A SURPRISE WEDDING

 

At some point between four and five o’clock this morning, I got married.

It was a long time coming.

John and I met at a time when gay men were fighting for their lives, not the right to exchange vows at an altar or in some municipal building. Thirty years ago, an AIDS Project Los Angeles volunteer appreciation gala called Friends in Deed was in the winding down stage. I stood awkwardly with a few volunteers I’d trained with nine months prior. They were the only people I knew and, as much as I’d arrived with the hope of meeting some cute, single guy, that notion quickly evaporated as I snuck glances at men in trendier, tighter shirts, flashing whiter smiles and repeating a mantra in their heads: “I am fabulous!” Sometimes it’s a curse being a mind reader.

Call it a hunch, but I don’t think this is the only 

issue this guy and I would disagree on.

Normally, I’d have headed home already, stopping at a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf to console myself with an ice-blended mocha, but the gathering had a kitschy ’70s theme and I’d never caved to the “Disco sucks” movement. I grinned into my cup of ice—Look! I can make something melt!—and tried to tell myself that casually swaying in place was a super chill version of boogie-oogie-oogie-ing.

 

The facilitator of our volunteer group rushed over, grabbed my hand and pulled me across the dance floor, stopping upon reaching a group of people dancing in a friendship cluster. Scott yanked one of them toward me, shouted introductions over the chorus of “Boogie Wonderland,” said, “You two need to know each other,” and walked off.

My notoriously pale complexion went all B-52s Rock Lobster, but I managed to grin and refrain from staring at my shoes. I’m rarely at ease in a social situation, but perhaps Scott sensed that my best shot of shining came with a retro disco beat. John and I grooved out of obligation as organizers took down tables and chairs on the fringes. Then the music stopped completely and we stood awkwardly, with me willing a stupid grin—was it frozen in place?—to stand in for witty conversation. Nobody pulled John back to his group and none of my acquaintances swooped in to rescue me. The deejay announced it was time for the final song—What else but Queen of Disco Donna Summer’s “Last Dance.” I remained in place as the song started into its slow beginning—not all that danceable for two strangers. I expected John to utter a carefree “Thanks” and walk away, but both of us shuffled slightly from one foot to the other, again and again, until the beat picked up and we were back in a full-on geeky groove again. (Most likely heavier of the geeky than the groovy.)

A week later, we had our first date. It should never have happened.

That afternoon, I’d met a law school classmate for a margarita and couldn’t find a way to wrap up our conversation. If I told her I had a date, it would lead to questions with me answering awkwardly using they/them pronouns—at the time a sign of still being hopelessly closeted rather than anything to do with gender fluidity or enlightenment. I showed up at his Silverlake apartment two hours later than agreed upon after sitting in Sunday summer beach traffic on the PCH in Malibu. It was probably a sign of things to come, something always a bit off, but we made a go of it for nine months until my First Love ended with a thud as John dumped me for a friend of mine, another guy in my APLA buddy group.

Scum. Both of them.

Imagine my surprise to wake up three decades later married to him.

It’s another reason I need to talk to my psychiatrist about changing my meds. The dreams are too vivid, often surreal, persistently continuing, picking up right where I left them, even when I wake myself up to make them stop.

It wasn’t all bad. It’s not like I woke up in Vegas with a hangover and a snake tattoo on my forehead. Finding myself married to John wasn’t a nightmare. Mostly, I just kept saying to myself, “Really?” while sneaking peeks at him through the crowd of people celebrating at “our” place. The dream offered me a chance to see a dear friend from my APLA days who died from brain cancer a few years ago. And, hey, “our” place was a trippy, expansive beachside hippie condo, swathed in avocado green, burnt orange and dark brown, adorned with oversized pillows and enormous rubber tree plants. Needs an update, I told myself, but listen to those ocean waves.

As with most of the dreams that I still recall long after awakening, I kept shaking my head and wondering, What brought that on? Surely it wasn’t the roasted cauliflower.

I last saw John over coffee at a fledgling cafe off La Brea Avenue in the spring of 1993. The get-together was my doing. I’d been a terrible mess after our breakup and I suppose I had a need for him to see me calm, composed, even happy again, having found myself in another (grievously flawed) relationship. It was an unexpected bonus to hear his disappointment that things had fizzled quickly with Rick, my ex-friend, the guy he left me for, even if it seemed misplaced for him to be seeking solace from me. I’d recovered but I met his dejection with stoicism.

