Surprise!!

Posted by raybarnhart1968

So tonight, actually just a few hours ago, I was on the receiving end of a surprise birthday party. Eric and I walked into Marie Callender’s, our usual Friday night hang and as we walked into the lounge area, a crowd of people that I recognized jumped up from behind the piano player and yelled, “Surprise!!” It took me seconds to realize what was going on, I literally could not process the data. And then when the piano player started singing Happy Birthday I realized, ohhhh, this is for me! It seems my friend Barbara had masterminded the entire evening, with a little help from Eric and a few others. We sat outside on the patio and enjoyed all night long happy hour and a good time was had by all!

I will tell you, it took me a few minutes to feel comfortable. I’ve thrown surprise birthday parties, but I’ve never had one thrown for me. But you know, once I started into my second glass of sauvignon blanc, it got a little easier. At one point, I looked around the table and I thought how lucky I am to have such good friends. These are my work friends and you know the thing about work friends, is you’re kind of stuck with each other. I’m sure this will come as a shock, but sometimes I can be a little, well, mercurial in the work place. When I was looking around that table, I thought to myself, there is not one person I have not had some conflict with at some point in our time together. Not one person. Now of course, I can see that I am the common denominator: I can be a pill sometimes. But in the spirit of cutting myself some slack (hey, it’s my birthday!) I do think conflicts always arise in relationships, work or otherwise, and how we proceed after the conflict is actually where the gold can be found. I’ve worked with some of these people over a decade and I don’t think of them as co-workers or even friends anymore; I think of them as family.

I’ve posted a few of the pictures of the party. It was a beautiful evening and I am touched by the work that Barbara and Eric and others put into it to orchestrate it. And I especially loved the cake that Barbara and Jack got for me from Hansen’s. It was so like her to understand how much this little blog has come to mean to me in the last few months and it was such a Barbara gesture to ackowledge it on the cake. So, thank you Barbara and Eric and Matt and Eboni and Kristin and Olya and Ian and Vinod and Jon and Shelly and J.B. and Mimi and Danny and Jack and Amy! You totally, TOTALLY surprised me!

Mr. Bradley

Posted by raybarnhart1968

A few days ago, I found myself at an elementary school assembly. There was a young man, apparently the music teacher, leading a group of kindergarteners in a song about being an animal, if I recall. He was magnetic and enthusiastic and a tad flamboyant and he reminded me of my own grade school music teacher, Mr. Bradley.

Mr. Bradley was tall (at least he seemed tall at the time) and lean and silver-haired. He wore clogs and turtlenecks and was the most sophisticated person I’d ever known. He taught us songs in foreign languages (Frère Jacques) and songs about European landmarks (London Bridges) and he gave us, at an early age, a window into a world far away from our little Kansas farm town. He was the vocal teacher and orchestra teacher and since I sang in the choir and also played violin, he figured prominently in my grade school years. Like the young teacher I witnessed a few days ago, he was magnetic and enthusiastic and a tad flamboyant.

Mr. Bradley was the first gay person I ever knew, although I did not know it at the time. I remember in junior high, a classmate told me about how he’d once called Mr. Bradley a faggot to his face, bragged about it actually. I asked if Mr. Bradley was gay. He said, “Yes.” I asked how he knew and he told me his Dad who was also a teacher had told him.

When I was in high school, Mr. Bradley moved from Independence to somewhere in Texas. A few years later, I heard that Mr. Bradley had passed away. I’ve talked about formative teachers on my blog before and Mr. Bradley falls into that category. And of all my teachers from my hometown, he is the one I know the least about. In my adulthood, I’ve wondered why he taught in Independence when the call of the world was clearly beckoning to him. I’ve wondered if he had a great love or any loves at all. (I’d never heard talk about him having a boyfriend or partner.) I’ve wondered what prompted his move to Texas and if his final years were happy ones. I hope so.

I also wonder if he knew that I was going to grow up to be the (sometimes) magnetic, enthusiastic, tad flamboyant man I’ve grown up to me. Did he see something of himself in me? I know there are some people in the world that think gay people should not teach. There might be people who read my blog that think gay people should not teach. But I am very grateful that the Universe placed him in my educational path.

Mr. Bradley, I really wish you were alive today. I wish you could come visit me in Los Angeles and I’d take you to see Follies at the Ahmanson and jazz at LACMA and we’d walk the grounds of the Huntington Gardens. We’d get tickets to the L.A. Philharmonic and grab a drink at the revolving roof top lounge at Westin Bonaventure and as the world spins around us, I’d tell you how special of a teacher you were. I might confess to the school boy crush I’d had on you. You might tease me about how ridiculous I look in my man clogs and I’d tell you that it’s all your fault I wear the darned things. And then we’d laugh and order another round of Cosmopolitans. And when the check came you’d grab it and I’d steal it from your hand and say, “No, this is on me, I owe you.” And the fact is, even though I’ll never get to tell him that, I do owe him.

