Friday, November 27, 2009

What Academics Do on Thanksgiving Weekend


The X-BF once told me, “Shopping is an activity that may or may not end in a purchase.” Finally I began to understand the endless trips looking for the perfect drapes for the living room. Those windows were bare for years, even after he’d found the perfect curtain rods.

My own world was so different from his, but I found comfort and wisdom in this idea. Applying this saying to academic work leads me to consider research as an activity that may or may not end up in any findings.

Sometimes finding nothing is an answer, e.g., My Dead Poet did not keep any letters. Ever. From anybody. (Cursing the Dead Poet, optional.)

Sometimes finding nothing means you keep looking, which can seem futile, but can also lead to narrowing your search. Or it may lead you to look somewhere else. For example, Nope, nothing about this issue in the WHOLE Huntington Archive. Maybe I should go to New York and look at the public library. (This is either an exciting opportunity or a chore, depending on the status of your travel funds.)

So what’s all this about a Dead Poet? I’m glad you asked.

Last spring I was asked to contribute a chapter to a book about W. H. Auden, hereafter referred to as My Dead Poet (oh, let’s just go with the acronym, MDP, this is a blog). The book, called “Auden in Context,” is slated for the Cambridge University Press. My chapter is to be on Auden in the context of his lifelong friend and sometime collaborator, Christopher Isherwood. My deadline is sometime in Spring 2010.


A literary Hope and Crosby, Isherwood and Auden head to China to write about the Sino-Japanese War.

Toot Your Own Horn Department, All False Modesty Aside Unit: I am something of an authority on Isherwood and have published three books on him and his work. (See here.) Two with my own Sometime Collaborator, Chris Freeman, about whom more in a minute.

I spent several weekends at the Huntington Library and Gardens last summer reading letters from My Dead Poet to Isherwood. MDP wrote a lot of letters to CI, who really must have written back, because many of MDP’s letters begin “thank you for the letter.” But, as we know, MDP never kept anything that was useful. On the other hand his personal life and living quarters were always a messy mess mess.

My research agenda was to find in the Isherwood papers some new, undiscovered vein of raw material that would show this relationship in a new light. Trouble is, while this material is newly available in the archive, every every scholar who has written about MDP seems to have had access to these papers before. There are several biographies of MDP and CI, and their relationship has been written about ad nauseum. (Seriously, after shopping, er, researching, for a few months on this you do get a little sick of them both.)


Auden in later years.

So there it sat, this little Dead Poet Project. Sad and dejected, the project languished. I let leads go unfollowed. I consulted with an Eminent Scholar in England (via email) and dropped that inquiry.
Until once again, on the cusp of admitting defeat, I consult with Sometime Collaborator. Over coffee the morning before Thanksgiving and cocktails later on, we’re on a roll again. Co-authoring will be the way out of this morass! We’ll consult Eminent Scholar again! We’ll interview The Widow again!

We’ll challenge the conventional view.

We’ll head back to the library.

And life is a celebration again.

Happy Black Friday.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

The Exercise I Hate the Least


Recently I completed the “inaugural, first-ever” Malibu half marathon. I say completed, but I walked a lot during the second half. I have not trained on hills in more than a year, and boy, are there hills on the Pacific Coast Highway! I’ve decided my main problem that day was (Insert smarty-pants physiological sounding rationale here).


After the Malibu half, standing in the ocean.

