So, let’s see what’s been happening since my previous post ….

Last Friday night I met my old (boy)friend Peter Staley, who built this site for me, for dinner and then we went to see The Hoax. I’ve always been interested in Lasse Hallstrom’s work - he was the film’s director - ever since he directed My Life As A Dog, which was a movie about a boy who had lost his mother, a film that touched me deeply since I will always be a motherless child myself no matter how old I am blessed to be. The Hoax is the story about Clifford Irving’s bogus Howard Hughes biography back in 1971. I was 15 then and remembered all the media hubbub about it. I enjoyed reliving that time in my life up on the screen - the sets and hairstyles and clothes and old-media world. Having experienced a bit of publishing hoopla myself with the publication of Mississippi Sissy, I could appreciate as well the rarified desperation of editors and writers and publishing pooh-bahs that the film depicted so well. Richard Gere plays Irving. I’ve become a fan of the latter-career Gere. I thought he was great as Irving. But, as usual, Alfred Molina, as Irving’s best friend and amanuenses, steals every scene he’s in. My first mentor in New York, Henry Geldzahler, who was then the Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for New York under Mayor Koch but had been the curator of 20th Century Art for the Met for years, once told me, after we had met the young Gere at the theatre one night at a John Osborne play as part of the Roundabout Theatre season when the company presented its plays at the Hudson Guild Theatre, “Poor thing. I think he’s destined to be the Farley Granger of the ’80s.” Henry was seldom wrong, but he was wrong about Gere. He’s developed into a really good character actor with remnants of his leading man demeanor lurking about onscreen. Gere was the second cover story I ever did for Vanity Fair - my first was Madonna - and the first thing he said to me when we sat down was, “So what’s your agenda?” I thought that was too cynical by half and always held that comment against him. But now that I’m probably too cynical by half myself, I can understand his distrust of a VF writer back then. I told people my impression of Gere was, quoting the poet John Ashberry whom I had met with Henry at yet another cultureklatch party we attended together when Ashberry spoke of another of our acquaintances, that he was “a storefront of knowledge.” I take that back now. I think Gere had done wonderful things with his life. Perhaps it’s his devout Buddhism but I think he not only has developed into a talented actor, but also an honorable man with more than a storefront of knowledge of the world.

Saturday a friend of mine was sitting shiva for his father who died last week. I had never been to someone’s house while the family was sitting shiva. The female rabbi from his mother’s synagogue in East Hampton led us in the Mourner’s Kaddish. It was a beautiful service. I was moved by all of it, especially the words first spoken by the rabbi: “When cherished ties are broken, and the chain of love is shattered, only trust and the strength of faith can lighten the heaviness of the heart. At times, the pain of separation seems more than we can bear; but love and understanding can help us through the darkness toward the light. Out of affliction, the Psalmist learned the law of God. And in truth, grief is a great teacher, when it sends us back to serve and bless the living. We learn how to counsel and comfort those who, like ourselves, are bowed with sorrow. We learn when to keep silence in their presence, and when a word will assure them of our love and concern. Thus, even when they are gone, the departed are with us, moving us to live as, in their higher moments, they themselves wished to live. We remember them now; they live in our hearts; they are an abiding blessing.” I thought of my father and mother and my grandparents and all those friends of mine I have lost to AIDS when those words were read. I also thought of my friend’s father, a total stranger who in his death brought my own family and friends so close around me, hovering with love and concern and a kindness that seemed in those prayerful moments in no way ephemeral and ghostlike, but present and everlasting.

Brandon, the kid I mentor out in Brooklyn, woke me up with a 6:30 a.m. phone call on Sunday to make sure I had the directions to his baseball game that day. After a long subway ride and a walk through a housing project, I sat in the bleachers in the project’s park - the only white guy there as far as I could tell - and enjoyed the game and watching all the mothers cheering on their sons. The only men there seemed to be the coaches and the umpire. The mothers furnished lots of delicious picnic food for everyone - fried chicken and mac’n'cheese and green beans and collard greens and barbecued ribs. It was like a bit of Mississippi there in all that Brooklyn concrete. I was touched by all the maternal love about me. I talked to Coach Butch - yep, that was his name - who said he’d been coaching boys - and now girls - like Brandon and his friends for over 20 years. “We gotta save some lives of these kids. We can’t save all of’em. But we can save some of them by doing this and showing them discipline and how we much care about them. Plus, these are the best ribs you’ll ever eat,” he said, laughing and making me take a plate. Brandon’s team lost but I’ll be back to cheer him on again. He plays catcher, still getting the hang of staying alert there behind home plate. “I get to control the whole field,” he said, not knowing yet that nobody really gets to do that in life. But it sure feels good when you’re his age - he’ll be 13 in August - that first time you think such a thing is possible. I guess that’s what Coach Butch and the good men who are his compatriots do by coaching these inner-city teams: they put hope and confidence in these kids lives. Many of the boys and girls came up to me and asked “Are you Brandon’s daddy?” that last word spoken with such longing it, more than the kaddish the day before for a dead father, made me miss my own, a coach himself who in his own tough yet tenderhearted way instilled me with hope and confidence.

