From December, 2006.\u00a0 This moody little piece found me tempted to cut and run:\u00a0 Dissolve the company, leave DC, move to the country… I’ve been in cut and run mode for quite some time and never seem to get to the first step.<\/p>\n
I didn’t post this article because it sucks.\u00a0 But also because, a few days later, I learned that dad was dying.\u00a0 By the time that was over, the article felt outdated.
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There are things I hate about DC.\u00a0 It\u2019s my birth city, I grew up here, but let\u2019s face it \u2013 it\u2019s a sad, fucked up, pathetic little town.\u00a0 The older I get, the more gentrification sweeps through the city, the more the client suburbs become strange and twisted salad bowls of disenfranchised immigrants and extraordinarily prices dwellings, the more the pretentiousness of the neo-yuppie set expands against a backdrop of cold, iconoclastic repression, the more I start to think that it\u2019s about time for a real move.\u00a0 The last bastion of normalcy in this city are the queers.\u00a0 As I don\u2019t operate in their circles, I\u2019m starting to find myself adrift.<\/p>\n
Focal points.<\/p>\n
The family dissolved. My grandparents have now returned to West Virginia to live out their last hurrah.\u00a0 My uncle leaves shortly for a new job in Manhattan.\u00a0 Mom dead, father estranged, and the rest aren\u2019t worth speaking of.\u00a0 With the old homestead now, as I write this, locked up by the realtor and forever out of our lives, there\u2019s no longer a foothold in DC.\u00a0 We\u2019re no longer a DC family.\u00a0 I\u2019m a renter in the suburbs.\u00a0 There\u2019s no where I can run to when the money dries up, no refuge or solace when life becomes crisis.\u00a0 It\u2019s taken no time at all to accept the sudden reality of the last seven days \u2013 my grandparent\u2019s exodus, the breathless clearance of the house, and the renter\u2019s lockboxes snapping into place.\u00a0 It\u2019s the final chapter of our family\u2019s local history, and the last thing that was keeping me grounded here in this angry city.<\/p>\n
The friends.\u00a0 They are also grounding forces.\u00a0 But with age comes a family, children, or the rocketing lifestyle of self-employed mania.\u00a0 Something that I also suffer from.\u00a0 Friends have become rarely visited \u2013 exhausted during the week, picnics with kids on the weekends, or, themselves, on short-term plans to leave the area.\u00a0 House prices, congestion, the people\u2026 All adding up to Maybe We Should Move Elsewhere.<\/p>\n
Today a bike courier shouted at me on the street.\u00a0 One of a horde of racing freaks who don\u2019t obey any traffic rules.\u00a0 Same in any city, mostly, and always a fear of mine \u2013 death by high speed bike courier.\u00a0 I felt the city-rage in me.\u00a0 It\u2019s happened before, but now I\u2019m starting to pay attention to these things in me.\u00a0 That city-rage, all part of life before, now seems unhealthy.\u00a0 The explosion behind the eyes that demands I attack.\u00a0 The purest reptilian urges that make people blow each other away on the road.\u00a0 So quick to madness.\u00a0 Exhausted before I even get to my desk.\u00a0 The commute, the crush of people, the rush out of the cattle run at Union Station, the knowledge that I\u2019m about to spend eight hours of the day doing nothing.\u00a0 Advancing nowhere.\u00a0 Being mocked by friends and customers.\u00a0 Everyone exhausted and crushed.<\/p>\n
Wanderlust.\u00a0 What has pushed me to travel and read and explore these last eleven years has begun to change.\u00a0 Where once the end of a trip was disappointing and heartbreaking, I now find myself longing for home.\u00a0 Not in the exhausted, get-back-to-my-bed way.\u00a0 Instead it\u2019s a desire for grounding.\u00a0 Not settling down, mind you, just the need to end 32 years of transition.\u00a0 Still young, not family-minded, but tired.\u00a0 And tired of the old family home, too.\u00a0 So glad for that refuge in my past, I am fully aware of how sick that house had become.\u00a0 Life needs endings.<\/p>\n
A woman has asked me: Could I maintain a monogamous, celibate relationship if I was with her.\u00a0 I love her and would be willing to \u2013<\/p>\n
No, wait.\u00a0 What am I saying?\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019d have to fuck women on the side.\u00a0 Still, though, it\u2019s the thought that counts.\u00a0 And, though I\u2019d be sneaking women ten years my junior through the basement window and having brutal sex with them, I would gladly maintain a monogamous celibate relationship with this woman I love.\u00a0 She\u2019s an ex, and we broke up long ago when I was under the clouds of emotional pain and hopeless youth.\u00a0 With age has come the bitter realization that her love for me, then scorned, was one of the most powerful elements in my life.\u00a0 She saved me at a time when I most needed her.\u00a0 Now, with age, and all sorts of new clouds of emotional pain and hopeless fading youth, we\u2019ve entered a confusing point.\u00a0 For me, a strong need to be near her, to hold her close.\u00a0 And for her?\u00a0 She\u2019s a lesbian.\u00a0 Some sort of cruel joke\u2019s been played on me, I know.\u00a0 Fortunate that I\u2019m getting used to cruel jokes.\u00a0 Our tug of war is approaching a conclusion:\u00a0 With the death of my presence in DC, do I now follow her?\u00a0 If she moved here to me, it would be compromise.\u00a0 A year ago, the same could be said of a move on my part.\u00a0 But, now, I\u2019m entering a new phase that will, sooner rather than later, push me out of this area.<\/p>\n
Finally, the question that keeps me up at night:\u00a0 Am I just dwelling?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From December, 2006.\u00a0 This moody little piece found me tempted to cut and run:\u00a0 Dissolve the company, leave DC, move to the country… I’ve been in cut and run mode for quite some time and never seem to get to …<\/p>\n