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11/2 Today Goofus the Peacock killed a mouse and instead of eating it right away, decided to wander around the pasture carrying it in his beak. The feral cats always appreciate dead-rodent-based performance art, so they followed behind Goofus single file to make a Very Exciting Dead Rodent Parade.

At one point Goofus stopped and put down his rodent and one of the feral cats dared to sniff at it, and Goofus unleashed The Most Terrifying Honk, something along the lines of I WILL END YOU AND EVERYONE YOU LOVE AND YOUR BONES WILL BE FORGOTTEN ON THE FROZEN EARTH WHEN I SNUFF OUT THE SUN AND SING THE STARS TO DARKNESS I AM THE DEVOURER AND DESTROYER OF ALL THINGS

The feral cats, previously unaware that the Death Of The Universe And End Of All Things is currently living as a peacock, ran off at about fifty miles an hour and hid under the barn for the rest of the day. They didn’t even come out at milking time to beg for goat milk, which is a first.

We probably should not have named the Death Of The Universe And The End Of All Things “Goofus,” actually.

[hughman]

I recently started a new writing gig and my first article is a review of the Netflix series "Sense8".

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[hughman]

WHEN I DIED

Four months ago, on January 11th, my sweet beagle Polly died at the age of 14. She quickly became ill and the best thing was for her to gently go to sleep, free from pain. My dear friend Carole came down from SF and a kind woman vet came to my apartment to administer the shots. Polly died here next to me on my bed.

It may be hard for people to understand what Polly was to me. My last relationship ended 13 years ago, not long before I got Polly, and I’ll never have another (by choice). I’ll never have children and don’t particularly want any. Over my 53 years I spent more time with Polly than any other person in my life including my mother. Because I’m now disabled and can’t work, I was with her 24/7. She would get so upset when I’d leave her alone in my apartment that in the 12 years I had her, the longest I left her was maybe 3 hours. She was indifferent to other people and dogs and as a friend would tell me, the only thing Polly cared about was me.

While I had Polly, I had a lot of traumatic events occur. My mother died 7 years ago and after she died my family stopped talking to me. I had no money, I had AIDS, I lived across the country.

I got really ill a couple of times when Polly was with me. Times I thought I would finally die. Polly would lay beside me in bed.

I’m not exactly a stranger to death. The many years I lived in NYC, I had numerous friends die of this disease and some I nursed till their end. I grieved. So when my mother died, I felt like mourning was familiar, something I had become an inadvertant expert at. I couldn’t afford to go back east to her funeral and no one who was my family offered to help. They never even told me where she’s buried. But I would say goodbye on my own, alone and with Polly. I’d think about our time together and then my life would go on as it always had in the past.

And it did for awhile, at least on the outside, and when I had health issues arise again Polly was there and it was bearable and then she got sick and died and grief has overwhelmed my every cell.

This grief is nothing like life. It has come and snatched away the Hugh I was. It has taken my joy, my humor, my interest. I stopped posting to FB like I used to, stopped watching most teevee.

And I cry. Every day. Most anything can set me off and I’ll find myself standing in my kitchen, spoon in hand, and suddenly wracked by huge gulping sobs. I’m crying while I write this, tears blurring the screen while my fingers type without me.

I need to have extensive oral surgury soon. Because of my financial situation, I’ll be getting the work done through a dental clinic here in LA for people with HIV/AIDS. They are supposedly very good but I need to have all my teeth removed, or what remains of them. Hopefully I’ll get dentures.

I’d like to not have to think about pain in my mouth anymore or not being able to eat certain foods because they’re too tough or crispy. Pizza, fried chicken.

But there’s also a part of me that just doesn’t care anymore. I rarely leave my apartment now. On Fridays the woman who is my home worker takes me to the grocery store and I stock up for the week. There is no reason for me to go outside, I don’t have to walk Polly. I don’t want to run into anyone because the first thing anyone asks is where’s Polly and I burst into tears and people give you that look, that sympathy that does no good for me.

