Shadow's Gravity

 

Me during the various periods of the Aviary Hill series from 1979 to 2005.

This week was the release of my latest novel, Shadow's Gravity. It is the last book of the Aviary Hill series. The series is written about my family and my life between the years 1979 to 2005. 

The series began with Dweller On The Boundary in 2020 and ends this week with Shadow's Gravity. It has been forty years coming since a conversation with my father over pizza in December 1984. There have been many secrets, tragedies and a few triumphs in this story. Hopefully there has been some humor along the way and readers have met some interesting characters, from Uncle Ridley to Robin, David The Bishop, English Stan, Dylan, Everett, Piper, a boy from New Hope and the rest. I will miss writing about most of my characters, but I still have some of them in real life. 

Shadow's Gravity is the most complex, mature and most lengthy novel of the series as it takes place when I was twenty-two to thirty-two years old. It is set in the past, but readers should find that it remains relevant to today with some of the topics contained in it. 

I began writing this series in 2018. The release of Shadow's Gravity brings to an end a writing process that spanned the last six years with origination for the idea dating back to a conversation with my father over pizza in December 1984. This book brings to an end a forty year project. There is no plan or desire by me to write further in this series. I am free to move on to writing something else after four decades and what comes next will hopefully not take as long to complete.

There is plenty of material and stories that were edited out of the series, but with anything, it is impossible to tell everything. What was published in four books was the distillation of those years. It is unlikely that any of the stories cut during the writing process will see the light of day, though I believe some of them are some of the best writing I have done. Perhaps they will serve as inspiration for what I write next.

Shadow's Gravity is in part dedicated to the readers who took a chance and allowed me to tell them a story. I am grateful to them for their time and interest.  Thank you for reading.

Steve Albini Dies

Steve Albini in the documentary Breadcrumb Trail.

 

Sometimes it feels like the 90s were yesterday, but then someone who had a major influence on that decade dies and I am reminded that the 1990s were a long time ago.

 

It was surprising to learn of Chicago based producer/engineer Steve Albini's death last week at age sixty-one. 

 

I most associate him with his work with Nirvana on In Utero and Fugazi. He was also known for his odd engineering choices made on Slint's Tweez album. Slint is probably the most well known rock band to have come from Louisville. Spiderland produced by Brian Paulson was considered their best album.

 

What I admired most about Albini was the indie ethos that he stayed true to in his work. He achieved much success in the 90s and it would have been easy for him become a sellout. 

 

Culturally the country is in a very different and worse place decades later with no Nirvanas and Albinis around.

Update On My Next Novel

 

That is me in October 2001 at a special place I have written about a few times, Patton's Run on the Nantahala River in North Carolina.

As of this morning's edit, it appears this novel should be finished and out by late June barring any major life interruptions or unforeseen developments. The word count currently sits at 112,000 words which would be by far my longest book. The cuts have already been deep and I want to bring this book in at around 100,000 to 105,000 words max.

This is the end, spanning from 1995 to 2005. It contains all of the answers that I can ever provide about everything I have written about my family and life. I hope readers find it engaging, fun, mysterious, surprising, not too depressing and different. I have been open how I struggled with a period of serious depression to write this. There are some seriously ugly, shocking and sad moments in it, but humor finds its way through. The last chapter, Silent Bridges, fits this lifelong project.

Farewell to Robin, Oliver, Elliot, all of the characters from all of the books, the past and may they rest in my new written time capsule. This book is for Everett, Louisville, Paulding County, Baby X and all of the other hidden children.

Thank you for reading.

 

Movies, Thoughts and Walks in May

 

A photo from a walk near home this past Monday. The landscapes are getting the late spring green as summer settles into place. Though I enjoy gardening and being out in nature in the warmer months, summer's heat and humidity is not as much fun as when I was a child.

I reread Tom Wolfe's Radical Chic from 1970 this week. It is relevant again in modern life among the poseurs of society.

Recent movies I watched:

The old mansion in Silent Night, Bloody Night

 

Silent Night, Bloody Night - I probably saw this on television in the seventies when old movies regularly played on the Atlanta independent stations. The movie is from 1972 and it captures how I remember the seventies as dark, rural and quiet. The 70s were not all about disco despite what people may think. I enjoyed the movie for what it was.

Westler -This is a 1985 West German gay movie about two lovers divided by the Berlin Wall. I'm obsessed with the GDR and Berlin so this movie appealed to me for it's footage shot on both sides of the wall. The plot and acting weren't the best, but it had enough appeal for me. The East German film, Coming Out, released in 1989 is a more complete and interesting film.

