R.P. Andrews's Blog, page 17

The Doggie Trick Test

The Doggie Trick Test

As those of you who follow my blog know, l’m a dog lover. I’ve got three here with me in Florida, two dachshunds and one terrier chihuahua mix. My ex just lost his elderly beagle Sammy at our home in Pennsylvania, who now joins the ten dogs and one cat we had over the decades we lived together that are either buried up in PA or in urns at our respective residencies.

I also fully recognize not everyone likes animals – l get it – but l’ve learned over the years that if a newbie (a guy l’ve connected with over the web or phone apps who l’ve never met before) doesn’t warm up to my dogs (who again aren’t intimidating pit bulls) the second he walks through the door, l can bet with 99.9 percent certainty our encounter will bomb.

Such was the case a couple of months ago when a guy from Chicago l met off Manhunt came over for a fling. He was a top and l’m a top, but he agreed that some of his best sex has been with other tops and that if he couldn’t plow me he’d blow me like a champ. Since l dig sucking too l figured we’d have fun. His face pics looked younger than the age he admitted to – 50 – but the body shots for someone who described himself as “athletic” looked on the mark. i even brought up the fact that all my pics were current – less than six months old – and he said the ditto about his and that he had had the same frustrating experiences of guys showing up at his door looking like their father.

Now l’m no gym bunny but l keep my weight under control and my body toned and expect the same from the guys l bed down with. But the first thing that caught my eye as he walked from his car to my door was his belly. Not huge but not a sign of an “athletic” build. And as l suspected, his slightly haggard face was that of an older man, befitting the fifty he admitted to, not the thirty something boyish one he had in his profile.

Standing by the inner door to my house as they always do when Daddy has a gentleman caller was my little tribe.

First words out of his mouth: “They don’t bite do they?”

Right then l should have told him l had just come down with Ebola. But l didn’t. Guess l am a masochist.

Then, as l always do, l asked him if he was okay with me. I’d rather beat a guy to the punch if he’s not happy with what he sees than wait for him to kick me in the balls with a “l don’t think this is going ro work out,” which what l should have said to him looking at his belly.

But l didn’t.

It wasn’t that l was overly horny, or pissed if l told him to get the fuck out that my dollar Viagra would have been wasted. No, but I was curious where this was going.

“l’ve got water or Gatorade. “

Now if someone offers me a free drink as a courtesy l  gladly give him my choice without reservations, as do my fuck buddies whenever we get together.

His response:

“What flavor Gatorade have you got?”

HUH?

He passed on the cherry colored bottle l held up for the bottled water.

We got in the bedroom, him still concerned about the dogs, l hesitantly agreed to close the bedroom door. Yea one of them may roam in and out but better that than whimping and barking on the other side of the door. (“Hey, what are you doing to our daddy?”)

We strip, and stocky he is, athletic he ain’t. My dick is up – thank you Canadian Pharmacy – his isn’t, so l begin demonstrating the talents that won me the Best Cocksucker Award for the Mid Atlantic Region in 1996. He gets hard – nice cock – and we go to the bed.

Now for someone who in his profile claimed he’d dive on your dick if couldn’t dive into your ass, he’s real slow to prove it, but after about fifteen minutes of making him feel good, l cheerfully (thank God for my acting classes in college) announce *My turn,” and gesture for us to switch places on the bed. He complies but, well let’s put it this way, my little mutt Pete can do better.

We try sixty nining which he mentioned in his profile, but he immediately complains that if l bend his dick closer to my mouth in that position, it hurts. Okay …

In the end neither of us got off. We rattled on for a while about Trump, and his job as private snow removal guy.which sounded like his only job. Since Chicago this year had baske in an Indian summer with barely a trace of snow, l wondered if he lived with his parents or had a sugar daddy to feed that belly of his.

“I gotta eat,” he finally said reaching for his clothes.

“Thank fucken God,” l thought to myself.

