Monday Morning Housekeeping

First all, for those who asked for a non-Kindle, ebook version of Bitten by Moonlight, that is now available via the publisher. Yay, and thank you for your patience.

For those that heard about my amazing medical dramas over the last few days, I’m fine, although it’s still hard for me to hold a glass in the affected arm without dropping it. For those who missed it: stepped on metal splinter, got a tetanus shot, had reaction to the tetanus shot, wound up in the ER. That drama started Wednesday night and went through Friday. Then I spent the weekend recovering. It has also, as you might imagine, been strongly recommended I see an allergist.

Additionally, I’ll be in Europe for work October 2 – 16. If you’ve got recommendations for ways to occupy myself in London on October 3 and October 15, do let me know. My birthday is the 4th, and I’ll be away from both Patty and friends, so I am trying to make the best of it but sneaking in a total of about 40 hours non-consecutive hours in one of my favorite cities. Dinner at my favorite Indian restaurant on earth is on, but otherwise, no real plans yet; help me out! (Also, if anyone wants to share their experiences about bringing a guitar on British Airways, let me know. I’ve picked it up again recently, and am contemplating bringing it along, but imagine that might be an adventure greater than I wish to have).

And finally, yes, I’m still three episodes behind on Torchwood; we may have to have a conversation about True Blood later, though.

It’s been ten years since a whole lot of things

So, in about 36 hours, it will be the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Like The Onion says, remembering that day can seem less awful than remembering everything that’s happened since. Of course, no, not really, especially for people who lost people, but there’s a kernel of truth in the sentiment. Everything’s been so wrong for so long.

And everything is still wrong. Government officials give these weird announcements about vague, credible, unspecific terrorist threats against my city (this information is useful to me how?) and talk about “the Homeland” like we’re in some badly written, bizarreo-world AU where the Nazi’s won. Any day now, we’ll be allowed to keep our shoes on at the airport though. Really. Any day. They swear. That’s what we’re supposed to be grateful for in these last ten years, and I just can’t even… there’s some screed I could write, something poetic about feet and vulnerability and slavery, and I just do not have it in me anymore.

All of that’s without getting to the racism and xenophobia and violence that 9/11 unleashed, and in the eyes of too many, seemed to justify. Do you know how many civilian casualties there were in Iraq?

But on a personal note, the thing that keeps sticking with me, particularly as a New Yorker who hates the city being used and exploited and pitied and revered and even exiled (it’s like lower Manhattan has become some sort of tragedy theme park) for all of this crap instead of the things it should be (Broadway, 24-hour restaurants, night clubs and possibility), is that it’s been ten years since a lot of other things too.

It’s been (almost) ten years since I stayed with someone because without them cooking dinner for me twice a week the level of my food insecurity was more than I could bear, and it’s been (more than) ten years since the dot.com boom wasn’t. It’s been (nearly) ten years since I held a job I couldn’t talk about in polite company, since I first met my friend Anton in person, since I decided I couldn’t live alone, and since I had the tiniest apartment in the world (but it was all windows< I swear) in Gramercy Park.

None of these things are that interesting to you; nor should they particularly have any reason to be, but I've found them a good reminder as the anniversary looms. Life continued on, continues on. What still often feels like a line in the sand of before and after, isn't. We are not, as a nation, required to be irrevocably changed for some fearful, cruel and wasteful worse. In the midst of really bad things, the minor tragedies of life do not disappear. Neither do the joys.

Anniversaries as we normally celebrate them reflect achievement related to love or memory related to loss. Certainly, in that context of loss the massive attention being paid to September 11, 2011, makes absolute sense, and it is a good, right thing that the occasion be marked. The human mind isn't, after all, really well made to remember fear and pain; if it were, we'd never do anything twice, I often think. September 11, 2001 was a real thing that happened, to us, and it was devastating. It is worth being able to recall it as it was and not, as so many of us thought when we turned on the TV that day, as just a movie.

But the last ten years on a national level are not something to be proud of. And too much of what I see in the impending anniversary coverage is pride in the mess we’ve made out of anger and fear.

