Computer Commons on a Tuesday Afternoon

Another crying baby. It frets and wails disconsolately for an hour or more while its stoically oblivious parent frowns into a computer screen and pecks at a keyboard. Finally it is tucked and quieted and strolled away. Presently another infant takes its place, accompanied by another unmindful caregiver.

It must be annoying, even unsettling, but no one says anything. Not to the parent, not to the staff, not to security, and certainly not to the baby.

Electronic Communication

Three times I had to search OutlookOffice365 before I could get the damn thing to open... Why was I trying to so hard to get past the error messages? There is nothing new here, nothing at all.

The Price of Progress

It is a bright crisp morning, so sunny that the warmth of the sun makes up nicely for the unseasonable chill. I would like to be outside walking in this but I can't. It is Monday and I am at work.  Time was when Mondays were my scheduled day off. Now I have Mondays free only when it observes a holiday.

I am in Microfilm again, making a pretense of reading my assigned drawers. I am sulking, doing this perfunctorily. I try to concentrate but am too busy wishing I was elsewhere on this lovely day to make much headway. I am so sick of the Chicago City Directories. Why these microfilms, anyway? Why not Life or Look or Seventeen, whose content would at least be more interesting as I check for accuracy and quality.

An elderly customer strides in and parks himself at a reader diagonally opposite mine. He has just turned on the machine when suddenly he thinks of something. "Crap," he says irritably, and jumps up. He strides to the front of the room disappearing momentarily behind posts and signage. Then he returns, takes his seat, and resumes loading the film roll onto the machine. He does not notice me watching him, engrossed in his task. His thick hair and full beard are much more salt than pepper and his face is lined. But he is trim and brown and purposeful and his hands look strong.

Reel 25 - 1915 Alphabetical Only is problematic. It is difficult to know for sure if he correct roll is in the box labeled Feb. 1915; June 1915; Oct. 1915 because the quality is poor--not the tape itself but the microfilmed pages on it. They are so faded as to be nearly impossible to see, forget about read. Even using the zoom and the--what's it called? The wheel thingee you turn this way and that for sharpness and clarity?--even fiddling with the controls doesn't help. There should be handwritten text on the START panel identifying the rolls's beginning content but that too has faded out to streaks of ghostly, skeletal markings. I make a note of this on my lined pad.

I keep scrolling and scanning the film. Eventually a sequence card displays the Feb. 1915 Alphabetical information; a little further along there is another for June 1915. I presume if I keep scrolling I will encounter another for Oct. 1915. This part of the film is much easier on the eyes as the page quality has significantly (I hesitate to say "dramatically") improved. I would like to say that if this day were mine to do with as I please I'd be in Washington Park right now taking some air and getting some much needed exercise. I'd like to say that but honestly maybe not. Maybe I'd do what I often do when I don't have to work, sit in my easy chair watching Boomer television. The Mod Squad, I happily note, has made a return to ME-TV's summer programming. That's almost the only change, other than the weekly addition of Sunday afternoon's The Love Boat and The Rockford Files.

Maybe I'd be reading. I read a lot but I should read more than I do. I don't lack for literature; lately I've checked out enough library books to warrant their own shelf in the bookcase above my bed. If I were home now probably I would be reading. But then again maybe not. There's what you say you will do with your time given a chance and what you actually wind up doing. I came to work depressed, thinking about all this.

I come now to a panel on the microfilm that is striking in its clarity and old-time formatting. It is a cover page and inside its bordering, large Times New Roman lettering says TELEPHONE DIRECTORY. Underneath this is a circle inside a circle. A narrow band of of capitalized wording in a different font says CHICAGO TELEPHONE COMPANY and AMERICAN TELEPHONE & TELEGRAPH CO. In the inner circle there is a picture of a bell shaded in black with the words LOCAL AND LONG DISTANCE TELEPHONE stenciled on it. Underneath the black bell appear the words BELL SYSTEM. Outside the graphic, in larger lettering, it says CHICAGO AND ADJOINING COUNTIES and (in smaller font) June, 1915.

The next page shows an artist's depiction of a couple in old-fashioned clothing. If this was 1978 or 1989 or even 1995 I would describe their outerwear as "turn of the century" but not now. They are standing together in a lush setting under a palm tree. The woman has her hands in the pockets of her jacket and her expression is vaguely wistful. The man standing next to her has not time for wistfulness. His back is to her and he is looking through binoculars at several steamships in the distance navigating a strait. The picture is captioned "The Price of Progress" and there is something here in the accompanying text about the Panama Canal being "the most marvelous achievement of the age." I haven't time to read more. I am due, I think, at Newspapers and General Periodicals.

Saturday Morning

I am not liking today's schedule.

This is the kind of scheduling that makes me wish so fervently that I'd been assigned back to my neighborhood facility, warts and all. Were I there instead of here, I'd be working the big busy desk charging things out and checking them in, and/or (probably and) assisting with incoming stations. Or I'd be moving along the aisles maneuvering trucks groaning under the weight of returned items (always and inevitably re-routing materials to outgoing stations trucks for return to their branches of origin). The morning would hum with activity, then settle into the kind of quiet that lets a person think a bit.

Not this regimented one hour here, the next hour there, and so on. I didn't need daily spreadsheets telling me what my workday would be. At the neighborhood branch I knew what needed to be done and as time and circumstances permitted I did it. I knew my job. I was good at it.

Half my day today will be spent in the time machine room. As a patron I used to like that room a lot. I had no thoughts then of working for the city, least of all in a library. Being posted to that room each day reminds me why I felt that way. I loved libraries, I always did, but was convinced that working in one would somehow spoil both my enjoyment of the facility and all my childhood memories of what public libraries--especially the stately main downtown building--repre

CoffeeCake

It's early. 37 minutes more before we open for the day. I am in the staff kitchen, silently cursing my stupidity as I visualize the unintended whereabouts of my carefully prepared lunchbox of tuna salad, Ritz crackers, yogurt cup and apple slices. I am hoping the day will be a quiet one, hoping plans and preparations for the approaching holiday occupy most of our regulars.

Moira, white, attractive and slender, arrives a few minutes behind me. Eight months in and I still don't know precisely what Moira does or what her title is, just that she's one of the full-timers here who moves like she runs the place. She is bearing several cardboard boxes and a large square pan. She places them all carefully on the table close to the center, and invites me to help myself. The boxes contain small wrapped sub sandwiches, saran-wrapped pickles spears, and little individual condiment and plastic-ware packets. The pan is a chocolate chip coffeecake Moira proudly announces she made herself. She pulls paper plates from the shelf over the sink and generously offers me one of the thick pre-cut squares, along with my choice of sandwich and pickle.