So what did l learn from this awkward, occasionally painful experience?

If the guy doesn’t pass the doggie test right from the get-go,  tell him you’ve suddenly come down with a case of the runs and get him back his car as quickly as you can.

A Viagra that cost a buck is a terrible thing to waste but, hell, we all gotta make sacrifices, right?

Have a great Labor Day … chat with you Wednesday.

Where Are All The Unencumbered Men?

Where Are All The Unencumbered Men?

You know what l’m talking about: guys who have their shit together and aren’t chained to anybody, guys who are potential lover material.

So where are they? Here in Fort Lauderdale which l only half jokingly call The Land of Philandering Partners and Assorted Predators, and l suspect elsewhere, they ain’t easy to find.

You’ve got guys partnered, even legally married in open relationships (including sugar daddies and their “sons”) who don’t have a place to play, or if they do, are in relationships where they only play together and Joe is hot but Moe is not.

You got guys partnered or married in closed relationships (including sugar daddies and their “sons” ) who can only meet when their other half is away, preoccupied, working, or fucking around himself. The best time for them is seven o’clock in the morning. (No joke.- that’s the time one encumbered guy wanted to meet after hubby had left for whatever.)

You got guys with no money and/or a schlock job (that’s New Yorkese for a shit job or minimum wage) who get around on bike or scooter and usually connect guys with cars because they have wheels. They also who have no place to fuck around in because they either live in their mother’s basement, on their ex lover’s sofa or with four roommates.They’re often the ones on the market for a sugar daddy, but are manipulative and clever enough you have to read between the lines to figure it out.

You got the druggies or the alkies who expect you to pick up their bar tab or finance their next forty dollar bag of Tina. And that’s for starters. (See above.)

Or you got the guy who has everything, the face, the body, the right age, a good job, the apartment or condo with the smart furniture, the car, the right credit cards, even a cute little doggie, who digs you for the night or as a fuck buddy but says he’s not in the market for a lover ( until one – not you – comes along);

Or who is your soulmate but is from out-of town and lives in Butte, Montana. (Butte is beautiful – believe me, I’ve been there – but you guys in Butte find your soulmate is in Nome, Alaska, and it costs a thousand bucks and three connecting flights to see him.)

So what else is new?

Kodak Moments

Kodak Moments

For those of you too young to remember, Kodak once ruled supreme in the photographic world, that is until it missed the boat and under-estimated the impact of digital technology which it actually developed and is now an integral part of every smartphone. (Thank you, Samsung. Without you, I wouldn’t have been able to take all those scandalous pics that get me men on the websites and phone apps.)  But when Kodak was King, it ran an advertising campaign that encouraged people to use its cameras and film to capture and save those once-in-a-lifetime memories, what its copywriter geniuses cleverly branded “Kodak Moments.”

So what’s a Kodak Moment for me as a gay man?

When it’s more than just mechanical, hit and run sex, which is practical and has its place but is only physiologically satisfying at best. It’s when you connect with a guy on more than just the dick and butt level, when he’s your type and you his, when lust and not expediency (or drugs) drives the two of you to do things you wouldn’t do with other guys but hardly think twice about with one another. The setting, be it a comfortable bed or a cramped sex club booth, and time spent, all night or just seventeen uncivilized minutes, are less important than what you do with them. It doesn’t matter if you ever connect again, though at the time the two of you think and even talk about doing  just that. Even if you live in Chicago and he’s from Sydney. The reality is that you did connect and, in the end, that’s somehow enough.

So what’s a Kodak Moment?

It’s loving in the fast lane.

 

 

The Magic Triangle

The Magic Triangle

Even if a guy doesn’t have much in the looks or bod departments, if he has the Magic Triangle, I can have fun with him. What’s the Magic Triangle you ask? That crotch area that cuts across the abs just above the pubes, punctuated on each side by the hip bone and ending at the tip of his dick.