I realized I’m in a bad place and recently reached out to the County Social Worker who had helped me in the past. He’s a gay man as well and very kind and he’s going to be assisting me in getting to my dental appointments. He brought up the subject of suicide, not as a question or a warning but because he knew it was there, the quiet observer in the room. We acknowledged it and moved on. I have no energy for suicide.

I still have Polly’s crate in my living room where she’d stay during the brief times I had to leave her. The doggy steps that she used to get on the bed when she got older and less agile are still sitting in the same place. When I make the bed, I just move them and then put them back. I can’t let go. I’ve been abducted by this constant sadness that has taken me from living and without me doing a thing.

This grief is nothing like life.

[hughman]

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You're welcome.

[hughman]

Richard Diebenkorn, Cityscape #1, 1963

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I made a new mixtape.

[hughman]

When I Met The Jeffreys, Part Four

“This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.”

- T.S. Eliot

When you take a share at a summer resort like The Pines, there might be the expectation you’re leaving behind your harried and urban life, even if only for a weekend at a time. After all, getting to Fire Island involved taking a cab or subway to Penn Station, a train to Sayville, Long Island, a van to the ferry, the ferry to the Island dock and then a walk to your house (since the Island is free of cars). Total travel time was approximately three hours depending on your train schedule and how you coordinated transfers. You might assume after the journey from concrete and skyscrapers to a thin strip of land on the ocean, you’d be free of Manhattan.

You’d be wrong. True, you were in a completely new physical environment but the people around you were basically the same people you saw all the time in the city, as if all the bars, restaurants, gyms and discos had beamed everyone right to the beach. While my Fire Island housemates apparently clung together in Chelsea as much as they did while at the beach house, I had made different friends. When the summer started, I’d become friends with a man named Ray.

Ray was the first friend I’d ever had who was a certifiable Gay It Boy. He was actually rather infamous in the confines of the Chelsea subculture where I lived, the same group who also predominately occupied the Pines. He was in many ways the poster child for a certain gay stereotype gaining prominence in the 80s. Ray was tall and very muscular, he was strikingly handsome. He worked as a popular bartender during Happy Hour at one of the busiest gay bars in the West Village. And despite all odds, Ray was incredibly nice. He could have easily been a vain, snotty queen who banked on his looks and he could have easily gotten away with it. Instead he was one of the kindest, funniest and most charming men I’d ever met.

Years before our paths crossed, my first glimpse of Ray was at my gym in San Francisco before I’d moved to NYC. One day there was this gorgeous muscled stranger, obviously a visitor to the city, and I’d rushed home to call all my friends on the phone to extrapolate how this vision had appeared in our city, spinning possible scenarios about his reasons for visit and who he was. It wasn’t until years later when I’d moved and saw him again that I connected recognizing him.

In NYC, I’d seen him bartendering a number of times. The bar where he worked was on a busy main avenue with large windows facing the street. So it was always crowded, the perfect place to drop in for a quick cocktail or meet friends. Ray and I also went to the same gym (the It Gym of that time) where we struck up a conversation one day. I was no doubt intrigued by his looks but quickly became charmed by his personality. Soon, and I’m not even sure how it happened, we began going out socially on the weekends. Ray was quick to party. His best friend was a doyen of the gay scene, an interior designer named Antonio who also sold coke so it was always plentiful and cheap. At a Michael Jackson concert, Ray and I bent over in our seats between songs to snort drugs and then Ray stood and laughed, waving his arms to the music. People turned and looked but of course no one dared stop him.

So I was thrilled Ray also had a share on Fire Island. Of course he had a room in Antonio’s house and I looked forward to hanging out there. However because of his work schedule Ray’s arrivals varied and while most people, including myself, went to the Pines on Friday afternoon he would usually not come out until sometime late Saturday or Sunday.

So Friday nights I’d go to Tea with my housemates but then I’d disappear on Saturday and go to Ray’s before showing up to Tea with him and the members of his house. We’d arrive and Jeffery One and Two would be standing near the entrance, nursing cocktails and featuring new shirts.

