In the last few days I’ve received two emails from different young gay men in Russia. This can’t be a coincidence, but I haven’t quite figured out what’s going on yet. Both found me through my profile on gay.com. There are a few different explanations, but so far I have no sense of which is closest to the truth. It could be a scam by someone here posing as young Russian gay men in the hope of extracting money from lonely American gay men with a fondness for Russian boys. (I’m older and have a fondness for Russian boys, though they have no reason to know that. But I’m certainly not lonely.) This seems like a lot of work for a dubious payoff—all of that writing to random people. It doesn’t seem like a good plan for a single scam artist. It could also be a scam by actual Russian boys working separately, trying extract money from the same lonely American men, or a passage to the U.S. somehow. This seems to fit better with the fact that there is much work for a questionable return—the Russian boys are enterprising and have the time to work on easily duped lonely gay men. The third possibility is that gay.com is suddenly expanding into Russia—it is in much of Europe already—or somehow the word has gotten out in Russia about gay.com. This would mean the Russian boys, with their earnest and voluminous emails, are sincere—a notion I’d like to believe but can’t. I’m betting on the second possibility. Here are the facts.

First both boys, on different days within the same week, leave short emails at my gay.com address introducing themselves and wanting me to write back. Both leave email addresses for me to use. One address has a domain with a simple .com extension. The other has an extension of .by (Belarus). I respond to both with very short emails wondering how they found me. (Why little ‘ole me?) Within a day or two both respond to my emails with effusive, lengthy text and an attached photo. First there is Ivan, who, in his opening remark, commented on my “pleasant letter”—it was definitely not pleasant. His English is disjointed (except for places where it reads oddly well) but comprehensible, as if he feed his Russian through a translation program. He apologizes for the poor English, claiming that he studied English for only a few years and going on to mention that although there are translation programs, he was unable to use them. He is writing from an Internet café, for he has no access at home. In his attached photo he is sitting alone at a dark table in a dark room, looking friendly and somewhat handsome, but not exceptional. Ivan is from the city of Kstovo, which is 400 km or so southeast of Moscow and has a population of about 70,000.

Sergey is the second fellow, 25 years old. He claims to be a “consultant.” He is from Ufa, Russia, which is 1200 km east of Moscow, with a population of one million. His photo is better. He is sitting next to a window at a brightly lit restaurant, smiling and eating pizza.

There is no question that both responses are tailored specifically for me, addressing questions I posed in my first email. Both young men claim to be lonely and looking for friends, correspondence or life partners—they seem to be willing to take any of those options. Both say they have many friends but that they are closeted to all but their immediate family. Both speak of the persecution of gays in Russia, and of the difficulties of being gay there, but they don’t belabor the point. It is simply made. Both hope their age difference with me will not be a problem. Both have former relationships lasting a few years, finally terminating with the bf cheating (Sergey) or moving away (Ivan). Neither boy is looking for sex, though they both are clear that they like sex—they both want “stability” and to be loved body and soul.

Both go into agonizing detail about their respective cities. Imagine paragraphs beginning “In the beginning of XV century” and “After reform of 1861.” Both very much want me to write back. Ivan wants me to send a photo. I’ve responded to both. We’ll see what happens.

A few words while my stained glass cement dries. . .

The other day I was reading a description of a newsletter we publish at work. It said the newsletter was published bimonthly. There was a time when my mind was certain what that meant. I was certain of a lot of things at one time. Now I’m not so sure. Anyway, I looked it up in two dictionaries, and they both give the same basic story. There turns out to be a real problem with the meaning of the word ‘bimonthly.’ The first dictionary said it means happening every two months. That’s the first meaning. The second meaning is . . . happening twice a month! The second dictionary gives both meanings as well, but it says that happening twice a month is nonstandard. Either way, although those two meanings are not exactly antonyms, they’re close. Essentially the word is useless. What is a customer to understand when we say bimonthly? What if they’re non-standard customers? Semimonthly has more meaning to my mind. ‘Semi’ means less than whole. I think of semi-sweet chocolate, which is less sweet than sweet chocolate. So semi-monthly should mean less than monthly, or every other month. If we all understood semimonthly correctly, we should all understand bimonthly correctly. But we don’t, so bimonthly is no longer useful.

Today I came across the question “Who do I contact?” and I wondered if I should change this to “Whom do I contact?” Isn’t the latter correct? But people don’t say that.

Note to self: Egon Schiele. Remember that name.

The other day I put a small pot of water on the stove to cook some broccoli, but then I couldn’t find the lid. I became so irritated over this little problem, jumping from one cabinet door to the next, throwing things out and cursing to anyone within distance to hear, until I found the lid. At that moment I wanted to institute a new rule that the lid to the pot had to be put in the same cabinet as the pot itself. But later, when cooler heads prevailed, I started to wonder if the rule might be more burdensome than the occasional time it might take to find the missing lid. I was reminded of my rule because Ann has recently begun to place like glasses in separate rows according to their design—a row for my favorite tall, light glasses and a row for her thick, heavy glasses. I like the orderliness of it, mostly because it eliminates the occasional delay in getting a glass I prefer if one or more of hers is blocking access to mine. It’s all about eliminating irritation.

Today I wore the most ridiculous pants. I just bought them, and today I wore them for the first time. I was in the bathroom at work, looked at myself in the mirror, and thought to myself, “Good lord, you look like a dufus. . . in cheap, neatly pressed, but tight, slacks.” They were slacks, not pants. They were slacks I might have bought at Sears.

The last few days have been the most beautiful autumn days of the year. It’s always this way. Autumn is always the shortest of the four seasons. Or at least the days that are quintessentially autumnal are so few. Yesterday the tallest trees across the street glistened in golden brilliance against the backdrop of the large mustard colored Victorian home, and the temperature was unusually warm. I was glad to be in Rochester, glad to be in upstate New York, and glad to be where I was in my life.
I was in San Diego last week, and didn’t enjoy the city much. Maybe it was in part because the weather there was a little cool, and the contrast with Rochester was not so striking. But also, it seems too disperse for me, like L.A., but without the city feel of L.A. The gay area (not neighborhood really) seemed characterless, or characterized by distance, concrete, and business travelers. Where was the gentrification, the pedestrian traffic, the local flavor? There was no flavor. Well, I passed some time one night in a dance club which had little to set it apart from any other gay dance club. There was the large dance floor in the center, surrounded on all four sides by elevated platforms, and two beefy studs overlooking the floor, shaking their bikini bottoms in obvious boredom to indistinct but seamlessly integrated dance beats. The entire scene seems almost perfectly designed to filter away all that might stand out or stir interest. Afterward I stopped in at a bathhouse. I’m always interested in seeing different bathhouses, the facilities, the scene, the crowd. As paranoid as I am about disease, I tend to be more of a spectator in such places. This place was not so great. The crowd was older and sparse, the facilities very mediocre. Of course it’s always hard to judge such places, because often there are good times to go, and bad times, and unless you know these times, you’re chances of having a good time are poor. At this place I met a 31-year old man, a gym-built guy with an impressive chest and a handsome face. He was the best looking thing inside, and he quickly introduced himself. We chatted. He told me he was attracted to white guys--he confessed, after some prying on my part, that he was from Iran. He seemed worried that I’d hold that against him. Was he really worried, I wondered, or was it simply a way of ingratiating himself, invoking my empathy, or something. He had a white boyfriend. I teased him a bit. Where was the boyfriend? Does he know you’re here? You drove an hour for this? Etc. He groped me a bit in the hallway as people passed between us. He wanted me to go to his room, but I said I have a firm rule against sex in bathhouses. (The rule is not firm, but with him it was going to be firm.) He said we needn’t necessarily have sex. We could talk. I chuckled. He smiled in return. We chatted a little more about why I was in town, about his plans for the evening, etc., and then I said I was going to walk around some more. I walked to the showers, which were empty, and I began to lather up. A moment later the Iranian enters. He offers to “get my back.” I laugh and turn my back to him. He lathers my back very briefly before reaching lower. He tells me with a smile that I have a very nice ass. We’re both smiling; all is light playfulness. We grope some more in the hot showers while a small group of spectators gathers at the entrance. He drops to his knees as the strong shower pellets his hair. I allow it for a moment, but then I pull him up to me, hug him firmly, and turn toward my towel, which hangs at the entrance. I dry off and leave the shower. Enough of the display for me. I sit a little bit at one of the high traffic spots where hallways intersect and the sauna entrances lie. Few people pass by who interest me. Eventually a tall black boy with a fine, firm butt walks by, heading toward the bathroom. A moment later he comes out and enters the wet sauna. I follow him in after the appropriate delay, just to get a better look. The wet sauna is my favorite place in a bathhouse. It’s wet and warm, and the steam hinders visibility. What was uninteresting outside is suddenly infused with just enough mystery and fog to make me a passive voyeur. You see the faint outlines of men in corners, and on platforms, and you hear moans and the sounds of sex, but usually you can’t see much. I often sit and listen with feigned indifference, and wipe the steam from my glasses. I sat for a few minutes while my glasses adjusted to the heat. The black boy sat in his towel diagonally from me, lightly stroking himself. I watched. We exchanged looks as I worked my glasses fastidiously. His skin was dark, and his penis long. His abdomen was furry, but his chest wasn’t. He shaved, no doubt. Our glances turned to watching, until finally he stood up, walked over, and sat down beside me at a little distance. But his intention was clear. He extended his arm and put his hand on the platform beside him, and I reached down and touched his hand. He didn’t pull away. He touched my arm, and we were off. Soon, however, we both had to leave the steam room. So we entered a hallway and stood facing each other, cautiously touching each other while we exchanged short phrases—names, where we’re from, what we like about the other. I liked his voice, his intelligence and his forthrightness. And of course his body. We weren’t there long before he suggested we move to the movie room, which had a large open area and multiple levels where men in towels could sit and watch the porn on two large TVs above their heads. He was 22. I learned that he had recently been discharged from the Marines after over two years of service. Someone reported that he was gay. He was from North Carolina and was estranged from his family. He liked white guys, and my face, which I attributed to the dark theater. Hehe We chatted for maybe a half hour while we explored with our hands, and kissed, and commented on the other men in the room. I mostly remember how nice his semi-rigid penis felt in my hand, how sexy it looked, curving up stiffly when it was hard, and the sound he made when I put my finger into him. Eventually I said I had to go because I had an early morning. He wanted to continue in some way. He wanted to go back to my place, but I assured him that I shared a room with someone and couldn’t. (I didn’t, and could have.) He wanted to get together the following day, but I told him I was working. He hinted that he’d be willing to move to Rochester, that he wasn’t attached to San Diego. Jesus, don’t be ridiculous, I thought. Of course it was absurd, but he was young. His mind and emotions moved quickly, and he was searching for a home, for a person and a place where he belonged. I’m older, and already have that person and place. I took his contact information, which he wrote on the back of a card, and we hugged and said goodbye. It was a nice experience, but it made me feel a little guilty, guilty that I have the life that I have, the comfort and security. I guess I lived through the same sort of period during my youth when I felt unmoored. But it didn’t seem so starkly barren of support, so isolated, hostile, or difficult. At least that was my impression of his situation. He’ll be fine, I’m sure. But it does seem like the world should not be so difficult for him. Maybe it’s not. Maybe I’m just getting mushy and sentimental. Today I spent the entire day listening to Rachmaninoff’s Isle of the Dead. It’s a symphonic piece that sounds just as it’s titled—a dark, murky island at the end of the earth where the dead are laid. A few weeks ago at the ImageOut gay film festival Gerry and I saw a film about a gay boy struggling alone in the darkened streets of urban France. It was called “Stupid Boy” and it featured this music of Rachmaninoff’s, playing as the boy wandered alone at night through empty streets, picking up strangers for rough sex and filling his day with sleep and a numbing job. The music seemed to lend the film a gravity that it didn’t warrant, exactly, though I understand now why it was used. Of course the boy was a barren island in which he was the only inhabitant. As the movie ends, he begins to understand that he needs to form relationships and emotional bonds if he is to find meaning and happiness in his life. I suppose lots of boys have to struggle with that realization.

