THE DAY THE FASHION DIED

I didn’t start out in this world with a sense of fashion. My first influences—my parents—have probably never fit Yves Saint Laurent, Coco Chanel or Giorgio Armani into any conversation. My earliest memories of my mother’s glamor involved muumuus and wigs. My father stuck to suits and standard ties with diagonal stripes. Shoe polish was important but it came with connotations of labor instead of shine. At some point in my youth, my mother took a continuing education sewing class at the local high school and that brought on a mortifying period of making matching t-shirts for my brother and me, dressing us as twins even though I was three years older. Luckily all evidence of this “trend” in our household is in my father’s slide collection which no one has ever transferred to photos or any other kind of easily viewed humiliation. Lying around somewhere is an actual photograph of my brother and me sporting Budweiser tees at Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida, as macaws perched on our elbows. Classy stuff.

 

My first personal fashion choices were copycat clothes based on what my peers wore: disco shirts, a pair of platform shirts and nearly knee-high tube socks that I liked because a few horizontal stripes of color looked crisper against bright white. (I could have scripted and starred in my own Tide commercial.) “Bucking the trend” for me meant preferring Lee jeans to Levi’s. Mostly, I remained a follower. Skintight Calvin Kleins. Jordache. Velour shirts. Izods. Polos. The fashion industry needs followers. I was still my awkward self, but I was at least a geek in Calvins. No one asked me if I was Amish. That was my fashion bar.  

 

By the time I hit eighteen—An adult? Me?!—a few more personal preferences had crept in. Wimbledon-worthy K-Swiss tennis shoes. A WilliWear shirt that felt as comfy as a pajama top. Perry Ellis spread collar dress shirts. I was a closeted gay guy in Texas who figured I might as well make that closet look nice. 

 

Gays were into fashion, right? I bought GQ to look at the fashion ads (and unsmiling, impossibly chiseled models’ faces). International Male tracked me down—did they have gaydar?—trying to entice me into buying skimpy, colorful undies and oddly cut shirts that looked stunning on their own crop of unsmiling, impossibly chiseled models—the faces and the hairless bodies. I never got duped. I knew I couldn’t carry off those garments with my goofy smile and my non-chiseled everything. 

 

My first year out of college, I taught at a private special education school outside of Dallas. It was my dream job, but the pay was a pittance—less than. I moonlit as a sales associate at Sanger-Harris, a higher end department store, at least the one at the recently razed Valley View Center in Dallas. I loved the shifts when I was assigned to the Guess/Generra/Claiborne collections and felt it was a personal affront whenever my manager stuck me in Ocean Pacific, Levi’s or, gross, Haggar. I began to understand a fashion hierarchy and spent my breaks zipping over to Bloomingdale’s (snootier than Sanger-Harris) to fondle Armani clothes. Yes, they felt amazing! It took me many paychecks before I could buy a coveted Armani sweater which I still have and wear once each winter.

 

RIP, Fred Segal, Santa Monica.

I found my own favorite brands and styles. Girbaud jeans. Paul Smith shirts. Guess watches. Cole Haan and Kenneth Cole shoes. Moving to L.A., I fell in love with Hugo Boss, a few label-subtle Tommy Hilfiger offerings and hip stores like Ron Ross, George’s on Melrose and, especially, Fred Segal in Santa Monica where I bought a pair of purple and green paisley socks and sought out an Italian shirt and shoes plus a Hugo Boss suit and tie to match them. The fact the look began with socks felt insane. I understood fashion!      

 

When I moved to Vancouver, I landed a job in a men’s boutique on trendy Robson Street, but it was a temporary gig. I got back into teaching and there wasn’t a need to dazzle ten-year-olds, the girls having an indiscriminating affinity for pink and Hello Kitty, the boys wearing the same Pokémon sweatshirts for days on end. I’d also come to realize that the stereotype about gays having impeccable fashion taste was vastly overstated. They followed the flock, wearing tank tops, jean shorts and Doc Martens or, worse, construction boots. The misguided independents wore passé Cosby-style sweaters and, on one first date, a Batman t-shirt. ZOWIE! KLONK! My fashion sense was bound to wane.

 

It might have been a gradual thing, but seitan (or something like that) finally did me in. It happened when I went for dinner with Ron, my closest friend in Vancouver. We have plenty in common except for food. Picking a restaurant has been a constant challenge.

