ask, tell

I woke up at 9:30 this morning and read Twitter. I'm in Alabama and I read that Obama was signing the Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal into law at 9:15 EST, and there was going to be a live video feed of it on the website. I had my time zones confused and thought that meant I could still watch it. But it was too late.

I went to the website anyway and there was a live video of a press conference with Robert Gibbs. I thought about how I hate publicists, how the implication of a publicist is that a person doesn't trust himself to self-represent in an appealing way. The implication of a publicist is that somewhere, truth is lost, or that truth doesn't matter. I don't like to think about how the artists I admire probably have publicists. I admire them because I believe they are telling me the truth about life.

I shut the computer and burrowed back into the covers and slept til noon for the first time in months. It felt good. While sleeping, I had a dream. I had a co-worker who was a teenager, maybe 16 or 17 years old, a boy. He asked me if he could come over after work and I said yes. He came over and we talked and he sat beside me on a couch and leaned in and buried his head in my neck. He cried and said his grandmother had died that morning. It made me very sad and I ran my hands through his hair and told him it would be okay and that I was sorry. Then he started to kiss me, but he didn't know how to kiss because he was so young. It was so sweet, it made me want to cry. I kissed him back.

A person I used to love works as a publicist now, or did the last time I spoke to him, nearly a year ago now. I thought about that as I crawled out of bed at 12:45 and fixed myself a sandwich. I don't know if it was breakfast or lunch.