That Would Be Me (dot net)

I am surprised when people I meet don’t know I’m gay. How could they not figure that out? I am also surprised when I meet someone and they do know. How can they tell? It’s a little schizophrenic, I guess (no disrespect intended to any of my schizophrenic readers) but both are true. I have been out of the closet for so long it’s almost like water to a fish for me and yet I don’t think I come off as particularly “gay” (whatever that means. And I know at least Steve will have several comments about it. Be nice, Steve. This is my blog and I’ll equivocate if I want to.)

As unexceptional as it is for me to think of myself as gay, the process of coming out was a long and circuitous one. (What, you may ask, should I have expected, that the path be straight?) It was not, I’m sure, as arduous as that of numerous other gay men and women, but it took many, many years. I knew I was attracted to men even before I really knew what sexuality was. I grew up in a tavern in a small town in northern New Jersey and most of the patrons were blue collar men. Trust me, I noticed a lot of them.

I have no idea when I first knew what a homosexual was, but I remember quite clearly when I started to realize there may be something wrong with being one. My older brother, who was perhaps thirteen at the time, told me that the way they treated homosexuals was to show them pictures of naked men at the same time as giving them an electric shock. He didn’t call it aversion therapy, I’m sure, but it seemed to me at age ten a rational way of dealing with the issue. I also wondered when I would have to have the procedure.

Several years later, and on the other side of the continent, my mother decided to have a “talk” with me. I had no idea of her agenda, of course. We had decided to take a drive to visit some family friends who lived in a big, old house on a scraggly piece of land in a small town about two hours drive from us. We often visited them on a moment’s notice, both families enjoyed each other’s company. It was a little odd to me that it was only Mom and me going, but what the hell, I was fourteen or fifteen and not that inquisitive about such things. We had a nice visit. Then, on the way back, my mother initiated “the conversation.” It was obvious she was having a hard time starting, but I didn’t help. In fact, I didn’t say anything. After a lot of hemming and stammering, she said she thought I might be (might be, mind you) gay, that she didn’t know if I’d had any overt experiences, that I could talk to her any time and that, if I needed it, we’d find a good therapist.

I didn’t say a single word the entire ride home, which couldn’t have made her task any easier. Thinking back on it, it must have been excruciating for her. What if she’d been wrong? What if her supposition put the thought into my head for the very first time, made me question, then experiment, then BECOME gay? My silence couldn’t have eased her trepidation, yet I remained silent. Being a parent can’t be easy sometimes. When I got home, I went downstairs to my room, dragged out my dictionary and looked up the word “overt”. I was disappointed. I’d thought it was something sexual. To be truthful, “overt” is the only actual word I remember from her long talk, the rest is only a vague sense of extreme discomfort and the sound of my heart beating fast.

I hadn’t had any overt experiences at that point, though. My first was when I was seventeen, with a twenty-eight year old relative of that same family, ironically, at their house during a weekend visit. My heart beat fast then, too, as I recall.

Many years later, again in another corner of the country, I finally “came out” to my mother. I was in my mid twenties and living in Los Angeles. I had moved here in part to have a big, anonymous place to figure out what all this sex stuff was about. I told myself and others I came here to be in the movies, which was true to a point, of course. I’d been here a few years by then, living in a house in the Silverlake area. I called my mother long distance (back when long distance actually meant something momentarily) and this time it was I who hemmed and stammered. Which I did for some fifteen minutes before I got out the operative sentence. I’m sure my mother figured out within the first two seconds what was up, but there wasn’t much she could say until I actually said, “I’m gay.” She said, “I know, honey.”

I cried and said the thing that hurt the most was the thought that I would be with someone who wouldn’t be welcome in her home. She said, “Oh, Honey, anyone you love I love.”

She proved it, too. When I was with Jerry, my one long-term boyfriend (if two years can be considered long-term), we took a trip up to her cabin in Idaho. One day I’d been out doing something in town with mom’s husband. That night, Jerry told me that my mother had asked him if he felt like part of the family.

“Of course, Toni,” he’d told her.

“Good,” she’d said. “Could you pick up all the coffee mugs in the living room and bring them into the kitchen?”

He said he’d felt very welcome, indeed.

The one thing she asked of me was that I not tell my great aunt. She didn’t want any blowback from that side of the family. I did anyway (many years later, of course, I said it was a long process.) Aunt Lou’s only comment was, “Well, do you have a friend?” I said I had lots of them and she said that’s not what she meant. I told her no, I didn’t have a friend and she told me I’d find someone and then changed the subject.