 

Spring Roses and Bob Edwards

 

It has been such a wonderful spring for the roses this year at home. The blooms have been abundant and with the rain last Sunday the weight almost broke some bushes.
 

This orange one growing at one end of the back yard has been spectacular.

 

The New Dawn that we grew at my childhood home and I grow now has its first bloom of the season. It should be covered in the coming weeks.

The tall Louisville, Kentucky boy, Bob Edwards, with President Jimmy Carter.

I did not learn until yesterday that former NPR Morning Edition host Bob Edwards died in February. Bob was the original host of Morning Edition since its inception in 1979. He was a hero of mine in radio with his wonderful voice and style. I was a regular listener to his show in the 1990s and early 2000s. He was also a Louisville native and there was that special connection since I lived and worked in radio there too. Bob is mentioned in my next novel, Shadow's Gravity.

I no longer listen to NPR, haven't for several years, as the hosts are insufferable and the programming is insulting. The Atlanta affiliate WABE has completely lost me too with its narrow viewpoint and activist journalism that I can't relate.

Louisville which has three public radio stations under the Louisville Public Media umbrella, including one that is still dedicated to classical music (rare these days), is a better option.

Although Bob Edwards had the rare longevity of hosting the same radio program for twenty-five years, it was a shame that he was pushed out in 2004 and what NPR became.

April Movies and Music

 

As an Erik Satie fan I was thrilled to learn about this album last week on BBC Radio 3. I have had it on repeat ever since. My introduction to Satie was through film. I heard his music the first time as a small boy when I saw the movie Being There with Peter Sellers and Shirley MacLaine. It would not be until I was an adult that I find out who composed the music that I could not forget.

Movies & documentaries that I have watched in the last month:

Drifter (set in Berlin and loved it)

Downtown 81 (that period of New York fascinates me. Dreamy and gritty.)

The Killing Of A Sacred Deer (there isn't a Yorgos Lanthimos film that I haven't liked)

Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak (loved Where The Wild Things Are as a child and Sendak does not disappoint as a documentary subject.)

The Man Who Skied Down Everest (stunning visuals in this documentary. I'll never be convinced that the seventies weren't the best decade of film.)

February Gray Days

 

Atlanta. Photo by me, February 2024

After the morning writing sessions this last weekend, I went down to the city to pick up another chandelier for the house, got new glasses from Warby Parker, ventured  into Athens, and squeezed in some miles in the woods.

 

Marietta. Photo by me, February 2024.

And I made it over to the Marietta Square, which was part research for the next novel. A bus almost hit me in a crosswalk on the square. I gave the driver a stare and the finger for which she honked at me as if she was in the somehow in the right. If there is a county that is hell then it is Cobb County, Georgia. 

Gin Blossoms, Hey Jealousy.

At My Most Fragile

 

It is late winter, the middle of February, but here in Georgia that means early Spring. We come by our global warming here naturally. The trees are budding and I sit here in my Keith Haring tee shirt, needing a haircut and wearing a fuzzy cardigan still living like it is 1994. Blueberry yogurt is digesting in my stomach and the morning sun is out. The birds, no Robins, are singing what sounds like Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. Needless to say, I'm feeling stupid and contagious.

Without further fanfare here is the promotional mock interview for my next novel due this summer.

 

---

 

At times I didn't think I could write this book.

 

Let's talk about secrets.

Okay. You first. (laughs)

You have written extensively about family and personal secrets. Some of them have been quite tragic including sexual abuse, rape and suicide. Some of these secrets are related to growing up gay in a small town and others were more common to American families from the 70s and 80s such as infidelity, domestic violence and divorce. Having revealed all of this, how do you feel about it and what's left to tell?

I said something a month ago, it was that I found writing to be an emotionally abusive occupation. I had to go back during the writing process and relive all of it to some degree by reading my old journals, watching videos, looking at photos and talking with people that knew me then. I've cried over some of it, I've been angry about other parts and Shadow's Gravity put me into a serious depression last year. At times I didn't think I could write this book, but then it clicked for me and out it came every morning.
It comes with a price besides my mental health and there are some people who look at me or think of me differently after knowing, but I can't be worried about it. I wanted the truth to be known.