I accept immediately, grateful for the lunch solution. The coffeecake looks amazing, the darkly glistening, half-buried chocolate chips dotting nearly the entire surface. I shouldn't, my sugar intake has been off the charts lately... I wolf it down. I am going to have a raging headache within the hour but it is totally worth it. The cake is dense and sweet; it is effing delicious.

I enjoy it so much that I wait a few minutes as Moira busies herself making coffee, then sneak back into the kitchen when I think she's gone to take another piece--maybe two--for later. She walks in and catches me at it. A blink-and-you've-missed-it side-eye as she serenely pulls down coffee cups.

"As long as there's enough for my team," she cautions politely and I am immediately chastened. I decide to keep the piece I've already wrapped in foil and stored in the fridge alongside my sandwich but abandon the idea of taking any more. I am embarrassed at my greed and Moira's observation of it. Annoyed too, faintly. Something about her demeanor--that super-polite tone with the hint of cool disapproval underneath it--suddenly reminds me of Molly. Molly with the delicate fine-boned face and tiny, ballerina waist. Is there a secret club all white women of a certain age belong to? For a moment, I hate Moira Conner and her precious homemade chocolate chip coffeecake and wish we'd never encountered each other. Maybe I should return that second piece, along the with the deli sandwich and the pickle. I can buy my own damn lunch.

It is later. I sit at my desk, munching the last of the pickle, stewing about Moira, I mean Molly, I mean Moira.

I mean Molly.

Actually not so much Molly as all of them, the whole Mulvaney clan, remembering them and Mom and me some 20 years ago, around the time of Molly's engagement to James. Remembering how afraid my mother was.

Here were these strangers, her in-laws-to-be, affluent, educated, attractive--the youthful Mulvaney women especially--and brimming with confidence and social ease. Their elder daughter, a University of Chicago law student, was living with her son in a Hyde Park apartment somewhere off Cornell. Jamie was waiting tables at that pizza place on Kenwood. What did he see in her? And why a white girl? A girl from a family so different from his own? If he was trying to make his mother feel insecure and off-balance he couldn't have come up with a better choice. I watched Mom try to be happy for Jay but I could see that... well, she had her doubts. Put it that way.

Miranda Mulvaney was happily married to the father of her four grown children. She had a thriving career of her own, was slim as her daughters, drove her own car, and was friendly and outgoing. My mother, a billing manager for a tire company, had none of these things. The Mulvaneys celebrated everything and there was a lot to celebrate: the sale of Mike's company upon his decision to retire, Peter's promotion and posting to London, the publication of Danny's new novel, Kelly's acceptance to Barnard. Whenever my mother found herself in the company of this family of accomplished, globetrotting go-getters she was reminded of everything her family wasn't, everything she wasn't, I knew.

So she kept me close. I was moral support. Maybe also a shield of sorts. From the first I felt this. But listen, I had my own insecurities and didn't liked to be chained to my mother every time she faced a gathering of the Mighty Mulvaneys.

Did I ever tell you this story..? The Joy Luck Club story? Yeah, well.

In the fall of '93, some weeks before the wedding, Miranda Mulvaney decided it would be nice if she and her girls and Maude and her daughter could do something together, just the women. There was this new movie she and the girls had been wanting to see, and she thought--why didn't we all meet at the theater and see it together? And have dinner afterward, her treat? I will never know with what degree of enthusiasm or reluctance my mother accepted this invitation. But she did and then she called to tell me. I was immediately wary. What movie?

What movie, Mom?

Well (long pause) it's based on that book by Amy Tan.

Amy Tan? What book? Which book? (Oh no...)

It--oh, what's it called--it talks about the lives of these Chinese America women and their daughters.

Uh-huh. (Oh shit... Oh no.)

I was aghast. Seriously? This was the way Miranda Mulvaney thought we should begin to get to know one another? The five of us passing popcorn back and forth through a 2 and 1/2 hour angst fest exploring the whys and wherefores of mothers and daughters who don't understand each other? And then, what, spending another hour or so dissecting it over dinner? I cringed at the very thought.

You have to understand: nearly all of my life my feelings for my mom have been this complicated, love-hate thing. I couldn't summon one iota of enthusiasm at the prospect of spending hours in the dark next to her, watching this of all films and then talking about the meaning of it all with three women who were near strangers to me.

I did my best to get out of going but my mother would have none of it. She half-bullied, half-begged me to cooperate. It would not have been nice to decline Miranda Mulvaney's invitation, it would not have been polite--these two would be mothers-in-law soon and grandmothers eventually, after all--and she was goddamned if she was going to face these suburban superwomen alone. (And besides, if Miranda Mulvaney's invite was the only way to get me to a movie my mother had been hoping we'd go see together anyway, so be it. Every time Mom saw a TV advertisement for The Joy Luck Club she nudged me.)

Honey, it's one evening out of your life.

What could I do? I swallowed my resentment and misgivings and I went. And... I don't know. It was chilly, but I don't remember what I wore. We ate somewhere close to the theater, but I don't remember where or what I ordered. I don't remember the post-movie conversation. Just the awkwardness and the super-politeness and the strain in my mother's voice. Or maybe it was my voice. Whatever, I couldn't wait to get away. From all of them, Mom included. I felt guilty for feeling that way and then angry about the guilt. The old conundrum.

I wonder if, after my mother dies, I will continue to write words like this. Will the remainders of love and guilt prevent any more of these conflicted ruminations about her and me? Or will her absence make the musings easier? I can't even hazard a guess.

It's late. Time to go.

Denial

I watch the local news, shaking my head. There is some kind of disconnect here that is not being talked about, at least, it seems, not publicly. It's no good marching arm in arm in the streets with matching tee shirts and signs, chanting Cease fire! and Put down the guns! and No more body bags! when the shooters are in fact your neighbors and kin and the self-imposed No Snitch rule remains hard and inviolate. Are the shooters gangbangers? Are the gangbangers strangers, some implacable alien force invading the borders of your community?

Or are they your children?