As we parted, I knew I needed nothing more from him. I’d entertained the notion of friendship as proof that I was an evolved person, in the spirit of thinking that a person who was once important would always be important, just differently. Nope, notion shattered. As our catch-up conversation dragged on, I found myself bored. As much as I hadn’t liked the way it ended, it was always going to end. Being with someone had been too new to me. My mistakes were many...and messy. Our relationship would only linger as a learning experience.

Married? Unfathomable! It wouldn’t hurt to steer clear of cauliflower for a while. A precautionary measure.

I was tempted to Google him. Nah, I told myself, rigorously shaking my head. What would be the point of it? But then I remembered a dream from a year ago in which a lovely but not particularly work colleague from 1988 popped up. When I Googled her, I found her obituary. It was the anniversary of her death. Was I clairvoyant? Was there something the universe was trying to message me about John?

I caved; I Googled. I’d watched enough episodes of “Charmed” to know you don’t mess with clairvoyance.

I had instant results. For as common as his first name is, adding John’s surname yielded only one person in the whole world wide web. Hello, Facebook page. Palm Springs. Retired. Grayer, heftier, but clearly the same guy, that first love.

The search also yielded relief. No obituary. No abhorrence with me muttering, Hoo, boy, what was I thinking?! Nope. Just a mild hmm as in, We’ll, that’s that. There was a LinkedIn profile too which, judging from the search page, seemed more active. I thought of clicking onto it but shot that down with, “Why?” No answers were forthcoming.

No urge to make a nostalgic Friend request either. I’d searched as much as I wanted to. Last time ever? That may depend on my dinnertime meal choices and whatever the side effects will be for my new meds. As astonishingly indiscriminate I apparently am in saying “I do,” it’s best to never say never.

And so the day moves on. By evening, I suspect my shotgun, three-decades-in-the-making marriage will be annulled. Wedded bliss, but a dream. In this case, a good thing.

LESS (Book Review)

By Andrew Sean Greer

(Little, Brown and Company, 2017)

Jealousy is a highly unattractive trait. I banish it, but it’s as pesky as that guy who played Chachi, always making yet another unwelcome last gasp. (Whatever happened to Potsie and Ralph Malph?)

Pardon me. Clearly, this is no way to begin a review of a Putlizer Prize-winning novel. I first read Less in the summer of 2017, rushing to the store and buying a copy during the first week it was on the shelves. Actually, it was on a table at the very front of the store, a grand tower of light blue hard covers pegged as quick sales. This was before it had been bestowed any astonishing award, but only a few days after a glowing review appeared on the front page of The New York Times Book Review. All this for a gay-themed novel by a gay writer. You bet I was jealous.

I had to read Less. As a gay writer with several works in progress involving gay protagonists, I hoped Less would be a beacon, a wake-up call to the publishing industry that gay fiction can sell broadly. I wanted agents and editors writing in all caps on their manuscript wish lists, SEND ME YOUR GAY BOOKS, SOMETHING LIKE LESS. Maybe this novel would lead to agent wanting something maybe by an unheard of writer like, ahem, me.

As can happen when a particular thing—a movie, a book, a vegan Crispy “Chickun” Burger—gets raves, it can lead to expectations that are too high and, ultimately, disappointment. (I know some of you are thinking, Raves for a VEGAN burger? Preposterous! They shall always disappoint. I hear this every time I let the V-word slip into conversation with my best friend, a hard-core carnivore. We try to stick to less touchy topics where we can find common ground these days: old-school Seals and Crofts songs, “This Is Us,” structural racism.)

From the review in The New York Times, I’d expected I’d have to read the book while wearing a bib, frequently wiping away saliva as I drooled over Andrew Sean Greer’s prose. I’d anticipated a severely bruised tush from repeatedly falling out of my chair, the thud of my body hitting the floor failing to interrupt robust guffaws. I’d hoped Less would inspire my own writing, pushing me to be better.

Alas, reading Less was like eating a certain “chickun” burger. Less proved to be less. (It’s a risky book title, don’t you think?)