I have hope, perhaps unreasonable (but that is what hope is, optimism, even when it may not make any sense), that after this anniversary, things will get better. That the eleventh or twelfth or thirteenth won’t be as compelling as these first ten. That the big wallows in all of this will come every five years, every ten years, that all of this will begin to seem farther away, and as it does, we will return to ourselves.

Because “Ground Zero” (a name I loathe, born out of our nuclear imaginations) has become a tourist site. And while there are numerous reasons that can be justified or called crass, I’ve got just a single reason it infuriates me: coming to New York City, this island off the coast of America, has never, ever been supposed to be about the end of things. I grew up in this place with its poisonous myths, understanding New York as a city where people celebrate the end of wars, not as one where they come to revel in the criminal tragedy that helps make certain they begin.

California: a greater room for words

Like most native New Yorkers, my relationship with California is a little strained. A typical interaction between me and my beloved In-and-Out Burger is a perfect example.

Me: Let me have 2 burgers protein style, fries and a vanilla shake.

Counter person: Now is that hamburgers or cheeseburgers?

Me: Hamburgers.

Counter person: Onions?

Me: Nope.

Counter person: But tomatoes, spread, lettuce, you good with all that?

Me: Sure.

Counter person: Okay, let me read your order back to you. And hey, are you having a great day?

This is where I feel like a heel for not having engaged in friendly banter, but in NYC efficiency is generally what’s considered polite. Get it done, don’t hold up the line, and don’t engage strangers, who don’t really care about your day at all.

That said, Patty and I are having a lovely, giddy time in San Francisco, which I feel like I understand more than I have on other trips here and to the rest of its state. Of course, all those other trips have largely been for family (my grandfather lived in San Mateo), work, or cons (events during which I hardly leave the hotel).

Certainly, I’ll never forget my first trip to Los Angeles, which, while for work, started by witnessing a pack of young men (what is the male of starlet?) in nearly identical black slacks and tight t-shirts brawling in the street outside of a night club and ended with my having a vague affair in an LAX airport hotel while the Miss Teen USA California pageant was happening a dozen floors below.

Seriously, for me, California is Mars. Sexy, perfect, cold Mars, and it is a place I don’t understand.

But part of that is, I recognize, self-preservation. If I understand California, I must fear that I will have to succumb to it, to come out here to act or to be queer. This state looms so terribly large for anyone that’s some of the things I am, even as I think I could never be happy here with my imperfect smile, disinterest in surfing, inability to fit in boxes, and my relentless awareness of the scaffolding that holds everyone’s myths together.

But yesterday, running around in the chaos that is San Francisco (seriously, sometimes the cable car is actually practical transit, but running into the the street to catch them in dense and sudden fog while the conductor beats out a syncopated rhythm with the bell and cars swerve around you seems like the least logical way for a city to conduct its business of getting around ever), I thought I could maybe understand what the lure is and what it’s like to be from here.

Because I’m always talking about the scale of New York and how we must be big in our hearts to survive all the shit of it, but I never before got how effortlessly easy it is to be big here, where a person doesn’t have to pick apart every sentence a hundred times before they say it to make sure it’s small enough and doesn’t waste anyone’s time or take up too much space on the subway.

Last night, when we got back to the hotel Patty and I both had hair wild from the wind and the moisture. She’s a curly girl, and so it’s never unexpected. But I’ve been straightening my hair nearly constantly for about 15 years now, and so it was something of a surprise despite a few recent and failed efforts to let it go back to its natural state.

So I burst into hysterical laughter when I saw it in the bathroom, this ghost of the 80s child I was staring back at me. I remembered all my friends with their perms and crimping irons and then my college career counselors who told me my long curly hair was too immature, ethnic and unprofessional. I wondered if it’s easier for people from here not to be chameleons.

It’s probably not. There are probably a million private local myths in San Francisco and Los Angeles and the whole of this state for people to navigate past and try to bend themselves to that I will never see as an outsider. Half the the country, of course, can’t just be easier and happier than the other half, right?