Brunch with Audrey

The skin on her face is so smooth, and her eyes so velvet and soft that though she is darker even than my half-sister I look at her think helplessly of Audrey Hepburn. Audrey, or some winsome, movie-star princess like her.

Her smile is Audrey's too. It's enchanting; warm and wide and very, very white. Her smile, and the way it animates her eyes, is what cinched my longing for her. Almost immediately I became obsessed with the ear to ear width of her smile and the perfection of her teeth. Now, surreptitiously, I watch her from across the table, trying not to stare, determined not to telegraph too much too soon. Audrey takes delicate sips of iced water, her long cocoa brown fingers sliding along the condensation beading the glass. She takes another bite of her ham and spinach omelet, laughing a self-conscious little laugh as she chews, trying to maneuver the bits of food in her mouth and still talk intelligibly. She startles and her hand jumps toward her face. When my half-sister does this I want to gag but on Audrey it's just adorable. Adorkable. From now on, in nice restaurants on Sundays, I will order omelets and eat them like Audrey does, winningly and with feminine gestures, even though the smell, really the very thought, of cooked eggs makes me violently ill sometimes.

She laughs again, mispronouncing superfluous. She forks more omelet, chasing chunks of egg and ham around her plate, and swallows. I reach for my water glass and take long, deep swigs, trying not to gulp.

A week or so later Audrey and I went to the Music Box to see The Last Waltz. Afterward we went to a steakhouse, a fancy one on the Near North side, and had dinner. I ordered grilled salmon. Audrey's ribeye was extremely rare.

This was our last date.

Pride 2014

I was wondering what to do for Pride Month now that June is finally upon us, when a handsome young man with the dark hair, skin and eyes of an Arab aristocrat walked up. "These are for you," he said, slapping two pamphlets on the counter and pushing them toward me. The cover of one pamphlet was titled The Watchtower: Announcing Jehovah's Kingdom, the other was titled Awake!

"Thank you," I told him politely but before the words were completely out of my mouth he had turned and was walking away. I picked the pamphlets up and looked at them. Then I threw them into the  recycling wastebasket under the counter, still deciding about Pride.

Off Wednesday

16 April

It's afternoon, about 3 PM, my day off. I am trying to relax.

Two days ago I made what felt like a cracking good beginning, writing up what I'd hoped would be a blog contribution, the first perhaps of many, to the new Chicago Public Library's website. A combination essay and review of two books I have been sort of reading lately, both of them unsparing examinations of African American homophobia.

Sort of reading because I pick up these books, get absorbed in pages and pages... and then stop. Start and stop. Start and stop. Dropping them to wander back to Beatlemania, grizzly bear attacks, Windows 8.1 tutorials, and Barbra Streisand (specifically Hello Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand by William Mann). But after a while something, some need, draws me back to The Greatest Taboo: Homosexuality In Black Communities, edited by Delroy Constantine-Simms, and Homophobia In The Black Church: How Faith, Politics, And Fear Divide The Black Community by Anthony Stanford. I read avidly, hungrily. But not for long.

I don't know. Momentarily I'm hampered by technology; I don't know how to create a blog on the new CPL website or upload images of books I'm reading to it. But I'm hampered by something else as well, a creeping sense of dread and sadness and anger as the words reveal the ignorance, denial and cruelty that--

I don't know. I can't even finish the sentence. These books are well-written and compelling. But at some point they feel like taking bitter medicine that is good for you, all this documentation of black man--and woman's--inhumanity to black man and woman. It's frustrating. And hurtful. I read, and then I get angry, and then I have to put the book down.

I'm distracted also by thoughts of Michael, who called me this afternoon to tell me he was terminated from his job yesterday. From Mike's description of the meeting, the new HR manager who fired him seemed almost to be enjoying the process. More than almost. Actually.

Quisling asshole.

I feel such worry and sympathy for my friend.

Okay and I also envy him his freedom, however temporary, from managers and bus schedules and workaday grind.

I hope it is temporary, and Mike doesn't find himself sliding into the precarious existence my cousin found himself in, when the financial company he worked for collapsed in 2011 thanks to the incompetence and greed of the CEO. Both my Michaels, used by men and women that called their employees "family" and then tossed them away like so much used Kleenex.

The world is shit sometimes.

Boys' Night Out Revisited

Do you remember Boys' Night Out, the 1962 "sex comedy" starring James Garner, Howard Morris, Tony Randall and Howard Duff as the middle-aged Boys with Kim Novak as the blonde they all lust after?

Typical of the era, this a Hollywood comedy where the sex is all talk but no real action. Not on screen, anyway. (One can safely assume that then, as now, the real action was behind the scenes in Hollywood land.) I watch movies like this and feel suddenly nostalgic for a time in American life I was too young--and too black--to know. In the sixties only white people were having wild romantic misadventures like this. Apparently.

Tell me you remember this movie. If you don't, watch for it on Turner Classic Movies or one of those "romance" premium channels and see what you make of it.

Me, I love-hate the stuff. The performers in Boys' are second generation Golden Era ; slick, smoothly attractive, energetic and amusing. Watching them go through their paces is undeniably entertaining. But the story is utterly predictable. The early sixties was basically still the fifties. The New Frontier notwithstanding, America was still shoveling the same old shit about "morality." And Hollywood was still lumbered with a Code that mandated it tease American audiences with the promise of something it had no intention of delivering.

Howie (Morris), George (Randall), and Doug (Duff) are mad men in gray flannel suits, youngish marrieds longing to break free of the suburban restrictions of their lives. They envy what they imagine to be the swinging bachelor existence of their hunky buddy Fred (Garner), who, um, still lives with his mom, Ethel, played by the droll Jessie Royce Landis. (Catch her peevish tsk about the effrontery of a feisty waitress: "Have you noticed how insolent the help is becoming lately? Ever since the Kennedys got in!" It can't be coincidence that the witty Landis was Cary Grant's wisecracking mom in North by Northwest and Grace Kelly's wry and wily mom--and Grant's future mother-in-law--in To Catch a Thief.

And as long as I'm mentioning great character players, they really should have given the marvelously pixilated Ruth McDevitt more to do in this movie; she's nearly wasted as a snoopy neighbor. As is Jim "Mr. Magoo"/"Thurston Howell The Third" Backus as the opportunistic realtor. Where did the delightfully loopy Jim Backus go?)

