THE ANCIENT ART OF PHONE CALLING part 2

     Basically, text messaging was created to make sure kids kept spending money during school days. Think about it. It's a simple fact that phone companies made less money when teenage girls weren't talking on the phone. This included all the hours they spent trapped in classrooms.  With texting, they could contact each other in different rows or in different classrooms without the teacher even knowing. What teenage girl or boy with at least a few friends and some social standing wouldn't want to text and be texted. It's the modern, high-tech version of note-passing. And it was the perfect way for the phone companies to finally infiltrate the classroom and anywhere else that children and adults couldn't, or didn't want to, talk freely on their phones.
     But not even the creators of text messaging imagined the impact it was going to have on how the world communicates. It's gone more global than global warming. Texting was only supposed to to be an adjunct to phone calls. It was not supposed to drive people away from phone calling.
    We are witnessing, no less creating, a paradigm shift in communication that is undoing what the telephone, in all its glory for 130 years has so amazingly given us--the gift of having conversations and hearing each others' voices.  It rewards us  in all the ways that 'LOL' and :) , and the more dramatic, heart-felt  :(  never do. The spontaneous roar of laughter, the perfectly timed retort, the drawl of sarcasm, the all-telling pregnant pause, the silent stand-off,  the sniffle of a hidden cry, the romanticism of not hanging up first, the quirky nuances of our voices along with the inflections and tones we use that in an instant convey exactly how we want something to be understood, are all being thrown overboard.
   We are willingly abandoning a level of communication we have come to expect from each other and are now prepared to accept much less. Phone calling does not seem to be part of the modern plan, even though the telephone was one of the most modern inventions of all-time.  It was the greatest thrill of the twentieth century.  Thousands of people lined the streets just to use one of the few on display for the first time in the 1870's. And the ritual continued when the phone arrived in every new country, then in every new city, then in every new village for decade after decade. People lined up because they wanted to talk.  There are Indigenous people in remote regions who are still only now being introduced to the phone for the first time. Some don't even have a written language. The question is how long  after they develop  one will they be texting instead of talking? Is it some kind of evolutionary process that we first crave talking on the phone then we come to hate it?  Now we do whatever it takes not to speak on the phone. We've gone from a society that talked to each other for almost a century and a half to a society that wants to only text each other, all  in a matter of a few years.  Why have we latched onto this so quickly and so easily? Have we always been this desperate not to talk to each other?
   I've been trying to go back and think when and how it all started happening. Early texting was as  innocent as an address, a phone number, confirming plans, an  arrival time.  It was also a great, quick way to let people know that plans had changed. But then we realized we could cancel plans with a text too, and how much easier and less guilty it felt not having to fully explain ourselves or hear the disappointment in the friend's voice over the phone. Soon after, people were using texts to avoid anything that an actual conversation would have made more unpleasant or awkward. Consolidating one's thoughts and feelings onto a small screen using a vocabulary of lettered abbreviations has a great appeal for those who think talking on the phone has turned into more of a commitment that they generally want to make. Its the most some people are willing to be available for. Texting allows us to be as disengaged as we want to be while still remaining in contact with each other. It's like contacting your neighbor across the street but doing it with hand-held signs and binoculars to read them. These days, when you do get a phone call from someone it feels like a grand gesture.  We are using text messages in so many ways now that I can't help but wonder how the rules are regarding what still must be said over the phone and not by text. Is there anything? People I know have been broken-up via text, have received death notifications of a grandmother and of a cat, have been turned down for a job, have been notified of cancer, have been told by a birth mother that she is changing her mind and keeping her baby,  and have been informed to get checked for Syphilis ( that unfortunately was a text I got ).
   It's gotten to the point that we're even allowed to argue using texting. My good friend and his boyfriend just had a week long argument texting each other back and forth from their individual apartments. First of all,unless two people text at the same speed, one person is going to be answering the first point while the other person is already on to the second point. Rebuttals that made sense when they were being typed arrive at the wrong time and confuse things even more. These guys kept getting more and more frustrated as they flung texts but neither of them would pick up the phone and call. Since the beginning of their relationship, all their contact when they weren't in the same place was through texts, so they had no practice in how to speak with each other over the phone.
    This is becoming the case more and more. And the younger the person, the bigger the role texting plays. Now, young kids growing up with texting don't even consider making a phone call an option. They usually have to be forced to speak on it, and its almost always to older relatives. The ones I feel most sorry for are the grandparents out there who got totally blindsided by their grandchildren switching from the phone to the text. It's created a huge generation gap, even bigger than the computer did. With arthritic fingers, worsening hearing and a life-long attachment to phone calling, many grandparents don't want to learn a whole new way of communicating at their age. Unfortunately, this might mean that they'll have less contact with their grandchildren. But, on the positive side, if most of the older grandparents out there now refuse to text, no one has to worry about them hitting the wrong key and by accident sending their entire family 'sexting' messages with pics attached.
    I know there's no way for me to stop this texting phenomenon from happening. People all around are trying to suck me into the texting abyss. So far, I've given in only to one close friend, and that's only because his hatred of  phone conversations predates texting ( you know who you are).  I've been able to hold off almost everyone else but I can feel the levee isn't going to hold up much longer. I'm going to just have to adapt a little. It's not that I am totally opposed to it. I text sometimes, and even enjoy it when they're playful. But there are the other times that I am as guilty as anyone else in using texting to suit my purposes. Yes, I admit it! I know exactly when I've done it and why I've done it. It's not easy for me to do but sometimes it must be done. There are people in this world who I always want to talk to, and there are people in this world who I want to talk to sometimes, and there are a few  people in this world who I don't want to talk to at all. Oh that reminds me, I have to go and text my mother.

