So I’m a Slow Learner. Sue me.

As we sat waiting to board the plane, the most magical thing happened. I began to feel less like someone being chased by torch-wielding villagers. My fever subsided, and the risk of blowing chunks all over any number of Chinese businessmen began to vanish.

Whew, I thought. It must have just been food poisoning. (Mental note: reexamine the value of shopping in the “expiring today” section of Fresh & Easy.) Thank God, I prayed silently, that I’m not exposing scores of unsuspecting passengers to bird flu or malaria or whatever it was I thought I had.

But by the time we arrived in Kuala Lumpur 20 hours later, I was miserable again. Thus began a three day quest for public bathrooms that did not require me to squat over a hole in the floor in order to do my bidness.

By the time we arrived in Singapore, I was finally feeling a little more human.

“I can hardly wait,” I said breathlessly, “to get on the cruise!” I had snagged, for an insanely cheap price, rooms on the back corners of the ship with 250 square foot balconies, and I couldn’t wait to get out there and pose, a drink fairly blowing out of my hand, as others looked on from their inferior balconies with envy and despair.

And then I reached for my wallet.

Now, I have always considered myself a positive person. Someone who does not allow life’s little challenges to upset my emotional apple cart.

This is, unfortunately, a self-image apparently manufactured out of thin air, for on this day, I stood in the Changi airport, behaving markedly like a 12-year-old girl forced to miss the premiere of Twilight.

“I wish I was dead!”

“Really?” Sandy replied. “That’s how you’re gonna play this?”

“I’m sick, I have no wallet, this trip is ruined! Ruined, I tell you!”

Yes, I actually said it like that.

When we arrived at the cruise ship, I phoned the Hilton in Kuala Lumpur. They had found the wallet. But getting it back to me would be something else altogether. DHL clearly thought I was a member of Al Qaeda and informed the Hilton in no uncertain terms that there are rules about overnighting a wallet stuffed with ID, credit cards and cash from one second world country to another.

“This is awful!” I shrieked.

“Why?” Sandy replied. “You’re getting your wallet back.”

“Yeah, after we get home. How am I supposed to pay for stuff on this trip?”

“We’re on a cruise ship. It all gets charged to your onboard account. When we’re touring, I have credit cards. What’s the big deal?”

“The big deal is that I am not in control!”

You may not be surprised to learn that these were not words I meant to say aloud. There was a long and painful (for some of us) silence. But in that moment, as Sandy stood gazing at me with an irritatingly ironic smile, I realized how much of my self-esteem in our relationship is predicated on my being what I perceive as the Big Man. The one who takes charge, the one who makes things happen.

“So maybe,” he said calmly, “you can let go for a few days.”

And I was forced, over the next two weeks, to let him be the one in control. To let him take care of me. Which he did, of course, with aplomb.

And I realized that it’s kind of nice to be taken care of. Sure, I have to be a little more flexible. Sure, when I’m not calling every shot I can’t always get everything my way. But I get to feel loved.

I guess even the best life lessons, the most valuable moments, come at a price.

Of course, that price is much easier to pay when you have your wallet.

(Apologies for the six week silence! The cops kept catching up with me.)

It was 2 a.m. and I awoke with a start. Not the “wow, I shouldn’t have had that gallon of Diet Coke and a Midol before bed” kind of start. More like “Hey, two exits, no waiting, free Funyons on your way out!”

It was the night before we were to leave on an 18-day international vacation, and I was coming down with something. And I’d been looking forward to this trip for a year. Having never been to Asia, I was anticipating lots of profound cultural experiences: shortie kimonos, lots of Panda Express restaurants and poignant photos of me with poor people.

What I was getting, instead, was a violent case of the stomach flu.

“Pull it together!” my supportive and concerned partner Sandy yelled at me when I told him I didn’t feel well.

This was not a surprising response. He’s not actually quite as horrible and soulless as that sounds; he just has this ridiculous and totally unwarranted idea that I can be a bit of a hypochondriac.

Sure, I might take a Xanax before getting my teeth cleaned. Sure, one patch of dry skin and I’m at the Mayo Clinic website searching for rare skin cancers. But I was sick. And there was irrefutable evidence – the kind that makes you go, “Wow, I don’t remember eating corn.”

A couple of weeks earlier, Sandy had laughed at me when I said that I was gonna get a prophylactic course of Tamiflu from my doctor.

“Listen,” I told him, “it’s the height of the flu season and we’re gonna be in Asia for 18 days. If one of us gets sick, where will we find a good physician? Do you want some witch doctor waving a flaming wad of sage over you and chanting in a voice straight out of The Omen?”

He never catches anything, so naturally this seemed like insane reasoning to him.

“We’ll be on a cruise ship and staying in American hotels. We’re not gonna be floating on a raft down the Mekong Delta.”

“Better safe than sorry,” I had replied. And now, in this moment of illness, I smugly waved the box of Tamiflu in his face. “Who’s laughing now?”

I had no idea if Tamiflu worked on whatever I had, but I immediately began popping tablets like they were Sweet-tarts because I had to go to work. We weren’t leaving until midnight, and nothing says “fake sick day” like calling in sick on your last work day before a vacation.

Promptly around noon, after spending roughly ten hours on or near the toilet, I finally managed to drag my ass in to the office.

“Oh, my God, what happened to you?”

This from my friend Raquel, who typically suffers from some sort of ocular disorder that makes her think I’m handsome.

“Do I look bad?” I said, sweat running down my unshaven face, my clothes unkempt.

“You look like shit.” Raquel is Chilean, so she used a Spanish word, but I’m pretty sure that’s what she was going for.

“I have the flu,” I replied breathlessly, “or SARS.”

I managed to make it a couple of hours, until my boss asked me, for the sake of everyone else present, to get the hell out of the building.

When I arrived home, my in-laws were there, along with our friend Julie who was going to house-sit for us. Everyone was in a festive mood, which only made matters worse.

