Non-Amish Non-Hospitality

Saturday evening I was invited to a banquet at a local "Amish" family restaurant. I really wonder what a real Amish would have thought.

The banquet was a fundraiser on behalf of a Christian ministry, and they did a good job of their part. I even pledged to send some money. But this isn't about them. It's about the restaurant.

I feel pretty certain that any Amish would be uncomfortable with all the made-in-China gewgaws for sale in the upstairs souvenir shop. Halloween junk. Christmas junk. Just plain junk. The only thing I saw up there that reminded me of the Plain People was an assortment of quilts.

Downstairs, we had a banquet room reserved, with long tables for all of us potential missionary supporters. Maybe there was a problem with last-minute invitations, because we were really jammed in there. The teenage boy to my left kept putting his elbow in my face as he ate. There was just enough room in front of each of us for a plate (with a salad plate on top of it) and flatware. So when the real food began to arrive (and the people bussing the tables hadn't), we sort of pushed things aside and piled the salad plates on top of each other.

The main dishes were served family-style (sort of a trademark of Amish-style restaurants). Serving dishes with large spoons in them were passed down the tables. Now I know it's nobody's fault that I'm under 5'6" and it's probably nobody's real fault that the chairs were unusually low for a table, but it took a little bit of readjustment (and a spilled glass of water) before I understood that I had to actually hoist the serving dish above shoulder-height to pass it on. The hoisting part wasn't that difficult, though. By the time the dishes got to me in the middle of the table, they were empty.

This is the point for a digression. I've only met a few Amish, but they were uniformly gracious and pleasant. I strongly suspect that an empty serving dish would be counted as a disaster. Yes, the restaurant did end up bringing out more food, but not before several of us had volunteered to go hungry so the people further down the line could have something to eat.

And now it's time for another digression. I live in Ohio, widely considered to be the heart of the midwest. Fruitful fields and happy farm wives and all that. Well, maybe it's so, but the most vivid personality characteristic I have noticed since moving here in the 1970s is a total lack of hospitality. Church potlucks have been discontinued because there is rarely enough food: most folks show up looking for a free meal, so those in charge of things have to provide a really large amount. Nobody knows how to be a host, and nobody knows how to be a guest. In over 30 years of church membership, I've only been a guest at half a dozen people's houses. And to be fair, I've only reciprocated about the same number of times.

End of digression. The family restaurant just felt too much like the church potluck. Maybe I'm traveling with the wrong crowd. I visited an Episcopalian church last winter and happened to show up on the day of a church dinner. There was food and friendship to spare.

More church stuff

Had a sit-down with the pastor on Tuesday. It was kind of weird—when he left an answering machine message for me, he actually sounded a bit frightened.

I'm tempted to give one of those reports that diplomats give when they come out of a summit meeting: "It was a productive conversation and both sides got a chance to air their views." Well yeah, but it was more than that. I think Jerry and I actually began a friendship once again.

One really important thing was the discussion of public role versus private friendship. Apparently Jerry (the pastor) often feels that he's got to preserve some sort of persona and to make all sorts of people happy. Thus, he's the fireman and zooming around trying to put out fires. Or maybe policeman is a better analogy. I know that police officers are often compassionate, caring individuals, but when they appear at the door in response to a neighbor's call, they always have a gun. Jerry (and his messenger, Greg) often appears to have a gun. Or at least an agenda that says, "I'm right. You're wrong. Listen now." So we talked about that. He asked whether I could be friends with Greg if Greg were to stop being a church officer. The answer was "Of course!" I actually like Greg when he's not telling me that I've screwed up again.

So we're trying to navigate this territory—trying to forget (for a moment, anyhow) that we have an official relationship with each other. Hope it works.

Back to church

We're going to try this again. For two or three years I worked with several friends to get a gay-friendly church going in Columbus. Then when that died, I visited a couple of Ashland churches, but didn't find any that really attracted me.

So now I'm back where I started, at Grace.

It's really obvious that I'm nowhere near their target demographic. Of course, they couldn't pick a demographic that's much worse—white couples with school-age children and a total distrust of anyone outside their nuclear family. This isn't the stuff of Christian community. I looked in the church bulletin yesterday and found all sorts of activities for youth, for women, and for married couples who had been together less than ten years, but nothing for men, older married couples, or single adults.

But I will persevere. I'll attend the adult Sunday school sessions (now THAT'S a new feature for Grace!) and actually say something. I'll sing in the Advent ensemble. I'll even bring food for the children's mid-morning snack. (Somehow coffee after church got eliminated because it's too much trouble.)

We'll see what happens. Will I fit in? Is there anyone else there like me?

Cars

I watched the movie Cars last weekend. (I had owned it for a while, but it was out on loan to a friend.) Old memories began to surface as I watched the doings in the town of Radiator Springs ("cutest little town in Carburetor County"). When I was a small boy (under eight years old), my father used to take us on a LOT of trips through exactly that countryside. He had a government job that required a lot of driving, and often he just took Mom and me along.