The (mis)adventures of Arthur Less didn’t stand a chance. I do recall that there were sentences that wowed me, isolated nuggets of wit and refreshing phrasing. But Greer had this annoying habit of setting up a scene and then digressing at length. It begins with the scene that opens the book. Arthur Less, a middling author, sits in a hotel lobby in New York City, a Russian cosmonaut’s helmet curiously resting on his lap as he waits for an escort to take him to a much hyped book event. No, Less is not the person of honor for this event. They just needed some other published writer to lead the Q and A of legendary sci-fi writer H.H.H. Mandern. Part of the indignity of being a lesser author like Less is that his escort doesn’t have a clue what he looks like; she doesn’t even get the gender right, approaching women in the lobby, asking, “Are you Miss Arthur?” This plays out well enough for the first half dozen pages, setting up what is sure to be a disastrous event but then the novel goes into thirty pages of its first digression. Lots and lots of backstory—two days prior, two decades prior. Even when Greer finally returns to the book event he’d set up, that’s as far as he takes it. The scene never plays out. Arthur Less is off to Mexico.

It felt like a messy read. There are always risks when a writer strays from a linear plot. Momentum can be lost. There’s potential for imbalance, whereby the reader cares more about one period of time than another, thus resenting every time the story reverts back to the less-desired era. Sometimes the author himself is guilty of making a certain time frame little more than a device to explain another. (Note that the seemingly randomly cited “This Is Us” is nonlinear and usually shines because of it, aside from a dull Vietnam War plot.) From the outset, I suppose I was miffed. I wanted the opening scene to play out without interruption. It rubbed me the wrong way. I don’t think I ever recovered. I finished the book and moved on, deciding that Andrew Sean Greer and/or his agent and/or his publisher had the right connections to land a gushing review in The New York Times. Like so many gay things, I just didn’t connect with it.

And then Less won the Pulitzer Prize. Cue: rampant writer envy. I’m sure I swore when I read the news. Sometimes it falls flat to say “No way!” without a choice expletive wedged in the middle. Not as bad as “Titanic” winning the Best Picture Oscar or a certain sappy Mariah Carey duet staying at #1 forever on Billboard, but a head scratcher at the very least. I was less than impressed. (Again, that title invites negative commentary.)

As I prepared for a big move last year, I turfed so much. I gave my copy of Less plus some other mass appeal hard covers to a guy I was dating who professed to be a reader in the early going of our relationship. He wasn’t but, whatever. I knew I’d never read the book again.

About a month ago, for reasons that would unduly lengthen this already lengthy post, I surprised myself, deciding I needed to try Less again. (“Try less.” Doesn’t that sound like a mantra fit for a pandemic?) I picked it up at the library and gave it a go.

This time I knew about the wandering back and forth in the story. It also helped knowing the ending and casting aside the impossibility of the narrator knowing all of the comings and goings and exact conversations of Arthur Less. Instead of holding it up to greater scrutiny as a Pulitzer Prize piece of literature that drew raves from The New York Times, I simply read.

Perhaps I should give more things a second chance.

Arthur Less has embarked on a prolonged trip around the world, for the most part a stringing together of literary opportunities, all of it a distraction from his upcoming fiftieth birthday and the wedding of his much younger lover, Freddy Pelu, with whom Arthur had a nine-year affair that was supposed to be a mere convenience of companionship. It’s an elaborate itinerary just to decline an invitation to Freddy’s wedding, but Arthur needs to show he’s moved on with adventures awaiting in Germany, Morocco and Japan. Arthur tells himself all this has nothing to do with Freddy; rather, the message is for all Arthur’s acquaintances who will surely talk about his absence during the wedding reception. (Why, what else would they talk about?)

Greer offers many wonderful observations about accomplishment (and perceived lack thereof), about the awkwardness of social interactions and about aging. One of my favorite passages comes early on:

Arthur Less is the first homosexual ever to grow old. That is,

at least, how he feels at times like these. Here, in this tub, he

should be twenty-five or thirty, a beautiful young man naked

in a bathtub. Enjoying the pleasures of life. How dreadful if

someone came upon Less today: pink to his middle, gray to his

scalp, like those old double erasers for pencil and ink. He has

never seen another gay man age past fifty, none except Robert.

