Taking Care of the Tags, Part I

The irreverent, irascable, inventive and always interesting Splotchy tagged me with the Seven Untrue Facts Meme recently. And I love good tag! Sorry to take so long with it, Splotchy!

1. I hate hot sauces; I prefer my food bland and pablum-like.






2. I hate baseball, which my son has inherited from me.




3. I hate music, especially oldies, folk and punk rock.

4. I am a hard-core conservative. The death of Ronald Reagan was a black-letter day in my life.

5. I am always serious, never irreverent or fun-loving. Kim is just like that too-- that's why I married her.

6. I dislike red wine. Kim does too.




7. I don't agree with Teri Garr in the movie Mr. Mom when she says that raising children into healthy, functional adults is important work. Your life's work, in fact.

Another Birthday

Bubs has a nice tribute today to birthday boy Elvis Presley here and here. Elvis would have been 72 years old today. Bubs also reminded me of one of the great rock and roll quotes ever: John Lennon's pronouncement "Before Elvis, there was nothing."




Let's not forget one other birthday today, though: David Bowie, the Thin White Duke, who is 61 years old today!

I remember the first time I went to buy records-- yes, vinyl records, with my own money. It was in 1976. One of the records I bought was Bowie's The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars. Backed by guitarist Mick Ronson, the album, a vaguely conceptual one, kicks ass from beginning to end. I finally bought the cd not long ago and still love listening to it.

Try something: run a search on images of Bowie. Other than identical pictures, see if you can find two pictures where he looks alike. "Changes" indeed. He's had more incarnations than Spinal Tap. One band, Bongwater, even kidded about this in their eighties song "David Bowie Needs Ideas."

Bowie's done great work not only as a musician, but as a producer-- he produced some of Iggy Pop's best work, on Lust For Life and other albums.

The Let's Dance album, in 1983, was a big comeback album for Bowie, and on everyone's turntable at my college. I've included the video for the title track, "Let's Dance," his big breakthrough hit for that album.

By the way, you'll notice that he's wearing white gloves and obviously not actually playing the guitar (in last year's song "Hero of Nineteen Eighty-Three," the singer alludes to the subject of the song "finally" taking off his "silly white gloves." I've always assumed he's referring to this vid). The person who actually played that snarling riff was a then-unknown session musican named Stevie Ray Vaughn.

Happy Birthday David!

A Sense of Loss

About a week ago, I finally had a chance to watch a documentary I hadn't ever gotten around to seeing, Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt, which won the Oscar for best documentary in 1989. The Sulzer Library, near my home, has added it to its DVD collection.

I also realized the reason I hadn't seen it-- for years, it just hit too close to home.

In the summer of 1989, I ran into a friend I'd previously worked with at a popular Northside Chicago restaurant. It seemed that Rhodes, a guy we'd worked with, had not shown up to work one day (my friend still worked at the restaruant). It was not like Rhodes to do this. He was very reliable and very hard-working-- he also sold real estate on the side. For him to not show up without so much as a phone call set off red flags. A couple of days later, they finally found out what had happened. He'd developed PCP, pneumocystis pneumonia, a pneumonia common in AIDS patients. It is virulent and swift. Rhodes, who was as healthy as a horse, was dead within a couple of days.

It shook me up. Until then, AIDS was something I read about. I hadn't yet known anyone who died of it. After that, I'd know many.

One of the stereotypes about the restaurant business is that there are a lot of gay waiters. There's a grain of truth in that stereotype. It was probably rooted in the fact that for gay men who had to leave their homes and hometowns because of a lack of acceptance of their sexuality, escaped to urban areas where they found men who shared their sexuality and found an industry that accepted them. Working as a waiter for years, I met and became friends with a lot of gay men. At one restaurant I worked one summer, I was the only straight waiter, something the other waiters there (and I) found utterly amusing. I "integrated" the restaurant.

