Bullet Points

A few recent events of note:

• This week, I’ve gotten four flat tires on my bike. Yes, four.
• On Friday I had a $930 emergency root canal.
• Starting Monday, two houses near us are being very loudly re-roofed in the early morning hours, and a wooden fence is being put in next door.
• This morning, carpenters building the fence killed two full beds of my flower seedlings, including some I planted last year that need two years to bloom.
• This evening, I broke my favorite, fifteen year-old, English teapot, which I use every day, in a freak accident.

On the other hand:

• My tooth feels a lot better.
• I’ve been kissed by not one, not two, but three nice young men (from ages 22 to 25).
• On Saturday, I saw a bunch of naked hotties at the bike fair after-party.
• Today, I picked a big bowl of raspberries from our thicket in the back yard, and I have gotten about two pounds of snow peas.
• Tofurkey Italian Sausage is on sale — buy one get one free!
• The weather is beautiful. At 10 p.m. tonight, it was still light outside and seventy degrees. It’s summer at last.

Summer and naked hotties really do make up for a lot. I’d say things are, on ballance, not too bad.

Happy Monday – Gay Pride

Every Monday I post pictures of guys smiling. This week, it is the slightly belated Gay Pride edition.

  Gay Pride Parade on Christopher Street. New York, 1982.

Originally I typed 1882 above by mistake, and it might as well have been from then. It looks like a vintage photo from a bygone era, and it is.

And here’s somebody else’s Flickr set of a thousand smiles from Boston Pride, and here are some generally older guys at San Francisco Pride. While I was doing a quick search for photos (“gay pride 2007″), people were uploading them to Flickr so fast that I couldn’t click the “next” button. I had to click at least two or three pages ahead not to see the same thing over and over.

Lucky Doughnut

On Friday, a very handsome Russian dentist with a caring but authoratative manner gave me a root canal. I’ll never forget the way he gently vibrated my cheek as he injected me with anaesthetic. Sigh.

Nonetheless, at certain points in the procedure it hurt like a motherfucker. Plus I was warned that if I came in with pain, I would leave with pain. It would take a while before I would feel completely healed. Keep my expectations in check.

I had not slept much in over a week; every few hours the pain would wake me. So when I got home on Friday, I slept all the rest of the daylight hours on what was the second longest day of the year. Then I went to bed again at my normal time and slept for the whole night. By Saturday I was finally myself again — almost pain free and thoroughly well rested.

The difference was unbelievable. For a couple of weeks I had had no energy, neither mental nor physical. I had sloughed off on my work, barely exercised, and generally been a sluggish zombie. Then, in only twenty-four hours, I was healthy and happy and energized again. It was kind of amazing.

I was reminded of this study that came out last year (maybe — I can’t find it online) that turned the old idea about richer people being healthier on its head. It’s the other way around actually. The healthier you are, the more you can work and make money; so it’s not that rich people are healthier. It’s that healthier people make more money and spend less on medical care. Your health quite literally is your wealth.

The Last Hurrah
Though I had done no work all week and was anxious to catch up, I had committed to a volunteer shift at the annual Multnomah County Bike Fair, the final event in the two weeks of Pedalpalooza. Since I’d been under the weather, I had missed everything except the opening night party and ride. So in addition to a sense of obligation, I also just wanted to get in at least a little bike fun.

For several hours, I checked ID’s at the beer garden and accidentally stuck sticky wrist bands onto many a man’s arm hair. (There are some big meaty wrists out there, by the way. Kind of interesting.) The young guy working with me had a bright red sunburned faced, with the distinct white silhouette of his sunglasses around his eyes. He had ridden his new touring bike all the way out to Cascade Locks earlier that morning on a whim (more than eighty miles round trip). I asked him how the ride was and he stared off into the distance and smiled a big, toothy, crazy man’s smile.

“Beautiful.”

From time to time while checking IDs, yet another gray-haired whiner would give me a look of annoyed disbelief when I insisted on seeing his liscence. Women would pull on their gray hair and say, “I earned this.” Men would arch an eyebrow and try the alpha male stare down, asking in a withering tone “you’re kidding, right?”

