Midmod Musings

Top 5 Things on My Mind Today

1. I love summer in St. Paul. I went for a run along the Mississippi River today at 7 am. The morning sun shone on the city to my right and the fast-moving waters to my left. People -- specifically, Minneapolitans -- continue to mock me for moving to St. Paul, but between the farmer's market, the music festivals, the parks, the century-old buildings, the two gay bars in stumbling distance from my loft, and the ample free street parking after 4:30 pm, I'm not sure I get their point.

2. I do not feel Schadenfreude over the demise of Theatre de la Jeune Lune. Friends seem to expect some sense of glee from me because they know my experience working there was far from pleasant. But there was something about their productions, even the clunkers, that always blew me away. (Okay, except maybe Honeymoon China -- that one stunk up the place.) Their production of Cyrano way back when was as lyrical and beautiful a production as I had ever seen; Children of Paradise was an unforgettable event. The first production on tap when I started working there was The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which I must have seen four or five times. The image of Sarah Agnew's Esmeralda hanging from the rafters was haunting; seeing her in shows now at the Guthrie and the Jungle, I still have this weird sensation of, "Oh my God, I'm so glad she's alive." As a theater person, whose preferred art form is ephemeral, I live for those moments, those images, those sensations that stick with you, that somehow magically replay in your memory, that summon up a visceral response despite the time that has elapsed since you encountered them. Jeune Lune provided many of those for me.

3. Angus is almost 13. He's blind as a bat: my loft is pocked with noseprints where he has bumped into the walls. Although he has recovered some hearing since last summer, he's functionally deaf -- you call out to him and he registers the sound, but has no idea where it came from, so he runs fulls speed into a cabinet. I keep thinking I should get him a helmet. Yet he's a happy dog. One of my favorite things in the world is driving in to work with him in the back of my Saturn Vue, and seeing his smiling face in the rear view mirror.

4. The Red Wing Convention is just weeks away. I have made a mental list of items I am hoping will magically be there at bargain prices. These include (but are not limited to):

• A dusk blue Town & Country soup tureen with lid
• An Engobe line figural piece, preferably the muse with lyre
• A Belle Kogan muse vase in ming green (hmm, am I saying I need a muse?)
• A Smart Set cruet set with wire holder

 5. I've been dating Paul for more than 5 months. I would say more, but I don't want to jinx anything.

Free to Be in PV

If you ever doubt the American tourist’s astonishing lack of imagination, look no further than the requests they make of strolling musicians in Puerto Vallarta. Whether a solo musician or an itinerant mariachi band, one hears essentially two songs: “La Bamba,” and that Mexican standard whose chorus sounds to these non-Spanish speaking ears like “Wonton Avail Uh.” Despite Linda Ronstadt’s best efforts to teach us other canciones in the 80s, we continue to equate “Mexican” with Richie Valens. Or God help us, “Feliz Navidad.” I’m so glad it’s not December.

 

 

At Café Olla, a neighborhood place recommended to us by Oskar, our concierge at Casa Cupula, a table of 14 fat Americans – as if to prove my point – had just requested both “La Bamba” and the Wonton song. When the slender guitarist concluded, he approached Paul and me and asked what kind of a song we wanted – happy, sad, romantic, or traditional – we opted for “traditional.” I wanted to hear something authentic. He sang two lovely ballads (neither of which contained the word corazon, so they seemed credibly genuine). His guitar playing was straightforward, but he had a sweet voice that slipped easily into a plaintive falsetto. In the not-quite-air-conditioned restaurant, next to a tree growing in the floor, his songs were a charming distraction from the heat.

 

 

So much so that I didn’t notice the extraordinary thing right away. Here, in this cozy, decidedly mainstream restaurant, the balladeer had come up to two guys and offered to sing a romantic song. There were, according to my gaydar, a couple of other homos in the house, but it was mostly a straight crowd. The table closest to us – aside from the monster table of 14 – looked like two tattooed street toughs drinking cerveza and smoking Marlboros. Not even they seemed fazed by two guys being serenaded.

Mexico is a deeply Catholic country. If you go into any of the touristy gift shops in Vallarta, they are brimming with devotional objects: silver crosses, tin dioramas with clay saints, oil paintings of Mary, and all manner of sacred-heart-of-Jesus kitsch. Yet this city has somehow embraced the gays, pretty much universally. Without incident (or so much as a second glance), Paul and I held hands on the beach, kissed on the boardwalk, and made moon-eyes at each other at any number of upscale restaurants. Straight couples bought us drinks at beachside bars. Even the ubiquitous and relentless canopy tour and timeshare salesmen asked nosy questions about how long we’d been together and nudge-nudge-wink-winked their way through sales pitches while plying us with flavored tequilas. One asked if we planned to go to California to get married.

A cynic might say something about a gay tourist peso being as good as a straight one, but I never sensed any duplicity in the people we met. I’ve never felt safer – not even in San Francisco – to just be me. American cities could learn a lot from the hospitality of Vallarta. Maybe the hundreds of gay retirees buying condos there would have stayed stateside if some city somewhere had extended a hand and said, “Welcome home” the way that Puerto Vallarta has.