The grass is always greener, I suppose, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned is that in every city no matter the weather or the height of the buildings that there is a reason people there have to struggle to see the sun. Travel, it seems, just always gives me a much keener sense of what those reasons are back home.

Trash day is totally out of order

Like most of New York City, we survived the hurricane without major incident: some expected basement flooding that isn’t technically our problem; mistaking a neighbor’s woodsmoke grilling in 40pmh winds (who does that?) for a fire; one of the cats falling into the bathtub filled in case of water problems; and me getting beaned on the head with a tree branch. If any of this sounds dramatic, I assure you it was merely humiliating.

Tomorrow, assuming all goes as planned, we leave for San Francisco. I’m looking forward, in my weird way, to airport time; and also to scarf weather upon arriving in SF. Patty, I hope, won’t hold the weather against the city — she likes it much warmer than I do.

Of course, our immanent departure means I have a ton of work to do before we leave. And of course, that work is staring me in the face when I’d rather be restringing my guitar and taking a dance class (both of which I actually hope to do today, but doubt I’ll have time to).

In the meantime, I’m once again behind on Torchwood and desperately want to write about this piece on “The Downside of Immortality” in The New York Times that uses it as a hook for the author to basically promote his new book.

However, I am fascinated by a drive-by assertion in it, that implies we are crueler when reminded of our own mortality. This, when connected to the systems we have in place to seek immortality (including, as noted in another drive-by remark in the piece, the desire for fame), actually presents some pretty interesting ideas about the why behind the need for statements like “Don’t Read The Comments On News Articles”/”Never Read Anything Anyone Says About You on the Internet.” — basically, since the appearance of “Internet fame” is easy to come by, so’s the random nastiness that pools in various parts of the Internet in various ways. The article, alas, isn’t really about this, and is brief and full of poorly-supported pessimism. I’ll probably check out the book for more complete arguments, and also because of my whole interest in how people respond to death.

Meanwhile, and ever so faintly on point, my buddy Jill just linked me to an amazing mashup called “Stayin’ Alive in The Wall,” which yes, is the Bee Gees mashed up with Pink Floyd.

I can’t really top that, so I’ll leave you there.

natural disaster housekeeping

Normally when I say I have lots of news I mean that I have something being published or am appearing in something or doing a podcast or whatever. This week, I entirely do not mean that.

Right now we’re waiting for Irene, which is almost certainly going to knock out power (overhead lines, giant trees in the back yard); I’m also still literally bruised from Diner en Blanc, and hey, how ’bout that earthquake?

That said, it’s all going to have to wait until the other side of this thing, as I’m trying to get some work done before we lose power. We are also supposed to be heading out to San Francisco on Tuesday night, so you may be hearing from us from the other coast (In-and-Out Burger haunts my dreams!).

Stay safe, especially if you’re in the path of this storm. We’ll see you on the other side!

Diner en Blanc: The Ordeal

Part of the appeal of Diner en Blanc, both in how it promotes itself and in terms of how it pings my interest, is that it’s difficult. But it’s really, really difficult, and the event isn’t even until tomorrow.

I have, in the last week: gone to Ikea to buy the recommended table and chairs, only to find the chairs sold out and the table discontinued (I bought other, more expensive chairs instead); visited every random close-out store within a few miles of my house looking for a table of the appropriate dimensions (this has largely resulted in me explaining, over and over, the difference between a square and a rectangle. Today I succumbed and bought the closest thing I could find despite it being two inches too big on each side); and wondered if I have to wrap the black legs of said not entirely appropriate table in white electrical tape since the table is black. I’m hoping the tablecloth will suffice.

The event is tomorrow. We’re still missing things (electric votive candles, white cloth napkins, a white tote bag), and we haven’t really done menu planning. We’re not actually sure we’ll be able to carry all this crap (Patty will be fine, but I don’t have great upper body strength); or that it’s not going to rain in epic fashion. I am, by turns, in despair, foolishly optimistic, and too busy too care.