Then I remembered that I have a family wedding on the West Coast next June. Plans began to circle within my head. I looked at the website for the Route 66 Preservation Society. Looked at brochures for new cars. (My ever-faithful Toyota Matrix should have about 200,000 miles on it by then.) The trip actually looked pretty good. I'd drive to St. Louis (as quickly as possible because the Indiana/Illinois part of the trip is pretty boring), spend a day there, then wander down I-44 and other roads that have replaced Route 66. A bit of time at the wedding in Los Angeles, then up the coast to San Francisco (which is probably worth at least another day), then back on the successor to US 40.

All was looking really good until I realized that the wedding will take place right in the middle of the time I normally teach. Can I persuade them to move it three weeks earlier? I doubt it. Will I make the trip anyhow, then fly back for a one-day wedding-only visit? That's appealing, but sounds pretty expensive. And will I make the whole trip alone? I can't think of anyone right now who would like a two-week road trip with me.

Questions, questions.

Three Weeks in October

Book review, sort of. On the plane to LA, I tried reading Three Weeks in October. If any book had a hope of captivating me, this should have been it. It's the story of the sniper who shot thirteen people in suburban Maryland near Washington DC. Many of the deaths were within two or three miles of my mother's house, and most of them are in places I'm totally familiar with. The snipers were captured at a freeway rest area where I stop frequently.

So I should have loved the book, right? The author, Charles Moose, was the police captain who cracked the case, so he should have known everything there was to know.

I got 48 pages into it before I got tired. OK—I was trying to read on a cross country flight in the economy section of a six-abreast plane. (But I did finish a Harry Potter and half of another book that way.)

Three Weeks, unfortunately, commits two sins. It's an "as told to" book, and the real author, Charles Fleming, should have known better. But anyhow, it focuses on the trivia. Who cares whether the Moose's brother got into trouble with the law when Moose was a child? Who cares what sort of gun he carries when he's doing a press conference? I cared a LOT about the crime and its investigation, but I got bogged down in his personal history.

As if that isn't enough, the style is choppy and disorganized, something I'd have trouble allowing in my Freshman Comp students. Example from page 42 (about as far as I was able to get)

My brother David was the firstborn in my family. He was born in New York. I was born in New York, too, four years later. Shortly after that, my father decided to move back to the South.

It doesn't take much writing like that to discourage the reader—even one who really wants to read the book.

Back from LA

Suddenly I'm a world traveler. My daughter Becky surprised me with an invitation to visit her in Los Angeles. How could I refuse? Never been there before. In fact, I've never really been her guest before.

I guess I'm getting old. The prospect of flying (and facing the whole anti-terrorism search thingy) had me pretty scared. I kept envisioning someone doing a full body cavity search on me or finding a reason that my ballpoint pen is a weapon. Of course it didn't happen that way, though I don't think I'd ever recommend two seven-hour flights as a form of recreation. It's what you have to do. That's it. (Though I did manage to read a whole Harry Potter.)

High point of flying: picked out the Broadmoor Hotel as we passed over Colorado Springs.

Low point of flying: one hour stopover in the incredibly tacky Las Vegas airport (complete with slot machines, posters of the "Thunder Down Under" all-male review from Australia, and an ad for a company that rents machine guns by the hour).

Los Angeles is pretty much as I pictured it, though a LOT more desert-like. More cars and traffic too. Seems like most people are Hispanic. Skateboards are standard transportation for most schoolboys (which probably explains why most of them look a lot slimmer and fitter than their Ohio counterparts). Mint green stucco houses alternate with pink ones. Becky lives in an unusual apartment building: ochre.

One of our day trips was to a grocery store that sells almost nothing except pop and beer. Big store. Pop from everywhere in the country. Want a bottle of Green River from Chicago? Genuine Moxie from New York? Cricket Cola from Potomac, Maryland? How about Coca Cola with real cane sugar instead of the corn sweetener that's usual? He's got them all.

Of course, we had to do the Studio tour. Sony's is within walking distance of Becky's apartment, so we did that one. I almost got a glimpse of Adam Sandler's car. Saw the sets for Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. (One German family on the tour had never heard of either TV show, so they weren't as impressed as we were.) We did the Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard, but that was depressing. Sad, tacky, run-down. Definitely don't take the kids.

The whole thing was kind of mythical though. I guess, since I grew up in Washington DC, that I miss the mythic dimension to my original home town. Swinging by the White House, then proceeding down Pennsylvania Avenue doesn't sound like a big deal to me. But when I was in LA and we made a turn onto Sunset Strip, then ended up on Ventura Boulevard, I was back in the land of dreams.

Food? Luke recommended the burrito stand near Becky's old apartment, so we had those. Definitely wonderful. One evening when I was on my own, I walked to a New York deli and had hot pastrami on rye, with an egg cream on the side. You never know what you'll find in LA. I do wish, though, we had stopped where the guy with the pickup truck was selling coco fresco. Might have been interesting.