Paula, Paula…

Posted by raybarnhart1968

A few years before Jessica Tandy won an Oscar for playing Daisy Werthan in Driving Miss Daisy, I discovered her in a movie called Best Friends that starred Goldie Hawn and Burt Reynolds. Best Friends is one of those 80’s romantic comedies that played on a constant loop on HBO when I was growing up and Jessica Tandy was the reason I watched it every time it aired. I didn’t know who she was or that she’d originated the role of Blanche Du Bois in A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway, all I knew is that she was in the scene in the movie that made me laugh every time I watched it. I would rewind the scene over and over so I could hear her say the line again and again. Why did it make me laugh so much, who knows? For whatever reason, it tickled my funny bone. I was pretty excited to find the clip on Youtube; I had to do some serious sleuthing to find it. The video quality is poor and the movie is a little dated, but when she got to the line, I laughed out loud. And then I rewound it and watched it again.

The Kite Man

Posted by raybarnhart1968

A few years ago, I did this short film for my friends Megan and Patrick Heyn for FunnyorDie.com. It’s the press junket to a fake movie called The Kite Man. Megan plays a Lindsay Lohan-type actress trying to break out into her first adult role, Drew Droege is the The Kite Man‘s director, Kristin Wheatley is the Maria Menounos-like E! interviewer and I play, well, you’ll see. If you only know me from this blog, you might think I am a very serious person. I just wanted to post this to show I have a mirthful side, too. So watch and vote FUNNY! (NSFW)

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/a15fc3af2f/the-kite-man-press-junket

Guest Blogger, Joel Williams: Independence. Does that mean Freedom?

Posted by raybarnhart1968

A few days ago, I asked Joel Williams, a longtime friend and another Independence, Kansas product, if he would like to be a guest blogger here. We have much in common, but the one thing I think that binds us together is our interest, perhaps one could say devotion, to all things related to William Inge. I love what he had to say and I know you will, too. Here it is:

Independence. Does that mean Freedom?

Like Ray, I grew up in Independence, Kansas. Like Ray, I’m a fan of William Inge, playwright and novelist (1913-73).

What I don’t know is if Ray is looking for the same things in the work of Inge that I am. What am I looking for? Oh, of course I’m looking for the familiar, for signs of the past, for explanations of human behavior, especially those humans in Freedom, Kansas, Inge’s version of my hometown. I’m also looking for what my particular experience growing up in Southeast Kansas did to and for me. A decade or so ago, I bashfully told a friend about William Inge and my hometown, downplaying its significance, and he buoyed me up, comparing his experience and saying, “No one ever made art about Reston, Virginia.” I doubt the literal but not the essential truth of that statement. It made me take a deeper look at the matter.

When I was about 13 years old, my mother took a night class at Independence Community College (once attended by the playwright himself) that had Inge as its subject. She came home and discussed the class, the teacher, her fellow students, and, finally, the plays and the novels. I took an interest, slowly understanding that his work was all about people I knew. My parents pointed out the houses around town that figured in the plays. As adolescence proceeded and I came to regard my hometown as a closed, insular environ worthy of escape, I got even more curious about Inge. I learned that he performed his own escape act, moving away while casting his eyes back toward Independence and keeping his hands on the typewriter.

Every few years, I find myself going through a self-imposed Inge Intensive. I haul out “Four Plays,” then force my partner Roger to sit through a dinnertime viewing of Splendor in the Grass. Recently, I ordered my own copies of My Son is a Splendid Driver and Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff, and read them before flying back to Independence for the Inge Festival. Do enough of that reading and all you think is, funny, there wasn’t much freedom in Freedom – all those old maid schoolteachers accepting or rebelling against the strictures of small-town life and beauty queens dreaming of hopping a train to Tulsa to get together with shiftless bad-boy ramblers.

So, what are the results of growing up in The Real Freedom? I suppose that being surrounded by actual Kansas schoolteachers, beauty queens and bad boys while comparing them to their analogues on stage and screen made me acutely, intimately appreciate what an artist can do with words on a page and actors on a stage. Compared to other small-town natives I know, I think I see my hometown as something of a stage set, a place where Human Drama Happens. And I do occasionally find myself putting my life experiences into the narrative frame of an Inge play – oh stop it Joel, you’re acting just like Sonny! If I can’t have Bud I’m gonna go crazy, crazy!!! And when I think about the reason why I left Independence, I guess I was afraid of becoming a kind of old maid schoolteacher and yearned to run off to the city on a boxcar. So I did.

