Lost Youth, Part 1

In 1981, the year I graduated from high school, the most anticipated Broadway musical was Merrily We Roll Along, from composer Stephen Sondheim and director Hal Prince. These two theatrical gods had collaborated on repeated commercial and artistic triumphs over the previous decade, from Company to Sweeney Todd.

Merrily introduced some of Sondheim’s most enchanting songs, including “Good Thing Going,” “Old Friends,” and “Not a Day Goes By.” The musical’s gimmick, which came directly from the 1934 Kaufman/Hart play it’s based on, is the story unfolds backwards:  starting with the characters as jaded adults, and gradually returning them to idealistic high school graduates two decades before.

Merrily was a disaster. Frank Rich, The New York Times’ longtime drama critic and perhaps Sondheim’s biggest booster, confesses that he still listens to the Original Cast Album with fondness. So do I. Nevertheless, Rich felt entirely justified panning the musical. So did every other reviewer. (“Not since Carrie....”) 

Merrily closed after just 16 performances. It was Sondheim and Prince’s first flop, and ended their partnership. The problem with Merrily is that it leaves audiences feeling not catharsis but disenchantment. 

These days everyone knows the musical is unstageable, unless…. The amazing thing about Merrily We Roll Along is no one can quite give up on it. 

Netflix is currently screening a documentary about the doomed original production of Merrily, called The Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened. The film is a labor of love directed by Lonny Price, the actor who played Charley. After Merrily, Price left Broadway and went on to a career as a regional theater director. In addition to recent interviews with the cast and crew, Price benefited from hours of film footage from 1981 that was shot for an unaired ABC documentary, as well as video from a reunion concert fundraiser in 2002. 

Some of Merrily’s young cast, like Jason Alexander and Jim Walton, have enjoyed successful acting careers. Others left the theater long ago. All of them look back at their experience with wistful awe. They made me think of comparably intense experiences from my own youth, such as founding Student Review at BYU, or performing at Palace Playhouse and the Hale Center Theatre. Later scenes in the documentary reminded me of various impromptu reunions of the gang over the years, when we met again as adults but still recognized the profound connections we share.

What I found most fascinating was the portrait of Sondheim and Prince in 1981 as middle-aged artists at a crossroads. Prince is the one who came up with the dubious idea of casting the show with inexperienced youths, because he saw their energy as essential to the show’s themes. As Prince observed years later, young people don’t understand “they’re building something.” Prince sincerely believed his concept would work, right up until the brutal opening night. Meanwhile Sondheim was on fire, composing amazing songs with an ease he hadn’t felt since his own youth. 

The juvenile cast comes across as overwhelmed but enthusiastic, and constantly radiating energy. On one level, Prince and Sondheim are like aging vampires – inviting themselves to a cast member’s member’s birthday party, then staying all night to hang with the perky teens and 20somethings. I wish I had a bootleg recording of Stephen Sondheim playing “Happy Birthday” on the piano in my apartment when I turned 21.

On the other hand, it would be a mistake to cede creativity to young people. Samuel Johnson described second marriages as “the triumph of hope over experience.” That’s also a pretty good definition of a successful life. In the case of Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince, examining the energy of youth gave them a shot of youthful energy right when they needed it.

Ungilding the Lily

Readers occasionally ask “Roger, are your stories true?” Lots of readers – not just my mother and my daughter Eleanor.

Absolutely.

On the other hand, I never promised the whole truth, or nothing but the truth.

Unlike practitioners of certain dubious fiction genres, a memoirist can't get away with describing too many implausible coincidences in a row. Nevertheless, these stories all involve my bizarrely logocentric/charmed/cursed life. As you may have noticed, coincidence abounds. 

Numerous ruthless deletions are therefore necessary in order to avoid straining credulity, or exhausting readers’ patience.

For example, my recent essay about an off-Broadway-inspired epiphany begins with the sentence “Sometimes the universe speaks directly to you through music.” As you read “Comfort Animals,” you probably guessed something like this was going through my mind last Wednesday at Showtune Night:

“Here I am sitting at the piano bar in Vancouver, pondering a major life mystery – say, what’s this intriguing showtune I’ve never heard before?”

That's true. But here’s how the draft essay originally began:

The piano player at Showtune Night in Canada, Kerry O’Donovan, likes to point out when he’s playing a “hat-trick” of three songs connected by a single theme – such as Kander & Ebb showstoppers made famous by Liza Minnelli, or anthems introduced by Disney villains. 