Well, now I'm back in the real world, where grass grows and rain falls (Lots and lots of it—I missed all the flooding while I was in the desert). Teaching began again yesterday. It was really a good summer.

Reflecting on Georgia

My faithful readers (both of you) realize I'm cheating on this one by backdating it. Got pretty busy with school, then forgot my password for Blogger.

I'm really glad I went. I'm actually writing this nearly two months afterward, and I remember several things very vividly:

• I had thought that my visit with Joel and family (both going and return) would be a freeloading quick stop (and I was embarrassed to impose that way). Joel and Heidi did it up right. They took me for fireworks and a minor league baseball game. Fed me great Italian food and even espresso after church on Sunday. It was great.


• In Valdosta, Jon was (of course) quite busy putting the plays on, but we did get to talk really well a couple of times. I still think it's funny that he's pleased with his new police cruiser. As usual, he loves the stagecraft and is delighted to explain it. Some might think that's tedious. I don't. He's a true lover. He loves his craft, and when he talks about it, I fall in love too.


• The plays in Valdosta were A Year With Frog and Toad and Thoroughly Modern Millie. Jon wished I could have stayed for Cabaret, but I don't feel cheated. I loved Frog And Toad. We had the snail that delivers the mail ("I put the go in escargot"). Flowers popped up mysteriously from the stage. Wonderful. And I'm not sure I'll ever really recover from the Chinese guys singing an old Al Jolsen hit, "Mammy," in Chinese, with subtitles (Millie). So much to talk about. So much to remember. Office girls typing and tap dancing while someone pushes them around the stage in wheeled desks. Jon's elaborate art deco lamp. Lots of stuff.


• I sort of fell in love with Valdosta too. Apparently it's the town in Fried Green Tomatoes (which I haven't seen). Columbus may have its Short North, but Valdosta has its Really Short South—about a block long, complete with antique stores, classy restaurants, bars, and a great Episcopalian book store. I'd go back.

Plus ça change

Here I am, about a thousand miles south of home base, just a few feet north of Florida, in Valdosta, Georgia. I'm here to attend a couple of plays my friend Jon is working (He's the Master Electrician). But this morning, I'm sort of on my own for a couple of hours, so I spent the time doing e-mail and eating a hotel breakfast.

Over the last few years, I've done a lot of traveling, but it's always been in the same corridor. I oscillate between my home and my two colleges. Three or four times a year, I drive to my mother's in Washington, DC. Sometimes I go to Columbus. That's about it. Valdosta is definitely outside my loop.

Pax, West Virginia

A couple of hours on the West Virginia Turnpike, and I was beginning to worry about gasoline, so I took the next available possiblity. Pax. The sign at the edge of town proclaimed the town's most recent glory: the Boys' Basketball Division B State Championship. That was in 1954. No glory, apparently, for the last 53 years. The town's few houses are crowded between the state highway and the railroad. The one business, a tacky convenience store, is pretty much the center of things. I had to wait in line behind a group of motorcyclists who were pondering the difference between the energy drink in the red can versus the one in the black can. Harley riders apparently aren't in much of a hurry in West Virginia. I was strongly tempted to buy the local church's fundraiser cookbook. Maybe on the return trip.

South Carolina highways

I'm used to Washington, DC, traffic, but South Carolina beats it. Narrow Interstates, 70 mph speed limits, and semis operated by desperate drivers. I wonder if there's any way to defuse the return trip.

Georgia Route 84

The best way to get here involved about a hundred miles of Route 84. It's sort of a 100-mile-long town. You're never far from a tiny settlement (complete with a little Fundamentalist church). Driving at highway speeds for more than five miles is a real event. At least a third of the houses and businesses appear to be abandoned. You probably remember hearing about the Georgia fire that burned an area the size of Rhode Island (why is everything the size of Rhode Island?). I drove through that area, and it's pretty obvious how the fire caused so much devastation. The soil is almost nothing but sand. The trees are all pines planted by a local paper mill—skinny pines growing a uniform twelve feet apart as far as the eye can see. The paper mill wants poles about 40 feet long and 8 inches thick. That's what these trees become, naked poles with a brush of pine branches at the top. Not exactly Hiawatha's virgin forest.

Waycross, Georgia

This romantically-named town (it's the crossing of two railways) has actually grown to some size, probably because it's the home of the largest cigar factory in the world. It's not a bad town. I spent some time there, because Route 84 vanishes mysteriously in the middle of town. I asked directions from a local gas-station employee—not exactly a success—our versions of the English language didn't match up that well. Nearly wrecked my car when the route sign told me to make a turn into a church parking lot.

Valdosta

So, after all this romantic-sounding voyage, here I am. I'm sitting in an Econo Lodge, typing on my computer as if I were home. Yes, a couple of the people in the dining room look Hispanic, and there was a collection of Good-Ol-Boys a while back, but it's astonishingly like home. Local cuisine? Appleby's. I can stop at Kohl's to buy clothing. I can look for furniture at Pier 1. Local kids look like urban hip-hop, just like Akron, Mansfield, or Washington.