If the Magic Triangle looks good, nice tight skin, some fuzz, a hairy bush, low hangers and a nice thick cut cock, well, there’s no stopping me. A furry ab just above and fury chest to stroke while I do y job dob Under, well, then I’m in homo haven. Hairy, muscular thighs on either side of the Disney World for en Who Like Men, and I’m on life support.

But even if the guy looks and acts like Brad Pitt, if he’s shaved his pubes, has no balls and a puny dick, and smooth all over like a baby’s bottom, sorry man, it ain’t gonna happen.  At least for me, though I try, I do try, to get into zone, believe me.

From a larger perspective, if you asked me if my choice was between a handsome guy with a so so body and a nery or even homely guy with a body that looked like his owner gave a shit, I’d take the nerd anytime.

After all, even if he and you are into kissing, don’t you spend most of your time on what’s beyond his Adam’s Apple?

Case closed.

Oh, Those Phones!

Oh, Those Phones!

I’m still up in Pennsylvania and will be until just after Labor Day and my ex has had his cataract surgery and l know he’s okay.

Now every morning as we sit on our deck facing the road having our coffee and arguing about nonsense (like George’s concern about the mileage our neighbor across the street is putting on her Jeep; when l tell George who gives a shit, he yells at me – Christ! Get a fucken life) –  anyway as we’re on the deck, just about every morning this older woman all decked on in a fancy jogging outfit and makeup is walking her little Fido while talking on her smartphone.

Perpetually.

One morning, l just happened to be walking my Pete at the same time she was passing, and her conversation, which was loud enough to be heard yards away, was an endless series of gossip and criticism of others. Where the hell did all these conversations come from, and like George, ain’t people got their own lives to worry about?

Last week l took the Metro North from Port Jervis, New York, just across the border from PA, to Manhattan to visit the Frank Lloyd Wright retrospective on the one hundredth and fiftieth anniversary of his birth at the Museum of Modern Art. The pics here are of the exhibition which included his architectural drawings and models (here the Gugginheim Museum) that [image error]he made for himself and as a PR strategy for wooing new clients. Like Edison, Wright was as smart a businessman as he was a genius. After Edison’s very first invention failed, he vowed he [image error]would never invent anything every again he couldn’t sell. The real money behind the electric light bulb was providing the power for it and it was Edison who created the very first electrical power plant that as an experiment lite up lower Manhattan.

(The other pic is of MOMA’s sculpture garden.)[image error]

Getting back to phones, coming in on the Metro North, a family sat across from me, a young mother, her son and two daughters, and rather than chat, all four of them were on their respective phones in their own private worlds. So much for family togetherness.

The topper though was this young girl, she couldn’t have been more than seventeen, again across from me, this time on my trip home, who went into explicit detail talking LOUD  on her phone to her girlfriend about her most recent sexual encounters. (“Yea, these boys had their hands on my thigh but they knew they weren’t in my league… I got so drunk l ended up on the street .. then this one put his hand on my tit…)

A beauty she was not.

Now l’m no prude, hell, while she was talking l was writing a steamy, over the top sex scene for my next book, ”For The Love of Samuel,” on my tablet.

But there is such a thing as decorum on a public train.

The word “tit” had come out of her mouth for perhaps the dozenth time as we pulled into Port Jervis when, getting up, l stared at her with a disconcerting pissed look and blurted, “Honey, that’s more information that l need to know.” She smiled back like a nurse would to an Alzheimer’s patient who had just told her to go fuck herself, and went on talking. Now if l were her daddy, who BTW she didn’t speak about in the most glowing terms, l would have a chastity belt on her.

Now amatuer psychology tells me her self-esteem is so low this was the only way she could seek attention. Me? I seek attention my taking soft porn shots of myself and putting it up on the web, and writing erotic gay fiction with sex scenes l relive, not make up.

Or am l beginning to sound like a bitter old rationalizing, worrying- about-what-other-people-do faggot to you?

