Storm thoughts

I'm sitting in my friend Sally's house in Richmond, VA. Her hot, humid, likely to soon-be-intolerable house. She has no power. Irene saw to that. No air conditioner, no ceiling fan, no cold drinkable things from the refrigerator. 75% of Richmonders right now are in the same situation. We saw a lot of them this morning at Panera, which was doing a land-office business because they did have power -- and lots of bagels, eggs and coffee too. (They did a remarkable job handling the crowd with speed and smiles; a big shout-out to the manager who obviously trains the staff well).

As far as hurricanes I have known goes, this one was special for one reason: I left the Connecticut calm yesterday and drove straight into it. This weekend in Richmond and Washington had been long planned and I was loathe to let a bit of natural irritation scuttle it. So at approximately 10am yesterday I headed west from Woodbridge, drove to Scranton, PA, and then turned south to Virginia. I made remarkable time and in fact the biggest slowdown was caused by construction, not by the storm.

Nearing Richmond though the winds picked up a lot, the temperature dropped and the sky turned black. Stopping at my friend Don's house I had to dodge some fallen tree limbs, one quite substantial. He, remarkably, had power; after a short visit I headed to Sally's. Most of Broad Street, one of the main commercial drags, was dark; all the businesses were shut up tight. Going further west things got better, though a lot of places were still closed. I was after dinner for five people and had to settle for bad sandwiches, bags of junk food and Snickers from a local convenience store (sign on the door: "Cash Only.")

We ate our haul by candlelight and then sat around and visited. It was actually quite pleasant. Remember when families regularly spent Saturday nights together?

Today it's bright and sunny and the extent of the damage is becoming visible. Looks not to be anywhere near as bad as it might have been. There's a 75 foot tree outside that was uprooted, but luckily fell away from the house. There are traffic lights still out, and most of the restaurants we tried were not answering their phones. It'll take a few days for everything to get up and running I suppose.

And I learned something today: when there's danger the power might go out it's the D batteries that sell out first. Sally and I went looking for some; plenty of stores had lots of AAs and AAAs, but no Ds. It was our fifth attempt that proved successful. Who knew?

When to say when

There’s probably no better ex-Beatle solo album than George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass. Paul McCartney has certainly sold more records and made more money, but most of his stuff is pop fluff compared to this great Harrison effort. We lost a tremendous artist when Harrison died in November 2001; give The Concert for George a watch and you’ll see that a lot of great musicians feel the same way. It, and he, are classics.

I’ve been thinking a lot today about the idea that all things must pass. My friend Edward ended a relationship Saturday night; not a romantic relationship, but an every-Saturday-night-for-years dinner date. For ten (more?) years Edward had gone out almost every Saturday night with the same guy. They were never lovers, they were once co-workers, they became little more than weekly tablemates.

It was the fact that they were no more than that which prompted Edward to make the decision. There were, of course, other reasons, but what interests me is the question of what we do when we realize it’s time to move on.

My friend did the honorable thing. He told his tablemate the truth, or at least as much of the truth as was kind and polite. He didn’t make up an excuse, he didn’t lie; he simply ended it, as gently but directly as possible.

It strikes me that this is all too rare in our day-to-day commerce, both with each other and between nations. The truth is often avoided. It is easier to keep doing the wrong thing than to speak the truth and make a change. Look at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. How often have we heard that we must continue to support the war effort because of what we have already invested? Rather than say "no, no more," we continue on, throwing away good lives after good lives.

We keep going to the table, Saturday night after Saturday night.

I’m an Army brat. I know from experience that all things must pass. Nothing lasts forever. The best of things, the worst of things -- all have a lifespan. It is far nobler to let things go than to pretend all is well and start faking it.

Would that we as a nation could behave as honorably as my friend.

How many birthdays would you like this year?

I sent two birthday greetings yesterday; one to my brother and another to a friend of the last ten years or so. My brother’s birthday I tend to remember; for my friend’s I count on my Mac calendar to remind me.

Coincidentally, I was listening to the Slate Political Gabfest last night and David Plotz talked about a Facebook experiment he conducted. He opened his online profile in late June and changed his birthday from its true January date to July 11. Once that day passed he changed it again to July 25 and after that one more time to July 28. You can read his Slate piece here.