THE ANCIENT ART OF PHONE CALLING part 1

  

     Most stutterers wish Alexander Graham Bell was never born. What a sadistic man he must have been to invent such a  torturous contraption that demands you talk into it. No crueler punishment has ever befallen the stuttering community. And if the trauma of the phone wasn't bad enough, some fiendish person came along and invented the answering machine too. It meant that from now on a stutter could be captured on tape and replayed over and over.Your stuttered words become someone else's property and they can do whatever they want with it. They could even play it out loud on speaker phone at a party for entertainment. Imagine, the horror!
   The fear of the phone experienced by most stutterers goes beyond any phobia. It is not a fear born in the mind, and it does not go away if you stop thinking about it. It is real, it is ringing, and it is waiting for you to stutter when you answer it. If you ask a stutterer which of three rooms is the scariest to enter -- the one with the tiger, the one with the dangling live electric wires, or the one with the phone that has to be answered, he probably wouldn't be able to tell you because he's already been mauled to death or electrocuted.
    Considering all the humiliation and anxiety the telephone has caused generations of stutterers, it makes perfect sense that people who stutter have a profound dislike and distrust of the phone. What doesn't make sense is my relationship with the phone. I am a stutterer who is addicted to talking on the phone. I can't say for sure I'm the only stutterer like this but I personally have never met another stutterer who had as big a mouth as me and is on the phone as much. What's especially odd is how I'm drawn to the very thing that should be specifically difficult enjoying for a person with a speech problem. A stutterer who is constantly on the phone is equivalent to a paraplegic rock climber or a legally blind archer.
     I have what is almost a romantic relationship with my cellphone. It is what I keep closest to my heart, literally, in the breast pocket of my scrubs. Sometimes I hear people say they left their phone home on the kitchen table or at the office or just decided not to carry it.  To me, it's like deciding not to carry one of my bodily organs.  "I think I'll leave my liver home today."
   My phone, like a pacemaker,  is never turned off.  When I'm at work at the hospital though, I do make the concessions of switching  it to vibrate and never answering it when I'm with a patient. Answering it while I'm helping someone who had a stroke walk for the first time or climb stairs would be detrimental to the patient and even more detrimental to my employment. I only check my voicemail in the hallways away from patients, and make quick calls in the bathroom.  ( I am confessing this  because these quick calls happen only  when I am sitting on the toilet anyway.  I take care of two things at once that  end at the same time causing the hospital no loss of productivity. This is actually an excellent example of an employee multi-tasking, and should be used as a teaching tool throughout my hospital )  I save my longer calls for lunchtime. I have to start my phone calling while I'm still at work  because if I waited until I got home, there would never be enough time to make all the calls I want to make.
   Why I'm like this I can't exactly figure out, but it does give me another perfect opportunity to blame my mother Priscilla for something. The telephone was her tool of choice to use to either show her love or unleash her rage. On a typical weekday she would call up my father at his store 20 times day, 40 when she was mad at him. Scream, hang-up, call back, scream, hang-up, call back. In her mind, calling even if she was planning on  screaming still showed she cared. She was on the phone early morning to late at night, and the receiver usually smelled either like coffee, Norell#10 perfume, cinnamon gum, alcohol, or the unique salty smell of her tears. How she sounded when she was speaking to someone was a preview of how she was going to act when she hung up. I was so accustomed to hearing her on one of  the five telephones in our house that when there was silence, my first thought was always that she had a heart attack or strangled herself by accident with the extra-long coiled phone cords she always ordered. The telephone was such an intricate and important part of her life and her relationships that I grew up thinking that being phoned meant being loved. She would hand me the receiver and make me talk to her friends and our relatives so often that it became a natural thing for me to do even with my stutter. When I started making friends and getting calls myself, I was never more proud, especially in front of her. Thirty-five years later the ring of my phone still excites me.( Well, except if I see on caller I.D. that it's my mother. Ironically, she's the only person who I don't want a call from.)
  My dedication to the art of phone calling has turned into a battle I seem to be having with everyone. The enemy is text messaging, and it is overtaking the world.  I realize I am in this battle alone. No other stutterer feels this way.  Teenage girls are the only other demographic group who embraced textingTexting is what stutterers have been waiting for their whole lives. Finally a way to call someone without having to talk. What could be better?
   In all honesty I completely understand their excitement and relief, and don't blame anyone for texting who has suffered over the telephone like my fellow stutterers have. As a matter of fact, right here and now I give every stutterer out there a free pass to text whenever they want. If anyone deserves it, they do.
   As for the rest of you out there texting instead of calling, don't think you'll keep on getting away with it. You are not escaping talking to me over phone.You are going to have to suffer through my stutter every time I call, like you did before anyone even knew what texting was.