And it's not like domestic abuse, infidelity and some of these topics were exclusive to the American family only when I was growing up. Humans are still humans and there remains no cure for those problems within families, nor are these problems strictly American.

If growing up gay today is easier, I can't say. It might be a different time and on some level easier, but being different will always be a challenge. It might be new times, but with that possibly comes a new set of problems. If anything, it may be more confusing and embarrassing for children with some of the attention placed on it in school these days. I know that if I was a fourth grader and the teacher was discussing gay life in class I would have turned bright red and tried to crawl into a crack in the floor. I don't know if that perspective is taken into consideration. I knew what I was, but I didn't want others to know because I was taught what I am was shameful by society. Children today may be different though and if the shame associated with it can be minimized then that's a good development. It might save lives. It's difficult to find trustworthy current statistics on suicide rates because of how the numbers are clustered together under the umbrella of LGBT.

There are plenty of secrets left. I've never teased some of what is in this book. Also, I've never told all of the abusive stories that happened in New Hope at home or at school. There is one story in this novel which is about a complete emotional breakdown of mine in my teens. I finally came clean with it in therapy in the 2000s. I also come clean with readers that have followed my books about what I felt for someone that I wasn't completely forthright about before.

 

When does Shadow's Gravity take place?

Originally it was planned to span nine years. It ended up covering 1995 to 2005. I was a busy person, much happened and it made for a more complete circle from 1979 to end in 2005. This book sprawls and covers lots of territory in terms of themes, people and locations. During this time, there were also crucial events that still define our world today such as the widespread adoption of the internet and cell phones, Y2K, September 11 and the heinous murder of Matthew Shepard. This novel is my most ambitious. I'm excited about it and I feel the same about it as I did when I was writing Dweller On The Boundary.

There was another unplanned change. When I was writing this novel something happened in real life to one of the people behind one of the main characters of all my books. This development resulted in a drastic change in the course of the book.

I deeply loved him and considered him my twin brother.

What happened and to whom?

I can't say what exactly happened, but it was David The Bishop. I was shocked at what occurred involving him and it made me want to go back and delve further into that relationship in an attempt to find clues and offer an explanation. I haven't had any contact with him since the 1990s, but I was hurt by what recently happened with him. It made my head spin because I thought so highly of him, I deeply loved him and considered him my twin brother. It tainted my memories of us. As with any of my relationships, I've never spilled everything, just what I viewed as the most important aspects. I had to go back and examine that relationship and I did write more about it. My heart breaks for him that it came to this.

 

Paulding County has been the epicenter of your books, how much Paulding County is in this book?

The story picks up with life at the factory in Atlanta when I worked at Turner Broadcasting. It surprised me when writing this book, how much Paulding County is in it. I look back on life in that period and I don’t automatically think about Paulding County, but I realized it was still an important part of my life and I was often there. I lived there twice. Even when I was living elsewhere it seemed like there was a chain tied around my feet connected to the bumper of a van with one of those murals painted on the side that was popular when I was a kid and it was dragging me back out there for events. Years after I had graduated I was at Paulding County High School three times, talk about being surrounded by ghosts. My mindset then was, one day I will say goodbye to Paulding County once and for all, but it seemed impossible. I suppose I'll never say goodbye to it now.

 

What's your relationship with Paulding County these days?

I was there this past January, but I don't have a relationship with it besides the cemeteries. I don't live that close to it anymore, about an hour and a half away and with traffic it's a miserable drive. I pass through there a couple of times a year and it's less recognizable each time. I'm proud to be born and raised there, but we aren't compatible. If I haven't made that case yet then I hope it is obvious in Shadow's Gravity after I disclose what happened at my last house there in 2002. In the last few years, writing these books I have walked down Main Street in Dallas, the cemetery in New Hope, the Silver Comet Trail a couple of times and have been a few other places. I feel like maybe I've conquered the past, but then being there still makes me a little jittery. Also, I doubt I'll ever be asked to come out and speak at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon or at the main branch of the library where I met David The Bishop at a chess tournament. My experiences there are probably not something they would want to promote.

 

My belief is that if you wanted me to say something nice about you then you should've treated me better when you had the chance.

 

Are you saying you've presented Paulding County in a negative light?

Not entirely and I haven't been unfair to it by any stretch. My belief is that if you wanted me to say something nice about you then you should've treated me better when you had the chance. I loved growing up there, but I have to be honest. The Paulding County educational system was great to me at the time with some failings, but the community as a whole wasn't too kind. It was a pretty place though. As an adult, I don't have much in common with it and that's a sign that one, or in this case, both have changed.

