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Hello from the bus!

It’s midwinter and those of us in the east just survived below zero weather and a snow bomb cyclone!

To be honest, I love extreme weather.   I used to live in LA and the same sunny weather every single day really depressed me.   People would get annoyed with me.  “You are complaining about a sunny day?” they would ask.  But there is something about a thunderstorm or snowstorm or extreme heat or extreme cold that makes me feel alive.  For some reason this pisses people off.  “YOU DO NOT LIKE WALKING IN THE COLD!”

This cold weather didn’t come without consequences though.  Saul (my husband) and I had a loss and an acquisition.

The loss was my wedding ring.

This wouldn’t be so bad except that I also lost my engagement ring shortly after Saul asked me to marry him.   I have good excuses for both.  I didn’t carelessly leave them somewhere or throw them off a bridge in a rage or slip them in my pocket when a cute barista offered to give me extra oat milk in my latte.  The engagement ring came off when I was swimming in the ocean.   I mean how could I help that?  And when you lose something in the ocean, you can’t even begin to look for it.  You just have to give up the idea of ever finding it again.

My wedding ring had been loose on my finger for a while since I lost 30 pounds.  (Have I mentioned I lost 30 pounds?   It’s all because of Weight Watchers.  Thank you, President Winfrey.)

I was going to get it fixed but Saul and I were busy packing and moving and we had my brother stay with us and there were the holidays…and I just didn’t get around to it.

Then the snow bomb cyclone and freezing 0 degree weather came.

On the day of the snow bomb cyclone, I decided to walk from our new home in Lambertville, NJ across the bridge over the Delaware River to New Hope, PA where they have a brand new indoor Famers Market that is like a food court but with cool little restaurants instead of Panda Expresses. (This is not as long a walk as it seems.  It takes about 10 to 15 minutes tops).   The Snow Bomb Cyclone had stopped, but the temperature was about 4 degrees.  Like I said, I love walking in cold.  The river was frozen and beautiful.   My only concern was the geese.  How in the world can they stand to be in the frozen water?  I told myself that I had to trust nature knew what it was doing and they would be fine.  Still I wanted to jump in and rescue them and keep them in our basement until everything warmed up.  I was pretty sure Saul wouldn’t have minded at all as long as they didn’t bother the cats.  The geese seem stoic.  There was one swan that was anything but stoic.  He was screaming at the top of his lungs what I’m pretty sure would be interpreted as “FUCK THIS COLD.  FUCK THIS FUCKING COLD!  FUCK THIS COLD.”    Sorry about the cursing, but everyone knows that swans, like our current president, like to use salty language.

An hour later I arrived back home with Saul’s favorite lunch of Peruvian Chicken basking in the self-pride of what a good husband I was when I took off my glove and my ring was gone!  Saul was standing there so I didn’t even have time to pretend that it wasn’t.  The shock on my face told the story.   I checked my gloves and then I checked my pocket which I discovered HAD A HOLE IN IT!   I immediately retraced my steps and went back over the bridge to the market and then back again keeping my eyes peeled to the ground the entire time.  I believed with all my heart that there was a chance I would find it.  I had been the only person foolish enough to be out in the snow bomb cyclone aftermath so there was little chance anyone would get to it before me.

But alas, it seemed to be gone.

I looked up an article on the internet “THE MEANING OF LOSING A WEDDING RING” hoping it would tell me that it was actually good luck, but instead it was this annoying article about how this husband and wife worked together to find his ring together after he lost it proving what a great team and married partners they were.  Basically, it said Saul and I were screwed.

Luckily, we decided long ago that if one of us (me) lost our wedding ring, we would look at it as a chance to recommit and not as a bad omen for our marriage.  I told myself that maybe a poor person who wanted to propose but didn’t have a ring would find it.

The worst part to me wasn’t the sentimentality but the money.  I knew buying a house would be a big chunk out of savings but didn’t really think about how much would be spent after it was bought.  Yes, yes, I was warned, but didn’t really think the warnings applied to me.   Washers and driers…coat racks because there is no downstairs closet… sump pumps (I had no idea what I sump pump even was two months ago) all add up.

And on top of that Saul picked this time period to become obsessed with furs.

Saul is wonderful but at times can be a little obsessive.  Well, not a little obsessive…really, really obsessive.   If you are a cat and the object of this obsession you benefit greatly.