                                       END OF PART 1

THE DAYS OF DARKNESS HAVE ENDED

     This is an official announcement that my days of  beard dying are done.  My brown beard is no more. Period. Sorry for having to put you through my trials and tribulations over it but I had to come to some realizations that only doing it would have brought me to. Thanks to all my friends and ex's and co-workers who tried to convince me to stop, especially the really brutal ones( you know who you are).  And special thanks to my boyfriend Alex who "by accident" forgot to pack the bag I gave him with the dye in it inside his suitcase before we left for Europe. After trying to find the French version of Just For Men in Paris which seemed to be impossible( French men lie about not dying their beards) I turned to him and admitted that the search was absurd, the beard is absurd, and I'm absurd for doing it.
     "I've been waiting for you to realize this. I love you with a gray beard."
    At that moment I decided to take the leap. I grew up a little. It felt great and still does. But don't expect me to act so sensibly about other things. These moments of maturity come rarely, like eclipses.

A CRY FOR CUCUMBERS

     Europe, don't destroy cucumbers just because of E.coli. Send them our way. San Francisco is always in need of cucumbers. People here have ways of using them and other similarly-shaped vegetables that Europeans haven't, or don't want to, think about. (Well, maybe the Germans have.)
   God did not intend raw vegetables to be put only in salad bowls.They are meant to be put other places as well, especially in times of a health crisis like this.  A cucumber is more than food, it can be turned into a date, and bring you hours of entertainment.  The preparation is nothing fancy. It's as easy as asking your grocer what isle the Crisco is kept, after you choose the properly-sized cucumber depending on your needs and talents.
    Don't forsake the cucumber now. It has been one of the friendliest and most engaging vegetables. And it has pleased some of us in ways that spinach, cauliflower, and broccoli never have.

Am I going to be a 'one-trip wonder'?

   Alex has given me permission to speak for him, though I have already spoken for him many times without his permission. He and my best friend Scott have agreed on a list of 20 things that a person should do or be prepared for to make traveling with me a more bearable experience:

1. Bring sleeping pills to drug me.
2. Wear headphones to drown out my constant talking at the pool.
3. Be prepared to meet everyone around you.
4. Set the clock a few hours earlier each night so I'll stay in bed later in the morning.
5. Bring a spare laptop for me even if I say I prefers pen and paper.
6. Be prepared to instruct me on how to use the laptop each time I use it for the same task.
7. Add minutes to the international calling plan on your phone.
8. Travel to hot climates where I can take my shirt off.
9. Take pictures of me when I do take off my shirt.
10. Help me trim my chest hair when I ask.
11. Bring my reading glasses in your pocket so you don't have to read every menu for me.
12. Don't expect any help in locating anything on a map or a street.
13. Expect to apologize to waiters for the mess on my side of the table.
14. Order more than you want so I won't eat all your food.
15. Don't be surprised to find food crumbs in very strange places in the hotel room and on my body.
16. Don't be surprised to find me exercising in very strange places.
17. When booking the seats on the airplane, put me in a different row from the one you're in and then blame the airline when I ask.
18. Expect to spend a chunk of your sight-seeing time trying to find a bathroom for me.
19. Expect me to be blogging constantly.
20. Accept the fact that for some crazy reason people still fall in love with me.
       
          And for those friends who doubt Alex would ever treat me to another vacation after having to share the same hotel rooms and bathrooms for 2 weeks along with sitting across the table from me for every meal, let me be the he first to tell you that he is already planning the next trip. This one is going to be to Australia and New Zealand ---
             he's flying himself to Australia and me to New Zealand.

"HELLO, I AM POOPLOS CRAPAKAKAS AND I NEED YOUR BATHROOM."

   Oh, the cruelty of the gods. If someone just told me which god or goddess was in-charge of diarrhea I would have prayed to him or her for mercy.
  I have my suspicions it all can be traced back to that 'special sauce' from my Paris blog but there were so many delicious yet potentially hazardous meals after that I will never know for sure. The ferry ride from Athens to Mykonos was my first clue that something was wrong. Luckily it was a huge boat with ten bathroom stalls on each deck so me clogging three of them went unnoticed.  
  When we reached the hotel I wasted no time. "Hello I am Gary. I need your bathroom."
  "We'll be in the room in a few minutes if you can wait," Alex told me as he continued registering our names and taking care of the paperwork.
  " I would love to wait but I can't," I said as I hurried away to the lobby bathroom. 

"Alex, somebody stole my shirt, I swear!" 

"....again?"

    We were staying at The Elysium, the most beautiful gay hotel on the island.  It is designed in a high-styled 60's motif with white plastic, Lucite and luxurious creamy couches. The only other colors are the blue of the kidney-shaped pool and the orange of huge wicker carved-out egg shaped seats in a line on the pool's terrace that look out onto the ocean. The lobby bathroom was just as stylized as the lobby, as was the bathroom in our room, the bathroom by the pool, and the bathroom near the outdoor dining room. I quickly learned the location of every bathroom I could use in the hotel. They were so beautifully designed that I hated having to do what I had to do to them, even if it was only for a few minutes at a time.

"These chairs are terribly uncomfortable!"

