Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Mattress RIP




Today is the day the new mattress is to be delivered.
Somehow that makes me sad. And pensive.
What object inanimate is there that is so intimate?
I wonder and I cannot summon any other.
For all my life, there’s been a mattress for all my nights.
This will be Number Six, counting only those long-term.
What else has shared my tossing and turnings?
What else has absorbed fluids in such variety?
What else has tolerated the passion and love-making?
What else has always so easily forgiven and forgotten?

This new mattress will be different.
A graduation from Queen to King,
A softer, gentler one,
To respect old bones and sore muscles.
And what of my bed mate?
Will this mattress camouflage as well
All his yelps and groans and utterances from dreams
Good and Bad?
What of my sneezes and restless legs?
Will the King’s extra inches calm them
Or at least distance them?

This Number Six has its pedigree to establish
And an impressive record to maintain.
I wish it well.
As I mourn the one it replaces,
The one carried away by the movers
For an extra fourteen dollars,
A trifle for all of its service,
I dare not ask where it will go,
How it will end.
I give it my gratitude and whisper an
RIP.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

The Invisible Franco-American at the Tea Party - Part One


I feel like a Rip Van Winkle who’s just awakened to find that his world has gone upside down. The biggest wonder: a glance at the ballot for the upcoming primary elections, and lo and behold, there are more Franco-American names than ever, and most of them are Republican. What the hell happened, as good old Rip would say?

LePage, Poliquin, Michaud, Lamontagne, Racine. LaPierre. Where do they come from? In Northern New England, it used to be Franco-Americans could muster a few credible candidates for local offices like county sheriff and state representative. Those constituencies were local, small and manageable. But for governor and for U.S. Congress and Senate? Never, hardly ever. Once in a while a Franco name would surface for state or national office, but always as a Democrat. A Franco-American on a Republican Party ballot? Unthinkable.

Some of the Franco candidates are clearly favored by the grass roots Tea Partiers according to several polls and the press. This should be less of a surprise since Francos have always been conservative in their politics. I’m tempted to say that Francos might still harbor some deep feelings as outsiders which would clearly make them convenient fellow travelers of the current crop of Tea Partiers.

Maine by far has the largest number of Franco-American candidates. Of course, it’s the only state with a Franco incumbent, Congressman Mike Michaud, a Democrat. He’s running for reelection and is opposed by a newcomer, Republican Jason Levesque of Auburn. Neither is opposed in the primary, so the November battle for that seat in Washington will be fought over by two Francos, in what is very likely a historical first.

The governor’s race has two Francos among the seven Republican candidates, both from Waterville: Bruce Poliquin , a businessman, and Paul LePage, the three-term mayor of that city. Both are first-time candidates for statewide office. Neither would embody the typical Franco-American experience (if there is one, of course.)

Poliquin points to his roots on his official website, citing his great-grandparents who emigrated from Canada. The family names in his background – Poliquin, Cyr, Doyon and Bouchard – are common Franco names. His education, however, veered from tradition. He attended Phillips Academy in Andover and studied economics at Harvard. Over his career, he’s owned several businesses and from all appearances has made a success of them.

LePage’s life history is also atypical, especially his youth in Lewiston which is right out of a Dickens novel. According to the candidate’s web site, he was the oldest of 18 children in an “impoverished, dysfunctional family.” He left home at the age of 11 and “lived on the streets for two years, making a meager living shining shoes.” Later, when he tried to get to college, he kept failing his verbal SAT scores. According to LePage, it was only when Husson College administered the exam in French, his mother tongue, that he passed and was accepted. I have my doubts about the accuracy of this claim. As a contemporary from Lewiston (I’m four years older,) I suspect that a Franco kid in his circumstances at that time would have no more than a limited oral knowledge of French. His resume does include, however, a stint as an “executive” of Arthurette Lumber in Canada.

At the Republican Convention in May, LePage proved quite popular and was clearly the favorite of the state’s Tea Party. In a recent televised debate, he used a third of his opening remarks to address the audience in French, a rather gutsy act – one aimed obviously at the Franco voters who have traditionally voted the Democratic ticket. LePage has been quoted as saying, “the one thing a Frenchman likes more than a Democrat is another Frenchman.” Everyone will have to see if he makes it to the November ballot to find out if he’s right on that one.

There are no Francos on the Democratic ticket, although Democrat Donna Dion, former mayor of Biddeford, is waging a write-in candidacy. Besides serving as mayor and Chair of the School Board, Dion has worked as chief financial officer for two non-profit agencies and is widely known as an advocate for a number of social and educational causes.

The Maine primary election is June 8, while the primaries in New Hampshire and Vermont are scheduled for September. We’ll talk about the candidates in those states later. Rip Van Winkle deserves another nap.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

long ago, in a crowded bar


Excerpt from my first novel Singing the Vernacular, in which a lonely widower of 50 spends a couple of hours in a bar, from the chapter entitled His Bearded Cheek:

“You don’t know how lucky you are that your wife died,” Perry said.