It reminded me of another institution I helped integrate: the Gentleman's Lunch in my college town. The Gentleman's Lunch started as an all-gay institution. A small group of gay men-- professors, professionals and students-- would gather at 1:00 P.M. every Saturday at E.L. Krackers, on 4th Avenue, in Charleston, Illinois. "Kracker's," as we called it, played mulitple roles. It was a dance club-- a disco, essentially, but during the day was a restaurant-- one of the only decent ones in town at that point.

The men would gather to chat, gossip and have conversations both lofty and trivial. When a handful of straight guys who'd become friends with most of this group were invited-- my friends Larry, Kevin and I-- it was truly an honor. A couple of the older guys dragged their feet a little, but others championed us.

The Gentleman's Lunch was truly one of the great things in my life. In the course of a lunch, we might hear gay and straight gossip, have a conversation about movies, comic books, music, world affairs, politics, literature, Hollywood "who's gay" gossip, history-- just about any topic you could think of, we covered it. It was our version of the Algonquin Round Table.

Eventually, the first woman, Jennifer, who was a lesbian who was president of the campus gay advocacy group, was invited. Eventually, even-- gasp!-- straight women were invited!

Right before I got my graduate degree, my parents even joined the Gentleman's Lunch. I remember that day that there were 21 of us at Lunch.

It was at the Gentleman's Lunch that I first discussed AIDS with anyone. A couple of the guys discussed a disease that seemed to be killing gay men in San Francisco and New York. It still didn't have a name yet. Over the course of the year or so, 1984 and 1985, the disease took a name-- Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS. And the first case of AIDS was reported in Champaign, the big college town 50 miles north of us. They talked about what little was known about preventing it-- preventing the transmission of bodily fluids.

This weekend, Adam and I had brunch with Jim, one of my friends who first invited me to the Gentleman's Lunch. I realized that nobody from the Gentleman's Lunch had died of AIDS. I can't say the same for people I worked at here in Chicago. As I watched Common Threads, it brought back memories of the early nineties, when I began to dread running into former co-workers. Had I heard about Rhodes? Yes, I had. You heard about Reggie, didn't you? Yes, and Andre is "sick." The euphemism "sick was understood. It began to wear me down-- guys I'd worked with and enjoyed knowing were dying swiftly and helplessly in numbers that I couldn't cope with.

One death in particular was devastating. I'd become friends with a guy I worked with at the same restaurant I'd worked with Rhodes at. I'd also become friends with his boyfriend Tim; I remember one night the spring of 1988 when I sat on the beach the entire night, until sunrise, with Tim talking about opening a restaurant; Tim wanted to have a place his long-time boyfriend-- who ironically had the same first name as me-- could work at. He wanted me to run the "front of the house," while his partner would run the "back of the house," the kitchen.

Tim's boyfriend, who was a cook, not a waiter, was one of the funniest, nicest people I ever worked with in the business. I would have loved to have run a business with him. The fact that we have the same first name would have made it even funnier.

Tim and his boyfriend would go Alaska every year and work for several months catching salmon-- Tim's family's business. They'd make so much money doing that that they could do what they wanted the rest of the year. Tim would go to college and his partner would work at the restaurant.

Eventually, they opened a futon store in Rogers Park. They did quite well with it. Until Tim's partner got "sick."

Looking back, when he died in 1992, I shut down emotionally for a long time. It was just too much.

Watching Common Threads brought back a lot of memories-- of a time before drug "cocktails" and drugs effective against PCP and other oppurtunistic infections brought the toll of AIDS down to a fraction of what it had been; to a time where every couple of days there was the obituary in the New York Times of yet another notable artist who'd died of AIDS; of a time when running into an old co-worker brought a knot in my stomach. A time of unbearable loss. I'm thankful that all my old friends of nearly a quarter century ago at the Gentleman's Lunch, with the exception of Pat, a professor who died of liver cancer, not AIDS, a few years ago, are alive and healthy. I'm thankful for "drug cocktails," and awareness. And I'm hopeful that there'll be a cure within my lifetime for this disease that has cast a shadow over my generation.

Occasional Forgotten Video- Peter Murphy, "Cuts You Up."

Peter Murphy was the singer for the great goth group Bauhaus in the eighties. Bubs had the great Bauhaus song "Terror Couple Kill Colonel" on his Random Ten yesterday, and it reminded me to post this beautiful, haunting video that came out in the early nineties.