“Come have a glass of Merlot,” Mary, my mother-in-law said. She and I share a common interest in red wine for its health benefits, although rumor has it those benefits dull somewhat around glass number four.

“I’m just gonna take a little nap,” I said, stumbling down the hall to the bedroom.

“He thinks he’s sick,” Sandy explained.

“Dying is more like it!” I hollered, wondering if I should call for a priest. And convert to Catholicism.

I lay in bed, worrying about getting on a plane. I was clearly disease-ridden. Was it fair to expose my germs to the unknowing masses? But Sandy and his parents were so excited. I couldn’t let them down. I would have to man up.

Somehow, I managed to shower and endure the car ride to the airport, suffering in silence save for an occasional cry of discomfort to make sure everyone noticed my bravery. But as we shuffled through the security line, another, more terrifying thought occurred to me: we’re changing planes in Hong Kong. Hong Kong has those guys with temperature scanners. If you have a fever, they’ll quarantine you. I could be spending the next 3 days on a cot in the Hong Kong airport, being beaten by a Chinese guard.

Well, if that happens, I thought, I’ll film the whole thing on my cellphone and put it on YouTube. I’ll become a cause celebre. The state department will demand my release and when officials refuse, we’ll go to war with China.

That would at least make this whole barfy thing worthwhile.

TO BE CONTINUED…

My partner and I just returned from a trip to Asia that was, essentially, The Amazing Race without the shirtless Chippendales and prize money.

The idea for this trip started a year ago with my dad-in-law, who wanted to return to Vietnam where he’d served during the Vietnam war. Now, that sounds, in theory, like a very personal, almost mystical journey, one likely to bring a deep and profound sense of closure to a difficult chapter of his life.

But the rest of us – my partner, my mother-in-law and I – didn’t have much interest in reliving the Tet Offensive if there weren’t four-course meals and sparkly dancers involved. So instead of him taking a solo pilgrimage to Nah Trang, the four of us settled on a two-week cruise that began in Singapore, wound through Thailand and Vietnam, and ended up in Hong Kong.  And we added on a side trip to Kuala Lumpur, mostly because no one knows where it is and it sounds terribly exotic, as if we were visiting indigenous tribes that have never seen a Mr. Microphone or toilet paper.

We chose a cruise because, much like a Vegas hooker, we really like waking up someplace new every day. And we chose this particular cruise because we would be in each city on the itinerary for two days, instead of the usual 8-hour port stop you get on a ship that stops in New Orleans for Fat Tuesday. In as much was feasible in 48 hours, we wanted to soak up the culture, the local customs, and to begin to understand what it’s like to be Malaysian.  Or Singaporean. Or Thai. Or Vietnamese. Or Chinese.

None of this fazed us, of course. Seven cities across five countries in 18 days? Psssh. A no-brainer. We’ve done this kind of mad dash across Europe, Central America, Australia.

It’s all in a day’s vacation.

Unless you get the stomach flu. And lose your wallet.

TO BE CONTINUED…

We’re now a week and a half into 2013 and no one’s been able to provide a definitive new date for the end of the world. And if you’re

anything like me, you must be a nervous wreck.

I mean, there’s something comforting about knowing exactly when the planet will be destroyed. Sure, there’s that fiery cataclysm part, but
at least you can plan. And I’m a planner. I mean, I know what I’m doing every weekend from now through February. I know where I’m going on vacation in 2014. (If there is a 2014.) I know where there’s a stash of Windex bottles if the Apocalypse turns out to be a filthy mess.

Naturally, I thought the End Times were coming when I was little, and women started leaving the home and having careers. God is clearly
enraged, I thought. I was certain it was here when black people started legally marrying white people. Because if that doesn’t spell spiritual calamity, I don’t know what does. Then I was convinced the moment was upon us when gays were allowed to protect our country. Surely, I thought, God will now blow the whole business up. After all, that’s what our religious leaders who have TV shows assured us would happen.

But no Four Horsemen.

No raging hellfires.

All of these events that were hailed as the downfall of western civilization have had no negative effect at all.

And I have to tell you, I’m getting a little aggravated. Because if I don’t know the ground rules for Armageddon, I cannot properly plan
for it.

So, what, I’m now left wondering, would be cause for God to incite the end of humanity?

Maybe it’s not some event that made one group of people feel empowered and had no impact on the rest. Maybe it’s an event where all of us
are actually, truly, wronged, in a way that virtually cannot be disputed. Where the question is not one of religiously defined immorality, but of simple inhumanity.

Like the NRA refusing to ban assault weapons so that it would be harder to kill 26 people at a grade school.

Or Congress having their heads so far up their asses that they can’t manage to appropriate money for the victims of a hurricane.

Or even an insurance company that was bailed out by the American people suing the government because the “terms were too stringent”.

Yeah, that feels more Apocalyptic to me. And I’m really glad I came to this conclusion. Because I bought a new skinny suit for the Apocalypse,
and it’s gonna take some time to get into that thing.

When my first book came out, my partner presented me with a really
special gift: a scrapbook, filled with press clippings, reviews, photos from
the book launch events, etc. It was, and is, a prized memento of a time in my
life of which I’m proud. I wrote a memoir that the editor of The Help edited, Penguin published, a
few complete strangers actually bought, and Sony optioned as a TV series. And
I’m close to finishing a second book.

I feel like I’ve accomplished something small but worthwhile
with my life. And really, isn’t that all any of us wants? A scrapbook to wave
over our heads to prove that we did something that contributed to the world, or
at least that made others feel like total losers?

The problem, for most people, though, is that
accomplishments like this take time. And people with children don’t have time. Dozens of my co-workers have,
at one time or another, marched up to me and demanded, “How did you find the
time to write a book?” (Our work days are long and sometimes bitch-slappingly
stressful.)

And I always reply, “You know all that time you spend taking
Sophie/Bryce/Rainbow to Little League/Drug Counseling/Toddlers and Tiaras auditions? That’s
when I write.”