Last Wednesday, Kerry surprised us by announcing his first “double hat-trick” – six songs from different shows, all focused on the same word. As the audience leaned in, Kerry started with “Times Like This,” from Lucky Stiff:

A friendly face
The kind of face
That melts you with a grin
The kind of eyes that welcome you
The minute you walk in
A tender glance
You simply can't refuse

Times like this, a guy could use ... a ________.¹

Sometimes the universe speaks directly to you through music. Despite my recent plague of boils and other challenges, I’ve been in a shockingly good mood lately....

Snore. Too much clumsy exposition. Even if it's all true.

¹I’m not filling in the blank. Put down your knitting and go read “Comfort Animals.” It’s pretty good. Particularly the editing.

More than one reader has accused me of endlessly meandering before I get to the point. Would it comfort you to know that, at least in their early drafts, most of my blog essays started out with at least three additional introductions, and two bonus conclusions? [Ed. Note: Just like Lord of the Rings.] You should be grateful all the extra prefaces and postscripts are usually composted before publication.

Writing is like sculpture: sometimes the most important part of the artistic process is chipping stuff away.

Every edit is intended to serve the story, to find the right word, and to make the narrative flow. I wouldn’t add or omit anything that fundamentally alters the story. The truth is usually more than enough.

On the other hand, “materiality” can depend on context. The same obviously exaggerated detail in one telling might be misleading in another account, when we’re focused on different themes or events. 

You’ll have to trust me. Don’t I strike you as a pretty reliable narrator?

For example, I was indeed pondering the reason for my suspiciously cheery mood just as Kerry introduced "Times Like This." However, I did not attempt to transcribe the lyrics from my memory of what he actually sang last Wednesday. They're a blur. Instead, I found a comprehensive educational webpage with reliable links to theatrical lyrics. I picked the verses of the song I wanted to quote, and divided them into the two short excerpts that ultimately appear in “Comfort Animals.”

I made a few minor edits to the lyrics, such as omitting the plot-specific introduction, and changing the text to suitably gendered pronouns. I also borrowed the revised phrase “At times like this a person could use another ____” from Katherine McPhee’s charming version of the song on YouTube. 

So it's a true story. More or less.

Face it, deep down I’m an English Major. I can’t just turn off my editor function – I’m not Microsoft Word, or Apple autocorrect.

Or, if you prefer, you can blame my obsessive editing on the traumas I endured in my past. As with other PTSD sufferers, those traumatic events left me with various compulsive behaviours, such as hair pulling. And copy editing.

Regardless, the Oxford comma is not negotiable.

Comfort Animals

Sometimes the universe speaks directly to you through music.

Vancouver’s weekly Showtune Sing-a-long Night is back, so last Wednesday after chorus rehearsal I was in my usual corner of the bar, sipping water. No alcohol – I was finishing a round of antibiotics to kill what currently looks like a mere bullet wound in my chest. 

Despite my recent plague of boils and other challenges, I’ve been in a shockingly good mood lately. My attitude seems even sunnier than would be justified by my improved mental health and my imagined career prospects. As I sat listening in the dark, I wondered what mysterious X-factor had been giving an extra lift to my spirits since the beginning of the year.

The piano player, Kerry O’Donovan, is a student of obscure musicals. Last Wednesday he introduced a song from an off-Broadway show I wasn't familiar with, Lucky Stiff. (Apparently it has a convoluted plot involving a contested will, Monte Carlo casinos, corpses with mistaken identities, and stolen diamonds.) Just as I was musing about what recent development might be boosting my cheer, Kerry began singing “Times Like This”:

Other people need
Romance, dancing, playing around
Other people need constant fun
Well I'm not one
I have my feet on the ground

Give me a quiet night
A stack of books
A tuna melt on rye
A simple walk together
Underneath the starry sky

And, suddenly, 
The night is something grand
And all because
There's someone special there
Who's gazing at the view
His head upon...your shoes

At times like this
I sure could use....
A dog

(Click here for a short version on YouTube sung by the lovely Katherine McPhee.)

Over the holidays I had to move out of my comfortable Bellingham rental house. Since then, my ex and I have been experimenting with letting the kids stay full time in one place. That means I’ve been spending alternate weeks in a ranch house with two charming Aussiedoodles. I’m loving it.

