This was my view when I drafted this:

I’d forgotten I had Juneteenth off, so booked a quick Sunday overnight trip to Port Jefferson, on the Long Island sound – and I just got home.  More on that later.

So.. May was a whirlwind, June less so, but a lot to ketchup on.

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Memorial Day weekend, I went to visit my Dad and brother down in Durham, NC.  It was a perfectly pleasant trip, except it rained all the freakin’ time (meanwhile, in NYC, the weather was beautiful).  So most of the time Dad and I just hung out on the porch with his cat.

We only made it out for one powerwalk, but but Dad and I went clothes shopping at the outlet mall and we had some nice meals out, including one with his lady friend (well, one of them), who’s delightful and erudite.  That was at a tapas place – we agreed that tapas are more fun the more people you have, because you get to try more stuff.

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The next weekend was Queens Pride.  The parade is in Jackson Heights, three avenue blocks away from my home, and I went wearing this fantastic shirt.  (I’d bought it for last year, but Pride followed so soon after ‘the thing’, I wasn’t feeling it.)  It was fun!  Chuck Schumer, our senior senator, was there and so was AOC (who used to be our congresslady until they redistricted).  I got to say hi to my buddies in the Queer Big Apple Corps, and it was totally delightful.

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More gaiety: I went two-stepping!  I’ve probably gushed about this before – two-stepping is country dancing (in couples), and line-dancing and other types of dancing also happens.  Two-stepping was a big craze in gay Philadelphia in the early 90’s, for some reason, and enough bars did it so you could go any night of the week.  Much to my surprise, I really got into it – it’s a ton of fun and it’s actually a great way to meet people.  

When I moved to New York, I found much less opportunity here, but there was an organization called the Big Apple Ranch that had dances in a dance studio on weekends.  Well, BAR is still going, some 28 years later.  It’s just once a month, but it’s great.  You pay a cover and they also have beers and soda for sale.  They teach two-stepping at 8:00, a line dance at 8:30, then the actual dancing starts at 9:00.  I was determined not to dance unless asked, and of course no one asked me because they didn’t know who I was because I hadn’t been in 20 years or so, and, more importantly, that I knew how to dance.  But they did end up doing the ‘barn dance’, which is  very fun line-dancey kind of thing where you form two circles, one inside the other, and you dance with the person opposite you and at the end of the pattern, everyone moves to the next person in the opposite circle.  So you get to dance with pretty much hall the crowd (everyone in the opposite circle).  So now they know I can dance, and next time I’ll be a little more adventuresome about asking.  What’s nice about it is no one’s committing to anything – you’re not hitting on someone (although that may come later), you’re just asking for 3 minutes of their time, and if they don’t feel like dancing that round, it’s not a rejection, really (unless they immediately then accept someone else, those bitches).  I will totally be back.  I need to get a good pair of dancing boots again – mine mysteriously disappeared for some reason.

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Even more gaiety: I just played in a concert! With QUO, the Queer Urban Orchestra. 

I’d missed their Gala last year (we were playing Star Wars, and I was really excited about it) because of ‘the thing’.  But I got pulled into this at the last minute and even though right now I should be doing nothing but Ruddigore, I said yes because it was only 2 rehearsals left.  (and then as soon as I accepted, I got a text from one of the trumpet players saying, “Oh, you’re playing QUO!  Can you play another orchestra concert 2 weeks later?”  I was like “NO NO NO, I shouldn’t even be doing this one!”)

The first rehearsal I was supposed to go to was postponed because of the GIANT SMOKE CLOUD that descended on our city, so really it was only a week of work – 2 rehearsals and the concert.  We were playing the Delibes “Cortege of Bacchus” and the Holst “Jupiter”, both totally fun, and a lot of numbers with Jasmine Rice, a very funny operatic drag queen.

Then, the night before the concert, I was heading out to a restaurant for dinner and tripped… face-planting on the sidewalk.  Holy crap!  Nose gushing blood, I powerwalked back to my apartment, stripped off and assessed the damage as I shoved Kleenex up my nose.  As it turned out, I looked like I’d been in a brawl, but was basically fine – except for that fat lip, which was going to get in the way of the “I have to drive a  French horn in a concert” thing.

I’m not sure what I would have done if I hadn’t been able to play… but I did a test honk or two on Saturday morning, and it seemed OK, and then a full warmup before I left.  The technique wasn’t as facile as normal – I had to work to make things happen that normally would have just come right out – but I could still do it.  And, as it turned out, once we did the sound check of Jupiter, which was by far the hardest thing I had on the program, and it was fine, I relaxed.  The concert was great!

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Sadly, none of the gaiety has involved actually, like, having another man look smolderingly at me. That will come, right? Right? But I’m really enjoying Pride Month, I must say.  I’ve created an Itunes playlist of all gay music (men’s and women’s choruses, off-Broadway shows, Romanovsky and Phillips, that sort of thing) and it’s really flashing me back to my 20’s, when I was far more active in the community. Time to start that up again.

What else?  I’ve been doing some cooking – I’m trying to basically just eat protein and vegetables right now, so chicken breasts, pork chops, sausages from the farmers market, and a lot of roasted broccoli and such.

Consuming media – wrapped up Mrs. Maisel and Ted Lasso, both lovely, and have been working through White Lotus, finally.  Not only is it amazing, but the 2nd season’s set in Sicily, and C and I toured Sicily in 2008, so I’m going, “oh, yes, that’s Noto” and “oh, yeah, the Palermo opera house” and so on.  In honor of Murray Bartlett, I’ve started “Looking” and am also enjoying “Shrinking” very much.  Some RuPaul, too, but I may be burned out on that for now.

I’ve been out on my bike!  I went skating once!  I need to get back to the PT exercises, because if my legs and knees are giving me trouble in very hilly Buxton, I’m going to be sunk.

Yeah, it’s going to be Ruddigore Ruddigore Ruddigore from here until mid-August, but I did just take that little trip to Port Jefferson and I have other trips coming up, and the big NYC Pride is next weekend and there will be another round of two-stepping in July and we may have gotten over the last hurdle before my home becomes officially mine, so… more to come.

Happy Pride Month!