A Mystery

Friday night. T.G.I.F. Whoo.

Had the house to myself tonight. So I cleaned my room, did some laundry, baked banana bread. Later, I caught up on some emails, and then had a cup of tea while reading the New Yorker online.

How, I ask you, am I still single?

I got 99 problems, but…

Falling in love with your best friend — your straight best friend — is practically a rite of passage for gay guys. While other teens are plumbing the depths of their hormone-addled passion with a high school honey or, for late bloomers, a college sweetheart, gay boys are jealously watching from the sidelines, burning with a secret longing they know would change everything if anybody found out.

But there is one person, one guy, giving a tender hearted homo the attention he needs — his best buddy. Naturally, the two have a lot in common. They enjoy each other’s company, spend all their time together, prefer each other to anyone else. They get drunk together then pass out in the same bed, knees and elbows and sholders brushing together all night. They share their secrets. Talk about sex. Talk about love.

Sigh. Love.

It’s all tragically inevitable: the infatuation, the declaration of love, the rejection, the despair. Everyone’s been through it, but not everybody loses everything the way gay boys do. Best friend, social network, the esteem of others, personal identity, hope — all gone. And worst of all, nobody cares because he’s straight and you should have known better (as though knowing better has anything to do with falling in love).

Usually that painful episode happens (the first time) during the emotional turbulence of early adulthood, but last week I was hanging out with a friend who needed to talk. We went to a coffee shop where he gradually revealed the real reason he was upset. For the first time in his life he had fallen for a stright guy, his best bud. At almost forty, he should have known better. As an experienced adult, he did know better, but, you know, it just happens.

The guy was a carpenter. A total hunk. They spent the summer building stuff together in the backyard. They played guitars together. Got drunk together, crashed in the same bed, fell asleep curled up in each other’s arms. A crush was unavoidable. Shit, I was falling in love with him myself after that story.

So I sat there on a comfy sofa in a cosy coffee shop, listening to my friend as he politely spilled his guts. People at nearby tables cast us sidelong glances after especially scandalous confessions, but neither of us cared. (After decades of urban gay life, the things that shock other people inevitably seem rather quaint.) I assured him repeatedly that I understood what he was going through — all too well, in fact.

Daisy Chain
And that would have been that, except for one very fortunate digression. During the middle of our conversation, he looked up and commented on the song playing, one of the most beautiful ever written he thought. Forgetting his probelms for a moment, he launched into a thorough and knowledgeable history of “The White Album” by the Beatles, where the song came from. He was so eloquent and informed that I had to find out more, and I looked up the album when I got home.

For the first time ever, I took an interest in the Beatles. (Verdict: They’ve got potential.) I downloaded a bunch of songs and thoroughly explored a part of our popular culture that had always been there, looming in the background of my life. I always find that satisfying; it’s nice to fill in the blanks.

Better still is when it leads to new discoveries, when one thing leads to another, and to another, and so on. I like to think of it as a cultural daisy chain, each thing linking to the next until it brings you back around again, full circle. It’s like getting lost on back roads then suddenly coming to a familiar place and realizing where you are and how you got there. Or maybe you could think of it as Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, hold the bacon.

The Grey Album
For example, I read that The White Album has inspired innumerable tributes, and one of them is especially infamous. I’ve known of it for years but never actually heard any songs since you can’t buy it. It’s the work of a then little-known DJ called Danger Mouse who laid down vocals by rap zillionaire Jay-Z on top of samples from White Album songs. Jay-z is so rich he can afford to release his work directly into the public domain to foster the creative endeavors of others, which he did with an a cappella version of his Black Album. The name of the Danger Mouse mix compilation was therefore something of a foregone conclusion. It’s called, of course, The Grey Album.

Problem is, this Danger Mouse guy did it all for fun, made it for his friends, and he didn’t bother to get legal clearance for all those Beatles samples. When the mixes went viral on the internet, he was promptly sued. Now, the only way to get the music is to download it illegally, which, I hardly need to mention, is not much of an obstacle.

The first song I listened to, 99 Problems, was so good that I downloaded all the rest, and I have to say that The Grey Album does indeed deserve the universal acclaim. If you like any rap at all (and thirty years into it, there’s got to be something), you need to hear it.

Aside from the musical discoveries, I also learned a lot about Jay-Z (He’s dating Beyoncé! Wooh!), and about Danger Mouse, who lived in Athens, Georgia and did remixes for one of my favorite bands, Neutral Milk Hotel. (You’ve really got to listen to their album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.) Clicking through one connection after another, I chose NMH but could have followed Beyoncé if I’d cared to and seen where that would lead, or really, I could have turned off in any direction. That’s what’s so interesting about the daisy chain: You get to pick your own daisies. The possibilities are endless, but they all eventually lead back again.

