Tuesday, June 29, 2004

 

ENTRY 133: THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST


I'm not entirely certain what prompted me to dial the number again yesterday afternoon. Maybe because I was downtown. Maybe because I had let a week go by without a response and I wanted to finally address the issue. Maybe it was just one of those random thoughts you can't explain.


Whatever prompted me, this time Hamilton answered his phone.


I tried to be diplomatic in my phraseology. I hadn't heard from him, I had been concerned, I wasn't sure what was going on. He said he'd been "incognito," was sorry for not having called back. Did I want to drop by?


On the way over I realized that I wasn't entirely sure what to say. For a moment my mind was blank, until everything came surging back. But could I do this constructively? Could I do this better than my parents, who, as much as they loved me, had had no clue how to help me through my own depression, had done precisely the wrong thing?


All of this frightened me, the aching responsibility of it.


Five minutes later Hamilton was in the kitchen, getting me a drink. I stood at the window with the late afternoon sunlight spilling over my feet and across the hardwood floor, dust motes swirling confusedly around me. He returned and handed me the glass and we sat on the couch and he talked briefly about feeling out of sorts before starting on the topic of all the '70s movies he'd been watching. I chimed in here and there, all the time watching him speak and feeling a strange dumb relief in it.


But as he paused, I knew this was not nearly enough, and I had to do more. Even if that entailed a non sequitur. And at that moment I knew I would have to begin with the one thing I was most reluctant to tell him.


"I was angry," I said.


"About canceling the movie thing?"


"That isn't really it," I said. "It was that I'd left you a message wondering what was wrong and saying I was concerned and then I heard nothing for days. And I was torn because I knew why, and I understand from my own experience what depression means and is, and I didn't want to hurt you, but nevertheless I felt how I felt. And I think maybe on some level that anger may have come across, which is why I think it's important that I express that somehow."


He hadn't picked up on it at all, and he was sorry, and I said that I never thought he meant anything by it. And then it happened. He started to talk, and I listened, did more listening than I've needed to do in a long while.


It was astonishing. I don't think he'd ever said so much about his depression and his thoughts on it, and I was so grateful that this was happening, that he was allowing himself this. He talked about his frustration, his inability to function, his sense that maybe his beloved New York was no longer the place for him, how he'd tried all sorts of things over the past 25 years of grappling. In certain places I would offer some observation or response, but mostly I just let him do what he needed to do. All I'd wanted to really offer was a catalyst. It wasn't supposed to be about me. My eyes moistened, but I don't think he noticed. At least, I hope he didn't.


And then at the end of it we both said "I love you" and we kissed on the lips, just slightly longer than I'd have expected, not quite unchastely but almost, and I took him in my arms and held him for a while, stroked the back of his head, let his face settle in my shoulder on which I could feel, gently, his eyelashes blinking. It was more human contact than I'd had in months and months, and all that I really knew to give him just then.


I felt a bit like a foghorn in the distance, or the merest glint in the dark. But it was, at least, something.


When I emerged from Hammy's building the sun was sinking but still very much in the sky, and I was grateful for the sunglasses that hid my still-moistening eyes. I was crying for Hammy but there is always, I know, a sense in which we are really crying for ourselves. I shared so many of his doubts about my place in the world and whether life really does get better. Why he is so strongly debilitated by all these doubts, while I, at the moment, am not, is a question whose answer is beyond me.


I swallowed hard and pressed on toward the subway. The late afternoon was bright but touched with coolness, vivid but gentle, and I recognized this place as a world in whose beauty and solace I still fiercely and unwaveringly believed.

10:27 AM

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Sunday, June 27, 2004

 

ENTRY 132: SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH FRANK


I'd thought that my Last Sunday in June/Gay Pridepalooza was all set; Michael had said a couple of weeks ago that he would take me to the pier dance thing and "get [me] fucked up on E." I said okay, thinking to myself that he was half-right. Hey, it might even be fun. I'd let loose a little, put my best face forward, really try to have a good time.


But a couple of days ago Michael told me that some last-minute catering gigs had materialized, and he'd be busy with them all weekend. Well, there goes that.


Roll call.


Hamilton hasn't returned my six-days-old voicemail, and is no doubt in a lovely mood anyway. Roger is booked all weekend, as usual, and would no doubt be repulsed by the idea of a gay dance party. Zeke is vying with Ham for the gold in the Not Returning Voicemails Olympics. Nick is upstate. Phil is in Florida. Ray abruptly disappeared, only to turn up in Mexico, as I learned by post-relocation email.


Shit, I can take a hint. No pier dance.


And all of you get fucking detention. Spit out your gum.


When I woke up this morning, I thought maybe I would do something to observe the Gay Pride thing, as mixed as my feelings about the whole thing are. What to do? The parade? My memories of the previous year's didn't exactly inspire me. But....


Why didn't I organize my own parade? A parade of one?


First, though, I read the paper and showered and took the bus to the Met. It was the last day of an exhibit I really wanted to see. It turned out to be small and intricately beautiful and soothing in just the right way. This exhibit was also nice, but by the end of it I was wanting to get my parade on. Before I did, I went up to the roof garden to see the Andy Goldsworthy installation. It was particularly interesting to me after having seen the documentary on him last year.


The installation is called Stone Houses, and is comprised of two identical wooden structures built around piles of stones.






Interesting stuff.


It was such a beautiful day that I stayed up there for a little while--long enough to take this photo of a guy with a "Kick me" sign on his back.





And then I marched out of the museum and into Central Park. The parade had begun; I would revisit some of my favorite places in New York. I was wearing a semi-tight T-shirt, and nice pants. And I was gay. Sounds like a Gay Pride parade to me.


Past the Great Lawn and Turtle Pond and Belvedere Castle, down to the Bethesda Angel and the Loeb Boathouse and the rowers on the water, on through the Literary Walk and the Ramble (saying hi to Still Hunt, but not to any of the humans scoping me out) while I softly hummed "76 Trombones."


Out of the park and west on 72nd Street, past the Dakota to the subway, which I rode down to 23rd Street and 7th Avenue, the site of a recent gay half-drunken half-memory. Without a pause the parade moved west, out of central Chelsea and into the far western parts where I sometimes like to wander. There the parade paused, and ultimately ended, when the parade leader sat down on the wide front steps of a very nice building--the kind where neighbors probably borrow sugar from one another and don't urinate in the hallway.


For a little while the parade leader pretended that he really did belong on that shaded stoop on that quiet street, where neighbors from the adjacent building sat the next stoop over and talked companionably, and the occasional car passed, and the glistening waters at the edge of the island were close enough for the breeze to carry. He slipped off his flip-flops and pressed his dusty feet against the cool stone of the step, which felt so very solid underneath him.

6:47 PM

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