   After a day and a half Alex was getting very concerned and wanted me to see a doctor. I was concerned too, mainly because I had no spare weight to loose. I wouldn't have bothered doing so much cardio on the machines in the gym  before the trip if I knew I would be loosing a few pounds just sitting on the toilet. I owed it to Alex and myself to try and get better as quickly as I could so I could eat and drink whatever I wanted and enjoy Mykonos to the fullest and drunkest. 
   It was Saturday and finding a doctor was very difficult. The lovely and talented Belgium drag queen named Jahn, who was the main entertainment at the hotel, recommended I go to the hospital which treated him very nicely when he fell down the stairs of the little stage by the pool and strained his ankle two years before.  
   I was still trying to look my best as I got dressed in a pair of dark blue light cotton beach pants, sandals, and an unbuttoned short sleeve shirt.
  " No matter how hard you try, you can't be sexy with diarrhea," Alex said.
  "Oh yeah, watch," I said, putting on my sunglasses.  We went to the lobby and the gay Greek man behind the front desk called us a cab to the hospital. "How do you feel? " the man asked me.
   "Not as good as I still look," I answered, striking the most attractive pose I could, making the man laugh and Alex roll his eyes.
    I was worried how much the hospital was going to cost and how long the wait in the Emergency Room would be. Neither was a concern when we arrived. The hospital was basically the size of a large one-level house with the same white stucco and blue shutters that all the other buildings had, and there was no one in the Emergency Room waiting area. As a matter of fact, there was no Emergency Room waiting area. There was just the Emergency Room that you walked straight into.
  There was a male nurse hairier than me standing in orange scrubs all by himself. I introduced myself and Alex then explained with a combination of English and gesturing what my problem was. 
  " Gary, you can stop pantomiming sitting on a toilet. I think he understands," Alex shook his head in embarrassment.
   " I was just making sure," I said, standing back up from a squatting position.
    " Can I see passport," the nurse asked. 
     " Is this expensive? How many Euros will this cost for a tourist?" I asked.
      " No worry. You pay little. Come," he waved me over to a one of three gurneys in one room that served as the office and examination room. He took my blood pressure then my temperature with a thermometer stuck under my arm, which made me feel strangely more away from home than even the nurse speaking Greek. He applied pressure with his fingers to areas of my stomach, then had a doctor in his early 30's do the same. I assumed he was the doctor because he had on a lab coat over his jeans and tee-shirt. Neither had on name tags or had bothered to tell me their names, which as a hospital employee myself, I was shocked at. I was equally as shocked by the open toilet in the middle of their version of a medication room where they stored all the drugs in cabinets, canned food and janitorial supplies including a bucket and mop. After I was hooked up to an IV drip for dehydration, I had to bring the IV pole with me into the medication room every time I needed the toilet. One time I was sitting on it as the cleaning lady, who was at least considerate enough to put her hand up to block her vision of me,  came in to get her mop and bucket. 
    By the end, I was given 2 liters of fluid with electrolytes that lasted for 4 hours and a pill which was "for my stomach". The doctor in the lab coat then felt my stomach in the same way again and told me it was gastritis. "Many tourists have. We give you what to eat. " And then, believe or not, as Zeus is my witness, he lit up a cigarette. But to his credit he did open up the window next to my gurney. 
    The hairy nurse gave me a standard print-out in Greek of a  rice and chicken diet for three days and a prescription for electrolyte powder to put in water. As he was trying to explain  I knew there wasn't a chance in Hades I was following that diet. He handed me a bill for only 20 Euros (How about that US Congress!!!)  and Alex and I hopped in a cab back to the hotel. 
   I starved myself for a day, took Imodium AD and drank bottled water with the electrolyte powder, and didn't drink any alcohol, take any Adderall, or drink any Greek coffee, and just slept for half a day. 
    Who cared if I might have had a little stupid gastritis. Frankly, I didn't give a shit the day after, both figuratively and literally. I was cured.

A ROOM WITH A JEW

     The plane ride to Athens was perfectly smooth until the last ten minutes when there was the worst turbulence I ever experienced. It felt like Zeus was using the plane for a salt shaker. The huge Cumulus Nimbus clouds outside the tiny window were the same ones that must have surrounded Mt. Olympus. I had to do something to stop the plane from crashing. I needed to sacrifice a virgin quickly, but my boyfriend Alex was the only one near me, so we were doomed. Are you supposed to pray to the Zeus or to God when your plane is approaching the runway at Athens Airport? Choosing the wrong one could be fatal.

     Every man who worked at the airport looked like Pericles, or what Pericles would have looked like if he sat around watching too much TV and drinking too much Uzzo. They weren't in as great shape as him but each man had that same regal profile which thousands of years hasn't softened. For the first time in my life my nose wasn't big enough to compete.

     The cab ride to our hotel took 45 minutes and I kept looking for the Acropolis the entire time.

“ I thought I would see it by now.” I told Alex, a little disappointed.

“ Don't worry. Be patient.” He told me as we got out of the cab.

     When we got in the hotel room and put down our bags, he told me he was warm and looked around the room. “ Gary, open that door and see if it actually leads to anything.”

"Oh my Zeus!"

I opened it and stepped out onto a huge patio with the Acropolis right behind it! I was speechless, or more accurately, stutter-less. “Is that close enough?” Alex came up behind me and whispered. He knew all along what was behind the doors and wanted to surprise me. I turned and hugged him then turned back to it and stared, and kept staring. If I cried it would have been really impressive, but being genuinely thrilled was good enough for me. It was an amazing site—first, the perfectly rectangle base carved atop the huge stone hill, then the Parthenon perched atop the base like a beautiful broken birdcage.