Narcissism

Posted by raybarnhart1968

A couple nights ago, I was curled up on my couch, reading a John Cheever short story. Sadly, every few passages, I would lay down the book, pick up my phone and check my Facebook and more importantly, the stats page on my blog, this blog, easilycrestfallen.com. I thoroughly enjoyed the story about a midwestern writer with some delusions about his writing talents. It rang true because here I was reading a Cheever masterpiece and I kept setting it aside to see what people on the internet might be saying about, well, you know where this is headed.

So yesterday, I was talking to my friend Eboni about how I feel like I’m slipping into a rabbit hole and I don’t know how to get out. She suggested I take a one week break from Facebook, Twitter and most importantly, checking the stats page on my blog, this blog easilycrestfallen.com. When she suggested it, I told her she was cruel to even suggest it, it would be like 7 days without a heartbeat, it would kill me. “Do you know how much LIVING goes on on Facebook in a week’s time?” I might have said. I countered with, “24 hours”, she guffawed. I whispered, “Forty eight hours?” She told me I was going to do whatever I wanted anyway. So, we and by we, I mean I decided that I would take a 48 hour break from Facebook, Twitter and checking those damn stats. She did say I could continue to post to my blog. Actually, that’s the point. Unlike every other time I post something, I won’t be able to immediately run to my stats page or see how many “likes” I’ve received on Facebook. In fact, it will be 48 hours (well, 39 hours and 28 minutes now: I started my sabbatical last night) before I know how my little offering will be received by the masses. I feel like an old-time writer again, like John Cheever even. And don’t be too judgemental about me. Trust me when I say that Cheever was even more of a narcissist than I am.

The Forgiveness Machine

Posted by raybarnhart1968

The artist Karen Green has written a book called Bough Down about her grief over losing her husband, writer David Foster Wallace. In a review of the book I recently read, there was talk of an art piece that she built and exhibited in 2009 called The Forgiveness Machine, which is pictured here. Basically you write down something you want to forgive or something you want to be forgiven of and you place it at one end and a vacuum sucks it into the machine and it comes out shredded at the other end. What I read piqued my interest so I googled “Forgiveness Machine” and found a few interviews with Green where she talked about how she came to build the piece and the response people had to it. Of course, the first thing I thought was what would I write on that piece of paper. What would I want to forgive? What would I want to be forgiven of?

In November 2010, I was on Maui with my friends Michael and Kim, on my last night on the island, we treated ourselves to a luau at one of the fancier resorts. Now there are two things you should know about me:
1. I love a Mai-tai and 2. I love an open bar. We had a glorious evening under the stars, watching the show, eating poi and pulled pork, and drinking free Mai-tai’s. I had a few, more than a few. I don’t remember all the details, but at the end of the night, as we were walking to our car through the hotel lobby, I said, “This hotel is so pretty, let’s sit here and talk about what a beautiful night it’s been.” 30 seconds later, I was weeping convulsively. Kind of like an Oprah’s ugly cry, but darker. Uglier.

A few days earlier, hours after landing in Maui, my neighbor who had offered to care for my dogs called to tell me one of them, Mandy was not well and did I want them to euthanize her while I was gone. Mandy had been suffering from cancer, a fatal tumor in her sinuses and I knew her time was coming to an end. I had vacillated between going on the trip and canceling. My neighbor knew Mandy was sick and because she’d had her own elderly and frail dogs through the years, I knew she’d keep a watchful eye on her. I was not prepared for her phone call and I did not know what to do. I thought about coming home immediately. She ended up taking Mandy to her vet, he said that the end was near, but he gave her fluids (she’d become dehydrated) and a cortisone shot, which perked her up a little. Even though I had taken Mandy to my vet just a couple weeks before and she’d assured me that Mandy was in pain, but not so much pain that it was time to put her down. I still felt like I let her down, in fact, just reading these words, I still feel like I let her down.

All of these emotions flooded my rum-soaked heart that night when we were sitting on that couch in the hotel lobby. I started crying and I could not stop for 20 minutes. I was sad that Mandy was dying and sadder because I had failed her as her caretaker, as her father. Michael, who does not drink and Kim, who’d drank less than me, both offered support and hugs. If they were embarrassed by my display of emotion they gave no indication. I’m sure it’s not the first time someone’s cried their eyes out at the Kaanapali Beach Hyatt Regency. Eventually, the three of us pulled me together and we headed to our condo, stopping at another ABC store to pick up chocolate covered macadamia nuts for my plane ride home the next day. A couple days later, after spending about 48 hours with Mandy, I did decide to put her to sleep. It was a sad day, to say the least.