This makes them feel a little less lazy and slothful. And really,
they shouldn’t feel lazy and slothful. Their
accomplishments are those beautiful children – our world’s future leaders –
that they have nurtured, taught, and guided. Their scrapbook needn’t be
mementos of a book release, or album launch, or movie premiere. It can be
memories of the special moments in their children’s lives.

Take my best friend’s sister-in-law. She has raised three
children and, in her lovely double-wide in West Virginia, has a beer barrel coffee
table piled high with scrapbooks. And what are those scrapbooks filled with? Memories
of the kids’ arrests and incarcerations – press clippings, mug shots, prisoner
number tags from uniforms.

Memories that say, “Job well done, Shirlene. JOB WELL DONE.”

I am proud to say that I have never personally mooned anyone from the altar of the Sistine Chapel. Nor have I ever hurled onto a crucifix. I have never felt moved to get drunk and mack out in the back pew of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Or encouraged a stripper to “work that pole” in the Vatican.

I have always striven to show the world’s religious monuments and icons (even the heretical ones) a measure of respect and reverence. Which is, apparently, less than I can say for the Dublin Wax Works in Ireland, which has inherited possession of the original 1970’s Popemobile and is about to begin renting it out for proms, stag parties and bachelorette binges.

Okay, granted, as a non-Catholic, there is something fun about the thought of sitting on a throne in a giant glass bubble, wearing a big hat and gold dress and throwing condom wrappers (with no condoms inside) at the throngs as someone drives me down a parade route.  After all, there’s probably a three hour minimum and you gotta get your money’s worth.

But that is where I draw the line. I mean, it’s the Popemobile. Anything more than that is just bad taste.

Flashing your t**s at passing cars? Unseemly. Screaming the Louisiana fight song out the hermetically sealed windows? Vulgar. Losing your virginity in the back seat? Ironic, and a little hilarious…but indelicate.

No, I would treat the Popemobile with the esteem and veneration such a hallowed object deserves. I would use it to drive my Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic and Jewish friends to the site of the New Inquisition (sponsored by Red Bull), where they would be tortured for believing something other than the Catholic faith.

Just like Pope Innocent IV did.

Good times.

I recently saw a show where a mother forgave the drunk driver who killed her daughter.

And as if that weren’t hard ENOUGH to imagine, forgiveness was only the tip of this enlightened iceberg.

She has this guy over for Sunday dinners. They exchange gifts at Christmas (nothing of the Jack Daniels variety, one presumes). She calls him to gossip about the neighbors. “He’s as special to me as if he were my own son,” she said on this talk show, as she gently took his hand and the audience (including me) sobbed into our Pop Tarts.

This is a level of compassion and absolution that is both stunning and admirable. And it’s one that I, too, aspire to achieve.

I guess I say “aspire to” because I know that if I were in her shoes, I would not want this man to spend his life in prison, either. But what I might want is for him to spend his life attempting to absolve his wrongdoing by replacing the daughter I lost.

Actually, physically replacing her.

Oh, sure, it might feel a tad awkward at first, having a 40-year-old sitting at the breakfast table wearing a Catholic school girl’s outfit. Sure, it might be hard trying to find Mary Janes in size 13. Discipline could be a challenge when trying to take a 160-pound man over your knee for a spanking – not to mention the creepy look of anticipation on his face.

I suppose it could get weird around the time the daughter would have hit puberty and you have to have that “special talk”. And braiding her hair might lose something when the wig keeps coming off his head.

But imagine the torture of a grown man having to pretend to be excited about The Vampire Diaries and Justin Bieber and auditioning lip gloss. Picture the deliciously excruciating moment when he has to use his first tampon. Consider the gratification of seeing your little girl all dressed up in the ugliest f***ing prom dress you can lay your hands on. (“If a wrist corsage was good enough for me, young lady, it’s good enough for YOU.”)

Yeah, I guess I’m not as enlightened as I’d like to be.

But come on, that would be FUN.

As someone in my obscenely late early 30’s, one of the life truths I’ve come to know is that, all too often, people aren’t the façade they present to the world.

Occasionally, that’s a good thing.

From a very macho Italian guy from the Bronx, who I worked with until recently:

“I used to man the men’s room at a strip club from noon to 4. Couldn’t start earlier, ‘cause I took ballet classes in the morning.”

Mostly, it’s not.

From a lovely, spiritual goddess type I got to know in a week-long personal growth seminar:

“My brother just doesn’t get it – he is so unenlightened. So I tried to have him killed.”

From an extended family member, who lived with me and who I didn’t know was an alcoholic:

“Yes, that’s vodka in the toilet bowl. I didn’t think you’d look in there.”

From a high-level executive and family man at the company I used to work for:

(looking out his office window with binoculars as his employees walk by the office) God, there are some HOT women in that building!

From a female friend who’s a senior HR executive at a global company:

“Our president bet me that I wouldn’t make out with this woman in sales, so I did. I won fifty bucks.”

From a woman I worked with who embezzled almost a million dollars:

(to the judge) “I wanted to get cornrows, and those are expensive. And then, you know, you just get carried away.” (She was white, which makes it even worse.)

I went to a conference in Dallas last week, and as I was driving to my hotel, I passed a billboard for the convention center, which was breathlessly promoting the upcoming GUN AND KNIFE SHOW.

This couldn’t have made me prouder, of course, since I’m all for killing things for no better reason than the thrill of it, or for the feeling of complete and utter control over the life of another living being.

That’s just good fun.

But as a longtime aficionado of the standard GUN SHOW, where one can purchase enough firepower and ammo to blow up a BET convention or the parking lot of a Home Depot – often without the inconvenience of either a license or a waiting period – I had to nonetheless congratulate the sensitive, self-aware individual whose idea was it to add knives to the mix.

I mean, it only makes sense. We live in a crazy world where technology is splintering our connections with others. We text rather than talk, email instead of visit, and “check in” at glamorous locales for no other reason than to make others jealous.