Following yet another unexciting evening of wives, kids, and TV dinners, the married friends hit on the idea of jointly renting an apartment in the city and installing in it a Girl. A knowing, accommodating Girly-Girl they will democratically share. All they need is their pal, good ole Fred, to help them out. Unmarried, unencumbered Fred must know lots of knowing, accommodating girls or know where to find at least one, right? Fred is appalled--and intrigued. With misgiving he allows himself to get talked into setting things up.

Of course, nothing goes according to plan--that's supposed to be the fun, isn't it?--for Cathy the Girl (Novak) turns out to be brainy as well as beautiful. She's a grad student studying the adolescent fantasies of the adult suburban male. Well, of course. Cathy and Fred meet cute haggling over the rental of the deluxe apartment Fred has found for the guys. Realizing its purpose, Cathy decides for her own purposes to go along with the arrangement. (Incidentally, Christina Hendricks could have killed in this role.)

Cathy "goes along" only to a point; this is a Hollywood studio release featuring major movie stars, after all. We know going in nothing truly eyebrow-raising is going to happen in that bachelor pad. We're here to see how it's not going to happen.

And so what we get is the predictable: cold feet and confusion ensue as the neighbor snoops, the wives find out, and their mad men panic. Hysteria reigns, but only momentarily. The comely Cathy was never really a husband-stealing siren but a Good Girl in training to be a suburban spouse. In the end she wins over the wives by becoming one of them, marrying the hunky Fred and trading in her thesis for kids and TV dinners. Ah, Hollywood! In the America of 1962 I'll bet that ending was supposed to be very reassuring, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

What would life have been like if I'd been born a Cathy or some variation thereof? As I say, a part of me loves this movie and movies like it--the superior The Seven Year Itch comes to mind--and thinks the whole outrageous notion of being an alluring movie sexpot, all curves, hips and sly, full-lipped smiles, would be a hoot. Oh to be a Girly-Girl pursued by a quartet of furtive, randy skirt chasers!

Oh, put your eyebrows down. I said a "part of me" likes the idea. The rest of me--the part with the brain--knows damn well that a sexy woman being relentlessly pursued by skirt-chasing men would actually feel harassed, beleaguered, even demoralized. I retain enough memory of my twenties and thirties to know that only in fifties and sixties Hollywood movies is the experience of being pinched, palmed, and cornered by determined males something amusing.

Was the producer of Boys' Night Out Ross Hunter? It sure looks and feels like his kind of movie. Ross Hunter was not a skirt-chaser, unless we're talking Scottish kilts. He was gay. Like every Hollywood queer of his era he understood being gay was not necessarily a problem so long as you dedicated yourself to satisfying the heterosexist imperative. So while he cast Kim Novak as the Lust Object, the focus of the men's collective fantasies, one can't resist wondering whom Hunter would have cast if he'd had his Homo druthers. What would be the all-male version of Boys' Night Out (Note how the title totally works for this revision.)

Let's see.

In the Garner role--? Too easy. Rock Hudson. The strapping, handsome, homosexual Hudson, by 1962 an assured charmer with a silky baritone and impeccable comic timing, would have been perfection as the conflicted Fred.

For the others... I don't know. Tony Perkins? Rory Calhoun? Van Johnson? No, wait--how old is Van Johnson? I mean--you know what I mean--would Van Johnson have been too old in '62 to be one of the young and restless Boys? I think yes, so maybe not him... But you see where I'm going with this, yes? (Wait--wasn't Tony Randall gay? Was Rory Calhoun gay? Is it wrong that I honestly don't care?)

And for the blonde Lust Object...

He wouldn't have to be blonde of course, but since Novak was, I'm thinking inside the box. Who would have been the '62 equivalent of the young Brad Pitt? (Who is not gay, granted, but I'm talking sexual appeal, not orientation.)

Tab Hunter? How old was Tab Hunter in 1962? About thirty, wasn't he? About the same age as Novak that year? (Would thirty be too old? What is thirty in gay years?)

I mean, how different would this movie have been--and how different its impact--had the Boys all been down low brothers-in-arms? With Rock cast in the role of Fred, whose growing love for Tab, the blonde Boy Toy, forces him--forces them all--to confront his fears and come Out?

Okay, it would never have been made. Not in 1962, and not in any era with that cast. But that's a movie I would have paid to see, wouldn't you?

See Boys' Night Out starring Rock Hudson, Tony Randall, Anthony Perkins and Rory Calhoun! With Tab Hunter as the delectable, dreamboat Boy Kevin! Howie, George and Doug are family men desperate for some man-on-man action. Watch the fun as with the help of their mother-dominated, confirmed bachelor friend Fred, they set up their own private playpen to make their fantasies come true! Nothing goes according to plan! The neighbor snoops! The wives find out! The mad men panic! And hysteria reigns!

But only momentarily.

Conceivably we could flip this in all sorts of directions: how about a gay black version of Boys' Night Out? Circa 2013? (Because frankly I'd have no idea how to cast it circa 1962.) With--help me out here--Tyler Perry in the role of Fred? What do you think?

And the closeted suburban mad men would be played by... Chris Rock, Tracy Morgan and Martin Lawrence? None of whom are gay--that I know of--but all of whom are very funny, and were very funny together in the 2010 remake of Death at a Funeral. They could, I think, bring a similar manic chemistry to another film about adolescent men having a lot of trouble growing up.

Note: Oh. According to TCM host Ben Mankiewicz, it wasn't Ross Hunter who produced Boys' Night Out but the brainy beauty Cathy, star Kim Novak herself, who also worked tirelessly to promote the film. According to Mankiewicz, despite Novak's best efforts Boys' Night Out did only so-so box-office. Kim, slightly less svelte at age 29 than she used to be, took the film's relative failure as a sign that it was time to consider retirement.

Ah, well. If only the dynamic duo of Hudson and Hunter had been available... And the America of '62 had known how to lighten up.

Desperately Seeking Hepburn. And a Good Multi-Vitamin

Hand-wrote a good piece yesterday that I meant to post here. I'd planned to, just as soon as I got home. On the train I half-read my book, half-visualized myself at my desk pounding out my thoughts, publishing my words, and smiled the whole trip home.