No, I'm not sorry or depressed or anything about the trip. I'm glad I came. But the paradox is this. Apparently, if you want quality in the USA, it's going to be a franchise operation (Outback steaks, Econo Lodge, Barnes & Noble). If you want local color, it's going to be somewhat tacky (Bubba's Bar-B-Cue, El-Cheapo Gas).

One last encouraging note: fifteen hours of driving, and I only saw one Rebel flag (and that was on an old, weathered sign). Nobody flying them from their 4X4's. The Georgia state flag doesn't have it any more. I think I see more Rebel flags in Ohio than in Georgia.

Marriage is Work

I'm not sure what got this thought going—perhaps those old bits of writing I referred to. This evening I was pondering the slogan I heard thousands of times from various church leaders: "Marriage is Work."

Over the years, there has always been a church retreat or Sunday school series or something that was designed to repair the damaged marriages of Christians. Apparently Christian (heterosexual) marriages are always trembling on the edge of melt-down, and a major task of Christian leaders is to shore them up before they collapse. Thus the "Marriage is Work" theme—you can't simply assume your spouse is a loving friend who enjoys your company and wants to preserve the friendship. The results are fascinating:

• Somehow a Christian spouse isn't a friend or lover, but a coworker. Maybe a team member. When I worked at the book warehouse, I had a lot of fellow team members, and we had to figure out ways to cooperate. But we didn't necessarily like each other that much.


• There's really nothing intrinsic about the coworker relationship that makes a person want to spend time there. It's just functional. Therefore, the standard advice given by church leaders (especially to men) is that they have to ditch all their friends and find all their fellowship with that spouse/worker. If there's nobody else on the horizon, then you have to be with her.


• There's just not a lot of joy, spontenaity, or love in the coworker model of marriage. It's all about getting something done—preserving the partnership so the kids can have a stable home.

Several people have asked me why I stayed married so long. I think this is the answer. If I had expected to actually enjoy the relationship—to find love, comfort, romance and even a bit of sex there—I might not have stuck around. But I didn't. I bought the plan. I expected to find work.

Footnote: I wonder if this is one reason the straight church is so terrified of gay marriage. By definition, gay marriage is something two people enter into freely (and in the face of opposition) because they want to be together and expect to love and care for each other. It isn't work. It's gay. And if two people who love each other can freely associate, choosing each other even though other options are available and stick with it just for the sake of commitment and love, that's pretty threatening to the drudges who labor so hard to keep their fragile Christian marriages running.

End of an Era

Today I said goodbye to an old friend: my Windows computer that has been with me for more than five years. In fact, I am now totally Apple.

It was surprisingly difficult. A friend gave me $70 for the thing, and a few weeks ago I would have considered that sort of overpriced. But last night, I reformatted the hard drive, and discovered that a lot of the ills of the machine were simply the accumulation of trash. It's still true that the machine can't run Word for Windows in any modern version and that Norton doesn't make an anti-virus for it any more. But if the thing had been running this well in April, I don't think i would have bought the iMac. Lots of nostalgia there—I spent hundreds of hours doing desktop publishing on it (a main money-maker for quite some time). Lots of AIM time with several friends (a couple of them deeply depressed guys I tried to encourage). I'll actually miss the Windows chime when I turn the machine off.

I always second-guess any major financial event, so I guess this isn't much different. The new machine does look pretty good, though, and has almost no spaghetti cables under the desk. I'll get used to pretty, efficient, and elegant. Just give me time.

Into my Past

I guess I'm a writer at heart. Whenever something really grieves me, I tend to write about it, then save the copy somewhere, often on a Zip disk which gets forgotten. Anyhow, I'm in the process of getting rid of my Windows computer, and I was looking at all those old disks. I won't have WordPerfect of Microsoft Works any more, so I have been translating (and reading) all the old material to RTF files. Some funny stuff there. Some sad stuff.

One thing has really struck me. Several letters dated 1999 really focus on my sense of disenchantment and ill-ease with the church I've been attending since 1977. Since DaviD is out of town at the Pride festival in Columbus, there's no question of him coming to Ashland Presbyterian with me tomorrow, and I was asking myself this morning whether I would go without him. Maybe one point of all this archive-reading is that I have an answer. Yes.

A bit of my writing

OK—maybe this is the ultimate ego trip (perhaps an ego voyage). Here's an unfinished draft of a play I was working on a few years ago: Wedding Play. It never quite arrived, but the last couple of lines still bring tears to my eyes. One of the wedding planners (the guy in the loud suit) is actually patterned after the funeral director who did such a crass job with my grandmother's funeral. The other one (the biker) began as one of my friends from Columbus.

Old Blogs Return

I used to have a blog on the old Blogger system (before Google bought the thing), and I've managed to find and insert some of the better posts on this reincarnation. They will be at the bottom, according to their original date—enjoy.