I called upon both those paternally bequeathed attributes when I took the train down to Philadelphia to do a couple of radio interviews for Mississippi Sissy and do a reading/signing at Giovanni’s Room, the city’s landmark gay bookstore that has been open for over thirty years. The store is named for James Baldwin’s masterspiece, his second novel published in 1956, which was the very year my mother, who died when I was eight, gave birth to me. The novel is about a homosexual expatriate coming to terms with his true self after his own mother dies when he is five years old. My appearance at Giovanni’s Room was my last scheduled reading and signing outside New York for the book so I was curious as to what it would be like, how would the end of this journey play out, who would be the last person I would meet at a signing. The first hour-long interview on WHYY, conducted by the erudite and empathetic Marty Moss-Coane (she was so good at her job) went well and was broadcast nationally via satellite radio and on television. (When I walked into the Barnes and Noble on beautiful Rittenhouse Square, a man walking out said, “I just saw you on tv. You were great. I just bought your book.” So that was nice.) I was also interviewed by Robert Drake, another smart and charming Philadelphia radio personality, for his show on WXPN. I wondered around downtown Philly for the rest of the day. I had only been there twice before - once when I was doing Equus with Tony Perkins out at Playhouse in the Park (I remember going to see a matinee of Network on one of my afternoons off there, that’s how long ago it was) and the other time was to do the first part of an interview with Sylvester Stallone on the set of one of his sequels to Rocky before meeting him later in Cannes to finish up the interview on a yacht after Helmut Newton got through photographing him. We all got seasick.

When I arrived at Giovanni’s Room there were only about ten people there for the reading in an upstairs area next to a fireplace and hearth. It was a bit too cozy for my tastes but I sat in the highbacked chair in front of the other chairs and engaged the small crowd in conversation so we all could relax. There was one woman there on the front row. She was sitting next to a cute young guy and I thought she might be his lesbian buddy or straight friend or sister. I heard her whisper something to him and thought I heard a slight southern accent. Always ready with a pun, I thought to myself, “I’ll just think of her as the Liberty Belle in this group.” I began the reading as the setting sun from one of the windows beat down on me. I pretended it was a spotlight and read on. At the end of the reading, two of the young men there told me how much the book had been a gift to them. I really appreciated that and was touched by their response to the book. We all had a great discussion afterwards. The people who had shown up were really smart and interesting. The woman and her friend lingered, waiting for everyone else to leave. It turned out that they were husband and wife and had flown up from Nashville to Philadelphia for 24 hours just to hear me read. She had two books with her. She asked me to sign one of them to her. She then asked me to sign the other to her son. “But you don’t look old enough to have a son old enough to read my book,” I told her. “He’s eight,” she said. “I want you to sign a copy to him so I can give it to him when he is old enough to read it.” She then handed me a three page letter she had written to me and inside was a picture of her son dressed as the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz for Halloween when he was four and five just as I had gone dressed as the Wicked Witch to my own Halloween carnival so long ago in Mississippi. He wrote to Julie Andrews after seeing the Sound of Music and Mary Poppins and Thoroughly Modern Millie and she wrote him back. He now is crazy for Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe and Betty Hutton. “He is my Tennessee Sissy” she said, her voice breaking as she began, quietly, to cry. “You have no idea what this book has meant to me. Just like those two guys said who were just here, it is one of the truest gifts I have ever received. It has made me a better mother.” She was one of the truest gifts I have received. As I said, I had wondered when the day started who would be the last person I would meet at this reading since it was the last official one on my schedule outside NYC. I could not have prayed for a better experience. After she left, I put my head in my hands like that stutterer back at the Potomac School in my posting below and had a really good cry - from exhaustion and from thankfulness that this book really has touched the people I hoped and prayed it would touch. I pray it will continue to be found by the people who will understand the spirit with which it was written. I’m going to frame the kid’s picture - he’s name is Isaiah - as the Wicked Witch so I can be reminded every day of all the little sissies still being born out there in the world who are fortunate enough to be have a mother - and a father - like that young couple from Nashville as well as those who aren’t so fortunate. On the ride home that night on the train I decided to send him every Playbill I get at the theatre from now on. My inscription to him that he will read one day: “For Isaiah - This is a book about maternal love as much as anything else. You are very lucky to have a mother who loves you so.” I was lucky too. Indeed, I felt my own mother’s loving presence when that Nashville mother and I hugged each other upstairs in a place called Giovanni’s Room as the sun’s beautiful rays, so like a mother’s love itself, illumined us. It’s Mother’s Day on Sunday. Hug your own mother if she’s still alive. And if she’s not, summon her maybe with the words of the Kaddish above. Or just have yourself some fried chicken and collard greens after a kid awakens you with the directions of how to get to a place you’ve never been before where you can watch him, full of hope and burgeoning confidence, as he takes his position on the uncontrollable playing field at a place called home.

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while but have been taking a few days off from thinking about Mississippi Sissy to concentrate on the inchoate novel that’s increasingly making itself known in my already crowded thoughts. So I have been trying to clear away some space for it - in my head, on my computer, during my days, bits of my dreams, and a large chunk of the emotional acreage I guess I can call “hopes for the future” now that Sissy, a book about my past, is itself slowly becoming a part of that also.

A week ago today I took the train down to Washington D.C. for a reading/signing at Lambda Rising off Dupont Circle. When I first arrived at the store I have to admit I was a bit depressed by the surroundings. There was really no space in the store to stage a reading. There were no chairs set up for an audience, etc. I crossed the street to a Starbucks and had an expresso and some madeleines - which always can raise my spirits if only from the caffeine and sugar - and by the time I got back to the bookstore the place had filled up with - no choice here because of the lack of chairs - a standing-room-only crowd. I cleared some books out of the way in the window of the store and stood up there as if it were a stage and did my reading. The crowd responded well and I met a lot of transplanted southerners there in D.C. Among them were ex-Mississippian Joe Stewart and his lovely wife Rachel. Is there really such a thing as an ex-Mississippian? Once you’ve been born there it’s always a part of your DNA. Willie Morris once said that if you’re a native of the state that “you will always love Mississippi but it doesn’t always love you back.” Joe and Rachel are two big fans of my book who have been so sweetly supportive of me and it through this blog. It was great meeting them in person. They are each wise and witty and Joe is full of Mississippi stories of his own. Also, T. Michael Womack, a senior Cataloging Specialist at the Library of Congress on the Germanic and Scandinavian Languages Team of the Social Sciences Cataloging Division (only in D.C. could all that be on a business card), showed up to buy a book and have me sign it. When he got to the table he also had - ever the archivist - a folder of programs from some of the plays in which I starred at Millsaps College in Mississippi and a few of the newspaper clippings of reviews of those plays with photographs of me when a had a full head of shoulder-length hair. It was a nice surprise to be reminded of my youth when “hopes for the future” was an emotional landscape with less constricted acreage.