                 

As I recently wrote in “Guncle Again,” my kids are pretty useless as pet-owners. But they provide enough help to keep the dogs from feeling like a burden. More importantly, my ex and his husband are down the hill at the apartment if any real problems arise. Alternate weeks I’m away in Vancouver, or at my parents’ animal-free house. The dogs are ecstatic when I return. I feel like a fabulous gay uncle again.

Even the most adorable pet is not the same thing as a comfort animal. Moreover, neither a pet nor a comfort animal qualifies as a service animal. Here's a free legal primer:

The narrow definition of “service animal” includes

any dog that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, including a physical, sensory, psychiatric, intellectual, or other mental disability. Other species of animals, whether wild or domestic, trained or untrained, are not service animals for the purposes of this definition. The work or tasks performed by a service animal must be directly related to the individual's disability…. The crime deterrent effects of an animal's presence and the provision of emotional support, well-being, comfort, or companionship do not constitute work or tasks for the purposes of this definition.¹

            ¹If you relish raw legalese, you can read the full federal regulation itself at 28 CFR § 35.136. Or, if you prefer, here’s a handy FAQ published by the US Department of Justice – back when it was into justice. 

Under both the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Washington Law Against Discrimination, every government agency and every place of public accommodation must welcome service animals. If it isn't already “obvious that the dog is a service animal,” proprietors may ask “only two specific questions”:

(1) Is the dog a service animal required because of a disability?  

(2) What work or task has the dog been trained to perform?

Service dogs do not need to be specially registered or certified as trained. However, Washington now imposes a $500 fine for falsely identifying Fluffy as a service animal. 

As a separate matter, employers must consider any disabled employee’s request to bring a service animal to work under the same legal framework that requires a “reasonable accommodation” of the employee's disability, based on the circumstances of the particular employment situation. 

There’s exactly one exception to the rules limiting service animals to dogs:  miniature horses. Apparently they’re a thing.

The definition of a “comfort animal,” also known as an “emotional support animal” or “assistance animal,” covers much more than service dogs:

An assistance animal works, provides assistance, or performs tasks for the benefit of a person with a disability, or provides emotional support that alleviates one or more identified symptoms or effects of a person's disability. For purposes of reasonable accommodation requests, federal law does not require an assistance animal to be individually trained or certified. While dogs are the most common type of assistance animal, other animals can also be assistance animals.

Recently we’ve seen an increasing variety of comfort animals in two contexts covered by different federal laws. The first is transportation. According to an article in Forbes, US airlines carried a million animals in their passenger cabins in 2017, mostly supposed comfort animals – representing species from peacocks, to monkeys, to snakes. The airlines and Congress have been pushing back at passenger abuses, and the Department of Transportation is working on new regulations that are likely to impose significant new restrictions.

The second area is housing, where comfort animals are here to stay. Landlords from college dormitories to public housing projects to fancy apartment complexes are busy developing policies that override anti-pet rules. They must accommodate a wide variety of comfort animals, while attempting to balance the rights of nondisabled residents.

Outside of the transportation and housing contexts, individual businesses are generally free to make their own decision whether to welcome comfort animals. Or plain old pets.

Although I’ve never been a pet person myself, I’ve observed how pets brighten many other people’s lives. Just like country music, and knitting.

However, I learned the power of comfort animals on the night I hosted the worst dinner party ever. I’ll save the details for some occasion when I’m in a sufficiently safe place – i.e., after I find a job, an apartment, and a boyfriend. As a preview, no host should have to explain to a guest’s date that just because you're from the South doesn't mean you're allowed to use the n-word in the hot tub. 

I suppose the fiasco was partly my fault. I’m a big believer in the Greek concept of “xenia” or gracious hospitality, so I try to accommodate everyone. Moreover, as a codependent person I acquired a stable of needy friends and acquaintances whose dysfunctions I (formerly) could not resist enabling. Nevertheless, even codependent hosts do not anticipate having two separate dinner guests bring small yappy dogs without prior notice or permission. 

For now, I'll limit myself to explaining how one of the dogs showed up on Whidbey Island. Let’s call the non-Southern dog-bringer “Hot Mess.” He’s a longtime Seattle friend who comes from a similar religious and mental health background as mine, but with bonus substance abuse issues. Still, he’s a nice guy, and in the past he’d enjoyed fun visits to the island. I’d told him he was welcome to come back for another weekend if he could make his way up to the Mukilteo ferry himself. However, as Hot Mess went through yet another difficult period, I was confident that he was incapable of the complex organizational tasks involved in coordinating various buses, boats, and trains.