  

For the first decade I knew him, there always seemed to be a fight in him, needing to resist my personal choice as a vegetarian, wanting to assert the supremacy of meat eating. So often after I’d order a meal—pasta primavera is what every restaurant served the “difficult” diners back then—he’d enter a one-way debate about the absurdity, even the hypocrisy, of being vegetarian. What was sushi if it was just seaweed and rice? Why did vegetarians eat veggie “burgers”? Couldn’t they come up with their own cuisine? Kale is just roughage. “Kale chips” are NOT a thing!

 

The gift I couldn't ignore.

His breaking point came after my 40^th birthday, when another friend gave me a vegan cookbook and, as I randomly flipped pages as a performative measure to demonstrate my excitement about the gift—So thoughtful! I LOVE it! (I hate birthdays.)—my eyes fixed on an unknown term in the glossary. A certain binding ingredient wasn’t vegan. It wasn’t even vegetarian. 

 

Cheese suddenly became very complicated and basically a no-go at restaurants since staff were as unfamiliar with the complicating term as I had been. It meant cheese-less pizzas which continues to baffle helpful servers (as recently as last week) who assume I’m making a mistake. It unnecessarily draws out my order. It’s like a spotlight is cast on me and an alarm has been triggered. WARNING: WEIRDO DETECTED. I’m mortified. I don’t like attention. I love When Harry Met Sally, but I never want to be compared to Sally when she orders food. After the server escapes, I’m met with an oft-asked question by people at my table: “Why can’t you eat cheese?” 

 

It's tasty, I swear. Usually, my
friends look away. The horror!

If I were smarter, I’d say I’m lactose intolerant, someone would say, “You poor thing” and we’d resume talking about the perks of working from home or movies only one person at the table has seen because everyone has different streaming channels. But I’m dutifully honest. If someone asks, I assume they are genuinely curious. (As an introvert, I abhor inane chitchat, including longwinded takes on movies only one of us has seen.) My dinner companions prod when I try to brush things off with, “It’s complicated.” I explain. Ron’s heard it all umpteen times. Nowadays, he jumps in and gives the explanation, the disdain almost disguised.

 

When I first had to abstain from public cheese consumption, it was a step too far for Ron. I’d become radicalized. I’d insulted pizza. I’d become a mocking sympathizer of the truly unfortunate souls who are lactose intolerant. 

 

Ron loves food. His memories are always first about the food. I’m sure he saw the Eiffel Tower and The Louvre in Paris, but every recollection is about the baguettes. (He rhapsodizes over them!) Dallas is about a slice of pecan pie he once had. Any mention of the province of Ontario leads to a reference to a butter tart served at a particular law school cafeteria. When I went on a recent epic hike last month in Washington, his first response was, “Did you stop at the place with the sausage breakfast sandwich?” 

 

While my cheese choice in no way kiboshed his opportunities to talk at length about gorgonzola—it comes up annually, out of the blue—he’d had enough veggie-babble. He went for the jugular. He made a show of shifting in his seat and peeking under the table before saying, “If you’re a vegetarian, why are your shoes leather?”

 

It had been asked before. By others seeking to find fault in vegetarianism, even by Ron. It was the Achilles’ heel in what he saw as my sanctimonious dietary nonsense. I responded as I had before, “I don’t eat shoes.” We moved on to other topics, finding common ground on something about Will & Grace or Roger Federer’s rapid rise in tennis. But I knew I had a shoe problem.

 

I’d never bought a leather jacket or, god forbid, leather pants. These were style statements that didn’t fit my clean, conservative look. I would never make a transformation like Olivia Newton-John’s Sandy Olsson in Grease. I would never get a leather sofa or buy a car with a leather interior. All these things involved too much (dead) cow. But I’d told myself leather was unavoidable in some contexts. Belts. Watch bands. Shoes. I could not live in flip flops and running shoes. Neither option was professional, even for teachers. 

 

I couldn’t shrug things off anymore. My fashion would have to take a hit. 

 

Fun but never sophisticated.

I gave away the Guess watches. (The brand was out of style anyway.) I found an online company and ordered vegan belts—not some hippie-dippy kind, woven from hemp and dried corn husks (relax…I made that up), but pleather, available in only black or one shade of brown. I bought a few pleather dress shoes as well which came off as much like the real thing as vegan cheeze. (Not that well at all.) I started my Converse shoe collection which now stands at thirty-six pair. I love ’em. They make me happy. But they don’t signalize classy like my dearly departed Cole Haans or Kenneth Coles or other treasures I must overlook at Nordstrom. 