He met them all at forty or so but never saw them make it much

beyond; they died of AIDS, that generation. Less’s generation

often feels like the first to explore the land beyond fifty. How

are they meant to do it? Do you stay a boy forever, and dye your

hair and diet to stay lean and wear tight shirts and jeans and go

out dancing until you drop dead at eighty? Or do you do the

opposite—do you forswear all that, and let your hair go gray,

and wear elegant sweaters that cover your belly, and smile on

past pleasures that will never come again? Do you marry and

adopt a child? In a couple, do you each take a lover, like matching

nightstands by the bed, so that sex will not vanish entirely? Or do

you let sex vanish entirely, as heterosexuals do? Do you experience

the relief of letting go of all that vanity, anxiety, desire, and pain?

Do you become a Buddhist? One thing you certainly do not do.

You do not take on a lover for nine years, thinking it is easy and

casual, and, once he leaves you, disappear and end up alone in a

hotel bathtub, wondering what now.

There were points at which I wondered if Greer and his editor might have had some serious discussions about the possibility of Greer cooling it with his propensity to list observations in oversized sentences. Sadly, if these conversations happened, the editor lost. We get single sentences like this one, below, as the protagonist observes things in a Mexican market and his guide asks if he has any food allergies or intolerances:

Bitter chocolates wrapped in paper, piled in ziggurats beside a

basket of Aztec whisks, shaped like wooden maces, and jars of

multicolored salts such as those Buddhist monks might use to

paint mandalas, along with plastic bins of rust- and cocoa-colored

seeds, which their guide explains are not seeds but crickets;

crayfish and worms both live and toasted, alongside the butcher’s

area of rabbits and baby goats still wearing their fluffy black-and-

white “socks” to prove they are not cats, a long glass butcher’s

case that for Arthur Less increases in horrors as he moves along it,

such that it seems like a contest of will, one he is sure to fail, but

luckily they turn down the fish aisle, where somehow his heart

grows colder among the gray speckled bodies of octopuses coiled

in ampersands, the unnamable orange fish with great staring eyes

and sharp teeth, the beaked parrotfish whose flesh, Less is told, is

blue and tastes of lobster (he smells a lie); and how very close this

all is to childhood haunted houses, with their jars of eyeballs,

dishes of brains and jellied fingers, and that gruesome delight he

felt as a boy.

There is a lot that I like in that “sentence”: the oft-heard sentiment that fish are lesser among animals, the parenthetical remark, the haunted house comparison; still, I shuddered, and not just because I’m a vegetarian.

Overall, I can now say that Less is a worthy read. I even want to seek out more from Greer. (Just in the past month, he reviewed the latest collection by David Sedaris in the heretofore mentioned New York Times Book Review. Hmm, some things in the book world feel a tad incestuous...) Have I come around, now agreeing it is deserving of the Pulitzer? No. But what the hell do I know? I’ve only read two prior winners, both required reading in high school, one a thumbs up (To Kill a Mockingbird), one decidedly thumbs down (Old Man and the Sea). I’m hardly highbrow. I’ve been known to read—and enjoy—books by Mindy Kaling and, as currently, Allie Brosh.

Maybe, just maybe, the jury was swayed by the prize getting a shout-out in the novel itself. As a writer, Less feels lesser than. There’s a scene—one of those many backstory bits—in which his older ex, Robert Brownburn yells out during a 1992 phone call, causing Arthur Less to come running.

Robert turned to face Less. “It was the Pulitzer committee,”

he said evenly. “It turns out I’ve been pronouncing it wrong

all these years.”

“You won?”

“It’s not Pew-lit-sir. It’s Pull-it-sir.” Robert’s eyes took

another survey of the room. “Holy fuck, Arthur, I won.”

If not a deciding factor, surely it caused jurors a smile. That Andrew Sean Greer is such a flirt!

RESOLUTION RECKONING

For those of us who even bothered, we’re all given a free pass on any resolutions we set for 2020. Heck, pardon us all. (Pardons are apparently all the rage right now.) How were we supposed to accomplish some lofty goal of quitting smoking or starting an epic exercise regimen or posting daily shirtless gym selfies when a pandemic came along and f#!ked up everything?

Okay, the shirtless selfie guys adapted—no gym, but bathroom pics were just as good for generating desperately needed likes. (I refused to indulge on the principle that it encouraged shallowness. If they’d added a Shakespeare quote—the naked bard—I might’ve caved.)