Mac's Back

DaviD and I retrieved my machine yesterday, and life's (sort of) good again. The good side of things is that I did think to back up all of the really important stuff before making my experiment. The bad side is that it takes forever to put a computer back together after one of these crashes. I hadn't realized just how many little programs I'd downloaded—weather widgets, helpers for QuickTime and all.

It was almost worth it, though, to spend a day wandering around a really large shopping mall with a friend. We looked at kitchen gadgets (a passion for both of us), yearned over a new desk for me (no money for that yet), and ate at California Pizza Kitchen (always good). All in all, a fine day. And even though I knew I should have gone to the gym, I really did just spend the evening reloading stuff for the computer. After all, I would be less than human to simply let it sit there, right?

Bereft

Ouch! My friendly new iMac is in the shop for a few days. I tried to install Boot Camp, a program that allows it to boot up from either the Apple or the Windows operating system. The result was that it can't boot up from either. Fortunately, the whole thing was under warranty, so I'm only inconvenienced (a lot). Kind of sad and lonely too. Something must be wrong when I depend on a plastic machine that much.

Life Priorities

Today found me biking on the Kokosing Gap Trail. It's totally beautiful, and well worth a trip for the day. I guess I've gotten into bad habits though.

The trip from my place to Mount Vernon, Ohio, the starting point, is supposed to be a straight shot right down Route 13. Being who I am, I simply set the cruise control for the speed limit and roll. That worked just fine until Fredericktown, where we had to make a detour. Off I went to Centerville, 20 miles out of the way, down a beautful rolling road, behind a truck. He couldn't keep the speed limit. After all, we were supposed to be going 55 and he often dropped to 45!

Finally I arrived at the trailhead, pulled myself together, and took off. I often treat a trail like this a a sort of race. The trail is 13.5 miles long, and I wanted to do it all as an exercise in speed. (Kind of funny, considering the hybrid bike and my non-speedy physique. I see young muscular guys all the time who could double my speed for the whole trip.) Beautiful, fairly uneventful trip to Danville, the end of the trail. I stopped for a couple of minutes before returning. This was when a fellow trail user gave me a cheery "hello" and made a comment about the beautiful weather. He was right—it was a totally wonderful day. I thought maybe I'd found a companion for the trip back, so I stopped to chat. Then I got a look at him. The bike was a fat-tire 5-speed. He was clad in a Hawaiian shirt, cargo shorts, and loafers. He had quite a gut. Obviously, speed wasn't our agenda. He kept chatting and I kept wondering how to get away from him gracefully. But that wasn't happening. We biked along at about 4 miles per hour, so slowly that I had trouble keeping my balance in places.

Then he pulled his trump card. He's a birdwatcher, and his specialty is finding eagles' nests. And he had found one just past the halfway point of the trail. Well, I had to see that! Just as we arrived at the watching-point, a bluebird pulled the old injured-bird trick to lure us away from her nest. We played along until we were a safe distance from the nest, then the bird took off. Then we stood, looking through his binoculars, trying to find the eagle's nest among the foliage. We never did see it, but we saw a lot of redwing blackbirds, and I found out that my companion comes from the same tiny town where my uncle lives. After half an hour or so, it became obvious that we weren't going to see any eagles, and we finally headed home.

I guess I finally got the point. Sunday found me hiking through Mohican State Park with two teenage boys. Jared was a gas molecule, bouncing about and always urging us to zoom ahead, but Jake and I had the sense to ignore him and look very closely at a jack-in-the-pulpit.

Small Town Life

My aunt and uncle have lived their entire lives in a small Ohio town (population 1500), and I get over to visit them occasionally. The town boasts a well-known Amish-themed restaurant, and we always end up eating there.

Last Wednesday I dropped in for a visit, and as usual we went to the Amish restaurant. My uncle (who was never a farmer) keeps farmer's hours, so 5:30 seems a little late for dinner—that's when we got to the restaurant. Apparently the Masonic Lodge got there just before we did. Hattie, the cute waitress (she really is Amish) took our orders and three of us bustled off to the salad bar (my uncle ordered something much simpler).

We ate and talked for a long time. A very long time. Finally the main course came. Two orders of fried chicken (the menu said it was the best east of the Mississippi), one beef dinner (mine), and one thing that the menu claimed would be sort of a salad with a chicken breast (that was for my uncle).

My uncle's meal wasn't at all what he was expecting. The chicken was tough and under-cooked (perhaps all the Masonic business had put too much stress on the kitchen). My mother, aunt, and uncle complained all through the meal about the food (and remember that it had taken a very long time to arrive).

When Hattie came back to ask how everything was, they all just smiled and said, "Fine."

Later my uncle explained. They know all the people in the restaurant. He eats there several times a week. It's not worth making enemies for the sake of one complaint, he said.

More church stuff

I was thinking again about what I really want in a church.

