I don't quite remember when I first met incarnadine_ich, but just that our friendship ran back to the days when I lived in Kenmore with jasonlizard and arcanus and that he would sometimes show up spontaneously on a weekend and ask, "hey you want to go for a walk?" It didn't take long for me to realize that "going for a walk" with him meant wandering across Boston, from Kenmore to ( Read more... )

"Hi, my name is Cris and the story that I'm going to tell is about a road trip that I took thirteen years ago. I was twenty-four, a couple of years out of college, in that point of time in one's life where you're making friends, meeting new people, forming the surrogate family that you've chosen. That summer, a few friends of mine and I decided ( Read more... )

My memories of Canadian Thanksgiving are of ...

• ... waking up early to brew coffee and sit at a dining table to peel apples and slice onions, letting my brain find peace in the calming repetition within the strokes of a blade.


• ... a kitchen filled with the scents of baked stuffing, turkey stock, and rice cooked in coconut milk.
• ... the sounds of ( Read more... )

The last time that I saw Mike was six years ago on a cool summer night in Vermont. We had ridden together for 200 miles to this house on the border of New York before his legs gave out and I left him behindIt was the first year that we had both started in randonneuring, and we had bonded in online forums as rookies, sharing tips and confessing to ( Read more... )

Nearly a year had passed since silentq and I had ciimbed Kilimanjaro. It was a year with snowshoeing, skiing, brevets and skydiving, but the camping itch was manifesting again. On a clear day, I could look out of the windows of my downtown office and see the green hills of the Middlesex Fells. So we did our research, pulled a few books and maps from ( Read more... )

It was probably around this time eight years ago, I was cleaning up from the first party I co-hosted in the apartment I lived in at Kenmore Square. It was an old brownstone in the middle of a graceful decline -- tall ceilings, french doors and peeling wallpaper, and it was rented by arcanus, sogellag and sogellag's boyfriend, Gabe. I had just graduated from ( Read more... )

FengSwish1 at Liquid Hair Studios has been my hair stylist since 2001. It seems like a terribly non-heterosexual male thing to have a stylist as opposed to a barber, but that's just the whole gender/identity politics thing getting in the way. I don't worry about it, and if one feels a need to attach a label to it, you could say that our divergent ( Read more... )

It started when I was standing with escarey at the club during one of LadyB's sets, listening to "Everybody Knows" and having escarey tell me that she wasn't all that familiar with Leonard Cohen.

"Then, I'll make you a comp," I said, and in saying that I realized how much I missed those words. With the exception of the Christmas music swap parties, I've hardly ( Read more... )

I was hanging out with mishak on Saturday afternoon, finishing up lunch and a conversation about torture1. It was on the way out that I asked him if he had sarcasmchasm's number, because I needed to call her to discuss possible evening plans. I've been asking for numbers with some frequency, now that I'm on my fourth cell phone in as many months, and need to ( Read more... )

The day after I flew in to San Francisco, I drove into the city to kill sometime before meeting some friends for a birthday dinner. I drove into SoMa, parked, got out of the car, and instantly I looked up and saw Paul and Tyler walking down the street. Paul, I knew as one of Yosh's housemates and friends, and last time I talked to him was when he ( Read more... )