The results were fascinating, and, sadly, all too predictable. 119 “friends” sent David birthday greetings by the end of July 11. 105 friends did the same two weeks later on July 25. Of those, 45 were the same people! 45 of David’s “friends” either forgot that he had seemingly had a birthday just two weeks before or simply sent their impersonal greeting off without a conscious thought.

Three days later there was a precipitous drop in his birthday wishes; this time only 71 people wished him well. Still, almost 30 people repeated their salutations of only three or seventeen days prior.

This interesting, though – yes, I will admit – irritating, experiment strengthens my own antipathy toward the global friend maker that is Facebook. Again by coincidence this all happened 48 hours after I finally got around to watching The Social Network, David Fincher’s brilliant biopic on Mark Zuckerberg and the early days of The Facebook -- later, Facebook. The move made me like Facebook even less.

For my money, Facebook trivializes one of the finest gifts humanity has ever received: friendship. Plotz has 1,557 “friends,” but he admits he’s only met perhaps 200 of them. Even I, a card-carrying curmudgeon, have 71 Facebook friends  -- a paltry number by online standards – but I would claim true “friendship” with perhaps 20 of them.

I cherish my true friends. Rick has been a dear friend since the late 50s, Elaine since 1963 and Don since 1965. Other friends form the backbone of my life and are very dear to me: John (1966), David (1967), Tom (1968), Malette (1979), Darrin (1983) and many more since then. To go on Facebook and “friend” a thousand or more people cheapens the meaning of the word and the nature of the experience.

Thanks, Mr. Plotz, for cleverly showing us the banal nature of Facebook.

Art imitating life

I watched Handsome Harry the other night. It’s a 2009 drama about a 50-something coming to terms with his past. It’s seriously flawed, but is not the worst way to spend a couple hours -- and any movie with Aiden Quinn is one I want to see, though his part is a very small one.

Harry Sweeney is an ex-Navy man who visits the deathbed of a shipmate, a man convinced he’s going to hell for his part in a gay-bashing that left another mate, a promising concert pianist, with a crippled hand. The visit prompts Harry to look up the other bashers and to revisit this shameful episode in which he too was involved. By movie’s end we learn that Harry has buried his true nature for decades, unwilling for most of his life to publicly be the person he is.

Watching this film the New York Times called a "pungently didactic critique of the masculine mystique among American men" I was reminded of an experience in my own life. As a freshman at Notre Dame I knew a man I'll call Leif; he lived in the dorm room next to me and even my sexually-ignorant, repressed-Catholic brain assumed he was gay -- he was that obvious, or, more accurately, he fit that unfortunate stereotype that even I was aware of. He was likely the first person I ever labeled gay.

But he was "one of the guys" and whatever each of us might have thought individually, he was accepted as just another freshman.

During that summer (1966) I flew to Pennsylvania to pay Leif a visit. That night we shared a bed, a normal and innocent thing to do in those days. You already know what happened: in the middle of the night he made a move. I was both freaked out and intrigued, but too scared to respond, so I yawned theatrically, turned away from him and pretended to be asleep.

The next day, and for 45 years since, nothing was said. The situation never repeated and neither of us ever spoke of it.

Perhaps 22 years ago I was thinking of Leif, wondering what ever happened to him and, since I still had his parents' phone number, I called. I reached his Mom and we had a pleasant conversation, punctuated by her saying the most amazing thing: "you know, Walter, it's odd, but Leif never married." "Odd?" I thought, but did not say. "It's not odd at all; he's queer like me, you silly woman!" (I did not say that either).

She gave me his number and I reached him too, only to have an even more amazing conversation. I filled him in on my life, told him all about Ransom and then waited for him to respond in kind.

Nothing. No coming out story, no boyfriends, no lovers, nothing. No girlfriends or wives either. He seemed not at all happy to hear from me and downright uncomfortable. I hung up the phone, totally perplexed and unsatisfied.

There may be another explanation, but the only one that makes sense to me is that Leif is deeply, deeply in the closet and will likely remain there his entire life. Some men do, especially men my age and older. It's a testament to the power of homophobia and to the fear of coming out that homophobia instills in gay people.

Like handsome Harry, Leif has buried a part of himself way down deep. Perhaps someday something will prompt him to dig up that past -- maybe it has happened since our phone call. Perhaps it will never happen. It's a shame that our society has created a climate where people are afraid to be who they are. Homophobia’s victims are not always young teenagers struggling to accept themselves; sometimes that struggle never ends.