A dear friend of mine - Andrew Sullivan, who, in my opinion, is the best blogger out there in the blogosphere - was also at the reading and we went out to eat afterwards to catch up with each other’s lives since we had seen each other last. We both live up in Ptown during the summer and are longing for our days there this year. We met an old Millsaps pal of mine, Diane Wiltshire, at the restaurant. Diane moved back to the States from Tokyo years ago when she met her husband, Dick, there where he was posted at the American Embassy. She had been married to a Japanese businessman and had two sons with him who are now in college. (The older one is my godson.) Dick also had a child from a previous marriage who was her younger son’s age and they raised their blended family out in the leafy suburbs of Virginia, where I stayed with them on this trip. Andrew and Diane and I had a great time talking about our disparate lives and, in this Bush league age we live in, our increasingly less disparate politics. The interesting thing about being in D.C. - it really is a lovely city - is realizing that the more Bush and his Rove-ing henchmen have tried to divide us in this country for their own selfishly nefarious political reasons, they have, in fact, brought so many of us closer together politically in opposing their nefariousness. Hey, I was in D.C. so I should be allowed some politics in this posting.

Diane and I drove back to Virginia after dinner. She had arranged for me to read to an 8 a.m. combined ethics/drama class at the Potomac School where her sons had metriculated. It is a tony private school where - speaking of bringing people together, toniness has a way of doing that also - many Kennedy children attended as the Cheney grandchildren do now. The interior of Potomac’s new upper school building was more like a ski lodge than a school. (Bill Clinton was a guest at its official dedication yesterday.) When Diane and I arrived last Friday many of the kids were hanging around the stone fireplace in the soaring atrium. I immediately began to feel like that young sissy back in Mississippi when we entered the high school, especially around the ruggedly lovely lacrosse players roughhousing before classes began. I averted my eyes and read a poster up on the wall about a charity event the kids were spearheading, DONATE TO DARFUR. Suddenly Modest Mouse blared from the speakers after the chimes rang for the school’s first class of the day. “That’s Chimes for Charity,” the guidance counselor, who also teaches the ethics class, told Diane and me. “On Fridays we let the kids donate money for their favorite charities in exchange for playing their favorite music between classes.” She led us into a lecture hall where about thirty kids and faculty members were assembling for my reading. It was quite an experience having to summon the energy and emotions to read from my book at that early hour. Plus, I didn’t know exactly how 16 and 17 year olds would react to the reading. But the kids could not have been more attentive or sweet or, judging by their questions afterwards, any smarter. Of course, I let slip a “shit” and a “fuck” before the reading to get them on my slightly subversive side. One of them asked me if I thought it was easier now to be a gay teenager than it was “back in the old days when you came out.” I told them all it is always difficult to be different when you’re a teenager - whether you’re gay or your politics are different than your friends or you dress differently or you want to wear your hair in some other way or even if you stutter. Indeed, stuttering was more emotionally devastating to me as a youngster than my sexuality because it was constantly on display. When I said that, one of the most ruggedly handsome of the lacrosse players sadly put his head in his hands and his buddy, sitting next to him, began lovingly - yes, lovingly, not sexually - to rub his shoulders to comfort him. The physical empathy I had for that young lacrosse player in that sad second or two touched my heart with a deep recognition. The guidance counselor told me later that he was, yes, a stutterer and that she had immediately thought of him when I said that to the assembled kids behind her but that she didn’t dare look back at him. It is an image I can’t get out of my head though since I did finally dare not only to look at him but to see him too. I hadn’t dared even to look his way when he sat down in the lecture hall after having briefly glimpsed him earlier out in the atrium before averting my eyes toward DARFUR. The maleness of his beauty and demeanor intimidated me. But in that moment of comfort displayed before me - tactile, fraternal, unguarded - I realized how the blessings of this book I’ve written continue to unfold. I had dreaded getting up at 6 a.m. in order to eat breakfast and get to the Potomac School on time. But it is a morning that I will always cherish. I hope some of the kids who heard me read will cherish it too. Yet it is that hand on the shoulder of a stutterer that is the one unexpected image from all this book touring I’ve done that will stay with me for a very long time. I guess those are the best blessings we can ever experience: the unexpected ones.

That night Diane and Dick threw me a party at their lovely home. For the third time in 24 hours I did a reading from the book. Among their guests were some of the Potomac parents who had kids who went to school with Kennedy and Kane Kanagawa, Diane’s two sons. The men were graying preppy fathers who had been formed by graying preppy fathers of their own; their wives - one specific one an elegant and beautiful Persian who works for the World Bank - came outfitted in the slightly worn Chanel suits they didn’t mind wearing on a Friday night to a neighbor’s house. Other of the guests were some of Diane’s and Dick’s professional colleagues in the national security business. Their house is down the road from Langley, Virginia, so I’ll let you come up with the correct acronym. Suffice to say, they don’t teach at the Culinary Institute of America. Politics and Prose bookstore in D.C. furnished Diane with copies of Mississippi Sissy as well as the audio version of the book that I recorded and she sold a combined total of 50 of them. It was so gracious and generous of my old friend to open her home to me and give me a party. I don’t think those middle-aged heterosexual couples would have normally bought the book. It was an interesting night. The next day Dick, on his way to a “training session,” dropped me off at Union Station for my train ride home to Manhattan. Dick, when he was the age of those students back at Potomac, longed to be an artist but got sidetracked into drawing three-dimensional maps back in the 1960s which came from the images transmitted from our country’s secret sateillites. His work was seen not in an art gallery, but it was looked at very closely in the Oval Office. He later made his more dangerous professional chops behind enemy lines during the Vietnam War in the jungles of Cambodia and Laos. He had lived life completely and selfishly on the patriotic edge until he met Diane he told me on the drive to Union Station. “She’s taught me about patience and forgiveness and how to talk about tomotoes with my neighbors. I’m not kidding, I thought the first time I had to talk about growing tomotoes with a Potomac parent at a lacrosse game I was going to have to hire myself to assassinate myself. But you know what, now I love talking about tomatoes. I’m even going to get back to my art soon. I started out as an artist. I’ve still got the soul of one. Diane recognized that in me. She nurtured that part of me back to life.” I could not give you a better description of my old friend than the one the man who loves her gave me in the car that morning. I am grateful she has always recognized that I have the soul of an artist too even when I doubted that I did, that I do.