But then I got home. And I didn't sit down and write. I hesitated, letting myself be distracted by thoughts of dinner (Why didn't I thaw the chicken breasts? should I just do a salad? are there any croutons? is there time to go out and buy some croutons?), wondering where UPS was with my package (I mean what the hell? where is it? the tracking page showed it "out for delivery" since before 1 AM!), my mom's sciatica (Is the physical therapy even helping? is she going to be in a wheelchair this time next year?) and The Looney Tunes Show (Okay, the jury's still out about the transformation of Bugs from anarchistic wiseguy to put-upon straight man but seriously, they nailed the perennially self-absorbed Daffy Duck; Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese should be pleased).

Then I was just...tired. I sat down for a while. Then I couldn't sit still. I didn't feel like sitting at another desk--having done it for six hours straight already--tapping on a keyboard. After a miserably cold and rainy April it was finally gorgeous outside; I should have been lacing my sneaks and heading to Washington Park for some much needed exercise.

Or continuing William J. Mann's dynamite bio, Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn. I have to tell you, I am loving this book. I've just reached the chapter where the indomitable Kate, basking in the acclaim of her stage and screen work in The Philadelphia Story after a turbulent 10-year climb, is finally getting her chance to meet and work with actor's actor Spencer Tracy in Woman of the Year, the first of their nine films. Tracy was a married, devoutly Catholic, deeply troubled, hard-drinking man's man whose torment has been glossed over in nearly every account of his life. I like how Mann's sympathetic but clear-eyed examination of Hepburn's life and myth offers as well a more honest appraisal of her beloved "Spence."

So I was just settling in with Kate when the phone rang; ohhhhhh....it was Mike. My lovely, lonely Michael, who always promises to keep it short but will bend your ear for two solid hours, saying goodbye three times before actually hanging up. (No offense, babe)

By the time I returned to the book I was too sleepy to concentrate, nodding off over the pages and snapping awake to read the same paragraph four times before giving it up.

Tomorrow, Kath,
I'm there
I swear

So that was it. With reluctance I powered off my PC, promising myself I'd post the piece tomorrow. I was just too damned tired to do anything.

I have got to do something about my metabolism. This is getting ridiculous.

My First Library

6 May
Monday PM

I predict by the end of the day this pen will be completely dried out. It's nice, with a micro tip and a stylish blue-black flow, but it's not really a day-to-day instrument. As writing instruments go.

Alright, I'm stalling. I want to write, I swear. But I can't collect my thoughts enough to do it. Really what I want is to continue uninterrupted this Hepburn bio (eerie and completely unexpected how much of my younger self I'm seeing in these engrossing pre-Tracy chapters of the Great Kate's life) but they're not paying me to sit around reading library books now are they. I'll bet though that I could do just that if I were working at a library. Well maybe on quiet days.

I miss quiet days. And if they call me, or send me a letter or email, or however they do it, and tell me they're definitely interested, and I passed all the library-type tests and whatnot, would they let me choose the location? Blackstone is just up the street. But I've been going there since grammar school. Since in fact the day Miss Harte (slim, short, That Girl flip) took me there to get my very first library card. Afterwards, like girlfriends, we got in her junky little Volkswagen clown car and she took me shopping and we had 3 each of Baskin-Robbins 33 flavors. Then we got our nails done.

Alright, that last part was a flat-out lie. Sorry, just kidding around. Technically it wasn't just me Miss Harte took to Blackstone library. It was almost her whole 4th grade class and I'm thinking we took a school bus to get there. We all got a tour of the place, upper and lower level, and were asked by the lady who ran the place (tall, glasses, pelican nose) what kind of stories we liked. As you can see, the library has a book for every interest. What are some of yours? Idiotically, everyone talked at once and I don't have a clue what I said. But she smiled, indulgently, and talked to us for quite a little while, long enough for me to notice Miss Harte's expertly pretty, pearl-pink nails, and after we each got our very own individual library cards with our individual names elegantly typed on them; thin, sandpaper colored things with rounded edges. Then we were encouraged to look around us and see what we might like to check out and take home. For this first trip we were allowed one book each.

It was fun at first, everybody scattering and giggling and rushing gleefully around like demented mice in a book-lined maze. Until Miss Harte, who practically never gets mad, raised her soft voice and started sharply scolding people, reminding us where we were and why we were there. I found this oversized book filled with some really ghastly pictures. That was the one I decided to check out, my very first library book, Great Disasters. On the cover was a faded picture of a huge oval-looking thing suspended above the ground, the bottom half of it engulfed in a cloud of fire.

At the circulation desk Miss Harte looked at it and then at me. Are you sure about this, she said, one eyebrow rising up. I hesitated. Why was she asking? Was it really so weird? What kind of books were the other girls checking out? I stared at the arch of her eyebrow, and the perfect nails holding  my book.

"Definitely," I said, taking it back from her. With a sense of real accomplishment, I handed over my new card to the pelican at the desk. "Thank you," I said politely.

On Jason Collins and The Embrace of White Culture

 

Dear Queerty commenter,

I'm not sure why the website flagged this reply to you. Maybe it took me too long to pull my thoughts together, type them out, and click the send button which triggered some spam sensor or other. At any rate this is what I was trying to say:

Yeah, I was kind of waiting for this.

As soon as I read Jason Collins explaining the significance of the number 98 on his jersey, I knew some tone deaf malcontent (straight or queer, and most likely Black) was going to take issue with it, objecting on the grounds of race. Collins making the decision to come out of his NBA closet is an awesome cultural, social and political moment. But it seems all you've managed to take from it is how wrong it feels for him to honor the memory of a dead White boy.

Just tell me this, please. Precisely whom of all those Black men and boys whose brutalization Collins is supposedly ignoring would you have him publicly recognize? You yourself named no one in particular and that, surely, is the point. There are too many to name (especially if we include in the tally all the Black women and girls you don't bother to acknowledge), and their deaths by gay bashing are harder to track as such because their grieving families often cloak the details, refusing to allow their slain children to be publicly identified as LGBT. Too often it is Black homophobia, and the denial it produces, that subverts proper justice for Black victims of anti-gay violence.

Matthew Shepard's 1998 torture/murder was heinous and heartless, galvanizing the grief and anger of all kinds of people--not just White and not just gay--here in the United States and around the world. It was also one of the few gay bashings that shocked mainstream press organizations out of their collective indifference, forcing them to acknowledge that LGBT lives matter--and so do our deaths. Matthew's murder, the sheer mindless cruelty of it, became a call to action, and his face and name have--with his parents' full cooperation--come to symbolize the horrifying consequences of homophobia.

