How to do the wrong thing right
From getting sober to staying single
Brave New World Update: Miracle of miracles! On June 17, albeit, one day too shy, unfortunately, to make this issue’s ASK HOWARD, President Biden (with an ebullient Vice President Harris beaming by his side) bestowed into law a new holiday — a privilege granted to only a rarified few presidents. Yes, please stand my fellow Americans, do, and let’s all give Biden/Harris a big, unifying hand (of long, long overdue absolution) for creating our gleaming latest, brand new, officially-recognized national holiday . . . at last!
Welcome aboard, Juneteenth! Gurl, whatever took you so long?
Ah, sweet June. Across the northern hemisphere, June is June everywhere. Everything’s still beautiful.
All the trees and foliage of high summer haven’t been rendered raggedy yet. Marriages are fresh and exciting, eternally sunny. June 20 marks the summer solstice this year. Our longest day of the year always takes place this month, when the Earth’s north pole is at its maximum axial tilt toward the sun, and continuous daylight never leaves the Arctic circle.
On the day directly preceding the solstice — June 19 — arrives a holiday of slightly dimmer understanding, known as Juneteenth. As I understand, way back on New Year’s Day, 1863, was when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect; however, the “official” date of slavery’s end didn’t become written in ink in Texas until two years later on June 19, 1865, for that was how long it took word to filter down to the last remaining American slaves, located in Galveston, Texas, who were freed by a troop of mostly black Union soldiers. Thus, June 19 is nowadays embraced as Juneteenth, the still-as-of-yet “un-officiated” holiday celebrating when American slavery was no more. In sidebar, for those of you wishing to throw support behind the movement endorsing that Juneteenth be welcomed a national holiday, visit JuneteenthLegacyProject.com
Well, okey-dokey, now; let’s just get all gleamingly emancipated, eternal sunshine of this spotless honeymoon period’s, Covid’s-over/fresh-start excitement right to it, then, shall we?
Dear Howard: I got into a knock-down/drag-out fight with my new husband the other night. Like, we’re talking Code Red, secret-lab-in-Wuhan-level dramatics here, on full public display: Fred somehow escaped outside, tweakin’ mad, keys in hand, drunk as a motorcycle, against which I made a preventative stance in our klieg-lit driveway, virally conjuring up my best Richard Avedon’s “Dovima with Elephants” pose. Not the cleverest idea I’ve ever had. Of course, he roared right out over me.
By the time we each returned from the hospital it was broad daylight and both of us sober. I have to wear this damned cast on my foot at least until Labor Day. There goes the summer — two in a row now just … lost. Trapped indoors. Two old housebound harpies, both of us lyin’ like rugs.
Our public story is that I was rearranging the furniture (yes, at 2 a.m.), and one of our alabaster obelisks tipped over, landing on my ankle. A handy alibi, being that the hurled antiquity did play lurid jetsam in the night’s various ornamental damages — I forget which one of us threw it at the other.
Fred told me in the hospital, while my foot, was being x-rayed that this is my wake-up call: I need to go to AA. I likewise informed Fred that our koi pond’s newly-installed, wrecked combustion-engine bicycle feature would be replaced, brand new again — he needn’t worry — by the time he returned from Betty Ford. A poke too far, maybe, Howard? — Dizzy Dale
Dear Desilou: I think you and Fred, like all those so blessedly unencumbered by the ravages of intellect — blissfully adrift in a sparkling spaciness like a lunar rover ferrying rhinestones — should simply leave the Harley to the koi pond where she rests. Glue-capstone its mangled handlebar with your shattered obelisk’s permanently exposed shards of regret. Obviously, no visitor will need inquire what your secret for overnight sobriety was, and the free money your new outdoor, modern art installation saves via bypassing a stint at Betty Ford, all the subsequent relapses, money eternally owed your various dealers, etc., will more than cover a new hog for Freddie. A solid gold one, at that, and another, grander obelisk, too — go jasper this time, Desi, granite, even! Fuck, go all-out malachite, gurl, you sober, greenly enviable survivor, you!