I arrived home Saturday and met my old friend Darrell Wilks at the Biltmore Theatre to see Lovemusik, the new Harold Prince musical about the love affair between Lotte Lenya and composer Kurt Weill, two artistic souls who nutured each other in rather Germanic, tortured ways. Michael Cerveris seemed to be channelng Weill as if he were giving us a three-dimensional image from his own creative surveillance systems. I’m a big fan of Donna Murphy but she seemed miscast as Lenya, though I’m sure she’ll get mostly raves. To me it was like watching a term paper on Lenya - she had obviously done much homework - yet I never felt as if she inhabited the character. But it was a Saturday evening performance so maybe she was tired and marking the performance a bit. It happens. I did love the renditions of Speak Low (lyrics by Ogden Nash), Surabaya Johnny (lyrics by Bertolt Brecht), That’s Him (lyrics by Nash), It Never Was You (lyrics by Maxwell Anderson) and September Song (lyrics by Anderson). The book by Alfred Uhry - A Pulitzer Prize and Tony and Oscar winner - seemed a bit too jokey and clunky to me. The whole production ironically seemed old-fashioned and out-of-date for a musical about Weill and Lenya and Brecht (a Borsht Belt version of him, alas), three progenators of a new-fashioned idea of the musical when they stunned the world with The Three Penny Opera. I’ll be interested to know what my old friend Hilton Als thinks of it. He reviews theatre for the New Yorker. Hilton was sitting by Darrell and me and before he got up to leave at the end of the evening whispered, “I’m going home to read your blog.” If you haven’t read Hilton’s own memoir The Women, you should do yourself a favor and get a copy. In it, he writes an astonishingly insightful portrait of the late Dorothy Dean, a Manhattan cultural fixture who held court in her fabulously scrawny and cantankerous way. There was a little Lotte Lenya in her and alotta Lena Horne.

Monday I took an old boyfriend, Danny Edwards, to see Coram Boy. It was a huge hit at the National Theatre a couple of years ago but the New York critics this morning did not know what to make of it in their reviews. I admit it was a bit melodramatic but the stagecraft of the piece was quite exciting and I was never bored. There’s even a kind of Borsht Belt version of Handel in the production (his Hallelujah Chorus plays a big part in the production) which bothered me as much as the Brecht protrayal a few nights before. But overall it was a stirring evening in the theatre. I remember reading a rave review of the original National Theatre production during a layover at Heathrow in the American Airline’s Admiral’s Club on my way back to Manhattan from a dinner in Qatar given by the country’s royal family. (I should write about that trip at some point.) Anyway, I loved the girls who played the young boys (you’ll have to see the production to understand) and any story that touches on father/son relationships moves me as those of you who have read my book can understand.

Feeling like a father with two sons at the table, I had dinner last night with two of my favorite new people in New York, Josh and Josh of the website Josh and Josh are Rich and Famous. They are so adorable and smart and sexy and full of bushy-tailed enthusiasm for New York City. (Hmmm … I wonder if their tails really are bushy.) I name-dropped for them and they acted impressed for me. Anyway, after spending the evening with them and being touched by the freshness of their attitudes like a comforting hand reaching out to rub my sad shoulder, it added a much needed hopeful acre or two to my emotional landscape. I’m not joshing, Josh and Josh, thank you for your sweetness. I didn’t talk about tomatoes with you two but I went home and, patiently, forgave myself for ever doubting in this process of publishing a book that I am artistically capable. I wrote a few more paragraphs in my novel. I downloaded some Modest Mouse.

Just thought I’d name this post for my favorite new musical. If you haven’t seen it, do. And Jonathan Groff, the lead, is a sweet kid. He even let me bring my nephew backstage to meet him after we saw it in December. I’ll be rooting for Jonathan come Tony time. I had an unrequited crush on him for a few weeks. Jonathan would be a great replacement for Daniel Radcliffe after he completes his Broadway run as Alan Strang in Equus next spring, costarring with Richard Griffiths as Dr. Dysart. (Spring Awakening’s producer, Tom Hulce, played Alan as Peter Firth’s replacement back on Broadyway in the 1970s.) Alan is a part I also played back when I was Jonathan’s age. Anthony Perkins played Dr. Dysart opposite me. I had a shag back then. And I had to wax my chest and stomach to appear closer to 17 the age of the character in the play. I think I was around 21 or 22 at the time. That was thirty years ago now. Roberta Maxwell played the stable girl with whom Alan has a nude scene. The last time I saw her she was playing Jake Gyllenhaal’s mother at the end of Brokeback Mountain. I am often reminded that I have reached the “mother role” phase in my own life. When I used to watch Six Feet Under I always indentified with the sons until it always dawned on me that i went to the Juilliard School of Drama with Frannie Conroy, who played their mother. “I’m the mama,” I’d always whisper to myself and wait for Claire to fuck up.

