Common Sense	Common Sense Archive

I was staying with my older brother last week. The occasion was my annual visit back to the Midwest to see all my immediate family members, now all in one town. Brother had recently got himself engaged; his fiancée will become his third wife. It occurred to me that three marriages might once have been seen as extravagant. It is the norm in my family, myself excepted.

I asked my brother if he were looking forward to re-marriage. He considered the question. "I've gotten to like living alone." (He does have a big, floppy dog named Heidi.) "It will be a change." My father, who lives across the street from my brother, by contrast, was just delighted to have his new lady friend-- in her 80s and looking terrific-- move into his new condo; he doesn't like living alone.

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I understood my brother's position exactly. Being single and living alone has its up-side. It has been my preference all my life, though I haven't always had the opportunity. Living alone takes a certain kind of temperament and reflects on how you negotiate with time.

Family members and I looked at old photographs. Recently I perused a family tree of one side of my family. A few days later, back home, I looked at pictures of friends from the 70s and 80s. It led me to a consideration of myself in time. How have I spent my time? I am now 56, among the older cadre of the baby-boomers. As Jean Brodie put it, "in my prime," or, on some days, just a wee bit past it. There are those mornings, when looking at that face in the mirror while shaving that I think well, I won't go there for, as Myra Breckinridge noted, "self-pity is not box-office," though I have never regarded myself as a major theatrical release.

I looked at the pictures. There's me with some old pal. He gobbled up a lot of my time. He always came to me with his problems, which were unending. There were the boyfriends, the dogs, the shortage of money, his fabulous screenplay no one was interested in, his prospective theater company, and on and on. It got so I was not pleased when he came my way. I regarded my time as a resource I was to allot as I chose, not for others to snarf up. I suppose there was a period in my life when I didn't object to friends volunteering my time to their projects before gaining my consent; as a result I came to understand the utility of saying "no," and this was before Nanci RayGun made it a national mantra. If you say no often enough, people stop asking and you reach a state of Party Of One.

Couples tend not to include Parties Of One in their events; couples couple with couples. (I had one dear friend, with whom I loved to share my time, who, in the years I knew him had a series of boyfriends. When with a boyfriend, I'd never see him. After the breakup, we'd see each other on a regular basis; it was a pattern.) It is often the rule in gay life that you will like your friend and not like his partner or like him to a far lesser degree. Parties Of One might find it easier to co-mingle with their own kind. I know I have.

Regrets? I have a few. Too much time spent smoking too many cigarettes. Too much time having too many cocktails at late night hours, talking to other inebriated people about things I had no interest in. Too much time not dedicated to writing. (I once wanted to write a book a year, now I no longer care, barely have anything to say.) I once tried to figure out how much time I spent cruising for sex against my actual success record. It was kind of discouraging, at least in a cost-benefit analysis. I don't regret the time watching movies-- the oldies on the big screen (though they're still OK on the small screen), even the dull or bad ones. There's always something gorgeous about seeing all that money being spent up on the big screen-- or in Ed Wood's filmography, lack of money.

Did I ever want a partner for life? No. Children? No. Those were the easy ones. Being a gambler? No. (Though I know several people who have hit the million-dollar lottery.) Being famous for a brief time might have been an interesting experience; though I now believe staying below the radar is good for survival, and is certainly better for the soul. (Celebrity is so transitory, anonymity so durable. And then there is the issue of tawdriness.) Happily, except for one incident (which surprised me when it came on), I have never suffered from jealousy. (The incident was one night when I ran into one of my married-men sex-buddies after work at the Wrinkle Room and he was accompanied by another one of his boyfriends who did not like me a bit, and it devolved into a kind of hissing incident. It was a scene right out of a camp production of The Women, if that's not redundant.

Well, as Voltaire is alleged to have noted, once a philosopher, twice a pervert. The only thing I have gotten more jealous for, actually protective of, is the time I have left me. And the best way to manage that resource is continuing on as a Party Of One, in, I hope soon, the non-smoking section.

Author Profile:  Mitzel
	Mitzel was a founding member of the Fag Rag collective, and has been a Guide columnist since 1986. He manages Calamus Books near Boston's South Station.
	Email:	mitzel@calamusbooks.com
	Website:	calamusbooks.com