Now I know that I should make a difference in my mind between what God thinks of me and what the church thinks of me. Even though it's supposed to be the body of Christ, a church is really a miscellaneous collection of sinners, saints, etc., run by humans with their own political agendas. My knowledge doesn't help much. I still confuse the two voices. So when the church says, "We don't mind if you show up and sit here passively—just don't expect any relationship," there is more damage than a problem with an organization.

I guess that's my real problem. Some folks flop from church to church looking for the best product, much the way I flop from restaurant to restaurant. (Is the staff at this one friendly? Does the food arrive promptly? Is the dining room pleasant?) I just want more. I'm seeking the voice of a divine friend who has been absent from my life for a very long time.

Back to the Presbyterians

Yesterday found David and me back at the Presbyterian church. Unfortunately, I feel like we still don't know that much about the place. As I commented afterward, "You know you're in trouble when the preacher shows up in full academic robes." It sounded a lot like a commencement address: generalized, positive, and not much about Jesus. Their new interim pastor will have her first shot at things next Sunday—too bad we'll both have to miss. I don't feel that we've gotten much of a feel for the way they would do worship yet. I hope that after a couple of months with the new interim they still aren't as sleepy on a Sunday. She seems to have some life in her.

We did get a chance at the coffee hour afterward. Met a couple of people and had pleasant conversations. I wonder what they thought. We had (quite by accident) showed up in almost-identical clothing (kinda gay looking too).

After church, I drove over to my aunt and uncle's house where my mom is staying for the week. Someone asked me what I was looking for in a church, and I'm sorry to say I sort of fluffed the answer. An honest answer might have been, "A church that treats someone like me as a part of the body and not a virus." An honest answer might be, "A church that doesn't give knee-jerk reactions to so many things." An honest answer might be, "A church that has a little more distance from James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, and George Bush." But I fluffed and said, "I go along with David because he's looking for a good church."

Off to church

Yesterday morning found David and me at the church his mother recommended ("sort of affirming" she said). It was a large Presbyterian church in Ashland. The morning was beautiful and warm. Pentecost Sunday (though I didn't remember that until I got there—otherwise I would have worn red). I had done my research otherwise, though, and knew that blue jeans wouldn't work. Definitely no shorts. I cautioned him not to wear a severe black suit, or they would think we were Mormon missionaries or undertakers.

I loved the church. My background is Presbyterian, and all the little things felt so familiar (including the unique Presbyterian variant on The Lord's Prayer). The choir was robed. The music was pipe organ.

I told David that he got the full Presbyterian blast. A baby was baptized and we re-enacted the solemn dance that is a Presbyterian communion Sunday. The preacher was a woman, a General Presbyter, and the whole thing was sprinkled with little special terms.

I think David was less enthralled. After all, the choir was robed and the music was pipe organ. And I did agree with him that a Michael Smith song ("Great Are You Lord") done in a full choir style was a little funny. He was really tickled (we both were) when the preacher told a little story about another church she had been in. Seems they had an idea about youth ministry and all their leaders began getting sick, really sick. One guy had cancer, so they prayed for him. Never expected him to get well (She pointed out that they were Presbyterians, after all—people don't just get well when you pray for them.). That cracked David up.

I think we'll go back. It was impossible to form an opinion about the "accepting and affirming" issue, because the preacher was a guest and there was no way to really chat with people. I'm sure there's more to see there.

What IS all this stuff?

Cleaned out the dashboard of my car today (we used to call that space a "glove compartment," but I've never heard of anyone ever putting gloves in there). Among the things that went away:

• Three Ohio maps
• Two Pennsylvania maps
• A complete set of car registrations dating back to the day I bought my 1996 Toyota Tercel (which I sold in 2002)
• Ditto for insurance ID cards
• A bill for $3 for car insurance because I bought my new car just a few days before the end of my policy.
• Several sheets from my car insurance company saying, "This page intentionally left blank."

I'll bet I get better gas mileage since I'll be carrying less weight now.

Review—13 Rue de l'Amour

I've been visiting mom in Washington, so we did our usual thing and hit the theater. In the past we've been kind of eclectic--all the way from Greater Tuna Christmas to A Body of Water. This time it was 13 Rue de l'Amour—the sort of door-slamming sex farce that the troupe was trying to produce in Noises Off. I was a little uncertain what to expect, since the theater's publicity compared it with the Marx Brothers and mentioned "partial nudity," while a local reviewer thought it was stiff and unfunny.

Off to the theater. I remember Olney, Maryland, as a sleepy one-horse town that had a combination hardware store and gas station. Now, of course, it's a glossy suburb of Washington, where the BMW's outnumber the Fords. The Olney Playhouse has been there since the 1930's (when it began as a summer stock theater in a roller skating rink), and I love going back. One reason I love it so much is that I get to have dinner at the Olney Ale House (go for their home-made beef stew and house brand of beer). And summer stock, even in suburban Washington, is an excellent excuse to spend a pleasant evening strolling about between supper and curtain.