But, on the plus side, we now own two folding chairs and a card table; our grass has been mowed; and we may eat dinner in the backyard tonight.

And if Diner en Blanc kicks us out tomorrow over an extra two inches? I’ll be laughing forever.

Torchwood: Miracle Day – Finally Getting to America

Once upon a time I had a letter published in the New York Times in response to a piece they did on Russel T. Davies. In it, I noted that Torchwood felt like a show about people like me, just with more aliens.

What I meant by “people like me” wasn’t necessarily obvious. Because it wasn’t the show’s queer content so much as the smart-people-with-complex-friendship-and-romantic-networks-who-are-in-over-their-heads factor. But sure, the queer content helped, of course.

While I was one of the people who loved Children of Earth (so much so that academic research related to events in it took over a year of my life), Miracle Day, the current series, has been a bit of a struggle for me.

That’s been natural, I think. Aside from having to adjust to new characters and settings, there’s the sense of frustration that’s unavoidable as the show’s founding conceits are introduced to a new audience while us long-time fans are waiting for the plot to advance. But some of that has also been a frustration at tonal shifts that have been the result of the show’s coming to America.

Despite a team of US and UK writers, much of the show’s American content has felt like an impression of America from outside itself run through a damaged lens. This has come off less like commentary and more like just not understanding the nuances of life here: from our homophobia to our paranoias (justified and not) around the healthcare debate. It’s largely been a cartoon America, drawn hastily, with the wrong tools, and it’s been distracting.

These problems, however, are nothing compared to the ones Miracle Day very deliberately sets up for itself. Nazi allegory, even heavy-handed Nazi allegory, is nothing new in SF/F, of course. But it sets the bar high – how do you rise above the crowd with this trope? And how do you do it without being, well, assholes? (context, part 1: I’m half Eastern-European Jewish) While it can be harder and harder for many of us to remember, WWII and its atrocities are still events within our collective living memory.

I’ve been mixed on the show’s handling of this. Episode 4, for example, filled me with a near constant (and perhaps useful and strategic) rage. It reminded me of too many TV movies from the 80s, where people with AIDS were tattooed and put in camps. It was allegory upon allegory, and combined with the character of Oswald Danes, convicted pedophile, going in amongst metaphoric plague victims like Jesus, made some pretty unpleasant connections to some of the more revolting corners of our collective imaginations related to disease and queerness and the corruption of children. I was not comfortable, and I was unsure if the show had a remotely good reason for putting me in such discomfort.

Episode 5, however, knocked me over. Even as the Nazi allegory became even more aggressive to a degree that was perhaps insulting to the audience’s intelligence (yes, I can see that they are setting up camps), I was engaged. And I was perhaps most engaged when Oswald Danes gave his speech about us becoming angels, paralleled with the show’s examination of humans as monsters. I don’t know where Miracle Day is going with this (or if it was just a pretty speech) but at that moment I hoped, and perhaps still do, that part of the mystery to be revealed will have humankind as, in fact, the Nephilim – maybe we have been the supernatural and the monstrous all along.

But through all of this, Miracle Day hasn’t necessarily felt like it was a show about people like me. The interpersonal relationships were sketched too quickly; the casual queer content felt like a sloppy mockery of US homophobia and added nothing to the narrative; and while everyone was smart and in over their heads, they weren’t trying their best. Watching it, I felt, I guess, lonely.

And then, Episode 7 came along (after 6 mitigated some of my reservations about the Nazi allegory, because there’s a specific and legitimizing power when a UK citizen calls out another one on helping to set up camps in their own country), and it was everything I had hoped and wanted Torchwood to be since I first watched Season 1.

It was not just the content (Jack backstory, although where in Jack’s timeline it’s hard to tell), and it certainly wasn’t the sex, but the tone. Here was Torchwood once again understanding that what this show has always been, at its very best, is a romance, not because of Jack’s many relationships, but because of Jack’s many losses and the debt/reward relationship the show, and its source, Doctor Who, has always focused on between mortality and the wonders of the universe.

