man is shown alone with a small child unless he is wearing a wedding ring. Doubt me? Watch.)

Which brings us to my little epiphany. It came when I wrote the sentence about teetering dangerously on the brink of psychosis that I realized for the first time that the biggest totally irrational and inexplicable phobia—the one which has fundamentally affected my life—is: heterosexuality. I mean no offense to the 9 out of every 10 people who happen to be heterosexual. I react to it, I realize, somewhat less strongly than I react to rings, but I have never understood it and am as generally uncomfortable around it (with the exception of my heterosexual friends and family) as some heterosexuals are around homosexuals. It’s not something I’m proud of, but the fact is that it exists, it’s an integral part of who I am. And now, thanks to this blog entry, I know it.

And now you know, too.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

Journeys

One year ago yesterday I boarded a plane for London for the start of a month-long journey to, as Proust put it, recherche du temps perdu, to walk some of the same streets and visit some of the same places I'd first seen over 55 years before as a young sailor aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga. And while I appreciated the first-time adventure while I was experiencing it, it was set inside a framework of day-to-day life as a sailor...which is often unglamorous in the extreme. It was only after I had had my wondrous adventures that I was able to fully appreciate them, when the memories began to sparkle like bits of pure gold in a miner's sieve. On the second visit, every day, all day, was devoted totally to experiencing every moment. Of course the experience was made bittersweet by the fact that I was no longer 21.

Each of us is unique yet, because we live our entire lives inside ourselves, whatever we experience is, on some level, accepted as "the norm" for us. And yet there is a tendency to look at the experiences of others as being more romantic, more exciting than our own. You have done/seen/experienced/felt things I never have, as conversely have I. Yet there is something apparently built into the human psyche that makes our own experiences somehow lesser than other people's.

We watch movies wherein handsome people flit from romantic locale to romantic locale, apparently never at a loss for either the time or money to do both. Our social media is filled with posts from people either preparing to head off to London or Bali or Singapore, or notes from people who are there, or tales and photos of their adventures when they return. I read them and am overcome with envy. That I, too, did exactly the same thing last year and will be doing so again this year really doesn't count.

We see a photo of a picture-perfect little chalet perched on the steep slope a mountainside with a spectacular view of lakes and valleys spread out below, and we ache to live there, totally overlooking the fact that were we in fact living there, we would not/could not also be in the infinite number of other picturesque spots we ache to be. We can't be. Living is an hourglass, and no hourglass is big enough to hold all the sands of the desert.

It is not fair that we have so little time, so little money or opportunity to do even a minute fraction of the things we would like to do, to visit the places we would like to see. It seems next to impossible for most of us to limit our dreams, to reach some accord with the fact that there are limits. We just aren't built that way. We are all kids in an enormous candy store, each piece more luscious-looking than the one next to it, and the one next to that one, and the one....

Motors come with governors, preventing them from spinning totally out of control. People do not. There is no end to our longing, and when we have something, we want something more. It's like the toy the child sees on TV and wants desperately. Desperately! His life revolves around his desire for that toy, and he drives his parents crazy with his pleading. And then he gets it and, while he may truly like it and play with it, something has changed, and he soon wants another toy. Having is not the same as wanting and it is the wanting that drives us.

Someone said it is not the destination that matters so much as the journey, and it is a human failing that while we are on the journey we concentrate so heavily on getting to some specific destination that we do not enjoy the ride. We need to change, to set logical priorities, to pursue things much closer to us. We can still get to that distant, desired mountain if we break the trip down into manageable segments--from telephone pole to telephone pole, say--and take the time to experience the trip from this telephone pole to the next. We should change. We would be far better off if we did. But will we?...Well, we're humans, remember.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

Lost Friends

I was reading an article saying that the incidence of HIV infections among young men was once again rising. The advances in the treatment for AIDS has improved so much that too many think that it is no longer a death sentence. They do so at their own peril.