This, I'm sure, is why Jason Collins selected 98. It isn't that other victims, known or unknown, don't matter; rather the nod to Matthew is meant to acknowledge all the victims of intolerance and hatred--Black Trannies, White Bisexuals, Lesbian Latinas, Asian Gays and every gender, racial and ethnic rainbow member in between--that Matthew's martyrdom represents.

I'm sorry, but I do not see how Jason's public acknowledgment of Matthew Shepard translates as an "embrace of white culture and all that comes with it." Nor, at this writing, has Collins revealed he has a boyfriend or partner, White or otherwise. But even if he does, so what? You seem to be suggesting that Black queers should stay on their side of the color line where they belong. You identify as a Black gay man--are you sure you want to say that? Would that sentiment be agreeable to you coming out of the mouth of a White person?

To your final point, if Black gay relationships are "invisible," overwhelmingly the reason for it is that too many Black men, most especially those with public profiles, persist in living DL existences.

In which case your quarrel is absolutely not with Jason Collins.

Jason Collins Has Come Out -- Why It Matters

I work in an office filled with lively, opinionated folks of various ages yet so far most have been quiet as church cathedrals on the subject of NBA player Jason Collins coming out as gay. Maybe there's conversation going on, just not in my hearing. Interesting.

There's plenty of chatter going on about Collins in cyberspace of course, including the inevitable and dismissive "Who cares?" and "Why does it even matter?" For sheer towering cluelessness, there's also a fair sprinkling of my personal favorite: "Straight people don't come out as straight, so why do gay people think they have to?"

Let's take that last bit of disingenuousness first.

I've said this before (as have many others before me), but apparently whenever someone of note comes out of the closet it bears repeating: straight people don't have to "come out" as straight because historically the culture in which we live already presumes everyone to be straight, expects them to be. Slowly, as more LGBT people make their presences felt, this becomes less the case. Even so there remains a marked tendency on the part of many people to assume that because they are heterosexual so is every single person they encounter in the course of their day.

Besides, that argument is false: straight people actually do come out, all the time, in all sorts of ways. They telegraph their heterosexuality in water cooler conversation about remembered romantic getaways with their spouse or significant other, upcoming wedding anniversaries and family celebrations. They do it by expressing affectional interest in a new acquaintance, or sexual interest in a person passing by them on the street.

As to the knee jerk "who cares" and "why does it matter" responses, well, bunk.

Of course it matters and on some level everybody cares. Maybe you're so over it, but most people are fascinated by gossip about who is or might be queer, particularly when the talk involves celebrities, especially when the talk involves male celebrities. Whether or not LGBT people should be allowed to legally marry, adopt, teach in public schools, be accorded legal protection from discrimination in housing and employment, and serve in the armed forces--or play team sports--without having to lie and hide, continue to be subjects of heated debate, here and elsewhere around the world.

In that circumstance, it's impossible to read the "who cares" retort as anything but a wish to close down any further discussion about the subject of non-heterosexuality: stop talking, I don't need to hear about this, I don't want to know. Invariably these people insist they have no problem with gay, and really don't care one way or the other. You're gay? Fine, whatever, but I don't need to know. Just shut up about it.

But that's precisely the problem. As someone eloquently posted to Facebook recently, the price of your acceptance of me should not have to be my silence. That you'd require me to be invisible as a condition for allowing me to breathe the same air as you effectively condemns me to a life on the margins, where I can never feel sure of my welcome in your house or indeed my value as a fellow human being. Silence sends me right back to the closet.

Silence also kills. Especially if, like Mr. Collins and me, you are Black.

According to recent data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Black people account for almost half of AIDS deaths in the U.S. since the epidemic's beginnings and we remain the racial/ethnic group most affected by the disease, with young Black gay men accounting for more new rates of infection than any other race/ethnic, age or gender group. Poverty, higher rates of incarceration, and lack of access to comprehensive health care are the significant factors that explain this.

But stigma--the shame and disgrace associated with homosexuality--all but ensures the spread of HIV and AIDS. The fear of revealing yourself as gay, and the unconscious conviction that you are something broken, defective, less than and your life without worth, because you are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, becomes for far too many in communities of color a barrier to seeking testing and treatment services, and life-saving prevention information.

That fear and shame discourage many Black LGBT people from coming out to their family and friends. The consequent lack of emotional support deepens feelings of isolation, anxiety, and depression that drive risky behavior.

So it turns out coming out matters. A lot. Whenever someone comes out, they confront the gossip and change the conversation about what being gay means. Instead of everyone else defining you, you define yourself. You tell people who don't know, what gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender is simply by telling them who you are. If silence breeds denial, disrespect and self-hatred, your "starting the conversation" can break down the walls misunderstanding, foster empathy and acceptance, and save lives.

This is why Jason Collins coming out matters. Because he matters.

Because we all do.

The Eternal Return

I have been reading poetry and writing poetry and dreaming poetry. Falling asleep with iambic pentameter fragments swirling around in my brain... There is an outside possibility that I am a poet.

But only an outside possibility. Nothing is certain.

I am being urged by my workshop leader to go the POD (Publish on Demand) route as a way of getting launched as an honest-to-God for-realsies author. Imagine that! Thrills me! Scares me to death!

Scares me to death, kiddies. Really does.

The temptation to say Ah, Who are you kidding?, plant myself on the sofa and lose myself in the syndicated adventures of Rob and Laura and George and Ouisie is tremendous. I've waited too long, I worry, I've nothing that noteworthy to say anyway, I brood. Who'd read me? Who'd buy me? Who'd care if I ever published or didn't? And anyway there's this great Bette Davis movie coming on and it's becoming a favorite; it's strange and atmospheric and I think I like it even better than The Letter. I've just blanked on the title but in it she plays a wretch of a witch named Stanley whose reckless willfulness ruins the lives of just about everyone in her orbit.

Stanley. Love that. And Bette makes it work.

So I could just sit back and watch that again. Or wait about ten minutes and catch The Dick Van Dyke Show.

What is it Bette was famed for saying? If you know your Bette Davis you know where I'm going with this, I'm sure.

"No guts, no glory".

Pretty sure it was Bette...

My Name Was Barbra, Too

Poor things; December since last we visited. Did you think I'd forgotten, abandoned you?