 

So there it is. I live a more authentic life. My values are better aligned. But there’s a reason my Instagram is all about mountain hikes and quirky urban discoveries and not my outfit du jour. My quest to be a gay fashion icon got short-circuited by marinara pizza—all tomato sauce, Kalamata olives, basil and, hopefully, a damned good crust. I don’t freak out if the sauce splatter on my clothes. It is, after all, just a shirt. 

KNOWING

I’ve always been an avid ABBA fan. Even during the ’80s and ’90s when disco supposedly sucked and a Swedish pop group was deemed too sugarcoated compared to Morrissey and, later, grunge, I had ABBA tunes bopping about in my brain. While songs like “Mamma Mia” and “Take a Chance on Me” were happiness injections, “Knowing Me, Knowing You” had a jarring sadness, a reminder that sometimes a crash follows a sugar rush. The song is especially melancholic for me because, in 1977, I heard a Toronto radio station play it immediately after breaking the news that Canada’s Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Margaret Trudeau were separating.

 

Knowing me, knowing you,
There is nothing we can do;
Knowing me, knowing you,
We just have to face it, this time we're through.
Breaking up is never easy, I know, but I have to go.
Knowing me, knowing you, it's the best I can do.

 

For me, there’s something that gets lost in translation regarding the lyrics. Based on my many trips to Sweden, it’s clear the Swedes are remarkably proficient in English, but Duolingo has also led me to believe they’re also big on melancholy. When introducing vocabulary for feelings such as happiness (lycka), anger (ilska) and sorrow (sorg), the language app makes sure a beginning language learner knows “det svenska vemodet” (the Swedish melancholy). I’ve practiced the phrase so many times online but, fortunately, not during visits. If it’s truly a Swedish thing, I suppose that explains why knowing one another can be construed as a sad endpoint.

 

Not being truly Swedish (despite my wishes), I quibble with the sentiment. 

 

Yesterday I woke up, got dressed and grabbed lattes for Evan and me at the café on the corner. The barista was cheery, her tone giving me a lift equal to the anticipated double shot of espresso. I returned to Evan’s home and joined him on the bed, the two of us grabbing our phones to check news, messages and pics of acquaintances posing by Trevi Fountain, smiling while having a pint at a pub or showing the carnage remaining from a chew toy a beloved pooch destroyed in record time. 

 

Monday, Schmonday. It would be a good day.

 

Then I saw the subject line of an email from a family member and I knew the good in the day was gone. I read the email aloud and Evan knew this too. He hugged me, he helped me take regular breaths. Deep breathing wasn’t possible, but the goal was to guide me past an anxiety attack when air seemed entirely unavailable, when crashing to the floor and flailing would scare us both. 

 

It doesn’t matter what was in that email. What matters is Evan knew why it would be so significant. He knew his steadiness would help see me through. He knew what to say, what not to say. He knew me.

 

The previous morning, he’d awakened to his own uncertainties, his mind stuck in the clutter. I listened as he unpacked many topics. I listened and waited for my moment. I empathized. I related my own connections. I offered what I could in terms of hope, encouragement and maybe a small step or two forward. It helped him recall one of his favorite expressions: “You eat a whale one bite at a time.” (Never mind that I’m a staunch vegetarian and the image can be rather frightful; I imagine an extra-large bowl of fettuccini with marinara sauce. Yes, then, one bite at a time.) He startled me later that day when he thanked me for being there and being a support. It had all felt so natural. I guess I just knew what he needed.

 

After twenty months together, we’ve reached a state of knowing one another. We’ve experienced challenges as a couple and as individuals who can lean on and learn from one another. 

 

Once I’d tackled the initial drama from the email, Evan listened to a phone conversation while in another room. When it ended, he was by my side again, listening, validating, just checking in. I’m an exercise fanatic and Monday is the day I allow my body to recover, but he said, “You need to go for a run.” My mind might have spun more on the email, on the subsequent conversation, on the possible future dramas that could play out in the coming days, weeks and maybe—dear god—years. He knew that sort of “spin class” could wait.

 

Just run. 

 

One of his favorite observations: “You’re always happier after a run.” (No carnivorous reference in that statement, whew.) 

