 ©1999-1999 ICFTP What're you, kidding? |
Hey ya'll, look! I got a puppy!
I wonder how Lilu'll like him?
Ok, ok, not really, April Fool's and all that. He's Stephen Savage's pup, Alfred (or Albert, can't remember.)
After going out to David's site this morning (and laughing my ass off) I put up a missive about my coming out. Heh. Heh. Wasn't really all that funny, and I just got a really nice letter congratulating me on my courage, which made me feel like a bit of a heel. So, no more gay pride page.
We now return you to our regularly scheduled program.
2 April 1999:
Well, I'm headin' out. I think there's gonna be a blue moon party tonight on the landing between our apartments. I'm sure it'll spill out all over the place. See ya'll later.
Black people, white people, who cares. Thank God. For all you folks not in the South, whose perception may be skewed due to popular misconception - while racism still exists, it's more often found in tight little pockets, in individuals holding on to their fear of the unknown. For the most part, black people and white people stay politely separate in their personal lives. It's not a hostile thing at all. But go downtown to Drayton Place on a friday night, where there's something that interests both groups, and you'll see both eating, talking, laughing and singing together. Joe Lewis, black sax player, is on stage with Joe Cherry, white bass player, and they are playing up a storm. Smiles are the most common thing you'll see, on black or white faces.
Live-oaks rock.
I think our house was built sometime in the late eighteen-hundreds, maybe the early nineteens. I wonder sometimes what our neighborhood was like when it was 'West Mobile', when Dauphin Street was sparsely populated, just large homes set back from the road, separated by scrub woods. I talked to Mr. Dumas, who grew up in the house next door, and he said the neighborhood hasn't really changed since he was a kid. He's in his forties, I guess.
I love these trees. It is a good thing to live surrounded by live-oaks. They feel like friends. They really do. Ivy crawls over the top of the branches, and spanish moss hangs down from some. The color of the leaves changes, growing lighter as you get further out along the branches, and deeper green the closer you get to the trunk. Mobile's climate can be brutal if you don't have these beings protecting you. In the parts of town without them, you feel naked and exposed in the summertime. The sun and the 100% humidity laugh at window-mount airconditioners, and squash them easily. But even when it's murderously hot, even when the air is still, it helps to sit on the roots, look at the shadows of the leaves on the ground, watch all the small life that moves over and around the base of the tree, all the life that runs overhead. Squirrels, mockingbirds and bluejays all yell at each other and race around the upper reaches. Acorns drop to the ground. Each tree is alive, not just a column standing up above everything. When there are two, close together, they often seem to be reaching for each other, across roads, across driveways. They make tunnels for us to walk through. Stretches of Government Street, Springhill Ave, Dauphin Street and Old Shell Road are living green tunnels in the summertime.
When you drive east in the morning, the harsh bright sunlight dances through the leaves. It springs at you, painfully dazzling, when there is a break in the foliage overhead.
But... the shadows dance on the sidewalks and across the road, across the hoods and windshields of cars.
Bars of sunlight sparkle and heliograph off chrome, and that same bright chrome reflects green and brown in motion as the cars speed past the trees.
Ok, my secret's out.
I own an SUV. A Honda CRV. I love this car.
And yes, I feel like total yuppie scum sometimes when I drive it, and no, I do not have a cell phone. But... lemme tell ya'll something. Midtown floods. Every year. It gets really old when your Tercel dies because the engine is under water. So there.
At least it's not a Land Rover.