Fifteen years is a long, long time. Fifteen years can seem like an eternity. But when someone is taken away from you, irrevocably and without notice, and when that someone is someone you love so very dearly, nights stretch on and dreams become strange, but fifteen years, they go by in the blink of an eye.

I miss you, Daddy.

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What is it about mothers that they feel the need to keep information from their sons, that they feel the need to be self-reliant, that they demand their independence? "I wasn't going to tell you," my mother said to me tonight. "Because I didn't want you to worry." Greg and I rushed over to her apartment a few hours ago to check on her. She had taken a tumble earlier today and had sustained a few bruises, and had called only to let me know that she hadn't eaten all day because of the pain.

"Of course you should have told me," I said, as quietly and reassuringly as I could, but the guilt in my voice was sure to have come through, and I helped her to the dining table to eat some of the supper we'd brought with us. "Of course you should have told me."

She tore through the meal, famished as she was, grimacing through her injuries as I sat there feeling helpless.

"Next time something like this happens," I said, "next time you fall or are hurting or are in pain, next time you can't eat because you can't get up, make sure you call me, okay?" She nodded. "Promise?" She shrugged.

She shrugged because it was the same thing she'd promised me the last time this happened, just a mere week ago when she called only to ask if I could take her to the doctor because she'd been bedridden with pain for three days and couldn't get there herself.

What is it about mothers that they feel the need to be strong in front of their sons? Is it so wrong of a child to want to take charge as she grows older, as she loses her independence, as she hurts more and more with every passing birthday? I think about what they say about parents becoming like children and children becoming their parents, trying to reconcile the guilt I feel for wanting to take her into my charge and tend to her every need, for wanting to provide for her every want, for wanting to be there every moment of the day.

For wanting to rob her of her independence.

Role reversal, overprotective son. What is it about aging that necessarily robs us our dignity?

"Make sure you call me tonight before you go to bed, okay?"

"Yes, okay."

She hobbled to the door, trying not to grimace from the pain of her swollen ankles, and I hugged her as cheerfully as I could. "And make sure you call me next time." We both smiled and she waved goodbye as Greg and I left her apartment, her pretending to be as nonchalant as possible and me pretending to be as cheerful as I could. Inside I was tearing up with guilt.

What is it about mothers that they can make you hurt so damn much?

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The city is quiet today, the day after Pride weekend and all its trappings. It certainly always seems that way the day after. Here in midtown, the rainbows and the glitter and the scantily clad revelers have been replaced with businessmen in their business suits and business ties rushing about with their stodgy business briefcases to close their lucrative deals. Weekend over, time for a costume change, back to work.

I walked the parade this year. Chris had asked for volunteers to help with the balloons, and we began the day yesterday assembling the six gigantic strands of colour into what would lead the entire parade from midtown. I'd never really seen the parade, except for the tail end of it a few years back, and this was a tremendous way to experience it. We began the trek at noon, drumming up the crowds and cheering as loudly as we could, marveling at the weather and grinning broadly as we waved and yelled and hooted and hollered. I was tickled whenever the crowds responded, and respond they did, cheering a thousand times more loudly in return and raising the goosebumps on my arms. Steven and I walked together, winking and waving at the pretty boys in the crowd. One of them followed me forty paces, scribbling something furiously on a piece of paper and yelling at me to take it from him; another asked if I would go to a party after the march.

At 2pm we crossed onto Christopher Street and stopped for a moment of silence, the crowds erupting into cheers as we resumed.

***

I sometimes wonder about the relevance of Pride weekend these days, and whether or not it's really needed, what with things like this tending to become little more than an excuse for folks to throw a party and get drunk.

On the subway ride back home, a troupe of rowdy adolescent girls laughed and swore and made crude jokes. "I didn't know there were so many fuckin' gay people," one said. "There were so many people at the parade." She adjusted the rainbow bandana on her head and smoothed the "God made me queer" sticker on her shirt. "Next time I'ma throwing me a fuckin' gay party."

"What your grandma gonna say when she sees you like that?" her friend asked.

The first girl paused and shrugged nonchalantly. "I'ma blow her socks off and tell her I went to gay pride."

A third girl laughed. "And that you spent the day with a bunch of faggots?"

"Hush yo mouth," the first girl replied angrily. "You don't ever say that word again." She continued smoothing the sticker and looked quietly up as the train pulled out of Roosevelt Avenue. "Gay people are cool."

Her friends stopped and grinned. "You know what," they said. "You're right. They ain't so bad."

And it was then I realised the relevance of Pride weekend. That if even with weary feet at the end of a long and exhausting day my spirits could so suddenly be lifted, that despite the transgressions of a group of loud and obnoxious girls a single comment of theirs could make me smile, then yes, I'd say it's certainly all worth it. Pride weekend is still very relevant.

Happy Pride, everyone.

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To me.

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From the stairwell on the seventeenth floor, I watch the quiet monotones of a thunderstormy Friday saturate midtown Manhattan. Down below, taxicabs roll along unhurried, their yellows dulled by the nebulous mass of grey high overhead, their wheels splish-splashing in the pools of water collected beneath. Umbrella tops glide by, indecisive circles on the pavement below.