These are not real connections. Clearly, people are longing for a true sense of community and oneness. What better way to re-establish a sense of actual, physical connection than by killing things in an up close and personal way? And what accomplishes this better than a blunt knife?

Sure, some might argue that Texas is a state where the mascot is a bullet wound. And that the only reason they’ve added knives to the gun show is because once you own a rifle, a shotgun, a semi-automatic pistol and an AK-47, you go looking for a new high.

But I believe that this is about the all-too-human need to connect with someone or something else; to see the terror in the eyes of the person or animal you’re offing. Shooting something from a secure location a hundred yards away does not give one the sense of attachment and kinship that plunging a hunting knife into its jugular does.

And in support of this mission to bring souls closer, I encourage the creators of the GUN AND KNIFE SHOW to go one step further, and add even simpler items to their line-up of murder weapons – things we all have lying around the house. Things that will make it a snap to just up and kill and thus, commune.

I would suggest ice tongs.

Or a garden rake.

Or maybe some pinking shears. 

Items like these would not only invoke that simpler, more connected time, they would insure the necessity of real hand-to-hand combat, mere inches apart, often for impossibly long and uncomfortable and messy periods of time.

Which would provide you, the compassionate and deeply connected human being, the opportunity to come away from this event a changed person; made just a little bit better by having to kill that deer, or that guy who cut you off, or that neighbor who plays the drums at 2 a.m. by ripping open their intestines, painstakingly and personally, with a plaque scraper.

It is, quite simply, a killing that says, “I care.”

A friend of mine at work just announced that he is leaving his job at the TV network we work for and moving with his partner to Palm Springs.

Who DOES that at our age? Who just quits their job and moves to a retirement community like Palm Springs? It’s like a driven, fortyish New York Jew moving to Boca. Is he also planning to start driving a ’72 land yacht and eating dinner at 4:15?

Don’t get me wrong – Palm Springs is awesome. In fact, it’s the ultimate goal for lots of us gay folk. It is often portrayed as nothing more than a hot, desert wasteland with a little taste, a sort of Hell with Architecture. But it’s actually a spectacularly beautiful resort community with small-town quaintness and an overlay of swank sophistication. I call it Gayberry (like the old Andy Griffith town of Mayberry, but with a lot more homos).

The thing is, it shouldn’t be someone’s ultimate goal in their early 40’s.

In our 40’s, we should all be working our way up the ladder, accumulating cars and houses and stuff to put in those cars and houses. We should all be stressed because we have to work insane hours in order to afford all those cars and houses and stuff to put in those cars and houses. We should live in large cities and require constant stimulation and wake up each morning wondering whether any of this has any meaning.

We should NOT be uprooting ourselves and moving to a quieter existence in a town where we actually have time to think. Nor should we be downscaling our monetary ambitions and finding ourselves satisfied with less. That is, as far as I’m concerned, just crazy talk.

What good can possibly come of such a life? He’ll be disconnected from the glamorous life in LA, where you can go to dinner at any one of a hundred five-star restaurants, assuming the traffic isn’t bad enough that you go on a shooting rampage (that often delays dinner). He won’t get invited to glitzy premiere parties, where you can eat artichoke-stuffed dates while you’re bum-rushed off the red carpet in favor of the latest hair-pulling reality star. He won’t have easy access to the beach that no one goes to unless they can’t afford air conditioning or they live on it.

In Palm Springs, he’ll be forced to go to the same restaurants over and over, where people will learn his name, which is clearly an invasion of privacy. He’ll have to deal with CostCo lines which, although quicker because there’s about 5% as many residents, will be filled with walker-laden geezers complaining about their bursitis while they fumble for coupons for what feels like minutes. And he’ll have to sit by his pool, where the sounds of nothing but the breeze and the spa waterfall will force him to think – really think about what he’s done.

And I hope that, when he realizes exactly what he’s done, he feels absolutely, unforgivably terrible – that he didn’t take me with him. Thoughtless bastard.

My mother passed away last Saturday, which is the kind of thing that doesn’t really lend itself to amusing blog posts. But if you’ve read any of my writings about her, you might know that she’s given me a lot of material to work with.

And since we elected not to have a public ceremony, below is the eulogy I would have given had I had the opportunity.

_______________

For those who know, I wrote a book about my childhood in which my mom was not always painted kindly. Calling your mother “General Patton in pedal pushers” would, in most cases, probably result in gunfire and a grand jury…but to her credit, Mom was never anything but 1000% supportive. Even when the spotlight that I shined on her was a little bit harsh.

But, you see, I had a very good reason to be judgmental. You see, when I look at the people my sister and I have become as adults, and I see the lives we find ourselves saddled with, it’s very clear that it was all our mother’s fault.

Here, then, are 5 Reasons Elaine was a Bad Mother:

She worked nonstop – at her career, and at home taking care of us – and took very little time to relax. Watching this growing up, it taught my sister and I the importance of responsibility and hard work, which, let’s face it, are a big, fat bummer. I, for one, am a creative person – I should be all “Oh, I don’t have time to pay the electric bill, I’m busy being inspired!” But mom did not nurture our inner lazy, fat slob, like any good mother would. Instead, she made us into these responsible, reasonably good citizens. Uggh.

She read Time Magazine cover to cover every week, and took us to church every Sunday and Wednesday, and chattered endlessly about the state of the world. This blather about politics and Christian values and how to make society better made us more concerned about contributing something positive to the world than in taking advantage of people for our own gain. And had we learned how to screw other people, we’d probably each have four homes now.

She was extraordinarily generous – Christmas at the Poole house was a cavalcade of gifts that made it look like a Macy’s had exploded in our basement. And whether it was presents for the family, or flowers for someone who was sick, or graduation gifts for umpteen distant relatives and friends’ kids, or cards – all handwritten and full of the kindest expressions of love and concern – it made the rest of us look bad. I have never been as good at all these kinds of generosity as she was – my sister Valerie is much better – and trying to live up to a standard this impossibly high just made me feel like a loser. So, once again, you can see why she was just a terrible mother.

