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Summertime and intellectual endeavors don’t usually go hand in hand–at least, not down here in the subtropics. Attempting a poolside read of The Archaeology of Knowledge in New Orleans in July, for example, is a task no less Herculean than reciting multiplication tables while carrying a Bosendorfer grand piano up five flights of mouse-narrow stairs. (Not that I’d ever do either, mind you.) Luckily we’ve got the frosty, meticulous Germans and Swedes to pick up the navel-gazing slack during the warmer months.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m no scholar, that’s for sure. Since I turned my back on academia, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve mentioned Foucault in a sentence. But even my thoroughly insipid middlebrow tastes can’t stand up to the summer sun. During those hellish months, I tend to slouch toward dime-store romances and People magazine.

So, to prepare myself for the next few months of shall-we-say lighter fare, I’ve begun re-reading Mr. Capote’s Music for Chameleons. I haven’t even so much as thought of the book since the summer between my sophomore and junior years in college, when I spent the better part of every day getting stoned, going to an obscenely facile level-two French class, smoking up, having a swim, getting baked, and reading the afternoon away. I guess in my altered mental state, I failed to notice how thoroughly genius the man could be–the ease and simplicity of the narratives, the well-drawn characters. I’m finding I also managed to forget some pretty amazing passages, too. Speaking of Jackson Square in the French Quarter, for example:

A lot of fey folk have strolled about this square. Pirates. Lafitte himself. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Huey Long. Or, moseying under the shade of a scarlet parasol, the Countess Willie Piazza, the proprietress of one of the ritzier maisons de plaisir in the red-light neighborhood: her house was famous for an exotic refreshment it offered–fresh cherries boiled in cream sweetened with absinthe and served stuffed inside the vagina of a reclining quadroon beauty.

Certainly makes me hungry. Or thirsty. Or confused. Or something.

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My relationship with my mother isn’t very solid, either. I mean, when I was growing up, sure, we got along well. She was ridiculously overprotective, but she compensated by going to bat for me with dad when I wanted something out of the ordinary: a guitar, a new bike, armloads of cash. She was Good Cop to my dad’s Bad Cop, Madeliene Albright to my father’s Taliban.

Then something changed. I dunno if it was menopause or mental illness or a little bit of both, but sometime in high school, my mother took to her bed and refused to get up much. In addition to the babysitter we already had (there were four of us boys), we took on two cleaning ladies and a part-time cook. In the middle of dinner, mom would occasionally wander from her room into the kitchen, rifle through the junk drawer chock full ‘o Flexeril tablets, and mosey back to bed. Not a lot of mother-son bonding experiences, as you might imagine.

My freshman year at Millsaps, my parents divorced. About a year and a half later, while I was off in Texas for spring break, she married some scuzzy freak she’d been seeing. Since she didn’t bother to tell me herself, I had to find out from one of my brothers. I called her up and had a long conversation about nothing in particular and then, just as I was about to sign off, I asked: “Mom, while I was out of town, did you get, um, married?” She responded a quick “Yes,” and that was about all she’d say.

All-in-all, that’s the way our relationship’s gone for the past decade. She’s not a terribly good communicator. Add to that her genetic disposition toward schizophrenia and alcoholism, and you’ve got a woman most folks would try to avoid. Except maybe Tennessee Williams, who’d write a play about her.

Frankly, mom and I don’t have much to talk about these days. We don’t see eye-to-eye on anything, really. When I make the obligatory pilgrimage to her house once or twice a year, it’s like Chinese water torture: we talk about safe things, make small talk–drip, drip, drip–as the minutes creep by. I’ve managed to escape each incident with my sanity intact, but I don’t know how long I can keep it up.

My dad and I, though, we get along like gangbusters. We’re both pretty stubborn, and we butted heads a lot when I was younger. He thought I was frittering my life away in the arts instead of becoming a lawyer or doctor or something. He also had a little trouble accepting the fact that I’m gay. But now that he sees I can make a living doing what I love, and that Jonno and I have a relationship as solid–if not moreso–than any of his married friends–he’s come around. We could sit and talk for hours; in fact, we have more in common than I’d ever thought possible.

Sorry, mom. I guess it just wasn’t in the cards. Hope your day was happy.

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The dotcomments/php thing wasn’t working. When I started having problems with the UNIX commands, I gave up. I was out of my element, and I didn’t need any more gray hairs. So for now, I’m back with dear old blogvoices. Until it starts futzing my load times, anyway.

Some people don’t care much for the comments option, but I kinda like it. Lets you pull your weight.

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Speaking of the urban gay lifestyle, we just scored the rights to a kick-ass play. Anybody wanna guess which one? Here’s a hint….

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I know I live in a metropolitan area. I know I live in a gay ghetto. I know that the ideologies and tastes I’ve developed aren’t necessarily the same as those of folks from, say, Dubuque. I know I’m not exactly down with the middle-American zeitgeist. I know, I know, I know. And I accept all that…

That said, I refuse to believe that the values expressed through CNN.com’s Quick Vote polls represent those of contemporary America. They’re always so completely skewed to the right. For real. Even my mom doesn’t think that way. Who’s stuffing the box?