Last weekend I was driving east toward Albany on the NYS thruway. It was Friday evening, around 8:00 PM, and we were passing through a populated area, one of the towns between Utica and Schenectady. This entire region of upstate New York, from Buffalo to Utica and beyond is disparagingly called the rust belt of New York. In many ways it *is* a rust belt. You can see and feel the decay as you drive through Syracuse and points south. Life has passed from these cities and towns. To be sure, there are beautiful rural passages throughout much of the thruway drive southward. Despite the urbanization of much of America, the farmlands in upstate New York seem pure in their remoteness from change, untouched or untainted. But these rust belt towns seem somehow to have failed. They may hold a curiosity appeal and charm for passersby who romanticize the decaying aged small towns of the early 20th century, but these towns have truly been left behind. They *have* failed, or faded. But I wonder about all the people left in those towns? Who wants to live in a place which is rotting? It seems a waste of one’s life—plodding along paths which most others have abandoned as lifeless. And it makes me wonder about remaining in Rochester.

At one such rust belt town we passed by an apartment complex on the right-hand side, and I peered into the open windows of the apartments, as I like to do, wondering what the inhabitants were doing on a Friday night, and how did their plans compare with mine. Most windows were covered and dark, or flickering with the lights from television sets. Most of the building façade was checkered by dim kitchen lights and drawn bedroom window draperies, the sort of life signs that suggest the tired end of a hard work week. On the fourth floor of this six-floor complex was one open window into a room otherwise dark except for the sharply illuminated deep blue computer screen and a small reading lamp. No one was in sight, but clearly someone was home and settled in for an evening online. It made me think of Friday evenings when I was younger. After a suffocating week of school or work, the late afternoon on Friday always seemed wide open and exciting. It was a time to retreat into my private world and play alone online, chatting and connecting with strangers, or venturing into the city to see a movie alone, rent some porn, or indulge in some other secret fun. Friday evenings seemed to be a venting time for sexual energy, seediness, and private releases. At its best, it was a time to be alone with my own desires. I didn’t want friends to obstruct my urges because for me they never knew of nor shared them. I never had the sense of retreating into the night, into trouble, and away from the week’s business, with friends. It was always my time alone.

I loved these nights and these times. I remember savoring them especially when I was new to an area. During the week I often felt a little anxious, alone, and insecure, worrying about school or my job, my inadequacies, my future, about what I felt was a freakish double life of dark desires for young men. But on Friday night I indulged myself. The constant presence of mild loneliness that followed me throughout much of my young adulthood sweetened on Friday nights into a license. But it wasn’t all rooted in sexual desires. It was often just a time to connect spuriously with people in a way I never could manage in more personal and permanent ways. The online world in particular seemed to be populated with strangers like me who revealed dimensions of themselves that I liked far more than what I encountered in normal interactions during the week. I think above all the darkened room illuminated by a computer monitor on a Friday evening suggests to me all that was good and liberating about the otherwise anxious dread of being alone and unmoored in a strange place. I miss that feeling or being unmoored, though I think its loss is an inevitable part of getting older and becoming more comfortable and secure in the world.

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I was at a dinner party last night. It’s been a while since I’ve done anything like that with my friends. Hearing and seeing what your friends have been up to often awakens and energizes me. It feels like I’ve been a little complacent lately. Maybe I have been, maybe not. When you see what activities, jobs, and hobbies people are pursuing with passion, it’s a reminder to keep things moving yourself, keep the feet shuffling.

After the dinner party I went to a film at the gay film festival. It was an Italian film. I don’t even want to get into the story line or other details. It wasn’t a good film. What I disliked about it more than anything was the more-of-the-same ploys gay films use to entertain audiences. We’re continually asked to laugh at vapid young queens behaving with outrageous audacity before gasping straight people . . . the lusty gay with the cute smile and bleached hair bent over the couch taking it up the ass with lusty abandon as his matronly aunt walks into the room, shrieks in horror, and faints in the doorway. I want none of this. It’s not funny, I’m bored, and these films are stupid. Gay cinema seems to have a lower percentage of quality films than mainstream Hollywood. I want quirky, intelligent films with odd story lines and engaging dialog, but I think much of the gay film audience wants films that romp through gay clichés. Whoever said gays were more intelligent?

I’m always amazed at what films get made. I’m guessing that well over a majority of the gay films I see are very poorly written. Maybe I’m underestimating how difficult it is to write a screenplay, but I think that for many of these films, you could get a better screenplay by giving the writing duties to any amateur writer. The films that get made are those conjured by people with ambition and friends who can support the considerable undertaking of making a film. These are often not the same people who can write. Gay films are usually small films championed by one person performing multiple roles—writer, director, actor, producer. But so few people have all of these talents.

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I believe John Kerry will loose the election. I’m often disappointed at the American electorate, but I don’t really want to write much on politics in this blog. I will just say this. The war in Iraq was wrong, profoundly wrong. I believed this and said so at the time. I believe many political leaders also believed the same at the time, including Kerry. They didn’t say so because they were cowards. They feared being labeled as un-American and unpatriotic--a death blow to any politician. It was a difficult time, but it is at precisely these times when courageous leadership is most needed. They remained silent, and at the time they felt compelled to give their unenthusiastic support to the war, if not their rhetoric. Now, when the political climate has changed, they feel more comfortable voicing opposition and their true beliefs on the matter. They’ve been caught in their double speak and their duplicity, now painstakingly trying to rationalize their dissonant positions of support yet disapproval. They will loose the election, and they deserver to loose.