I am one of those who remembers all too well when AIDS first descended upon the gay community. It didn't even have a name yet, but it gripped us all in something akin to terror. Our friends were dying. They were fine one day and then they were ill and then they died, and no one knew why, or if we might be next.

And for reasons totally unknown to me, I found myself thinking of Matt Rushton. Matt and I were never more than acquaintances, but he was both charming and charmed. Chest-achingly good looking, he had everything going for him. He was a P.R. man for Studio One, the hottest predominantly-gay dance bar in Los Angeles. Studio One also had a show lounge featuring mostly high-end B-list entertainers, and as editor of a major gay men’s magazine, I was invited to every opening. Matt was always right there, effortlessly efficient, and giving me the definite impression each time that I was the most important person on the guest list.

Beautiful. Charming. Young. Friendly. A truly nice human being. And dead of AIDS within two years after I met him.

I met Mike at a San Francisco bar during Gay Pride week. We got together on a Friday night and spent the weekend together. We became friends, exchanging frequent visits between L.A. and San Francisco. When he met his partner, we remained friends, and through Mike, I met his best friend, Tim, who was cute and funny and about as promiscuous as they come. Rick and Mike brought him down with them from San Francisco for a visit, and he and I established the same sort of back-and-forth visiting that Mike and I had enjoyed before Mike met Rick. It wasn’t long, however, that Tim phoned to say that he had just been diagnosed with AIDS, and did not think it wise for us to see one another again. He did not want me to come up to visit him. We talked often on the phone, though, and within two months he was dead.

When I moved to Northern Wisconsin, Mike and Rick came to visit. Within months after their visit, I received a note from Rick saying that Mike was dead. They’d both known that Mike was dying (and in the early years of AIDS a diagnosis was a death sentence) when they visited, but didn’t want to upset me. Friendship sometimes makes me cry.

My next-door neighbors in Los Angeles, Bill and Larry were among my best friends. Larry was an entrepreneur, always busy with one business venture or another. Bill was what some might call “ditzy”…totally irrepressible, totally spontaneous, always with grand schemes which never came to fruition. Larry and Bill had been together well over 10 years when I met them, and they had an “open relationship.” Well, Bill had the open relationship; Larry didn’t like it, but he loved Bill too much to give him an ultimatum.

Bill developed AIDS just before I moved to Wisconsin. I was devastated for both him and Larry, but they both took it with amazing calm. The last time I called to check on how Bill was doing, I talked to him briefly. “I had a dream about my grandmother,” he said, casually. “I’ll be seeing her soon.” And the next week he was dead.

Ed was one of my oldest friends in L.A. He was unique among them in that we were what is now known as “friends with benefits” (our relationship was similar to that of Dick and Jared in the Dick Hardesty Mystery series). When either of us was dating someone, the “benefits” were put on hold, to resume again when neither one of us was involved. Ed was a pediatric dentist and had a very lucrative practice. He bought a beautiful home on a hilltop overlooking the city. However, he grew tired of being a dentist and gave up his practice to move to San Francisco to become a psychologist specializing in...gerontology. I moved to Northern Wisconsin about the same time and we lost touch. And then one day a rabbi from San Francisco, traveling cross country, stopped overnight at my B&B. I asked him if by any chance he might know Ed, who was Jewish. “Yes,” he said. “He was a member of my congregation.” “Was?” I asked. He looked at me and said “You didn’t know?” And in that instant, I did. “I was with him when he died,” he said.

And then there’s Ray, whom I still consider to be the love of my life. Ours would have been a perfect relationship were it not for the fact that he was an irredeemable alcoholic who was partially responsible for my leaving L.A. I thought by taking him away from the bars, I might save him. But there are bars in northern Wisconsin, too, and it reached the point, after a drunken rampage wherein he broke a bar's large plate glass window, where the court ordered him to either go to jail or return to Los Angeles. He reluctantly chose the latter. Within two years he, too, was dead of AIDS.