I few weeks ago I was sitting at the coffee shop being frustrated that I had nothing in my head to write about, so I just decided to force it a bit and start making it up. It's important to me to write things without regard, necessarily, for whether what I write is good. I don't believe I have any talent for writing fiction, but I think it's good to write. It keeps the imagination exercised, and what I like is that once you start something, it's like working on a puzzle--trying to figure out how it goes, what makes sense, how to get from point A to point B. So anyway, I started to write something, and then for a few weeks since I've added a few sentences each day during my lunch hour at work. So there hasn't been a great time comittment, but I can manage this little act of discipline, writing something for 15 or 20 minutes per day. I'm not doing a lot of editing or polish, little looking back. The goal is to write little stories or creative things without worrying too much about getting them right. We'll see how long it goes. I did read this through once, and it strikes me that it started as one thing, and ended as another. I should strike the beginning and rewrite it to make it a little more coherent, but I'm not going to.

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Ed and his friend Carl turned the corner of the street on which Ed’s friend lived. Ed didn’t drive. His mother had nagged him to get his license when he was in high school, but he was never interested. Now that he was on his own, he found that he didn’t really need a car. Why should he bother when everyone else gladly took him wherever he wanted. He looked at Carl scanning the houses for numbers, ducking his head to see under the sun visor. The cluster of cars up ahead ought to have been a clue, Ed thought, but then he remembered that he hadn’t mentioned to Carl that they were going to a birthday party. Ed provided as little information as possible to those he hung out with, or more accurately, to those who hung out with him.

“It’s right up there on the right,” Ed pointing as he spoke. Carl made a quick pull to the right and parked behind an old Honda that Ed knew belonged to his friend. Without a word Ed hopped out of the car and walked quickly toward the house, with Carl following a few paces behind. Ed knew Carl would follow.

The bungalow was shared by four guys, a place that had become a sort of half way house for the gay boys of Ed’s youth who had neither the attention span to plan for a future nor the aptitude to support one. At all hours the house was awake with activity—the clamor of a television, phone chatter which leaked through walls, bathroom noises and smells, strangers walking the darkened hallway which connected bedrooms with the kitchen and the living room. Boys came and went, but the house didn’t change.

The door was open. Noise coming from the back of the house drew Ed through the kitchen and onto the patio in the back of the house. Guys he knew and guys he didn’t, greeted Ed as he made his way through the gathering. Carl, now cut loose by Ed, nodded to those who looked his way. Most nodded in return, neither curious nor suspicious. Older men in attendance were common. Carl, in his neatly pressed shorts, collared shirt, and sandals, understood this and didn’t make any awkward moves. He stood back, listening without insinuating himself into conversations while scanning the patio for boys he recognized, and for boys he wished he knew. He was not afraid to become a part of the scene, even though he didn’t fit in, clearly didn’t fit in with this group of out-there gay boys, lost somewhere between adolescent preoccupations and a growing sense of being left behind.

Carl would look upon the gathering boys, listen to their talk, judge them and envy them. He remembered himself at their age, and compared his own youth to that of the boys at the party, boys who seemed to have nothing but the absence of parameters. How did his own sons compare? Was he looking upon a generational change, or merely at some boys untethered of their families and their pasts, and now making it up, badly, as they go?

He stood around listening to two boys talk of the previous night’s drama, borne of methamphetamines, electric hair clippers, and an exaggerated sensitivity to florescent lighting. None of this particularly interested Carl, but he enjoyed watching the tallest one gesture and pull at the bottom of his shirt. He said nothing, looked agreeable, and monitored Ed’s movement around the back of the house.

Ed was already on his second drink. He looked absently to his left and his right while people spoke around him. Occasionally he would register a faint smile and shift his weight, or move further into the house for a moment, as if looking for someone, and then return to his place at the patio door.

Carl liked to listen to the waves of crowd noise and correlate it with the levels of drink, with the food, the lighting, the temperature. Centers of noise always had at their center one person who whose voice rose above the rest, and who led the noise levels.

Carl counted a third drink for Ed, then a fourth. As Ed drank he became more stationary, less responsive, more morose. Talk around Carl moved to other, even more remote topics, and soon the sun was shifting in the sky to cast some shadow. It felt less severe to Carl now, and allowed him to remain outside. The crowd began to fragment and distill.

Ed approached Carl purposefully, apparently clear-headed. “Let’s go to Gillian’s. I feel like some games.” Carl put down his soda without hesitation and followed Ed through the kitchen, out the front door, and down the sidewalk to the car. They drove in silence for five minutes before Ed said, “Let’s stop and see if Hodson is home. Turn down here,” he said, gesturing with his right shoulder and a tilt of his head. Carl waited in the car for a few moments until Ed emerged with a stout young man in his late 20s, a ball cap on his head and his forearms covered by badly executed tattoos.

The three of them drove to Gillian’s. Ed attached himself to a video game and played for ten minutes or so, with Hodson looking on at Ed’s game, occasionally entering a groan when Ed faltered. Carl sat in silence in a video game chair at some distance from the other two, watching and waiting for Ed to tire himself. He did.

They returned to Hodson’s small, darkened apartment, sat in his wooden, mismatched chairs and poured the available liquor from near empty bottles found in the refrigerator. Ed began talking, in tones familiar to Carl, about his plans for the evening. “What do you want to do, Carl? Where did you tell your wife you were going?”

“I didn’t tell her anything. I’m open for anything.” He had a passing impulse to suggest something unreasonable, something utterly unlikely and improbable, but he didn’t.

“You’re a shitty husband. If I were her, I’d give you a good kick in the ass.” Carl smiled but didn’t respond.

“What do you say we take a ride?” Ed asked, but Carl knew it wasn’t really a question. He didn’t care. They would, of course, end up in the car—Carl knew that—driving wherever Ed felt like going. Ed rose to his feet and moved toward the door, grabbing the bottle of tequilla with his right hand as he headed out. Carl and Hodson followed him.

They drove slowly through familiar and unfamiliar neighborhoods, turning and weaving through streets purposively. Carl drove as if he had a destination in mind, each turn signal indicating confidence and anticipation, but no one knew where they were going. Occasionally Ed would tell Carl to go one direction or another, reorienting his direction as if he were a moving wind-up toy. Carl moved in his own pre-determined direction until redirected otherwise by Ed.

They were silent. Hodson sat in the back and watched through the window as the scenes passed through the side windows. It was the late afternoon by now, and they drove for nearly three-quarters of an hour, covering the northern part of the city, and then heading south along the river.

On the southern part of the city, the road forked, one road traveling east and into the city, the other hugging the river through warehousing, and empty graveled lots. Carl took the path closest to the river and continued to slowly follow the river. The region was industrial and vacant, littered with pallets and mounds of crumbled asphalt and cement. With no other cars to set the pace, Carl drove more and more slowly. No one noticed.

Finally the car came to rest at an open lot. Carl pulled up to the edge of the river and parked. A cement wall held the river back for 50 yards along the lot. Carl got out of the car and walked to the wall, sitting down to hang his feet over the edge. Ed and Hodson went their own way.

The three of them sat watching the river and beyond. The gray haze of the distant horizon, the moist air, and the line of malnourished trees along the opposite bank, gave the area the feel of a poorly maintained terrarium. The three men sat quietly, as if lizards waiting without interest for another to move. Ed rose to his feet, setting the near empty bottle of tequila on the cement and stepping away from the other two. He walked along the edge for several yards, turned towards the river, and began to urinate. They were alone, and felt they were alone. Ed returned to stand beside Carl, looking out at the river while Carl sat looking down at his feet.

“How are your boys?” Ed asked the same questions every time. Carl was never sure if he was really interested or was just lazy.

