WHEN GAY PRIDE DAY WAS MY FAVORITE HOLIDAY

Throughout the 80s, there was one day every year that was filled with nothing but love and friendship.  I usually spent it on Phoebe Zeeman's roof which was the best party in town.  We would play music and Phoebe would supply endless amounts of food and we'd have cocktails and laugh and hug and celebrate a day meant for our beloved friends.  

MY LAST GAY PRIDE DAY

Over time, we lost many, at first rapidly.  And then a slow trickle until those with HIV no longer automatically became symptomatic.  It was a hard loss that felt intimate, as it seemed as if it was only happening to those we loved.  Afternoons spent in the sun drinking wine were replaced by visits to the hospital.  Parties were replaced by memorial services.

During that time, I slowly became more involved with my work and eventually married and became more and more a member of the straight world.  No longer was Wigstock in my backyard.  Gay Pride parades were less attended.  No more sunday night gay parties at the clubs.

I kept all my friendships which only grew stronger over time, especially as the numbers had diminished to a precious clan of those of us who had lived through the silent war.  Daily conversations were replaced by weekly, by monthly, sometimes by yearly, without skipping a beat.

In the early 2000s my husband and I started a non-gender bath and body line, and naturally, our launch party was at Beige - Eric Conrad and Edwige Belmore's Tuesday night party.  During that time, more friendships were forged with gay men and women, and for a short period of a few years, their numbers swelled in my phone book.  The party was back. Sunday nights were spent at Lincoln's, where a group of us had dinner and watched Sex in the City.  I was often the in house chef, and loved serving food to a room of happy campers.  My friend Boden was chief in charge of taking me out to the clubs when my husband knew I needed a night of dancing with the boys.  Steph became the brother I had sorely missed.  Until he one day returned home to Berlin when his modeling contracts ran out.

That time ended as adulthood once again pulled us all away into our various relationships and responsibilities.

I remember Gay Pride Day every year as it seems to fall right around the weekend of my husband's birthday.  The day is often spent with family and birthday cakes, once again another year no longer spent at the joyous parade, or Phoebe's roof, having the love fest that we once all so adored.  

It's been many years since we celebrated together, a happy family of artists and writers, designers and photographers, misfits and miscreants.  It is still my favorite holiday.

IN MEMORIAM. [2 of the many friends lost to AIDS.  I miss them still.]

SCOTT MACPHEE

HAOUI MONTAUG

THE SKY IS WIDE OPEN

People are flying again.

It was inevitable, that we'd all finally get so sick of staying indoors, that we'd fly anywhere.  Some states are still on lockdown, or at least relatively so, and some countries still have mandatory 2 week lockdown for all visitors, but masks on, some wearing gloves, planes are filling up with anxious flyers, desperate to see something besides their own 4 walls.

Who can blame them.  The sky is wide open...

NO END.

We keep talking about when we are on the other side of this - when it will end - when we will be able to go back to a new normal.

Truth.  There will be no great delineation between today and tomorrow.  We will never feel an official “end”, even though clearly there are powers that be who want to say it is over.  There will be no “over”.  Things will very slowly change.  An opening here, and opening there.  Perhaps only temporarily as the virus re-attacks in a different strain at some point.  Or many different strains.  [Icelandic scientists identified 40 versions of corona virus, and that was weeks ago.]. 

It’s only my opinion, but I think we need to recreate our own sense of what life will be for us.  Not just for tomorrow, but for now.  

People are cooking who have never cooked.  Most of all, people are baking.  There is a huge comfort in baking, and it isn’t an easy thing.  But everywhere you look online there are recipes and photos of baked goods.  People are gardening.  If you have a space in which to grow something, do.  Whether vegetables and herbs to eat, or flowers for the bees, grow something.  People are adopting dogs.  I hope they keep them.  They become family.  They depend entirely on us for food, exercise, love.  Mostly love.  Some people are moving out of the cities.  I asked a moving van driver the other day if people were moving in or moving out of NYC.  He said there are a few moving in, mostly moving out.  And mostly putting things in storage.  That was telling…

There will be pros and cons, no different from any other time in history.  But this is just a time in history. Our grandparents lived through 2 world wars, the Spanish flu, the depression, the dustbowl, the Korean War and Vietnam.  That should put a few things in perspective.  

Right now we have the luxury of time.  Picture yourself with nothing left.  What would you do, where would you go, what would you have to say about it?  It’s an exercise in self discovery.  I’d bet my dwindling 401K that a lot of our decisions will be based in autonomy.  And maybe it’s about time.