 

“Don’t Flush for Piss:” The Sleaze Factor – Part II

“Don’t Flush for Piss:” The Sleaze Factor – Part II

So what separated the real Mc Coy Sleaze Factor bars of yesteryear from today’s S  wannabes?

Dress code: You didn’t see any polo shirt types with $100 designer jeans. Or flip flops or Bermuda shorts. The more ragged the better. At the Lure, it didn’t matter what you looked like; if you were wearing sneakers or, Jesus, after-shave or cologne, Mr. Bouncer would turn you away.
 Wall-to-wall men: There was no place, I mean NO PLACE, to move except against another sweaty body in bars the size of the men’s section at any Macy’s. Show me how many men’s bars that size are that crowded on a weekend night today.
The smells: Sweaty arm pits and chests, beer-laden piss, even carcasses (The Lure, in the heart of the now chic Meat Market, was once a meat packing warehouse).
 Cruising – Big Time:  You walk into a bear bar today shirtless and no one gives you a glance. Then, that was the ONLY reason you were there. Now it’s all social. Thank Grindr and Adam4Adam and Scruff for that.
 A sense of history: Even if it was more illusion than reality, these holes had the dingy, dreggy look as if they had been there from the early days of NYC’s pre-gay liberation when being queer meant belonging to some truly secret society of men, not a sub-cultural demographic dissected by Congress and wooed by Corporate America.

And on Summer Sunday late afternoons from 4 until about 8, the Sleaze torch was handed over to the Dugout at West and Christopher. There, sweaty men, half naked men flooded the corner, searching for the one last fling or two of the weekend before Monday morning reality came crashing down on all our respective little shitty worlds.

Even if they hadn’t become victims of the real estate boom of the early 2000’s that transformed  this abandoned sector of New York into a new Soho, (though I understand it’s still called the Meat Packing District), I doubt NYC’s gay sleaze alley might still be with us.

The reason? Simple. The web which has made hooking up a 24/7 amusement park – more virtual for some I think than real – from the convenience of your smartphone. Gay bars, all gay bars have become social clubs.  And leather bars trying to enforce a dress code just ain’t gonna happen much anymore in this age of anti-discrimination.

I’m just hoping some gay historian had the smarts to save the “Don’t Flush for Piss” sign in the Spike’s john before the wrecking ball moved in.

 

“Don’t Flush for Piss:” The Sleaze Factor

“Don’t Flush for Piss:” The Sleaze Factor

You know what’s disappearing big time in today’s scene? The Sleaze Factor. Today, too many bars are interior designer sparkling, like they were the “after” of some Bravo house make-over show. Christ, you can even smell the fresh coat of Sherman Williams. One famous leather bar in a minor league metropolis once oozed with the S Factor but lost it recently to a mutilating, emasculating redo, and now sports perfectly purple walls and nicely stained railings straight out of Home Depot.

No, no, no! I want the smell of piss to savor, cheap yellow lights to leer under, peeling black paint to smudge against my torn T-shirt, scraped, crumbling concrete under my boots, pool tables stained by Bud Lites, pre-cum and sweat.

And though only a few bars dared to sport them, backroom dark corners where shadows sucked and fucked in porn brazen brilliance.

I want the real raw deal, the kind of dark, dank atmosphere that made your dick quiver even before your first grope of the night.

There was a sign stenciled in white on the black wall of the tight, SRO-style john at one of NYC’s sleaziest West Village bars, the Spike. “Don’t Flush for Piss.” That sign said it all.

True, you can still find the S Factor at Lauderdale’s Ramrod leather bar and the Slammers sex club  (though the S there is more a re-creation like the Wild Wild West in Disneyworld) and echoes of the glory days at Philly’s Bike Stop, D.C’s Eagle, and Christopher Street’s Ty’s.  But for real authentic sleaze you’d have to take a time machine back to New York City’s West Village Sleaze Alley threesome, the Spike, the Eagle and the Lure.