 

Does Decatur County, Tennessee figure into this book?

Yes, I was there frequently in the 2000s. I don't even know if my family knew how often I was there then. My mother didn't know. It was the beginning of something new with my father. There may never have been any of the books in this series without those times in Decatur County. My relationship with my father may not have been as cut and dried as readers may suspect. We were close for fourteen years, with twice weekly phone conversations, regular visits and we traveled together.

 

You mentioned ghosts earlier, are there ghost stories in this book?
Yes, there are three ghost stories and another type of supernatural experience in this novel. The one ghost that my character experienced terrified me in real life. You can think what you want about ghosts, but I believe they are a genuine phenomenon. Whatever they are I cannot say, maybe they are a form of hallucination or maybe they are something that is not a creation of our mind. I'm open to either possibility. Most people will not believe in them, but unless you've experienced it then I suggest keeping an open mind about them. I've experienced way too many shocks in my life, but the experience I had in this book was the most shocking experience I've ever had and I have no explanation for it.

 

Who is your favorite character in this book?

Everett. I loved getting to finally write about this wonderful person that was locked away in my past. He was a transplant like me to Louisville, but had lived there longer and had a family connection to the city. He was a significant part of my Louisville life. He came from New York, was private schooled and was very much from a WASPY background. He was a polished person in areas that I was more rough around the edges. He was someone that I would have considered unattainable, he was extremely beautiful, sophisticated and intelligent. He was the kind of person that I did not think I would ever know or become involved. He came into my life in an unusual way and I'll leave it at that.

 

What made Louisville so special for you that you mention it on a frequent basis?

It was a city that gave me everything I ever dreamed and experiences I didn't know that I wanted. No place has ever embraced me the way that city did in the nineties. It was beautiful, historic, interesting, charming at every step and it had zero connection to my past. It was everything Atlanta was not for me, a chance to live a fresh new life. It was also fun trying to figure out what the mystery odor was that wafted around the city on certain mornings.

 

It feels like I'm losing them all over again and that hurts.

 

Since this is the end of the series, readers will expect resolution to the storylines that have been featured in your books. Is that going to happen?

Yes. It will not be neat and tidy though and requires an epilogue which is something I've not included before. I will resolve everything from my grandmother, to the search for Oliver, coming out to family, my relationship with Dylan, David The Bishop, Elliot, other people and places too like Aviary Hill.

Now this is coming to end, I am both happy and sad that this is the last book in the Aviary Hill series. I am happy to finally finish what I set out to do since I was a child and can move on to new writing territory. I am sad because I fell in love with some of these characters and I am unhappy about letting them go. I've spent years with them and trying my best to convey how meaningful to me these people were. It feels like I'm losing them all over again and that hurts.

No mention of Robin.

I'll be honest and say that there hasn't been a resolution with him, I don't believe it will ever be possible and that's for the best. He's not a major character in this novel as I never communicated with him during this period, though his presence and influences are heavily there as there was no way to deny the lasting impacts he had on me. Readers might think the sound of the crickets story and its effect on me in Uncivil X was fiction, but that was one example of the very real influence he had on me. He was a major figure in my young life and you don't ever shake someone like that.

 

Any plans to write another book about your family or your life?

No. I feel like I'm still living in the period that follows Shadow's Gravity and I want to keep my privacy. I might find some inspiration from parts of it, but I would not wish to do more than that. My day to day life isn't all that interesting anyway. Writing, hiking, gardening, photography, travel, work around the house and loafing in antique shops or wherever is what my life is these days. People on my Facebook can tell you that it's terribly lame like watching old music videos on YouTube or bad photos of stuff I see alongside the road or where I walk. I collect postcards and maybe I should start sharing that hobby on Facebook. I'm not all that interested in social media. I'm still a shy person no matter how much I have written about the past parts of my life. I won't say never, I learned that lesson a long time ago, but it is very, very, unlikely that I would ever do it. I still maintain a journal, but that's for my eyes only.

All that remains of the past that I want to publish is my poetry book from the 1990s and much of that is subject matter about family and growing up. I'd like to do that this year, but I don't know if it's the right time. It's me at my most fragile. 

 

A Chris Jr. running around out there? Hmm.

 

You shared a few details about the possibility of you having a child. Do you?

