Do I Look Better in the Dark?

He danced in front of me, for me.

I liked his white belt the most. As he swayed and slithered in front of me, I kept looking back to the belt. I should get a white belt. Except then I'd need white shoes. We've just crossed midnight into Labor Day, so is that okay.

He had a beautiful compact torso. He was shirtless. The white belt held up form fitting blue jeans. His skin was the color of coffee with cream. I reached out and felt his chest - smooth and soft - and let my hands slide down his sides, landing on his hips.

He leaned forward and maybe said something. It was so dark I couldn't guarantee that his lips had moved. The music drowned out any sound.

"What?" I asked and leaned my ear towards his mouth.

"How old are you?" He never stopped moving his hips.

"Thirty-eight."

"Per-fect."

Eclipse

I passed my husband in the hallway, of our apartment. I had just returned from a week spent in Plantation, Florida, as Motorola, studying Six Sigma. He was leaving to meet his brother and his brother's boyfriend in Syracuse.

I will rendezvous with him there, after midnight tonight.

He has a cousin who has graduated from something, so his entire family is meeting there - mother, brothers, cousins, aunts, and such. It's the type of thing you sign up for unknowing when you pledge you marriage vows.

We will return Sunday.

Quotable

"Give me a bottle of Bourbon and a half a chicken and I'll conquer the world!"

I don't know where I picked up this quote but it did manage to type it out after I heard.

Truer words were never ever spoken!

THE BOTTOM LINE - a coda

Betty Buckley had stood ten feet away from my seat at the small theater in in Irving, Texas. I watched her in profile, singing "Over You" and I was. Over him.

That feeling came upon me in an instant.

James had sat next to me after his initial, jaw dropping shock. I had been better prepared. God bless the Internet.

James's current boyfriend/partner was of the accompanist of Ms. Buckley - Mr. Seth Rudetsky. I had known that. His column on Playbill.com had told me so. God bless the Internet.

I hadn't known I would end up sitting on stage.

That very week I had been visiting my sister and 3-year old niece in Plano, TX, which is the same thing as Dallas to those who don't live there. I had found out about Ms. Buckley's All Broadway, All Request show from Seth's column on Playbill.com. It was sold out by the time I determined to go. The box office had told me to come and present myself. That's how I ended up in the extra seats placed onstage. That's where James found me, just before the show.

My request, inked on a slip of paper had tipped him off. Who else could have matched "David Robinson from Brooklyn, NY" who wanted to hear Betty sing "I Remember How Those Boys Could Dance" from "Carrie - The Musical." When he came onto the stage to take one of the extra seats he found me. There was gap next to me that James's filled with a chair.

He reminded me, "You took me to see Betty for the first time. At that place by NYU."

"The Bottom Line? Did I drag you there?"

Betty Buckley used to perform sets there and I would drag anyone, everyone there. If you were dating me from 1992-2002, you went.

All of the rancor I had collected and could still resurrect from the village of the damned and dumped, evaporated in the face of James, innocuous and harmless. As Betty sang "Over You" I remembered repeating that track over-and-over 12 years ago. That when Michael called me to tell me he had AIDS. That he would die. And he would. He did.

"Over You." Yes for James. Not for Michael.

James provided closure in a minute, in an instant. Seeing him, talking to him, dissipated the worst. Water flowed under the bridge and shattered it. Talking to him I regretted nothing. We would have become a terrible couple. With Michael, I'll never know. I can speculate, but speculation is a guess that never trusts its own instincts.

James apologized after the show. He walked me out to my car, my sister's car.

I said, "Please don't." After a breakup everyone is guilty, everyone is to blame. Still it's beautiful to get that when you've been dumped. So I got that. Chapter closed.

So I said, "Look. Everybody gets a turn. Sometimes you're the jerk. And sometimes you're the one getting jerked upon."

He accepted that completely imperfect summary. Two hugs and we separated.

Contraband

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia:

April 15, 1999

At dusk on Thursday, the call to prayer began. It's wailing chant permeated into my hotel room, declaring the end of the week and the start of another Muslim Sabbath in the Kingdom.

Alone on the bed, I sat tucked into the corner of my dorm-like room, and waited. It felt respectful, although I didn’t know when the prayer would end.

Forty-five minutes passed and that seemed good enough. I went to the window and closed the curtains, and then turned to the desk built into the wall and started my laptop. It whirred as it awakened, starting very slowly. I opened a drawer in the desk and took out a small candle. It wasn’t the correct candle for the prayer, but it didn’t much matter. I was a novice anyway, an aspiring convert to Judaism.

Then I got up and crossed the room, turned off all the lights except a small desk lamp. That and the glow from the computer screen helped me find my way back. Sitting in front of the computer I double-clicked the illicit document.

I started to read softly, not really afraid, but aware that what I was doing was illegal.

“Yeetgadal v' yeetkadash sh'mey rabbah”

(Read the rest of the story by clicking here.)

Wafting in from the Streets of San Francisco

I can hear the theme from The Godfather from a solo saxophone is coming in through the window of my hotel room . It's rare that you can open a window in a hotel, or any window above the 2nd floor.

"Extra" or the "Insider"? I can't decide and I don't know the number for the channels so I scroll forward through the channels until I get one or the other, re-starting the rotation at each commercial interruption.

USA Today and an empty wrapper from peanut M&M's litter the empty side of my king size bed. I'm working my way through a half bottle of Clos du Bois merlot from the mini-bar.

Billy Bush is a douche.

Who is playing that music? Now it's "Memories" from Cats. No. Wait. It's the theme from the Godfather again. Or something like that.

Will Britney Spears get nominated for an Emmy? Stay tuned.

3 Years Later

I met my husband Mark three years ago yesterday - June 7, 2005.

"I can't believe you remembered!"

Outlook remembers for me and reminds every year, 2 days in advance.

"You pushed me up against a dirty bathroom wall at The Phoenix!" He never leaves out "dirty" when he retells it.

"You liked it." That's my part when telling that anecdote.

I gave him his present, wrapped up in plain brown paper.

He laughed at it, like the laughing came from his toes out the top of his head.

"I love it!" He held it up - a DVD - and read out loud the title: "Paging Dr. Finger. It's exactly what I wanted."

I came up behind him as we looked at the cover.

"Do you think that's real?" I asked.

He scrutinized the photo for a moment. "Maybe. But he's a small guy."