Dear Howard: I’m planning a trip abroad later this summer, the first for me and my boyfriend, together. Jim’s been all over Europe, except for Scandinavia and Russia. We’ll be in the mood for a cold clime come September. We’re both fully vaccinated. Any advice on how gay people behave differently from culture to culture? Do they? We don’t want to come across as country bumpkins. — Jethro and Jethrene
Dear JJs: Last month, I skittered briefly across the surface of gay travel expectations in a post-Covid world, versus visiting a Muslim country, to which Putin’s Russia fully qualifies. Individuals the world over display spirited kindness and humanity toward visitors from other cultures, the exception being Putin’s nation of permanent poker faces, resultant from totally out-of-step governmental policies. Men in Russia, for instance, make absolutely no eye contact, whatsoever. My gaydar (which is superb) crashed batshit useless in Moscow and St. Petersburg — like reading a compass in the Bermuda Triangle. Nor do Russian gays exhibit any of the telltale aspirational displays of one-upmanship, refinement and campy polish that we, as jaded queer Americans, practically hone for stereotype; Russian gays’ haircuts aren’t hip, their clothes aren’t edgy, and their gyms are useful places with lockers in which to safely store contraband.
But, if you can make a Russian man smile — make him laugh for you, not with you — your chances at getting laid will increase a hundredfold, instantly.
Dear Howard: My current girlfriend and I met four months ago at — I’m embarrassed to say — a food pantry. She was there volunteering; I was there trying to keep starvation at bay. We’ve since decided, with clear heads now, to move in together. Her Persian cat and my Peruvian parakeet will just have to work out their differences somehow.
So, here’s the real rub, though: Cindy thinks I should sell my downtown condo, as she owns a three-bedroom house with a yard. On the other hand, my take is that we should both sell, pool our real estate profits and buy a place we each truly love, where we can start fresh, two as one in equally neutral territory.
It just seems more evenly committed, right, Howard? Especially with red-hot Dallas being such a seller’s market these days, too. See, my philosophy is, if we’re going to jump into this thing, then we need to do it whole hog with raisin sauce.
And it’s not that Cindy doesn’t see where I’m coming from, but she says. seeing as how she already owns a house plenty big enough for us to grow as a unit in, why not leave its option on the table? Well,
I like my condo, too, and the unit next door to me just happens to be for sale; so, by this reasoning, why not consider my own place an equally rational, alternatively viable option?
At 50, and fully 15 years my senior in age, I’m beginning to wonder if Cindy is even capable still of compromise. I’m the first “long-term” girlfriend she’s ever had. Before me, the longest of the bunch managed a whopping three whole weeks!
Am I just being whiny here, Howard? Should I not press the issue of us each selling, and simply move in with Cindy? She does have a fetching house, even a glassed-in backyard greenhouse, too, that Popsicle, my parakeet, adores taking loft in. I can see why she wouldn’t want to give it up. Who would? I don’t know why my own instincts are rebelling. — Birdie Lynne
Dear Lindy: Here’s the deal regarding the long-term viability of entering into a committed, live-in relationship with a person of 50 whose longest previously committed relationship was on par to a good Grindr trick: Ladybird, your antennae are already up, if not practically phosphorescent. Instinct, as the tired truism goes, is absolutely the only thing you can always trust — instinct and your grandmother.
Honey, a 15-year age gap is hard enough to bridge, even if Popsicle does get to trade-up from a cage in your condo to a greenhouse lush of palms with a burbling fountain, butterflies and soaring sunshine fluttering her soaring wings. It ain’t Popsicle who must reside daily alongside Cindy the Ossified. Somethin’ here just don’t feel quite right, not even remotely. Indeed, it’s a total shitshow, in fact.
This new summer, children, as we’ve discovered, all things marvelously peculiar, too, have their time and seasonal effervescence: Be it the summer solstice, Juneteenth or koi ponds featuring mangled motorcycles’ twisted follies to tattered youth, everything, ultimately, is transient, even the longest day of the year.
Big kisses, everybody, to Betsy Ross from me now, and I’ll see you all back here again, same place, on the other side July’s rockets’ red glare. Enjoy, kidz, this remaindered lovely, lipid June; summer’s a-peaked.
— Howard Lewis Russell
Have a comment or seasonally-sane question for Howard? Send it to AskHoward@dallasvoice.com