While I continue to contend that 2020 wasn’t as bad as popular opinion makes it out to be, it was the kind of plot twist none of us saw coming on January 1^st as we pondered self-improvement. To be sure, carrying on with my resolution would have landed me in COVIDIOT territory with such unsavory villains as Walmart Karen, Kirk “Singalong” Cameron and virtually everyone working in the White House. (For that last cluster, coronavirus idiocy was only one subcategory of an all-encompassing, hall of fame buffoonery.)

Let 2021 be a year of healing...in oh so many ways.

What was my sidetracked resolution? I feel my cheeks reddening.

I boldly announced it in this blog and it turned out to be my most-read post of the year...by far. I figured if I blogged my resolution, it might hold me more accountable. It also might make for other interesting posts as I provided updates. Not surprisingly, I didn’t get to my bold announcement until the twelfth paragraph of that particular post, from which I quote: “My New Year’s resolution is to find sexual liberation.”

Ahem. The fact that I’m blushing is proof enough that such liberation did not come to be. When I wrote my post, three days into the New Year, I was on track. One, um, episode. And then, nothing. I lost my resolve.

Really, I hadn’t thought things through before announcing my pursuit of sexual liberation. What was that supposed to look like? How frequent were my escapades supposed to be? To bring out the tired, old baseball lingo, how many bases was I expecting to get to on a particular hookup? (Baseball has to be the absolute worst sports analogy for anything. It only makes me visualize men congregating in a dugout, spitting chewing tobacco. Not sexy; just gross. Also, it brings back nightmares from childhood, with me standing far, far out in left field, away from all the action, my teammates betting that no one will hit a ball out that way; of course, it happened at least twice every game and then I’d witness every player on my team abandoning their positions—even the back catcher, for god’s sake—as they ran toward me, showing a collective lack of faith that I’d be able to catch the ball or retrieve it and throw it with enough force to come near another player. Just because their vote of no confidence was soundly grounded in reality didn’t make this panicked display any easier to observe. Yeah, so baseball as a subject for alluding to sex? Um,...only if I wanted to talk about impotence.)

I suppose I could have messaged Darian again, the young, eager first sexual partner of the year. The sex had been as disappointing and one-sided as ever, but maybe that was something to work through. If we hooked up again, I’d be more assertive. But then I thought that might just set me up for rejection. Sorry, man. I have to be more into a guy for that. Oh. I see. Yes, of course. Let me just get dressed in the hallway.

I’m really good at imagining worst-case scenarios.

Besides, I now knew that Darian was in a relationship and, while that didn’t matter in the sense I was definitely not looking for that sort of thing, it made messing with him again feel icky. His choice on cheating or maybe it was something they’d agreed to, but I wasn’t so comfortable with whatever that made me. I suppose I wanted to achieve sexual liberation while having standards. This was getting mucky.

I realize that, if I pinpointed January 3 as the day my resolution ended, I couldn’t blame the coronavirus. We were still weeks away from lockdown. At that point, I’m not sure a medical outbreak that seemed limited to another continent had even registered with me. Still, it’s established practice to blame everything bad about 2020 on COVID so I’ll say that my resolution wasn’t kaput; rather, it was on hold.

A month later, I met another guy through the hookup app. But we didn’t hook up. We wound up talking in a cafe, then walking our separate ways and, thereafter, dating. Curses to you, 2020! That was not part of the plan.

Five months later, it was over. I can say that sex happened. You might think it would be titillating if I wrote about it, but you’d be wrong. Sex had not improved. More to the point, I suppose I hadn’t either. Whoever came up with the expression, “better than sex,” curses to you, too. That should have been mine! Under that nifty little heading, I’d list some of the usual players (ice cream, pizza, a dog’s waggy tail), a few items particular to me (hiking for hours and running into no one or getting published in The New York Times as a 2020 silver lining) and a slew of things that would make better sexually adjusted people go, “Seriously, dude?” That’s right, dude. The Sunday crossword, reruns of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and the final two bites of a two-day-old buckwheat cherry scone I’d forgotten about. Better than sex.

Maybe even a bag of rice cakes. Yeah, that bad. That sad.

Single again, I technically still had half the year to slog away at sexual liberation. This is the point where the pandemic ruins everything. This is where I can say abstinence had nothing to do with fears of serial killers, guys slamming the door on my face and walks of shame home with me once again saying to myself, “That was it? Huh.”