A Chris Jr. running around out there? Hmm. Well, it would spoil a few things to answer that here. I answer that in Shadow's Gravity and the circumstances about that very possibility. I'm a good secret keeper, I've proven that. I'm not one to share everything about my current life on social media and I have serious concerns about the detrimental effects of what social media does to children's mental health.

 

What's one weird story in this novel?

There would have to be several or it wouldn't be my life, but I'll mention hanging out late one night at Charlie Dick's house in Nashville. Okay maybe two, how I was dragged onto the film set of Remember The Titans, which I've still not seen. I did leave out the story of  my being at 99X and how it involved a thrift store album of my favorite, Barry Manilow.

 

There are a lot of music references in your books, from names of songs that were pivotal to the stories or playing in the background of scenes. It's obvious music is important to you, so what are some of the bands or songs mentioned in this book?

 

There are several music references in this book, but hopefully fewer as I was aware of it and trying to get away from that, but since I was in radio for much of this book it was kind of unavoidable. Also, it's kind of an interactive experience for a reader. I enjoy exposing people to music that they may not have heard and may enjoy if they look it up when they read a book of mine. Did people go listen to Robbie Dupree's Steal Away after reading about it in Dweller On The Boundary? I don't know, but they should. It was one of those songs bouncing around in my little brain in the evenings when I was out running around with Robin in the twilight. Or maybe readers my age were reminded just how great the Cure's Lullaby was by having it playing while Tavin and I fumbled around in my car in a church parking lot. People could go study the lyrics to songs by The Police and see the similarities to my life.
As for Shadow's Gravity, Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark album is part of a scene with Everett in Louisville. Her songs Free Man in Paris, People's Parties and The Same Situation from that time with him capture the mood. Another band mentioned would be Pansy Division, a San Francisco gay punk band, who I got into in the mid 90s when I was going through this period of finally being comfortable in my skin for the first time ever. By the way, the guy on the album cover is from Georgia and was the last lover of William S. Burroughs and was involved with Allen Ginsberg too.

 

What is one random object like a toy that you still have from your childhood?

This toy gun. It shot those red paper caps. I used to play with it with Robin. I may have mentioned it in Dweller On The Boundary. I lost it for a time, but as a teenager I found it sticking out of the mud one day walking around the front yard.

What is something random from your childhood that you have not written about?

I loved train sets. My first train set was the Golden Eagle. There was always something with birds, wasn't there? I had a few train sets and would buy extra cars and buildings for my town at the Kessler's at Cobb Center. That store had one of the best toy departments except for the Lionel Playworld on Windy Hill Road.

 

Since I can't ever say who he was or share a photo, that is the closest I can come.

Any final secrets you care to share?

Okay, why not? When Robin left me a music video came out that June and it was like this gift to me. It was Bonnie Tyler's mega hit, Total Eclipse of the Heart, and one of the best videos ever made at the height of the MTV era. The video is set at a boy's school. One of the boys looked to my ten year old eyes like Robin. I fantasized that it was him in the video and I never moved when it came on television. I was pitifully heartbroken. He appears at the very end of the video and runs up to the group of boys already assembled. Since I can't ever say who he was or share a photo, that is the closest I can come to ever sharing what he looked like. I loved that video and took comfort in it. You can cross your heart on that. This video was also released near the time my gifted teacher wanted to send me away to private school and it shaped my idea of what it would've been like. It might be the most homoerotic video ever made too.

What is next after all of this?

I have piles of research on a Georgia murder from the 1970s that I may use for a book. I recently went by one of the locations for it and some time ago I hiked out to where the bodies were dumped. It was a spooky place. I have other ideas in various stages of development too. I am tempted to write something that is pure fiction and stretch myself. Part of me wants to write a book with 80s Atlanta punks as the main characters. People probably don't realize that there were punk clubs like 688 or the Metroplex in the eighties because that facet of Atlanta never seems to be talked about. I'm not certain what comes next, but whatever story is next it will be set in the American South, one of the most complicated and beautiful places on the planet. It has bothered me for most of my life how people get the South wrong, even people born here. There's a lot of lazy propaganda produced in the news and entertainment industry about what the imperfect South is from attitudes to culture. Without being an apologist for the South and the history before I was born, I want to try and change some of the misconceptions about what the South is.

 

Last question. What is the biggest challenge for indie writers?

Finding a book I wrote on the shelves of a Barnes & Noble bookstore was an incredible feeling. November 2020.

