Can Get There from Here


A bus to Portsmouth, NH, is easy


Can Get There from Here

Getting up early is never fun, but having to run to catch a bus first thing in the morning is less than joyous. I made my bus to Portsmouth, New Hampshire with just a minute to spare.

Does anyone out there know just how difficult it is to run through a bus terminal in sandals? Do you? It's a challenge. I should get a bronze metal or something.

I wound up sleeping on the busride up to NH, which only took an hour. I kept waking myself up with my own snarking. When I fall asleep verticaly, or with my head tossed back, I snark and snore.

I met A in Portsmouth at about 11 am, and we went to find lunch. Portsmouth is also paved with red bricks, but it's sleepy. No one has ever heard of an early lunch. Actually, I don't think lunch exists anywhere before noon, except maybe at McDonald's.

So, A and I went to an ice cream store. As the sign in a bakery near my house declares: Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first.

Then we had lunch at a Mexican restaurant overlooking the water. There was an area for al fresco dining, but the people down under the tarp were actually exposed to both direct sunlight and gas fumes from small boats.

Thank God for air conditioning.

A and I went to a jewelry store operated by two sisters. One makes the jewelry and the other does the paperwork and sales--she went to business school. I was immediately struck by the music, and the business sister showed us the CDs. Stuff by Combustible Edison, Blue Hawaiians, Dido, and Melissa Ferrick. A and I immediately ran to Blue Moose Music Store and bought copies of everything. They only had one of each album, so we split up the list and I bought some of the others from CDNow.com.

My sandals, which I got from the thrift shop where I volunteer, were doing me in. I wound up spending a fair amount of money on new ones, from Israel. They are called Naot. In Hebrew it's pronounced NAH-oat. Most Americans say NAY-oat. Some say NAY-ott. The main thing is, they are the most comfortable sandals I have ever had. And I supported the State of Israel.

A and I drove down to the Boston area later in the day. A had an audio cassette version of David Sedaris' new book, Me Talk Pretty One Day, on hand. We listened to some of it going down to Boston. I have never dealt with books on tape, but he narrated on his own, and he is very funny. I have now had him sign three books for me. He's very funny; his story about his sister Amy (the star of Strangers with Candy) being a champion mimic had us in stitches. Good thing I wasn't driving.

I met David Sedaris, again, the previous week. He did a reading at A Different Light bookstore in New York that had people out the door and all the way down to the corner of Seventh Avenue and 19th Street. There were so many folks we skipped the reading and went to see Chicken Run instead. When I went back to ADL to get a signed copy, he was still there, signing and smoking. I reminded him of my OJ Simpson story and my love of soaps. He said, "Have you noticed I pay hommage to One Life to Live in all of my books?" He was amused that Hilary B. Smith is playing Nora Hannon Gannon Buchanan. He signed my book and wrote, "It's always nice to see you." He now lives in Paris. I think there's a law that says there must always be a gay author in Paris. First it was James Baldwin, then Edmund White, and now Sedaris. White is now on our shores, in Chelsea, no less. I sat right next to him at a reading of The Isherwood Century. But I digress...

A and I had thai for dinner in Lexington, and we went to see Woody Allen's latest movie, Small Time Crooks. "Small Time" should have been hyphenated, but my being a grammar and punctuation queen does not stand in my way or a good time. We heard a lot of banging outside the exit door. At first we thought someone was trying to get in. A quickly figured out that it was fireworks.

Now I am not a big old patriot, but there is something neat about being in a New England town on the Fourth of July with fireworks going off and American flags everywhere. It's quaint, until you realize some people take it dead-serious and make it a "way of life." Yikes.

When I got to my hotel room, I found a lively young fellow writhing in my bed. It was Butchie, the hotel cat. Apparently he has full run of the joint. Sometimes he rides the elevator. Sometimes he even goes to the bar. That cat had a livelier time of the gay scene at the Chandler/Fritz complex than I did.

Posted: Mon - July 3, 2000 at 01:35 AM        

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