If I could go back in time and do things differently, I would. But I can’t go back. Something people told me during this period is that we make the best decisions we can at the time and just hope for the best. I understand why The Forgiveness Machine resonated with so many people. With it’s bright colored gizmos it presents forgiveness as something convivial and instantaneous. It’s neither, but we wish it was. Forgiveness is not a machine, but rather a process.

Best in Show

Posted by raybarnhart1968

A few years ago, I acquired a book called Best in Show, The Dog in Art from the Renaissance to Today. As an art lover and a dog lover, it kind of feels like someone compiled the book just for me. I inherited the book from my friends’ neighbor who passed away, in fact, she’d killed herself. I met the woman only once. My friends had a party and they had invited their neighbor, I’ll call her Cathy. Cathy and I talked and I told her I was a dog lover. She asked if I wanted to meet her five dogs. Yes, please! So we went across the hall to her one bedroom apartment that had magazines and books piled everywhere and five happy, energetic dogs greeted me. A couple were on the older side. There was much licking and tail wagging, from the dogs, too. We sat in her living room and talked about our dogs and what a joy they were. Then we went back to the party. A couple years later, my friends told me that Cathy had died, she’d committed suicide. And later, when they were helping Cathy’s best friend go through Cathy’s things, they found this book and wondered if I’d like to have it. Of course, I said yes.

And now, whenever I look at this book it means something to me on a few levels. I love art books. And I love looking at pictures of dogs. Dogs have always figured prominently in my life, from my first dog, Pee Wee through Buford Jake and then Lucy and Mandy and then Millie and Ricky. They have brought me so much joy. And I’ve always been a person who leans toward depression. More so when I was younger, but even now, there are days or nights when I take to my bed and crawl into a ball and I love when my pets burrow beside me, offering their comfort. So I look at this book sometimes and think about Cathy and even though I know she ultimately decided to end her life, I’m sure those five dogs were a necessity. They probably kept her tethered to this world longer than if she had not had them. I also often find myself thinking about legacies. If your children are human, you hope that once you are gone, your children and grandchildren will say that you lived, that you mattered, that you illuminated. When your children have four legs, they can be many things, but they can’t be your advocate after you’ve gone. So, that’s why I’m writing this. About this book and about art and about dogs, but also about Cathy. She lived, she mattered and she illuminated. And I hope someday, someone might say the same thing about me, too.

Gingerbread Rogers

Posted by raybarnhart1968

When I was 28, I lived in San Francisco. I went there to do a play and met a guy and we fell in love and I ended up staying there for a year and a half. The play, written by David Dillon, was called Party, and it was about seven gay guys who get together for a party and end up playing a truth or dare type game and guess what, everyone gets naked. (It was the 90’s.) I played Andy, the innocent one, who at one point emerges from the kitchen buck naked only to lick whipped cream and M&M’s off a guy’s bare torso. (It was the 90’s.) Every night after the show, I would come out the stage door and my boyfriend Gary would be waiting for me on his motorcycle. Because there was a certain amount of attention for the play, there were always people waiting outside to meet the cast as we exited. Still playing a part, I’d shyly and politely wave to the fans and get on the back of the Gary’s motorcycle, put on my helmet and then we’d ride away. We’d ride down Geary on our way to our home near Alamo Square Park and we’d sing songs we’d made up at the top of our lungs. Our favorite was this uptempo modified version of Dolly Parton’s tearjerker Me and Little Andy. Basically, we’d sing the song to the tune of Lullaby of Broadway. “Ain’tcha got no gingerbread, Ain’tcha got no caaaandy, Ain’tcha got an extra bed for me, me, me, meeee. Hey! I’m little Andy!” Just reading this, I’m pretty sure the memory is not completely translating to the page, and I suppose that’s okay. When you are in love you have these inside laughs that only make the two of you giggle and they don’t really make sense to anyone else. Even our nicknames for each other didn’t make sense. He was Gorgeous Rogers and I was Gingerbread Rogers.

Alas, we eventually broke up and I moved back to Los Angeles. For a few years after my return I had a very difficult time moving forward. Every guy I dated paled in comparison to Gary. Superficially, they weren’t as well dressed or as cute or as financially secure as Gary, but mainly they could not make me laugh the way Gary made me laugh. One day, a couple tormented years later, I called Gary to tell him I could not talk to him anymore, with tears in my voice I said it was just too painful. He kind of laughed and said, “But Gingerbread, why?” I said, “And you can’t call me Gingerbread anymore! It’s too intimate.” He said okay and then I told him I’d call him when I was over him and he said okay.