A lack of a promotional budget and a big publisher behind you when it comes to publicity. I'm grateful for the audience I have who took a chance on me, but of course I'd love to sell more books. Every writer wants to be read. I don't care anything about being famous or culturally important, but I do want to be read more widely and not be a niche writer. I willingly chose to be an indie knowing the challenges that come with it so I'm not complaining, but I'm mentioning it as a challenge to the business side of writing. I try not to promote myself all that much because there is something unseemly about that. Much of my promotion comes via word of mouth on social media and I'm dependent on ratings and reviews from readers on services like Amazon to help coax the the algorithms into favoring me. I wish more people that read my books would take the two minutes to rate or review me there with their genuine feedback. I have far more readers than ratings and reviews on my books and more feedback would definitely help me.

 

Thank you for reading. 

 

The Middle Of Somewhere

 

January 2024

Crossroads, seem to come and go, yeah
The gypsy flies from coast to coast
Knowing many, loving none
Bearing sorrow having fun ...

A bird sang on a cold Sunday morning and a week began. My head was empty and that is the best way to roll out of bed, go downstairs and make coffee. Nothing except coffee needed to be made, not the bed or decisions. This was a planned week off from novel writing after a very productive week before.

It was a week that I wanted it to snow, but it did not. Instead I enjoyed the snow in Louisville at the end of my fingertips. It was a week dressed in wool in the wind, the sun and the rain that stretched from Woodstock to the northwest, Dawsonville to the north, Gainesville to the northeast and Warner Robins to the south.

Roads had me. It was a week of being in the middle of somewhere in the middle of something. The unfamiliar and the familiar were all the same like the double yellow line. I really am the character Chris M. Rhodes from my books as much as I am Chris M. Vise.

Bennett Street Atlanta. January 2024.

It was a week of buying furniture and art. Legs were stretched, a salesperson carried a lamp for me assuming I was too old and a stranger talked about cell phones in an old mill. It was the South as it was long ago faded like jeans hanging from a clothesline. I could love it again like watching Coal Miner's Daughter for the thousandth time. Somewhere Dew and Loretta were cutting up and ordering sliced bologna in a general store.

Again the morning's come
Again he's on the run
Sunbeams shining through his hair
Appearing not to have a care...

 

Pretty roads were traveled and the miles climbed only to be erased by a head on a pillow and a quilt pulled up high. Georgia Highway 11 between Gray in Jones County and Monticello in Jasper County was some of the prettiest two-lane country road I have seen in Georgia. We drifted through places called Round Oak, Wayside, Adgateville, Hillsboro and places that once had names, but only the road, the train tracks, the pines and broken down homes remain. It was a nice stretch of road from Flovilla by Indian Springs in Butts County down to Forsyth in Monroe County on Georgia Highway 42 too. The quiet was as persistent as the January cold.

It was a week that reminded me that the moments I ever loved Atlanta were few and gone. Sitting in traffic, hunting limited detours and holding back the frustration of being inconvenienced by careless drivers who needed to crash into each other on the interstate was enough.

 

Monticello, Georgia. January 2024

 

Long shadows on the town square in Monticello came from the sun and history. A teenage couple walked into a local coffee shop, cars circled the square to get to some place else in four directions and my head filled.

Crossroads, will you ever let him go? No, no, no
Will you hide the dead man's ghost?
Or will he lie, beneath the clay?
Or will his spirit float away?

 

I began jotting down thoughts about Confederate monuments and the darkest part of my family's history that I have never whispered or hinted. I had a thousand words before the spell broke and I needed a break. I was uncertain if I wanted to write that. I suppose it means I should. The easier something is to write, the less interesting it is.

Macon was a city that I only knew from I-75 going to Florida or I-16 going to Savannah. It was a place to get gas or use the rest area. Many times I had said that I was going to the cherry blossom festival there and many times I found a reason not to go. Macon could never seem to capture me. It was odd for me, I had walked on the streets of the other small Georgia cities such as Columbus and Augusta, but never Macon.

A river and a railroad passing time. January 2024.

I liked how lost in time and left behind it felt. The states of decay that the South has cannot be achieved elsewhere as if the red clay and the kudzu are special ingredients mixed with the heat and humidity. The impression that Macon had on me that once it was important and now it was a relic. In the smaller places of Georgia you see the connections and similarities the state has to its Southern neighbors that metro Atlanta does not have. I could have been just as easily in Gadsden or Fort Payne or Meridian instead of Macon, but those places did not give us Otis Redding or Little Richard or Ronnie Hammond (lead singer of the Atlanta Rhythm Section) or The Allman Brothers Band. There must be something special about the crossroads there and rolling down Highway 41.