“You’re my only boy. Are you ok?” Carl answered with uncharacteristic sarcasm. Sarcasm wasn’t Carl’s style. It caught Ed by surprise. He snapped back in anger. “I’m not your boy. I’m not anything to you.” They never really spoke of their relationship, or whatever you would call the time they shared. That was Ed’s style.

Carl stiffened a little as his fear returned. “You’re something to me. I know you. You know me.” He didn’t really know what to call it himself. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”

“I’m not your pet boy to lead around town like some puppy dog.” His voice was strained; perhaps it was the alcohol. Ed turned away from Carl to face the river upstream.

“No, I know that. I just meant that we have some sort of relationship. That’s all.”

“Whatever. I just don’t want people to get the wrong idea.” Ed calmed a little.

The wrong idea, Carl thought. They most likely had nothing but wrong ideas. But he had to remember the twenty-some years that separated him from Ed. At Ed’s age, people mattered. He understood that, but yet he couldn’t resist pushing Ed. “What is the right idea? What do you want people to think?”

“I don’t want them to think anything at all. There’s nothing to think. Sometimes you hang out with me. What’s to think about? Hodson’s here too. People don’t think anything about that.” They both looked in Hodson’s direction. Hodson didn’t notice. He was walking away from them along the river, waiting.

“He’s not an old guy like me. It’s odd—you hanging around with someone like me. There’s no way around it. People assume I’m just another pervert who wants to get into your pants. Why am I here if you’re worried about it?” Carl truly didn’t know why, but the reason wasn’t important to him.

“Why ARE you here? What do you want?” Ed asked angrily. It was the sort of irritating response spoken by those who don’t have an answer and want to deflect the question. Ed wasn’t used to being challenged, not since his parents gave up on him years ago.

What do you mean? You called ME, remember. I’m glad you did, but you called me. What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to stop asking me what to do. Just fucking do what you want. I’m not you’re babysitter. I don’t give a shit what you do.” With this Ed walked a few paces along the river’s edge and away from Carl. Carl was unmoved. They had never spoken so frankly. It was unlike either, and unsettling to both. Carl thought a moment while they both stood in silence, and then he responded.

“I do want to get into your pants,” he said without flinching. “Maybe that’s not all I want, but I want that.”

“Whatever.” Ed turned his body toward Carl and looked at him. “You think if you hang around long enough I’ll drop my pants and you’ll get lucky?” Carl didn’t respond.
Ed stepped closer to Carl, reached with both hands for his pants button, and unfastened it, pulling down his underwear with his right thumb and exposing his lower abdomen, the tuft of darkened pubic hair and the penis it seemed to hide. “Here, have a feel.”

Carl watched without speaking, without his eyes meeting Ed’s. Slowly he reached out with his right hand and touched Ed’s pelvis with the back of his fingers, as if petting a wary dog, and then pulled away.

“Now you don’t have to hang around any more.” Ed released his thumb, re-fastened his pants, and walked past Carl along the river and towards Hodson, who was leaning against the car watching. Ed lifted himself onto the hood of the car without acknowledging Hudson and sat there looking out over the river.

“You’re giving out free feels?” Hodson rarely spoke without first being spoken to—it was a quality Ed liked. He needed to be the focal point of his own circle of accessory companions. There was no room for others.

Ed turned to look at Hodson. “Why, you want a feel too?” He was angry again, hopping off the car hood and onto his feet and stepping aggressively toward Hodson. “Here, help yourself,” he said while reaching again to unfasten his pants, this time pushing them down to expose his entire pelvis and buttocks. But Hodson didn’t hesitate, instead meeting Ed’s aggression with his own hurried steps around the front of the car. Either unaware of Ed’s anger or indifferent to it, Hodson dropped to his knees and began roughly taking Ed in his mouth.

Ed was stunned. Hodson wasn’t supposed to be anything but background scenery to Ed’s impulsive choices. No one thought he cared. Ed watched the top of Hodson’s head as it moved, noted his shoes shaking excitedly, resting on toe tips as Hodson kneeled, but Ed didn’t feel Hodson’s clumsy hands or mouth on his penis. Ed showed no reaction; neither would Hodson have noticed.

But then, suddenly raising his right hand above Hodson, Ed struck the base of Hodson’s head violently with the bottom of his clenched fist, causing Hodson to slump forward between Ed’s legs and onto the crotch of his pants, as if vaulting face forward onto the edge of a tree hammock. Hodson was out, limp and unconscious.

Hodson’s weight caused Ed to lose his balance, and he fell forward onto the back of Hodson’s legs and hips, Ed’s ass still bare. He sprang up but was caught by Hodson’s weight between his legs, and began kicking his legs to free himself.

By the time Carl arrived to grab a hold of Ed, he had already kicked his legs free of his pants, and was standing naked from the waist down before Carl. Carl grabbed Ed’s underwear and pants from under Hodson and handed them to Ed, who hurriedly removed his shoes and stepped into his pants again. They both looked at Hodson, slumped face down on the pavement, still unconscious. As Ed put on his shoes, Hodson’s legs began to move and his body twist.

“Get in the car,” Carl snapped at Ed, himself moving quickly to the driver’s side. Ed got in the car and they drove away, leaving Hodson dazed and lying on the pavement.

Moments passed while neither spoke. Ed was still agitated.

Carl drove further north along the river and then crossed over. Finally, heading south among the quiet residential neighborhoods, Carl broke the silence: “Why did you hit him?”

Ed didn’t answer. “Do you think he’s hurt?”

“He was moving when we left. You hit him hard. He’s hurt, but he’ll be ok. What the hell were you doing? He might call the police. You could be in trouble.”

“It wasn’t like I thought about it. I just hit him. He was going crazy on me.” Ed wondered himself why he had reacted so violently.

“Why didn’t you just push him away?’ Carl asked. “You dropped your pants. What did you expect him to do?” These were good questions, but Ed didn’t know the answers. He wasn’t a violent person, generally, but he had lashed out before. He wasn’t going to answer.

“Just take me home,” he responded, dismissing any further talk.

Carl took him home, pulling into the house Ed shared and parking the car in front, across the street from the house. Ed got out without speaking, and Carl followed him into the house, down the hallway, and into Ed’s room. Now Carl was agitated. Ed was often silent, and usually Carl liked this. Not now.

Ed flopped onto his bed and reached down behind the back of the stand to lift a bottle of vodka from the floor. “What are you doing?” Carl asked, clearly annoyed.

“What the fuck does it look like? If you don’t like it, leave.” He brought the bottle to his mouth, took a small mouthful, and swallowed quickly. Carl remained standing in front of the bed, unsure of what he should do.

“You hurt Hodson. You might have really hurt him. You could have killed him. And now you’re gonna sit here and drink. Is that it?”

“Like I said, you can leave if you don’t like it.”

“That’s your answer to everything? It’s all ok as long as you don’t ask for anyone’s approval. The thing is, you don’t want me to go away.” Carl moved around to the side of the bed almost menacingly, looking at Ed, who was sitting on the bed staring at the light on the stand.

“How do you know what I want?”

“Maybe I don’t, but I think I know. Why don’t you just say what you want? That way no one has to guess.” Carl no longer felt like playing by Ed’s rules.

“Why do you always have to have everything spelled out? Can’t you just figure things out? What does it matter what I want?”

“Hodson did what he wanted.”

“So did I,” Ed snapped in return.

Carl didn’t want to argue, but neither could he simply be agreeable. “Put the bottle down,” Carl said calmly, just as Ed was removing it from his mouth. Carl waited for a reaction. None came. He reached to grab the bottle from Ed’s left hand, but Ed pulled away.

“Fuck off. You think you’re my dad or something?”

“I think you need one. You’re acting like a child.” Carl caught the bottle in Ed’s hand, pulled it from him forcefully, and set it on the stand. Ed reached for Carl and tried to push him away, but he had too little leverage. Carl fought against Ed’s arms, grabbing his wrists and twisting them to gain control, and then pushing Ed against the headboard and wall. Ed sank onto the bed, his head bouncing against the wooden board. He was stunned, mostly from Carl’s aggression. He sprang forward combatively into Carl in a tackle around Carl’s waist. But Carl was bigger and stronger than Ed, and could control him if necessary. He reached his arm around Ed’s back and thrust him again against the bed, this time kneeling on the bed to pin Ed down with both arms.

With one hand Carl slapped him on the face and with the other he held Ed down by the throat. “You want to be a loser, is that it? Get yourself together, son. I can’t bail you out every time you screw up.” Ed was pushing the heels of his palms against Carl’s chest, but his reach was too short.

“Fucking get off me. You’re hurting my chest.” Ed began swaying his body and grinding his waist against the bed to break free. Carl gripped his shirt near the collar and pushed him up the bed, pulling his pants half way down his hips. Carl struck him again on the other side of the face, and began repeating in a low voice, “You think you’re a tough guy? You think you’re a tough guy?”

Carl leaned on Ed’s shoulders to pin him down, but Ed was no longer resisting. In a near whisper to himself he returned Carl’s chant: “I’m a tough guy, I’m a tough guy.” He took the blows as if his face belonged to someone else. Carl reached for a sneaker below the bed, pulled Ed’s pants down further to expose the skin of his thighs, and with long, high extensions of his arm, began to strike Ed’s upper thighs with the sole of the shoe. “I don’t feel anything,” Ed mumbled almost imperceptibly to himself, too quiet to taunt Carl.

Ed’s erection was showing through the elastic of his underwear. He was no longer aware of Carl, or of the night. He had what he wanted. He lied motionless on the bed, nearly swooning with the touchtone of violence. Carl continued striking Ed. He wanted to stop, but he didn’t want Ed to stop. He wanted to take him, to embrace him, but he knew what Ed wanted. “Do what you want to do”—he kept replaying Ed’s words. He was afraid of the escalation. Their games had to stop. Ed wanted more punishment each time, and his crimes were rising accordingly.

Carl grabbed Ed by the shirt again and shook him. “You have to stop hurting people,” he pleaded with Ed. Ed heard only warning and disapproval in Carl’s plea.

“Make me.” Ed mumbled, “You have to stop me.”