I’ve probably only seen him a handful of times in the last 10 years. I did eventually get over him. I’ve spent time with his current partner of 12 years, a guy that I like a lot and the two of them have built a fabulous life together. As for myself, I met Eric a few years ago, and I’d like to think we, too, have been building a fabulous life together. There are many things I love about Eric, not the least of which: he makes me laugh.

Which brings everything up to yesterday when I picked Gary up at LAX. He’s in town for a conference and I brought him to his hotel and Eric met us there so we could have a quick drink before Gary went on to a dinner that was part of the conference. The meeting was friendly, jovial, uneventful. We talked about the things 40-something urban gays talk about: real estate, New York, Bravo, our dogs, Barbra. I was waiting for them to bond over their shared feelings about my driving skills, but thankfully, it did not happen. Then before I knew it, we were saying our goodbyes and Eric and I walked away, on our way to our own dinner at a restaurant that the two of us like going to together. It was so regular but it was also a special moment for me. For years, I wondered if I would ever love someone as much or more than I loved Gary and as it turns out, I would and I do.

Blogger Ray Barnhart

Posted by raybarnhart1968

So, something interesting happened after I posted one of my recents blogs, The Truth about Paul which I’d written about an incident that took place while I was in Bible College. I was kind of proud of it and yesterday morning, I thought I would send it to the gay news website, Towleroad.com. I did not have a lot of expectations, I just thought, just send the link, who knows what could happen.

I could lie to you and say that I completely forgot about sending it, but the truth is, all morning, I kept checking the statistics on my blog. If you are a blogger, you know about statistics pages. They tell you how many views you’ve received, which of your posts are getting the most traffic, what countries are viewing you, what links led people to you blog, etc., etc. If you are a blogger, I hope you are a more rational, less obsessive compulsive individual than myself. Because I am obsessed with my stats page.

When I started this blog a few weeks ago, I told myself the blog was for me. I wanted to write about the subjects and post the pictures and videos that appealed to me, what I would want to read if I was reading a blog. That’s what I told myself. And I’ve been pleased with the following my little blog has collected along the way. I’ve received some nice compliments, I’ve interacted with a few members of the wordpress blog community. I’ve also felt a pride that I’ve been writing. I am not the greatest writer and I think of myself as an even worse editor, but I’ve started to see possibilities in my writing that I had not seen previously.

Anyway, getting back to yesterday. At one point in the morning, I checked my stats and I had 115 views, which is good for me. Anything over 100 is always good. I knew that that traffic came from my friend Alan who has 2,373 friends on facebook who had reposted the piece with a kind endorsement. Alan is one of those special people who remembers meeting every person who comes into his path, kind of like Marilu Henner, but likeable. Anyway, at about 11:00 am, I had 115 views and then at 11:15, I checked again and I had 345. Something was up. I went to the Towleroad website and sure enough, they had pasted a link to my blog in an article about Daniel Dobson, the man who was the springboard for my post. : “Daniel Dobson, son of prominent West Michigan minister, talks about being a gay Christian. “It’s morally right for me to do it. I feel I have something good to contribute to the conversation, something positive.” Blogger Ray Barnhart offers a response to Dobson’s disclosure.” ( http://www.towleroad.com/2013/05/news-20.html#ixzz2V10D0hBt) They referred to me as BLOGGER RAY BARNHART!

I was so excited and of course, I spent the rest of the day checking my stats every 6 seconds. It kept ticking up until it petered out this afternoon. In 24 hours, my blog had 1400 views, an easilycrestfallen record. I can now say that someone in Iceland has read my blog. (Þakka þér, nýja vini!) It was exhilerating, then exhausting and then it gave way to depressing. It was this little bright spot in my day, my year actually. And now I feel the way I always felt on the Sunday after my town’s yearly Fall festival, Neewollah ended. The carnival came, we ate the jaffles, we crowned the queen, we listened to the Oak Ridge Boys, and now it’s over. I guess I should be happier, but there are reasons why I call my blog easilycrestfallen.

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easilycrestfallen

I promised myself I wasn't going to get emotional about this.

Author: raybarnhart1968

Surprise!!

Mr. Bradley

Paula, Paula…

The Kite Man

Guest Blogger, Joel Williams: Independence. Does that mean Freedom?

Narcissism

The Forgiveness Machine

Best in Show

Gingerbread Rogers

Blogger Ray Barnhart