Spring is, indeed, awakening and God am I grateful. Since I last posted I went to dinner with Christopher Lee Nutter on Thursday night and took him to a party that my pal, Carole Radziwill, gave at her place on King Street for Norwood, a new arts club to be headquartered in a townhouse on 14th Street which is to open sometime this spring. Carole has just installed a turntable in her apartment so records were spun also. It was all kind of au courant and old-fashioned and elegant and lively at the same time - much like Carole herself Friday I caught the train to Boston for a reading at Calamus Bookstore. It’s owner, John Mitzel, could not have been more gracious in his sonorous, flush-faced, royal blue-wearing way. A nice guy. It was standing room only in his lovely store. I read sitting at a table with shelves behind me around my head filled with first editions by gay writers. James Purdy and Patrick Dennis tomes were floating there next to my right ear. I could almost hear their very different prose styles whispering to me from between their covers before I started reading my own stylistic prose. Sold a few books. Had an interesting discussion afterwards with those who came to hear me read. People again complimented me on my “performance” from the book. I do enjoy these readings. Maybe I’ll do a one-man show of sections from the book at some point. Who knows. I’d forgotten what that sweet-spot of performing felt like. I used to feel it when I wore a shag and straddled Nugget, Alan’s horse-of-choice at the end of the first act, and went on one of his - my - midnight rides. I got back around 1 a.m. - a midnight ride of a very different sort - from Boston (don’t get me started on Jetblue again) and fell fast asleep looking forward to the weather we had all been promised on Saturday.

The promise was fullfilled. After I worked out at the gym, I got on my new Electra Amsterdam bike and rode and rode and rode the blues away under the blue blue blue sky. Made it down to the parks and piers in the Village - it’s a bit like a midwestern river city that has spent some senior senator’s federal largesse on a waterfront, not Manhattan - but it was quite clean there and I did appreciate all those half naked bodies and beautiful faces, their winter glowers finally fading as they all, legs splayed, shoulders flexed, their calves cooled against the first brush of sod and grass and a spring breeze, allowed themselves to be moored in place, their hips beginning to list a bit in the sun, beneath the gleaming Meier apartment buildings.

I then rode down to my old neighborhood in Tribeca where I lived for about 15 years on Desbrosses and Greenwich. I was amazed by the difference in the neighborhood. Buildings even gleamier than the Meier cluster up the river had risen all around the old spice factory building where I had my loft. I loved living down there because it was so secluded and a bit of a frontier - though Bruce Weber and Bette Midler had lofts right around the corner. Bruce is still there I think. Bette’s become a Fifth Avenue lady - some downtown doyennes become that. Bette’s one of them, bless her heart. I worshipped her growing up back in Mississippi. My artistic brother Kim even painted t-shirts, exact copies of the Amsel portrait on her Divine Miss M album, for Karole and him and me when were were kids out in the country. I did a big cover story on her for Vanity Fair back around 1989, 1990. I visited her on the set of For the Boys and hung out at her house in Beverly Hills (”Well, Beverly Hills post office, “she corrected me back then, the first time I knew there was a distinction, a completely LA term to my New Yorkcentric ears.) She and her handsome fashionable lug of a husband, Martin, took me out to lunch. I even helped her - she was getting into gardening big time right about then - with her mulch. One day, over a year later, I was unlocking my bike on our shared corner in Tribeca and she and Martin were emerging from their building. “Hi, Bette,” I said. “Remember me?” She swept by in her haughtiest on-stage diva mode. “Hmmmph … vividly,” she said and strode right by. I had obviously said something in the VF story to offend her. My heart raced at the thought. Weeks later I was in our local breakfast expresso place. I was reading the Times and eating my croissant when she entered. We were the only two people in the place. “Morning, Bette,” I said. “Looks like you’re going to have a hit,” I told her, having seen the previews of First Wives Club a few days before. “Hmmmph,” she said, her favorite non-word it seemed when I was around. I turned back to the Times. My heart began to race again. I heard the click of her heels compete with the rapid beats of my increasingly racing heart. She stood, akimbo, next to me. “Kevin, we have to talk,” she said. “When you wrote that story on me for Vanity Fair, you said my baby was homely and it broke my heart.” I began to interrupt her. “No. Listen to me. What you wrote broke my heart. I have tried to forgive you. I have prayed to forgive you. I was hoping with time I could forgive you. But - look at me …” I looked up from my half-eaten croissant. Crusty remnants of it adhered to the roof of my mouth. “I will never fogive you,” she said. My hand shook own my expresso cup. “But, Bette … ” I stammered. “Kevin,” she said. “You broke my heart and I will never forgive you.” With that, she turned on her clicking heels and ordered her own expresso. Fade out. Fade in. The next year, in Vanity Fair’s Hollywood issue, I was asked to write an appreciation of Bette for the magazine’s Hall of Fame page. The form was that each sentence had to begin “Because …. ” At one point I said, words to the effect, that because in spite of all her awards and critical praise her greatest creation was her lovely daughter and then wrote Sophie’s lyrical full name. (I had initially written in the cover story on Bette that though Sophie had been a charmingly homely baby it was easy to see why Bette was so proud of her because she had grown into such an adorable child. But, rightly so, Better had focused on the word “homely.” I apologized privately to Martin and her with a note I slipped under their door and the Hall of Fame page was a public one as well.) A couple of weeks passed and I was buzzed at my loft. “Western Union,” came the voice. Who would be sending me a telegram in this day and age? I opened it and it read: “Kevin, That was very decent of you. All is forgiven. Bette. ” What a classy dame, which is more than I can say for myself in that story. Sometimes I think that’s one of the aspects of being gay: falling just short of being a classy dame oneself.