 

I ran; he did yoga. Then he made a gourmet lunch—shakshuka, his plate with an egg on top, mine without, everything flavored with the right spices and the perfect heat level. It was another form of knowing, our sit-down meal as intimate as anything we’ve experienced together.

 

Sorry...I can't explain it.

It was clear the day was a write-off in terms of my writing goals. I packed up my car and made the three-hour drive back to Vancouver which always takes me between five and six due to fuel stops (gas and caffeine) and grocery searches for items I can’t get in Canada. (Bean dip is a guilty pleasure dating back to days of watching televised football games in Texas. (Everything about the preceding sentence sounds so foreign!)) 

 

When I walked in my condo, there was a message from Evan, checking in, and then a FaceTime call so he could see me and confirm I was all right. Yes, the guy knows my fake smile, knows when my voice inflections are off and knows how the slightest diversion of the eyes belies any indication of thumbs up. I’ve always known I have no poker face but, damn, that guy has a way of going beyond calling my bluff.

 

Yes, he knows me. I know a thing or two about him, too.

 

When I hear that ABBA line, “Knowing me, knowing you, it’s the best I can do,” I feel that’s the ultimate. 

 

Melancholy, schmelancholy.

 

     

 

   

CAMP (Book Review)

By L.C. (Lev) Rosen

 

(Little, Brown and Company, 2020)

 

 

To be sure, the recent upsurge in book bans is out of hand. In some school districts, all it takes is one parent to raise an objection for a book to be shelved…or rather, unshelved. Those in the book banning game can connect online to share titles and strategies. I’ve read about parents checking out all the offending books in a library and never returning them. Late fees? Shrug. It’s not like the head librarian is going to put a lien on their house where the offending books are probably more securely stored than blessed guns. Another parent donates new copies of the titles that went AWOL and they become perpetually overdue again. 

 

It sounds childish, doesn’t it? Just like taking down Pride flags and seeing them replaced again and again until, as we saw a few months ago, someone gets fed up with the tit-for-tat and settles things with one of those blessed guns. 

 

Free speech and the First Amendment have nothing on the big bang that comes with the Second Amendment. 

 

The subject matter in L.C. (Lev) Rosen’s Camp is welcome. It’s needed in public libraries and high school libraries. It’s the kind of book that will ruffle feathers. 

What’s all this talk about a young adult romance novel about a summer camp for queer teens? 

Gays? A demisexual lesbian? 

A counselor in drag? 

Someone using the they pronoun?! 

 

Sigh. If only the feathers were from dazzling boas rather than another delivery from the Pillow Guy.

 

L.C. Rosen

But then Rosen ups things a notch and I wonder what his motives are. I’m not sure if Camp is on banned book lists, but that may be Rosen’s objective. Ban bait. Word of mouth can be great for book sales (even though a ban from library shelves means many young readers will not be able to afford access to the targeted book). 

 

First, a basic rundown of the story. Randall Kapplehoff is a sixteen-year-old gay camper who’s been going to Camp Outland every summer since he was twelve. Hudson Aaronson-Lim is another gay camper, same age, same number of stints at the camp. Randall has crushed on Hudson since the beginning. The problem is that Randall has never been on Hudson’s radar, much less gaydar. This is on the surface an opposites attract story in which Randall has spent his latest year away from camp trying to become Hudson’s ideal guy—a jock, not a musical theater geek; more muscle, less flab; deeper voice, less animated inflections; a drab, thrown together suitcase of  bro clothes instead of a matchy wardrobe with Barbie tones. Randall—no, wait…he’s Del now, arrives at Outland as a “new” camper, all femme signs suppressed. Del’s going to be the “masc4masc” guy Hudson’s BoyDate profile says he’s looking for. He’ll make Hudson fall for him. He won’t be another of Hudson’s two-weeks conquests from summers past. This is going to be love. 4ver.

 

Yeah, I know. One big mess of a premise. But isn’t that adolescence? For all of us who ever teared up and sniffled listening to Janis Ian sing “At Seventeen,” the teen years are about survival and hoping the beatings to one’s self-esteem only leave emotional scabs without the scars. This summer adventure should not end well for Del/Randall.

 

But, hang on. This is a romance. It’s not life. A romance is REQUIRED to have a happily ever after. 

 

I think that made me even more uncomfortable. 

 

I hoped that the story would take a turn, opening up a new love path for the main character. Stop obsessing over the “masc” character! Let Randall finally see his femme best friend, George, returning with hair all over his body, as boyfriend material. Let snarky supporting character Montgomery suddenly declare he’s spent all these summers pining for Randall who’s been pining for Hudson. 