The coronavirus makes for a nifty punching bag. I should be sexually liberated by now. All your fault, COVID!

Throughout the summer, I told myself that a hookup was irresponsible. Anti-maskers infuriated me. Hordes of gays flocking to Fire Island got me all riled up. I refused to be part of the problem. It’s true that one well-intentioned, progressive Canadian doctor acknowledged that sex is healthy and suggested people wear a mask while engaging, but I knew following that recommendation would only result in a longer better-than-sex list. (A stray Tic Tac, found in a coat pocket, popped into my mouth after wiping off the lint? No!)

Sex and that ensuing liberation thing would have to wait. I made things clear on my hookup profile, leading with the following:

Note: Think I'll wait for the coronavirus numbers to settle back

down again before considering any kind of in-person introduction.

That means I probably won't respond right now to local messages.

People looking for "right now" tend to get upset and label me a

time-waster. I don't need another label. You be you; I'll be me.

Stay safe!

Every now and then, I’d log in. Boredom. Annoying U.S. election commercials. A crossword puzzle impasse. Curiosity.

Usually, no messages. How many men had been overcome with mad rushes of lust and desire, only to click on my profile and read the note? Dozens? Three? Egad, a clip from “Ferris Bueller” comes to mind. We’ll never know.

In October or November, as coronavirus numbers in my province began surging upward again and more restrictions and recommendations came forth, I got a message from a very good looking guy in an open relationship who splits his time between Alberta (a province with an even higher surge) and British Columbia. He wanted to meet. I presumed he didn’t read my note—perhaps reading can ruin a lustful moment—so I messaged back that, politely letting him know that, considering COVID stats, I wasn’t meeting up with anyone for the time being.

My politeness didn’t go over so well. To twist and contort a common expression, apparently it’s a thin line between lust and hate. I blocked him so I’ll have to paraphrase his wrath. I was “one of them,” a dutiful sheep who can’t think for myself. I could go stick something up my ass but it would never be anything coming from him.

Well, okay then. Seems some of my fears about who I might meet from the internet aren’t entirely irrational. Some COVID Karens are actually Kens. I don’t log in these days. I’m not so curious anymore.

And now hello, 2021. Resolution time again. I’m still nowhere close to being sexually liberated and, really, that was probably never a reasonable goal. So much interaction, so much effort.

I’ve lowered the bar considerably. (I could flip that and say I’m setting myself up for success.) Still, it’s a tad scandalous, too. I have decided to finally set aside what my mother and my elementary school teachers advised. I’m going to talk to strangers.

Well, I’ll say hello, at least. Just that. Nothing epic like a Lionel Richie “Hello” or an Adele “Hello” or a grab-the-tissue-box “Jerry Maguire” hello. A simple hello. Saying it to someone on the elevator or a grocery clerk doesn’t count. They’re stuck. They have to say something back. (Well, some don’t. I’ve had many uncomfortable elevator rides. I should really look for apartments closer to the ground floor.)

During 2020, I went on more hikes than ever. I’d get up before sunlight, drive to a trail that was open and set out. As I came across other hikers, I always said hello and they said hello back. Even though we were socially distancing, we were sharing a glorious moment, appreciating nature. It lifted my mood. Maybe it made them feel good, too. Through trial and error, I’ve learned that it only works in the mornings. For some reason, the friendliness wears off around noon. People stop pausing from the conversation with their hiking buddy or they look down at their hiking boot laces. A safety check, no doubt.

I’ve tried saying hello to people in Vancouver’s parks. It’s not the same as on the hiking trails. The return hello can sound begrudging. One older woman just looked at me, frowned and looked toward the sky. We don’t say such things in these parts. If I were a dog, my tail might have stopped mid-wag. My mother was onto something. Talking to strangers can be risky business. But I have my resolve. For now.

Day one is of the New Year is in the books. I got up early and walked in the drizzle along empty sidewalks. Finally, I came to a homeless woman who’d stopped to reorganize her wares in a grocery cart. “Good morning,” I said.

“Good morning,” she replied. No eye contact, no warmth, but it was something. Had she ignored me or said something hostile, that would have been okay, too. This is about me stepping ever so slightly out of my tortoise shell. Who knows? If I keep at it, I might find that hello is yet another thing that’s better than sex.

Happy New Year!