Awake!
Well, we're in it. It's not Lent. But, it might as well be. It's the first week of Advent. We were treated to the traditional Gospel reading from Matthew 24 where Jesus warns his disciples to be alert to the coming of The Son of Man, comparing it to The Flood. A reckoning on the same order. Essentially, it is an allusion to death.
Christmas, it appears, is a brief respite of relief between two - in some ways - equally somber, contemplative sections of the Church calendar, Advent and Lent.
This Advent arrived on the heels of a Friday-after-Thanksgiving afternoon given over to pub crawling with an old friend from my ACT-UP days. Algernon and I met during the waning days of the Black Action Now committee which was sort of the successor to the Majority Action Committee after the latter blew to pieces following the discovery of one of its leaders double-billing for expenses. It was a short-lived association. The new members were younger, more college-educated than the older, Lower East Side oriented members of MAC. They were verbally skilled, endlessly cerebral and seemed to all know each other from Dartmouth. Apparently, that was where they discovered their inner-radical/militant.
Their resentments against all things white and male and particularly as they pertained to ACT-UP soon dissolved into weekly rant sessions against the umbrella organization which led to their diminished attendance at the mass meetings on Monday nights. Remember that this was in the days before the internet and smartphones, so attendance at actual brick-and-mortar meeting spaces was kind of important, if you wanted to know what was going on.
As always happens to me in these situations, I was torn between the friends that I had made and the friends who didn't like them. And, as nearly always, I chose the friends I had aready made.
Algernon occupied a particularly anguishing location along the spectrum of loyalties, if for no other reason than that he lived in Brooklyn, not far from me. We would often find ourselves on the train together. The last time I saw him was when I bumped into he and his young son at Atlantic Terminal and invited him to my house-warming. He never made it. That was seventeen years ago. Strangely, the random encounters stopped immediately even though I was only a few train stops away from where I had last lived.
That was until the Sunday before Thanksgiving, the one I had pegged for disaster for not attending church. I was on my way to a LGBTQ support group, searching for the Livingston Street entrance to the C train when there he was, standing on the opposite corner, waiting to cross the street. He was older. He'd gone from a slightly effeminate young gay man to a slightly more somber middle-aged version of himself. Older, yes, but probably no older than I would appear to him after seventeen years. I did a quick calculus. Did it make sense to catch his attention?
It was actually my curiosity that got the best of me. What had happened to him? Why had he not come to my house-warming?
It turns out, he as just as curious about me and we made plans to meet as soon as the last cranberry was devoured at our respective families' Thanksgiving dinners. To seal the deal, we even exchanged cell phone numbers.
That was nearly two weeks ago. When we finally met the Friday after, what was supposed to be a few hours catching up at Happy Hour, had turned into six, with approximately one alcoholic drink per hour. I made it home in plenty of time to take my meds, but, too late to avoid having a bit of a headache the next morning.
When I tried to explain to The Rector what it was that I'd had to drink, I mistakenly said vodka and grape juice at which she frowned and said "That sounds awful." I immediately corrected myself and interjected, "I mean, vodka and grape fruit juice!" She thought about it a moment and said, "That still sounds terrible."
Christmas, it appears, is a brief respite of relief between two - in some ways - equally somber, contemplative sections of the Church calendar, Advent and Lent.
This Advent arrived on the heels of a Friday-after-Thanksgiving afternoon given over to pub crawling with an old friend from my ACT-UP days. Algernon and I met during the waning days of the Black Action Now committee which was sort of the successor to the Majority Action Committee after the latter blew to pieces following the discovery of one of its leaders double-billing for expenses. It was a short-lived association. The new members were younger, more college-educated than the older, Lower East Side oriented members of MAC. They were verbally skilled, endlessly cerebral and seemed to all know each other from Dartmouth. Apparently, that was where they discovered their inner-radical/militant.
Their resentments against all things white and male and particularly as they pertained to ACT-UP soon dissolved into weekly rant sessions against the umbrella organization which led to their diminished attendance at the mass meetings on Monday nights. Remember that this was in the days before the internet and smartphones, so attendance at actual brick-and-mortar meeting spaces was kind of important, if you wanted to know what was going on.
As always happens to me in these situations, I was torn between the friends that I had made and the friends who didn't like them. And, as nearly always, I chose the friends I had aready made.
Algernon occupied a particularly anguishing location along the spectrum of loyalties, if for no other reason than that he lived in Brooklyn, not far from me. We would often find ourselves on the train together. The last time I saw him was when I bumped into he and his young son at Atlantic Terminal and invited him to my house-warming. He never made it. That was seventeen years ago. Strangely, the random encounters stopped immediately even though I was only a few train stops away from where I had last lived.
That was until the Sunday before Thanksgiving, the one I had pegged for disaster for not attending church. I was on my way to a LGBTQ support group, searching for the Livingston Street entrance to the C train when there he was, standing on the opposite corner, waiting to cross the street. He was older. He'd gone from a slightly effeminate young gay man to a slightly more somber middle-aged version of himself. Older, yes, but probably no older than I would appear to him after seventeen years. I did a quick calculus. Did it make sense to catch his attention?
It was actually my curiosity that got the best of me. What had happened to him? Why had he not come to my house-warming?
It turns out, he as just as curious about me and we made plans to meet as soon as the last cranberry was devoured at our respective families' Thanksgiving dinners. To seal the deal, we even exchanged cell phone numbers.
That was nearly two weeks ago. When we finally met the Friday after, what was supposed to be a few hours catching up at Happy Hour, had turned into six, with approximately one alcoholic drink per hour. I made it home in plenty of time to take my meds, but, too late to avoid having a bit of a headache the next morning.
When I tried to explain to The Rector what it was that I'd had to drink, I mistakenly said vodka and grape juice at which she frowned and said "That sounds awful." I immediately corrected myself and interjected, "I mean, vodka and grape fruit juice!" She thought about it a moment and said, "That still sounds terrible."