 

SPOILER, NOT SPOILER, ALERT (it’s a romance, people!): this is a love story about Del/Randall & Hudson. It’s basically Grease Goes to Camp without the hand jive. Like Danny Zuko, Hudson isn’t just the player he’s known to be. He has a soft side. And, like Sandy Olsson, Randall’s trying to shake his Sandra Dee.       

 

So…two boys find love. This is enough to incense book banners. Young gays are not allowed happy endings. Bring on the book banning debate. I’d jump in the melee. Let Camp remain camped out on bookshelves. Let it be checked out aplenty.

 

But then Rosen gifts book banners with more fodder. His young adult novel includes sex on the page. For much of the book, things are relatively watered down with multiple references to thighs touching when sitting in the mess hall, underwater kisses at the pool and erections remaining under clothing. Hands creep up under a t-shirt and slide under shorts to touch buttocks. 

 

Both boys want more. It’s going to happen. Rosen gives the reader ample notice it will happen. But there’s still a higher ground message at play. First love, then, uh, you know…that.

 

The first aid kit at this queer camp is generously stocked with condoms and lube. It’s responsible. It’s pragmatic. How many people who’ve gone to camp have had a number of sexual firsts…or seconds or thirds? Teens of any sexual orientation have sexual experiences. There are banned books that include straight teens having sex. This allows someone seeking to remove Camp from a high school library to say they are undiscriminating in terms of sexual repression.  

   

Sex is a difficult subject to write well. I find the same to be true with sports. Watching or participating in a tennis match, a triathlon or a basketball game can be exciting. On the page, it gets too technical in the telling. How do you make breathing or a racing heart sound exciting? In sports, it’s so calculated. Bottom of the ninth, a come from behind win. An unheralded teammate becomes the hero, the underdog team the victor. Rah-rah, no exclamation mark. As for sex, it’s a lot of switched positions, references to moaning and then that crossing of the finish line. Reading about it doesn’t come close to the real thing. 

 

I mention this to make the point that the big sex scene doesn’t add much to the story. The key storytelling parts are the feelings of doubt and anticipation, the fumbling or the mastery of technique and how the episode changes (or doesn’t change) the participants, individually and collectively. Earlier this year, I read a work of gay literary fiction (for adults) in which the writer’s description of a sex romp included something akin to: “They tried every position possible…and a few more.” What? Lazy, clichéd writing. If the couple invented something, well then put THAT on the page. It may get tedious in describing the positional shifts, but what a reward for conscientious bookworms. Let readers embark on new adventures in the bedroom!

 

SPOILER ALERT. (Again.)

 

No new positions in Camp. I suppose part of the cringe factor for an adult reading about sex in a young adult novel is that the characters are underage and the reader isn’t. Yeah, eww. I braced as I read the pivotal chapter. My mind cued up a general maxim oft-stated for writers: Less is more. Rosen ignores this.

 

First comes a cliché. The characters get drenched in the rain. They take cover in their tents and, yes, they have to get out of their wet clothes. They’re naked in their (separate) sleeping bags. But then Rosen gets clever after the boys kiss. Since the story has been about how a masc and a femme character find common ground, Hudson says, “[T]here’s something I want you to do to me.”

 

Del/Randall says, “Okay,” [his] voice a little breathier than [he] means for it to be…

 

“Paint my nails?”

 

The boys share an intimate act. Nail polish in lieu of lube. Kudos to Rosen! 

 

Hudson then says, “Can I do yours?” [“Can I do you?” would’ve been even better.] 

 

Afterwards, Hudson says, “It felt…nice. Thank you. I’m glad it was you.” 

 

Let painting nails be the euphemistic act. Make a few references to going beyond as the boys emerge from their tent the next day. Happy endings and whatnot.

 

But Rosen goes for it. Sex! It plays out over SEVEN pages. He avoids any references to the penis, but the action is clear enough with words like hard, stroking, deeper, panting, moaning, blow job, coughing, fingering. It’s seven pages, after all. 

 

I see book banners frothing. Indignation! Harm! Innocence lost!

 

Cue counter-indignation. Censorship! Homophobia! Peddlars of Victorian courtship! Righteous talk about art and free speech. 

 

Hello, publicity. An increase in online sales and ebooks checked out. Mission accomplished, I suppose. 