After the Malibu run was over and the leg cramps subsided, I realized that I have done four half marathons in 2009. This is a guy who wouldn’t run for the bus five years ago.
Malibu was the worst run of the year, and I posted a very bad time. I wondered what the heck I was doing it for. So I dug up a piece I wrote for my first running coach to remind myself of …
How I Became an (un)Competitive Runner, or Why I Have Four Pair of the Same Sneakers in My Closet and Will Soon Buy a Fifth
I started running in February 2006. My goals were to lose weight and see if there was some sort of activity I could stand doing for the next ten years. (I had recently turned 40—and even more recently, 42.) I was living in Minnesota—Minneapolis on the weekends and Duluth during the week.
I thought I might be able to jog a quarter of a mile. It took me three tries to run that far without walking. I ran for about six weeks, then life intervened, and I took about six weeks off.
My log starts up again in June 2006, and by that time I was up to 3 miles in 45 minutes. I was pissed that I didn’t lose any weight. I swear someone promised me that running would make me taller! But I could see and feel that my body was changing. On the other hand, I wasn’t getting any faster.
In July, my relationship ended after thirteen years—without much rancor or many recriminations. I started spending more of my time in Duluth, which has a great running community, some killer hills, and a world-class event, Grandma’s marathon.
I ran my first 5K in September of that year. The Duluth Gay Pride fun run. It wasn’t fun. It took me about 31 minutes, so my time had improved over the summer. In early September I was at the same weight as in May. I didn’t start losing weight until October, and in the following six months lost about 10 pounds. I was feeling better, healthier, and better about myself.
Trail running is a big deal Duluth, with all the young outdoorsy hipsters doing it. I was no longer young, had never been hip, and sure wasn’t outdoorsy, but I wanted to hang out with them. So I signed up for a race called “Bangin’ in the Brush.” It marks the end of the season for organized outdoor runs. At 6.6K it still seemed like a long distance. It wasn’t fun. I walked much of it. It was raining. It was not fun. I did it in 83 minutes. At the end met Katie, an experienced Duluth runner who would become my coach.
Soon after that I developed plantars faciaitis. That was not fun. (Sensing the theme yet?) It hurt. For about six weeks every morning when I got up the pain would shoot from my right sole up my leg. I missed some running in late October, when the Duluth weather can be alternately nasty and wonderful. I found that I actually missed the running.


Sometime in there I ran a full marathon. Dumb.

People often say that your body starts changing around age forty. You’ll need bifocals soon, your hair is thinning. For me, cholesterol tests have shown that I could be “pre-diabetic.” My blood pressure increased seemingly overnight to the higher end of normal. High blood pressure and diabetes run in my family, so I take the warning signs seriously. I have what I consider to be a stressful job—maybe it’s just annoying.
So, the point is, I’m running to try to get healthier and stay healthy. I don’t consider myself competitive. I have always disliked competitive sports. I don’t run distances to prove anything to anyone or myself. I do it so that I keep up with the training. I think of running as something I can do alone or with a group, indoors or out. I have met a lot of great people through running: many in Duluth, some in Palm Springs. Sometimes I enjoy it, and sometimes when I don’t do it, I miss it.


 The Fool on the Hill. Nice legs though, eh?


Oh, and before I left my last job, I got a couple of faculty members to start a little event. The Lake Superior College Thrill on the Hill Fund Run: it’s a 10K half-road half-trail event in May, about six weeks before Grandma’s Marathon. The first year, we had around 100 runners. I was one of them. It was kind of fun.
It’s now in it’s fourth year. That makes me happy.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

A Single Man comes to the screen

Christopher Isherwood's novel, A Single Man, will be released as a film by Tom Ford in December. Get a jump start on your friends by (re)reading the novel, published by the University of Minnesota Press.


The publisher has also set up a readers' guide and discussion forum for fans of the book. Join the conversation at http://www.asingleman-book.com.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

The Art of the Breakup, or The Goodbye Song Cycle


Yah, you’ve been there. 


You were seeing this guy and it was fun but now, really, a) there’s someone slightly hotter, b) your ex is back, or c) what was that all about?


So you want to move on. How to tell him? There are several ways to do this. Now that we’re so much more advanced as a society, we talk openly about relationship issues without fear of hurting each other. 


Oh, wait, is this the real world, or Jim’s fantasy of it? 


The weird truth is when guys say, “What do you like?” as a conversation starter, he’s not talking about Whitney’s comeback or which boy is hotter on “Glee.” 



Men will tell you what they like in bed the first time they talk, text, or meet you online, but they still won’t discuss their feelings.


So we end up with the dysfunction wagging that dawg. 


Extensive research has shown (okay, my three years of experience being single) that the following break-up patterns common among your modern homosexuals. (Extra points if you can identify the musical allusions. Number three is a gimme.)