But it was, for me, also more personal than that. Now, I’ll grant you, fictions I love are always personal for me, and Torchwood has a very special place in both my personal and professional lives. However, that still didn’t mean I expected Episode 7 to take place in Little Italy in New York City or to hear gay slurs that I had previously only heard from my relatives (context, part 2: I’m half-Sicilian).

So it may have taken seven episodes, but my weird show about dysfunctional people trying to save the world with not enough resources while distracted by interpersonal dramarama is back. It’s even in America; one I recognize, finally, because my family came through Ellis Island too and sometimes uses some pretty terrible words.

I’ll do a real analysis of Miracle Day and its various references, allusions and allegories when it’s over. But right now, I’m a little too busy being grateful and stunned.

It is really early in the morning on trash day

I cannot believe it’s already Friday, although that’s to the good, because I have a bucket of random things to tell you. Other than that part where our house (still) smells like burnt cookies because of a microwave incident with a desert item from a local restaurant.

First, to get my own crap out of the way — yes, there with be a non-Kindle ebook edition of Bitten by Moonlight via B&N/Nook, and I should have a link for you within a couple of weeks.

Next, New York, in a lot of ways, sucks. It’s expensive; it involves huge amounts of contact with other human beings when you’re not in the mood; the subway gets filled with water in the most disgusting and mysterious of ways. Even as someone born as raised here who loves this place, sometimes it still makes me furious. But, that said, we put up with all the utter crap that can be living here because that’s just the toll for awesome.

So seeing a fabulous gig in a tiny space for free with a bunch of my random friends at six in the afternoon in the middle of a spectacular electrical storm? That’s why I’m willing to pay what I pay for rent. Anyway, it was most awesome, and I’m sort of keeping it close, but I’m dying for Charlene Kaye to record her new song about aliens. It was one of those moments that are why you go to see live music, where everyone in the room is transfixed and transported together. Weirdly, it also reminded me of something about binary stars someone wrote about a bazillion years ago at a Guitar Craft workshop I was at. Also, there was a hilarious moment involving a Justin Bieber song; I feel morally obligated to tell you that.

Meanwhile, I haven’t promoted a crowd-funded project in a while, but I’ve got one for you today. It’s for UK-based (I believe you can donate from anywhere; I just have to figure out the site so I can throw in my own contribution), queer, feminist opera company Better Strangers Opera. Yes, you read that right. I’m far, far from any sort of expert on opera, but I do love it and it’s saved me with its beauty in some pretty dark moments. The Crowdfunder project will help stage “Ah! Forget My Fate: A Complete History of Women in Opera (Abridged!),” which the creators describe as “part chamber opera, part cabaret” saying “it offers a pithy and poignant overview of the duplicity, the daring and the many deaths of women throughout the operatic tradition.”

In other news, after many logistical snafus, it seems like Patty and I are on for the Diner en Blanc experience, which is NEXT WEEK. Which means we need to hurry ourselves up with getting supplies. So glad we live near Ikea. And anyway, it’s another excuse to buy the Swedish pegboard furniture version of gluten-free raspberry cheesecake.

Finally, I am still behind (one episode and soon to be two) on Torchwood and writing about it for you. Now that “Sanquali” and promotion there of is out the door, I’ve got a lot of other things that need my attention: edits on a book chapter, collaborative projects ahoy, a trio of journal articles (so not even kidding, and you wouldn’t believe the timeline) and whatever is next all by my lonesome.

But, all is not all work and and no play! If you’re at the Dances of Vice “Under the Sea” prom thing this weekend (OMG, what am I going to wear? Well, my tux, if it is neither pouring rain nor above 80), do say hi. And if you have any restaurants recs for when we’re in San Francisco at the end of the month, let us know (although poor Patty, I think I’m making us go to In-and-Out Burger the second we get off the plane).

“Sanquali” excerpt

When Joselle first asked me to write “Sanquali,” I had no idea what to do. Some of the thing she was looking for from me sounded easy (mannerpunk), but I’d never thought about werewolves before, and I don’t have the best track record of writing women or lesbians.