“No Ed, I mean it.” He slapped him hard across his cheek with the back of his hand.

Again, with his eyes closed, Ed mumbled, “Make me,” and reached with his free hand beneath his underpants.

Carl lost his focus momentarily, bending over Ed to brush his face against Ed’s exposed abdomen. It was tenderness Ed was not expecting, and didn’t want. His eyes opened wide, as if he were jarred from his own private revelry. He shouted “Fucking pervert,” and pushed Carl’s head away from him with both hands. Embarrassed by his lapse and fearing its consequences, Carl swung powerfully with his right hand and punched Ed on the side of his head.

Ed slumped forward onto the bed. Carl knew instantly that he’d gone too far, but it was too late. Ed was unconscious, perhaps worse. He stood still against the bed for a second, looking at Ed, at the waist of his pants pulled sideways on his hips, at his t-shirt pulled up his back, and the side of his face pressed into the bed. And he knew what he wanted.

Here’s a little more on the classification of gays. Gide writes, “I call a pederast the man who, as the word indicates, falls in love with young boys. I call a sodomite . . . the man whose desire is addressed to mature men. I call an invert the man who, in the comedy of love, assumes the role of a woman and desires to be possessed. These three types of homosexuals are not always clearly distinct; there are possible transferences from one to another; but most often the difference among them is such that they experience a profound disgust for one another, a disgust accompanied by a reprobation that in no way yields to that which you (heterosexuals) fiercely show toward all three. The pederasts, of whom I am one (why cannot I say this quite simply, without your immediately claiming to see a brag in my confession?), are much rarer, and the sodomites much more numerous, than I first thought. . . . As to the inverts, whom I have hardly frequented at all, it has always seemed to me that they alone deserved the reproach of moral or intellectual deformation and were subject to some of the accusations that are commonly addressed to all homosexuals. . . . That such loves can spring up, that such relationships can be formed, it is not enough for me to say that this is natural; I maintain that it is good; each of the two finds exultation, protection, a challenge in them; and I wonder whether it is for the youth or the elder man that they are more profitable.”

Such silliness. Twink lovers, bears, and bottoms, I suppose. I wonder just how young Gide means when he says “young boys.” I have a preference for young guys myself, but I would certainly not say I preferred young boys. I have no sexual interest in boys. And even the boys who are of age but who seem very child-like are not sexually appealing to me. What IS appealing to me are young guys who mix maturity with youth—the boyish faced kid with the body of a man . . . a sizable dick, a hairy bottom, and a slightly muscled physique. I like the contrast of innocence and brawn. But boys, mere boys, hold no appeal. If forced to choose between pederast, sodomite, or invert, however, I suppose I’d be a pederast. That Gide thinks inverts deserve reproach is reproachable. His thinking on homosexuality is crude.

In May of 1921, just months before Proust’s death, Gide wrote this: “Spent an hour yesterday evening with Proust. . . He says that he has not been out of bed for a long time. Although it is stifling in the room in which he receives me, he is shivering; he has just left another, much hotter room in which he was covered with perspiration; he complains that his life is nothing but a slow agony, and although having begun, as soon as I arrived, to talk about homosexuality, he interrupted himself to ask me if I can enlighten him as to the teaching of the Gospels, for someone or other has told him that I talk particularly well on the subject. He hopes to find in the Gospels some support and relief for his sufferings, which he depicts at length as atrocious. He is fat, or rather puffy; he reminds me somewhat of Jean Lorrain. I am taking him Corydon, of which he promises not to speak to anyone; and when I say a word or two about my Memoirs: ‘You can tell anything,’ he exclaims; ‘but on condition that you never say: I.’ But that won’t suit me. Far from denying or hiding his homosexuality, he exhibits it, and I could almost say boasts of it. He claims never to have loved women save spiritually and never to have known love except with men. His conversation, ceaselessly cut by parenthetical clauses, runs on without continuity. He tells me his conviction that Baudelaire was homosexual: ‘The way he speaks of Lesbos, and the mere need of speaking of it, would be enough to convince me,’ and when I protest: ‘In any case, if he was homosexual, it was almost without his knowing it; and you don’t believe that he ever practiced. . .’ ‘What!’ he exclaims. ‘I am sure of the contrary; how can you doubt that he practiced? He, Baudelaire!’ And in the tone of his voice it is implied that by doubting I am insulting Baudelaire. But I am willing to believe that he is right; and that homosexuals are even a bit more numerous than I thought at first. In any case I did not think Proust was so exclusively so.” Just a paragraph later Gide bemoans his lack of facility at the piano. He says he does not like pianists because: “All the pleasure they give me is nothing compared to the pleasure I give myself when I play; but when I hear them I become ashamed of my playing—and certainly quite wrongly. But it is just the same when I read Proust; I hate virtuosity, but it always impresses me, and in order to scorn it I should first like to be capable of it.” I understand when Gide means.

If Gide’s thought on homosexuality is crude, Proust certainly does not further the cause in his writing. Elegant and beautiful as it is, his treatment of gays is harsh and relentlessly unsympathetic. Gide agrees. He writes in December, 1921, “I have read Proust’s latest pages with, at first, a shock of indignation. Knowing what he thinks, what he is, it is hard for me to see in them anything but a pretense, a desire to protect himself, a camouflage of the cleverest sort, for it can be to no one’s advantage to denounce him. Even more: that offense to truth will probably please everybody: heterosexuals, whose prejudices it justifies and whose repugnances it flatters; and the others, who will take advantage of the alibi and their lack of resemblance to those he portrays. In short, in considering the public’s cowardice, I do not know any writing that is more capable than Proust’s “Sodome et Gomorrhe” of confirming the error of public opinion.”

Gide is right. On the one hand, that Proust treats the subject of homosexuality so extensively in his books is exciting and surprising, given the times. Homosexuality is insinuated into every otherwise respectable aspect of society. Gays inhabit the Paris parlors, the butcher shops, and theaters. It gives readers the impression that it’s not a rare and dangerous scourge, but a part of everyday life. On the other hand, Proust’s every treatment of homosexuality is unsympathetic--gays are ugly and duplicitous. He mirrors exactly the sharply disdainful attitudes of the public, and one gets the feeling that he’s trying to have it both ways. He wants to write about gay life, his life, but he also wants to protect himself. Just as he said to Gide—you can write anything as long as you don’t say “I.”

There’s one final passage about Proust that I want to note. Proust’s chauffeur arrives at Gide’s house, returning the copy of Corydon that Gide had given him to read. What’s funny is that Gide notes how lengthy and convoluted the chauffeur’s speech is. “His sentence is much longer and more complicated than I am quoting it; I imagine he learned it on the way, for when I interrupted him at first, he began it all over again and recited it in one breath.” The chauffeur’s wife, who also lives with Proust, speaks in a similarly convoluted speech. Gide visited him in mid-May, 1921, and describes Proust as spending “hours on end without being able even to move his head; he stays in bed all day long, and for days on end. At moments he rubs the side of his nose with the edge of a hand that seems dead, with its fingers oddly stiff and separated, and nothing could be more impressive than this finicky, awkward gesture, which seems the gesture of an animal or a madman.”

During the visit Proust talks of nothing but homosexuality. What is most interesting is that Proust, near his death and having finished his work for the most part, is perhaps regretting his treatment of homosexuality. “He says he blames himself for that ‘indecision’ which made him, in order to fill out the heterosexual part of the book, transpose “Within a Budding Grove” all the attractive, affectionate, and charming elements contained in his homosexual recollections, so that for “Sodome” he is left nothing but the grotesque and the abject. But he shows himself to be very much concerned when I tell him that he seems to have wanted to stigmatize homosexuality; he protests; and eventually I understand that what we consider vile, an object of laughter or disgust, does not seem so repulsive to him. When I ask him if he will ever present that Eros in a young and beautiful guise, he replies that, to begin with, what attracts him is almost never beauty and that he considers it to have very little to do with desire—and that, as for youth, this was what he could most easily transpose (what lent itself best to a transposition). ”

In early January of 1921 Gide went to see Parade, by Cocteau, Satie, and Picasso. He writes: “went to see Parade—of which I don’t know what to admire more: pretense or poverty. Cocteau is walking up and down in the wings, where I go to see him; aged, contracted, painful. He knows that the sets and costumes are by Picasso, that the music is by Satie, but he wonders if Picasso and Satie are not by him.”

I took last Saturday and collected some notes on Gide. I don't imagine they'll be of interest to anyone but me, but I felt compelled. . .

I’ve been reading the journals of Gide. I'm now in the WWI years and soon beyond. This volume is better than the first, with the exception of several pages skipped over tonight at the gym, pages containing his thoughts on the Gospels, and his belief or not in the devil. My god, this man is a little exasperating. On the one hand I read elsewhere about how experimental or ahead of his time he was, but to me he seems stuck in an older generation, an old fogy fussing about his position among the literati, his piano playing, and the incompetent pruning of the trees surrounding his house. He speaks often of his battles to resist temptations, veiled references to his sensual desires, etc., all of which I take to be his great anguish and conflict about being gay. But of course it’s a different era, and I have to remind myself not to be so quick to judge harshly. Edmund White, in his biography of Genet, seems to be pretty hard on Gide, speaking about his “faintly ridiculous defense of homosexuality” in Gide’s book Croydon, which “argues that homosexuality is completely natural since it can be observed in several other species.” According to White, Gide also argues that “male homosexuality is a healthy alternative to prostitution as a way of channeling the sexual needs of young, unmarried men.” I suppose it does all seem a little silly now. Certainly when placed along side the next generation such as Genet, Gide looks stiff, uptight, and silly. But he was among the first to write openly in defense of homosexuality (even if a defense was not exactly what was needed). Gide was married, and seemed to be happily married, at least in his early diaries. But from what I’ve read about his life, he was married for 27 years in an unconsummated marriage, before having a child with another woman. And otherwise he was gay. An odd fellow. I’m beginning to think I shouldn’t be spending so much time reading him, but over the last few weeks I’ve come across a few things that I wanted to note, so . . .