I was stunned. I wasn’t certain that I had heard correctly, and then my mouth opened wide with disbelief. Perry apologized, muttering something about not really meaning it, and that it was just his bitterness speaking.

“Oh, don’t mind him. Just because his wife took him for a couple of million, he thinks all marriages have to end the same way.” It was Perry’s friend from Saint Louis offering the excuse.

The three of us occupied a small corner of the bar where we had been corralled by the ever-growing Saturday night crowd. Forced by the herd of gay men to stand closer to each other than I wanted, our breaths collided. I felt the mist of Perry’s spit on my face when he talked to me. I could smell body odor on both men and, to my surprise, I found it wasn’t unpleasant. The milling throng surrounding us had us constantly shifting our positions but no matter how much our trio was jostled about, I nearly always found myself caught in the middle, between Perry and his friend Jack.

Perry craned his neck looking around the room and signaled for a waiter. He was obviously drunk and appeared to have forgotten the remark he had so casually dropped on me. Jack was sober. He was working hard trying to repair the damage caused by his friend.

“Please, don’t pay any attention to Perry,” he whispered in my ear. Pulling me closer, Jack explained that Perry had just wrapped up a bitter divorce. “I don’t know exactly how much money she sucked out of him, but Perry’s very, very wealthy. He still has plenty to spare. He has a thriving real estate business. He’s the one paying all the expenses for this weekend, for all of us. But, whatever the amount they settled on, Perry feels his ex-wife got too much.” Jack’s way of talking, whispering in a conspiratorial way, was annoying. I had to strain in order to hear him over the noise of the crowd. I hesitated to ask him to repeat, fearing he would just get closer.

“Let me buy you guys a drink,” Perry said. He had caught the attention of a waiter. “She told me she’d make me pay dearly and she sure did,” he told us. I was surprised that he had kept up with our conversation. “She just couldn't’t deal with the fact that I liked young boys more than her. I know your situation is totally different, but I can’t help dumping on all women right now, especially that breed called wives. What are you drinking?” Perry said while grabbing the waiter’s arm.

“Scotch. Dewar’s preferably, and on the rocks.”

It was all Jack’s fault. He was the one who had drawn my life’s story out of me with his disarming directness. I had just walked into the bar and had headed straight to the first open space I spotted without noticing who my neighbors were. Jack turned to face me immediately. “Well, hi there!” he said. He elbowed his neighbor to catch his attention. “This is one of the guys we met at the pool this afternoon.” Turning back to me, he extended his hand. “I’m Jack. And this is Perry.”

I quickly paraded the day’s events before me and placed these two among the new faces I had seen at the pool party and later at dinner. Perry was tall, about my age, and very handsome. Jack was even taller and he was sporting a deep tan.

“Sorry, but I just can’t remember your name. I met so many people this afternoon and I’m terrible with names,” Jack said.

“My name’s Marc.”

Grabbing my shoulders with both hands and looking at me straight in the eyes, Jack said, “So, tell me all about Marc.” He accurately read the look of confusion on my face. “I want to know everything about this person Marc who is standing in front of me.”

Flattered by the attention and by his sincerity, I blurted out a capsule description of my life. Jack listened attentively. I thought Perry wasn’t interested; he had his eye on a couple of young pretty boys.

After I was finished, Jack shook my hand in an exaggerated gesture of formality and said, “I am very glad to know you.” Perry simply volunteered that he too was fifty years old. “Fifty, but not dead yet,” he added. Neither offered any other information about themselves, and we drifted into the usual bar banter. That is, until Perry dropped his line about me being so lucky that my wife died.

I scanned the busy room, looking over the heads of the chatting and laughing men, and I suddenly felt a deep gratitude for all the years of my life when I hadn’t had the time or the need for a place like this. Then, the clamor and the throng vanished, and I suffered through a drenching of serious self-pity. Without a word, Perry handed me my drink. I thanked him and emptied nearly half of the Dewar’s in a quick gulp. I noticed Perry was staring at me and I stretched my arm out, holding my glass towards him. He responded and we toasted each other silently, sending the clinking sound of our glasses into space as a testimonial to our shared misery.

Perry turned away from me and was swallowed up by the noisy crowd. I shot a look at Jack who threw back a knowing smile. “Does that all the time...just walks away,” he explained. “Nothing personal. I told you already: don’t mind him.”

“Last call, last call,” a faceless voice invaded the smoky room. “Last call.”

I looked at my watch and was surprised to discover that it was almost 2 o’clock in the morning. My two hours in the bar had evaporated. It worried me that I was developing a fondness for jammed bars. Was I beginning to find, in the crush of people, with all the noise, the music, even the smoke, a haven? Was it that entertaining, or distracting? The one certainty was the exhilaration I felt when I realized I was surrounded, totally and overwhelmingly by gay men – all kinds of gay men, dozens and dozens of gay men, nothing but gay men.