June 1994

My heart is cool and clear for new adventures. The good kind, not the reckless kind I used to know. Things are quite slow and ordinary and for the first time I am grateful for that. Am I getting old?

I have to make my own family, my own way in life. Do what is right for me, healthy and good for me so that I may go out into the world and give it my best, my most positive.

I have been working at an interior design firm and meeting wonderful people and learning new things. Taking a few classes at a local college. Ran into Tom who informed me that Eartha Kat has had kittens, but that Hightops, the poodle, ate them! I guess that's nature for you. Hung out with Lisa and Bryan. We walked down dark side streets drunk and harmonizing. Lisa used to be in love with Bryan, but they have managed to remain friends. I still can't believe it, but Bryan and I had sex. I guess we have been flirting for months but I was certain Bryan is straight. It's funny how people come to change before your very own eyes!

Yesterday for the first time I felt I expressed myself clearly to dad. Lena said that my words were gold. I hugged and kissed him, but lord knows I don't want the responsibility of hoping he'll stop drinking. I know he won't. But I am healing. I'm working out my father's alcoholism inside myself. I must remember the positive in things. I watched an old man today and missed youth. It's going so fast. Let me just say now and here that life is just amazing, truly bizarre, with never-ending surprises, stimulating and grand!

Sometimes I'm shocked to think people can be so indifferent. Aren't we bound by the same needs? Air. Water. Love. What are we without compassion for one another?

I wear my hair long in a ponytail.

Everything is perfect!

While we celebrated one of the designer's birthdays at a Mexican restaurant O.J. Simpson was in a white Bronco with a gun to his head on television screens everywhere!

Our entire staff took a tour of the model homes we decorated for a suburban development. Dave, the young builder with whom we've worked for months, directed us to a nearby estate he thought was worth checking out. Our whole entourage entered the palatial home that was still under construction, but beautiful. A tall, slender, blond gentleman approached us wearing a Keith Herring t-shirt. He extended his hand to me and introduced himself by first and last name. I did the same. He said he was the brother of the man who owned the house in which we stood, and that he was visiting from New York. 'Wow,' I said, 'I'm going to New York for the first time next weekend.' I paused for a moment and continued, 'For the 25th Stonewall Anniversary.' The designers grinned and winked from a distance and moved on to see the rest of the house while Jeffrey and I talked in the foyer. He gave me some tips on where to go and what to do while in New York and said that he would have to miss the celebration because he was in town to do an intervention on his alcoholic father. I felt that we had this, too, in common and we talked a short while about this. As we walked to catch up with the others at the van Jeffrey asked what my birth sign is. 'Leo,' I told him. And we hugged like old friends. He wished me a good time in New York and I wished him good luck with the intervention.

Last night I prayed. I asked God to be patient with me and my anger for the church and its intolerance of homosexuality. I woke up in the middle of the night with my arms outstretched and chills all over my body. I don't know what to make of any of it, and won't try. I'm just taking everything in stride and observing, learning, living patiently with an open and happy heart.

My English teacher gave me an issue of "The New Yorker" today in class and said, "It has listings of events for The Stonewall. Have a wonderful time." I guess I was surprised by this gesture because I had thought of her differently. I suppose I need to learn to be a little less judgmental. I hear rain outside.

New York was amazing and empowering. As a gay man I feel totally entitled to the pleasures and amenities of life and earth!