I rode up from Tribeca into Soho and dropped in on my friend Michael Smith at Depression Modern, who had decorated my entire loft back in those days with 1930s furniture from his store. My weekend stops, when I’m in town in nice weather, have always included - for over 20 years now - a visit with Michael and his dear friend, Howard, who worked in the store on weekends. The Sunday before I headed out on book tour on that Monday, I visited Howard at St. Vincents hospital to bring him some tulips and see how he was doing. He was not doing well. He was up in his 80s and a lifetime smoker and when one thing started going wrong, everything started going wrong. He never made it home. I had been thinking about Howard all during my tour. I had written the words “Depression Modern is a less lovingly irascible place without you there. Get well, honey” on the note I left with the tulips. Michael told me Saturday that Howard had passed away. I stood in the store and cried a bit. I had last seen Howard in the lobby of City Center before the concert version of Follies. He was complaining that Michael was late and he was freezing and how he was so looking forward to seeing the production. Howard taught scenic design at Brooklyn College and worked as a scenic designer all his adult life. His professional heyday was back in the ‘50 and ’60s. I’ll miss talking about what theatre we’d seen the week before when I’d go downstairs at Depression Modern and sit at the table with him as well as discuss the stories he was reading in the Times and Post that day. He was one of those sweet curmudgeonly gay gentlemen of a certain age - literally a dying breed now - who are a repository of fabulous memories and nicotine and a hard-earned grace. Rest in peace, Howard. My life was enhanced knowing you.

Saturday night I met up for dinner with my friends Jamie - a Columbia med student - and his New Zealand boyfriend Bede, who recently graduated from Columbia law school. Jamie is on his way to Cape Town for the summer to work with AIDS orphans and Bede, who specializes in human rights law, is headed to Johannesburg to do some pro bono work before settling into his new job in D.C. at a law firm. We had a great meal at Mermaid Inn and then walked over to KGB Bar to hear Phil LaMarche read from his novel, American Youth. Remember Phil from my Toronto posting? The place was packed with his groupies - yeah, I guess I’m one of them - and I bought a book for him to sign. (Jerry Stahl in the LA Times gave him a rave last week and called the book “an American masterpiece.”) Before Phil read he said that some of his friends didn’t show up because they thought readings were for sissies. He wrote in my book, “Readings are not for sissies.” I think I would have liked it better if he had stuck with his friends’ attitude and turned it on its head. But maybe you have to be a real sissy to do that.

After the reading I left Bede and Jamie in an East Village boy bar to drink and I rode my bike up to the movie theatre on 11th and Third and bought a ticket to Fracture. Anthony Hopkins, the original Dr. Dysart in Equus on Broadway, and Ryan Gosling, who would have made a great Alan Strang a few years ago, were fun to watch though the movie was a bit too slick for my tastes. I made it home by midnight and read the Times with Archie my dog cuddled next to me. I wondered what stories Howard would have found the most interesting in the Arts and Leisure section. I fell asleep, looking forward to Sunday and more sunshine. I dreamt of Cape Town and Johannesburg and Bette Midler’s face singing Surabaya Johnny on a t-shirt I wish I still had in my drawer. “I’m the mama,” she whispered to me after she sang the song. “I”m the mama,” I whispered back. “I’m the mama,” we both kept saying and we were. We are.

On the plane ride home (see below) I said a prayer for the families of those kids and teachers at Virginia Tech and never mentioned myself or my book once. Exhaustion causes more than headaches; it can cause selfishness as well. It’s 3:14 a.m. right now. I’ll say another prayer of thanks I made it home safely. Safety to you all out there.

I know. I know. I’m sounding like a stuck record. But here I am again at another damn airport - this time Logan in Boston - because of weather. My flight has been delayed for four hours and who knows if I’ll make it back home to NYC tonight. I flew in on the Jetblue shuttle do to a reading in Newtonville at a great independent bookstore. Mary, the owner, could not have been nicer or more gracious but only about a dozen people showed up because of the inclemency. I gave them a show anyway. A buddy from Ptown, Phil, came and kindly gave me a ride back to the airport. I thought it would be easy doing a round trip in one day because it was Boston. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. I am exhausted and frustrated and close to tears. I sold three books tonight at the store. I paid for this trip myself. My Amazon number is for shit. I feel like I’ve sort of reached my limit in sales - I pray I’m wrong about that - and I’m just treading marketing water now. I hate to sound so down but that’s the way I’m feeling. I live a pretty solitary life but this life-on-the-road has taken the loneliness I often feel and encased it with a meta-loneliness that is becoming increasingly difficult to cope with on a night like this. There is a baby squalling next to me that seems, touchingly but maddenlngly, to have picked up on my feelings tonight. And it sure isn’t helping my headache. I hope the weather is better by Friday when I head back up here on antoher day trip to do a reading at Calamus bookstore and speak to a class at Harvard. I’m going to sign off now and ask the mother with the crying baby if she has any aspirin in that diaper bag by my feet.