As the years progressed, my mother began wearing a pin that said, “Straight but not narrow”. She called me her fairy god son, and once asked if I were bothered that she had used me as an example when she showed the documentary Pink Triangles, about homosexuals in Nazi Germany, to her YWCA luncheon group. One of the group had said, “Gay people are disgusting.” My mother was horrified and said, “That’s my son you’re talking about.” I gave her retroactive permission and told her she could use me to enlighten someone anytime she wanted.

Oh. By the way. I’m gay. Did you know?

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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

Many years ago I got into the habit of answering the ubiquitous question, “How are you?” by saying, “Dandy, how are you?” Most people just smiled and said they were fine. I was working in a law office in Los Angeles at this time and there was one lawyer who worked there, a junior partner, tall, smart, proper, very straight and very New England reserved. When I answered his salutation with my usual, “dandy, how are you?” he looked at me for a brief moment then said, “Foppish,” and sauntered down the hall with the bearing of a man who was very secure in his intellectual prowess and dry wit. I still admire him after all these years.

I rarely say “dandy” anymore, although I’m not sure why. I have found recently that I answer that question with the word “fabulous.” A friend once said to me that he could tell how good I really was doing by how long I stretched out the first syllable. “Only two ‘A’s today?” he’d say. If it were a one “A” fabulous, it was merely a good day. A five “A” fabulous would likely send one into convulsions of ecstacy. I think I usually hover around three.

I like the word fabulous. Okay, yes, it sounds really gay, but so the hell what. And they called Frank Sinatra fabulous and no one would ever consider calling him gay. I dare you to say you’re fabulous and, at least for the few moments you’re saying it, not actually feel fabulous. It’s impossible. The vibrational tones of that particular combination of letters won’t let you. I challenged one of the tellers at the bank I go to to try it. The next time I was at her window, I asked if she had. She said she’d tried it once and it didn’t work. I said to try it one more time. The next visit I was at a different window. That teller asked me how I was and I simply said “Fine.” The first teller called over three windows to say, “well, I’m fabulous!” She smiled and so did I. She was, indeed, fabulous. It works, I tell you.

More people should say they were fabulous. The more they say it, the more fabulous they’d be. President Bush should say it. If he were fabulous he might not be so inclined to incite war and strife all over the place. Andy Rooney should say it. At least momentarily he wouldn’t be so grumpy. It probably wouldn’t last with him, but we can all savor moments.  We should start a movement. The Be Fabulous Movement.  “How are you? You’re fabulous, of course!” It would be the only acceptable answer.

I think it’s a dandy idea.

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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

Many years ago Toyota had an ad campaign with the catchy slogan, “What Will You Do with All the Money You Save?” The thinking was, I assume, the consumer had $20,000 in their checking account allotted especially for the purpose of buying a car. When they bought the Toyota and it only cost $18,000, they had $2,000 worth of FREE MONEY! Woo Hoo! I’m going to Disneyland and have dinner at one of the real restaurants!

Of course, how many people actually have the cash already set aside to purchase a car? (Or even a pack of gum these days, even that’s put on a credit card more often than not.) We usually don’t even have the down payment ready at hand. So, when a car costs less than originally expected, you don’t actually “save” money, you just don’t spend as much potential (read “imaginary”) money as you would have on the more expensive item. You can’t do anything with the money you saved, because in actuality it never really existed. Except in your mind. Which, now I think about it, is how most of my money exists.

Why do I bring this up so many years after the fact? Well, there is a new ad campaign now running from Hyundai, called Dollars & Sense, where the wide-eyed consumers, having fallen in love with the car, are admonished by either Larry Winget, Ray Lucia or Adam Smith (all presumed to be best selling authors of books about money) that they should “put the money they saved into an insured CD” or some such drivel. These renowned economists should be ashamed of themselves! What could it possibly do to an economist’s reputation to advise people to put money that never existed into savings? Isn’t that illegal? Would there eventually be a margin call? Would you have to give the car back when that happened? What if you’ve already spilled ice cream on the upholstery during your trip to Disneyland?