 

I feel sorry for librarians and principals who get pulled into the fray. How much Extra Strength Tylenol will this latest battle require? What accusations must they endure? What relationships are damaged?

 

I’m all for queer stories with diverse, queer characters. Teens deserve books that reflect their world and their wonderings. Many literary advocates will say sex shouldn’t be censored, even when it comes to seven consecutive pages. Rosen does a decent job of including the main character’s thoughts throughout the protracted, consensual scene. It’s some parts realistic, some parts cliché. That can happen with any scene that runs long. Del/Randall mentions the elephant involved in the likely kerfuffle over free speech when the character thinks “this is not how it happens in porn.” Yes, porn is where so many teens make more sense of what fuddy-duddies may still refers to as “the birds and the bees.” 

 

Camp is not an instructional manual. It’s not setting out to correct shaky sexual scenarios played out in porn. And yet seven pages may overshadow the more than three hundred fifty pages about whether the divide between femme and masc gays can be narrowed or eliminated. This is the topic Camp should be tackling, without inviting distractions. In this regard, Rosen takes a copout stance. It’s not actually femme versus masc because, in the end, Hudson’s true nature isn’t all that masc. This is the part of the story I wish Rosen considered tweaking. Let characters be different and come to respect their differences. Let opposites truly attract instead of blurring out. Overall, Camp is a pleasant enough excursion, happy endings and all.

 

 

 

    

CLICKING ON

My birthday happened. A friend emailed me the week before to make plans. A dinner. The message included, “Is this a big one?” I knew what he meant and, no, entry into a new decade is still a year away. “Don’t rush me,” I replied. Still, at my age, they’re all big ones in terms of numbers and they all seem to be rushing me. 

 

Another birthday? Already?! Pick any random smaller number—27, 35, 43, 52—they came and went so fast. How do I slow the speed setting on this treadmill of life?

 

Alas, the speed setting is locked. And so, yes, another birthday, another number on the age clicker. 

 

I’m not a birthday guy. It has nothing to do with bigger numbers. Sometime in my early twenties, I started letting Happy Birthday messages go straight to the answering machine, a gadget that sounds as ancient as the telegraph and messenger pigeons. I can’t cite a particular birthday, but I suspect I go into hiding on my “special day” because I was disappointed with how it was or wasn’t celebrated once or twice. Was it the pair of socks my grandparents gave me when I was eight, ignoring my wish list which included Lite-Brite and the gender inappropriate Easy-Bake Oven? Maybe it was the Hardy Boys book they gave me the next year and the year after. So boring. So many words. (I was a very slow reader.) 

 

I shouldn’t blame my grandparents. Their gifts never dazzled, but they did have a nice tradition of buying a little something for the other grandchildren when it was a different sibling’s birthday. Pez dispenser? Pet rock? I don’t remember. Maybe that’s what the socks were, a non-birthday consolation, and my sketchy memory has made argyles the main attraction. 

 

Someone that mattered probably missed a birthday. Probably a whole cluster of friends. My guess is it was part of leaving university as all my Forever Friends started new lives in Boston and Tulsa where new jobs and, yes, newer friends made the birthdays of friends from college easy to forget. We didn’t have Facebook sending us reminders. We didn’t have calendars on phones or laptops. We had to open up address books every January and write all the birthdays on wall calendars that celebrated “The Far Side” or Miami Vice or Vermont. Some of us prided ourselves in how many birthdays were committed to memory along with phone numbers, state capitals and all the actresses who played on TV’s Charlie’s Angels, in order of appearance and ranked (#TeamKateJackson).

 

The Swedish cinnamon bun,
aka kanelbulle.

Whatever the genesis for shunning my birthday, it’s now entrenched. I go into hiding which isn’t as bad as it sounds. Usually, it means I go on a solo hike—a treat in itself—or head out of town…in recent years to the Oregon Coast, Seattle, Victoria or Stockholm. (The Stockholm trip was three weeks and the birthday being smack in the middle of it was merely fortuitous. It meant an extra kanelbulle on another day of being gloriously ignored by Swedes.)

 

This year's birthday escape:
a glorious, seven-hour hike. 

I spent one birthday in a psych ward. It was a little too anti-birthday, even for me.

 

Aging has been on my mind more than usual the past couple of months and not because my local drugstore sent me a $5 voucher, saying, “We wanted to celebrate with you.” (A virtual celebration with a drugstore sounds sadder than argyle socks but, yes, I’ll take the free shaving cream. Begone, gray whiskers!) 