Hello again from book tour hell. Remember my birthday when I was stuck in the airport in Chicago? Well, at least the airport here in Toronto is much nicer than O’Hare. But I’m stuck again in an air travel nightmare. My flight this morning back to New York was cancelled due to weather and I’m now scheduled to depart at 4:15 - if that flight too is not cancelled. I even had to come all the way back through customs to re-book a later flight and have to make my way back through security and customs a third time to get back to a gate if the later flight takes off. I have a sinking feeling that it won’t and I will be spending another night in Toronto. I keep trying to breath and not stress out and remember how lovely the last day was in Miami at the end of my three-week leg of the tour before taking two days back home in Manhattan to re-bond with my dog, Archie. When I last posted I was about to walk along the beach in Miami. It was just what I needed - and I need it again right about now up here in cold, rainy stormy Canada. Later in Miami I went to a concert by the New World Symphony on Lincoln Road, the orchestra made up of recent graduates of musical schools across the country which Michael Tilson Thomas directs. I wrote Mississippi Sissy while listening to many of Bach’s adagios. Every word of the book, in fact, was written with Bach filling my ears from my iPod. I suggest maybe playing a bit of Bach while you’re reading the book if you haven’t already. So as the long three-week leg of the tour for the book came to an end in Miami it seemed only fitting that I found myself sitting at the New World concert hall on Lincoln Road - where I sat so often when I had a condo down there - and listening to classical music. They performed beautiful renditions of Mozart’s Overture to the Marriage of Figaro, an adagio by Brahms, and Richard Strauss’s suite from Der Rosenkavalier. They also played a composition by one of their own violin fellows, Piotr Szewcyk. It was his graduation piece from the University of Cincinnati and won the composition competition there. It was titled - yet another heightened coincidence considering that I was winding down a tour I was on to promote a memoir - Transposed Memories. I keep trying to hear all those melodies I heard on my last night in Miami again in my head - an inchoate ache instead is beginning to make itself known around my sinus region - as I sit here in the Toronto airport and attempt to remain calm at being stuck yet again on the road. (I left my iPod at home.) I also keep thinking about Archie that first night back in New York a couple of days ago now when I slept like a baby as he curled up next to my stomach under the sheet. Just the thought of him curling up next to me can calm me a bit. I know that sounds corny and too asininely caninely of me, but humor me. It’s been a rough day so far. I had to board Archie yet again to come up here and now he might be spending another night at the kennel, his own version of the Westin I fear I’ll l be heading back to in a few hours.

I arrived in Toronto yesterday to do a reading at the International Readings series at Harbourfront Centre. Last week Lionel Shriver read from her new novel, THe Post-Birthday World. Others who have read at the Harbourfront Centre series over the years have included John Banville, Maeve Binchy, J.P. Donleavy, Seamus Heaney, Edna O’Brien, Colm Toibin, William Trevor, Amoz Oz, Umberto Eco, Oriana Fallaci, Hikaru Okuizuma, J.M. Coetzee, Athol Fugard, Nadine Gordimer, Orphan Pamuk, Martin Amis, Alan Ayckborn, J. G. Ballard, Clive Barker, Howard Barker, Julian Barnes, Alan Bennet, William Boyd, Howard Brenton, Anthony Burgess, A. S. Byatt, Bruce Chatwin, Antonia Fraser, Michael Frayn, Simon Gray, Thom Gunn, David Hare, Ted Hughes, Kazuo Ishiguro, P.D. James, Pico Iyer, John le Carre, Doris Lessing, Ian McEwan, Jan Morris, Harold Pinter, J.K. Rowling, Salman Rushdie, Will Self, Zadie Smith, Jeanette Winterson, Edward Albee, John Ashberry, Hilton Als, Paul Auster, Ann Beattie, Saul Bellow, John Berendt, Amy Bloom, Robert Bly, T.C. Boyle, Harold Brodsky, Josef Brodsky, Gwendolyn Brooks, Rita Mae Brown, James Lee Burke, Raymond Carver, John Cheever, Pat Conroy, Michael Cunningham, Don DeLillo, James Dickey, E.L. Doctorow, John Gregory Dunne, Deborah Eisenberg, Bret Easton Ellis, Lousie Erdich, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Jonathan Safran Foer, Betty Friedan, John Kenneth Galbraith, Mary Gaitskill, Kaye Gibbons, Ellen Gilchrist, Allen Ginsberg, Nikki Giovanni, Gail Godwin, Mary Gordon, Spalding Gray, Barry Hannah, Beth Henley, Patricia Highsmith, Christopher Hitchens, Alice Hoffman, Richard Howard, John Irving, Bret Anthony Johnston, Edward P. Jones, Erica Jong, William Kennedy, Ken Kesey, Jamaica Kinkaid, John Lahr, David Leavitt, Fran Lebowitz, Elmore Leonard, Bobbie Ann Mason, Peter Matheissen, Mary McCarthy, Joseph Elroy, Jay McInerny, Larry McMurtry, Terrence McNally, Daphne Merkin, James Merrill, W. S. Merwin, Arthur Miller, Sue Miler, Czeslaw Milosz, Susan Minot, Toni Morrison, Howard Moss, Walter Mosley, Gloria Naylor, Tim O’Brien, Joyce Carol Oates, Grace Paley, Camille Paglia, Jayne Anne Phillips, Jodi Picoult, Marge Piercy, David Plante, George Plimpton, Richard Price, Annie Prouix, James Purdy, Ishmael Reed, Adrienne Rich, Tom Robbins, Norman Rush, John Sayles, Wallace Shawn, Jane Smiley, Susan Sontag, Robert Stone, William Styron, Gay Talese, Amy Tan, Peter Taylor, David Foster Wallace, Alice Walker, Edmund White, Colson Whitehead, John Edgar Wideman, Joy Williams,, Meg Wolitzer, Tom Wolfe, and me.