No phone, no call, no text. He ain’t got no damned regrets.
Roger: we met on Match.com and talked or saw each other everyday for a week. Then—radio silence. He didn’t return my phone calls, he didn’t respond to my emails. Really? You can’t say, “one of my other Matches has better hips than you”? Coward. We know each other for a week, you think I’m going to cut myself because you don’t want to marry me? A clue, perhaps the one Roger was looking for: Man up, King of the Road—make a call or send an email.


Take me to a bar with half price imports. Tell me on a Friday, please.
Andrew: Six weeks of dating and spending the night. I actually stayed in your crummy apartment on your mattress on the floor when I have a perfectly cosy, heated home around the corner. Still, after being out of town for a week and not returning my calls (cell phones work in Michigan, right?), you meet me out for a drink. Once the martinis are delivered, you deliver the news. What would Carrie Bradshaw do actually comes to my mind. Put down ten dollars and walk away. You say, “I can pay for the drinks.” Damned right you can. Clue to Andrew: You’re not being kind here. I thought this was a date.


Living in an ethereal world: boys may come and boys may go and that’s all right with me.
Carlos: we’ve taken up all of the modern conveniences. Yea us! We met online and had a couple of dates. But really, we knew it wasn’t working out. NBD. If Carrie was indignant to be dumped on a Post-it, can we really use email? It’s not just Brittany getting divorced by text these days. So if we started off online and didn’t spend a lot of time together, it may be appropriate to write a brief, thoughtful note. Clue to Carlos: let’s not blame each other if I’m not Mr. Right. 


I’ve been on both sides of all of the above, and I prefer option number three. So civilized, so modern. And you can hit “reply” or “delete” at will.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Elizabeth Taylor's Dress

My friend William J. Mann recently published a new book about Elizabeth Taylor, How to Be A Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood. It's a great book, and he's been getting a lot of press about it. Go ahead, google him.

In honor of his new book, I'm posting here a piece I wrote about two years ago and posted on my friend Jocelyn's blog (omightycrisis.blogspot.com).

Elizabeth Taylor’s Dress

I have been a fan of Elizabeth Taylor for about 20 years. That’s a comparatively short time for a gay man in his forties. But when I was growing up, Elizabeth Taylor was an old woman with her best work behind her. Who’s this and what’s all the fuss about? I wondered. After all, I was born in 1964, and ET is two years older than my mother.

My views changed around 1985 when I saw the film of Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly Last Summer. I thought the movie was dreadful, but ET was gorgeous. I understood her appeal then. Later, I saw ET’s other major Williams screen role, as Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and I was hooked.

By 1990, I was a graduate student, studying Williams’s plays, and I wanted to write a paper about ET and her relationship to the gay community. The paper would note her friendships with Montgomery Clift and Rock Hudson but would focus on ET’s identification with Williams’s screen heroines. I would focus on imagery and iconography, and there was no image more powerful to me than Elizabeth Taylor standing in a doorway wearing a white dress with Paul Newman in the background.


I never wrote the paper, but I did come up with a good title: “Elizabeth Taylor’s Dress.”

My fascination has ebbed and flowed over the years as ET has limited her film and television appearances, introduced fragrances and jewelry, and become the first lady of AIDS fundraising and activism. For her 75th birthday (February 27), I threw a party at my home in Duluth, asking guests to contribute money to AmFar, which ET helped found in 1985. (Okay, so the birthday and fundraising were tie-ins, the party was for me and my friends.)

Then I moved to southern California, and I figured it was only a matter of time before I was able to meet Elizabeth in person. After all, I’d been visiting LA for years and had a social network there. I had met or at least seen many celebrities on my visits.

So I wasn’t particularly surprised when I was offered a ticket to see Elizabeth Taylor and James Earl Jones in a one-time-only performance of Love Letters on World AIDS Day, December 1, 2007. A friend of a friend—okay, a fabulously wealthy friend of a very thoughtful friend—had an extra ticket: Tom invited Chris, and Chris deferred to me. Score!