For anybody in the leather/levi scene of decades past and living in New York, visiting these bars on a Friday and Saturday night was a given. You wouldn’t just visit one of them even if essentially the same guys frequented all three. You’d have your early evening beer at the Rawhide in Chelsea (for those of us who came in from the ‘burbs parking in the West 20’s was saner). But by 11ish you were trotting your levied ass (or bare one if you were wearing chaps under your trench) down to West Street. The streets were dimly lit and kinda scary to be honest, but you didn’t care. You were butch (with no shirt under your leather jacket on a 10 degree NYC January night so your tits were all perky for your grand unveiling in the bar) and about to enter Manhattan’s Butch Zone. The S bars were all within reasonable walking distance of one another, so making the circuit was easy even with the wind blowing in your face.

And when you’re Saturday night horny, four or five blocks in sub-zero weather means nothing.

Wednesday: The Sleaze Factor and what separated the places of yesteryear from today’s S wanna-be’s.

 

Gay Double Speak

Gay Double Speak

Hell, today more than ever in this culture of info-overload, our society is full of celebrities, politicians, and commentators saying one thing and meaning something else. Or as Trump’s people would put it, “alternate truths.” But I think it all started with us gay boys:

“You look great!”

What he really means: “You looked like shit the last time I saw you, and you still do, but since I heard Gig left you, and I can see why, I don’t want to be the person who pushed you into walking in the middle lane of the highway so I’ll be upbeat.”

“Gees you lost weight!”

What he really means, “You don’t look as fat as the last time I saw you, but you still got a ways to go to look as good as me.”

“Boy you look like you work out a lot.”

What he really means: “I’m envious. I probably spend more time in the gym than you do. So how much juicing up do you do, buddy? Don’t you know it’s gonna pickle your liver?””

You ask when a guy you thought was interested in bedding down wants to connect , and he replies, “Cool!” or if you throw out a strategy, he replies, “Sounds like a plan.”

What he really means: “Shit I don’t know if I want to make a commitment right now, I mean you look O.K., but I’m on vacation and I’m really waiting for somebody better, but just in case, let me string you along with some nice, hip totally evasive response.”

A buddy is getting nowhere with some hottie he’s tricked with three times in a row: “But I really love him!”  You reply very empathically: “Well, did you tell him how you feel about him?”

What you want to do is shake him and yell, “Look, all you were was a good fuck – if he wanted more from you, don’t you think he’d say so by now? You’re 45, and look 55, he’s 33 and ready to pose for the cover of Men’s Fitness. Wake up and smell the coffee!”

The guy is 55, got infected when he was 39 (i.e., around 1995, ten years after researchers knew how HIV was transmitted). He describes himself as a “survivor,” looking for some kind of sympathy from you. You respond, “Glad to hear it.”

What you really want to say is: “You fucken jerk – you knew what was gonna on. Sorry to hear you got fucked, literally and figuratively, but my tax dollars are paying to take care of you and you want sympathy too? Huh?”

You’re on the beach and your buddy introduces you to bunch of guys he met in from San Francisco for the weekend.  As they leave for their beach blanket, you exchange, “it was nice meeting you.”

What you really want to say to the hottie of the group: “Here’s my cell number. Ditch your friends and let’s fuck.”

Or if none of them stirs your dick, “That’s a relief. I was afraid one of them was gonna make a move on me.”

You’ve fucked around with a guy at the bath house and you both had some fun but it’s too early in the evening to cum, so as he moves on, “he says, “Catch you later.”

What he means: “That is if nothing better comes along because I’m a pig and I want to fuck around with as many guys as I can tonight but if I still haven’t cum by 2 and you’re still trolling around, well, why not?”