Maybe the cat obsession should have been a clue that the fur obsession was coming.

Saul found a fur stole a month or so ago at a thrift store.   It was a ratty old thing and he took to wearing it when he walked the cats in the cold.   Then he saw an old raccoon coat at another thrift store and HAD to have it.   It wasn’t very expensive and he convinced me that it was ethically okay to wear it.  Is it helping the raccoons to have it thrown in the trash?   I wasn’t convinced and told him to sleep on it.

The next day after he obsessed, I mean slept on it, he decided he wanted to buy it.

He went to the store and IT HAD BEEN SOLD!  I couldn’t believe it.  A raccoon coat?   Who would think it would fly off the rack?   Suddenly Saul couldn’t imagine life without a raccoon coat.  He searched EBay and every other method to get a used raccoon coat.  He finally found another good bargain and ordered it online.  He couldn’t wait the two weeks it would take in regular mail and paid to have it sent express.  Then the snow bomb cyclone hit and the temperatures plummeted.   Saul was beside himself.   The delivery was delayed by the storm and he had no furry coat to protect him from the cold.  He was convinced by the time the coat arrived, it would be hot and balmy for the rest of his days on earth and he would never get to wear it.    It became all he could think about.   At one point, I took a bath to relax and when I turned off the water I heard him in the other room on hold with DHL trying to find out when his coat would be delivered.  He was on hold for 20 minutes as I stewed in the tub.  “Why can’t he let it go?” I thought to myself.  It’s a stupid coat!

Later that evening I learned that actually saying out loud the words “Why can’t you let this go?  It’s a stupid coat” in a raised voice while dripping wet does not achieve the desired effect you may want.

The coat arrived the next day right after Saul left in freezing weather to walk across the bridge to his art gallery.  I excitedly texted him about its arrival.  Then I called him and then face timed him   I always feel like he is constantly looking at his phone when he is with me, but when he is away from me and I need to get hold of him he never checks it once.  He disagrees with this “fact” that I often point out.  My excitement finally turned to frustration and I eventually jumped in the car and drove the coat over to him, walked in the gallery and flung it on the chair in front of him.  “Here’s the damn coat!”

I don’t think it was the exciting moment he dreamed of, but he recovered quickly and excitedly put it on.   I have to admit he looked great.  We went to church the following day (It’s an Episcopal church, which is a lot like the Catholic church I grew up in, except it has a gay minister—we are not going to become born again or anything but are always on the lookout for a little spirituality.)   A woman after the service went up to Saul and admired his coat.  Then she turned to me and told me how great he looked in it.

“I don’t think I would look good in it,” I said trying to be friendly.

“No.  No, you wouldn’t’,” she replied.

So, Saul waked the cats around town in his new fur coat and I paced back and forth over the Delaware River looking for my ring.  I remembered an I Love Lucy episode where she lost her ring and thought she had accidentally sealed it in the new backyard brick barbecue Ricky had built and had to secretly take it all apart and disastrously put it back together only to find out Ricky had it all the time to teach her a lesson about leaving it on the kitchen sink.  (This was in the last season when they jumped the shark and moved to the country).  I remembered several I Love Lucy episodes where Ricky got mad at Lucy for buying a fur coat.  So, if television is any indicator, I guess Saul have become your typical married couple—at least if it was the 1950’s.

I’m not sure this is what the gays and lesbians who fought so hard for marriage equality imagined.  I certainly don’t know why somebody wouldn’t want to bake us a gay wedding cake.

UPDATE:  I found the wedding ring!  Or rather, Social Media found it!  I posted on the Lambertville NJ Facebook page last week and someone found it today!   She turned it in to the coffee shop and replied to my post.  Saul picked it up and I am on my way home to put it on!

I just reread those worlds above I’m saying that My husband is going to pick up my lost wedding ring.

The privilege of saying those words is still brand new to gay people.   And townspeople we don’t even know on the Facebook page are celebrating a husband retrieving his husbands lost wedding ring.

This snow bomb cyclone week has reminded me I have a lot to be grateful for: Rings and furs and a stubborn belief that people are still good at heart.

ABOUT TO THE AUTHOR:   KEITH HOFFMAN tells himself that forgetfulness is a sign of genius.