I did not realize that Hot Mess had acquired a small comfort dog. Apparently it fits inside his leather jacket, and soothes him when he has an episode. After alarming numerous public servants and fellow travelers along the way, Hot Mess and his dog arrived on the island just in time for dinner and the ensuing chaos.

Recently I went over to the other house to help my daughter with homework, even though it was my week staying across town with my parents. Afterwards I took the dogs for a long walk through the arboretum. For a little pick-me-up.

So I should have been more prepared for my epiphany at Showtune Night, when Kerry sang about what a couple of Aussiedoodle comfort animals can do for your mental health:

My idea of company would be
A friendly face
The kind of face
That melts you with a grin
The kind of eyes that welcome you
The minute you walk in
A tender glance
You simply can't refuse

Times like this, a guy could use...another dog

He listens when you tell him things
There's nothing you can't say
And unlike certain people
You can teach him how to stay

And if the world
is giving you the blues
He cheers you up 
by chewing up the news

It's things like that
That make you choose...a dog

But.

When I arrived home from Showtune Night in Canada, I discovered my favorite jammies were missing. It turns out worn flannel is just as irresistible to chewy dogs as bad news and holey underwear.

So I sighed, and temporarily banished Bear and Buster from my bedroom. Facing codependency is all about establishing healthy boundaries. With dogs, it’s good to be a Guncle.

More Showtune Night Stories:

"Missing Marie's Crisis" (5/6/17)

"Get Out and Stay Out" (10/18/17)

"Six Degrees of Kristin Chenoweth" (10/31/18)

"I am Third" (5/29/19)

"Spongeworthy" (6/13/19)

"Maybe I Love Showtunes Too Much"  (9/17/19)

"Artificial Emotional Intelligence" (2/25/20)

"Do Gay Androids Dream of Electric Brunch?" (2/26/20)

"A New Brain"  (5/5/20)

Shazam!

I've never been into comic books, and I grew up before Christopher Reeve’s Superman kicked off the cinematic superhero renaissance. Instead, I saw my first superhero on Saturday morning television. My introduction to the caped-crusader universe was Shazam!, which ran on CBS from 1974 to 1977.¹

¹Adam West’s TV Batman is not an actual superhero, and he doesn’t have real superpowers. He’s more of a camp icon, like RuPaul.

“Shazam” is the magic word teenaged Billy Batson says when he transforms back and forth into his buff alter ego. It’s an acronym that comes from the names of the six heroes who give Billy his superpowers during the series’ animated title sequence - Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury.

When the character made its comic book debut in 1939 he was named “Captain Marvel.” Subsequent trademark disputes left DC Comics owning the character but not the title, so he’s been re-branded as Shazam. The exclamation mark must be a surname.

Appropriately for its 1970s Saturday morning timeslot, Shazam! was a blatant Public Service Announcement, with cheesy production values. Billy rode around California with his unimaginatively-named mentor “Mentor.” He performed such heroic deeds as preventing reckless joyriding, and catching high school students who cheat on tests. Each 30-minute episode ended with a clumsy moral lesson. I don’t remember much else about the show, other than the rad mobile home and the mounds of feathered hair.

Shazam! was paired with The Secrets of Isis, which Wikipedia helpfully encapsulates as a show “about an Ancient Egyptian superheroine resurrected in the body of a schoolteacher.” Like Shazam, Isis would say her ancient name in order to switch between alter egos. However, instead of provoking lightning bolts, her transformation involved an eerily diminishing echo: “Oh Mighty Isis” (“Isis Isis Isis Isis….”). I still mimic its timing in my head every time Vancouver Men’s Chorus sings a decrescendo.   

Gratuitous chorus shout-out - #vmc70sShow
Tickets go on sale Wednesday at www.vancouvermenschorus.ca

My son Oliver is currently in fifth grade, which means this is the last year we’ll enjoy elementary school early release on Thursdays and get to see matinees without his sisters. 

It's been a while since we went to a movie. Oliver turned up his nose at Missing Link and How To Train Your Dragon 3, and I vetoed Hellboy and Pet Semetary. Obviously we’ll be seeing Avengers: Endgame soon. In the meantime, this week we agreed on the new Shazam! movie.