I don’t really begrudge these authors getting their truck load of money for giving this fictional advice in a commercial, it is good economics. For them - lead by example, I always say. Are Hyundai cars relatively inexpensive? Yes. (I didn’t say “cheap”!) Will you spend less money on one than if you buy a comparable car from another maker? Probably. Does that mean you’ve saved money? Theoretically. What are you going to do with that money? I’m going to invest mine in an imaginary gold mine in Argentina. Hey, I don’t even have to buy the car to do that. How much more money can I save, then?

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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

Spy Magazine, that wonderful satirical magazine that slowly started losing subscribers as it slowly devolved into a bitch fest, had a great feature called “Logrolling In Our Time” which presented two members of American intelligentsia giving favorable, often glowing critiques of each other on their respective pulpits. It was surprising how many pairs of mutual admirers they could find to keep the feature fed for as many issues as they did. This is a different kind of logrolling, more in line with birling, where a lumberjack perches on a log in the water and spins it with his feet in order to keep his balance. This is an essay inspired by a movie based on a book about a man who wrote a book about a real life event. It is, therefore, at least five times removed from anything that could possibly be considered important to anyone. And so I roll the log.

The movie, of course, is Infamous, which I finally saw last night on cable, about Truman Capote writing his masterpiece (and artistic swan song) In Cold Blood. In this movie Sandra Bullock proves she can really act, disappearing completely into her role. I don’t know if she accurately portrayed Harper Lee, I’ve never met, seen or watched video of the diminutive writer, but Bullock convinced me, at the very least, that she was someone other than Sandra Bullock. It is also a movie in which Daniel James Bond Craig plays one of at least two conflicted gay men he has portrayed on-screen. This essay, you may have guessed, is not about them. The log continues to spin under my feet.

It is, moreover, not about why we are as fascinated by the masterful In Cold Blood as we are by Capote, the silly, pretentious little gossip who wrote it. So fascinated that, within a year, there were two movies made about him creating it. (And there was a movie based on the “nonfiction novel” In Cold Blood. And there was the Broadway play, called Tru, about Truman’s last years, as he faded into obscurity after bitterly betraying his high society friends by telling all their tales in one of the few books he was able to write after finishing In Cold Blood. And the television special based on the play. It’s not about those, either.) I think the reasons we are fascinated by him and by it, even though he and it seem on opposite ends of the cultural spectrum, are really one thing: Voyeurism. We are a nation of voyeurs. We love getting inside the minds of criminals, watching them plan and execute their crimes. And then we love watching them be caught and punished for the crimes. We also love a gossip. And we surely love watching a gossip crumble and die. We love watching. And I love watching us watch. I’m a voyeur of voyeurs. Even though I’ve never read the book In Cold Blood. But, as you may have surmised, this essay is about none of that. I almost lost my balance for a moment, there.

So what, exactly, is this essay about? It started with a description of how a defunct magazine feature relates to a movie based on a book about a man who wrote a book about a real life event, then moved into a condemnation (or celebration, perhaps) of voyeurism and a confession of talking about something I don’t know anything about. It is about the random connections our spinning minds make, connecting immediate input with data stored so long ago its accuracy might be questioned, and thinking, in the moment the connections occur and coalesce in our conscious minds, that we have discovered or realized something brilliant that others will be moved or intrigued to read or hear. I have just plunged into the icy water and the log is now spinning on its own, quite out of my reach.

It’s not about anything, ultimately. It is logrolling. There is a website that sells a tee shirt that says, “More people have read this shirt than your blog”. I think I’ll buy that shirt. It makes me laugh every time I think about it.

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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

And what the hell is a continental breakfast? Where did it come from? Which continent? It sounds vaguely European, but somehow I doubt that they only serve Cherios, cornflakes, waffles, orange juice and coffee for breakfast in Brussels.

Yesterday at a rest stop, I climbed a steep hill (a triumph in itself) to look over into the rough cut valley of a Utah canyon. On the way up, I passed a small mound of sand in the rocky path that was swarming with red ants. Almost at the top of the hill there was a hole in the path that was swarming with large black ants. I predict a war in the near future.

Las night I actually sat in the Jacuzzi and swam in the indoor pool at the motel I was staying at. It was run by a handsome young Indian man (from India, not a Native American, who should be called Native Amercanian or something to avoid all the confusion. Or, perhaps, they should just be called “The People.” They were, after all, here first) and the pool area looked neat and clean. Shortly after I got there, a nice Morman family joined me. They may not really have been Morman, but when I asked the father where they were traveling to, he said, “We’re from Salt Lake City. We’re going to Moab,” so I assumed they were. The youngest son was the first into the Jacuzzi. I chatted with him for a moment, then went into the pool. He seemed to want to show off for me, diving and jumping and splashing and always looking sort of slyly my way to make sure I saw. Starved for attention? A budding actor? His older brother was much more reticent. Teenager, you see, and much too cool to care what some long haired stranger thought.

