Fall Back Disposition

New York City has several recurring themes, most built around notions of high highs and low lows. The city has never been lovelier than it is right now. A perfect summer fading into a truly luscious autumn. More trees and green space than have been seen in centuries, harking back to early industrial times when the city was mostly farmland. A recent panicky shark sighting off Long Island turned out to be a huge pod of dolphins, and whales are so numerous in the harbors that a marine biologist has hailed this "the new Cape Cod." But then my friend Adam Jay, minding his business on his way to our friend Terry's party on Friday night spotted some man making business on the sidewalk.

"I wanted to post about it on Facebook," he told me later, "But had to look up the spelling of defecate to make sure I got it right."

That's New York City for you. The more things change in this city that never stops changing, the more it can't completely shake the vestiges of the past. There is something about this place. You are forced by circumstances to always be moving forward and yet the city makes it so difficult to let go of everything that has come before. Naturally I mean this both in the sense that memories made here can be hard to shake and that you could literally be stuck with the same couch for decades solely because it is impossible (read: too expensive) to get rid of.

Lounging on a chaise lounge in 2001 that, for some reason, I still have. 

I have been writing about New York City since before I arrived and my love of the city hasn't changed (even if I don't write about it as much as I used to). This place is magical. Period. But it is a cruel dark magic, like Ariel trading her voice for legs. You give up so much just to have the most basic necessities. No wonder people who live everywhere else think we are insane. But loving New York City is a form of Stockholm Syndrome. You're a prisoner but where else can you get a bagel like this?

Adam lives in Los Angeles now and while it has many fine qualities (eternal sunshine, air you can see and taste), it's no Manhattan. LA too often can feel like those commercials for depression medication where a sad lady is standing alone in the middle of a party filled with happy, laughing people. "I can't feel my life." Carrie Fisher wrote in Postcards From The Edge and that is LA. You can definitely feel your life in New York City but mostly because it has cut you and you're bleeding.

I realized at Terry's party that it has literally been forever (March) since I wrote about the city. It isn't that I haven't gone out, it is just that my desire to write has. Jimmy made some remark about his long absence from my blog, but it is the blog itself that is long absent. "I think it might be over," I declared, saying out loud what I had been thinking for a long, long time. But here I am again.

Cub and Chris got married this weekend and it reminded me that it has been a long time since I saw them. A quick dash through my blog and I relived quite probably every single interaction we have ever had. A brief, sporadic friendship was writ large, no moment lost to the ravages of time. In that moment, I realized that even as my writing has annoyed and exasperated those closest to me for years, the truth is also that it has documented all of those small moments, good and bad, that make us New Yorkers.

Meeting Cub and Chris at Ben Harvey's birthday brunch in 2009, as New Yorkers do.

We can lose institutions, from Joan Rivers to Roseland, that we thought would stand forever.  Memories can dim and pictures can fade but words are eternal. And if the man relieving himself against the wall of a Broadway theater on my way home after the party is any indication, so is public urination.

Only in New York, kids. Only in New York.

Litttle Girl Lost

A weekend at Disneyland. Rough job right?

Attended Gay Days Anaheim, the coy unofficial name for three days of fun in the Magic Kingdom, with winking approval from Mickey. I like Disneyland. The artifice doesn’t bother me. If anything, I find it comforting, which I suppose is the key to their success. The magic’s in the clean, careful consistency, the sheer repetitiveness of the images. Alice isn’t just a girl who fell down a hole, Disney insists, she is a ride, and a spinning tea cup and a parade float, graphic t-shirt, film on DVD and an opportunity to sing-a-long for generations to come. Sara Lee, Aunt Jemima and Betty Crocker combined can’t match the magnificent force of commerce that embodies a Disney Princess ™. The consequence is a total immersion in Wonderland itself, a magical place where wallets open like blooming flowers as busy Disney bees eagerly pollinate.

There were a smattering of listeners who recognized me throughout my adventure, and I stood by warmly, posing for pictures, feeling a bit like a face character (a young Orange County teen drafted to physically recreate a mermaid, a fag prince, or a young woman undone by a cursed spindle). It continues to be the height of silliness that anyone would want my picture, autograph or the chance to sit next to me on a rollercoaster, but it beats stuffing envelopes or working in a sewer. At least Disneyland feels like an appropriate venue to act out my childhood fantasies of fame, however misguided or narcissistic they may be.

I say all the time that some people never get over being a twelve year old girl and some people (gay men) never get over not being one. It is such a little girl notion to want people to think you are pretty and stand next to you. Guilty as charged I guess. For a day or two at least. Then I can go back to the four walls of my house where neighbors only care that I remember to mow the lawn every once in a while and lay awake at night wondering how much longer I will be driving that loud car down their previously silent street.

My generation, if I have one Carrie Fisher, is trapped in perpetual childhood. The gays live forever like extras in Saved By The Bell, if the new class had never arrived to relieve them of their teen duties. Marriage? No thank you! I just need a date to the prom. Toy collecting instead of child-rearing. I fear the Me Generation has birthed the Me Me Me Generation. Who am I to swim against the tide? Besides, being a kid, for the most part, is a lot of fun. The downside is how easily your feelings can be hurt when things don't always go your way. Hence the fierce partisanship of the country, frivolous lawsuits (this spilled coffee is everyone's fault but mine!), and truly outlandish public behavior by petulant man-children who, like Disney's Peter Pan, never grew up, but did learn to multitask on planks extended over crocodile-infested revenue streams.

After Disneyland, I visited real live children at my Mom's house, spending a few hours with my nieces and nephew before flying home. In between I planned to attend Dennis Hensley's delightful bowling birthday party. Somehow my intensely emotional three year old niece got the idea in her head that she was going to a birthday party too. When no such party materialized, she collapsed in utter devastation by the front door, sobbing inconsolably. My sister rushed to the kitchen to find something that could approximate birthday cake while I tried to explain to her that she really didn't want to come to the party with me.

"It's for old people." I insisted, but she was unbowed.

Through tears she declared, "I want to go to the old lady birthday house!"

How do you explain to a three year old that the party in the bowling alley with cupcakes, a coloring book project, and all the licorice you can eat is strictly a middle-aged affair? In a way, you can't. A Popsicle in her mouth and SpongeBob on the tv and moments later she forgot that I had ever been there, let alone the despair surrounding the never to be seen old lady birthday house.

From the happy confines of Dennis' birthday party, I sped away to the airport for one last thrill ride. Flying still fills me with the childlike wonder that only a barely passing grade in Physics can give you. No matter how many times it is explained to me, I will never understand how that big heavy plane full of people lifts off the ground and travels thousands of miles in a matter of hours. To me it is as magical as the Peter Pan ride at Disneyland. Perhaps we don't get over being a kid because the unknowing wonder of it all is so much better than the crushing miseries of adulthood. The safety bar can barely keep you in your seat, let alone contain your excitement as you whirl over Victorian London, so much better than regulation coach seats and lopsided exchange rates. You spin past Big Ben as the clock strikes "past your bedtime" as you journey past the second star on the right and on until Morning. If only a Popsicle was enough to calm our adult tears and life's disappointments, but for a $91 park hopper pass and a little imagination, you can get by.