The Gide diary finally came alive for me at the outbreak of World War I. He describes in some detail the first few weeks of the war, the rush of people around Paris, the frenzy at train stations, the complete chaos and upheaval. It contrasts dramatically with the outbreak of war for Americans in recent decades. Certainly with the Iraq war, Americans have experienced nothing like what previous generations have known. Today it’s little more than extended coverage on CNN for all but those with family in the military. What Gide describes in those first few weeks reminded me of what I sensed, and what much of America sensed, I’m guessing, during the morning of Sept. 11. It was a sense that the routines of our daily lives were no longer viable, that there were suddenly no rules and no normalcy, that we had been living in a house of cards. I remember that feeling the morning of Sept. 11, as I watched the towers fall, gathered with other Xerox employees around the television inside the office of some manager. I didn’t feel terror; I felt excitement—excitement to be faced with the possibility of life being uprooted of its routines. That morning no one cared about their jobs, their appointments, their duties and personal agendas. Everything was being questioned. It was as if suddenly society had crumbled and we were all hunters and gatherers, fending for ourselves, and looking after those immediately beside us.

Gide wrote about the wild speculation regarding how things were going at the front. No one knew anything, and everyone clung to the flimsiest morsels of information. Now we know instantly what is happening. For some reason which he doesn’t explain, Gide decided shortly after the beginning of the war not write about its progress. It’s too bad, as his reports on the war are among the most interesting passages of the diary’s second volume.

Occasionally Gide writes about his encounters with other interesting people. His first report of Cocteau is funny. It was 1914, shortly after war had erupted, and Cocteau was still a very young man. Gide writes this: “I had no pleasure in seeing him again, despite his extreme kindness; but he is incapable of seriousness, and all his thoughts, his witticisms, his sensations, all the extraordinary brilliance of his customary conversation shocked me like a luxury article displayed in a period of famine and mourning. . . When speaking of the slaughter of Mulhouse he uses amusing adjectives and mimicry; he imitates the bugle call and the whistling of the shrapnel. Then, changing subjects since he sees that he is not amusing me, he claims to be sad; he wants to adopt your mood and explains it to you. Then he talks of Blanche, mimics Mme R., and talks of the lady at the Red Cross who shouted on the stairway: ‘I was promised fifty wounded men for this morning; I want my fifty wounded men.’ Meanwhile he is crushing a piece of plum cake in his plate and nibbling it; his voice rises suddenly and had odd twists; he laughs, leans forward, bends toward you and touches you.” Funny. Gide is hard on young Cocteau. I think I might have liked him.

In 1918 he writes again of Cocteau. Cocteau makes a reference to Debussy’s funeral. Then Gide writes this: “Nothing is more foreign to me than this concern for modernism which one feels influencing every thought and every decision of Cocteau. I do not claim that he is wrong to believe that art breathes freely only in its newest manifestation. But, all the same, the only thing that matters to me is what a generation will not carry away with it. I do not seek to be of my epoch; I seek to overflow my epoch.”

Gide writes of frequent gatherings with Darius Milhaud, one of the group of French composers know as Les Six, so designated by Cocteau. At one such meeting Milhaud plays for Gide a symphonic poem he’d just written. Gide comments, “It was nothing but noise to me.” He writes a few times of meeting Edith Wharton. He liked her; they seemed to be friends. On one occasion he writes, “Mrs. Wharton tomorrow morning at the Gare du Nord. Henry James and Arnold Bennett were expecting me.” Quite good company.

During one afternoon with Wharton, Gide met a Paul Bourget. At one point when Wharton was away from the room this Bourget asks Gide about his novel “The Immoralist.” “Now that we are alone, tell me, Monsieur Gide, whether or not your immoralist is a pederast.” After regaining his composure Gide replies, “He is probably more likely an unconscious homosexual.” Bourget goes on, “There are two classes of perversions: those that fall under the head of sadism and those that belong to masochism. To achieve sexual pleasure both the sadist and the masochist turn to cruelty. . .” Gide then asks, “Do you class homosexuals under one or the other of these perversions?” Bourget begins to respond, “Of course. . .” but then Wharton enters the room and Gide never gets the full answer. I have to confess myself that I don’t really know the difference between sadism and masochism. I imagine sadists like to impose pain, and masochists to receive it. I wonder if today these are still accepted terms among people informed about sexuality. They strike me as a bit silly and outmoded, perhaps useful in earlier times when people were so interested in classifications. Neither term seems to describe the great majority of gay sexuality today, though.

Here’s another passage about Gide and his veiled homosexuality: “The trait I have most trouble struggling against is my sensual curiosity. The drunkard’s glass of absinthe is not more attractive than, for me, certain faces encountered by chance—and I would give up everything to follow them. . . Why, to be sure this involves such an imperious urge, such an insidious, such a secret counsel, so inveterate a habit that I often wonder if I can escape it without outside aid.”

My real interest in reading this volume of Gide’s diary is what he says about Proust. This volume covers 1914-1927. The first mention of Proust comes in 1916. By then Proust had written much of his masterpiece. Only the first three? volumes were published before he died in 1922. Proust did ask Gide and the publishing company he owned to publish the work, but Gide or the company turned him down, a decision Gide greatly regretted much later. This is what Gide first writes of Proust: “Finished the evening at the home of Marcel Proust (whom I had not seen since ’92). I had promised myself to relate that visit at length; but I no longer have the interest to do so this morning.” What a shame. He should have mustered the interest. It would have been more interesting than most anything else in his diary (at least for me).

In 1918 he again mentions Proust. “In Paris I reread to Jean-Paul Allegret a few pages of Proust—dazzled.” And then later he writes about work on his memoirs, but he says, “But I have no further taste for them; the fews pages that I read aloud . . . disappointed me; and the comparison I made between then and the pages of Proust’s marvelous book, which I was rereading at the same time, overwhelmed and finished me off”

Here’s a passage about Gide’s tortures: “Night haunted, devastated, laid waste by the almost palpable phantom of X., with whom I walk for two hours or in whose arms I roll on the very steps of hell. And this morning I get up with my head empty, my mind distraught, my nerves on edge, and offering an easy access to evil. Yet last night I did not quite yield to pleasure, but this morning, not even benefiting from that repulsion which follows pleasure, I wonder if that semblance of resistance was not perhaps worse. One is always wrong to open a conversation with the devil, for, however, he goes about it, he always insists upon having the last word.”

In 1918 he seems to fall in love with some man in Paris whom he designates as ‘M.’ “I cry for that health, that happy equilibrium, which I enjoy in M’s presence and which makes even chastity easy for me when I am with him, and my flesh smilingly at ease.” He finds himself torn between M and Em., his wife: “Recalled to Paris again. . . Em. Can never know how my heart is torn at the thought of leaving her, and in order to find happiness far from her.” This is another thing about Gide that interests me—his clear homosexuality, yet his marriage and his love for Em. He seemed to live the life I am leading right now, only nearly a century earlier.

This last week I heard three pieces of music that made me instantly happy. First was a song by Crowded House. I don’t remember the name, but it reminded me how much I can enjoy some pop music. Then on the radio I heard the Polovtsian Dances of Borodin. They have an otherworldly feel to them, dark but not foreboding, a cross between the world of Oz, Tolkien’s middle earth, and a snowy winter retreat in the Russian Alps. The third piece was something by the contemporary Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. I think she’s one of today’s most innovative and important composers. It’s funny that among my list of such composers, two near the top are women composers. These days women are producing great works in art music. For centuries it was a man’s domain, but women like Saariaho and Jennifer Higdon are today among the world’s greatest composers.

A beautiful young black woman with a narrow, exposed waist and a bushy Afro lifted her arm to reveal a tiny carpet of curly black underarm hair. Sexy.

Lately I’ve been envying Judge John Roberts, soon to be the nation’s new chief justice. He’ll be untouchable. Life tenure at the top. Accountable to no one, with the whole nation hanging on every word he says and writes. I don’t want to answer to people, yet I want power, respect, and position. He’ll have it all.

A preponderance of Ann’s friends are suffering through longstanding bouts of depression. I suppose it’s merely coincidence—Ann did not somehow attract depressed people, since these are childhood friends for the most part. I’m probably not as sympathetic as I might be to their plights. It’s not that I’m not sympathetic to those who suffer from depression—I have a sense of what it means to be depressed, and it’s hard or impossible to simply pull oneself out of it. I understand and even appreciate that. My reaction, though, is that I just don’t want to be surrounded by it. My life and mental state are pretty stable, and my friends are also, for the most part. If I contact a friend about something, or to do something, I don’t want to be faced with their depression. I want them to be on the same solid ground as I believe I’m on. I think I just don’t like sickness, and don’t want to be around the sick.

Across the narrow hall from my cube at work is an office occupied by a very nice, young woman. She’s friendly, bright, and very competent. Every so often, however, she’ll close her door and I’ll hear her in a very strained and emotional phone call with her husband, arguments about money or time commitments, issues with their son, etc. I don’t know what exactly the issues are, as I can’t hear the talk, only isolated words. Mostly what I hear is the emotion in her voice—not screaming, but strained cries of emotion. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to be suddenly immersed in the emotional lives of those I know only casually. I don’t even want such emotional trauma with those with whom I’m emotionally involved—I don’t like high emotions. But I certainly don’t want to be plunged into the trauma of those with whom I have no emotional stake. When I hear the plaintive emotion in her voice, it reminds me of my mother, when she’d argue with my stepfather. I just don’t want to be around it. I think that tendency has something to do with why I don’t want to be drawn into the mental and emotional troubles of friends—I just don’t want to be exposed to it unless I must. And with casual friends, I needn’t be, or at least that’s what I believe. It’s all about my emotional stasis.