We both enjoyed Shazam!  In contrast with DC Comics’ recent string of dark and brooding movies, it was refreshing to watch a superhero having unadulterated fun.

As I’d gathered from the pre-opening buzz, Shazam! is reminiscent of 1988’s charming Big. Like Tom Hanks, actor Zachary Levi does an excellent job of channeling teenaged Billy’s glee with his new powers to zap things and to buy beer without an ID. The homage is not limited to subtext. During a chase in a mall, Shazam comes upon an oversized piano keyboard on the floor, and can’t resist pausing to stomp out a few notes.

What surprised me about Shazam! was how long it took to get to the fun – and the emotionally bleak landscape we had to wander through first. 

The movie begins with a couple of flashbacks. The future hero and the future supervillain both are rejected by their families of origin, and grow up bitter and broken. Young Billy Batson’s story begins with his single mother at an amusement park. His mom wins a lame plastic compass at a seedy arcade game, rather than the cool tiger Billy had his eye on. She tells him the compass will always lead him home. Billy immediately drops his compass, and then gets lost in the crowd as he tries to retrieve it. His mother disappears, and Billy grows up in the foster system. 

During the next decade, Billy runs away from numerous foster homes because he’s on a quest to find his mother. For the first thirty minutes I kept wondering if we'd wandered into the wrong movie theatre. 

Billy’s foster system origin story shouldn’t have come as a complete surprise. When I saw the Shazam! trailer the last time Oliver and I went to the movies, my favorite moment came when Billy meets his new foster brother. Freddy is a motor mouth who can’t help joking about disaster, and everything else. He ends his spiel to Billy with a deadpan “You look at me, and you’re like ‘Why so dark, you’re a disabled foster kid – you’ve got it all.’”

Midway through the movie, Billy is placed in an ideal group home, headed by an interracial couple who both are alumni of the foster system themselves. My favorite character in the movie indeed turned out to be Freddy, who copes with challenges he can’t hide by saying too much. The other foster kids in the home take different approaches to their situation: the wordless big guy, the overachieving good girl, the Asian teen who disappears into technology, the excessively-affectionate little black girl. Like all coping mechanisms, eventually each approach can get in the way of your growth. 

The group home’s multiracial mix feels like the kids were ordered off a menu from Central Casting. But one of the pleasures of a non-biological family is how it stirs up the gene pool. You’re much less likely to end up with four brothers sharing identical foreheads and the same stoic sarcasm.

After some initial prickliness, Billy bonds with his new siblings. The Asian hacker brother tracks down Billy’s birth mother, and he confronts her in a brutally unsentimental reunion. She’s in another abusive relationship, and can’t let him into the apartment. She admits that she saw young Billy after he disappeared into the crowd at the amusement park, but she decided he was better off without her. Before returning to the group home, Billy gives her the plastic compass, saying she needs it more than him. His mom doesn’t even remember it. As one critic observed, the scene is an example of “what Shazam! gets right about the emotions of foster children.”

As I’ve previously recounted, the foster system is filled with tragedies and epic failures. Nevertheless, there really are heroic foster/adopt parents out there who take on tough challenges like Billy and Freddy. Kudos to intrepid foster parents like Amanda, Goran & John, and Jack.

This June for Pride Month, Netflix is releasing a sequel to the classic miniseries based on Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City. Laura Linney and Olympia Dukakis will return as Mary Ann Singleton and her mysterious landlady Anna Madrigal. 

Maupin titled his recent memoir Logical Families. Like Maupin’s novels – and indeed like a significant percentage of all queer literature – his memoir focuses on the “logical” families people find or create when their “bio-logical” families cannot or will not welcome them. Gay choruses, lesbian friendship clusters, LGBT softball leagues, and similar chosen families provide the safe space we all need to thrive.

Watching Shazam! with the son I adopted from the foster system reminded me of the wide variety of non-biological families that can rise from the ashes of tragedy and disappointment – still broken in some ways, yet stronger together. 

These final two sections are adapted from an essay I published in October 2017, “Sure of You”:

Children with two dads grow up comfortable talking about adoption. We’ve always tried to be honest in an age-appropriate way, answering questions and engaging issues as they arise. All three kids came to us during the era of “open adoption,” long after child psychologists and social workers recognized the harm wrought by prior decades’ secrecy and shame. Still, I’ve observed the same fundamental dynamic at work in a wide variety of adoptive households: For every child curious about her origins, there’s another who is more interested in animals or sports. And for every birthparent who wants to reach out and make a connection, there’s another who still isn’t ready and may never be.

