"I just show up"

The boys I had over for dinner and Kiki liked Kiki. Said she had a real aesthetic. Which means that there were still comprehension problems. R had read the blog that day. Was touched by the way T figured into "Savage and Tender." Even playfully complained to M that he'd never talk about him that way. M has become my gym-buddy. We have fun chatting chatting chatting in between sets. Also went with me to listen to Judith Butler struggle with her French. I made a fan of him. We ate linguine alla carbonara. With chicken broth instead of cream. It's a weeknight standby T and I often make. And it's yummy. We usually do more exciting things for our guests. But since T is in Vancouver, I knew I was going to be alone slaving over the kitchen. And I allowed myself to take it easy. Plus we were going to watch Kiki and Herb. That was the main thing, really. I did some pausing, commenting, and translating for some of my favorite spots. Like? I told them I used to sing "Jesus loves me this I know" in Bible school. R said, "But not like that." For sure. Or how amazingly touching her monstrosity can be. Like when she sings "Boulder to Birmingham" just after missing Jesus and stopping her cat fight with Mary Magdalen. "But she's not grotesque," replied R, when I mistakenly referred to her beautiful monstrosity as grotesque. What did I translate? The moment when she says how worrisome it is that the fates of 12 million immigrants are being decided by 8 white men. Or when she talks about how Lilian Hellman stole her line. "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashion." I didn't have to translate the moment where she says, "I'm a socialist. I socialize." Because they got that and laughed. And I just had to repeat "If I could love, I would love you all" for them to get it. I did have to translate the moment where her sister Candy's station wagon did an about-face in the driveway. "Best Christmas I ever had." And the moment after she sings the bit from "Horses" when Herb says she wasn't there for him because there's only one set of footprints in the snow. And Kiki says "Those aren't your footprints, Herb. They're my footprints. I carried you, Herb." Jesus. I've got them singing "Boulder to Birmingham" on the tube right now. It still makes me cry. "The hardest thing is knowing I'll survive."

Can I indulge a little fantasy? Maybe, like, I dunno, five years back I remember saying to our Brooklyn friend R, not to be confused with the R I invited over for dinner and Kiki with M, that Kiki should do an Emmylou Harris song. How long has she been singing that song? Could it be that this somehow filtered back to her? It's a funny fantasy. I don't really care too much if it's true or not.

Happy Birthday, Po. I love it that you have a mother who can find the New Yorker cover card that'll make you weep. And, as if you couldn't tell given all I'm finding to say thanks to the fact that I'm saying it to you, I'm so happy we started up this gig. I can quote Kiki for its title. "I just show up." It says a lot to this crazy long-distance long-term friendship we've got going on. I had forgotten the bees in the deli! So much I forget. Fucking Atlantic ocean. Keeping us so far apart. Beautiful big traversable ocean still somehow full of all kinds of life. There's a quote from a fag who wrote about Glenway Wescott, who was a fag who lived a sustained three-way with Monroe Wheeler and George Platt Lynes that I was really interested in for a while. That whole scene. The art it allowed for. I discovered it during a New York visit. I probably even talked to you about them. I had this idea I'd write a play about them. And that I'd call it "The Distance Between the Stars." So gay! Anyways. Thinking about this whole project I came across a quote that I ended up writing in a card to my father and mother, telling them why they should come to my graduation as a doctor from that great school in California. Because at first they didn't think it was important enough that they should go out of their way to come. Anyways. There's this gay who wrote a book called The First Time I Met Frank O'Hara. And he says that "The thrill of The Pilgrim Hawk [the most beautiful thing Wescott ever wrote] is the knowledge, slowly and skeptically gained, that there is always a completely different way of living from that of the struggling and occasionally beautiful but foolish people that underestimate the value of the straightforward expression, the self-exposing gesture, and the humbling aspects of being in love and, especially, of being loved."

Jesus. Here I am typing that and it so happens that Kiki's on the tube singing "Moments of Pleasure." In other words? I'm a puddle of happy tears.