It was always a contest of wills in every case, them holding out their wrists and me doing nothing. I mean, I wouldn’t actually give a shit if a bus load middle-schoolers end up chugging PBR on the main stage, but the OLCC officers were literally right next to me sometimes. I wasn’t going to risk getting the organizers in trouble, especially not for a bunch of self-entitled assholes who think that rules no longer apply to them just because they got old.

One bald, potbellied guy complained, “Maybe when I’m forty I won’t have to do this anymore.” And I was happy to reply, “Well, I’m forty, and I still had to show my ID just to volunteer.” So fuck you and your whiny attitude.

Ultimately though, holding the big, hairy wrists outweighed handling the big, annoying assholes. I had a nice time and even stayed late to help break down. Eventually, asparagus & chevre pizza showed up for the volunteers, and the location of the after-party was quietly passed around. As night fell, a hundred or so people, myself included, mounted their bikes and set off on another impromptu group ride, which toured inner-southeast and downtown, covering about fifteen miles. As we rode, other cyclists joined in, and eventually at least two hundred strong we landed at the “love party” (aka the after-party) just before midnight.

Alas, it was just a giant crowd in an empty lot downtown with guys performing bike tricks. Didn’t know anybody. Nothing to drink. No reason to stick around. I was glad to be old enough to say “I’m too old for this.”

I buzzed over to Voodoo Doughnuts for a quick snack before heading home. There was a large crowd on the sidewalk, including a few guys in tuxedos, and the queue was snaking out the door. I waited with my bike in the shorter line at the outside window, and when I got my usual maple cruller, I was told “it’s taken care of.” Some guy in a wedding party (ah, the tuxedos) was springing for everybody’s doughnuts.

It was indeed my lucky day.

Dead Inside

This morning I had to make an unplanned visit to the dentist. Tomorrow I’m having an emergency root canal. My tooth is “necrotic,” which means it’s dead on the inside. While being told this by my dentist, I was struggling to be serious and not reply, “Hey, just like my soul.”

 And so begins a lifetime of expensive dentistry

Only three weeks ago, I spent $300 to have the same tooth fixed, and that’s when it started hurting. I’ve been getting about half my calories from ibuprofen for the last week now, and I take four naps a day because absolutely anything (including sitting in my office chair) can cause waves of pain that will not go away until the drugs kick in. All I can do is lie down and wait.

Eating is almost impossible. When I chew, I hold my head sideways so that no crumbs get between my sore teeth. It’s ridiculous, and yet it took me how long to finally go in?

To add an extra element of farce to it all, the specialist I’m seeing tomorrow is expecting twins literally at any moment. I’ve been warned that the appointment could get cancelled, and I’ll be in pain all weekend.

Ouch
The thing that really smarts, though, is the $930 price tag. That money was earmarked for the crown on my other tooth that hurts. It’s cracked, and I’ve been cautioned that if it breaks I’ll lose more than half the tooth, then need a crown and a root canal. Awesome.

And all of this comes after a year of dentistry at a cost of thousands of dollars, with five more necessary crowns to go and three optional veneers. When it’s all done (if it’s all done), I’ll have a ten thousand dollar smile.

… for, like, five minutes, because by then I’ll probably need more work. Today, when breaking the news about the root canal, my dentist told me, “…with your teeth, you’re probably going to be facing a lot of these.”

Quilts

A year ago April, I visited my parents in rural Georgia for a week. Because they live so far away from civilization these days, I’ve been building up a small cache of supplies at their house to maintain my sanity while I’m there, things like peppercorns and a grinder, good black tea, whole coffee beans in the freezer, extra virgin olive oil — you know, life basics. There’s also a set of my own cotton sheets because I just sleep better on them, and on that visit in April, I took a quilt (below) that would match.

I made it myself, of course, and it took me more than two years to finish it up. But when I did, it went right on my bed, and I and my boyfriend of the time spent many sweet nights together underneath. Then when that ended, the quilt was inevitably tainted by unpleasant memories. It kind of had to go.

And so to Georgia it went, and all of the navy and khaki and camo fabrics were a perfect match for my sage colored sheets. Nice. Somehow the trip across America cleansed it of all negative associations too. Now, mercifully, each time I see it again it’s like greeting an old friend.