I am visiting L.A. for a working weekend: Chris and I are putting the finishing touches on our book Love, West Hollywood. I didn’t bring anything to wear. No problem; I borrow a jacket from Chris, and we go shopping for an appropriate shirt. I drive to Tom’s house in Beverly Hills, and we take his vintage Mercedes convertible to the Paramount lot. After we arrive, we walk along the red carpet where a TV actor (from E.R.?) is doing the step-and-repeat.

Inside the lobby is a crush of people. “Do you know anyone?” I ask Tom. He says no. But we see Mary McDonnell (love her) and Maria Shriver (looking better than expected) and, who’s that really tall guy? Kareem Abdul Jabar. I smile and say hello to Mary McDonnell who returns the smile and the hello. I love her all the more. It takes us 30 minutes to identify the TV actress trying to hide her bad cosmetic surgery behind long blonde bangs: Joan Van Ark. A particularly Hollywood tragedy.


Our seats are third row center, reserved for Tom and his boyfriend, an internet billionaire. Next to me is seated a middle-aged man, dark hair, and next to him is, I presume, his boyfriend. The man turns to me eagerly and asks, “Are you Tom?” I say no and indicate Tom next to me. “Are you David?” he’s very eager now. “No, I’m Jim.” The man then engages Tom in discussion over me, never again to address me, refer to me, or look me in the eye. The man has some relationship to ET, and Tom is happy to talk to him. Liz’s man clearly wants Tom’s money for her foundation and offers to set up a meeting with Elizabeth for Tom and David. Score for Tom! (It never came about.)

I wonder if Liz-man thinks I am Tom’s whore for the evening and marvel at my sudden invisibility. (“You haven’t been in L.A. long have you?” a friend asks me later.) Neither famous nor rich, I better get used to it. Still, I’m used to the L.A. attitude of being friendly with everyone, since you never know who might be on their way up. I like to believe that ET wouldn’t act this way to anyone and that she wouldn’t approve of her man’s treatment of me either.

Up on stage there is a raised platform with a table on it. On the table top are two script holders. Love Letters by A. R. Gurney is a two-character play that is usually presented more as a reading than a performance. There is only one chair at the table. I mention this to Tom. “Wheel chair?” he asks.

Soon speeches are given to honor Elizabeth Taylor for her AIDS activism and fundraising. The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation is the organizer of the event, and it was ET’s idea. She hasn’t been on stage in 25 years. Without anyone saying so, we all understand that she isn’t likely to ever perform on stage again. Eventually the side door opens, and Liz herself is wheeled out to the auditorium, up the stage and to her place at the table.

She looks good. Old, but good. Her hair is dyed jet-black, as in the old days. Her face is thin, with sharp angles where it used to be heart-shaped. She is Dame Elizabeth here. I look for some remnants of Maggie the Cat, finally finding it in her smile and the glint in her eye. She’s wearing a long loose dress (one couldn’t in good taste call it a caftan) and a shawl. We all stand and applaud wildly. She nods appreciatively. James Earl Jones comes out too.

The play starts out with letters between Melissa Gardner and Andrew Ladd as children. They are playmates and neighbors who become teenage sweethearts, college lovers, and adult correspondents. In middle age they rekindle their romance and become lovers again. Elizabeth is good with the girlhood letters, all flirtatious and rebellious. She has clearly prepared although not enough to get her over the French words in the script. She loses her place in the text a couple of times but she gets over it.

The most gripping part of the performance is the shawl. Midway through the first act, Elizabeth’s shawl has dropped from her right shoulder. She continues her lines as she tries to put the shawl back on. I can’t stand the thought that she is cold or uncomfortable on stage. I want to help her out. You’re sitting on it, I whisper to her. I try not to look at Tom next to me but I feel the whole audience is riveted to Elizabeth and her struggle with the shawl. James Earl Jones help her! I scream in my head. He continues with his lines. Finally, the shawl does her bidding, and I relax. I feel a sigh of relief around me. We will not mention this, we silently agree.