A couple of years ago my son came home from school with a homemade Mother's Day card and a letter addressed to his birth mother. In the letter, Oliver explained that he misses his mom, but he understands she’s been busy dealing with stuff, and he hopes that she’s doing well and can see him again soon. He made me promise to mail the card to her. So I tracked down a current address in another part of the state, added a few extra pictures and a note from me, put some stamps on a bottle, and sent my son’s hopeful message out into the world. 

A few weeks later, my parents invited the kids and me across town so they could check all four of us for signs of scurvy. Inspired by signs of incipient maturity, for the first time Grandma assigned Oliver to set the table solo before we all sat down to an excellent meal.

That night as I tucked him in bed, Oliver whined about Grandma’s slave driving. But he knows I will defend my mom no matter what, just as I will defend his birth mother, too. As we lay in the dark a few minutes later, my son quietly asked why his mom hadn’t responded to his Mother’s Day card. [Ed. Note: Oliver’s birth mother still hasn’t responded.]

I told Oliver she probably didn’t feel ready yet, and it might make her sad to see how much he’d grown in the last seven years. I assured him she’s welcome to spend time with him, and reminded him that no one can take him away from our family, even though she will always be his mother. I said she might be afraid he would judge her, or worry that he wouldn’t have enough love left for her. But I told my son he has such a big heart that I know he has enough love for all of us.

Oliver sleeps in the queen-sized guest bed, and ordinarily I have lots of pillows and space to myself when we cuddle at bedtime. But that night he pulled me next to him and tightly held my arms as he fell asleep.

Happy Easter from Bellingham and Vancouver

Click here for links to more essays about our family’s experiences with adoption 
and the Washington state foster system

Holy Underwear

My son Oliver’s wicked gaming skills have earned him an invitation to some kind of Fortnite all-star tournament. According to Oliver, there’s a $1 million prize. He says that if he wins he won’t get anything for his sisters. But the first thing he’ll do is buy me a new car.

Me too.

I have a social worker friend who worked with military families for many years. When I told him about my PTSD diagnosis, he asked when I anticipated being back at work. I said I hoped it wouldn’t take more than six months. He looked at me, paused, and said “Trauma can take a long time.”

One of my writing files, labeled “Longterm Unemployment,” includes my increasingly voluminous musings on the various implications of having your life derailed indefinitely. Most of the stories are too triggering or at least too disheartening to share yet. But I think I’ve made enough progress to tell this one.

Before Vancouver Men’s Chorus rehearsal on Wednesdays, I usually go to my favorite coffee shop on Commercial Drive. The regular barista and I are buds. A few weeks ago my receipt had the tell-tale coloured stripe signaling it’s time to change the ribbon. I laughed, and told her I’d done laundry that morning. You know it’s time when you’re down to the pair of underwear that’s wholly holes. 

When the barista brought my quad americano to the table where I was typing on my laptop, she smiled and said, “Did you know economists can predict when a recession is about to end by observing when men start buying new underwear?” 

Deferred maintenance, whether it’s involves your house, car, wardrobe, or body, is something you think you can ignore forever. Until you can’t.

Still, I was doing fine before I moved into a house with two Aussiedoodles.

Bear and Buster are chewers. Their favorite chew toy, even more than bones, socks, or fuzzy things, is stolen underwear.

Considering I still don’t have a real job, can either of these items of intimate apparel be characterized as “sexy” holey underwear? 

Yesterday I drove to Seattle for oral argument at the Washington Court of Appeals in my lawsuit against the bottom-feeding private investigator firm that colluded with my former employers to evade their responsibilities under the Washington Law Against Discrimination and the Rules of Professional Conduct. The court will issue its ruling in a few weeks. On a Monday. I offer no predictions, but I remain hopeful. 

Regardless of the outcome of the case, I’m glad to reach the end of this particular chapter of my life. To celebrate, on the way home to Bellingham I stopped at the Premium Outlet mall, where I bought two heavily-discounted packages of underwear at the Calvin Klein store. 

No holes yet. Except for what looks like a bullet wound in my chest where the recent alien bacterial infection had been burrowing.¹

¹Trust me, you don’t want to see pictures. And this comes from the guy who posted a photo of his inflamed left nipple on the internet last week.

At the courthouse - last beard picture until Fall