late / knotes

Leave a reply

Late! I keep forgettin’! Here are some notes…

Friday evening: Tying up loose ends. The last time I saw Rand I gave him a handshake and I think he was expecting a hug since I gave his wife Lisa a hug. I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

I intentionally did not give him a hug I was trying to be funny but it didn’t come off that way. So tonight I just saw Rand and I demanded that I give him a hug and I did just that.

I’ve known Rand over 40 years. Amazing! I DJ’d at his wedding to Lisa. That was a blast and a half. I think that was 30 years ago.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This afternoon while bicycling:
Her: That’s a fun buzzer
Me: Yes and it sounds like you
Her: Like me?
Me: Yes. Annoying

Then she said something else and I didn’t quite hear cuz I was about 100 ft away. I regret it because she might have actually been thinking it was a fun buzzer and I turned it into something stupid.

I’m used to people being rude sometimes when I bike and I was defensively offensive.
No excuse!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I guess summer is over now that all the stupid people are on the sidewalks in bike paths wearing their earbuds.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

A woman standing on the bike path at the corner of Marin and 18th in Newport.
I say to her “Darling, You’re standing in the bike path. That’s not a good place to be if you’re not on a bike ” A fellow bicycler chuckled when he heard me say that

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Pauls

Paul Hanley. I knew Paul Hanley in 1976-77. We were at school at Paramus Catholic, our freshman and sophomore years. We both enjoyed the Beatles. He gave me a copy of John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. It was a trade but I don’t remember what I swapped. I think he lived in Hillsdale. I grew up in Lodi. Paramus Catholic is a regional high school so I never saw him or anyone else outside of school. Except for Kevin Wagner and that other guy, I mentioned a few weeks ago. Paul and I did go to Manhattan once to see the St Patrick’s Day. Alone, unsupervised. Nothing bad happened and it set the seed for a future endeavor. I never saw Paul again after 1977

Paul Rigby. I worked with Paul Rigby in Saddle Brook at HBJ. We were movie buddies a few times. I saw Flash Gordon and Tootsie with him. I’m pretty sure he was gay. He went to Boston University and talked a lot about a Boston band called Rat Race Choir, which I didn’t know then, but is a line from a Bob Dylan song.

Paul Balderas. A deep guy. I fancied him somewhat, one of a series of straight male friends that I crushed on, sometimes unknowingly. Paul went to school with Rand, Jane, and a few other people that I knew. We shared a chemical bond of what seemed to be MDMA. I thought of him as a Kerouac type of guy, though I’m not sure if he felt the same. He was quite good looking and he knew it but there was no conceit. Some other tales are best left unsaid.

I almost included Paul Wickliffe. I worked for Paul at Skyline Studios and the main memory was when I really heard Take Five by Dave Brubeck. I asked him about it and he was somewhat thrilled to have someone younger than him, a music aficionado asking about a piece of music that the must have loved passionately. But that was about all I had about that particular Paul.

An anniversary

Leave a reply

It’s an anniversary. 24 years ago tonight I met Bill. It’s been a fun ride and it keeps going on and on which is fine by me and fine with Bill. It’s a relationship and it’s work. 24 years later it’s a little bit easier but with time comes age and with age comes worry. Health matters basically.

Nothing bad is happening but in the back of my mind, when Bill is here and not saying anything I panic and need to ask him to respond or make some sort of sound. He does just that, chuckling at my morbid paranoia.

I told Bill the story of my Mother on Mother’s Day in 1991 when sitting in her chair doing the New York Times Sunday crossword, she left, just like that. Who knows what my father was talking about when she passed but I guess when he looked over and saw she had passed away he was shocked.

Bill is a great talker and when he suddenly goes quiet I need to check and he understands. Bill and I were members of a Gay Yahoo Group, for Men who Like Men in Suits. That’s where I was 24 years ago.

I was into wearing suits as fetishwear and found a group of other men who were into it as well. I had gone to a few of these parties and always went home dejected. My sister was in town and drove me to the Path train from my apartment in Weehawken.

The party was on Ann Street and I took the elevator to the penthouse. I was determined to have a good time this time and availed myself of the beverages, which I think that night was mainly wine. That meant a mellow night.

At some point I was outside on a terrace, smoking a cigar, and from my memory, I was surrounded by suited men laughing at my bon mots when through the crowd I saw this brown-eyed handsome man in a mustard colored suit.

He certainly stood out in a sea of dark colored suits but I didn’t mind. A connection was made and he seemed to feel the same way. I saw Bill sitting in a chair while Erykah Badu was playing. Bill was vibing on the music and I walked up to him, asking ‘Do you dig Badu?’.

The wine emboldened me enough to make some physical moves on Bill in front of everybody else. A public display of affection or in this case, lust, is not my usual modus operandi. We wound up leaving together, both of us on the same train going uptown.

He was getting off at Union Square and I was continuing on. Before we parted I told him, ‘I’m feelin’ you kid’. We exchanged numbers and threw our chances into the air. Apparently, Bill had seen a photo of me in the Yahoo group page and it turned out I was just his type.

Little did he know what was coming on down the line. I sure didn’t, and here we are 24 years later!