Brenda lost his job and left bitterly. Two of the top managers I worked with are also gone. There were a handful of others whom I didn't know. The guillotine, for the moment, is resting.

In the process of resolving a problem this morning, I introduced myself to a new manager and explained a bit of my background. You must miss Colorado, she said.

Ordinarily, I might have said something nonsensically standard in return. But in that moment, the floor dropped beneath me. Her comment took me by surprise, and so instead I sat immovable, blinking, mouth frozen down.

She meant nothing by it, and she just blinked back at me.

This afternoon, my boss called and asked my interest in managing a new department being formed in Colorado. I heard the words and what he was saying; I sensed something struggling within the lobes, electricity kicking to light a spark. But my head was pale. What? he said, I can't hear you.

I'll think about it.

But I don't have to think about it now. I held a meeting, got great feedback, and posted the minutes: I'm out of here!

Post-script Sunday, February 29, 2004

The 1980s, then and now, are remembered for its images of corporate success. Do you remember 100% all-cotton pinpoint button-down shirts and leather wingtips? I remember the folks who wore that costume carrying out war games, battles between the top 10 percent that treated the other ninety as carelessly as spare change. I remember early-morning telephone calls, "There's no need to show up today." I remember it for entire wings of buildings suddenly dark, the doors chained.

Leap forward to now. An advanced degree, experience, and a shelf full of books on last year's favorite management theories bring false promise. The suits have changed, but the top one percent still play shell-games with organization charts. Managing a new department? The guillotine lurks just out of sight, a glint of blade in the dark, ready to roll out in six months, nine months, a year.

Lately, my e-mail in-box has filled over the issue of gay marriage. Sign this petition, send this on, and can-you-believe-this-article. The assumption made is: Because I'm gay, I must support gay marriage.

Wrong.

Why? Because of my general emnity toward all things cloaked with religion. I don't care about the issue of marriage (gay or straight) because I don't care for anything organized religion purports to own.

And before anyone sends me hate mail: I have been signing those petitions, I have been sending things on, and clucking my head at articles forwarded to me. Discrimination is alive and well in this country, and to the extent DOMA represents discrimination, I am opposed to it.

But rather than getting all whooped up over DOMA taking away something we already don't have, we should be campaigning instead to expand the Civil Rights Act (also a constitutional amendment) to include sexual orientation. A much better use of everyone's time, I think.

The myth of Getting Married runs too deep in this country. Whisper "I do", and suddenly trumpets sound and the gates open to a lifelong earthly paradise. It is a Get Out of Jail Free card.

In the golden olden days, Marriage meant tramps were transformed into perfect housewives; assholes became strong and silent breadwinners. These days, the myth has mutated: For thoroughly modern Millies, marriage between equals means "always communicating", "always being sensitive to the other person's needs" and "always willing to compromise". With those skills down pat, things will never go wrong.

Right?

Why, it's almost like drinking wine and having it turn into blood.

The focus, regardless of orientation, should be on commitment, not marriage. My partner of six years wanted to get married: Marriage shows you've made a commitment. And I said, Every day I wake up next to you shows I'm committed. (No jokes please.) Good thing we weren't married, because when the kitchen got hot he couldn't take the heat.

Oh, I'm expecting to hear how I'm full of internalized homophobia. Last I heard -- and only one short generation ago -- the Gay liberation movement was inventing new rules that worked for us; relationships and traditions and methods of honoring them that worked in a new world -- and not in a world that hated gays. What happened to this energy and imagination?

But my lack of support for marriage should not be misinterpreted as discrediting those who believe in the Right to Marry. Go for it, if that's what you want. Already, two sets of my closest friends have tied the civil-union knot. My best friends G & P exchanged vows in Canada last fall; and my ex-boyfriend R traveled to Vermont with his boyfriend a week or so ago. Congratulations! and I'm very happy for them.

Whether or not Canada or Vermont allowed a civil union, they could have exchanged vows to each other privately, or publicly at a party for one thousand of their closest friends. They could have said something to each other each morning they wake up next to one another.

And they still can.

My point being: The right to marry won't change a damn thing. At least not for what's truly important.

Instead of burying myself with my usual slew of self-help books, lately I've been reading books on writing: Ann Lamot's Bird by Bird. It's very easy to read and gets the point across. But, like those darn self-help books, there are some familiar themes, like: Just Write. Well, consider this entry today's effort!