“Oh, guess who’s here? He’s here.” Jeffery One would acerbically announce when he saw me, the wayward child who’d finally returned home for breakfast after being out all hours. Jeffery Two looked startled as if I’d appeared in a flash of light.

Perhaps it was Jeffery One’s scolding tone, perhaps it was his inappropriate gravity, or maybe it was the line of coke we’d done before leaving the house, but Ray and I burst out laughing. Antonio, who always had the weathered air of a jaded alumni, lowered his sunglasses to assess the two Jefferys.

“She’s your roommate?” he asked me and gestured at Jeffery One. “Oh I know about her. This one’s a piece of work.”

Jeffery Two was startled at this announcement and dipped his head and quickly bent his legs as if recalling how to curtsy. Jeffery One took a more muted response. “Hello Antonio” he somberly acknowledged.

“So how is it living with the new girl on campus?” he asked the two Jefferys. “She sure has put a fresh coat of paint on your toolshed of a house from what I hear. Bout time someone there got laid.”

Ray returned with cocktails for all and Antonio grabbed his and sucked his straw as he peered over his sunglasses at my housemates awaiting an answer.

I was a little startled because the point he was making was, in fact, true. I don’t think I remember anyone ever returning home the next day after some carnal tryst with someone they’d met at the disco or on the boardwalk. I assume David and his DJ Boyfriend Ronnie “did it” but it was an unspoken rule you never mentioned it. I, however, had met a few hot men in my time on Fire Island. Hell, I was young, mischievious, personable and on the most concentrated piece of Gay Land on the planet.

By this point, Jeffery One’s face was twitching between forced grimace and pinched disdain. It was as if he’d had a face lift that couldn’t decide who’s face it was actually assigned. I could tell he was wrestling between dismissal or protocol towards someone higher on the Gaytem Pole than he was. Meanwhile, Jeffery Two seemed to be having an epileptic fit and was smoothing his shirt, quickly averting his eyes and contorting his face in what could only be described as the first signs of a stroke.

Jeffrey One made the most obvious, plebian mistake. He glanced from Antonio’s face to my boots and back again, as if to force everyone to acknowledge my fashion faux pas. Antonio sipped his cocktail and gave a cursory glance to my footwear.

“Honey, they ain’t looking at his shoes. As if that’s what the boys here really cared about,” he said as he handed his empty cup to Ray, “if I was you I’d go out and buy swamp waders. Cause you need all the help you can get. We need another drink.” he declared as he brushed them all aside and walked to the bar, assuming rightly that we’d follow.

For the rest of the evening, I’d occasionally glance over to Jeffrey One and Two and could see one was incensed while the other was confused. Steven was unfortunately torn between the two factions, rushing next to me and showcasing his footwear before shooting beck to Jefferys One and Two to calm their ruffled feathers.

Frankly, I didn’t care in the least. As far as I was concerned, I was living the textbook life promised of a Fire Island fable. I was BFFs with a hugely popular It Man, I was in the clique of a seasoned Doyenne (who also had a steady coke supply) and I was having a blast. The judgement of those lacking my stature and fun was negligable.

Eventually, however, Tea was over and we all sauntered back to our respective domiciles before making plans to convene later when Disco began. When I walked in my house, however, I knew something was up.

“Here” Steven whispered conspiritorially as I entered and he handed me a cocktail, “you’ll need this.” I was wary of accepting since I’d already had a few drinks at Tea (not to mention the coke I’d been given by Ray and Antonio) but I figured it would give me something to do with my hands.

“DINNER’S READY!” he twirled to announce. David and his BF appeared as ravenous as you’d expect but Jeffrey One solemnly walked out as if witness to a hanging with Jeffrey Two in mourning behind him. We all sat at the table.

[hughman]

Years ago, Polly and I were having breakfast at The Belmont when a man entered and sat a few tables away against the banquette facing us. He had on a Motley Crue t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, full beard, sunglasses, a Big Black Hat, one hand wrapped in bandages and studded cowboy boots....

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