Warner Robins, Georgia. January 2024.

I-985. January 2024.

The sun set on Saturday and a week ended. My feet went on my desk and outside as I write this it is nineteen degrees in the backyard. My lips are chapped and I am a little sore. It is time to be home again and to empty the head that is in the middle of thinking about something.

I Have Seen That Face Before

Oh...

When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head

A mugshot is that moment for the public when a crime becomes real and a criminal is made. For the accused, it probably feels like a ceremonial performance as part of having their finger prints taken and the handcuffs placed on them. Perhaps it does not seem genuine until the bars close behind them and they are left with only their potentially guilty thoughts and a filthy shared toilet. It might emotionally sink in for them when they have been caught and the game is up. The mugshot is enough for the rest of us to understand that this is official without a need to experience the rest of it.

I have seen numerous mugshots of people I have written about in my books. Some of them, with multiple mugshots, were expected and then there was one I saw this week that shocked me. I might have expected it if it were Rowe (he has several mugshots) or English Stan (he has none). The person staring ahead in the orange jumpsuit and bad lighting with a scowl I saw for years was the real person behind one of the major characters in all of my books.

It seemed impossible. It seemed ludicrous.

Side by side I compared older photographs of them to the mugshot taken in 2023 and even overlaid them in Photoshop. It was the identical bent ear and the same messed-up eyebrow. Not that I should have needed more convincing once I looked into their eyes, I still did not believe it. I scoured the internet for two days to triple-check the information. It was as though I tried to convince myself that the tsunami I faced was only a ripple on an infinity pool caused by the breeze of a palm fan. This could not be.

There was some reason for disbelief, the last I saw of them was in the 1990s, when they resembled the dorky and youthful person I knew. They were not this scruffy, wrinkled, sun-blotched person who had let themselves go. Was I wrong? I still questioned it despite the exact match of their first, middle and last names and their date of birth.

Something else that threw me off and gave me the biggest doubt was the incorrect information about where they were raised. No, they were not raised in that state; they were raised in Paulding County. I was sure of it; I had known them since elementary school. I had slept in their bed, worn their clothes and much, much more. There was no evidence then or now that this person had a doppelganger.

My fingers kept clicking and my browser kept digging deeper and deeper down a rabbit hole. I learned that they had lied about where they were raised to cover their tracks. That lie was part of a larger scheme lasting two decades.

Emotionally it sank in for me, the information was correct. I was left dizzy in a state of unexpected disappointment. How had I gotten this person so wrong or had they changed? To call it a shock would be to call losing an arm in a gory chainsaw accident a minor scrape with a Husqvarna running wide open. Why had this person allegedly committed these felony crimes and potentially spend the rest of their life in prison? I do not understand.

It was not unexpected that the bullies and bad characters that I have written about have all gone on to become criminals of varying degrees. None of them redeemed themselves in adulthood or made the world a better place. Once a bad apple, always that, I suppose, but this person was not a bad apple. This person was one of the people I still held admiration for, albeit with a few misgivings. It was as if a worm had breached the red skin and made them rotten. This moral threshold that everyone of us have, with a few exceptions, that establishes at our most fundamental level what is right and what is wrong, was perforated. They went from an adult with a distinguished career to possibly a felon on multiple counts.

I scrambled my brain looking for markers on the highway of life that might have predicted this outcome for them.

The look in the mugshot is one I recognize when this person is seething with anger. I did see that face from them a few times, but that is not enough to convict them or say that this person will grow up to become a criminal.

I am reminded of a scene between us next to a cow pond in Dweller On The Boundary.  They throw a large rock into the water disturbing the universe. The crows are gathered in the tree tops, pacing and watching. The conversation goes somewhere I do not want. There were signs of something I did not understand in their personality and they, like many people, had a few loose connections, but not once did I believe there was anything other than a shining goodness in them that steered their decisions.

There is also an experience I have withheld about them, but I am compelled to write about it now. It is not included in the first draft of my next novel, but with these new developments, I will work it in. It seemed insignificant in the context of the times and in 1986, but now it makes more sense and takes on a bruising shade of seriousness. It could have some relevance to what became of them.