Someone flirted with me on Tuesday. I was struggling with the door to Chris's building on the Upper East Side when I saw out of the corner of my eye a man stick his foot in the elevator door, holding it open and waiting for me to get in. "Which floor?" he asked. I gave the number and thanked him, suddenly aware that he was looking me over in the cramped space of the elevator. "You know," he said, "the only reason I held the door was because you're cute."

I don't know why that memory came to me this morning, but it did. Rainy days do that to me sometimes. They make me pensive, they put me in a somber mood, they temper the crazies in my mind and slur the voices in my head. Rainy days are good that way.

I just thought I'd share.

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I'm still here. Sorta. Whaddya want?

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Butterflies and dragonflies and pillow-white clouds and setting suns. Another February come and gone and what really have we to show for it but a smattering of memories harvested for pensive nights and a few extra wrinkles collected at the corners of our eyes? I watched this evening a tiny insect jump off the leading edge of a jet engine and get immediately swallowed by the powerful rotating blades, its life no more inconsequential than mine and just as fleeting. I struggle these days with a sense of purpose only to be consumed myself with the vagaries of work and ever-changing human drama around me. What have we to show for anything? It's the perennial question, I suppose, and one intended and perhaps so designed never to be answered. Life, death, what have we at the end of it all but the impressions we leave on our fellow humans? What do we do to be truly happy? Do dragonflies ever dream?

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"And your boyfriend, he won't be angry?"

"Of course not," I said. "Why?"

Oswaldo cupped my chin gently between his thumb and middle finger and lifted my face away from the light. "This," he said, and he touched with his index finger a spot on my exposed neck two inches below my left ear. "Here."

I looked at my reflection to where Oswaldo was pointing and giggled. Oswaldo regarded the red streak forming in the fading light and smiled in concert. "I think I am in love with you," he said.

***

We've just returned from five days in Fort Lauderdale, a last-minute Christmas gift to Greg and a well-timed escape from the suddenly frigid northeast of last week. It was a relaxing time by all counts, time spent lounging poolside and hot-tubbing with immediate and disposable best friends: David, Lorenzo, John, Antonio, Bob, and a host of others whose names have already begun to fade from memory, faces we're likely to never see again and who we'd long forgotten in the haze of frantic relaxation.

We're back to the city now, back from blue skies and temperatures in the mid-seventies, back from Atlantic breezes and friendly vacationers, back from poolside cocktails and burgers. We're back to a quiet apartment and an even quieter outside, welcomed by a gentle snowfall that's already begun to blanket the streets in white.

Thank you, Fort Lauderdale, for a wonderfully relaxing time. Thank you for the food, the fun, the laughter. Thank you for the balmy weather and the lazy conversations. And thank you gentle, playful Oswaldo, wherever you are, for my first Cuban embarrassment.

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Last day of the year, wondering during a brief emergence from twelve months of hibernation, from twelve months of madness, from twelve months of mayhem: how can so much change so fast, so completely?

And really, no, really: where has my 2006 gone?

Here's to hoping 2007 brings peace to troubled minds.

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Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Munich, Innsbruck, Vienna. Greg and I have been traipsing about Germany and Austria the past eight days by train, little more than our overloaded backpacks and train tickets in tow and the merest hint of what to do when we arrived to wherever it was we ended up that day.


We flew in to Frankfurt last Friday and we've been seeing most of the countryside by train, ending up in the various cities and making daytrips from there as we see fit. Everywhere we go, in the centuries-old castles and cobblestone streets, history and beauty and human drama saturates: from the manmade grotto in mad King Ludwig's fantastical Neuschwanstein Castle near Füssen and the chilling and cramped room marked Bransebad--"showers"--at Hitler's concentration camp in Dachau, to the picture-perfect Innsbruck at the foothills of the Alps and the intricate vaulted ceilings of the soot-covered church in Stefansplatz.

And the food, oh, the glorious food.

Double helpings--and then one more--of hearty and seasonal martinsganskarte at Palmbraü Gasse in Heidelberg (to where we escaped Juliette Lewis and her band chowing down before their concert), multiple servings of wiener schnitzel (in Vienna, most naturally), bratwursts and smoked meats and döner kebabs and sidewalk roasted chestnuts, sampling everything at the outdoor Naschmarkt to the delight of the stall owners hawking their wares, sipping slow cappuccinos and einspanners at the ancient Viennese Kaffehauses (where the tuxedo-clad waiters were disappointingly polite), hunting down the Sacher Hotel for its famous Sachertort chocolate indulgences that are nothing short of sinful.

It's 5pm on Friday as I write this, and we are on the train heading from Vienna back to Frankfurt, wending west through towns and cities, through woodlands and meadows, trading Grüss Gotts for Guten Tags, all suitably exhausted and our bellies full from gorging on Viennese pastries. We fly back home tomorrow, our feet weary, and, as with any good vacation, looking forward to the normalcy of it all again.

And that's one of the best parts of a vacation, isn't it? The heading back home, I mean.

A few photos here.

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