A catalog of the stuff in my apartment
Last year I joined a gay book club. The selections are all by and/or about LGBTQ+ people (broadly defined), and the club’s members are all gay nerds (narrowly defined). We usually meet at the Boston Public Library in Copley Square on the last Wednesday of the month. Since I joined in fall 2023, every book […]
One of the pieces of furniture I have owned the longest is a skinny stack of wooden drawers that looks like it could have come from a library’s card catalog section. I use the cabinet to store my CDs, almost all of which I acquired during the 1990s. Basically, the whole setup is a Russian […]
Thanks to my ongoing Spanish classes, supplemented by daily Duolingo lessons and consistent pestering of my Puerto Rican spouse (who could stand to show a little more interest in the finer points of the subjunctive, if you ask me), I have progressed in my Spanish learning to the “High Beginner/Low Intermediate” stage, according to the […]
I started dating my husband, Frank, almost 18 years ago; we met on October 2, 2006. If our involvement with one another were a person, it’d be old enough to join the military—probably the Navy, since that’s the gayest branch of the armed forces, owing in large part to the indisputable truth that sailors get […]
I went to the beach only a couple times this summer. During my most recent day out on the sand, there was no umbrella for me to cower under, so to protect my pasty skin from harmful UV rays, I slathered on extra sunscreen, kept my shirt on, and used my towel as a blanket […]
As of this month, I have maintained this blog about my belongings for 5 years. I am fairly pleased with how things are going, though the AI-generated feedback from WordPress, the platform I use to create this thing, seems less enthusiastic. Before publishing a post, WordPress now lets you click a button so that a […]
Because I sometimes forget to put on sunscreen before I leave the house, I carry a spare bottle in my bag for application on the go. But that usually means I have to smear the cream on my face without the benefit of a mirror and can’t see what a poor job of blending I’ve […]
At a Pride party I attended last month, somebody I had just met asked me if I was gay. “Can’t you tell?” I said. “Sometimes with nerds it’s hard to tell,” he said. I live for that kind of remark because I can’t wait to repeat it. My idea of the perfect material for a […]
I recently read Lord of the Flies for the first time. I know, I know: You read it in ninth grade. Well, excuse me, but I attended an evangelical Christian school. We’re lucky I know my multiplication tables. I found the novel distressing, though I suppose I do agree with author William Golding’s pessimistic assessment […]
Since March, I’ve taken three regional trips—to Martha’s Vineyard; Rockport, Mass.; and Provincetown—and two trips to farther-afield destinations: El Salvador and Valdez, Alaska. Needless to say, this flitting around has left me concerned about my finances, my disrupted sleep schedule, and my chances of contracting the fungal skin infection evidently poised to ruin my “Hot […]
Indirect Objects 