THE LONGEST APRIL

I'm still working.  But with the airlines flying so few flights, there are far less to work, and far more days now spent at home filling my days with well... the same things so many others are.

All of my clothing drawers are perfectly organized, short sleeve tee shirts, tank tops, long sleeve tees, turtlenecks, light weight sweaters, beachwear, sleepwear, underwear, socks... everything is in it's perfect place, and with so much more time on my hands, little chance for me to misplace a favorite top or pair of pants.  There is a box by the front door with a few clothing items in it, waiting to get shipped out to the Real Real.  It's been years since I wore that pair of Dries Van Noten sandals, or the Alexander Wang sweater I was never really sure of... and the Gucci skirt purchased during Tom Ford's final days... I'm not sure it will ever fit my lifestyle again as it's been ages since I was out socially on the level of a Tom Ford outfit, anyway.

 Bergdorf Goodman sent me a letter a couple of months ago saying that since I hadn't used my credit card in 3 years that they were going to cancel it by a certain date.  I called to say please no, I'd rather keep it open in case I'm ever in need of an emergency lady outfit.  I no longer foresee that as necessary and with Neiman Marcus declaring bankruptcy, I may never need it again.  I've already put away my Barney's card as a keepsake.

Then there are all the little stores... the ones I visit often, just to window shop, and occasionally to buy something from a young designer or artist, just because.  They are all closed... some already papered for closure.  Some have websites, so I visit them to see if they have still survived in some form or another, knowing that this is a last hurrah for many; local shops, once full of information and gossip and that sort of community conversation that keeps a neighborhood, a neighborhood.

But I still take walks, though the sound effects have changed.  I hear more birds now.  I saw a bluejay the other day.  And there is a nest of Robins in front of my building who sing every morning to wake me up.  It's them or Alexa, though the latter is getting on my nerves ever since she learned my name.  And without so many cars, there are more squirrels on the street; even a feral cat who I caught digging in my garden the other night.  It won't be long now before the Central Park Raccoon population comes out to visit the trash on garbage night.  They seem to travel in twos...

I run into people on my block a few times a day when I sit on my stoop for a smoke.  Those in masks take long sweeping steps far away from me, as smokers are still a common evil.  And those without masks just pass by chatting on their phones and staring at their masked counterparts with disdain.  I'm still on the fence about it all.  Masks still needed to protect us with equal need to get back to work.  It's all very confusing to me... maybe because I've never stopped working.  I still take the subway to JFK a few times a month to work a flight, or two, or three.  The rules change constantly.  Today's email from my employer with the latest covid19 rules... boarding and deplaning in small groups, customary temperature taking before passengers hit the gate...  Tomorrow there will be something else.  A new announcement, a new way of gate checking bags, a new way for passengers to be seated.  It's a constantly changing feast of rules and regulations.  By now, the planes should be 10 times cleaner than anybody's homes or public spaces...

It has been a time to finally take care of certain projects that have been sitting around gathering dust.  I have about 45,000 aerial and landscape shots that needed editing and locations added.  It's a bear.  But I'm almost through the first 20,000.  Seems I'll have plenty of time to finish it.  I wonder what other people's projects are... projects waiting for a rainy day.  Or many rainy days.  It's been April for ages.

And then there is the food... I admit, when the first hints of self containment occurred we bought a mini freezer for the kitchen so we could stock up on some essentials.  Most of all, to have room to freeze food for the leaner days that might occur.

My husband and I both cook.  He came from a foodie family... I didn't which was all the more reason to learn to cook as soon as I was on my own.  We filled the little freezer with homemade artisinal breads and lamb and beef stews, soups and cut up fresh corn and veggies, bagged and marked, wasabi salmon burgers and breaded tilapia.  I became my grandmother who still had a shelter in her basement from the days of WWII.  She made jams and pickled vegetables, canned fruit and chutneys.  I made marmalades, pink grapefruit with pomegrante, and date and apricot scones.  We bought extra meat and butter.  We have enough freshly made foods for a dinner party or six, but nobody to serve it to.  I've put on a couple of pounds - just enough to help fill that box by the front door for the clothing I'll never wear again.

I miss my friends. I miss hugging someone hello whom I haven't seen in a while.  I miss having a random conversation with a stranger that ends with an introduction and a handshake.  I miss buying a morning coffee and smiling at the barista as she spells my name wrong.  I miss chatting with the UPS guy and our mail carrier about who is moving out of the neighborhood, and who is moving in.  I miss having a cocktail with my co-workers after a long day of flying in bad weather.  I miss people.  We all do.