The play, first published in 1892 as Monsieur Chasse! (a classy little double-entendre because one character keeps telling his wife that he's going hunting for the weekend) is one of those delightfully shallow things that plays best on a Vaudeville stage. To make it work, you need a beautiful young woman, a handsome young man, her older and slightly pudgy husband, a slim young male college student who isn't afraid to strip nude on stage (rear view), identical suits cut from ghastly red plaid fabric for the young man and the portly husband, two police officers and an idiot police inspector, and an overweight (and incredibly made-up) German concierge who used to be a countess until she fell in love with a muscular lion-tamer. Get the picture? People hiding in closets, doors slamming, an incriminating note that is stuffed in a trousers pocket (and of course the trousers get traded about from character to character). Sight gags that any teenage boy would understand but most middle-aged women don't get (or at least pretend they don't).

Loads of fun. The reviewer was right, though. Wrong too. This is vaudeville, not high theater. The actor is supposed to deliver a line, mug for the audience, and pause while we get it. We're never supposed to believe those things in the basket are actually meat pies—they looked like they were made of plaster and painted pink. We never forget that this is a play—sort of a long, sophisticated joke.

The playhouse was just made for this sort of production. It's brand-new, but has a period feel to it. Close, intimate architecture, a thrust stage, FOOTLIGHTS, and tableau curtains. The sets looked like a collision between Toulouse Latrec and Sergeant Pepper. Once again, we were reminded that we were part of a 100-year-old French joke.

I'm glad I went. Glad, too, that I opted to avoid the heavily political one-man play on the other stage (I am my own wife). This was an evening for laughs. If the standard for a good evening at the theater is a house full of smiling patrons, this one made it.

Footnote #1 That tableau curtain gave some trouble. As the second act opened, the drawline let go (just as the German concierge entered to give her "two maids dusting" plot exposition). As it descended, it wiped out a small table with a bottle of wine, a vase of flowers, and two wine glasses. To her credit, Madame Spritzer (yes, that was really her name) sort of ad-libbed and acted around it as desperate techies attempted to fix things. One young man ended up simply holding it back for the entire second act. The intermission was a bit long, as more desperate techies struggled with it. When the third act began and the curtain opened flawlessly, the audience burst into applause.

Footnote #2 I'm not sure what sort of clientele I was expecting. I was surprised, though, that almost the entire audience was well over 70 years old. Mom wondered if maybe a sex farce (with partial male nudity) was just a bit too tame for today's generation.

Footnote #3 The next day, Mom and I were in a greeting card store miles away and one of the ushers accosted us. We spent several pleasant minutes talking about the theater and the show. Not exactly what I think of in suburban DC.

Killed the Geezer

My youngest son has, for at least ten years, loved terms for me like "Geezer" and "Old man." I sort of bought into it too. When he put "The Old Man" on my cell phone screen, I let it stay there. I came up with usernames all over the internet that stressed my age.

Time to end that. You've probably noticed that my username here doesn't stress age, and I'm changing e-mail addresses and such to get rid of that reference. Just not a positive way to think about myself. Maybe I'll never pass for 18 again, but I don't have to prepare for the boneyard just yet either.

So How Did I Get This Isolated?

And what can I do about it?

One of the fascinating/depressing things about getting old is that I have gotten perspective. How on earth did I get here? Specifically, how did I get to a place where I find I'm unable to even think of ways to contact people? When I discuss dating, younger online friends usually say, "well, you just go out and find someone else if your current relationship doesn't work out." Maybe it's not quite like buying a box of corn flakes, but it's no worse than buying a new car or computer. If the current model quits or I don't want it, there are dozens and dozens out there waiting—so they say. And I respond (with all the good will of a bear that's been awakened too early) that I've actually met both of the over-40 single gay men within a 50-mile range of my home, and neither worked as a date.

I can blame lots of minor causes for this isolation.

One would think that teaching in two universities and one college would give me lots of time for interaction with intellectual people (I like to imagine C.S. Lewis going down to the pub for a pint with a couple of bright students and a fellow faculty member). The true picture, though, is that neither Ashland nor Akron has anything resembling a faculty lounge (Ashland doesn't even have offices for adjuncts like me), and "intellectual interaction" means a five-minute chat with my secretary. We adjuncts aren't even welcome at faculty meetings. But lots of people (truck drivers, for example) work in places where they don't get interaction with fellow workers.

Modern culture? I spend a lot of time at a coffee house in Akron, and the most usual sight there is half a dozen people with their laptop computers open, presumably deep in an IM session with someone elsewhere. In four years or so, I've only had half a dozen conversations there. But, realistically, who goes out to a place like that to meet people? And the computer does work to bring people together (though I do yearn for close friendships that don't require me to keep track of time zones).

I think it's deeper.

