I feel I owe a small explanation for my absence from these pages over the last few months, lest some kind reader imagine we've been lost on debauched bender of sex, drugs, weight-lifting, and endless techno.
Alas no.
Without refining too much upon it, Mutha had a rough winter health wise. Read all about it in the July issue of POZ magazine if you're so inclined. Essentially, I've added to my roster of chronic ( supposedly ) manageable conditions and threw two very public ( almost back to back ) seizures. The first one left me with a dislocated and broken shoulder, and such severe bruising of the brain that my neurologist was astonished that I wasn't in a coma. As it is, three months later I still have no sense of smell, and taste only tells me if something is salty, sweet, bitter, or sour. The second seizure left me with three broken ribs, further drain bamage [ sic-k ] and a four-day stay in the hospital wherein I managed to lose oodles of weight. The EEGs reveal no trace of seizure activity in the brain, so we are not epileptic. It appears the blame can be laid at the feet of two major blood glucose crashes and stress.
For the first time in a 26-year career I was forced to cancel a performance-- I've been trying to pull together a new one-man show. And for the first time in my life as a grown-up I was forced to rely on my friends and loved ones in a whole new way. Through it all, by my side has been the first man to introduce me as his boyfriend in over 13 years. Yes, despite all these challenges ( and my dear father's ailing health ) I have fallen in love with a kind, sweet, and funny man who is also devilish handsome.
Lest anyone worry about how I am doing now-- I've just been laid off from my day job.
Oh yes, these difficult times have forced many advertising agencies to cut back, and I am one of many New Yorkers suddenly without visible means of employment. And though the lack of a regular paycheque is a titch frightening, I must believe that I'll be able to pay the mortgage on Forever-- my adorable Georgian jewel box fifth-floor walk-up tenement flat in Hell's Kitchen.
This relentless optimism in the face of a true "annus horribilis," to borrow from Queen Elizabeth's reworking of the Marquess of Montrose, is no grand gesture.
Simply put, as Great Aunt Olga would blurt in her telegraphic manner: „"Solzhenitsyn said in Cancer Ward, we can choose to be happy."
I have always believed that as an approach to life poverty is merely a state of mind.
What I long for now is the same answer from the Lord-- or whatever moniker is currently modish for our celestial puppeteer-- that I've always wanted. Can I make ends meet writing and performing, with maybe something more certain on the side to cover health insurance and the mortgage, or dare I not worry about that 'something more certain' and return to the glorious freedom ( and impecuniosity ) of my four years in Chicago?
For once I can say that finding myself a man is not a priority since I have one for the time being. And though that tender three-month juncture-- post novelty with the honeymoon waning-- is upon us, there is a core of love shared that is astonishing to me in its depth and implacability. So negotiating the more mundane ways of being that are merely irksome and far from lethal is, I suppose, what I have been waiting for during all those endless prayers and dreams of love that filled my mind during even the chilliest sexual conjunctions with strangers.
Did I mention that I met my wonderful beau at the Mount Morris bathhouse at 125th and Madison in Harlem?
For those who imagine that love cannot be found in such a den of depravity, I reply: "but I am there, always looking for a love beyond mere pelvic contractions, so why presume that I am alone?"
To be fair, I must credit my phenomenal friends and this marvelous mahogany man with reminding me that despite all the troubles-- large and small-- that can assault one, beating down the ramparts of a sophisticated veneer until all that's left is another man trying to get by, regardless of these trials, love truly is the only thing worth living for.