Some of the other accusations levied against them without being charged yet, but hopefully will if true, are violations of federal law. With the gift of hindsight, I can see the origins of these accusations taking root in the games we played as kids. Those inconsequential make believe games we played then carry stiff consequences if carried out by adults. How could a smart person be so dumb? This person acted like he was Peter Pan, except they knew it was not a game. I have seen the evidence of these accusations as presented by knowledgeable people in this field and it is damning.

Ethically and legally, I cannot write why they were arrested, even if it is a matter of public record or their other shady and dishonorable dealings, for fear of revealing their identity in my books. With these constraints, there is little detail I can write, but it is bad, very bad. The alleged crimes are bad enough that this person's arrest was covered on every local television news broadcast where they live. Not to offer them any defense or to minimize the crimes, but they are not violent or of a sexual nature and instead involved a very planned deception. The justice system affords them the presumption of innocence and in my heart I would like to believe they are innocent, but based on the evidence and patterns of behavior I have learned about, the allegations are probably true. This was not a one-time spur of the moment bad decision by a good person. It was a series of intentional bad choices over a long period of time by someone that had a substantial part in my young life.

I have to think maybe I saw this somewhere buried in their eyes, at the corners of their mouth or in their arrogance behind closed doors, but I did not. They always claimed to know so much about human nature and then they gave into the meaner, more desperate side of it. It upends my view of them in the past, our shared memories, what I have written about them and they are now tainted. 

If a conviction comes down before publication of my next novel, then I will address it in the epilogue, as this book was intended to tie up all of the storylines from this series. Beyond that, I will have no further comments about this person.

Inside My Skull

Me in 2000.

 

To write about the past is not as easy as opening your head and spilling it out onto the screen. If only it was that easy then I could write much faster. 

 

One of the techniques I use to remember the past is immersive. I visit places from that time, listen to music from then, watch videos if I have them, look at photos, read my journals or hold objects from the  time. Those actions are an attempt to reconstruct what it felt like in my life  and to coax out memories that may have been misplaced. Since my next novel is set in the second half of the 1990s and the early 2000s I still  have clothes from that period that did not end up in one those charity bins in a shopping center parking lot. Luckily the clothes still fit and I have put them on.

The year 2000 was a big year for me with many changes. I had come into my own, was successful, confident and was having a lot of fun. I was into trip hop, trance and jazz since rock music was going a direction that little interested my tastes. I was exposed to trip hop by a guy I dated in late 1999 that was Mr. Hip Designer, living-in-a-loft guy. It was a brief relationship, but it changed me for the better. I cannot listen to the sensual downtempo music of Massive Attack, Portishead, Alpha or Hooverphonic and not think of him. He left his fingerprints inside my skull.

A copy I still have of an XY Magazine from 2000.

I was rummaging through the bookcases in my office and came across this magazine. I remember buying it at a Borders bookstore near where I lived. I had grown up a magazine reader and in the early 2000s I often went to bookstores rifle through the magazine rack and read. Even a simple magazine from twenty-three years ago had memories attached to it that had little to do with what was printed on its pages.

 

To look at this XY Magazine from November 2000 is for me to remember how much I loved the television show Queer As Folk. I added Showtime to my Direct TV package just to watch and I cared little about television. The show debuted that December, but there was much buzz about it in gay circles beforehand about just how gay and sexy it was going to be. It turned out to be just as advertised and in those first couple of seasons I never missed an episode or taped it on the VCR if I could not watch it when it was scheduled.

Looking at this magazine also reminds me of a guy I met that fall and the deep red accent wall of my master bedroom. I remember him holding this very magazine in bed next to me after sex and asking who the guy on the cover was as he pointed at Justin played by Randy Harrison.
 

"He's hot. Who is this," he asked.

I agreed and explained that he had grown up in metro Atlanta and some of his family still lived here.

The guy I was in bed with was twenty-one, a twink, from the small Georgia town of Jefferson. I had aged out of my twink years and was twenty-seven. He was attractive, good in bed and a fling that lasted a few weeks. Our getting together was never meant to be anything more than temporary fun. I was on to the next guy and he probably was too.

I did write about this guy in the first draft of the next book, but whether he will make it through the further drafts remains to be seen. There are so many stories that could be told in every life, but never will and that is one of the more difficult parts of writing, knowing what to cut. A good memory does not always make for an entertaining one or one that fits within a larger story that is being told.

To the Jefferson twink, I still remember your name and if you are out there and you find this, I hope you are doing well.

It might not be trip hop, but that year I loved Macy Gray's I Try.