This morning, when I left my room to pack the car, there was a family of small lizards skittering around on the hot sidewalk outside my room. They were tan with a subtle striping and their tails were blue! Some just a dull blue-gray, some quite a bright, almost teal. They ran and jumped ahead of me, staying on the sidewalk, but seeming to want to get away from the large human with the suitcase pursuing them. When they ran by the door to the motel lobby, they jumped up against the door jam as if they knew somehow that it was sometimes open and they were able to get out of the heat that way. They did this to the door to my room, also. In fact twice, when I opened the door, one would get in. It wasn’t hard to get him out again, I simply stood by the corner he ran to (under the air conditioner both times) and he would run the other way and out. It was a different one each time, the first one was a little bigger and darker brown. I didn’t really mind them being in there, but thought if I left them there, they’d either stave to death or the next tenant in the room might be a skittish little girl and I didn’t want to be the indirect cause of any hysterical shrieking. I want my shrieking to be direct, by golly.

So far, besides the two heavy storms during the seminar, it has rained three times on this trip. Once going up the Rockies on the way east, once going up the Rockies on the way west and once in the middle of nowhere in the Utah desert. (Everywhere in the Utah desert, of course, is in the middle of nowhere, but this short, heavy storm was in the middle of that.) When the rain started in earnest in Utah, I took in the smell. For some reason I love the smell when rain first hits hot ground, an earthy smell, like dust. It seems both dry and wet.

Shortly after that last storm, I pulled into a View Area to put the top back down on the car and had a lovely conversation with a nice couple from somewhere back east who traveled around the country converting Thrifty Drug stores into CVS Drug stores. They were headed for a short stay in San Diego, then an extended one in Los Angeles. We chatted a while, I told them about the La Brea Tar Pits, which was near where they were staying, and told them about our book, Weeping Willow, and gave them a card. (I tell almost everyone I meet about our book, Weeping Willow, and give them a card. Have I told you about Weeping Willow? Would you like a card?) The woman seemed impressed and promised to look the site up. The husband seemed kindly aloof and smiled. I suspect he won’t be looking up our site.

This time through, Eastern Utah doesn’t seem quite so foreboding. It still feels alien, mind you, and empty of life, but I can more see how someone might actually like it. Someone weird. An antisocial loner. You’re not from Eastern Utah, are you?

Okay, I’ve been sitting at this rest stop long enough for one black leather clad motorcycle lad to come and go (how the hell can he wear black leather in this heat?) and another two motorcycles both doing double duty carrying quintessential biker dudes and their biker chicks to stop to stretch their legs. I should wrap this up, now, and finish it when I settle in tonight. I could slog through all the way to LA tonight, but I’d probably get in after midnight and what’s the point of that? One more day on the road should be a nice capper. And now I go. The road beckons. The land pulls me. The wild calls.

It’s seven o’clock, or there about. I’m at a Best Western somewhere off the highway near Lake Mead. Not sure how I got here, I pulled off to find a place to go pee and the road kept going and going. The sign had said “Gas, Food, Lodging” but hadn’t mentioned how far off the road said amenities were. The town I went through (once there was a town) was actually kind of nice. Green lawns and quaint houses. Horses. Cows. Trees. Didn’t seem like Nevada at all. I didn’t realize how hot I was until I got into the motel room and turned on the air. My skin instantly became soaked. I must have been perspiring the whole day, but it was so hot and dry, and windy with the top down, I didn’t notice it. I should have; I’ve been drinking a ton of water and barely needed to relieve myself.

I stopped in St. George, Utah, a fair sized town on the far western end of Utah’s stretch of Highway 70. I was sitting in my car writing down the milage in my little notebook, but the door was open. A thin older fellow in worn jeans and a dim white tee shirt looked over my way and said, “What the hell is that?” “A Mini Cooper,” I informed him. He shook his head and said, “I’d rather be shot dead than be seen in something like that.” He was smiling, but I didn’t believe it.