Last night I saw some queer French film called “Wild Side.” It was a look into the lives of a trio of lovers, one a prostituting pre-op transsexual (once Pierre and now Stephanie), a studly gay Russian man, and a twinky gay young man named Jamel. (I may be mistaken on the names.) It was a serious film, heavy on mood, mixing their current lives with flashbacks to childhood events and key moments in their more recent past. Every scene held a little too long. Every scene brooded indulgently. Folksy solo viola music played through scenes of children playing in expansive green fields, and through pans of countryside marred by decaying buildings and the scars of abandoned industry. Much effort was made of mood-setting, and showing us the characters. Little was expended on narrative, or on why exactly we care, even if something did happen. An infusion of meaning and significance, with no where to go. By the standards of many of the gay films now being made, it was better than average. But it wasn’t good. It didn’t challenge, engage, entertain or illuminate. It was like being required to sit on a soft bench in an art gallery looking at the same painting for two hours. What I found most annoying was listening afterward to so many in the audience who thought it was such a fine film. People are suckers for the suggestion of gravity in the arts. I gave the film a B. Gerry gave it a B+. I think we both had the same general take on the film, though. The man who introduced it presented it nicely, cautioning the audience that it was a film of poetry, not one of motion. And indeed it was. I often like films of poetry, but this didn’t seem to have much to say beyond the interesting contrasts of images and scenes. The director said he wanted to show the actors more and the characters less. I wish he hadn’t.

I heard from my old friend Ian from London. He says he likes Philly a lot, which surprises me. I like Philly, but I have history there. It’s not clear to me why someone from London would enjoy Philly.

Anyway, I’ve been absent for a few weeks. Well, checking … It’s more like a month! Jesus. And having looked at Ian’s blog, I ought to be ashamed. That boy is diligent.

It’s been an active summer. A few weeks ago Ann and I spent a week in Cape Cod. It was a success all around, and I should write all about it, but not right now. I will say that the Cape is still a wonderful place to visit on a summer vacation. It has not been ruined by crass commercial development, like so many other spots visited by gaggles of squawking families. What will stick in my mind as enchantments, things and places that captured me in some way, are. . . sitting on Nauset Light Beach during the chilly early evening, the cliffs behind us as a smattering of kids and parents braved the frigid waters, and as groups of surfers, speckling the waters beyond with their black wet suits, rose on their boards for a few brief moments above the waves. I remember looking from atop the cliff, out over the gray and misty shore before Ann and I left for the last time. The most wonderful place still in all of New England must be Nantucket Island. The heavily salted cottages tucked behind thick brush, the kids on bikes carrying towels as they wobble along bike paths, the beautiful architecture which still suggests to me Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville. Ann and I did not get along much of the day, but still, I’m already romanticizing the memories. For a few moments we sat on wet towels as the utter grayness and chill of the day blanketed the beach. A cold rain fell lightly while we fed on crackers and tried to keep warm, until finally the rain was no longer light. Ann thought it was the best beach we’d seen, and she was right. Everything about Nantucket was right, even the rich kids in their Abercrombie clothes whom Ann resented. Nantucket still seems to be steeped in a tradition, which I love. Privileged kids and privileged families have been populating the beaches, beach houses, and streets for decades. I can resent it no more than I resent the Ivy League, A&F catalogs, and good restaurants. For some reason, I resent ... or rather, have disdain for, rich, stupid California kids. Somehow the privileged east coast suggests Harvard to me, while the west coast suggests Paris Hilton. Anyway, there was also Provincetown, in some ways a disappointment, but I got the sense that we had just scratched the surface. Maybe more about that later.

That was a few weeks ago. Two weekends ago I was at a gay campgrounds. I enjoyed sunbathing and swimming naked. I don’t know what exactly it is that draws gay men to public nudity, but I like it too. Finally, this past weekend Ann and I were in Albany visiting her parents. It was a nice weekend too. More later. I've got to keep this short.

I just stood for 10 minutes waiting for two little old ladies to conduct their business at the coffee shop counter. First it was the ordering of sandwiches, choosing meats, condiments, cheeses. Then drinks had to be ordered. Decaf or regular? Whipped cream? Water on the side. Then desserts. One wants the triple decker white cake, the other the mud pie. After all is ordered, the dishes gathered together and carried to tables, and the total tallied, these two women, dressed in long, loose dresses and large-brimmed straw hats, remove the purses hanging from their tiny shoulders and place them on the counter to begin the search for exact change. After some effort they combine their resources of spare change to come up with what they think is the correct amount, except that of course they’ve misheard the total that the clerk told them, so the process begins again. Apparently it wasn’t acceptable that the clerk simply give them change from the $20 bill that they gave him. And all the while I was thinking how easily one could snap one their frail little arms. The clerk and I exchanged grins, which of course the old ladies did not notice, caught up as they were in their quest for nickels and dimes lying at the bottom of their little clothe purses. God bless them.

This week a co-worker told me how a clerk at a store had been rude to her because she wanted to buy a greeting card worth $2.49 using a credit card. She didn’t realize that I have my own personal pet peeve regarding that very thing. I had to tell her please to never, EVER, use her credit card to pay for a cup of coffee, ever. We are not yet a cashless society, and unless they can expedite credit card transactions, let’s hope we never are.

Yesterday I had lunch with a group of gay attorneys. I had never met one of them. He was an older man, nice enough, entertaining to listen to in his own way, though he had a penchant for monopolizing the conversation. Subtle but noticeable. As we all parted, I noticed he wanted to touch me more than seemed appropriate in a professional context. Well, it was social, but I was among co-workers in front of my office building. He was touching my shoulder, seemed to want to hug, incidental touching of my chest, etc. I truly don’t mind that sort of touchy feely among gay men. And with older men it seems almost sweet, the least I could do for the older guys. But I started to wonder how far it could go before I was implicated in a bit of unseemliness myself. I mean, inappropriate touching can be impugned to the toucher while the touchee remains blameless. But if the touching is allowed to continue without protest, at some point the touchee is implicated. At what point must I protest? Doesn’t matter in this case, because he didn’t cross the line.

I haven’t been buying much music lately, mostly because I can’t seem to find a good time to go to the music store. But it’s forced me to dig into my collection and listen to some music that I either haven’t listened to for a long time or never gave it an adequate chance the first time around. This week I’ve been listening to some of the older pieces of Steve Reich, things like Desert Music and Music for Mallets. I never really cared for Desert Music before, but I’ve finally come around after more listening. Well, his music for orchestra, or even for just strings, is not very interesting, in my opinion. John Adams is just the opposite. His music for small ensembles doesn’t seem to come alive like his music for orchestra. But Reich is truly great with unconventional musical forces, typically including percussion of some sort, and he’s pretty good with voices. Desert Music is a full-scale cantata for orchestra and voices, and it’s wonderful. But what has been most surprising to me recently is how I’ve come to love the symphonies of Honegger. My friend Gerry would be pleased. He loves Honegger. I don’t know anything of his music but his symphonies 2 and 3, and I never cared much for them, but I’ve come around totally. Symphony #3 in particular is excellent. He writes complex, sophisticated music. That symphony uses a big orchestra sound, almost Strauss-like in places, which surprises me.

I am less than 30 pages from completing Proust’s 6-volume masterpiece. What will I read in its place? Nothing will ever quite match its perfection and beauty for me. Here’s a discussion which struck me. He’s speaking about dating and being matched with one’s “type.”

“There was a time when [Odette] had found Swann attractive, which had coincided with the time when she to him had been ‘not his type.’ The truth was that ‘his type’ was something that, even later, she had never been. And yet how he had loved her and with what anguish of mind! Ceasing to love her, he had been puzzled by this contradiction, which is really no contradiction at all if we consider how large a proportion of the suffering endured by men in their lives is caused to them by women who are ‘not their type.’ Perhaps there are many reasons why this should be so: first, because a woman is ‘not your type’ you let yourself, at the beginning, be loved by her without loving in return, and by doing this you allow your life to be gripped by a habit which would not have taken root in the same way with a woman who was ‘your type,’ who, conscious of your desire, would have offered more resistance, would only rarely have consented to see you, would not have installed herself in every hour of your days with that familiarity which means that later, if you come to love her and then suddenly she is not there, because of a quarrel or because of a journey during which you are left without news of her, you are hurt by the severance not of one but of a thousand links. And then this habit, not resting upon the foundation of strong physical desire, is a sentimental one, and once love is born the brain gets much more busily to work: you are plunged into a romance, not plagued by a mere need. We are not wary of women who are ‘not out type,’ we let them love us, and if, subsequently, we come to love them we love them a hundred times more than we love other women, without even enjoying in their arms the satisfaction of assuaged desire. For these reasons and many others the fact that our greatest unhappinesses come to us from women who are ‘not our type’ is not simply an instance of that mockery of fate which never grants us our wishes except in the form which pleases us least. A woman who is ‘our type’ is seldom dangerous, she is not interested in us, she gives us a limited contentment and then quickly leaves us without establishing herself in our life, and what on the contrary, in love, is dangerous and prolific of suffering is not a woman herself but her presence beside us every day and our curiosity about what she is doing every minute: not the beloved woman, but habit.”

Last night I went to a local club, which features a mix of a drag queen shows and dancing. The MC of the show is always very good. Last night at one pint she said something about it being near the end of summer. It’s still July, for Christ’s sake! Please. Why do we all rush to our disappointments, as if to take the edge off the pain of diminishing hope and optimism. We rush to get it over with, whatever casts a shadow over our future. Every morning as I’m driving through the parking garage I see people making a nuisance of themselves by insisting that they back into their parking spots. I can’t help but think this is all part of the same mentality—they feel that by backing up into their spot in the morning they’ve cleared from the remainder of the day whatever unpleasantness they feel by having to back out of their spot in the evening. When they get out of work, they can just pull right out and zip home. Everyone wants to get out of the way things that they don’t like. Winter is ugly so we hasten its approach. Kids and teachers dread the return of school so they begin to imagine the impending return long before it is here. I understand the impulse. I just wish those damnable people who back into their spots in the morning would stop it. It requires much more precision and care, and takes up more time, than if they’d just back out when they leave. At least then they have more space and room for error. Backing into the spot in the morning is NOT equivalent to backing out in the evening.