These stories are not unique to me. Every gay man who survived the early years of AIDS has similar tales of loss--and while so many young men today think modern medicine can save them, they are wrong. So many friends. So many decent, kind, warm, loving men snuffed out like so many candles in a windstorm. We cannot forget them. We must not.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

Addict

Hello. My name is Dorien and I am a mental masochist and spam addict.

("Hello, Dorien.")

While there is nothing that infuriates me more than to be held in such obvious contempt as is demonstrated by internet spammers, I seem unable to resist exposing myself to it. If I didn't somehow perversely love it, why would I do it? I try to resist. I do. I have given it up time after time, but then, like any addict who begins to feel confident that he has conquered his addiction, I feel I'm strong enough to take just one quick, harmless glance at my spam inbox. But like "just one glass of wine" to an alcoholic, just one exposure to a message in my spam folder and I am lost, instantly caught up in the heady euphoria made up of a combination of total, utter (I know they're synonymous, but one word just can't express it properly) fury, disbelief and incomprehension that such a thing as internet spam exists.

I am just about to hit "delete all" at the top of my spam folder when my eye stumbles on "Your e-mail address has won you US$4,600,000.00"and "Exxon Mobile Award! You are the recipient of $15,000,000 in the..."

Does no one of the millions of people receiving the same message ever, ever stop to ask: How? Why? Why me? Couldn't they just as easily open a window and throw the money--if it did exist--into the street?

The fact that many spammers are functionally illiterate ("Am MrHarold Green thisis to notify you that your overdue funds has been....") apparently isn't a factor, and clearly implies that they assume the recipient is not only also illiterate but stupid to boot.

How can people possibly be so...gullible is the most charitable word I can come up with? Why are there not laws to prevent this? The people who use spam as a weapon to rob people are as much crooks and thieves as those who use a loaded gun. And their victims--anyone who actually believes what they read and responds--are, sadly, society's weakest members; the elderly, often lonely, eager for attention and the promise of a life they can only imagine; the astonishingly gullible and/or incomprehensibly trusting who, having fallen off the turnip truck so often their mental facilities have been seriously impaired, and who believe that if someone says something, it must be true.

And there those for whom greed is a major factor in releasing their grip on logic in order to reach for the carrot dangling at the end of the stick.

One of the oldest caveats known to man is "if something sounds too good to be true, it is." Yet it is neck-and-neck with "do unto others as you would done unto you" in being almost universally ignored. The blatant, callous disregard for others displayed by internet spammers is just one more step in desensitizing people to the distinction between acceptable and unacceptable.

How many articles have you read/news reports have you seen wherein a sweet little old grandmother is devastated because she has been conned out of her life savings by some beneath-contempt sub-human to whom words like compassion and honesty are alien concepts? Would this little lady have done the same thing in her 20s or 30s? Unlikely in the extreme, but there seems to be a point where a mental reversal to childhood takes place. That these sub-humans deliberately target them, like lions separating baby water buffalo from the herd, should, in any society which values justice and believes in protecting those who cannot or will not protect themselves, fuels a white-hot anger in me. I seriously cannot think of a punishment suitably severe enough for the crime of throwing away one's humanity for profit.

I relapsed yesterday, but today is the first day of my resolve to beat this addiction and simply ignore my spam folder. Yes. That's what I'll do. I can beat this thing. Anyone taking bets?

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

Things and Us

I've tried very hard not to totally sever my ties to the more magical aspects of childhood, which has proven over the years to be a definitely mixed blessing. One of these is that, even at my rapidly-advancing age, I cannot avoid ascribing sentience to inanimate objects which are important to me. Certain pieces of furniture, family heirlooms, artwork, even pieces of clothing--almost anything that evokes strong memories becomes, to me, far more than merely a "thing." They become, somehow, extensions of myself.