Andrew and Melissa’s affair resumes after he is elected to the Senate and she has become a successful artist. Her success, however, comes with divorce, alcohol abuse, and mental illness. Although I think Gurney packs a lot of clichés about successful East Coast establishment figures into the play, the last half of the second act is good, tense, and funny. The ending is a disappointment and, I think, an artistic cop out. But it gives Elizabeth a final bravura performance: Maggie the Cat lives!

Standing again, we cheer wildly. Elizabeth beams. She is tired. For nearly two hours, she’s been on stage, working hard, and it shows. James Earl Jones graciously steps aside and applauds for her. She nods to him and takes his hand. Then she turns back to the audience and nods again. Slowly she puts her hands on the wheelchair arms and boosts herself up. She inches up until she is in a half-standing position, supported by the wheelchair. She nods again at the audience, once, twice, three times. Slowly she sits again. Dame Elizabeth, having made her appearance, is ready to go. The assistant wheels her off.

On the way home, we dissect her performance and her appearance. Tom refers to Elizabeth Taylor’s reputation as the “most beautiful woman in the world,” saying she was “the most beautiful YOUNG woman in the world.” I feel somewhat sacrilegious but remember my own view of her when I was young. She was 32 when I was born, an age I no longer find old, and her movie-making peak was soon behind her. But her work continues and her stardom endures.

Monday, November 2, 2009

A View from the Porch


It’s been two years and three months since I arrived in the desert. High time I wrote some thoughts about living here.

I’m sitting on what I’m going to start calling my “Writing Porch.” It’s one of three patios at my apartment. And I’m sitting in the sun, laptop on the table, and the sun is so bright the apple on the other side of the screen is showing through. Do you think I’ll write more if I call it the Writing Porch? Michael Chabon has a writing studio in his back yard. Just sayin’.

I’ve been such a crank lately, bitching over cocktails about everything from problems at work to my dismal love life. (No offense to the two guys who have dated me this month; not talking about you.) I better get some thoughts in about what is good about living in this beautiful area.

For the beauty of it, I will just give you this photograph.


There is little more beautiful than the view of snow from a distance.
Photo by Tony DiSalvo (in case he sees this).


Okay, just took off my shirt. (Take that Michael Chabon.) Yep, it’s warm here in Palm Springs. Eighty-five degrees on November 1st is, let’s just say, insane. In a nice way--not like Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun, more like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Puerto Vallarta.

What’s really insane, in the way of ET having a frontal lobotomy against her wishes, is this place in the fracking summer. Alex: “June, July, and August.” Jim: “What are the best three reasons to be a teacher?” Not so much here. Three to four months of heat in the 120 degree range. It’s a dry heat my mother’s aunt! An oven’s an oven, sweeties.

Having lived in extreme cold, though, I can tell you this: extreme heat is more bearable. You can sit still on a hundred-degree day if you’re in the shade and drink a nice shandy. Outside. Then you can go into your air-conditioned apartment and watch Keith Olberman. Can’t do that in the tundra of Wisconsin, Minnesota, or Maine (other places I’ve live) when it’s 30 below. (Okay, you can watch Keith if you have cable, a hot toddy, and a snuggie.)

It’s no use, you northerners, saying how much you like the cold or value the Change of Seasons. You might as well say you enjoy the Change of Life. My stalwart brother even posted on Facebook the other day the opening line to “California Dreamin’”: “All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray.” I couldn’t help but reply that he knew where and how he could be safe and warm.


The view from my Writing Porch.

On the other hand is the bitching. A couple of years before I moved here, a friend talked about weekending in Palm Springs. Well, talked is a bit generous. He ranted: “There’s nothing to do there! There’s NOTHING to do there.” And he’s pretty much right. Sure, there’s hiking in the mountains, drinking in the bars. And tennis for those who play. And that Scottish game that takes up all that lovely parkland. But nightlife? Forget it. One museum: good. Movies: good. International Film Festival: two weeks in January.

There’s no one under sixty who is single (see above re: love life). Why even yesterday there was a rather fetching guy my age getting his haircut next to me. “I think he has a partner,” says my Guy with Scissors. Natch.

So we’re saved from boredom by our proximity to Los Angeles and the coast.

But Jeeves! I think my laptop’s overheating.

And did you see those mountains?