She had an amazing gift for being interested in others. If you encountered her at church or a dinner party or the office, you came away feeling as if you were the most important person in the room. Needless to say, my sister and I watched this – and have tried to mimic it ever since. And you can imagine how dangerous and irresponsible this kind of activity is, since giving friends and family unrealistically high self-esteem just sets them up for a fall, right? I mean, I’m only thinking of others when I say that this type of overly thoughtful and supportive behavior makes Elaine a very bad role model.

I’ve always wondered if maybe our mother didn’t really want kids when she first had us – I think she really wanted to be Gloria Steinem, but without all the protesting and ponchos. Now, I have no idea if this is true, since Valerie and I preferred to speculate wildly rather than ask. But when we were young, it wasn’t really clear whether she wanted us around. There were a lot of tantrums – usually related to her amusingly OCD need for a perfect house. But as Valerie and I became young adults, and she became middle-aged, everything changed. I think we all grew up.

And this is the last reason she was a bad mother. When we were young, she set up an expectation that she wasn’t gonna be the greatest mom a kid could ask for. And then she turned that expectation on its head. Because she became the most supportive, the most loving, the most accepting mother Valerie and I could have ever asked for. And trust me, we gave her a lot of things to have to “accept”.

Don’t get me wrong, up to the end she was still a little OCD. When she was in the hospital, recuperating from heart valve surgery, she fell while trying to CLEAN the floor of her room. IN ICU.

A few months later, I was visiting her in rehab, and she hadn’t walked for months and was very weak. We were sitting outside in this gazebo on a beautiful day, and I said to her, “What’s the first thing you’d like to do once you’re well?” She paused and thought about it for a moment, and then replied, “Just walk around the house. And dust.”

Mom, I know you’re dusting that giant living room in the sky. And I’m sure it sparkles like it never has before. And I can’t wait to pick up a dustrag and a can of Pledge and join you.

Either I’m a giant Scrooge, or this is a giant racket.

Can someone please explain to me why, because somebody chooses to get married, or have a kid – two undertakings that are, with a few notable exceptions, elective activities – I am required by law to shower them with gifts?

Where is it written that I am compelled to reward people for managing to turn 13, or for getting through high school with that impressive 1.7 GPA, or for deciding to produce a short film about gay rodents? Aren’t these activities that should engender their own sense of internal pride/joy/accomplishment, and not require commemoration with online donations, Chipotle gift cards and training bras?

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not always this cranky and cheap. Contract a disease, get hit by a bus, lose a loved one, find your home burned to the ground by a chain-smoking hobo, and I’m your man. I will throw money at you like twenties would smother the flames. People who are suffering through no fault of their own deserve all the love and support – financial and otherwise – we can give them.

And I can even get behind two twentysomethings who are coming together to form a household for the first time and really, truly need things like duvets and crock pots.

But this whole, “We’ve decided to have a mini-me and now you need to reward us for bumping uglies til the job was done” business, or the “This is our third wedding but, for gift purposes, let’s just pretend the first two didn’t count” nonsense, or the “Please give us money so we can do a project to further our own careers, but don’t expect to own a piece of it or anything” schemes are a crock.

I recently went to a gay engagement party for a friend and his partner. I love these guys – they’re funny, charming, kind people who I’m sure were not at all aware that their gift request could be construed as mercenary. But they do not plan to actually get married. They are in their 40’s. This is not their first time at the relationship rodeo. They both make six figure incomes. They already have two homes together. And yet, they asked that, in lieu of toasters, we give them money so they can make another $8,000 trip to the South Pacific – like the one they just had three months ago.

Several friends have asked me to contribute money to their personal creative projects – short films, web series, that sort of thing. In theory, supporting someone’s creativity is a beautiful thing. But I don’t ask people to donate money so I can take six months off to finish my second book.  Is it really appropriate to expect others to pay for your dream? I have a dream for ya – a dream that one day, I can give all my spare money to people with tumors, and crime victims, and families whose houses are currently floating around the Pacific ocean.

Oh, sure, I DO reward all these things. I buy wedding and baby and graduation gifts, and I give to people’s creative projects, and I do it all with love and good wishes and hearty congratulations.

At least, to their face.

But I’ll tell you, it makes me NOT want to invite any of these people to my bookstore events when my second book comes out. It makes me NOT want to ask them to take time out of their busy lives to come sit through a reading. And then stand in line for half an hour to have me sign the book. And pay $24.95 for the hardcover when they could get it for half that through Amazon.

It makes me NOT want to ask them to repeat what they all did, so very thoughtfully and generously, when my first book came out.

Oh, hell.

I sure would like to buy a graduation gift right about now. Is somebody looking to get hitched?  Anybody got a kid being bar mitzvahed?

Is male menopause a thing?

I had one of those mornings earlier this week where any sane person would look at me and say, “You best be havin’ a hot flash ‘cause child, you’ve lost yo’ mind!” (Apparently, all the sane people around me are Southern black maids from 1964.) I was cranky, spiteful and snippy.

Mind you, this unpleasantness was all happening in my car on the way to work, and I was alone and my windows were rolled up, so no one was the wiser unless they could lip read at 40 miles an hour.

But still. I was in a foul mood, and I not generally one to be grouchy.

You see, I’ve always been in the “You get more flies with honey” camp, although I would personally prefer a Shell No-Pest Strip with a bunch of dead flies stuck to it. My motto has always been ““Smile, and the world smiles with you”, even if I have encountered a few people who, while you’re busy smiling, try to wedge a turd into your mouth. 

So when I’m around other people, I always try to put on a happy face. But sometimes, when I’m alone, I just find myself in a really lousy mood.  Maybe I’m actually a horrible person, and this is some sort of chemical reaction to spending my public life trying to be nice all the time. Or maybe I just have stresses, like everybody else – a lawsuit that has dragged on for three years, an ailing mother, the feeling that an alternate me is living a much more glamorous life on another plane of existence – you know, the usual stuff.