What an extreme reaction, I thought, and considered asking if he wanted a test drive. “It’s a cool car,” I said, completely unruffled, returning his smile. He looked in and studied the dash board. He seemed fascinated and slightly repulsed, like just looking might somehow make his feminine side bubble to the surface. “Does it really go 150 miles an hour?” he asked after seeing the speedometer. I let him know that it did indeed, that they raced them in England where they were made. He shook his head and said, “It’s just wrong, somehow,” and walked away. He had the same crooked smile the whole time, as if to say, “I really don’t like your kind, but this is a bright, public place and I can’t get away with stomping you.”

What a hoot. If I didn’t already love my little car I would now. It makes small minded people uncomfortable. It would really be poetic if I then sang for the next twenty miles. I didn’t, of course, but my heart cockles were warm.

I go, now, to wipe the sweat off my brow. And nose. And neck. And arms. And legs. Sheesh, I’m sweaty.

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Geoff Hoff is co-owner of Joseph Coaler Productions and, with Steve Mancini, co-wrote the best selling satirical novel “Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend“.

Second Day Back, Saturday, August 19, 2006

The seminar was wonderful, informative and powerful. I am a changed man. The very foundation of existence has shifted. Life as we know it on the planet will never be the same. The universe has shifted three degrees into the blue. God wept. Okay, enough of that, this is a travel journal, and, although the seminar was a journey, the signposts of that journey will have to show up on their own here, I won’t consciously try to insert them. I did meet some great people who I think will be around for a while. That would be nice.

The seminar ended Thursday afternoon and Thursday evening four of us went into downtown Minneapolis to see a play at the Guthrie Theater. The Guthrie is one of the premier theaters in America and I’ve always wanted to see something there, but it didn’t even dawn on me that it would be right down the street (so to speak) until a friend back in LA said, “You’re going to Minneapolis? That’s were the Guthrie is!” So. I mentioned this to one of the guys at the event and he said he’d get tickets. We got directions from the concierge and four of us set off on our adventure (with a side trip to a good sushi restaurant for a little raw fish and saki). The directions were wrong. Seems that they’ve built a new Guthrie Theater, that this is the first season at the new theater, this the first play there (The Great Gatsby) and that most people in Minneapolis were unaware of this. Everyone we stopped to ask gave us a different idea about just where the place was. We traveled all around downtown Minneapolis until we stopped by an odd fellow who looked slightly off, friendly buy possibly schizophrenic, possibly occasionally homeless. He very clearly knew right where the place was.

By the time we found it, parked and picked up our tickets, we were about fifteen or twenty minutes late for the opening curtain (a misnomer, of course, there is no curtain on a thrust stage and the Guthrie stage - old and new - is about as thrust-y as you can get) so we quietly found our seats. The theater was amazing, large but intimate if that makes any sense, a wonderful facility. I’d love to work there. The play was good, a few of the actors were “acting”, the guy playing Gatsby was very good, the guy who played the gas station owner was amazing. Daisy was cute and alluring, but I couldn’t imagine her as someone who three men would destroy their lives for. The sets were great. They used very little to suggest the setting but did it in a very effective way. It even included a simulated swimming pool where Gatsby floated around on a rubber raft. Very cool. In any case, the experience was what counted and the experience was grand. The building has one long arm jutting out of the fifth floor, a cantilever that hangs out over the river (which someone on the balcony at its end told me was the Mississippi and I have no reason to doubt him) that was a highlight of it.

Back to the hotel, drinks with several of the seminar participants (one of whom was a handsome straight man who had thought he had lost it because I hadn’t flirted with him. After that I made a point of flirting with him whenever I saw him. What fun - safe flirting - who’da thunk?) then bed. Left the next morning after lunch with two of my theater companions, then on the road.

In the movie The Secret, Jack Canfield talks about driving from Los Angeles to New York at night. You can see about a hundred feet in front of your car. And yet, only seeing this much, you can make it all the way. He’s using it as a metaphor for life - know your destination (your goal) then just take the next step, don’t worry about the next two, three or fifteen steps, they’ll take care of themselves. This, maybe, is why I like driving. I know where I’m going, know I can get there even with a detour or two, and all I have to worry about is what I can see right in front of me.

Okay, philosophy aside, the parking lot of the motel I stayed at last night was full of small beetles. (I almost spelled that “beatles” but that would have been wrong, wouldn’t it?) The room was clean, but I got the sense the beetles hadn’t stayed outside. (The beatles probably did, though, I never saw any of them.) The clock wasn’t plugged in, so I had to pull the little bed side table out to find the outlet and noticed part of the cord was stuck in this little plastic tray filled with something sticky, and in the something sticky were more beetles. (Ringo may have been there, I didn’t study it long enough to find out.)