The other book I'm reading is a biography of Jack Kerouac. I guess that's not really a book about writing. But this book goes into detail -- exhausting detail -- about Kerouac's writing process.

Alright, I have to admit, I was looking for the gay bits. I heard Kerouac was gay. And even if he wasn't totally gay, he was supposed to get around. Well, this book detailed in the Best of Boring all his conquests. He was married three times, and "put the make" on girls when he was young. Very little gay. There was a single-line reference that Kerouac and two friends went to a bathhouse in the 40s "but Kerouac didn't get into it." No details. Oh well.

Well, I guess it's supposed to be a scholarly work. My dad once said "I don't know if Kerouac was gay, but he had quite a 'thing' for Neal Cassady." Cassady is Kerouac's friend in On The Road and the main character in Visions of Cody.

Here's a summary of the juicy bits involving Cassady: He had a year-long affair with whozits who wrote Howl. I saw the best minds of my generation... yeah, him. And, when Kerouac lived with the Cassadys in San Fran in the early 50s, they shared Cassady's wife.

Maybe it was the writing style, maybe it's 2004, or maybe I'm jaded: These tidbits didn't particularly scintillate me.

What interested me more (and I haven't read the book enough to discover the answer), was why Cassady disappeared from Kerouac's life after about the mid-1950s. What happened? Did their friendship suddenly end, or did they drift away?

Flash back about twenty years: I remember reading On The Road the first time. I wanted to hop in my rusty VW Rabbit; swoosh! down that rising asphalt ribbon to the land of the eternal cowboy, searching for that luscious desert, litting up like bizzing neon.

(OK no more bennies for me!)

Seriously, I had never read anything like it. It was a positive and hopeful book because it was filled with energy and made me look at everything fresh. To me, it symbolized -- and still symbolizes -- what I believe America represents. Or should represent.

Question for visitors to the site: Have you read a book that impacted you that way?

Later, I tried to read Dharma Bums and Visions of Cody, but I didn't get far in either one. Sadly, neither seemed to match that zeal -- irritating, even -- of On The Road.

This past saturday night, I hung out with two new friends of mine. I met E when we began talking about living healthfully: eating right and exercising. He'd gotten hooked on the Body For Life program. I looked through it, but I see it as another form of body fascism involving charts and diet supplements. But, E has followed it faithfully in the last two years to transform himself from a humpty dumpty into a 'metrosexual'.

When I arrived at their house, E and his girlfriend L were decked out in vinyl and leather, and that's when I learned they are into bondage. (They just formed a local leather 'group'.) Aren't there any normal straight people anymore?

We went to an alternative club in downtown Dayton. By "alternative", I mean neo/semi/post-punk/Goth/industrial. Black paint, black lights, and mirrored columns in the upper floors of an old department store. Fog machines, strobe lights. Lots of smoke and very loud, reverberating music. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised that Dayton has a place like this -- turn on the evening news to see the dispair here -- and then you might as well revel in it!

Maybe I'm a little long in the tooth to be hanging out in a nightclub, a post-punk/goth/industrial one at that. But E and L aren't much younger than me, and besides, it didn't matter. A lot of the playlist was from the 80s, and if it was new, then it sounded like it was from the 80s. Seemed like they played albums of Depeche Mode. Crazywild!

Following a full metal-detector pat-down to get inside, I smelled a clove cigarette and that got my mouth drooling. I don't smoke, but cloves are a guilty -- and rare -- exception. If you've never smoked a clove, they taste spicy and make your mouth and tongue tingle.

I cornered one of E and L's friends -- trussed tightly in a corset and floor-length dress -- and got her last clove in exchange for a drink. Mmm -- heaven! Meanwhile, E and L bubbled about an artist who's coming soon -- someone who uses his body piercings in his 'performances'. I admit, I'm intrigued...

During the evening, I got the vibes. When they asked me what I wanted to do at the end of the night, I said I was tired and drove home. (And that wasn't a lie, I had really cooked it up on the dance floor.)

On the one hand, I thought to myself Carpe Diem if they ask me to 'participate' in something with them. But then I think, where one boundary goes down, another goes up. I want to be friends. And as a friend, the most I could see myself doing is 'cuddling' without necessarily even being sexual. (Ugh! And, I hate cuddling...!) I don't see cuddlebunny and bondage making good bedfellows, do you?

But then I seem to be intimate only with strangers. Who knows. If I'm ever asked, I'll decide then.