But whatever the case, I gotta drag myself out of this sporadic morning morass.

Yoko Ono was on the radio the other day. She wasn’t singing – to the delight and gratitude of Americans everywhere  – but rather, talking about how she pulled herself out of her desperate sadness after John Lennon was killed.

My first thought was that she drove out of DespairLand the way most people do – via fistfuls of colorful anti-depressants. But they weren’t really a “thing” in 1980. No, the way that this BeatleBuster managed to climb out of the dumpster of depression was – I’m not kidding – by smiling.

Every day, she’d drag her ass out of bed and stand in front of the mirror…and smile. At first, she said, it felt super phony (of course, when you look at yourself in the mirror after age 40, what smile isn’t fake?). But as time went on, grinning into the mirror helped to genuinely lighten her mood. And she began to discover the enormous power of a smile.

Maybe I should try this in my car. Maybe, if I can smile for everyone else, I can smile for myself. Maybe, just showing a few molars in the mirror could lighten my heart and remind me how fortunate I am and how trivial my problems are in the grand scheme of things.

And most importantly, maybe then I wouldn’t have to worry that I’m undergoing male menopause. Because I’m way too young and moist for that.

Shut up.

Does anyone know how many people are murdered each year during home renovations? Offhand, I’m guessing about a million. And most of them probably had it coming.

My partner and I are remodeling a couple of bathrooms in our house. (If you saw them, you’d wonder why we waited this long.) To be clear: we’re not doing the work ourselves. Although I assisted my father in all manner of home building projects as a kid – “assisted” being a relative term since I mostly just sat on a cardboard box eating Ding Dongs and recapping episodes of Wonder Woman – this valuable how-to information apparently went in one ear and out the other, because I can barely turn a screw without requiring an instruction manual and emotional support. (My employees may disagree on my ability to turn a screw.)

And my partner, who actually has a lot more common sense than I do, is, in this case, also useless. We have to call a handyman to replace toilet seats and security light bulbs on the roof (the security lights are on the roof, not the toilets – never mind).

I’ve always called my other half a Useless Mexican, since he’s third generation American and speaks less Spanish than I do, but I now have to add Useless Home Renovator. Really, what’s the point of marrying a Mexican if he can’t build anything? (Oh, I’m sure he has any number of “Useless [insert noun here]” labels for me as well, but fortunately he doesn’t blog, so it takes him a lot longer to spread the slurs around.)

But I digress.

The irony of this situation is that not only are we not doing the work ourselves, but we haven’t even begun the actual demolition and reconstruction process. And that’s usually the point – when people have to shower in the back yard with a hose, or scrape tile dust out of their crack – that they begin to scream and cry and consider the legal ramifications of shooting someone with a nail gun.

34 times.

No, in our case, it has been the process leading up to the point where construction begins that has been fraught with challenge. Because redoing a bathroom from scratch requires agreement on décor style, layout, tile, lighting, vanity and fixtures. And each of those elements, I have discovered, gives the other person a delightful, even welcome opportunity to comment on who you are as a person.

And who Sandy apparently thinks I am, as a person, is a bully.

Now, don’t misunderstand. It’s not that I want my way, come hell or high water – I just want my way and I want everyone to be happy while I’m getting it. Is that too much to ask? Is it too much to expect that others just sit there and shut up and let me make my exquisite design choices? I have extraordinary taste (just ask me), so they (my partner) can rest assured that the room in question will be handsome and tasteful, if they (my partner) would just back off and let me pick everything out. It’s really the outcome that will make everyone the most happy.

And by everyone, I mean me.

You’d better start drawing the police tape around us now. You can find the bodies buried under the beautiful new tile.

It’s me, again – Otis, your highly evolved and wondrously humble link to the exciting world of angelic/human intervention. I say “intervention” because, much like that A&E show with the soccer mom crackheads, we spirits spend most of our time trying to get you people to STOP doing things. Amazingly, you all don’t generally seem to have a problem getting off your butts and doing stuff, it’s just that you always seem to be doing the wrong stuff – like bath salts or liters of vodka or barfing up your lunch. I don’t know what is in the water down there, but you guys seem to LOVE making yourselves feel like crap.

Okay, that’s not true – I DO know what’s in the water. I know a crapload of stuff, I’m just trying to be modest and make you feel like I’m on your level so we can bond. Truth is, of course, that I’m not on your level, but I once was, although that was thousands of years ago. (Actually, time doesn’t really exist, but I’ll save the quantum physics for a slow news day.)

Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. Since I’m new to this blog and you may be new to the whole concept of angels, or spirits, or really any life form beyond those badly designed human ones, let’s start from the top.

Oh, before I get into the whole Guardian Angel business, I should probably mention that Eric, the guy who normally writes this blog, thought I was being really presumptuous when I criticized God’s creation of humanity.

“Are you kidding me with this?” he said when he read my comment. (I post these blog entries for him to read before they’re released to the general public so that he can feel like he has some control, which, trust me, he’s really big on.) “You can’t go around criticizing God’s creations, that’s super arrogant.”

“Sure I can,” I responded. “He appreciates the expression of opinions. Up here, disagreement is exhilarating. Besides, I’m only criticizing the human body. What a piece of crap.”

“Criticizing God’s work just makes you sound snotty. And jealous.”

“I’m not jealous of those second-rate spacesuits. Those things suck.”

“Spacesuits?” Eric said.

“Well, that’s what human bodies basically are – containers that hold the spirit. And I’m sorry, there really should be an exchange policy, because those things wear like shit.”

“Stop being crude.”

“You say shit all the time.”

“I’m human,” Eric replied. “You’re supposed to be more evolved, or whatever.”

“It’s just language. And frankly, the word communicates rather effectively, doesn’t it? Look at a 90-year-old human body and tell me that thing purrs like an 18-year-old’s. It doesn’t. That is some f’ed up wear and tear.”

Eric harrumphed. “I give up.”