WATCH THE RAVENLUNATICS THIS MONDAY AT 9PM ON FACEBOOK LIVE.  GET SAUL’S LIVE RESPONSE TO THIS BLOG AND INTERACT WITH US!   Email binknik@gmail.com for details.

I am stuck sitting on my bus for what is starting to feel like forever or, at the very least, eternity inside the bowels of Port Authority behind a very long line of other buses trying to get through the Lincoln Tunnel.

I’m on the late bus tonight–the last bus from NYC to New Hope.  I stayed in the city to go to my company holiday party.  I am not great at parties in the best of times.   Situations where I don’t have total control unnerve me.   And tonight at our holiday party I felt melancholy for some reason.   Nothing sad happened.  Well…except that there were very few low-point Weight Watchers food items.  “I’ll have a seltzer and that little piece of lettuce under the barbecue chicken wings please.   And is anyone else eating this napkin?”  It’s very sad being skinny.   Oh, and also everyone in the room works in cable which doesn’t seem to be a rising industry.    Some days I feel like a cashier at Barnes and Noble three years ago.

But mostly I find I don’t like to be parties without my husband, Saul.   This is rather shocking since I spent much of my twenties and thirties in Alanon meetings being taught to not be codependent. (I don’t want to say that my family has a history of alcoholism but every time I’ve gone to a medium and asked to talk to a dead relative the first thing they inevitably say when they contact someone is “I smell alcohol.  Did any excessively drink?”)     I learned in Alanon to detach and not to ever depend on another person for my happiness.  It’s not that this was awful advice.   At the time, I tended to date vampires who sucked the joy out of me leaving only a dried husk where my soul used to be.

(The bus still isn’t moving.    Besides being hungry I am trapped inside a bus terminal that was bombed earlier in the week.  Note to Saul:  If I die on this bus and this is my last blog, please remember to play Storms by Fleetwood Mac at my funeral (the alternative version from the Tusk reissue) and make everyone sit quietly and listen to it and cry.

So how did I, this fiercely independent guy, not only get married two years ago but buy a house last week?    (Mortgage I am finding is a much stronger bond than a wedding ring.)   Why do I crave getting home to my husband?  The reality of me arriving home hardly ever plays out like the fantasy in my head.  Usually when I am telling Saul about my day I have to remind him to look up from his phone and at least look like he is listening.    And then I often get irritated that he doesn’t have the perfect reaction to whatever story I happen to be telling him.     Then he will tell me something he is worried about that is usually some version of something he has worried about a million times before.   “No dear, I don’t think the cats will die from eating a piece of lint.”

Saul worries a lot.  He worries so much that I almost seem calm in comparison.    On the day we closed on the house he found a form letter in our new mailbox saying that our underground water table somewhere on our block was being routinely investigated as a result of a toxic spill from a factory literally sometime around 1900.  It was more of a required notice than anything to be alarmed by but it sent Saul reeling.  He quickly became convinced we had moved next to our area’s version of Three Mile Island or that Erin Brockovich would be knocking on our door before the end of the day.  Throughout our closing between signing large stacks of paper, Saul was on the phone with several environment agencies trying to get to the bottom of it.   I was becoming more and more stressed.   I wanted to tell him not to worry, but 9 years ago I told my mom not to worry about my sister’s headache and then my sister suddenly died.  That definitely felt like the universe saying, “Don’t get too cocky, buddy.  You don’t know anything.” Saul finally got reassured that our ground water was totally fine and we closed on our first house together.  (Still we are going to closely examine the first batch of tomatoes in our backyard to make certain they don’t have  three small eyeballs or two tiny arms.)

I don’t think Saul’s nerves aren’t just about fear.  They are a result of all the compassion and passion that is practically bursting out of him.  On the very same day we closed on the house, he got a lease for his very own art gallery.   I never in a bazillion years thought I’d be married to a man who painted what one patron recently called sensual gay art.   I mean I never saw that one coming.   “Do you maybe want to hang a wolf or maybe a cheetah up darling?”  I often ask.  Saul was an English teacher when I met him but it seems I brought out the sensual gay artist in him.   If only my father had lived to see this (He died due to the effects of alcoholism.  See paragraph 2 above.)