     I dragged myself away from the view and we went to eat lunch. Then Alex and I came back and 'pulled a Paris' again by sleeping the entire afternoon instead of going to any museums. My new temporary philosophy about traveling and museums is that 'if you can see it inside a book, why go inside a building.' I'm sure I'll look back on this in a few years and think it's ridiculous, but for right now it's very convenient when you're feeling too lazy to hop from museum to museum. When we awoke from our luxurious lamb-induced nap, we stepped out onto the patio and found the entire Acropolis lit-up like a sports stadium with a night-time game. Nothing else was lit around it and the huge, heavy stone floated in the sky.

     We didn't want to wait for the morning to climb to the Parthenon, so we left the hotel and just started walking uphill. The streets leading to the Acropolis were the original ones designed more for foot traffic than for cars, but one wonders how many merchants lined these small streets in ancient Athens as compared to the restaurants and tee-shirt shops now. After all, having the Acropolis with all its temples and amphitheaters, Athens must have been the world's first tourist trap.

     After turning a corner onto the first of these streets, we didn't make it five feet without the owner of a rug store calling to us.

“Guyz, guyz! Come here. This first stup. I am Theo. See my rugs. Drink glass of wine whit me. Then you see Partenun.” He came between us and put his arms around our shoulders. “ You go Myknos after Ateens, right?”

“Are we that obvious?” I laughed.

“ It's gud. The gay we luf. No Muslims here. You do whatever you wunt. Everyone free here. Dat is Ateens.”

     The Muslim line was just the right hook to get us into the shop. Before I knew it, we were being poured glasses of white wine, being introduced to his father and his nephew, and shown rugs. I was on guard and leary, but Alex was already drawn in. The whole thing was a little arousing to him, reminiscent of the classic French porno filmed in Turkey by Cadinot called Sex Bazaar, one of Alex's favorites. “ This is perfect. I was going to have to buy one in San Francisco after I have my old carpet torn up.”

     “Zan Franziz-Go!” Theo toasted. We all clinked glasses, including his father, who just grinned and had no clue what any English meant.

     We didn't have a clue what any of the Greek being spoken meant either. I hoped they weren't saying anything bad, especially anything anti-gay after acting so inviting. Theo showed us different style rugs and explained the meaning of each. There was the tree of life, the shield of Athena, and the footsteps of wisdom.

     I asked if he had one for the 'missteps of ignorance', which only Alex understood enough to laugh at. Theo gave most of his attention and his wine to Alex who he could tell was going to be the one to possibly do any buying. Theo sensed correctly, and Alex had his Visa Platinum out before the third glass was poured. The transaction felt as fast as a mugging except for the fact that we were sitting in a shop having wine. It just goes to show that a handsome, pushy Mediterranean can get Alex's wallet out of his pants almost as fast as a handsome, pushy Mediterranean can get Alex out of his pants.

     “I promise we won't stop again,” Alex swore as we left the shop after giving Theo the shipping information.

     We kept climbing upwards on streets that turned into stairs that turned into plateaus that turned back into stairs that turned back into streets, all lined with more stores and restaurants with obviously no regard for any regulations or provisions for the handicapped.  A wheelchair-bound person would have to be airlifted to reach the top. It was dark under the spotlights aiming upward at the base as we climbed narrow walkways with no indications of direction. As we got closer to the iron gate surrounding the entrance a Greek woman, sitting in a metal folding chair on the path selling Parthenons made of foam that sat on the head like a pillbox hat clipped into the hair, told us the Parthenon was closed until morning.

     “Terrorists too dangerous for night to be open. You buy one? ” she pointed to the foam Parthenon on top of her hair twised into a bun that looked like the Acropolis.

     “No hair,” I pointed to my head, my baldness finally paying off after all these years. We moved away from her and got closer to the gate.

“ We could climb over,” Alex said.

“And end up in a Greek jail.”

“Sounds like a win-win situation to me.” Alex said with one of his devilish grins.

“ What Cadinot film is that fantasy from?”

“ Istanbul Cellmates.”

“I've waited since I was 10 to see the Parthenon. I can wait one more night.”

"There is no place to tan!"

     We went back to our hotel room and laid down on two lounges on the patio, held hands and enjoyed the great view again. The evening was warm and the street below was surprisingly quiet. Without realizing it, we drifted off to sleep with the Acropolis as our nightlight.

le Pitstop en Paris

     For me, this trip has always been about Greece.  Paris is not a destination; it is just a beginning. But who can complain when Edith Piaf is the opening act. My boyfriend Alex and I would start on the grand boulevards of Paris and end on the beaches of Mykonos. From high culture to the beginnings of culture.

