Manchester Otherwise Love
Now Manchester. While we pause and pray, let’s be clear what gets us here–and how to stop coming ’round again.
Now Manchester. While we pause and pray, let’s be clear what gets us here–and how to stop coming ’round again.
My synagogue was one of the Yemeni mail-bomb terror targets. It is impossible to write a sentence like that without feeling the worst of humanity well up inside your being. But sometimes it’s when you feel the most hateful of urges that healing the world has the best chance to begin.
People say the strangest things to me in downtown Chicago. This past weekend was a trifecta. Sunday afternoon I ran into Marina City’s own Vincent Falk, aka the colorful, tour-boat-waving Riverace (rhymes with Liberace), standing together with Marina City Online scribe Steve Dahlman mid-span on the State Street Bridge.
Once again, the Internet has wrought cross-country friendship for Yours Truly. Departing today after a whirlwind Windy City vacation are Seattleites Café Kasey and John Dramatist. Emerald City barista Kasey originally contacted me after visiting a link to my blog. He and actor-boyfriend John were ready for a change of scene and were coming to Chitown to see if the flatland urban shores of Lake Michigan would fit the bill.
Recently, I was reminded that I’m alive when an unexpected event stopped my mind long enough to realize the fact.
Today, I’m the featured guest on Chicago’s homegrown Feast of Fools podcast, the most popular LGBT-themed daily talk show on the planet. Wonder twin powers, activate! Form of: a giddy gay blogger!
When Cincinnati Jamie pulled up in front of the Hilton one evening in October with a spent Austrian airline pilot in the passenger seat, I tried to be demure. As he got out of the car, I told Herr Pilot, ‘When I blog about this, I promise only to refer to you as number three.’ Jamie’s response? ‘He didn’t know there was already a number one and two.’
If only our friends and lovers could roll out the same patience we ADDers have to unfurl for them. Talk slower? Write things down? What do you mean we said that already? So what? We’re just trying to make a point! You understand us, don’t you? You are aware our behavior is due to uncommon neurological pathways in our brains and not because we don’t ‘try hard enough,’ right? Didn’t you know all of this came with the territory when you signed on to have an ADDer in your life?
You have better things to do today than surf through lunch on the Internet on the anniversary of 9/11. There are important people in your life and you know you’ve been taking them for granted. Yes, I’m talking to you. Now get off the Internet, pick up the phone, and tell them so: husbands; wives; life partners; children; brothers; sisters; best friends. Every one of them. No, I’m not kidding.
Even seated, Pastry Chef Chris couldn’t help but grimace over the top of his grande iced green tea cooler. ‘Maybe you slept wrong,’ I offered. His response: ‘How does one sleep wrong on a foot?’