This chain started, as they usually do, by chance, with a song playing in a coffee shop. It ended a few hours later with a song playing in my headphones, me thinking about my friend’s man troubles, being so glad that wasn’t happening to me again. Jay-Z was rapping, “I got ninety-nine problems, but a bitch ain’t one.” And I thought to myself, amen, brother.

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.

An Invisible Line

Yesterday around 11 p.m. I was walking home from the grocery store. It was a mild evening and breezy — Hollywood weather, the kind that tousles your hair just so. As I ambled down 38th, I could hear bells ringing and ringing in the distance. They could only have been from the Catholic church down on Powell, a good mile away, calling worshipers to the Easter Vigil.

Growing up in suburban isolation, I never heard any sounds except our own, and it still feels like a movie to me when I hear church bells. They’re such a cliché of village life, of collective experience. I’m not Catholic, or even anything, but like everyone within the sound of bells last night, my life was punctuated by a seasonal ritual. A transition was marked, and I was part of a community simply by virtue of hearing its call.

An invisible line
My first experience with a church bell was in Savannah, where I lived while studying architecture. One of the more exciting prospects of moving there was the opportunity to seduce sensitive art school boys. Once on a fine Sunday morning, while lying in bed with a young blond kid I met at a (straight) bar the night before, I could hear a bell ringing at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, just down the street.

My new friend heard it too. He opened his eyes wearily and rolled out of bed. Apologizing, he told me he had to rush off so he could change his clothes before mass. After his aggressive pursuit of me the night before, I almost asked, “You go to church?” But I held my tongue. Maybe he was eager to confess.

When he left, I shook my head at his Pavlovian response to that sound. I was also impressed at the genius of the Catholic church. It was as though everyone who could hear their chimes was hooked on an invisible line, and ringing the bells was all it took to reel us right in.

Whistling a Certain Tune

Near dusk, I hopped on my bike and rushed down towards the river. It was around there that I planned to bury the Goodwill mug. As I sailed down the hill, still in a great mood that had lasted all day long, I whistled to myself as I often do, not really paying attention. When I finally realized the song in my head, I took it as a good omen.

It was his song. It was a tune that I have not been able to listen to or think about for a year now. When my Magnetic Fields CD gets to it, I have to skip past. That song always reminds me of how great I used to think he was. And it reminds me of how great he wasn’t in the end.

But I was whistling it to myself, and I was still happy, which just confirmed that this funeral idea was a good one. I pedaled to the burial with a light heart, eager to begin.

Tombstone
I’ve been scoping out locations for my little ritual for months now, and the moment I spied this particular stone, I knew that that would be the spot.

After I arrived, I waited until no one was around and dug the hole quickly. Then I smashed the mug with a hammer, and I smashed a gold-rimmed Limoges porcelain bowl that my ex so enjoyed using. Filled the hole. Covered the grave with leaves. And then I mumbled out some of his song, trying to remember all the words, which, actually, I never really knew. I gave the tombstone a last tender kiss, and walked away to take care of the final task.

Marching down muddy trails past abandoned encampments and soggy piles of discarded clothing, listening to a chorus of evening frogs, I walked through the woods looking for just the right place. I wanted a spot to dump the Fresh Pot mug. I wanted a place I would never again recognize, where I would never pass by accident. When I found it, on a ledge overlooking a swamp, I closed my eyes, took a long deep breath, and drawing back my arm as far as I could, heaved the mug out into oblivion. After a long silence, I heard it clank against something, then thunk to the ground.

Opening my eyes, there was just a lake of grass and weeds. No mug in to be seen. It was gone for good, and I’ll never ever be able to look at any spot and think “it’s there.”

Gone forever, and good fucking riddance.

Dashing back home in the last light of the day, I felt unburdened. I felt free for the first time in years. All of a sudden, life was beginning to look pretty good again.

This morning I woke up with a smile

Last night, after the fire, I fell alseep. For eight solid hours I slept like a baby, which hasn’t happened in a very long time. My insomnia is finally gone. The spell appears to be broken.

When I got up and got dressed, I saw in the mirror that I had a big smile. I was so refreshed.

Outside, it really looks like the first day of spring. The sun is brilliant, promising picnics and short sleaves from here on out. I know it’s a charming lie, but today I’m in such a good mood that I’ll pretend to believe it.