When a female-type person in fandom says, “I’d rather be writing boys,” it can mean a lot of different things. A quirk of our writing habits and skills or too much time spent in slash fandom. It can be about internalized misogyny, a dislike of writing things close to home, or any of a million other things, all of which are pretty hard to untangle from each other.

At various points, I’ve tried on all these explanations for my own writing habits, and they don’t necessarily feel true or untrue. But they universally don’t feel like a tight or complete fit. Today, I think I write boys more often because I always played the male roles in all the school plays I was in growing up, and so it’s more natural, when telling a story or taking on someone else’s skin for me to think male.

And werewolf stories are all about skin. How does someone become a werewolf? How does the transformation work? What does it mean to their place in their family, amongst their friends, and in society? And how would that weigh (or not) on a woman in a world where gender and role are closely, specifically, and largely inflexibly linked. What’s more important, being a wolf or being a woman?

It was those questions that got “Sanquali” going. I built a mythology of the place, and then tried to find a way to make it interact with its people. The characters are mostly women — a guard, a thief, a wealthy daughter, a socially important mother. But there’s also a male guard who helps to frame the story. I felt a bit weird about doing that in a woman-focused (and lesbian-focused) anthology, but it was an important statement about “Sanquali” the place. This is a world made and shaped and structured for women by men, even when they are absent, ineffectual or irrelevant, to what the women are experiencing.

Sanquali isn’t a romance or a love story, although relationships and potential relationships (primarily a lesbian love triangle or polyfidelitous arrangement) are suggested, and an arranged marriage is central to the plot. Even for a lesbian anthology, it was really important to me not to write an “issue” story. This is a plot that happens to have lesbians and not the other way around. Plus, in a world with supernatural wolves in sarcophagouses hanging out in rich people’s basements, it seemed like lesbianism was really not going to be anyone’s central crisis.

Anyway, here’s a small chunk of the opener.

Antonia scratched at the dirt floor with her long knife and listened halfheartedly as Gino attempted to tell a creepy wolf story. It was, she thought, one he had clearly heard told before and was perhaps even bored with himself. That was, at least, the only explanation she could find for the manner in which he was telling it, punctuating the all-too-familiar mythos with excessively dramatic pauses and frankly ludicrous hand gestures.

“Every city has two societies and so two stories of its founding,” he said, flourishing his hands as if to beg she imagine such a city placed between them. “Sanquali is no different. The rich live above, on the hill and in great rooms with grand windows.” He went up on his toes then to emphasize the height of the hill, before descending into a crouch. “And the poor live below in the valley by the flooding river or in the low-ceilinged basements of the houses they serve. These men and women of wealth or poverty, however, are not the only residents of Sanquali. There are also the wolves.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Antonia said when he paused and looked at her expectantly. “Our little basement here is a nice touch, though.”

“I’m setting the scene; it’s supposed to be eerie,” he whispered, at if there were an audience beyond the two of them to hear him stray from the narrative. “Thanks, though,” he added shyly.

Antonia laughed and shook her head as he stood again.

“Those who live above say the wolves helped found the city—”

“It would really be better without the jumping around,” she said, not feeling bad about criticizing him because she could have been so much crueler.

“I’m wooing the audience.”

Antonia stared at him until he blushed.

“These wolves,” he continued, “rescued two boys, who were carried to the city on the river, and they tended to them, feeding them, keeping them warm and teaching them to fight. The boys learned courage from the wolves and crawled out of the dens and caves of these animals to build the city and its great society. When women were needed, the men found she-wolves and beseeched the gods they had created to make them human.”

“That’s actually really weird,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“There were no women until we turned wolves into some?”

“It’s just a story,” Gino said weakly.

“Well, it’s a stupid story,” Antonia said. “Why would I start as a wolf, become a woman, and then get turned back into a wolf part-time?”

“Sanquali” is part of the anthology Bitten by Moonlight, available in ebook and trade paperback.

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.