As I prepared to head back to Palm Springs after a great weekend in San Diego, I noticed my car was acting funny. Precisely, my gear shift was odd. Reverse didn’t work all the time. So, I thought, before I head up the freeway, I’ll pull over and check my transmission fluid. I pulled into a parking lot near Balboa Park and parked. (I want all those “parks” to be in that previous sentence.) Transmission fluid was full, no problem there. I got back in the Jag and reverse didn’t work. I couldn’t get the car in reverse. I tried and tried. I cussed. I turned the car off and walked around. I got back in. Still no reverse. I was stuck in a parking place. Sweating, I found my AAA card. I called. It was very difficult to describe where I was because it was a parking lot. “P” as in Paul, parking lot, that kinda thing. The tow truck arrived after a long, hot half-hour. The driver couldn’t find a place to hook his chain to the back of my car. I suggested we try and push it, I was afraid he was going to rip my back bumper off or rip something off in the back of my car. I put the car in reverse and we pushed. It started to move. Then it really caught some steam and was zooming backward. I was thinking, how will we stop it before it hits another car? So I jumped forward and thought I might get in the driver’s seat and slow it down. Just then the tow truck driver stopped pushing, the car slowed down, and I tried to walk forward. But I couldn’t. I looked down as I heard my knee crack. The front tire of my car was running over my foot. The tire got to the peak of my top foot arch then “reversed” and rolled back off my foot. Sounds and sights slowed down, everything was white. Slow motion. I’ll never forget watching the tire roll across my foot then reverse and roll back off. The motor of the tow truck was as loud as a plane taking off. I yelled to the driver that the car had just rolled across my foot. “You ok, man?” “No,” I yelled. “My fucking car just ran over my foot.” I hobbled to the curb and took off my running shoe. (I wasn’t wearing sandles which is a good thing.) My foot was red but it didn’t look crushed. “You ever have a car run over your foot”, I yelled to the driver. “Lots a times, man. If you can wiggle your toes you’re ok.” I wiggled my toes. But I didn’t feel ok.

I can’t talk politics.  I’ll choke.  I can’t talk current administration.  I’ll die. 

I need to get in touch with JANE ROTROSEN at the Jane Rotrosen Agency.  Call me.  Email me.   

“He’s not from distinguished people who had anything lurid going on.”   

(Refer to Moving, Part One if you wish but you don’t have to)…

I purged great mounds of files during the move.  And I feel lighter as a result.  All that dust and paper, all that history which is recorded elsewhere, all the sticky notes and new legal pads with one page written on — all gone, shredded into oblivion.  I found a sticky note under my desk that I’d written on and dated August, 1999.  That’s just one insight into the job I had before me and how crowded my office was with gobs of similar forgotten pieces of thoughts.  I will be a leaner and cleaner me here in the new pad.  I swear… 

All the furniture survived unscathed.  The guest bedroom is still piled high with boxes of books.  I unpack at my own pace.  I’ll be in San Diego this coming weekend with Mr. Luke and then he’ll be here the following weekend.  This is the best thing to happen to me since the last best thing happened. 

I’m back into the new novel and it’s changed quite a bit due to painful yet dynamic literary changes in my bio family life.  I will say this, without giving a single thing away from the new novel — family members don’t realize how much pain they create and hang onto in spite of being able to take a breath and let the emotions fly like saucers.  Alas, I’m catching all the breathless moments as if they had been thrown to me.  I’m a great catcher. 

So the moving chapter is over and the settling in chapter begins.  It doesn’t get any better than this. 

Now, let’s impeach Bush and Cheney.  We are as close to a dictatorship in this country as we ever have been. 

bye. 

In the desert home, ceaseless freedom is rampant.  I’m getting the feel of it.  I’ll take a swim, come back in, and rattle.

On this day in 1969 the Stonewall riots began in New York City. They lasted for 3 nights. The Stonewall Inn was a “gay” bar and the patrons of the bar had finally had enough of the police and public harrassment. So they fought back. It was the beginning of the modern day Gay Rights movement.

So much has been gained over the last 38 years. And there is still so much ground to till for further growth in the culture regarding gay issues. Intolerance toward gays is the providence of, amazingly, religious people who preach hate… It is time to build a stone wall against gay prejudice in this country. It should, under no circumstances, be tolerated.

Bless you, Tom Young, my friend and writing comrade. Your life ended far too early. I am doing my best to keep our Stonewall script/movie dreams alive… I love you, Perky’s dad.

… it is far more desirable to be on the arriving end of the move than it is to be on the departing end of the move…

I’m home.

Our defense budget dollars at work – a gay bomb funded by the Defense Department, meant to drop chemicals on the enemy, chemicals intended to turn the troops gay — so that instead of fighting, the soldiers would be lying around in fox holes all over the battlefields, having neverending sex — so much sex that they would forget about their weapons and would be an easy kill for the U.S. Military. 

KABOOM. You’re gay. 

Does a Straight Bomb act the same way? 

Luke and I are moving to Palm Springs.  The last time I moved, twelve years ago, from Vashon Island in Washington State to San Diego, I remember telling myself as I poured my belongings into boxes that I would sort through all my personal papers once I arrived in San Diego.  Well, I didn’t. 

During the middle of the seven years we lived on Vashon Island Luke and I moved to Flatridge, Virginia during the summer of 1992.  We lived in my deceased maternal grandparents’ farmhouse.  A U-Haul was rented and every last thing from the Vashon Island house was crammed into the U-Haul.  I even dragged my Peugeot behind the U-Haul on an orange carrier that left the back tires to bounce across three thousand miles of hot pavement while the front tires were tied down, pointing skyward.  And let me not forget the green and white Chevy pickup truck, with no AC, that Luke and I traded off on driving behind the U-Haul and bouncing Peugeot.  We lived in Flatridge for exactly three months and then turned around and moved everything, including both vehicles, back across the country to Vashon Island. 

Before the move to Vashon Island, I alternated between Seattle and L.A. for 10 years, never bothering to purge papers or clothes.  I simply added to my swelling menagerie.  And before that, I attended 4 colleges.  I moved from one to the next one, adding to the initial belongings I took with with me after I graduated High School in Roanoke, Virginia. 

The point of this post?  Tonight, some thirty-five years after graduating High School, I came across two things:  a letter I wrote to my maternal grandmother when I was seven-years-old and never mailed and a shirt I wore during the summer of ‘73 when I traveled to St. John’s, Newfoundland to Memorial University where I had been accepted.  The question is:  will I finally purge my personal papers and clean my closets or continue icing the uneaten moving cake as I head into the desert to start the next phase of my life on Earth?  Stay tuned…

The Dixie Chicks were hammered into the dead wood of their careers a few years ago because of a statement about President Bush, who now needs a War Czar. His excuse for the continuing occupation of Iraq is that Al Qaeda is gaining strength in Iraq. But Al Qaeda did not exist in Iraq before his invasion. His war has brought Civil War to Iraq and has created a new training ground for Al Qaeda. And Bin Laden lives on.

This past week Rosie O’Donnell received as much if not more “news” coverage than the President. It is clear, diversion and fear-mongering are the primary domestic policies of the current administration and the entertainment/news media is more than willing to oblige, just like they did with the Dixie Chicks.

Back to the Chicks:

“Our children are watching us, they put their trust in us, they’re gonna be like us, let’s learn from our history, and do it differently…

…I Hope” Rosie. Now buck up. Take a leave of absence from the public view. Don’t become a tragedy on display. You’re better than that.