Alex's job is to arrange everything and pay for almost everything. My job is to carry as much of our luggage as I can and pay for as little as I can. This is fair for reasons that go back 30 years, have little to do with Alex, and make no sense to anyone but me.  Luckily, Alex is amazingly generous and doesn't need or even want to hear my retarded reasoning. He has been to Paris several times already but never stayed at a gay Bed & Breakfast, and thought it would give our trip a personal touch and bring us closer to the Parisian way of life. He found one in a perfect central location right across the street from The Monument of Saint-Jacques near the gay le Marias section of town. True, it is owned by a gay man named Fredrick and true, it does have a bed in the spare bedroom of the 2 -bedroom apartment that he lives in and true, Fredrick did offer to make us breakfast if we really wanted him to, but as a Gay Bed & Breakfast, it fell short of Alex's lofty hopes. After giving us the keys and tour of the apartment that only took 30 seconds, he went into his room and promptly removed his pants and spent the next 2 days in 2 different colored Ralph Lauren high-collared polo-shirts and bikini white underwear.

   "I can't believe he's dressing like that. He's more inappropriate than you," Alex whispered to me.

   "I know, isn't it great," I said, taking off my shirt and pants so I could walk around in my underwear too. "I didn't know Bed & Breakfasts were like this."

    "This isn't a Bed & Breakfast, it's a locker room."

“If Fredrick was a swarthy French serviceman in his underwear you wouldn't mind so much.”

“ For that I'd pay double what Fredrick's charging,” Alex said with a devilish grin that showed the less hoity-toity and more debaucherous side of him.

     We were so exhausted from the 12 hour flight that we slept from 1:00 PM to seven at night, missing the entire afternoon. We felt guilty for not forcing ourselves to stay up and see more of Paris since we were only staying for 2 nights before the flight to Athens, so we promised ourselves that we would stay up late and at least go out at night. But we ended up getting drunk  at a great meal where I was served my first peeled tomato, came home and had great sex for 4 1/2 minutes, and passed out again and slept until almost 2:00 in the afternoon. Fredrick had been barricading himself in his small office whenever he wanted to smoke which was whenever he was awake, so he missed the one time Alex and I had actually left the apartment.

“ This is the first time that I had guests who never left the apartment. It's like Ann Frank in the attic.”

When we calculated that we had basically only spent 8 hours awake in Paris so far, we were even more embarrassed of ourselves. Our plane to Greece was leaving at 7:00 the next morning which meant we had to be at the airport by 5:30, which meant we had to leave by 4:45, which meant we had to get up by 4:00 at the latest. We decided there was only one thing to do-- forget about going to bed at night and take a vampire's tour of Paris by moonlight. To celebrate our plan we went back to sleep for a few more hours.

We had a very late lunch at six o'clock then began our walk without any intention. The last time Alex was in Paris was eight years ago so he wasn't sure where we were heading, which was perfect. As we wandered from block to block, we passed so many cafes and pastry shops that we started comparing the number of them to the number of fire hydrants. I can confidently say that there are more places to buy sweets in Paris than there are fire hydrants. This means that French firefighters would stand a much better chance if fires could be extinguished with pralines & crème rather than water. Just by chance, we stumbled across world-famous landmarks and historical monuments, plus a few old churches which we had no desire to go into, nor could we have without bursting into flames. There was one church, however, that looked so sinister it was almost appealing. “ They must have done wonderful things to Jews and gays in this one,” Alex joked. “Not a lot of laughter coming out of there.” We sat on one of the many benches forming a rectangle under trees with the thickest and lowest canopy of leaves I have ever seen. By the entrance to the church was a huge row of high, lush antique roses in gorgeous colors with thousands of tooth-sized thorns that made them as sinister as the church as they stood guard in front of. We followed the roses to the end then walked along the side of the building past one of its massive flying buttress. The side wall kept on going further and further back, forming different chambers of what was turning into a huge, block-long church. When we reached the back of it that opened onto a stone square, Alex and I turned around and realized that what we had thought was the front entrance of a neighborhood church was actually the backyard of none other than Notre Dame itself. We eventually came up on The River Seine and continued as it split in two along more residential areas, and crossed over to make our way all the way back to the gay district. It was almost 1:30 in the morning and the streets were getting more and more empty, especially since it was a Tuesday. All the walking had made us starving so we both scarfed down lamb with special sauce from The Kebab Stand, the only thing still serving food.

Then we were ready for our fête complet, the pièce d' résistance. Alex and I made a promise to each other that we would end our trip to Paris with a walk all the way to The Eiffel Tower, no matter how far it was as long as we could get back by cab in time to leave for the airport at 4:45. To Alex's credit, he had not used his iPhone's GPS app. to cheat once during the entire night, but for this Parisian pedestrian pilgrimage we needed help from the twinkling satellites above. He typed in 'Eiffel Tower' and moved his phone from side-to-side like a divining rod. “ It's 5.2 kilometers from here. And wait a second....by walking it should take under 2 hours. That gives us enough time. Follow me.”

By this time the streets were deserted. As we trekked along and saw no one else walking past us in either direction, we started to realize how special our journey was. To our amazement, we seemed to be the only two people in Paris who were out on the streets besides the homeless who were always out on the streets. It felt like Paris belonged to us alone. There wasn't even a lot of cars passing by; only the occasional cab who would stop and ask if we needed a ride. It was so desolate that we should have been more scared.

“ Alex, it's dangerous out here. There's no one to help us if we need it.”

Alex's ears pricked up when he heard the word 'dangerous' and he made another one of his devilish grins. “ I might get mugged and raped. Well, hopefully not mugged, just raped.”