When I see Saul talking about his work with interested patrons and how excited he is to share his vision, it makes me so proud I could cry.  I don’t  cry because it tends to alarm people and hurt his sales.

I love seeing Saul joyful and he is quite joyful when he is immersed in his art.

It’s not a one-way street.  Saul listens to me read a new chapter of my endless memoir every week and gives me valuable feedback.  How lucky am I to be married to a writing critic I trust?

I made out with a lot of toads  before I go to Saul.   A lot.  I speed dated until I bled.   I had so many terrible first dates that I had stopped trying to impress anyone and showed up wearing sweats with holes and an oversized T Shirt.  “This is what they will mostly see me in if it works out” I would tell myself.  “Why try to impress with false advertising?”

But then I met this knucklehead Saul and he was not scared off by my sweats.  We worked hard from the start to figure each other out and to make the relationship work.  Our first fight occurred when  he napped for two hours on our third date and I woke him up by screaming in his face,  HOW LONG ARE YOU GOING TO NAP?

 He didn’t seem to like that.

Now I send the cats in to walk on his face when I’m bored by his sleeping.

I look at that as a compromise.

Saul went to a hypnotist for his anxiety last week.  I waited outside the office to meet him afterwards.  Perhaps I was being codependent but I knew he was anxious about the appointment ironically so I wanted him to know he wasn’t alone.  Plus, I was worried he would be acting like a chicken and follow a stranger with bird seed home.

When he came out of the office, he walked over to me standing on a street in the West Village waiting for him and embraced me said in my ear, “I love you so much.”

I liked this hypnotist.

And I knew why he was saying this.  Saul and I fuss and argue but in the end, we always want what is best for each other.   I don’t want him to be anxious and if a hypnotist can help (and she did) then why not support that 100%?   Plus, he has been very nice to me ever since that appointment.  When he asked me yesterday if he should go back to her, I screamed “YES.  YES.  FOR THE LOVE OF SWEET JESUS YES!” perhaps a little less subtly than I intended.

The bus is finally moving now   I’m excited to go home.  We haven’t moved into the new house yet.  That won’t be for a few days.   But home isn’t the place I will be paying a mortgage for the rest of my life until the day I drop dead from exhaustion because I had to work way past my retirement.

Home is my relationship with husband and I’m going to work on a strong foundation, build it up a little at a time and keep it as safe from harm as I possibly can.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:   Keith Hoffman is writing a non-sensual gay memoir.

True Story…I was just telling my Bus Crush about some drama I had on the ride into the city this morning (more on that later), and he actually said to me, “Keith, you should start writing about what happens to you on the bus.”

If he only knew.

My Bus Crush is good for me. There is a man talking on his phone in front of me even though that is AGAINST THE RULES. I want to slam the back of his seat really hard but I think my Bus Crush may look down on me if he sees me doing that. I would never want to lose his respect. But why is this man in the seat in front of me breaking the rules?!

Where was I? Oh right…today’s bus blog.

I like to be edgy and surprising and fly by the seat of my pants to keep you on your toes but since it’s Thanksgiving next week and I will not be writing an ON THE BUS blog, I have decided to write my THANK YOU LIST this week.

Thanksgiving is an awkward holiday if you ask me. It didn’t used to be. When I was a kid, I was taught the nice white people and the cheery Indians got together and helped each other make delicious turkey and stuffing until the Indians became bad people and we had to kill them all. Too bad that those Indians didn’t have gun rights like we do today—just those inefficient bows and arrows. Now that I’m adult I think of how we deliberately gave them blankets infected with smallpox during the French and Indian War and the whole holiday feels kind of depressing and makes me feel guilty.

Then I think about how not all American had an equal chance at the Great American dream like I did. When I was a child my grandmother once proudly told me that she saw two black women walking down the sidewalk and yelled “nigger” at them. Now I knew from my very liberal mother that this was not okay, but it still wasn’t outrageous. That’s just what my sweet cookies-and-milk-serving, racist grandma did. Even now I have relatives pissed off black people won’t stand for the National Anthem. If I were African American, I would be a bit ambivalent about standing for the flag of the country that has treated me so badly for the last few centruies too.