You’re introduced by an acquaintance to some fifty something rich faggot who’s either a six figure Manhattan corporate attorney or a trust fund baby who can’t stop telling you what exclusive neighborhood his seven bedroom home and two thousand square foot condo and beach front vacation getaway are in, how he trades in his Lexus for a new model every year, and where he stays when he vacations on the French Riviera. He, in turn, introduces you to his 35 year old muscled partner who throws his arm around him affectionately.

You smile benignly and reply, “that’s great.”

What you want to say is, “I don’t give a fuck if you got as much money as Bill Gates. You’re still an ugly old fuck that even half a mil in cosmetic surgery won’t help.”

And to his hunky paramour: “Who the fuck are you kidding with all this all lovely-dovey bullshit? How many times did you fuck his sorry ass or his yours for those keys to the Ferrari?”

But, as we all know, honesty is not always the way to win friends and influence people – and definitely doesn’t work when you’re searching for dick.

 

Country Cruizing …

Country Cruizing …

Some observations since slumming this summer up in PA country:

This is Mr. and Mrs. Pillsbury Doughboy and their Muffins Territory. A Jenny Craig franchise up here would go bankrupt in a month.

Down in Lauderdale, sex is more important than eating. Up here, eating is sex.

Here the homely nerds that got bullied and picked on in high school are now the professionals in Manhattan making big money. The pretty boy jocks with bodies by God who bullied them are here cutting grass, raking leaves and shoveling snow.

Here old men think about or have sex. Old women go antiquing.

Down in Lauderdale we barhop, fuck, beach, and get high. Up here getting high and fucking is all they got.

Here with the nearest gay guy 25 miles away, virtual sex on a hookup site or phone app isn’t an option, it’s a given.

Here, guys in Witness Protection Territory, hiding from guys they squealed on go from Tony Soprano to Stu Levine.

All I know, come Labor Day I head back home to the narcissistic, the anorexic (my 42 year old lover and I only half joke that we must be anorexic if we go nuts if we gain five pounds), the drug happy, the sex addicted, and the who cares about skin cancer, I wanna look good naked crowd.

And I can’t wait.

 

 

Happy Birthday Ma! (Wherever You Are)

Happy Birthday Ma! (Wherever You Are)

Mary,  my mother, a life time nicotine addict, who died peacefully and painlessly in her apartment down here in South Florida of a brain tumor in 2006, would have been 96 today.  (This year my father, a World War II vet and hero who died at 76 of a stroke, would have been one hundred years old.) And while I still think of her bitter sweetly at times, my fondest recollection of her was that she was a bitch.

Buying all that Freudian mumbo jumbo when I was in my teens about how a domineering mother and submissive father made you gay (today I’m convinced it’s in our genes), I blamed her for my atypical life. I never quite reconciled that, though, with the reality that my father was my first sex object and gave me some of the best hard-ons of my youth.

My mother’s family came from a little town in the Ukraine, and my sister and I often referred to Mom as the “mad Russian,” as she was constantly ranting and raving about something with a terribly negative view of people – including her husband – while my father, always the diplomat, stood quietly by. Once when I was grown and long out of the house, I boldly confronted him as she was off on one of her temper tantrums with this demand: “Why don’t you rap her already?” He just shrugged his shoulders.

In hindsight, I think my mother had real clinical psychiatric issues. She may have been dipolar, with a heavy dose of a Napoleonic Complex. Perhaps, deep down, standing at just four eleven, and growing up in Depression poverty of immigrant parents, she felt insecure and inferior and never outgrew her tomboy scrappiness and aggressive often “in your face” character for, in her mind, it was the only way she would be heard. Though she was forced to drop out of high school a month before graduation because she needed to help her family, Mary was intelligent and savvy, and everything I know about handling money I learned from her. Yet she was obsessed with being the center of attention wherever she went, and had the emotional maturity of an eight year old. But if it’s true opposites attract, it was these very qualities I think that, besides her beauty, drew my father to her.