“ I can't believe you're not more frightened.”

Alex pointed out the the only frightening thing about our walk was my loud farting from the lamb.

“ I can't help it. It's has to be from that stupid special sauce.”

“ You're making sure that I'll be the only one getting raped.”

“ Then I'll keep farting. It's the only weapon I have right now.”

Still there was no one to be spotted as we walked along The River Seine for the second time that night, passed The Parliament, The National Assembly, the Museum of Modern Art, The hugely obscene Petite Palace, the old Louvre and the new Louvre. In the 5.2 kilometers, we saw a grand total of one couple on a street bench, a group of five drunk teenagers yelling French at us, and an older man with his dogs. As the GPS told us we were getting closer, we searched the sky for the lights of the tower until we realized that four poultry dots of red light floating in a square shape in the sky was the only lights left on to show one of the most iconic structure in the world. As we got only a few blocks from it the streets got smaller and the echo of our footsteps got louder. When we entered the park where it stands, all we could still see was the four red lights way above us and four white lights that illuminated only a tiny bit of each corner under the base.

The City of Lights...Off

“There must be a light switch somewhere,” I joked.

“ Wait,” Alex pointed his iPhone at it. “There must be an app to turn it on.”

We both laughed at how ridiculous the lighting was as every picture Alex tried to take of it kept coming out black. But then we both realized something at the same time. How often do any tourists dare to walk all the way to The Eiffel Tower at 3:30 in the morning and see it in all it's glorious blackness. What a brilliant way to see “The City Of Lights”.

The Princess And The Punching Bag

     I know all the many ways in which  I am annoying when I'm awake, but I never thought I could be even more annoying when I was sleeping. I seem to be a 'puncher', or at least that's what some men I have slept next to accuse me of.  I have no recollection of hitting anyone. I've already swung my punches by the time the victim wakes me. It's like a nightmare only the person next to me is having it for me.
    Luckily for me and even more luckily for the man I'm sleeping next to, these nocturnal knockouts happen only when I sleep in a different bed for the first time. I realized this after it happened the third time this year. The first 'incident' occurred with my best friend of 33 years and first ex-boyfriend Scott. I had begged him to meet me in Florida to visit my fat father who was in the hospital for the fourth time for some fat-related reason. My stepmother Cecil had just re-decorated the guest bedroom and was excited for Scott and I to be the first ones to sleep on the new top-of-the-line memory-foam mattress with 1000 thread count linens and 100% goose down pillows. " Tell me how you like it in the morning, boys. Sleep well," she told us as she closed the door for the night. Eight hours later, when she went into the bathroom in her bathrobe to take her morning shower, she pulled back the shower curtain and found Scott sleeping in the bathtub with 2 of the down pillows and a spare blanket folded in half as a makeshift mattress. Scott explained that I had been punching him so much that he couldn't stay in the bed and had to find somewhere to go, and he didn't know if Cecil wanted anyone to sleep on the brand new couch that she had just gotten a few days before.  
   I refused to believe that I could punch someone and not be aware of it, and accused Scott of exaggerating. Then it happened again with one of my dearest friends, Graham. We were visiting his family in England and stayed at his mother's house where we slept in two separate bedrooms, but when we got to a hotel in London, the room only had one queen-sized bed. It so happens that before going to bed that night we had had an argument, which Graham and I seldom have. We had both gone to sleep angry at each other, so when I unknowingly started punching him in the middle of the night, he punched me back. I woke up shocked until he made me realize that I punched him first. We ended up laughing about it but I wondered if my punching episode with Scott was somehow connected.
    It was only after the first time I slept in my boyfriend Alex's bed that I connected all the dots. It was a weekday night and we both had to work in the morning. The first time you sleep over at a potential boyfriend's place could be either a 'make or break' moment.  Punching him in the kidneys as he is peacefully sleeping on his stomach is not the best way to win over a man's heart.
   " Gary, I'm sorry but I can't sleep like this. I've got a a major deal happening tomorrow. I need to sleep. I'll give you cab money and we'll try this again another time."
    " I can't believe you're kicking me out."
    " I'm not kicking you out, I'm just paying you to leave." He kissed me and gave me a reassuring hug, then gave me $20. "Don't worry. I'm still crazy about you. It's going to take more than  few midnight beatings for me to loose interest. Just try to save them for the weekends."
   After that first night I was fine sleeping at his place. It's been six months since I punched him in bed. But now I'm going to be faced with my greatest challenge. Alex is taking me on a trip to Paris for three days then Athens for two days and  to Mykonos for 5 days after. Three places means three new beds, which means three chances of Alex coming home with a black eye from our first romantic trip.