I've recently been debating what has proven to be a major and rather traumatic life change: selling my car. I have owned a car since I was seventeen years old, and I have subconsciously totally bought into the concept of equating a car with independence. To give up one is to give up the other. That I can easily rent a car whenever I might need one, and that there is a car rental agency within two blocks of my apartment, means nothing.

I love my car. It and my beloved 1978 Toyota Corolla are the best cars I've ever owned. I bought both off the showroom floor, and I had each of them for 12 years. My current car is a green 1999 Chevy Metro 4-door; stick shift, air conditioning, stereo system. It has less than 70,000 miles, gets 43 miles to the gallon, and given me very few problems. When I got it, I nicknamed it Bunny (yes, I know...).

I live in Chicago, less than a block from the L lines and major bus routes, and I have to make a conscious effort to drive my car even once a month. Even then, it's usually not because I really need it to get somewhere, but just to exercise it. Logic dictates that it is foolish to spend somewhere around $1,000 a year on insurance, license plate fees, and city stickers--not to mention the cost of gas, though I seldom need it. To have a perfectly good car just sitting there when someone could get use out of it is foolish.

I truly dread the idea of going through the hassle of selling it...ads in the paper, notes posted here and there, phone calls, showing it who knows how many times. I've even considered simply donating it to a worthy charity to avoid all the frustration. (The A.S.P.C.A., for example, will arrange to pick up any vehicle, then sell it and give the donor a receipt to be used for tax purposes.)

A month or so ago, when I first began thinking of selling it, a maintenance man in my building somehow heard about it and expressed an interest in buying it. I gave him all the details and, since it's parked in the building's lot, told him to look it over. Last week he made me an offer and I, emotional issues aside, accepted. He said he would bring me the money day after tomorrow. Yesterday, totally unexpectedly, he knocked on my door saying he was ready to pick it up. I hadn't had a chance to go through the car to remove anything I might want to keep, nor had I gotten the title out of the box in my closet. I told him it would take me about fifteen minutes and he said he'd meet me in the parking lot.

I hate rushing, and felt rushed by his showing up several days early without my having sufficient time to pull everything...including myself...together.

Went to the parking lot, saw him and a friend standing by a car some distance from mine. It seems he had the wrong car, though I had described mine to him in detail when we first talked.

They came over, the maintenance man looked inside and said, "Is this a stick shift? I don't know how to drive a stick shift."

Considering he had thought it was a different car and that he wouldn't be able to drive mine anyway, I said, "Well, nice try," and returned to my apartment.

Bunny is still mine. But the trauma is not resolved...just delayed further. I know I'll have to resolve it some day. But not today.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

Laser Lights and Rosebuds

I open my closet door probably four times a day, and each and every time I do, Spirit, my cat, races in as though I were opening the door to a totally new universe for the very first time. Why he does this I certainly do not know and doubt that he does. But that does not stop him from doing it.

Cats are selectively intelligent; they know what they choose to know and simply ignore anything else. A lot of people are like that, too. But we'll get to them a bit later.

Each time I open my top dresser drawer to take out a pair of socks and shorts, Spirit positions himself at the corner of the dresser, looking up at the drawer and demanding loudly that I get on with it. He doesn't give a damn about my socks and shorts, of course. He knows that is where I keep the small laser light pen which he insists I take out each day for his entertainment. I turn it on and send him into an absolute frenzy trying to catch the little red light that appears on the floor in front of him and moves quickly up and down the lower sections of doors and walls, where he can more readily get to it.

His attention span has grown noticeably shorter of late, and while he has always associated the pen with the game, he has apparently figured out that that's where the light comes from, and now looks up at the pen itself while ignoring the spot of light he's supposed to be chasing. Our sessions now last little longer than a frenetic fifteen or twenty seconds, after which he gets bored and wanders off. (Again, there's a certain similarity there to many humans.)