“By the way,” I added, “remember what I said about God wanting you guys to call him Lloyd?”

“I can’t,” Eric replied. “It just sounds weird.”

“Weird, shmeird,” I said. “You’re only upset because it takes all the air out of cuss words. Lloyd-damn just doesn’t have the same ring, does it?”

“I don’t say that word.”

“Yeah, you’re saintly,” I chuckled. “You should be sitting at the right hand of Lloyd.”

At that point, Eric closed the blog, so I’m not even sure if he read the rest of my entry. So, as a professional courtesy, I’ll save the rest for next week. Lloyd knows, Eric will have something to say about it.

This website has a “guest blogger” in residence for a bit. (It’s hard to say no to someone who can watch you go pee.)

See the entry below.

I’m not trying to be all Christ on the Cross or anything, but sometimes, I’ll tell you, it’s hell being a guardian angel.

This one client of mine, Eric Poole (who’s kind of a piece of work, not that I’m judging or anything, but let’s face it, I see everything he does) whose blog appears on this website, is busy trying to finish his second book. As an enormously evolved and, if I say so myself, quite attractive spirit who is charged with the care and protection of a number of lesser-evolved souls (don’t get me started on how much lesser or we’ll be here all millennium), I could see how stressed he was. After all, his last book was published two years ago and he’s only 75% finished with the second one. He’s not exactly setting any land speed records.

“What is taking so freaking long?” I said when I appeared to him in physical form around 2:00 a.m. one night.

“I have a gun,” Eric said, bolting upright in bed.

“No, you don’t,” I replied. Not that it would matter – kinda hard to shoot a spirit. (I know, I should appear in the middle of the day at his office or something, but it’s so entertaining watching humans freak out – it’s really one of the perks of the job.)

“Who are you?” he said, his voice trembling.

“I’m Otis, your guardian angel,” I said wearily, “and you’re not writing War and Peace, here. What’s the holdup?”

“I work kind of long hours at my job,” Eric said, fishing for a baseball bat that he did have under the bed.

“Join the club,” I replied.

“And I write a blog,” he added. ” There are only so many hours in the day. Don’t you know all that?”

“You write like one blog entry every two weeks. And it’s not like you have kids. What do you do when you get home at night?”

“Again,” he said, “isnt that something you would know?

Such attitude for a Level 3.

“You think I’m just sitting up here watching The Eric Show?” I replied. “I got a lot of channels to flip through. I’m not watching you go pee.”

“Well, that’s…good.”

“Alright, look,” I said with a sigh, “it’s my job to get you out of scrapes. And boy, have I. You really need to stop reading your email while you drive.”

“I only do it at stoplights!”

“Uh-huh. How’s about I step out of the other-dimensional shadows and write the blog for a while? Would that help you get that book finished before 2014, for Lloyd’s sake?”

“Lloyd’s sake?” Eric said, still fishing wildly under the bed as though I couldn’t tell what he was doing. “Who’s Lloyd?”

“Oh, that’s God’s nickname.”

“Doesn’t a nickname normally refer to an attribute, like Spaz or Fat Ass or Wombat?”

“Are you calling the Almighty a fat ass?”

“No, I just mean –“

“He nicknamed himself. He just thought Lloyd sounded more fun, you know, more accessible. God’s kind of a loaded word.”

“Well, then why doesn’t he just go by Lloyd?”

“Oh, it’s the whole branding thing,” I explained. “There’s so much material where he’s referred to as God. It’d be like Kleenex trying to change their name to Snot Rags.”

Eric finally stopped flailing around under the bed. “So you’re saying you’ll write my blog? How exactly does that work?”

“I’ll just make the entries magically appear on your website. What, I can stop a semi from running into you but I can’t operate WordPress?”

“You know,” he said, “I always believed there are spirits around us. I once saw the ghost that inhabits this house I used to live in. The house was built by Carl Laemmle for his son, and the son -“

“Yeah, I was there, listen, you’re not my only customer, can we wrap this up?”

“I just never thought I’d see another spirit, much less a guardian angel.”

“Well,” I replied with another well-earned sigh, “ta-dah.”

So, for a while at least, until Eric finishes that second memoir, I’ll be enlightening you with my own angelic brand of wit and wisdom. A lot of you have expressed interest in knowing the meaning of life and why good things happen to bad people and whether angels have lady parts. So here I am to explain it all for you.

You’re welcome.

Few things in life make you feel as delightfully violated, as deliciously desecrated as having your home broken into. It’s like being date raped without the festive flirting and roofies.

Several years ago, my partner and I returned home from Chicago, exhausted from a nine-hour housewarming party the night before. (What can I say, that house requires a nine-hour party. Imagine if Kelly Werstler, Elton John and Dr. Suess had an interior design orgy. And then blew themselves up.)

When we walked into our own, less opulent (by a factor of ten) house, nothing seemed amiss. We stumbled down the hall to the master bedroom and threw our suitcases on the bed.

Suddenly, we noticed that several drawers were open, as well as the closet doors. And some of my watches were flung across a chair. I walked into the master bath. The medicine cabinet was open, and a couple of pill bottles were lying on the vanity.

Did we leave in a hair-on-fire hurry? I didn’t think so.

And then, in positively Columbo-like fashion, it began to dawn on us.

We rushed through the house, looking for signs of forced entry, finally finding the door they had entered through. We were panicked, in denial, horrified, angry – we’d been robbed, ROBBED I tell you!

We flew from room to room, taking inventory. Nothing seemed to be missing except a small amount of cash I had stupidly left in a drawer as a welcome gift to ransackers, and a bottle of expired Vicodin which would probably still do the job if you’re a hillbilly snorting it off the hood of a Chevy pickup. (Their standards tend to be a bit lower.)

For a moment, we were kind of insulted. I mean, what, we’re not good enough to be stolen from? True, neither of us wears jewelry, we have no high-end electronics, and we don’t collect Precious Moments. There’s really not much to take outside of a lot of used furniture, which doesn’t tend to fence well since it can’t be displayed in the lining of a coat or on a tie-dyed folding table on 42nd St.