All this made living with Mom hell. You never knew what would set her off and when, which made holiday family gatherings or just simple Saturday afternoons sheer stomach wrenching experiences. And when my father, who never smoked, rarely drank, and seemed to be in terrific shape for someone who was not an athlete, dropped dead in the bathroom after coming home one night from a VFW meeting, I blamed cohabitating with this crazy woman for forty years as the cause of his early demise. After all, she was the one who smoked like she owned stocks in R. J. Reynolds – shouldn’t she have been the first to go? Overly critical of him while he was alive, my mother was totally lost when he left her, demonstrating the best performance by a widow in a leading role, though her grief did not stop her from trying to sell his three month old Cadillac to friends and co-workers  – including my boss – at his wake.

My sister dropped out of the family theatrics early in the game, marrying at 22 and moving to Long Island, leaving me, the single son (my closet homosexuality, interestingly enough, never became a subject of family discussion) to watch over Mom. One Thanksgiving long after my father had taken the easy way out, and in my feeble attempt to keep the family together, I drove all the way to extreme northwest New Jersey where my mother, without consulting either my sister or I, had moved to after my father’s death, and brought her to spend the night with me on Staten Island which, in holiday traffic, seemed half a world away. The plan was for us to drive over the following morning – Thanksgiving Day – to my sister’s on Long Island, another marathon on the LIE.

But when my mother saw some light snow falling that holiday morning, she refused to budge, and my frustration in seeing my carefully orchestrated holiday plans go down the sewer reached the point of no return, and in a sudden fit of rage, I knocked this then seventy something woman to the floor. She pretended in typical Mary style to be injured – she wasn’t – and all I thought was how I, a senior health care executive, was going to be charged with elder abuse of his own mother. We later buried the hatchets and spent Thanksgiving as the old lady and her fag son in a local diner.

When guys later on in my life would tell me they knew they were gay when they were practically still in diapers, I would look at them with a jaded eye. Then one night I was watching an old western on TCM and realized that I had had a crush on one of the handsome cowboys when I first saw the flick with my mother at the Central Theater in Passaic, New Jersey. I checked the listing for the year the film was released and saw I was five years old.

But I think my greatest life lesson if not directly imparted by Mom certainly was of her making came a few years later when I was 8 and my sister 3. At the time, my mother worked in a cookie factory, and one of her co-workers offered to pick the three of us up for a Saturday romp to Seaside Heights on the Jersey Shore. How I, even more than my sister, looked forward to that day. (My love of “the shore” was one of the motivating reasons I retired in Fort Lauderdale.) So that morning, with sand pails and shovels and blankets and beach chairs in tow, we trotted down to the pre-designated spot where Mom’s friend would swing by and pick us up.

Only she never came.

After an hour of our futilely waiting and me counting cars whizzing by, Mom forced us to face reality and turned us right around for home.

What I learned that day I never forgot and has, rightly or wrongly, guided me throughout my life: never put your faith in other people; always rely first and foremost on yourself; and always, always have a Plan B.

Mom and I probably fought hundreds of times during the years we shared this earth together, but even when she told me never to come back, I did like a bad penny and played the good son to the end, and, when I moved from NYC to Fort Lauderdale in 2002, I brought her down with me. (Mind you, she had her own place – you can only carry that loving son shit so far.) That’s why, given our roller coaster relationship, I found it strange, even alien, that in her last days as the tumor was eating away at her brain, the boisterous, cranky bitch I had known all my life had become a serene, even pleasant little old lady.

The last time I saw her in her apartment – she was by then on hospice care – I was dressed up for a staff meeting at the college where I taught rather than in my usual jeans and a T. Her final words to me as she gazed with a silly ass smile were, “You look nice.” The following morning, just as the hospice nurses predicted, she was gone.

So when the funeral director allowed me to view her one last time in her coffin before shipping her body up to the cemetery in Jersey to be with my father, I made sure to place a pack of Winston Salems by her side.

But no  lighter.

After all, that was the least a son could do.