Both cats and humans tend to spend a great deal of time trying to catch things which cannot be caught. Cats pursue laser lights; humans pursue any number of elusive things--love, fame, fortune. I pursue time, spending probably the bulk of my existence trying to capture it...to put it into words and preserve it. And the irony, for me, is that I am so focused on capturing the past that I fear I am all but incapable of living in the present.

Back in the early 17th century, English poet Robert Herrick said, "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may; Old time is fast a-flying...." Well, thoughts and memories formed into words are my rosebuds, and the more clearly I recognize that old time is, indeed, fast a-flying, the more frantic I become in their gathering, . (I find it mildly ironic to realize that this is not a new phenomenon for me; I have been this way for as long as I can remember, so it's not particularly an intimations-of-impending-mortality thing.)

And in a way I realize, too, that I spend so much time recording time simply because I can. No 9-5 job. No wife, kids, or grandkids or weddings or Moose Club picnics or church socials or bowling leagues or season tickets for the Mets putting demands on my time. This of course does not make my life better than anyone else's, but it does make it different, and I do have far more discretionary time than people with familial and social obligations.

So Spirit and I make a rather good match. We are each able to concentrate fully on those things we find worth concentrating on--though Spirit in fact probably has a longer attention span than I. We each can either totally or fairly well ignore those things we wish to ignore, and find an odd kinship with one another. Our attempts to communicate with each other are notably unsuccessful--though once again I take second place to Spirit, who manages to get his ideas on his need for food and attention across fairly well. My demanding that he stop using the carpet as a scratching post is, if acknowledged at all, met with a totally uncomprehending stare. And neither of us has the foggiest idea of what goes on in the other's head.

Now if you will excuse me, I must go gather some more rosebuds.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

"Application Denied"

On those rare occasions when I allow my ego to run amok, I look at myself and consider putting in an application for sainthood based upon my sterling qualities. Then rationality steps in, laughing hysterically, and pulls me back to reality.

I find people absolutely fascinating. Really, I do. But do I understand them? Why they do/say what they do/say when they do/say it? Not a clue. Not a single clue. And I suppose all this would be more tolerable if I understood myself and why I do/say the things I do/say. Sometimes I have a vague inkling of my own motivations, but...

Because I spend all my time being me, I have little choice but to observe everyone else's actions/comments in light of my own. And naturally I prefer mine to theirs. But being overwhelmingly outnumbered inevitably results in huge amounts of frustration, confusion, and guilt.

There is a man in my building whom I see regularly. He works the front desk in the lobby. Last night, he was asking me about my books, since I'd loaned one to another desk worker, and asked if he might read one.

"Are they all gay?" he asked, obviously having been told so by his co-worker.

"They all have gay characters, yes, but the stories are universal."

"Why are they gay?"

"Other than the fact that I'm gay myself, you mean?"

He then confided in me that he considers himself bisexual...he'd been married and divorced after having prostate cancer made him unable to respond physically. But he had gone on line and started looking at gay sites and met a man on line and got together with him and his difficulty was resolved and...detail upon detail I neither needed nor really wanted to know. I was looking for a graceful way out of the conversation and could not find one. Finally he asked me if I would like to come to his apartment sometime and talk.

Suspecting that he might have something other than talk in mind, I abandoned all attempts at grace and told him that I was really very much a loner (which I realized with a small degree of shock was the truth) and that I would rather not.

And for the rest of the evening and this morning I thought about the conversation and felt guilty for being rude. Here, after all, was a fellow human being who was probably just lonely and was reaching out, and I rebuffed him. For all my vainglorious self avowed nobility and concern and supposed compassion and caring, my veneer was stripped away I was revealed once again to be merely rude, insensitive, and unkind. How can I preach compassion when I do not show it myself? There are few things worse than not being who you think you are.