That Would Explain A Lot...

Is it just me, but doesn't this picture, taken at the December 26th blogger get-together at Hala Kahiki, look a lot like the picture at the end of The Shining, the one with the scary-looking Jack Nicholson front and center? I mean, I'm just sayin'...

Hazy Shade of Winter Friday Random Ten

Well, Christmas is done, and now begins the job of slogging through the rest of a tough Chicago winter.

The impossible happened-- not one, but two people left Jury's, so I picked up three lucrative night shifts there. I'm cutting back on shifts at the Evanston place, but will still work there a couple of shifts a week. My finances are finally recuperating from the fiasco at the downtown restaurant. It's a big relief.

I'm looking forward to a new semester of school. I've already signed up for Biology 122 online, and have to go in next week during open registration to talk to an advisor to get an okay on Chemistry 201. I'm going to be a busy guy for the next few months. That's ten credit hours worth of classes. It'll get me warmed up for later in the program, when I'll be taking a full fifteen hour class load. And working full time. With one kid in college and one kid in high school, by then. Yikes.

1. Hazy Shade of Winter- Simon and Garfunkel
2. Creeper Is a Lowrider- Manic Hispanic
3. Blues Is King- Marshall Crenshaw
4. Outsider- The Ramones
5. Gas Station Women- Phil Ochs
6. Coming Up Close- 'Til Tuesday
7. Roadhouse Blues- The Doors
8. 1968- Dave Alvin
9. Julie's Been Working For The Drug Squad- The Clash
10. The Fight- The dB's

Notes:
1. Love this original, but also liked the Bangles' version, done for the movie Less Than Zero.
2. A cover of the Ramones' "Sheena Is A Punkrocker," by the latino punk group Manic Hispanic.
3. This guy should have had way more success than he did.
4. What's a Friday Random Ten without the Ramones?
5. Phil Ochs loved country music, and it shows on this song.
6. This lovely song defines "bittersweet." I've always assumed this song, their second hit after "Voices Carry," was an epitaph for her relationship with singer-songerwriter Jules Shear. I especially love the line about sitting in a car listening to a Dylan tape. She's happily married these days to singer-songwriter Michael Penn (brother of Sean and the late Christopher Penn).
7. Love this racuous song.
8. Former Blaster Dave Alvin singing about a Vietnam War vet.
9. The Clash sing a song about betrayal.
10. From "Like This," one of my favorite records of the eighties, finally available again on cd.

First Dates

Tonight was a funny night at work. I was working at my primary job, Jury's. Toward the end of the night, there was a couple who I figured out was on a first date.

I'm good at figuring out some ages-- kids, for instance. I can tell by subject of conversation, demeanor, etc. what age kids are, especially if they're around the same ages of my kids. It gets murkier as people get into their twenties and thirties. My guess was that this couple were late twenties/early thirties.

It was funny to watch. She talked more than he did. She'd never been there, but I'm pretty sure he had. She took my recommendation on food and wine (the Reuben and Big House Red). She talked a lot more than he did. Sometimes that indicates nervousness. In this case, I don't think it did-- I though it indicated confidence.

They stayed and talked for some time. I was complimented on my recommendations. Sometimes this indicates what we servers call "the verbal tip." This means that they compliment you on your service and your ability to read them and their preferences, and that makes it okay to leave a tip that is under ten percent. I could tell that she and her date, who was paying and tipping, would not do that.

And what I could also tell was that the date was not, in the end, the right one. I felt a little bad for them.

It did, though, make me think of another first date, back in 2004. I was in the middle of a bunch of first (and usually last) dates. Two years after splitting from my wife Cynthia, I had decided it was time to start dating again. I'd decided it was also time to be a little more systematic about it; rather than the luck of the draw of whoever landed in my life, I thought I'd try the Matches section of the Chicago Reader. I discovered that it was now mostly electronic.

After a few horrendous dates, I found myself in an Argentinian restaurant a couple of blocks from where I'd lived with two of the closest friends I've ever made made in my life, Dan and Mark, in the late eighties. I could tell from the moment I laid eyes on her that she was trouble-- good trouble.