Last week I went to a little lunch hour picnic at work. Admittedly it wasn’t a good week, so my attitude wasn’t good going in. But I felt a sadness as I walked around and stood around, a sadness like I rarely feel, almost a sense of panic, as if something were very wrong. Groups of middle-aged people stood around looking bored, their hearts not really into it, as if they had little interest in being there but felt they had to show some interest. The barbed wire wasn’t exactly surrounding the perimeter of the park, but perhaps someone or something held them hostage through subtle but very real coercion. And the worst part was that though they didn’t really want to be there, neither did they want to be anywhere else.

I’ve finally finished the first volume of Gide’s diaries, running from 1889-1913. It started out with promise, but much of it was pretty pedestrian, and when it wasn’t pedestrian, it was tediously dull. Gide’s thoughts on most things aren’t especially interesting to me, and certainly all of the talk of religion and Christianity turns me off. I’m moving on to the second volume, mostly because I want to read of his relationships with Proust and Cocteau. And I’m interested to read about both world wars. World War I has lately been of particular interest to me, probably because of Proust’s discussion of it in Time Regained. Here’s something which Oscar Wilde once said to Gide: “I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.” I like that. And here’s a word of caution from Gide for anyone facing retirement: “The truth is that, as soon as the need to provide for it ceases to force us, we don’t know what to do with our life and we waste it wantonly.”

I’ve been working on criminal law publications for some months now, and having read lots of court opinions on the topic of searches and seizures, I’ve learned that lots of very stupid mistakes are made by suspects, costing them years of prison time. Sometimes the difference between going free and spending 20 years in prison can be one stupid decision made during a brief encounter with the police. So here’s my advice to anyone who has a run in with the police.

First, even though the officer may seem friendly and the encounter cordial, be wary and do not volunteer information. Absolutely never consent to a search of your house or car. If the police have a search warrant, of course allow them to conduct the search on their own, but do not assist them in any way, do not speak, and do not show them anything. If the police take you for questioning, ask if you are a suspect. If you are, do not speak to the police without an attorney. If they have you in custody, ask whether you are free to go. If you are, then go. If you are not, say nothing.

If you are stopped while driving your vehicle, cooperate but keep your comments to a minimum. Do not offer information, and positively never consent to a search of your car if the officer asks. If he’s asking, he needs your consent. You don’t have to give it. The worst that can happen by refusing is that you’ll seem suspicious to the officer, but nothing good can come of consenting. So many convicted criminals have been caught through searches conducted with their own consent.

If you are asked to take a test for blood alcohol levels or to perform sobriety tests, comply. Do not refuse DUI tests.

People get nervous around the police, but it’s important to keep your wits. Do not start yammering to try to convince him or her of your innocence. Do not be taken in by the nice cop who wants to be your friend. Again, keep the interaction cordial but volunteer nothing, never consent to a search, and go if you are not under arrest. That means leave the police station if you are there, or drive away if the police have pulled you over in your car. Do not allow the scope of the interaction to expand beyond the reason for the initial stop. If your business is completed, you’ve been ticketed and are free to go, then go. That’s all for now.

This Friday I thought I’d go to the local gay shop and rent some porn. We have two good shops in Rochester, each filled with all the porn a man could want. Well, not that much, but at least enough to keep *me* supplied with adequate-to-good porn for months. And new porn is coming in all the time. Apparently there is no shortage of boys willing to share their sex with the insatiable gay male public, a fact that ought to make us all thankful. With this supply one oughtn’t to have to repeat a selection. So why do I regularly rent a video only to realize, when I get it home, slip in the video and sit down, eager for fresh boys mounting slippery behinds, that for Christ’s sake, I’ve just rented it weeks ago! My memory for porn, or rather for the porn video covers that line the back walls of the stores, grouped according to the highly refined demographics and sexual idiosyncracies of the gays to which they appeal, is poor. You’d think I’d remember, given how carefully one tends to scrutinize the covers, trying, on the basis of a few photos and some descriptive text, to discern the closest matches to one’s own sexual profile. There’s so little to go on, so the processes of choosing a video is arduous. Are the boys in this video cuter than in that one? Are there more bodies? (There’s safety in numbers, you know—amongst all the boys, surely one will please.) How long is it—the video, that is. Does it seem to focus on particular acts or body parts? After going through this, you’d think I’d remember the damn thing the next time. I don’t. Not even a twinge of déjà vu, not the faintest suggestion of familiarity. This time around I got home, only to realize it was the very same video I’d rented, not months ago, not several visits before, but the very same video I rented the last time I was there! What is really funny is how predictable my preferences are, how reliable they are at choosing the very same sexual pleasures out of a multitude of options. Out of the hundreds to choose from, I hone in on the very same video.

Tomorrow it the gay pride picnic. Last year AIDS Rochester was performing their usual “polling” of random attendees about sexual practices, opinions, and knowledge of safe sex practices and STDs, and knowing that the reward was a large bottle of lube, I readily agreed to participate. The contents, today, a year later, are barely depleted.

[The guy exiting the door to the outside chairs, returning my stare with the look of piqued interest, thinks I’m lusting after his body, when what I really want is the generous slice of carrot cake with the fork sticking out of the top of it.]

I promised to lay off Proust for a while, but I can’t. Time Regained is excellent. I thought perhaps, this volume, being his last, published posthumously from a disjointed and fragmentary text, would be off the standard of the earlier volumes, but it’s wonderful, full of his thoughts on writing, on aging and the passing of time. Time is not regained exactly--its passing is rendered painfully obvious, as he returns to his cast of characters after having retreated from society years earlier (to write). He finds old age. “So different was she to look at from the woman I had known that one was tempted to think of her as a creature condemned, like a character in a pantomime, to appear first as a young girl, then as a stout matron, with no doubt a final appearance still to come as a quavering, bent old crone. Like a swimmer in difficulties almost out of sight of the shore, she seemed with infinite effort scarcely to move through the waves of time which beat upon her and threatened to submerge her.”

Proust died in 1922, so he never saw the Second World War. But he did write prophetically about the mentality of war: “They have long ceased to speculate upon the morality or immorality of the life they led, because it was the life that was led by everyone round them. So it is that, when we study certain periods of ancient history, we are astonished to see men and women individually good participate without scruple in mass assassinations or human sacrifices which probably seemed to them natural things. And our own age, no doubt, when its history is read two thousand years hence, will seem to an equal degree to have bathed men of pure and tender conscience in a vital element which will strike the future reader as monstrously pernicious but to which at the time these men adapted themselves without difficulty.”

Robert Saint Loop dies in WWI. Proust reminisces about Robert’s “vice” (homosexuality) and wonders if perhaps Robert exaggerated its seriousness, “just as children who make love for the first time, or merely before that age seek solitary pleasure, imagine themselves to be like a plant which cannot scatter its pollen without dying immediately afterwards?” “Perhaps this exaggeration … came partly from the still unfamiliar idea of sin, partly from the fact that an entirely novel sensation has an almost terrible force which later will gradually diminish.”

I was a very naïve kid. Until the age of 16 I had no idea what an orgasm was. I discovered on my own, seeking “solitary pleasure” in my room. I’ve always been interested in the discovery of sex. I mean, I’ve often been intrigued by this question. Imagine that a boy and a girl are left on a deserted island as children, and have no information from others about their bodies and how sex and procreation “work.” Of course they’d figure it out, but watching the process would be interesting. Pleasure leads the way.

So there I am in my room enjoying my hard-on, stroking and pulling at it impulsively just because it feels good. More intense stroking, and greater pleasure. And then, suddenly, a rapid escalation which I couldn’t stop. I erupt, releasing semen all over my hand and chair. I was shocked. I had no idea this was what happened. I knew, of course, that this must be an orgasm, and that it was the same sort of thing that I’d experienced dozens of times in my sleep, when I’d been wakened by a wonderful sensation--a messy and embarrassing thing that I had little control over and which I wished I wasn’t bothered with. I DID want to die after scattering my pollen, then running down my fist. It felt so strange, surprising and shocking. Of course it felt great, but it scared me. It felt wrong, foreign and apart from me. It was probably similar to what many girls feel upon beginning menstruation, but without the pleasure. I got over it.

I don’t really remember a similar “seminal” moment (hehe) when I discovered I liked other boys, but I DID exaggerate its seriousness. At all times. My experience with sex as a kid was nothing but a series of momentary desires, never much examined, never integrated into a relationship, a personal identity, or a target of desire. I lusted after boys in the shower and in the locker room in middle school. I lusted after men in the changing room at the beach.

I remember once going with my mother to visit her younger sister in her new apartment on a very hot summer day. At that time her sister was the black sheep of the family, running off with her bad-ass biker boyfriend when she was just in high school. As I walked down the dark hallway of her apartment alone to go to the bathroom, I looked inside one of the bedrooms, its door left open optimistically to circulate a little breeze. There sprawled out on his back on the king size bed, was my aunt’s naked boyfriend, fast asleep after working the night shift. I was stunned and struck with desire, staring at his large dick lying across his thigh and his arms flung up over his head. During that same visit I saw a brief glimpse of some pages of a Playgirl my aunt had lying in the apartment. My mother noticed the magazine, picked it up, and quickly flipped through it as she continued to talk to her sister, showing little interest in the photos. She allowed me to look, but she paged through quickly, believing, I imagine, that I had little interest in such things, being so young (and male). I had nothing but interest.

I would find my step-father’s porn magazines and focus on the spreads that featured men fucking women. It was the only porn available to me that showed men. I remember being happy when I found a girl that I thought was sexy—how could I be gay if I was attracted to that girl. I never pursued any outlet to my isolated desires until I was away from home, in college, and then it was only visiting porn shops occasionally. I knew somehow I had homosexual desires, but didn’t really believe I was gay. I acknowledged my tendencies enough to conceal them carefully, but not enough to integrate them into a sexual identity.