I thought about being creeped out but decided if I want to get any sleep I’d just have to come to terms with my roommates. I asked them all pleasantly to leave me alone while I slept and left it at that. The only one I actually saw (besides the unfortunate few in the sticky tray) was walking along the edges of the floor in the bathroom in the morning while I was sitting there voiding and reading. He circumambulated the room a couple of times, then disappeared into some crevice or other. I only bring this up because, as I sit at this rest stop in the middle of Nebraska (the motel was in Iowa) a lady bug decided that the top edge of my computer was something needing exploration. She (he? Who knows the sex of a lady bug. There must be guy lady bugs. Do they, like the one in the bug cartoon, have issues about that?) made the journey several times, decided she’d (he’d?) gleaned all she could from it and flew off. Normally I would have shooed her away as soon as she landed. I don’t mind lady bugs, mind you, but the instinct is to shoo away anything not congruent and lady bugs are not congruent with the top edge of a laptop. After all the beetles last night, bugs not nearly as pleasant as this little orange and black dainty, I realized that, if I can sleep with them in my room, I can let one explore my laptop.

It has been cloudy since I left Minneapolis. It rained for about ten minutes late yesterday afternoon, but I was on the highway and it stopped before I was able to pull off and put the car top up. It wasn’t raining very hard and was actually kind of pleasant. The wind is blowing a bit, now, and I’m trying to decided if I want the top up on the next leg of the journey or not. I will decided after I start the car. Perhaps, if I remember, I’ll record which way I went. Perhaps not. Some things need to remain a mystery to preserve that sens of wonder in the reader, don’t you think?

Since there is no Internet connection at this rest stop (did you know all the rest stops in Iowa have wireless Internet? Very twenty-first century, I must say. I didn’t use it at any of them because you only got a small, finite amount of time before they started charging and it seemed, somehow, pointless) I will post this once I touch down this evening. Til then, the road beckons, the next hundred feet await.

I took the top down. So much for mystery and wonder. I’m at a motel in Brush, Colorado run by a young, blondish poor-white-trash woman and her poor-white-trash husband. She has two young poor-white-trash children and most of the night’s tenants are poor-white-trash. The main exception being the oriental family two doors down. (I leave it to you to decide about me.) My immediate neighbors are a thin, blond grandmother, her two small blond grandchildren and at least two rowdy and possibly drunk men who I haven’t yet seen. I did hear them arguing with each other about how to use the key card to open the door, with a lot of back and forth about the timing of the little green light and turning the handle and a large double “Whoop!” when, I assume, they got it right.

The Internet connection doesn’t reach to my corner room, so I’m sitting in the gazebo between the parking lot and the pool, my blowing coyly in the evening wind, typing furiously, trying to get this written and posted before my coy hair drives me nuts and I have to go inside, away from the wind.

Ah, travel. There’s a Chinese restaurant with a bar right past the pool. Perhaps I’ll have a small drink before retiring for the evening.

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Geoff Hoff is co-owner of Joseph Coaler Productions and, with Steve Mancini, co-wrote the best selling satirical novel “Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend“.

Second Day - Wednesday, August 10, 2006

Utah is in a different universe. And as you go further east (at least on the 70) it gets more and more alien. The western end has green and looks normal, but it starts to get strange very soon. I was told that, as you travel along the way, you go through every geological era. It’s beautiful, breathtaking, actually (how often will I use that word?) but off-putting. I can’t imagine living there. There is a stretch of the 70 highway where there are “no services” for over 100 miles. It’s no wonder. I can’t imagine any sort of people who would want to populate it enough for there to be services. When you cross the border to Colorado you are instantly transportede back into our universe, there is green and houses and people and horses. The only animals I saw in Utah were lizards.

Half way through Utah, I realized that a friend I haven’t seen lived somewhere in Colorado. I remembered the town Carbondale and looked at the map. It was only a few miles from the highway I was on. I had my little phone book with me. I called the last number I had for her and her husband. It was Michelle’s voice on the answering machine, but they weren’t home.