 

The truth is, I don’t feel older. I continue to contend my body and mind are aligned with thirtysomething. It sounds so much better than any other decade-something in part because I adored the TV show way back in the ’80s. (Good god, I just Googled the cast and they’re all sixtysomething and seventysomething. Duh…but still a shocker. It seems only Paul Rudd and characters in comics don’t age.)

 

These characters drink heavily
from the fountain of youth.

I get a reality check whenever I leave my condo and have quick, casual exchanges with people who don’t know me. I’m just the guy in front of them, waiting to order my oat milk latte or the person they’re trying to get past as I hunch over and eyeball Häagen-Dazs pints in the freezer aisle at the grocery store. Three words set me straight: “Excuse me, sir.” 

 

Okay the “excuse me” is fine. Nice manners. Better than a sigh, a grunt or a shove. But it’s the “sir” that feels like an assault. Did they say that as they maneuvered by the skateboard dude on aisle three? I may feel one age, but clearly I look another.

 

I mean, good for Colleen
Hoover, but what about
the rest of us?

For practical, non-vanity reasons, that’s a concern. I worry I’m aging out of my big career dream. I yearn to have another novel published. Actually, many novels. Move over, James Patterson and Colleen Hoover, I want a spot on the shelf, too. And off the shelf…grabbed by an avid reader, scanned at the register, taken home, read and loved…or at least liked enough to evade those crushing one-star reviews. (Who are these terrible people? Weren’t we all taught, If you don’t have anything nice to say…?)

 

I’ve been querying agents by email, my cover letter and first five pages ending up in virtual slushpiles and thereafter, it seems, passing through the virtual shredders. No response means no thanks. 

 

I shrug it off the unspoken dismissals. I remember all the men who rejected me. All the messages sent on dating sites, never answered. All the coffee dates that went nowhere, the few promising ones seeming so only from my perspective. I know rejection! I handle it well! 

 

But I don’t want to. I want an agent to finally say yes. Actually: “YES!!!” I generally think extra exclamation marks are redundant. Normally they cause involuntary tics. But bring ’em on, dream agent. Exclaim! Exclaim! Exclaim! Take all that love and enthusiasm to Random House and HarperCollins and land that book deal. Let me be your golden nest egg! 

 

Oh, how I dream. 

 

Let me continue to do so.

 

My best shot to getting an agent to consider my latest manuscript is to have their full attention, face to face, instead of being one of a sixty querying emails they power through on a Saturday afternoon before they get to do something more appropriately Saturday afternoon-y.     

Two weeks ago, I attended a writing conference in Seattle and pitched three different novels to three different agents. Each pitch was in one of those hollow hotel conference rooms with oversized beige drapes, beige tablecloths and a carpet adorned with rust-colored flowers and swirls intended to cover at least twelve years of wine and coffee stains. (No stains from me; I did, however, spill a quarter bag of flax pumpkin granola while waiting in an armchair in the lobby. Sorry!) 

 

My in-the-flesh face time with each agent amounted to four minutes each.

 

Bing!

 

A timer and some watchful volunteers made sure we’d vacate our chairs posthaste.

 

The first impression was everything. With eighty wannabe authors entering the pitching room at the same time—it was one of four such sessions—I needed to stand out for all the right reasons. For days, I sharpened my spiel. I timed myself, whittling things down from a rambling seven minutes to ninety seconds, the time recommended to allow an agent to ask follow-up questions, assuming they didn’t scowl, wave their arm and say, “No agent for you!” 

 

While I knew the content of the pitch mattered most, I knew other things factored into an agent requesting pages and ultimately wanting to take me on as a client. I brushed my teeth in the men’s room. I popped a mint. I adjusted the collar of my conservatively stylish shirt. And I poofed up my hair which I’d had cut and highlighted the day before. No gray. Even the sideburns got a paint job. 

 

Please, let no one smile vacantly and say, “Thank you, sir.”

 

Let me look young. Younger, at least. If not thirtysomething, then fortysomething. I needed agents to see a long, bright writing future in me instead of my name on waiting list for Shady Pines.

 

LET ME BE YOUR CASH COW!!! 

 

Things went well enough. Two out of three agents requested more. We clicked. This time, the word click feels like a good thing. Maybe it will lead to something. This old-ish guy has so much more to offer.