My exaggeration at the seriousness of my gay desires didn’t appear until I actually acted on the desires with another person. Actually, I exaggerated the seriousness only after arriving at the feeling that I wanted some openness about my homosexuality. I could continue to like gay porn and to have sex with guys, but as soon as I was pressed (by myself or others) to be gay, then it was gravely serious. Being gay or bisexual is no longer a serious matter to me.

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Proust gives hope to all of those who aspire to writing something noble or great someday but who haven’t the discipline to sit down and do the hard work of creating. For much of his life he lingered in the parlors and salons of Paris, thinking about writing but never actually doing it. What he’d written before his great work amounted to nothing much either in quantity or in substance. But late in life he began writing what would become one of the greatest (perhaps THE greatest) literary achievement in a century, a thing of exquisite beauty.

He talks about this in Time Regained, through the character of his narrator, who despaired of every being able to produce anything. “Really, I said to myself, what point is there in foregoing the pleasures of social life if, as seems to be the case, the famous ‘work’ which for so long I have been hoping every day to start the next day, is something I am not, or am no longer, made for and perhaps does not even correspond to any reality.” Many would-be writers have gone through this, and I suspect most never go on to produce anything much. He reached a point at which he believed he was “useless” and that he did not having “enough talent.” But then he had somewhat of an epiphany. “In my absent-minded state I had failed to see a car which was coming towards me; the chauffeur gave a shout and I just had time to step out of the way, but as I moved sharply backwards I tripped against the uneven paving-stones in front of the coach-house. And at the moment when, recovering my balance, I put my foot on a stone which was slightly lower than its neighbor, all my discouragement vanished and in its place was that same happiness which at various epochs of my life had been given to me by the sight of trees which I had thought that I recognized in the course of a drive near Balbec, by the sight of the twin steeples of Martinville, by the flavour of a Madeleine dipped in tea, and by all those other sensations of which I have spoken … Just as, at the moment when I tasted the Madeleine, all anxiety about the future, all intellectual doubts had disappeared, so now those that a few seconds ago had assailed me on the subject of the reality of my literary gifts, the reality even of literature, were removed as if by magic.”

He goes on to explain his ideas on memory, sensations, literature and life, which I haven’t the patience to try to understand. He talks of excuses which people use for not writing. “For instinct dictates our duty and the intellect supplies us with pretexts for evading it. But excuses have no place in art and intentions count for nothing: at every moment the artist has to listen to his instinct, and it is this that makes art the most real of all things, the most austere school of life, the true last judgment.” A little later he writes, “I had arrived then at the conclusion that in fashioning a work of art we are by no means free, that we do not choose how we shall make it but that it pre-exists us and therefore we are obliged, since it is both necessary and hidden, to do what we should have to do if it were a law of nature—to discover it. But this discovery which art obliges us to make, is it not, I thought, really the discovery of what, though it ought to be more precious to us than anything in the world, yet remains ordinarily for ever unknown to us, the discovery of our true life, of reality as we have felt it to be, which differs so greatly from what we think it is that when a chance happening brings us authentic memory of it we are filled with an immense happiness?”

What Proust has done in his great work is to fashion his own life into a work of art. His “In Search of Lost Time” doesn’t stray far from his own life. The narrator is a thinly veiled rendering of himself, and his characters merely renditions of his friends and acquaintances encountered during his salon years. In that sense it’s not an immensely creative work spun from nothing his own rich imagination. Edmund White has done the same sort of thing in his series of autobiographical novels, albeit not as beautifully presented.

Well, I’m done writing about Proust, at least for now. It’s boring reading—my recollections of reading Proust—but I feel like I have to note certain things as I’m reading them.

I walked up to the coffee shop counter, ordered my usual grande dark roast coffee. The girl behind the counter, who always comments about how she knows what I order, asks me, “Two grandes?” I reflexively reply, “Yep” before thinking. I’m so used to clerks repeating my order back to me and me confirming the order that I didn’t catch the mistake. When I realized the mistake it seemed too late. I sit here with two grande coffees. I am a fool.

I have moved onto the last of the Proust novels, “Time Regained,” but before leaving “The Fugitive” behind, there are a few things to note. Saint Loop, the dashing young nobleman and friend of Marcel, the sensitive man of culture, once devoted to the actress and whore Rachel, has been revealed as a gay. Toward the end of “The Fugitive” he marries Gilberte, Marcel’s old girlfriend. Proust makes some interesting comments about gays who marry. “People whose own hearts are not directly involved always regard unfortunate entanglements, disastrous marriages, as though one were free to choose whom one loves, and do not take into account the exquisite mirage which love projects and which envelopes so entirely and so uniquely the person with whom one is in love that the ‘folly’ a man commits by marrying his cook or the mistress of his best friend is as a rule the only poetical action that he performs in the course of his existence.”

This is true—as if one were free to choose whom one loves. And how often we see couples and think, “What was he or she thinking? What does he or she see in that person?” You look at the “lesser” of the pair and think that he or she is lucky; there’s nothing poetic about that person’s position. Of the other we think, “They could do so much better.” And perhaps they could, but they don’t want better—they’ve found in the “lesser” whatever they desire. But I guess we regard living below one’s means as poetic. When I think of Ann and me, I imagine my gay friends thinking, “Dan should find a nice successful gay guy.” And I imagine Ann’s friends thinking, “Why is Ann settling for damages goods, some sexually confused guy who will inevitably leave her unhappy.” Perhaps they’re both right, but nevertheless, we don’t always behave as we should. And maybe we’re both a little poetic in our life choices.

Gilberte has no idea that Saint Loop likes men. He speaks to no one but his wife. “The rest of the hotel appeared not to exist for him; but whenever a waiter came to take an order, and stood close beside him, he swiftly raised his blue eyes and darted a glance at him which did not last for more than two seconds, but in its limpid penetration seemed to indicate a kind of investigative curiosity entirely different from that which might have inspired any ordinary diner scrutinizing, even at greater length, a page or waiter with a view to making humorous or other observations about him which he would communicate to his friends. This little glance, brief, disinterested, showing that the waiter interested him in himself, would have revealed to anyone who intercepted it that this excellent husband, this once so passionate lover of Rachel, had another plane in his life, and one that seemed to him infinitely more interesting than the one on which he moved from a sense of duty. But it was not otherwise visible.”

Later Proust notes, “Homosexuals would be the best husbands if they did not put on an act of loving other women.”

“Personally, I found it absolutely immaterial from a moral point of view whether one took one’s pleasure with a man or with a woman, and only too natural and human that one should take it where one could find it.” Indeed.

Proust on what an artist is: “It is not the man with the liveliest mind, the most well-informed, the best supplied with friends and acquaintances, but the one who knows how to become a mirror and in this way can reflect his life, commonplace though it may be, who becomes a Bergotte . . . and could one not say as much, and with better reason, of a painter’s models? The artist may paint anything in the world that he chooses, but when beauty is awakened within him, the model for that elegance in which he will find themes of beauty will be provided for him by people a little richer than he is himself, in whose house he will find what is not normally to be seen in the studio of an unrecognized man of genius selling his canvases for fifty francs. . .”

The tone of “Time Regained” is quite different from the previous volumes. One gets a clear sense that the charm of the old world is gone, that the modern age has arrived. Proust talks of the war (WWI); he bemoans what he believes to be the new superficiality of society, more concerned with fashion than with art. He quotes or writes, with tongue in cheek, an article he imagines might be written in the time, “’We may even say that one of the happiest consequences of this sad war will be’—added the chronicler (and one expected: ‘the return of our lost provinces’ or ‘the reawakening of national sentiment’)—‘one of the happiest consequences of this sad war will be that we have achieved some charming results in the realm of fashion.’” Heheh Things become even more superficial as the decades pass, it seems.

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Lately I’ve been in the worst mood, though only when I’m at work. I just feel very mean, as if I might lash out at the most undeserving person crossing my path. I don’t know what it is. I think I’m becoming a mean old man . . . slowly. It’s beginning. I have no patience for nonsense. Must get to the point, down to business, hold the fluff. I think I may also be too much of a snob for my own good. I want to talk about substantive things—art, music, literature, history. All else bores me. Maybe I’m becoming Charlus—a blustery man with a bulbous nose and a waist that grows with the increasing liberties I take with the handsome boys. I’ll monopolize the conversation in an overly loud tone, unaware of my own captive audience except when it begins to abandon me, and stitch together a sequence of seemingly unrelated monologues, each one triggered by the concluding phrase of the previous. After finally tiring of the dull company around me and becoming fuzzy-headed with drink, I’ll push myself out of my chair with both arms and great effort, and find my way to the door. Having abruptly abandoned my already forgotten, and by now, bemused, company, I open the door and, with head down, move forward in the wind tunnel of my own drunken solipsism. Voices and images swirl about me, but none finds footing enough to stir me from the contempt I feel for all the world. People and things seem to part before me, not so much out of respect or obedience, as by mutual repulsion. I’ll find my way home, feeling self-satisfied while my drunkenness lasts, and thereafter alienated and angry. I live in this state much of the time. I know it’s my issue and not others, but I don’t tend to like people.

One of the consequences of the war for Charlus is that all the virile, handsome men have been drawn to the battlefield, and so he has had to re-orient his tastes to boys. The other day at the gym I happened to look up at one of the television sets and there was some footage of Ashton Kutchner as a boy, perhaps 17 or so. He was in a modeling contest, one of his first professional jobs. He came in second, losing to another young man who also later entered television. They showed the footage of him in various clothes on the runway, including him in some white underwear. Never have I seen anyone more beautiful. He seemed perfect, perfectly beautiful and good. I’m not sure I’d call him sexy for me, though. I mean, the very boyish, clean-cut, beauty does not necessarily arouse lust in me. I think I like the slightly flawed, or perhaps the rougher, young men. If I had that Ashton Kutchner in my bed, I’m not sure I’d be especially aroused. I’d probably find myself admiring his beauty, fingering his nude body, lightly kissing it in admiration, but not thrashing it about hungrily.