Just outside of Colorado, I stopped at a rest stop because the wind was so strong I had to put the top up on the convertible. Good thing I did, it started raining shortly after that and rained the rest of the day. Driving in the rain is a whole different experience. You can’t see as far ahead and the rhythm is different. I even think th e rhythm of my breathing changed a little. Slowed down or something. I could be wrong, perhaps I’m just trying to be poetic.

I called Michelle and Marvin again just inside of Colorado at Grant Junction. They were there, live in Paonia not Carbondale, they would love to see me and it would take me about two hours to get there from where I was. I had to go. They live in a small geodesic dome that they built as a “temporary” house while they built their big dome. They’d planned on being in the small one for a year. Well, Marvin’s job got exported to India, then he fell off the roof one winter and was in the hospital, so the big dome never got started. Until last May, seven years later. It’s pretty great, actually, very exciting. I took some video of it. (Yes, I finally started taking some short movies at rest stops, etc. Didn’t take me long to get off it…) I spent the night in their very funky home and visited.

Marvin’s network wouldn’t talk to my computer. Is it because I’m gay?

Third Day - Thursday, August 10, 2006

This morning, I got up and went into the big dome. The floor is still bare plywood, but most of the inner roof (ceiling?) is in place, as are the windows and a counter that will be the kitchen. Except for one corner that will be the bedroom, there are no inner walls, so it’s a huge open space. When I walked in, I felt dizzy. After a moment, it passed, but later Marvin insisted that the dome was on a vortex and that, when he was digging the basement, Michelle couldn’t stand in it because the energy was so strong she would almost faint. I’m not sure what to think of that, I’m one of those skeptic believers. I want to believe things like vortexes, even have some experience of things like that, but a big part of my mind says, “You were dizzy because you didn’t sleep well, silly.”

I had breakfast with Marvin and Michelle, then hit the road at about 10:30. While eating, they had the news on and it was full of reports of all the nonsense at the all the airports all over the country. Okay, yes, they captured a bunch of suspected terrorists. In England. Because the precautions being taken are working. So America responds with its normal, rational, considered reaction and goes nuts. I cannot convey how glad I am that Steve talked me into driving to my seminar. I was anyway, but now it seems more than propitious. Of course, I imagine certain people are ecstatic about the airport craziness. Divide and conquer, rule by fear.

I took the back highway from Paonia to Carbondale. Colorado is magnificent, beautiful, grand, green, immense, overwhelming. Driving down the twisty road listening to Beethoven’s Fifth is the only way to do it. Until Beethoven’s Sixth came on. Perfect. The fifth, so dramatic and grand, was the best way to see the mountains and the river by the road, the Crystal River. The sixth, the Pastorale, was then perfect for the lower end of the highway through the communities of local coal miners and hippy artists. The music ended just as I got to Carbondale and back on the main highway. Synchronicity, anyone? Of course, beautiful Colorado is also the state that voted in Proposition 2 all those years ago. Go figure.

I’m at a rest stop outside of Glenwood Springs. If I’m not too tired, I’ll write more this evening.

Fourth Day, Friday, August 11, 2006

Two nights with no Internet. Can I survive? The eastern end of Colorado is much more even, still beautiful, but it’s a gentler beauty. I’m now in Nebraska. I was told Nebraska would be boring. Flat and boring. Not true. Yes, it’s flat, but that makes it easier to drive, and it is lush and full green with lots of trees. The landscape is varied and very interesting. A lot of insects, though. I crossed the border at night and every time I passed a stand of trees I heard this arrhythmic whining buzz and clicking. After hearing it several times, I figured out it was some type of bug. Locusts? Who knows. I also kept colliding with bugs, and my windshield was a mess when I stopped. This morning when I cleaned the windshield off there were five dead bees and a wasp on the hood. Bees and wasps! I’m sitting at a beautiful rest stop with a thick lawn and tall shade trees with a stream running through it and the constant buzzing sound from the field behind me. And I’ve been bitten by at least six ants and a spider or two.

I think I’ve trained my bladder. As soon as I see a Rest Stop sign and decide to stop, it starts aching, as if it now has permission to get ready to void. Very odd. Useful, though, in a strange way.

I keep seeing signs for Buffalo Bill’s ranch, and there have been some highway-side attractions with tee-pees and covered wagons and it makes me wonder about the fortitude of people who traveled the same distance I’m traveling (in the other direction, of course) with their whole families and all their belongings and it took months and years. And there were no highways or rest stops. (Of course, if you think about it, the entire way was one big rest stop. When you have to relieve yourself just stop, go behind a tree and “rest”.