As I write I am listening to selections from Barbra Streisand's My Name Is Barbra, Two...Too? album, the sublime sequel, if that's the correct description, to her wonderful My Name Is Barbra album, which was, I think, the companion lp to the first of her storied sixties television specials--

Or actually, no, I may have the sequence slightly wrong. The black and white television special My Name Is Barbra may have been launched by the success of Streisand's record album of the same name, with the lp My Name Is Barbra Two...Too? the immediate follow-up to the TV special since it featured some of its tunes. (The Second Hand Rose medley in Bergdorf Goodmans department store.)

I was only 8 at the time of all this, understand, and the only television program I remember from that year was the Rogers and Hammerstein musical special, Cinderella, the color version starring the wide-eyed and winsome Lesley Ann Warren in the title role. If I squint I can see my skinny 8 year old self in summer culottes wandering my Aunt Mary and Uncle Larry's sprawling Blackstone Street apartment singing "A Lovely Night", channeling Lesley Ann swooning from that magical meeting with His Royal Highness, Stuart Damon.

But in just a few years it would be Streisand's "Where Is The Wonder" and "Second Hand Rose" I would be singing around the house, mine and everyone else's and I never really looked back. I loved the yearning and brass of that big, big voice.

More later. Not too much later. I promise.

Brava Meredith Baxter!! (Your Membership Kit Should Arrive Shortly)

Just watched the online Today show interview clip in which Meredith Baxter, best known as Elyse Keaton, the mom on the popular '80s sitcom Family Ties, came out to Matt Lauer. It was terrific. Watching her, and watching Lauer draw her out with such sensitivity and skill, was a genuine treat; I smiled all the way through it.

It was twice the treat, in fact, because as I was hurriedly putting myself together for work this morning I slowed to watch the shot of Lauer, standing outside the studio with Meredith Viera and Al Roker, giving the teaser for the upcoming interview with Baxter in which he hinted at her decision to share a "secret".

"Gay!" I thought immediately, then laughed at my presumption. Ah, Lorraine, you think everybody's gay. I grabbed the remote, clicked off the set, grabbed up my coat and bag, and went out the door and into my day, not giving it another thought.

Then I came home, turned on my pc, opened up my browser and--gasp!-- there was the "coming out" story on my homepage with Baxter's picture beside it!

Sweeeet!! :0)

I thought Baxter was very classy, didn't you?--forthright about her anxieties over such a public disclosure of her private life (Um, yeeeah, do celebrities really have those anymore? Did they ever?) and candid about her reasons for doing so (A looming tabloid disclosure *sigh*). She was also warmly funny relating how she'd earlier come out to her five grown kids--her eldest "smart-aleck" son cheekily told her he already knew--and her step-dad, Emmy-winning writer-producer Alan Manings ("Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In", "One Day At A Time", "Good Times", et al) who in reply to her nervous announcement that she was dating women said something along the lines of "Really? So am I!"

Baxter told Lauer that she'd also come out to her Family Ties family, Michael Gross who played husband, Steven, and the "kids", Justine Bateman, Tina Yothers and of course Michael J. Fox. (Oh yeah, and I suppose I should include Brian Bonsall, who played the adorable 1986 edition to the Keaton household, Andrew). Happily, according to Baxter, both her real and fictional families, as well as her friends, have been supportive and loving. I'm delighted for her, and for all of them.

But especially for her.

Some LGBT people may take issue with the awkward timing of Meredith Baxter's announcement--it is unfortunate that it took the threat of a tabloid "outing" to convince Baxter to acknowledge her queerness, and personally I hate the idea of anyone, famous or not, coming out under duress--but good on her for deciding to tell her life story her own way rather than leaving it to a supermarket gossip rag to do the deed.

Though I have nothing but admiration for LGBT people who come out young, especially those with public profiles--more of that, please-- in some ways I most admire late-in-life gays who finally stand up and step forward. I speak from painful experience when I say here that the longer you avoid telling what you know to be The Truth, the more convinced you can become that speaking out will be the cataclysmic end of everything, and the harder it can get ever to find the words and the courage to do it.

All that said, watching Baxter's coming out today is for me a bittersweet thing; I so wish the profile of African-American LGBTs was higher, by which I mean, existent. How much longer will we all have to wait to have the pleasure of watching similar Big Reveals from the likes of... oh, pick anybody. Seriously, go ahead--pick anyone. If we're really expected to believe, as we approach the second decade of the 21st Century, that all of today's black entertainers and persons of note--be they tv stars, movie stars, R&B, hip-hop and pop stars, athletes, journalists, politicos, reality-show divas or various and sundry other media movers and shakers--are all heterosexual, why not assume they're all gay as well? Holds about the same amount of logic.

Wait, you're saying, what about--? Yeah, I know... I know about African-American LGBT luminaries such as singer Johnny Mathis, dancer-choreographer Bill T. Jones and writers Alice Walker and Jewelle Gomez, to name a few... but more importantly I wonder how many other Americans, black or white, can say the same? Because that I'm aware, I've never known any of them to sit with a Matt Lauer, a Barbara Walters or an Oprah Winfrey on national television and talk plainly about the experience of being lesbian or gay or bisexual. (If I've missed something, speak up--I'd like nothing better than to be contradicted on this point!) And it needs to be said that far too often when the celebrated likes of James Baldwin or Bessie Smith or Lorraine Hansberry or Malcolm X are profiled for Black History Month, their non-heterosexuality is either downplayed to a footnote or airbrushed entirely out of the bio.

Which leaves me feeling... less than celebratory.

Bleh (Sunday Morning Pages)

Sunday. Sinday. Sin day.
(Sin-Day? What in heaven's name made me think of that?)

Restless today and vaguely... bleh. Went for a pleasant walk this morning--absolutely beautiful autumn day, perfect for strolling--but feel like I didn't get as much out of it as I should have somehow. Would I still be out and about if this were Hyde Park rather than Bronzeville? Possibly. All those evocative, familiar streets and beckoning bookstores and cafes, the lakefront, the parks. I miss the walkabouts of my younger days--so much restless energy. Wish I'd begun writing back then, too. Didn't know then I had it in me, I guess. Nobody knows anything when they're young. Nothing.

I should return Michael's call. He left a message requesting assistance from his "computer expert", meaning of course me, but I am not an expert at all, just a bit more comfortable with modern electronics than he, hopeless Luddite that he is. Mike reminds me of my mother in the way he just assumes I can rescue him whenever he's confronted with something he doesn't understand. It never dawns on either of them that I might be as baffled as they and not exactly eager to demonstrate that.