Putting “and me” at the end of such a litany …. well… floors me. I have always had a bit of an inferiority complex about my abilities as a writer since I became known for writing celebrity profiles for Vanity Fair. Getting an invitation from Harbourside meant a lot to me. And the writers with whom I shared the stage were exceptional. The lyrical award-winning Irish novelist Colum McCann (nice guy) read from Zoli, his haunting tale of exile and survival based on the Romani poet Papsuza. Brit Howard Jacobson read - brilliantly - from his brilliant Kalooki Nights, which spans the decades between WWII and the present day as told from the perspective of Max Glickman, a Jewish cartoonist. I’ll go read every book ever written by Jacobson now that I’ve finally discovered him. I whispered that to him when he sat back down next to me after he read. Howard has been called the funniest writer in Britian and The Independent said that Kalooki Nights is “a masterpiece.” Judging from what he read last night, I’d be prone to agree. Howard has called himself “the Jewish Jane Austen.” But I think he’s more like the son she would have had if Philip Roth had fucked her. And first time Amercian novelist Phil LaMarche read from the opening of his acclaimed new book American Boy which tells the story of a southern New England teenager who is confronted by a moral dilemma following a firearms accident. When Phil sat down next to me at the dinner beforehand, I have to admit I had an instant crush on him. Maybe we bonded because we were the “new boys” in the group since we each were promoting our first books. Phil teaches creative writing at Syracuse and just got married to the womens volleyball coach. He was a wrestler in high school but also, he claims, a sensitive type who loved reading and was often ridiculed as “the pansy.” I can’t imagine that, but I trust him. He told me after I read from Mississippi Sissy - I was given the honorary clean-up slot of fourth after the other three had read, which I found flattering considering the esteemed company I was in - that he was very moved by my excerpt. “I was considered the jock when I got to graduate school for creative writing. But in high school I was the one ridiculed. I can’t wait to read your book.” I can’t wait to read his too. Google his name and you’ll see what a lucky woman that volleyball coach is. Then go buy his book. I plan to. Phil seemed as sweet as he obviously is talented - and, yes, he’s really, really sexy. That’s the trifecta.

Last night I had my reading at Books and Books on Lincoln Road. They said they were expecting a big crowd but I knew not to expect one and get my hopes up too high. As you can read below, I lived here for a while but one of the reasons I moved away was because the only thing most people read around here in this land of clubs and cloudless skies are condo prospectuses and fake IDs. But I really appreciated Books and Books inviting me to read - I love the people who work there, especially Viv and Chip and Anne Marie - and signed a few books for the people who showed up after I read. In fact, I even, in my exhausted state, signed my own book in which I have edited in pencil the abridged version of the Halloween scene I’ve read at all my stops and gave it to someone off the table of books in front of me. I’m hoping the person who bought that one realizes it and brings it back to Books and Books. It threw me into a bit of a tizzy for the rest of the night. I really was counting on carrying that book around with me to all my readings. It’s become a kind of security juju for me. Or have a just imbued it with such juju qualities, engendering it with the power that I really must carry around inside me instead. Maybe it’s just another lesson in letting go. Books and Books was a hard room to read in. I had to use a hand-held mike and felt like a bit of a lounge singer in Las Vegas. But my old buddy, Andy Tobias, was there and told me it went well and I’ve always trusted Andy’s critical acumen. If you’ve never read Andy’s book Best Little Boy In the World, I recommend you do so. And any of his financial books and computer programs are helpful. In fact, I should have paid more attention to those now that I’m deep into middle age. Andy is also Treasurer for the Democratic Party and I’m sure he’d want me to tell you to find a way to donate at some point before 2008. (Are there any Republicans reading this blog? If so, out yourselves in the comment section below this post. My own bumpersticker in life is this one: NEVER JUDGEMENTAL, ALWAYS DISCERNING. So don’t worry. I welcome readers of all political persuasions.) Thanks to local writer and bon vivant, David Leddick, for showing up also. He’s a legend around these parts for good reason. And my old pal Alan Roth, who’s becoming a South Beach legend himself, came with his latest beautiful girlfriend. Alan is a local party promoter and restauranteur and now magazine publisher. His grandfather was once mayor of Miami Beach and I - lovingly - refer to him also as “the mayor of South Beach.” We met years ago when he was a waiter at the Delano Hotel when it first opened and I came down to work on an earlier book I was trying to write - a novel that now sits in one of my drawers in New York - and we immediately hit it off. He will always be, in my eyes, that ambitious little kid who kept me smiling so long ago when I’d wonder down from my room at the Delano and dare to flirt with him. I still dare to every now and then. His ambition has certainly paid off. And he can still make me smile. Two other guys who always make me smile are my Ptown buddies, Sean and Mitch, who live down in Ft. Lauderdale during the winter. They came over for the reading also and we went out and had dinner afterwards. There are some people you just feel at home with and Sean and Mitch are like that for me. I always feel like I’m rocking on porch back in Ptown when I’m with them and life is good and simple and … soothing on some basic level. You can’t ask for much more than that. So thanks to Sean and Mitch for showing up. After three weeks on the road, it was relaxing just being in their presence. I can’t wait to get back to Ptown this summer and really rock on a porch with them and create even more summer memories together. And Archie, my dog, loves Atticus, Mitch’s dog. Everbody loves Atticus. Atticus is the mayor of Ptown.

Another person who showed up last night at the reading was writer Christopher Lee Nutter. Go get his book as well - The Way Out. I usually avert my gaze from books that are labeled self-help or New Age, but Christopher’s transcends either category because of his talent as a writer. Also, he’s an original thinker. And he’s sexy too. That always helps. We had never met until the night before my reading at Books and Books when he had his own reading there. When I went up to get his book signed, we discovered that he is from Birmingham. I had arrived from Birmingham that morning. He also went to Millsaps College in Mississippi where I went to school. He was also a Pike at Millsaps. So was I. And he lives one block away from me in New York. As you can tell from reading my blog and having read my book, that my life is full of heightened coincidences. Heightened Coincidences is, indeed, how I often describe the narrative flow of my life to people. Meeting Christopher was one of the loveliest in a long time. I look forward to eating at one of our local restaurants when we both get back to New York and finding others in our lives.

And now I’m going to go put on a pair of shorts, take off my shoes, exhale the three-weeks of airline air I’ve been breathing in on this trip, and take a long walk on the beach. I’m going to go over what all has transpired and connect all the Heightened Coincidences I’ve experienced on this tour. Once I’ve done that I am going to empty my mind as I let my feet feel the ebb and flow of the tides and - toes tingling, allowing time itself to ebb and flow - BE THANKFUL.

More anon …