On Travel

I've since returned from Palm Springs, CA where I combined business with pleasure. Both involved copious amounts of vodka. Pressing the flesh of LGBT bookstore owners and managers is daunting when the bottom-line of the conversation is, essentially, "Please please please carry 'The Cool Part Of His Pillow'. That is, you see, the point. And in an evolving world where brick-and-mortar bookstores are vanishing faster than my skin's elasticity, it's become even more urgent to pacify management that isn't ALL about e-Books. Some people still like to dog-ear and crack a spine. I was prepared to offer forgettable sex to secure bookshelf space but, instead, I met some wonderful gentlemen who assured that, yes, they would carry the book upon release; one even went to his computer to place the order in my presence, a generosity that then compelled me to buy two hardbacks from his store. I wanted them, anyway, but it seemed the right moment to literally put my money where my yap is and fiscally support the shop. I was gladdened to be invited back to Palm Springs PRIDE in early November for a signing and reading. If I find the right wig, I may even join the parade and do a show at TOUCANS.
The return trip back to Key West FL, where I reside full-time, was fraught. Isn't travel always, now? Between a 6:20 AM departure that compelled me to rise at 4:30 AM (I cursed my travel agent, pretending it wasn't me)...to the zipper on my luggage that decided to disengage...to the fact that there was NOT ONE coffee shop open in the American Airlines gate area at that ungodly hour, when people crave caffeine...the actual journey provided much amusement, disdain, exasperation and discomfort.
On Flight #1, from PSP to Dallas/Fort Worth, I sat next to a man wider than a stove with hands like baeball mitts. I think he is the largest man I have ever personally seen, outside of the Ripley's Believe It Or Not! ad that displayed a man so massive he was buried in a piano case. Without asking, he raised the armrest to allow his fatness to cascade onto my hip, lowered his head and wheezed the entire flight. He either had the worst case of rosacea known to medical science, or he was suffering the first stage of a stroke. I prayed it was the former, because his collapse would have crushed me.
On Flight #2, from DFW to Miami, I watched a very frightened, very pale little girl, flying alone, told by a lipless gate attendant to "stand back here, we don't have time for you right now." A gentle older woman with a pixie cut saw this and intervened, asking the child's name, and offering to escort her to her seat. This was fine with Lipless, freed from her responsbility. Aboard, a man of Middle-Eastern descent ate an entire boxed lunch from POPEYE's next to me. All I could smell was chicken fat for two hours and I became obsessed by his shiny chin that he never sought to dab at. As we all left the plane, I watched the child tearily reunited with what I assumed is her Dad, and felt miserable that this child was the collateral damage of a divorce. She introduced the kindly woman to her Pop, who spontaneously hugged her. I hope Lipless suffered a grievous leg cramp at the same exact time.
And then on Flight #3, from Miami to Key West -- so abbreviated there isn't a beverage service -- I endured two cackling women aptly described as hussies
debate about where, upon their Key West
arrival, they'd have their first Jack and Ginger. "I sure can taste that Jack and Ginger," Brunette Hussy observed. Blonde Hussy added, "I want a strong Jack and Ginger." They tossed this sobriquet around so much, like Sonny and Cher or Abbott and Costello, that I began to fantasize that Jack and Ginger were actually people.
And then, home, to find that my trade paperback version of 'The Cool Part Of His Pillow' had arrived, had been brought in by my catsitter. (The e-Book had debuted earlier that week, on May 14th.) It lay unappreciated, unremarked upon, among 'Entertainment Weekly' and catalogs and more, rude AARP invitations. After I tore, nearly chewed my way into, the Dreamspinner Press box, terrified that something had escaped all of our vigilant eyes -- the editors, the proofreaders, the artist -- and that my name was spelled RODNEY ROSE on the spine, I sighed and savored this, my reward at the end of a 10-hour travel day.The Cool Part of His PillowRodney Ross Rodney RossThe Cool Part of His Pillow