Last night the moon rose very late. It was completely dark and I saw this weird glowing orange dome on in the distance directly in front of me. I wondered what building would be lit like that. As I got closer, it got bigger and I realized it was the moon, huge, orange and distorted. When it broke the horizon, it looked like a glowing squashed pumpkin. It looked like that for about fifteen minutes until it was fully up in the sky.

I still don’t know why I love traveling so much. I was saddened that I would be going by myself and tried to think of a way to get a traveling companion, but I’m so glad I didn’t. Being alone on the highway is the point. I think. I’m trying to figure what it means to me. Maybe I shouldn’t try and just enjoy it. Today, I sang. For over an hour. To Simon and Garfunkle. It’s a good thing I am alone, probably.

I’m at a Best Western in Williams Iowa. Internet at last! (Oh, what a modern drone I am.) Iowa’s air is damp and dirty. I expected the damp, it’s high summer and this is the Midwest. But I didn’t expect the dirty part. During the day there was a faint brown hue to the horizon and as it turned to dusk, the air got damper and difficult to see through. Not like a smokey room, but dense and grey.

Nothing philosophical tonight. I stopped earlier than I expected and am just relaxing. I only have about a hundred and eighty miles to Minneapolis. I’m looking forward to the last leg of this part of the trip. I don’t know how many posts I’ll be able to do while the seminar is raging, but if the spirit and the opportunity present themselves simultaneously, I’ll write. If not, I’m sure there’ll be plenty on the road home, what with processing everything from the week and all.

Til then.
_______________________________
Geoff Hoff is co-owner of Joseph Coaler Productions and, with Steve Mancini, co-wrote the best selling satirical novel “Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend“.

First Day - Tuesday August 8, 2006

I am taking a road trip to Minneapolis, driving my little Mini Cooper Convertible named Nigel. Yes, I named my car. I was going to fly, but Steve convinced me to take the time and drive, knowing how much I love driving. Good old Steve.

What a glorious day. I love getting out on the highway. I don’t even know why. Driving feeds me in some odd way that I’ve never been able to completely explain. The route is steady and forward, there aren’t any real decisions to make, all the important ones have already been taken care of. I love watching the terrain change as I go, but that’s not the real reason I like driving. I take in the scenery, the gorgeous Virgin River Gorge, which I’d never seen, the clouds over the Mojave, which I have. I watched sunset over Utah, at a rest stop shortly after I crossed the border. (Funny, Nevada, which is supposed to be such a wealthy state, doesn’t have any rest stops with bathrooms. I’m already at my second in Utah. And Utah’s are the nicest rest stops I’ve ever had the pleasure of stretching my legs and draining my bladder in.) The moon rising over a butte, huge and bright with a scar of clouds over it, was breath taking. I keep these images in my mind and think I should record them. In fact, I brought my video camera with me for just that purpose, and have it all unpacked with a tape in it ready and waiting on my front passenger seat under the album of music CDs I’ve been methodically listening to ever since I left Los Angeles and lost the local radio stations, but it seems, somehow, peripheral to the driving, and I haven’t turned it on, yet. It seems almost the antithesis of the spontaneous experience of driving. I will turn it on and use it sometime during my trip. After five days of driving, the peripheral will probably be more attractive.

I like seeing different people as I travel. People say “People are people.” Yes, but the people in North Las Vegas are a different sort of people than those in Los Angeles. There’s a desperate, haunted look in the faces and bodies of the people behind the counter, and, indeed those in front of it, at the Shell station I stopped at to top of my gas tank. Most of the haunted faces were staring into video poker screens, which might have something to do with it.

There’s one big gathering of casinos on this road, once you get out of Vegas. As I passed it, I wondered why they put it just there, then I saw the border and realized it’s the eastern version of State Line on the California side. No dummies here. Get everyone just as they enter your state, get them again just as they leave.

I’ve been on the road since 11:30 this morning. It’s now 8:54. I stopped to eat a sandwich and type this, but I want to get back on the road again. Another hour, perhaps, before I get tired. I like driving at night a lot; proof, I guess, that the scenery isn’t the main reason I crave this.

More later. Another stop at the rest room then, as the singer says, “on the road again.”

____________________________
Geoff Hoff is co-owner of Joseph Coaler Productions and, with Steve Mancini, co-wrote the best selling satirical novel “Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend“.