I was the one who talked too much; if you know both she and I, you know that this is not an easy feat.

About a half hour into the date, I stole (or actually paraphrased) a line from Alvy Singer, Woody Allen's character in Annie Hall. There's a scene where they're on their first date. He stops her at some random point and says "Kiss me." And he explains; otherwise, all night, we'll both be worried about "when do we have that first kiss." If they just do it, get that first kiss out of the way, they can actually enjoy the rest of the evening.

I didn't say that (though we did have our first kiss that night, while we sat having a beer at the Hopleaf). I stopped and said "Hey-- we're going to have a second date, aren't we?"

We did have a second date. And a third, and fourth.

A few weeks later, at a party at our friends Greg and Christina's home, I knew that I was going to marry her. And we ended up getting married there, in that place, on December 30, 2005. It was our second anniversary a few days ago. We have never had dinner or a drink even together for our anniversary. The reason for this is that we've never been together on our anniversary. The reason for this is that we always take our kids to visit their grandparents right after Christmas. Our kids are the most important thing in our lives.

Kim took Mel up to Minnesota. I didn't take Adam to Tennessee-- we didn't have the money. He understood, but it was not easy. I hope he understands that it was so that I could stay in school and finish what I'm doing, and allow him to go wherever he wants in college and do whatever he wants in life. My goal since he was born has been to make sure that he can go to college wherever he wants. It's first on the list of life goals that I have and that I've referred to on this blog. And he also knows that we can go visit them in March. I think he also, like me, wishes that we could go see my mother before her hip replacement surgery next month.

I think that both of our kids had trepidations about our marriage, for various reasons. In the end, though, I think that both our kids are okay with our marriage. They're mature enough to want their parents to be happy. They actually appreciate one another as siblings. And they are, I think, appreciating their step-parents.

I've had it easy. I love being a parent-- especially after being a badass for much of my adult life. I'm also, usually, the Good Cop. I'm the one who plays baseball, catch or Frisbee with my son until it hurts. I'm the one who picks my stepdaughter up early at afterschool and goes to Trader Joes and lets her get the free samples and talks to her about music or whatever else she wants to talk about. I also take them both for bike rides, no matter the fact that I am always exhausted and that I'm much older than any of the parents or step-parents involved (I'm much closer to fifty than any of them).

But a little over two years ago, in a beautiful apartment owned by our beautiful friends Gregg and Christina, with a beautiful view of Lake Shore Drive and Lake Michigan, with our other beautiful friends (two of my closest friends, Larry and Jim, and Kim's friends Elefteria and Jesse and Sheb and Zach, who are now my friends, were there), with our two beautiful children, Adam and Mel, got married on the date we chose, December 30, the birthday of one of the most beautiful people who ever walked this planet, punk poetess Patti Smith. Two years later, we're still married. I guess all that beauty worked, didn't it, my beautiful wife?

New Year's Day

Making New Year's resolutions is a risky venture-- I always think of the quote, attributed to many, "Do you want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans." Still, I think it's a good idea to have some goals, even if you can't attain all of them.

First, I vow not to be discouraged politically-- I have faith that enough of the middle people in the United States have seen through the charade of the right in this country, realizing they represent not the values of fiscal conservatism, public safety and a rational foreign policy, but a wholesale looting of this country, a lack of regard for the well-being of anybody who is not a rich Republican and a wreckless, counter-productive foreign policy.

I vow to make sure to spend enough time with my wife and kids, despite a schedule that is going to be busy.

I vow to keep at my goal of changing careers-- to keep working toward the goal of a degree in Pharmacy, that will lead to a career that will allow me to make sure my kids can do what I was not able to do-- go wherever they want for college and study whatever they want-- and to make sure that Kim and I can eventually retire comfortably.

To read more.

To get back to posting on this blog at least once a day.

To make sure to spend time with long-time friends like Larry, Dan, Jim, Andreas, Ron and others.

To make sure to keep enjoying the bloggers I read every day.