Sometimes when Thanksgiving comes around we aren’t always feeling so thankful. Sometimes we have job insecurity or a loved one suffering from the soul-sucking stubborn grip of addiction (pardon my language but addiction is a dick.). Sometimes people have children who suffer from mental illness. A friend told me about his bipolar son the other day. Once in one of his manic phases, his 17-year-old son disappeared for several days. When the dad was driving home he saw his son standing on the sidewalk in the freezing cold talking to friends. He was about to stop but as he got closer he saw his son’s shirt was open even though it was below zero, and he was gesturing manically and talking intensely. The dad said he just burst into tears at the wheel of his car. He knew how helpless he was in the situation. He ended up just driving home.

I know people who have babies that were injured by the carelessness of a nanny, and people who think they are too broken for love. I know people who suffer from the very physical pain of depression. Young girls are exploited and raped and sold for sex all over the world and innocent children are abused. Beautiful elephants are being slaughtered for trophies. So, who in the heck do I think I am to make my puny gratitude list?

The answer is I don’t know.

I mean, this human life is full of joy and pain and sometimes pain is the most authentic feeling to feel. But I think if I’m not careful I can be drawn into that pain and can wallow in it I don’t know why it is so damn attractive. Someone once described addiction as an electric current. You can grab it and be shocked but be careful because if you grab it again it might not let go. I think negativity is this way too. Pain and negativity or two different things. Pain can teach. I’m not sure negativity can tell me anything.

So, let me try to think of some things I’m thankful for. I don’t honestly know how to fix the world problems but I can try to be a positive light to myself so I can be one for others.

1) My humor. I don’t know what I’d do without a sense of humor. And it is not something I worked for. It is very clear I inherited it from my dad’s side of the family. Sorry Mother, you appreciated humor but you were no match for Dad. In my family, you had to be sharp so I did have to learn to be quick on my feet. I was the youngest of five so if I didn’t get my joke in fast, the moment would have passed. My sister had a diary and one entry said, “My big brother Dave was carried out by a stretcher today after his contacts made him go blind. We all threw jokes at him but he didn’t laugh.” Poor Dave. He had our mother’s sense of humor and never really got the rest of us. But at least he got his sight back which I’m pretty sure he is thankful for.

2) Helen Keller.-I know it seems like I hate her and I do because I don’t buy that humble act of hers. She is as cocky as a rooster. But when I feel like my childhood was too hard and it keeps me from achieving things like finishing and publishing my book as an adult, I am haunted by the snide words I imagine her signing to me. “I couldn’t speak, hear or see as a child and I grew up to write books and became famous.” Damn you Helen. You keep me from being a victim. Thanks for setting the bar so high, Helen. Come to think of it. You are off the list.

3) My husband—My husband is quiet and always bows to my every need and whim and never causes me any stress. HAHAHAHAHAHAAHA (this is an example of my humor). No, he totally makes me crazy and trying to control him is like trying to control a stampede of rabid hippos running with wild jackels on their back sticking pins in their eyes. But mostly that doesn’t matter. This guy is a very special guy which makes me very lucky. I like to send him into situations like work parties ahead of me because he can charm the pants off the unlikeliest people. He loves deeply and creates a magical world for me to live in at least 88 percent of the time. He is almost too sensitive for this life on earth. I truly wish he could always know  every second just how special he is.

(That man in front of me is still talking on his phone. Why won’t my Bus Crush let me be myself and hit him? Why don’t people follow the rules?)

4) Deodorant—Now don’t get me wrong. I’m kind of a natural guy. I would be good in a cabin in the woods except for the whole killing animals for breakfast lunch and dinner thing. If I couldn’t grow crops or live off of berries, I’d starve before the month was out. Shaving is a chore for me so I get a person might hate putting on sticky deodorant–but the guy who sat next to me this morning on the bus had the worst BO ever known to man. I was trapped by the unopened window and using all my stamina not to gag while breathing into a scarf. Of course, we got stuck in terrible traffic and this ordeal lasted for over two hours. I know now how that guy felt who cut his arm off to escape from being trapped when he fell climbing by himself in the desert. I almost used my keys to file my nose off but my vanity won out by a very slight margin. Bus Crush never smells. Well, he smells like the Cheerios he likes to eat by the fistful.

5) My cats because they are orange and have fur and are little wild things. They have no problem knowing how special they are. We can all learn a thing or two from them.

