trash day in a whole new borough

The new house is fantastic, even if it’s still filled with boxes, even if the new couch isn’t here yet, even if the new cable service is completely screwed up (a technician is coming on Monday), and even if we totally can’t find an accent chair we agree on. The fact remains, however, that while we’re no longer exhausted, we don’t quite have the energy to get everything solved. It’s perhaps only now, that so much of the weight of the last month and a half has lifted that I get how really bad and exhausting it’s been. It’s going to take a while to get back to ourselves, but we’re getting there, I think.

For those who missed it, the Diner en Blanc matter has had a positive resolution, in that there is no longer an additional burden on queer couples wishing to register for the event. Am I still less than pleased with the phrasing or the suggestion that our existence inherently mars the tradition of a social occasion? You bet. We’ve always existed, and seating arrangements have only really become the end of the world in a world with so many other lost formalities.

I do a lot of things where this stuff comes into play, social and historic dance among them. Patty and I have registered for gender balanced balls with me as the man, worried about how it would go, and then it’s always been fine and without remark. Always. But one still has to go through the explaining your situation politely and being told no and then they worry and plan for what to do when you sneak around the rules anyway and it isn’t fine. The worst part, really, is that I get it — in dance you need a good balance of leads and follows; in historic dance you arguably want to recreate what you are romanticizing about the past.

But the past totally contained people like us, even if the terminology was different. Yes, the level of knowledge and response to homosexuality was varied from social circle to social circle, but that’s not actually particularly different to today, although the word “out” and most terms currently used for sexual, romantic and gender identity are anachronisms in historical discussion. But the fact is LGBTQ people have always been invited to dinner parties, and so the idea that we’re interrupting tradition, when tradition is just history, and history is filled with queerness — well, it’s a little tiring.

That said, Diner en Blanc did the right thing in the end, even if clumsily, and we’ll be attempting to register today.

I should also note that today is photography day for “A Day in Gay America.” So get out your cameras.

Meanwhile, I’m very briefly off to Boston tomorrow to see one of my creative collaborators perform, with the hopes of getting back to a possibly dry NY early Sunday so that Patty and I can picnic in our new backyard.

Finally, I owe you some writing about Torchwood. Through episode 3 I was bored, episode 4 made me angry, and episode 5 made me wonder if they were up to some seriously sneaky (and brilliant) stuff in the midst of all their heavy-handedness. I am almost afraid to wait until after tonight’s episode to write about it, simply because any answers that come our way in the episode may make it less interesting (and my theories less clever, but if you’re long-time fans of the show, I think/hope this is all going somewhere that’s weird, gnostic, about the nephilim and “what’s moving in the dark,” and will addresses just what sins of his past Jack is alternately trying to mitigate or forget about). But I did say I would give it through episode 6 to comment at any length and so I shall.

Thanks to everyone who has picked up Bitten by Moonlight. I’ll try to post an excerpt from “Sanquali” and talk a little bit about the process of writing the sort of thing I never write (Italian AU werewolf lesbians!) this weekend.