Why am I so irritable? It's the first of a nice little 3 day vacation (almost forgot I put down Tuesday as a vacation day, though I still have Tuesday night's workshop to attend) but I can't work up much enthusiasm about it. Maybe that's why I'm dragging my feet about calling Mike back. I don't feel like talking, and I don't feel like talking about why I don't feel like talking. Even a non-conversation with Michael, where we begin by acknowledging we need to keep it short, can run on for a solid two hours before someone's phone dies and we finally hang it up.

The writing is going... (pause)... okay. It could be better. I want it to be better. I want to write every day something good, something wonderful, not this doodling crap where I can go for pages not really saying anything. What forces combine to create a Baldwin? a (Toni) Morrison? a Dickens? an Oates? Why can't I be as prolific as any of them?

Because they're special that's why. Gifted. Touched by the Divine. I am neither special, nor gifted (though I might be touched). I am just okay. And only that when I work at it.

Okay. Pity party is over. Time to get back to working at it.

Lizzie

Lizzie has now been consigned to memory. I miss her terribly.

This morning Mom and I took her to Hyde Park Animal Clinic where Tom Wake--a good guy who manages to combine kindness and sensitivity with brisk efficiency--performed the euthanasia services.

Did she know this moment was coming? It sure seemed that way; getting her out of the house was really rough. The clever scenario I’d envisioned for tricking her into her carrier—placing it outside the front door the night before with the expectation of maneuvering her inside the thing this morning after she followed me into the hallway—quickly fell apart when she went into hiding instead. The diabetes meant she was always ravenously hungry and thirsty, yet this time she refused to budge at either the sound of kibble being poured into her silver dish or the sight of a little 2% milk in her orange saucer, as though she sensed something sinister was afoot. I wound up having to corner her under my mother’s desk and muscle her into her carrier, she snarling and spitting every step of the way.

Me feeling like a traitor.

At the clinic Dr. Wake‘s assistant carefully held her on a towel-covered examining table while Tom gently but surely injected her leg with a clear solution that made her unconscious then stopped her heart. At Tom’s urging I stroked her head and spoke softly to her, hoping my loving voice and touch were the last things she experienced as she faded. It was all over so quickly—she didn’t pant or struggle or moan—and I could swear I saw the light go out of her beautiful marble eyes. Her pink tongue protruded a little. Then she was gone.

One especially heartbreaking little moment: as Tom was administering the injection my mother tried to gently rub Lizzie’s extended paw and with her remaining strength Lizzie pulled away from her. I cringed inwardly at this; even seconds from death she would not allow Mom to befriend her. Mom didn’t comment or react, but it must have hurt. She’d tried so hard these last five years to win Lizzie over but Lizzie would have none of it. For a fleeting moment I was actually angry at the cat.

I am going to miss her so. I know I sound like one of those pathetic cat ladies everyone rolls their eyes about, but she was my baby and almost human in her irrepressible playfulness, compelling need for attention and affection, inquisitive nature, epic silliness, and occasions of hissing, paw-swatting cantankerousness. From the moment I first met her, a live-wiry 11 month-old calico in my neighbor's living room, she was truly a character, interrupting her wrestling match with a Kermit toy to bound over and leap into my lap, paws pressed against my chest, performing a whisker-tickling examination of my chin, lips, hands and knuckles, before deciding I was hers. I brought her home that very day (My neighbor had to move and couldn't take her with him) and watched her take over the place, as I knew she would.

I will miss her chirping, burbling greetings, her soft mewlings for her breakfast and supper, her sudden mischievous grabs at my passing feet, and the trick she developed (until finally she became too sick to balance herself safely) of sitting up on her haunches and begging like a dog, knowing I would melt at the sight and give her whatever she was after—usually a saucer of milk, her favorite treat.

Where she learned that gesture I will never know, but then, she was an amazingly smart animal. Whoever said cats can’t be trained has been seriously misinformed; I was always teaching Lizzie new things, often without my realizing I was doing it.

I will miss our hallway hockey games, whapping and sliding back and forth to each other aluminum foil balls, plastic milk jug rings and anything else that would roll or bounce or skip. I will miss hide and seek around the living room furniture, and her snooping shopping bag inspections of incoming groceries. I will miss her frantic little “hurry up!” meows whenever she’d hear my key in the door and her affectionate nuzzles and winds around my legs when I came in and knelt down to tickle her ears and properly say hello.

I have gotten through the rest of this day and this evening by pretending Lizzie is lazily snoozing somewhere in the house out of sight, a contented, fuzzy, tri-colored ball—it’s just too painful right now to admit that she's gone and I will never see her again. I will miss her every day, for a very long time. The house will feel this way for a very long while, strange and still and unnaturally quiet.

For Barbara; And Especially For Lynn

I am going to do three things very soon, as soon as I am able: I am going to purchase two books--Barbara Sher's It's Not Too Late If You Start Right Now and E. Lynn Harris's What Becomes of the Brokenhearted.

I loved these books--I don't think it's just the mood I'm in. I have just this week finished library copies of each and have decided both should be in my home, near my desk, somewhere close by. Even if they mostly only sit on a shelf, I'd feel better if they were always within easy reach for those times when I'm down, discouraged and unsure of myself and the validity of my dreams. Both in their way are inspiring reads, though I ended Lynn Harris's beautiful, deeply moving memoir with the sad awareness that, due to his sudden death last month (heart disease?), I'll never have the chance to meet or correspond with this wonderful man. I know he's gone and still I want to write to him right now, just to tell him how much his willingness to share his struggles as a black gay man trying to make his way in the world means to me.

Barbara Sher however is alive and presumably kicking at this writing, and at the close of It's Not Too Late included contact information and encouraged her readers to let her know if her words were helpful and in what ways. I have forever missed my opportunity with the generous and life-affirming Mr. Harris; I will try not to with the witty and wise Ms. Sher. Even if she is unable to reply, I would want to let her know that her book made me completely reconsider what I thought I understood about middle age and second life dreams.

The third thing is I am going to join that Neighborhood Writing Alliance group I've spent three years watching wistfully from a distance. It's free, my work hours have changed so there are at present no scheduling conflicts, they meet within walking distance of home, and the new workshop begins next month. Looks like I'm all out of excuses.

If I get to choose my first writing assignment, I know exactly what it will be. Maybe I'll call it Letter To Lynn.

If not... I'll write it anyway.