6) This blog because without it I might actually hit people on the head or throw their purses on the ground or walk up and down the bus aisle snatching phones from people. You guys are my friends I take with me on each ride.

7) Creativity –A minister once said that she went snorkeling and saw just how many different kinds of fish there are in the sea–so many different combinations of shape, color and size. She said to herself in wonder, “God must so love to create.” When I die, if people say I did more to help people be creative than I fought for gun rights, I am 150 percent okay with that.

8) Tyne Daly—She is America’s sweetheart and a national treasure. She can make me laugh and cry within minutes apart—and that’s just when I’m sitting at my desk daydreaming about her.

9) Elephants

10) Friends—When I feel scared and like I’m going to slip through the cracks I know at least one of them will hold my hand and keep me upright. I know this because they did when I lost my sister. You know who you are Alexandra, Steve, Megan, Jill and Scottie. And so many others in so many ways have helped me along the way. That is a blessing

11) I’m grateful that the guy in front of me is off the phone.

12) Dancing With the Stars—Just bear with me on this one. I started watching it because I would call my housebound mom every morning during the last few years of her life. It gave us something to talk about that was easy. I got hooked even though she has been gone eight years now. After she died I watched with my friend Jill who was also going through grief and we laughed and cried our way through the show every Monday over pizza or chicken or tacos. When l moved to New York from LA, we texted during the show and we still do today.  After a lot of work, I got Saul hooked on it too. Saul blurting “Wow Rumor Willis’ footwork in her tango is amazing!” is all I’ve ever looked for in a husband. See how special he is?

13) Strong Women—I was raised by a strong mom and grandmother and a strong older sister. It’s the reason Hillary Clinton running for President didn’t bother me. She has a great chapter in her book about women in power and what they face. It’s not victim-y. It’s pretty fascinating. I know you haters won’t read it (although I challenge you to read at least 50 pages), but if you like her, it’s an interesting book. I think she would have been beat-up if she won. And she has that paradox of a husband. I think sadly she was a generation too early and saddled with too much baggage, but I am grateful she ran in my lifetime no matter what some of my high school friends say about us evil liberals. I like Bette Midler too. She’s strong. Okay, I will keep Helen Keller on the list (for now). I suppose she is strong too.

14) I just watched Roy Moore’s wife in Alabama defend her husband, and I am really, really grateful I am not the type of person who cheers and applauds when someone like her says the line, “He is against transgender bathroom access.” Man, I am happy I somehow was born with enough grace to not be that type of person.

15) I guess I’m glad each day that I get up and face life head on and jump into the messy, heartbreaking nonsense of living. I used to be so scared in the mornings but I’m lucky that as far as I can tell I’m caring less about what others think of me (except my Bus Crush). And maybe that is what gratitude does? Maybe it makes my soul expand rather than contract?

I hope you all have at least a few things to be grateful for, and I hope as you wake up each morning you can find some joy and play in the day ahead. I will leave you with this line I heard just this morning: God is like a bikini. He shows you a lot but not everything. He makes you work for it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Keith Hoffman is nervous about counting his Weight Watchers points on Thanksgiving Day but is far too obsessive to not worry about it.
He forgot to list that he is also grateful for ducks.

Here is what is nice about having a bus crush.

I got some big and somewhat unsettling news at work right before I left to catch the bus. And I was told I couldn’t tell anyone.

Now I am really bad at not telling anyone. I mean, look at me…I blog about my life. I’m not the model of discretion. I make those Kardashians seem guarded.

But the bus is its own weird void of a universe. You see some of the same people every day for four hours a day but you are not involved in each other’s lives once you step off the bus.

So, when my bus crush sat down next to me tonight and said “Keith! how are we today?” I told him the big news about work that I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone yet. He gave me sympathy and support “Good luck Keith!” and no one was the wiser. Who is he going to tell? (Unless he is writing his own blog that I don’t know about and writes about me as much as I write about him.)

The news will be out by the time I post this blog. Basically, there is a big reorganization of the company. Whenever someone uses the word “pivot” in relation to  your job,  it’s unnerving. I am an anxious man and can’t help immediately wondering what it will mean for my future. What if they realize I’m not needed? One of my  biggest concerns is  what would happen to my On the Bus blog if I stopped taking the bus every day.