Then the rage part set in again. How dare these monsters violate our space? How dare they think that they can just come in and browse, like our home is a Supermarket Sweep episode?

But as we replaced things that were askew, and called the police, we began to realize something: there was no broken glass. No ruined door frame. There was no spray paint on the walls or feces on the floor. (Friends of ours had a burglar take a dump on their living room floor, clearly commenting on their taste in decorating.) They had not taken whole chests of drawers and emptied them in the middle of rooms, or pulled food out of the refrigerator and left it rotting on the counter.

They were, more or less, courteous. And I really appreciated that.

Don’t get me wrong, we subsequently fortressed the place like we were about to be invaded by the Huns. Security system revamp. New deadbolts. Security doors. New outdoor motion detector lighting. Bear traps set randomly around the grounds.

But I understand that sometimes, people feel the need to take what isn’t theirs. Let’s face it, the chasm between the haves and the have nots in this world grows ever wider and deeper. Although nothing about stealing is right, I must say, if you have to break into someone’s house, it really helps if you act like a houseguest.

And, as the victim, in the venge-filled moments that follow the discovery of such an act, it really helps if you can find that one little kernel of good fortune – the part that could have been worse.

‘Cause it makes stepping into a bear trap when you’re coming home from work a lot less painful.

My friend Tom (name changed so he doesn’t knife me in a dark alley) is a confirmed bachelor. I don’t mean in the coy, 1950’s he-likes-the-opera-but-we-don’t-talk-about-it kind of way. I mean, he’s never had a relationship that lasted longer than an episode of The Client List.

As is typical of people who don’t have to worry about what hijinks their genitalia gets into, Tom occasionally picks up random women at bars. And since he is single, and since any hookup is comprised of two adults old enough to spell the word “consenting”, this is probably none of my holier-than-thou business.

But then, there’s Lisa.

Lisa is a seemingly nice, 27-year-old girl who Tom has brought home several times. She’s cute, she’s fun, and – here comes the slightly problematic part – one could say she enjoys a festive libation, because she’s routinely, eye-crossingly HAMMERED when Tom encounters her, generally around 7pm.

“Yeah,” Tom says with a disturbing measure of either pride or laissez-faire (I’m not sure which), “I’m a Hot Mess Enabler.”

Upon arriving at Tom’s house, Lisa allows Tom to take photos of her which could most politely be described as Unfit for Facebook. And he gets her to perform acts that would make Heidi Fleiss roll over in her grave. (I know she’s not dead, but this would kill her.)  

He then holds her hair while she hurls (always an attractive quality in a booty call), and he thoughtfully forbids her to drive home, dropping her off in front of her home where she presumably “naps” with her skirt up around her head.

Exactly how starving for attention must someone be to take advantage of a girl who is so clearly FUBAR? If there is one truism in life, it’s that we all crave intimacy and companionship, even people like Tom who claim to love being a “playa”. (He’s white, which makes it worse.) And we all want to feel attractive and desired, but I’m not sure how validating it is to have someone think you’re incredibly hot when they’re seconds away from being out cold.  

Tom’s a great friend to the many people who love him. He just sucks at relationships.  He, of course, blames it on the crappy women. I blame it on the man who picks up the crappy women. As Marianne Williamson once said, “It’s not that you attract the wrong people, it’s that you give them your phone number.”

I think it’s never too late for us to discover our inner benevolence. Maybe the next time Tom picks up someone like Lisa, he’ll play Farmville with her instead of asking her to squeal like a pig. And maybe then, a nice girl can stumble across his path. A girl who doesn’t wake up in her driveway and call the police to report a stolen car.

I had dinner the other night with my friend Jenny and a visiting co-worker of hers, Darren, a 49-year-old gay guy. He was warm, sophisticated and well-traveled, and he brought along his 23-year-old son.

Oh, wait, sorry, that wasn’t his son, that was his boyfriend. You can understand my confusion (as could the concierge at the Andaz Hotel in West Hollywood, who said to Darren, “He looks just like you”). When there are more years between the ages of a couple than one of them has been alive, it’s rather easy for unsuspecting onlookers to mistake the younger one for either spawn or a rental.

As someone who came out in my mid-twenties (which was already five or ten years too late and which involved a lot of unnerving man-on-girl activity and a near-miss wedding), I did not spend a ton of time dating guys for whom being able to order a drink was an exotic novelty.

But I’ve noticed that men who don’t come out until they’re 40 or 50 have a tremendous appetite for youth. They want to date it, they want to dress like it, they want to talk like it. My friend Sallie once said, “Guys who come out late spent so much time being someone they weren’t, that by the time they allow themselves to be who they really are, they have to live out the years they missed.”

Wiser words were never spoken. This late entry into the gay game results in a lot of men in their 40’s wearing super skinny jeans and hoodies emblazoned with One Direction, and using words like “Chillax” and “Hater”. It also results in relationship drama that would make the characters on Gossip Girl cringe. A 40-year-old man who has just come out has the emotional maturity of a 14-year-old girl, without the hormonal insanity to blame it on.

On the plus side, if you’re a 50-year-old man who was once married, your 23-year-old boyfriend can be BFF’s with your children, since they’re often the same age. Darren’s boyfriend spends more time with his kids than Darren does, although the kids sometimes tire of the boyfriend’s enthusiasm for skateboarding and prank calling the Apple genius bar.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against dating younger – you need somebody to wheel you around when you’re old. And unless you have kids that you can guilt into it by showing them pictures of the third world orphanage you plucked them out of, or an estate that makes nurses uncommonly interested in your romantic side, it’s up to the spouse. My partner is 8 years younger than me and will gladly push my wheelchair (off a cliff, I suspect).

I just think that one should marry someone within cultural striking distance of one’s own age. Because, after all, if you can’t share memories like Wonder Woman and Hot Wheels, what on earth do you talk about after you’ve redecorated the house?