When I first really understood the Christian faith, all those years ago in college, I tended to phrase it very much in an "us versus them" rhetoric. Later, I drifted into a church that stresses isolation—not just from the outside evils, but from other Christians. When I was married, raising children, and working as hard as I could, I didn't really understand my loneliness, but since then I've seen that for years my only real interaction was with people I could claim on my income tax form.

I think being gay is part of all this too. Being a Christian sets one up for "us against them." Being gay does. Being a gay Christian certainly does. Being a gay Christian who reads and thinks analytically certainly does. It's not snobbishness so much as a feeling that there certainly can't be anyone at all like myself anywhere.

I've lost the skills too.

Last week a pleasant stranger struck up a conversation in a gas station, and I struggled to figure out what to say. A year ago a younger friend flirted with me (pretty much asked for sex), and I didn't even figure out what he was getting at until a week later. When I meet someone socially and my gaydar goes off, the best I can do for a conversational opener is "Ummmmmm."

Prescriptions for fixing all this? Well at least I'm going to actively look into churches that don't discourage interaction between congregation members. Ashland promises a spiffy new building with a faculty lounge and a microwave—and I'll see if there's a way to strike up ordinary conversation there. And maybe I should just accept the idea that for most older folks, friends have been dying and moving away, so the circle of social contacts will naturally shrink. Maybe the natural course of humankind really is to move from dozens of school chums to one or two good friends in later adulthood.

Advantages of Being Single

Yes, I know the standard ones—you can wander around the apartment in your underwear, you don't have to tell anyone where you are or what you are doing, and you can eat ice cream for breakfast.

There are others, and I'm not sure whether I'm being cynical or not. My elderly mother was sort of musing about Dad, who has been gone for about ten years now, and I remember some of my sister's comments too. I'm not sure whether my parents had the hot love affair of the century, but at least they were there for each other and my mother felt very cared for. Now she feels very alone. And I've talked with younger friends who remember the joy and comfort of being loved and having a physical relationship with boyfriends or girlfriends. One said he thought the cuddling was better in some ways than the sex. I'm sure there are other advantages, whether it's having someone to hold the other end of a large box you are moving or someone to bounce ideas off of.

Of course, we chronically single people don't have any of that, but I'm not entirely sure it's a bad thing. There seem to be only three ways a relationship can end: You die first, you die last, or you two split up. Sure, if you die first, there's no emotional pain of losing the relationship, but either of the other two result in pain of separation, whether you were together half a year or half a century. In a way, I'm much better equipped for the pain of elderly loneliness. I don't have the sense that I've lost something (or someone). My mother can't get over the anger at her situation, and some of that (irrationally) is directed toward my father. Yes, I'm angry that I'll never have a lover, and I direct the anger against God, but in my quieter, saner moments, I realize I'm sort of like Popeye. I am what I am, and that's all that I am. It's like an anger that I was never tall. Irrational. And I truly don't know what I'm missing. I've read about and briefly experienced, but that's not the same. The intense passion of lovemaking. The long-term intimacy of simply knowing each other for years. I miss it and daydream, but I really don't know what either is like, except for brief previews and second-hand glimpses.

So a weak cheer for being single. I can run around the apartment in my underwear. I don't have to conform to anyone's schedule. And I'm most definitely prepared for the inevitable loneliness of old age.

YMCA Thoughts

When the Village People sang their hit "YMCA" I was so naive that I didn't quite realize it was about being gay. (But then, I never did understand that Scooby-Doo was really about pot. I'm just sort of numb, I guess.)

Anyhow, after my Christmas break, I looked in the mirror and realized that I really had to do something about my middle. So I joined the Y. I really was a bit afraid. After all, I was going to be spending time with all the muscular young hunks, right? I wasn't worried about lust so much as embarrassment—this soggy old body and all those fit young things. I needn't have given it a thought. I'd forgotten that I live in one of the fattest counties in one of the fattest states in the country.

So I've been really regular, right up until this trip back to my mother's (and all the good food and lack of exercise). My wrist has given me some trouble (something called a "Bible Bump") and I am certain I look better to myself than to others, but it's been really good. I'm now part of the exclusive fellowship of extremely annoying people (like ex-smokers and ex-drinkers) who will bore you for hours with tales of personal achievement, etc.

Now I need to work on my sense of snobbery and my sense of entitlement when someone uses a machine I had obviously been thinking of.

After Memorial Day, it's back to the gym, and I can't wait. But I'll try to be less of a bore about it this time.

The First Post

I keep restarting this project. Maybe this time will work. I'm a writer, after all, and I have an incredible internal monologue going on all the time—and this is a good place to let it all (or almost all) out.

OK, so I'm still a bit closeted. Lack of nerve, maybe coming from being old or something. Anyhow, this blog is mainly for my GCN friends and fellow travelers. Some of you who are on my more general mailing lists can recognize that hideous green as a near-match to the templates Apple gave me for my other web excursions. And you do know how to get back in touch with me. Friends can e-mail me. GCN folk can use the forum board's IM function. I'd love to hear from you.