Smack

It is 8:20 in the evening on a Saturday, and I have had as close to an entirely idle day as I can remember or imagine. The closest I got to doing anything industrious today was a trip to Home Depot where I purchased a toilet seat, followed by a trip to CVS where I got a can of Raid. They had the wrong kind of Raid at Home Depot. B&c wanted the unscented Raid. I'm sure the ants will appreciate it.

I may also have jerked off a couple of times today. I'm not sure that counts as industrious. Typically, I would want it to, but I'm sort of proud of my lazy day, so right now I'm going to consider it self-indulgent.


Right now, the Baltimore classical music station (b&c always listens to them: I think he heard two operas today) is playing a recording of Marian Anderson singing a series of spirituals. It reminds me that I should have spent some time rehearsing today. But it's still three weeks before I'm doing three solo pieces at church for a Sunday service. I was going to sing a spiritual, but the music director and the intern minister (who's leading the service that day) thought "Steal Away" was too aggressively Christian. I suppose they have a point. Instead I'm going to sing "John Henry," "I'll Fly Away," and "Hard Times Come Again No More." I'd originally planned to sing "Where'er You Walk," but there's only room for three, and the powers that be decided they liked the other pieces more. It is pretty much all the same to me: I only offered songs that I wanted to sing. But it will be the first time I've had a Sunday and not sung anything classical. On the other hand, I'm only singing "John Henry" because I once heard Paul Robeson do it, so there's that. You have a lot of choices when it comes to "John Henry," and mine will mostly be very rich bass, but the voice and tempi will vary according to the subject matter of the verse in question. I'm singing that one a cappella, so I can do pretty much whatever I want as long as I stay on pitch, and that is usually not a problem for me. I realize that this has been a very pretentious paragraph, but I don't really care.


I was sure that b&c would be fully recovered by last night, so that's when I arranged for an outing to see the Nationals play at their new ballpark. We went with our friends C. and G. We all still had a good time, but I felt bad for b&c. He didn't eat anything and only drank one beer. I had an amazing chili dog. The game was entertaining, but not exactly a pitchers' battle: the Pirates beat the Nationals 11-4. I do not follow baseball, but I played in little league (but not, I think, Little League) for several years as a kid, so when I go to a game, I always know what's going on, but I have no idea who anyone is. The Nationals' pitchers -- as you might guess from the score -- took quite a beating last night. I think the starting pitcher had thrown 84 pitches when he was taken out of the game in the third inning. The first relief pitcher had apparently not pitched very much because when, in the fourth inning, he gave up a solo homer, his ERA doubled. Then it fell precipitously with every out. This is the sort of thing that amuses me at ballgames. The other things that amuse me are perfect weather (when we have it, as we did last night) and looking at the legions of hot young men. We had seats near the left field corner, and there was a group of about twelve early twenties military guys in the next section over. They were gorgeous, and they drank a lot of beer.


G. told us on the Metro ride down to the stadium last night that he and his (first) boyfriend (he has two) are going to install hardwood floors in the townhouse that they just bought together. My father (who can do any home remodeling task) and I (who am pretty handy) once installed a hardwood floor in a townhouse that I owned with my then-wife. I was, then, twenty years younger than G. is now, and I found it an irredeemably awful experience. The floor ended up looking great, but it was physically and mentally grueling work. G. is fortunate in that he found flooring at a liquidator and consequently has twice as much square footage as he needs, so he will not have to be careful about fitting the lengths in, to avoid wastage, as Dad and I had to do. On the other hand, he also has to install subflooring before he can rent the big compressor and the big stapling machine that you need to lay hardwood. It's much, much harder than, say, Pergo, and I told him that there's a reason why you never see homeowners laying actual hardwood floors on all those home remodeling shows. I mention this mostly because G. reads my blog, and I want to needle him a bit. I'm glad he got that amazing deal on the hardwood because when they've finished with the living room, he and his bf will no longer be speaking to each other, so the savings will be important if they have to sell the townhouse. Fortunately, he has a reserve bf, so I reckon he can afford to risk it.


I am not having any sex these days. It's really difficult to play around with a sick partner at home. Logistically difficult, that is, not morally or emotionally difficult. I should probably have a hobby, though, for such occasions. It occurs to me that as I get older, there will probably be increasingly frequent periods where no sex will be happening. Perhaps it's time to take up knitting or write that porn novel.


Speaking of porn novels, I had a relatively protracted discussion of the same at a party recently. I don't read nearly as much porn as I used to (I spent much of today reading Paul Lisicky's Lawnboy, which has some moderately explicit elements, but is a long way from pornography. It's very, very good, though.), so it was good to talk with someone who does. He told me that there's a major writer of gay bear pornography (there are many sub-genres, it seems) who, he was surprised to learn, is a woman. "That's just wrong," I said. He agreed, and said that although she wrote very convincingly, her work lost its potency when he learned that she wasn't a gay man. I reckon it's hard to tell, what with pseudonyms and all. I think pseudonyms are the best reason to write porn. Back during my very brief career as a pornographer, I wrote under the name "Dakota North." You are expected to react by simultaneously rolling your eyes and finding me brilliant.