Erased? Yipe, yipe, yipe!!!

Dearest Jo-Anne,

Aren't you ready to talk yet? I know I told you that I'm really patient, but could you cut me a little slack - please?

Missing you,

- Me

Settling in again, I guess.

Just got back from a tenants rights rally to support my neighbors who are being evicted. It was a fairly large turnout with at least 150 local community members and over a half dozen elected officials promising strong support. The event and issue was covered by several news channels and is featured on the front page on the NY Times Sunday real-estate section.

I was invited out for drinks and dinner by a friend whom I hadn't seen for at least two months. she took me to a nice Mexican restaurant that served very interesting pre-Hispanic dishes and fantastic margaritas in a beautiful outdoor garden - you would have loved it. We wound up working on a treatment for a 1930's period musical comedy she was contracted to write for producers in China. My job was to figure out the reason for a big Kung-Fu fight that the producers required. Great fun and very productive to boot! We may go sailing tomorrow since my dive on the submarine today was cancelled. I've got to get out on the water somehow - my gills are drying up. Well, at least my surfboard is ready to be picked up this coming week and I'll hit the waves no later than Saturday. Cowabunga!!

Tonight, I'm attending a fundraiser dinner/dance at that East River ecology center I've been working with. Great people, great food and bad dancing - how can I go wrong?

Anyway, congrats on a good time on the courts today, and good luck tonight on your date.

As ever,
- Me

PS: It'd be really nice to hear from you sometime- I miss your voice.

I wish you could be named, my secret friend.

My dearest pumpkin,

I've missed you since you left me on that Wednesday night I'll never forget. I deeply regret how we parted and I think about you constantly - usually with a smile on my face. Regardless of what we become in the future, I would not give up one moment of the past - of our time together and apart. You touched my heart in a way that I was afraid I'd lost the capacity for these past years, and for that I'm extremely grateful. Our time together meant more to me than you can possibly know, and for different reasons than you might suppose.

Images of you that I'm left with:

Your sweet face while asleep in the early morning.

Eyes, bright with humor soaring over your charming, infectious laugh.

Your strong yet graceful hands.


Your friend always, and more,
-Me

It's Puerto Rican Pride Weekend - Woo Hoo!!

Here's to Puerto Rico and its people (perhaps that's where we should go on vacation, hmn?). And a big hats off to the Puerto Rican mothers and fathers that made women like you.

I caught you peekin' Pumkin!

What do I want to eat for supper tonight? Hmn? Perhaps I'll just whistle and see who comes?

To my secret friend

I miss you, but I bet you know that already.

Because she's looking.

Secret Woman - don't be lonely. I'm right here.

Her scent lingers in my mind.

Secret Woman -

She gets under my skin.

Zoinks! I'm a human teabag!

So, I spent the weekend teaching 50 firemen and firewomen how to conduct in-water rescue. Most of them are very good on land in a burning building but as soon as you plunk 'em in the drink, they become like rowdy teenagers at the local municipal pool - and as difficult to control. I need a bigger bat!

We were conducting drills in the Hudson river and I had them practicing spinal injury management with a mannequin but couldn't get proper control and feedback from that piece of plastic so I made my first mistake; I volunteered to let them use me as the drowned victim. They were supposed to roll me over in the water from a face-down position using a special technique to prevent additional spinal injury but since they had never tried it before and were, as I mentioned, like rowdy teenagers, they handled me like a ragdoll being washed in the kitchen sink.

Now, I have water up my nose.

Because you said I should post this.

This is part of an ongoing effort to share details about my life with you in lieu of having your countenance opposite me at a dinner table or curled around each other on the sofa, or on the grass in Cental Park.

How do I spend my time? Well, this past summer (which extended well into October) I finally realized a lifelong dream of learning to surf.


As a very young boy I remember vividly how the fire Island surfers would paddle out and over these impossibly tall, steep waves. It seemed to me that they would float all day on the swell, catching random waves and almost before they finished the ride, would turn around and head right back out.

I've often lived in places that had great surfing but somehow never seemed to make it happen. Then this past summer, when I received a birthday check for $100 in the mail from my mother with an admonishment to only spend it on something fun, I turned to my favorite marketplace; Craigslist. Within one day, I was walking back from the west village with my new, used board under my arm and no idea what to do with it except to head out to Rockaway Beach.

I learned how to navigate the subway system with a 7'-6" piece of fiberglass that seemed to be magnetically attracted to other people's heads. Interestingly, few folks took it personally and actually seemed to like the idea that they could be conked on the noggin with a surfboard in the NYC subway. I wound up meeting more nifty people last summer in this way.

I realize that I haven't really said that much about the actual surfing part, but that's because I learned that it's all about the process and not always about standing up on the board on a wave.

Coming soon: A picture of me in September on the beach not standing on my new surfboard and not riding a wave.