הי״ד

Of all the abhorrent tragedies happening under this white supremacist regime, the Tree of Life-Or L'Simcha massacre hits home more closely than most. My stepmother is Jewish. I have several good friends who are Jewish (I don't think I realised how many until I decided to make a point of checking in with them), one of whom lives in Squirrel Hill about two blocks from the site of the shooting. I'm actually relieved he's in Germany right now, which I'm sure sounds ironic to some people.

Squirrel Hill also reminds me an awful lot of parts of suburban St Louis where I have family. I've walked past that synagogue more than once. So there's a strong element of If It Can Happen Here, It Can Happen Anywhere. I've been well aware of that for years, of course, but it's the old notional vs experiential dichotomy and I'm feeling the experiential part very viscerally right now. There are also echoes of the Pulse massacre in all of this. The way in which I'm reaching out to my Jewish friends is grounded in how I wish people had reached out to me after that happened.

Just now I was messaging one of those friends who recently moved to Columbus. He was the first to venture some concrete advice on how best to respond, concluding with a passage from Deuteronomy about choosing life. I think choosing life in this instance means defeating evil and if that doesn't describe the current regime then I don't know what the word means. But how do we do that? Everyone's talking about voting but that is, at best, a stopgap measure when what we need is a torrent through the stables.

Lies and hos

Friday night I had invitations to two Halloween parties and attended neither. Instead I went to dinner with a friend I felt I'd been putting off for too long. In a spirit of adventure, he took me to a new-to-me Persian place literally across the street from Noon-o-Kabob. It was cafeteria-style and the portions were absolutely outrageous. (Two meals and I still have leftovers.) While there, I talked about how much I missed Massouleh and then confided my troubles finding a suitable outfit for the wedding reception on Sunday.

He tipped me to an upscale resale shop in West Town. It more than an hour each way so I'd meant to get a jump on the day but I woke to such depressing news that I literally crawled back under the covers rather than deal with it. At the busstop that afternoon I overheard a couple of middle-aged women briefing a teen on almost the exact bus route I was taking so I offered to keep an eye on him. They were effusive in their gratitude and he was aloof but ultimately thanked me sincerely.

The shop was everything that was promised. He told me of the proprietor "He'll dress you" and he did, selling me on a beautiful vintage Pierre Cardin blazer and a quirky disco shirt to go with it. They netted me an outrageous number of compliments at the reception (as did--rather unexpectedly--my dance moves). I kept trying to leave only to have my eye caught but yet another fabulous find and only made it away as dusk was falling.

That evening we got the gaming group together for the first time in weeks. JB went wild in the kitchen, serving us pumpkin soup, a mushroom-leek galette, and apple cake with Calvados for dessert. After dinner, he passed a bong around and we tramped upstairs for a game of Final Girl with me the only unstoned player. I got so into it the others were like, "Are you sure you don't want to run the next game?"

The next day I'd planned to hit Middle Eastern Bakery and then loaf or possibly do a few chores until the reception. Just as I was preparing to head out, I got a text out of the blue from one of the Madison bears who was marooned out by O'Hare while his husband cosplayed in Indiana. It was basically a wanna-fuck and I was in just the right mood to be all "Well, I'll be back here from noon to 3:30. Come get it if you want it" and genuinely not care if he showed up. (He did. I did him. It was fun.)

I arrived unfashionably punctually to the reception and caught a glimpse of the grooms before their grand entrance to "Here Comes Your Man". One friend summed up the guest list as "Basically my 'People You May Know' list from Facebook"; as a consequence of my attendance, at least four guys migrated from there to my Friends list. They ranged from someone I'd only just met to someone I knew through LJ and had last seen at a house party about fifteen years ago.

It had everything I could want from a marriage celebration: I ate, I drank, I danced, I watched the groom's super hot brother give his wife a lapdance in the middle of the room. Despite an early end (they kicked us out at 9 p.m.--or tried at least) I was so excited I had trouble sleeping, with the result that I fell asleep in the bathtub the following evening. But that's another story.