Returning from coffee this morning, I approached the elevators where a woman in a wheelchair was waiting. I didn't recognize her as being the same woman with whom I had had a previous run-in involving an elevator. Anyway, we were the only two people waiting. When the elevator arrived, she got on and I started to get on, too.

"Don't you come in here! Take the other elevator!"

Once again I responded in a manner diametrically opposed to my self image, and said something sarcastic.

"F**k you!" she said, and the door closed. I immediately pressed the button for the next elevator before the first one had left the floor, and its door reopened, revealing the charming woman.

"Get the f**k away! Get away!" she yelled.

I got the f**k away, absolutely furious.

Now, I realize this was a woman with serious, serious emotional issues which I know had nothing whatever to do with me. And I am truly sorry for whatever happened in her life to make her who she has turned into. So why did I react the way I did? Where, again, was my compassion? Why am I still angry just thinking about it?

Whenever anything like these two incidents happens, I realize--unfortunately too often in retrospect--that my application for sainthood would be resoundingly rejected, and that I also must stop and examine my own reactions and wonder what sort of person I am turning into.

And why am I foisting yet another totally me-centered blog on you? In the hopes, as always, that perhaps my reactions might not be totally limited to me, and that I may not be as alone as I too frequently feel I am.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

The Pleasures of Drear

Don’t let the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any such word as “drear” bother you…it’s a nice word which should exist even if it doesn’t.

Today was what undoubtedly most people in Chicago consider to be dreary (get the connection?): heavy, heavy overcast, drizzle and light rain mixed with torrential rain mixed with wisps of fog, chilly winds…sort of a picnic-on-the-moors, Hound of the Baskervilles day. And I love it.

I’ve always liked it when Mother Nature shows emotion. Anybody can enjoy sunny skies and puffy clouds and warm, gentle breezes, and I like them, too. But it takes a special outlook to be able to appreciate days that drip with lugubriosity (I just made that one up, too). One of the reasons I left Los Angeles after eighteen years there was because that was about all there was: sunny skies, puffy clouds, etc. Every single day was June 25. You could plan a picnic six months in advance and be almost guaranteed that it would be a sunny day with puffy clouds and warm breezes. Los Angeles days tend to be like one of those perky little sitcom stars who is just always so…well, perky…that you want to throttle her.

Ah, but “drear” has it’s own quiet pleasures. Sitting comfortably indoors looking out through rain-streaked windows at the trees swaying wetly as they listen to the whispers of the rain, offers a rare form of comfort. Safely inside, watching the umbrella’d people scurrying along the glistening streets, cars’ tires like the bow of a ship sending up little sprays of water to each side, neon lights reflected off the sidewalks, the passing elevated trains shooting off sparks from their wet wheels on the electrified track…it’s all very comforting, somehow. It’s rather like my other favorite calmative pastime, walking through a cemetery, reading tombstones.

Drear provides the backdrop and sets the mood for quiet contemplation and reflection, and if there is the sound of rain to create background music, all the better. Granted, some fine-tuning of one's thoughts is required to keep out the static of regrets and longings and missed opportunities, or errors made, but once you’ve got everything right on pitch, it’s wonderful.

I also enjoy, still using music as an analogy, when Nature segues from quieter contemplative pieces featuring fog and overcast and soft rain, to the full orchestrals of storms: booming tympani of thunder, cymbal crashes of lightning, full-brass of wind and fierce rain…watching the trees, as if they were dancers caught up in some frenzy of emotion, whipping back and forth. I love it!

I remember once, as a teenager, during a terrific thunderstorm in the middle of a summer night, getting out of bed to stand in front of the open window and watch it. I was between the drapes and the window for a better view. My mom came in to close the window, thinking I was asleep. When she moved the drapes aside to get to the window, I scared the wits out of her, poor thing. (And you see? Even thinking of that on a day like today gives me pleasure and comfort rather than the sorrow of knowing it could never happen again.)

Life is full of drear. It’s how we see it and react to it that makes the difference.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).