" Excuse me, does this face come in permanent press? "

    There's a trainer named Kyle  in my gym who is actually straight. The 'needle in a gaystack'. He is  either very cool or just very smart. He's got a huge following of paying clients and non-paying onlookers. It's easier to get an appointment with Steven Spielberg than with him after 5 P.M. Like a shrink, the early evening appointments are booked the fastest. Some of his clients have to re-schedule their entire work day for a  training session during the less desirable  9-5 slots, which are very often taken as well. Being able to afford him isn't good enough; you have to also be available at any time he offers. And you can't buy just single appointments, you have to buy package deals that are only refundable if you are in an accident and become a quadriplegic, but not if you become only paraplegic because he can still do upper body training with you.  His clients agree to this and anything else he says because he is beautiful. His body is better than any human or statue I can think of. Of course he doesn't think so. And he's not being humble; he's just being insane.
   " This ab is smaller than this one,"  he lifted his tank top and showed me, as if I or anyone else in the world could possibly be as concerned over it as he was.  
   " A fat person ought to come over and punch you in the face for complaining about that," I shook my finger at him.
   " Come on just look at it," he pointed to the rows of abs on his stomach. "It is, right?"
   I rolled my eyes and turned away, refusing to look. It seemed I was the only one on the entire gym floor not looking at his stomach. It was uncanny how they all sensed him lifting his shirt by picking up on each others' subtle head movements in his direction like gazelles at a watering hole. We gays are very good at that.
    Kyle and I have developed an unlikely friendship. The key is that I don't ever flirt with him. I'm not like some other gay guys who fantasize about sex with straight men. Most of these gay guys have been, as my friend Ron Brock calls it, 'dicknotized'. This is the medical term for a gay man who has been temporary placed into a semi-coma state and will follow instructions given by a gay or straight man with a big dick. A more severe form of dictnotism can make a gay man suck and get fucked by a group of two or more men who are straight or at least straight-acting, which can involve extra planning and a casting call sometimes bigger than for the movie "GLADIATOR."
      Personally, there is nothing a straight man can do to turn me on, not even a beautiful one like Kyle. After having to wait until I graduated High School before I moved to Manhattan and was finally surrounded by gay men who I could have sex with, fantasizing about a straight man was the last thing on my mind. There are so many gay guys who actually want to be part of another gay man's fantasies that having to find straight guys to fulfill your fantasizes is unnecessarily difficult and very self-limiting. And fantasies about straight men are doomed from the start. With so many gay men who will only probably make you hate yourself after sex, why bother with a straight man who will definitely make you hate yourself after?
    Our friendship started when a  friend of mine told him I worked in physical therapy, and Kyle started asking me questions about certain injuries and the exercises best to do for them. He also started confiding in me about his love life, and his frustrations over not finding a woman who was a good match.  To Kyle, a good match meant a female version of himself. Why should he have to settle for something less? He worked on himself too hard and spent too much money making himself flawless for him not to expect the same from any girl he would date. This year alone he spent $6000 on laser hair removal to bring him back to pre-pubescent levels of body hair, and spends $1000 dollars every 3 months for botox. " I want totally  ripped muscles from the mandible down and total muscle paralysis above it. If you think or laugh too hard, it wrinkles these areas," Kyle explained, pointing to his forehead, the outside of his eyes and between his eyebrows." The laser treatments are expensive but at least it's just once and you' re done forever. This other shit  keeps on costing me every 90 days. The problem is all  the guys who can afford me can afford botox too. And if they all do it, I have to keep doing  it too. I always have to look better than them. That's the whole trick.   I'm trying to get my doctor to trade for training sessions but he's got a trainer he's been using for years and won't  switch. I think this guy gives him another kind of workout if you know what I mean". 
    " See, that's where you went wrong. If you were gay, men would be throwing money at you. Well, they are now but you have to still work for it. "
   " I know, it sucks. I could be getting free botox for the rest of my life."
   " You could be a doctor's wife, every body's dream."
   " Sometimes it really sucks being straight," he complained.
    " Only sometimes?" I smiled at him.
    " Especially since I broke up with Tami."
    " Wasn't she the one you brought to your cousin's wedding?
     " Yeah, but her ass was too low."
    Every girl he dated ended up having something wrong with her. Something he would try to ignore at first but it would just get bigger, or flatter, or flabbier. He couldn't help looking at a girl with the same critical eye that he looked at himself.
          And then it happened. He was browsing through Match.Com and came across an actual real, life-size breathing version of Barbie, or what Barbie would have looked like if she was a 35 year old Jewish woman with very generous parents and a very good plastic surgeon. Kyle was ecstatic after they had dinner, and described how he fell in love with her as she told him that she broke up with her last boyfriend because of his skinny neck, and how she proudly revealed  what body parts of hers were altered, and what other work she planned on having done. She was perfect in her fakeness, as only fake can be. Their second date was running up and down the stairs at Ocean Beach seeing who would  tire first. She exercised as much as he did, and kept up  her speed even with her huge fake tits bouncing in her sports bra.
     " And the best part is she has a doctor from India who charges half of what mine does for botox, and she's going to introduce me!" 
         I had never seen him more excited about meeting someone and  he continued to give me updates  until the fifth date, which she canceled because she wasn't feeling good. " She said she was going to go to the gym like she always does when she feels sick  and do cardio for 2 hours  to get it out of her system." Even Kyle thought that was strange, not to mention excessive. As the excuses kept coming, Kyle looked sadder each time I saw him. "I didn't tell you this Gary, but last week she asked me if I ever considered getting calf implants. I don't care what she thinks, I've got good enough calves."  It was becoming painfully obvious that she was  trying to end it, and Kyle was distraught.  And  then a few days later he came into the locker room as happy as could be.
     " Guess what!" he said with a look of joy.
     " You worked things out with her?"
     " No she broke it off. But I got the name of her botox doctor before she hung up on me!"