Because of its size, I had never been able to take a good picture of the quilt, and in my mind I had long ago formulated a plan for where and when to take care of that. The living room of my parents’ house has very tall white walls and a high vaulted ceiling; so one day while they were out, I set to work. I took down all the pictures over the sofa and covered the back of the quilt with rolls of clear packing tape. Then at great risk to life and limb, I stood quite unsteadily on the back of the couch and carefully pressed the quilt to the wall.

To the unnerving sound of tape rolls slowly crackling as they became unstuck, I jumped down and snapped a picture, then jumped back up to restick everything. I did this several times, then pulled it all down, balled up the tape, and rehung the pictures. You couldn’t tell anything had moved.

(The pictures, alas, came out a little blurry and with a purple tinge. Thank goodness for Photoshop.)

The Quilts of Gee’s Bend
Quite coincedentally, while I was in Georgia on that visit, there was a show of The Quilts of Gee’s Bend at the High Museum down in Atlanta. I had found the book by that name years earlier and loved the powerful abstract designs, all done by poor black women in rural Alabama. I was already considering a visit to the museum anyway to see the recently completed addition by Renzo Piano. (The main building by Richard Meier was already world famous.) So when I saw that the quilts would be there, that sealed the deal.

While extraordinary, the show was a little overwhelming — too much inspiration. Plus there was a Chuck Close exibit and the architecture. It was a long day on my feet with open eyes. In the gift shop, I bought a stack of postcards with different quilts on them, and I dutifully mailed them off to roommates, friends, and one former lover.

Or actually, I bought a card for him, my ex as of three weeks earlier, but didn’t mail it. I wrote, “I bought this card for you, even though I know I’m never going to send it, because you’re the only person in the world who would understand what this show meant to me.” When I got home to Portland, I stuck it on the bulletin board over my sewing table, where it hung until a year later when I had The Great Fire.

I also wrote a card to myself too. On the front was the quilt at right. On the back it said:

“John, this card is for you. Remember that you took the opportunity to see something new that was exciting, interesting, stimulating for you. Keep doing that. Don’t get in a rut again. ‘Life comes first’ in the words of someone famous. Love, John”

This card has also been hanging over my sewing table. As soon as I saw it, I knew that it was the right design for my next project. Now, finally, a year later, I’ve just gotten started on it. But rest assured that in the interim I’ve been doing my best to follow my own advice, and life has indeed been stimulating.

The New Quilt
All of last summer I was picking up old, out-of-fashion jeans from the free boxes I would see around town. There was almost always one pair in every box. Whereas in the past, jeans were in a classic style and lasted until the holes threatened to get you arrested, nowadays there’s a new (usually unfortunate) look every season. That’s a lot of turnover for a garment whose original appeal was its durability, and all that waste troubled me. I wanted to salvage both the fabric and the reputation of reused jeans, which always brings to mind horrible Seventies craftsy crap.

The quilt I chose as my template seemed to lend itself perfectly to simple, monochromatic lights and darks — faded and un-faded denim, for example. Of course, my own result will probably look nothing like the one above. I’m not a poor, elderly black woman from rural Alabama. I’m an urban, bourgeois, anal-retentive former architecture student. I use a ruler, drafting triangle, and metal straight edge to measure and cut my fabric strips. As much as I love the dynamic irregularity of the Gee’s Bend quilts, it would be a lot more authentic of me to make something that represents my own background. So I’ll just have to make peace with my orderly nature.

Often while I sit alone making something, I think to myself, “This is your life, John. This is how you are spending the limited hours you have on this earth.” And I wonder why I’m not doing something else. The only answer I can come up with is that, if I don’t exactly enjoy it, I do want to be doing it. Simple as that. And I find it deeply satisfying to have a tangible result from my effort. There aren’t a lot of things we do in life that give us that anymore. It’s like I can still hold that time in my hands, like it’s not gone forever after all.

Happy Monday – Summer Travel

Every Monday I post photos of guys smiling. This week, I’m celebrating summer travel season, and maybe I can conjure up a little sympathetic magic for myself at the same time.

Bon Voyage!