But this too shall pass.  And there's always murder hornets...

MY LITTLE BEAUTY

A moment of love and adoration.  My little beauty.

PUMPKIN.  EXTREMELY SPOILED WIRE HAIR DACHSHUND.

THINGS THAT KEEP ME UP ALL NIGHT

I am an insomniac.  My brain just will not shut down at night without the aid of several different organic and sometimes not so organic assists.  But basically, I don't sleep well.

When I'm not running over moments in my past when I said something stupid, wondering why I didn't say "-----" instead, I'm thinking of things that my brain and well.... nobody's brains can really comprehend.  We can create mathematical equations, scientific theories, philosophical and religious doctrine, all of them meant to make us sleep well at night in the safety of their concepts.  But we really just don't know.

The first one that I mused over for several years was the size of the universe.  I'd think it into a constantly enlarging size, wondering at what point did it end.  Was it inside of an incomprehensibly enormous bubble?  And was that bubble a molecule inside something even larger which was full of universes?  Or were they alive in which case are we just quarks inside of atoms inside of molecules inside of... you get what I mean.  It is enough to make your mind explode.  Of course I always thought that eventually the thought of it all would put me to sleep, but alas no... another ambien please.

Then for a few years I mused over the question of "love".  I have no idea why I thought I could figure it out when nobody else has...even my existentialism instructor in high school said that the only philosopher who ever broached the subject was someone name Unamuno, who isn't particularly well known... but I kept wondering if love had a larger purpose that just reproduction.  Why did we choose who we choose to be with?  And why does that change at times leading us to find someone new?  Of course there are a ton of scientific responses to this, all based on chemistry... the general smell of another person... etc.  That all sounds good to me.  But it never explains why, really.  And clearly if it is based on chemistry, then does the chemistry change over time?  Is that what makes people stop wanting each other?  In which case there is no longevity to smell or chemical interactions, so why do some couples stay together?  Anyway, don't make me muse on this one any longer, my head hurts already.

My recent stay-up-all-night-pondering question is that of beauty.  What makes us decide something is beautiful?  What makes us choose one object over another?  One apple over another?  One pathway to walk over another?  This sort of ties into the last wasted time of musing, that of love.  Since there is an aspect of love which makes us feel that someone is beautiful, even if only just to us. But seriously, why do we have taste?  What purpose does it serve except to give us something to delight in?  Is that happiness part of what makes us survive as a species?  But again, it still doesn't explain what makes us think something is beautiful, and why.  This one is going to be around for a while.  Another hugely unanswerable question, bigger than us, bigger than the capability of our brains to comprehend fully.  So if you find out why some day, could you please let me know?  I could really use some sleep.

xo

Spooky photo that has nothing to do with the story above.  c.2020 SRB

WALK ON THE NINJA SIDE

One more day off before I return to flying, so I went out for a morning walk to CVS for a few needed items.  Raining.  Put on my black fenty sweatshirt and pea coat, tall black boots, black mask.  Of course once I put up my hoody I looked like a cat burglar... maybe a ninja.  As I walk the silent streets disobeying the traffic signs since there is no traffic, I run into the occasional other in black mask and hoody.  The street has been taken over by ninja warriors, or so it would seem not knowing otherwise.  It's NYC's version of coyotes on the roads of Los Angeles.

I pass a woman in a pink mask walking her dog and she smirks at me.  Maybe she is intimidated by the warrior sect... or just suspicious of all other humans possible lack of a decent immune system.  Either way I walk the 6' approximated space around her and continue on my way.

Nothing I need left at CVS.

On the way home I check out my garden... I've put a sign up to fend off the evil dog walking shit stainer.  I'm pretty sure I'll get reamed by somebody who thinks I'm being selfish by not letting a dog walk over the dirt... or politically incorrect somehow [not sure which racism clause I'd be offending, but I'm sure there is one out there]... or rude for using a bad word on the sign.  Corruption of children et al.  And the request to the coop board to purchase a low iron fence for the front of the garden has brought on controversy for not having found one without sharp edges.  Children might maim themselves on it.  Not sure there have been mane reports of death by self infliction on a city fence, but if it is possible, there is a lawsuit somewhere to support it.

I digress.

This is really about the Ninja warriors of NYC.  Maybe Ninja gardeners too.