Mind you–no one said my job was in danger–I just liked to start my anxiety early so I’m not taken by surprise

I have always been somewhat of a nomad and pretty good at adapting to change. You can’t grow up in Cincinnati as a gay boy in the years before there was any sort of acceptance of homosexuality and not want to get out of town at the first chance you can get. Staying there was not even an option. So, the minute I first saw New York City after going through Lincoln Tunnel on…coincidentally…a bus..I knew I was leaving the midwest the minute I graduated collage. And that’s what I did.  When I was in my 30’s, work took me to from New York to LA for many years. Then 9 years ago this week right after losing my mom and sister a few months apart, I drove across country back to New York in a Mini Cooper with my dog Sasha in the passenger seat to start a new job and a new life in New York City.

I was thinking about this this morning. If I hadn’t moved to New York, I wouldn’t have made friends like Sara Helman whose wedding I ended up officiating. Sara decided she liked me the day I walked in to her office while still the new guy at work and confided that I had run into the glass door of the office building lobby. “I love you,” was her response. I wouldn’t have met Marjorie Kaplan or spent every Tuesday evening in a writers group with my cousin Melissa. And I, of course, wouldn’t have met my husband. Or would I have? Was he inevitable and I would have met him another way or was our marriage a result of accepting a job nine years ago?

I  wouldn’t have our cats. They would probably be living like little urchins snorting catnip on the streets of Brooklyn if I hadn’t moved there. And I wouldn’t be sitting on this bus writing this blog. You would probably be reading about some dopey thing Trump tweeted that endangered planet instead.

Change in retrospect seems to turn out to be a good thing, but change in the present is anxiety-provoking.   As I heard in my writer’s group last week—our ego doesn’t like change because it doesn’t  know how to protect us in the murky and unclear future.

So, what is my identity?

What I do for a living?

Where I live?

Who I am married to?

What I write?

My mother once said when I was leaving from a visit in Cincinnati, “I’m sad you are leaving again, but I’ve always known you are a wanderer.”

Is she right?  Is  my identity my desire not to have a fixed identity?

I actually think there is something fixed about all of us even if we move, change jobs or start and end relationships. And I think one of the things I try to do as I get older is to discover what my identity is and honor it.  I think the best way I can say it is that my identity is an essence not a fact.

One of my favorite movies is called Angel at My Table. I love it and I rewatch it every few years. It’s a lesser known movie by Jane Campion who directed The Piano  about the beautiful New Zealand writer Janet Frame. I went to see it at the Angelika Theatre in New York City by myself one afternoon in 1990.

There are two moments I especially love in that movie

In one Janet is having emotional issues and in the time and place she lives in, no one knows how to deal with them. She is locked up in a mental institution, given shock treatments and is scheduled for a lobotomy. At one point, she is locked in a tiny room and sits on the floor in distress writing feverishly on the walls. Even her dire circumstances  didn’t keep her from expressing herself. (Her lobotomy was cancelled when just days before the procedure her debut publication of short stories was unexpectedly awarded a national literary prize.)

At the end of the move, (spoiler alert–don’t read this paragraph if you don’t want to know how it ends), she goes to a psychiatrist and tells him that she is shy and hates going to parties. Her psychiatrist responds with, “then don’t go to parties”

It’s that simple. It was a revelation to Janet and to me. She was a beautiful, sensitive soul who longed to write and, after everything she went through, found  her peace came from being herself. In the last scene, she is living in a small trailer outside her brother’s house writing.  Then she begins dancing quietly to music on the radio. She finally discovered  joy  in who she was.

So, pivot all you want life!   I am going to try to remember as I navigate the changing current, that with each turn around a new bend there is an opportunity to rediscover my joyful and strong self.   The less guarded I am,  the more I let myself be free.  As scary as it is, I find my authenticity through flexibility.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Keith Hoffman needs to figure out how LinkedIn works.

So, I am still a bit shaken. I just got into a fight with an aggressive woman next to me on the bus. I was quietly celebrating the fact that the bus was relatively empty when this older lady and her friend came charging on at the very last minute and marched to the back where I was sitting. She announced her arrival by violently slamming her purse next to me. Her friend sat two seats ahead and they yelled to each other at full volume not caring who was around them.

Every time they yelled, my hair stood on end. The lights were still on, so I bit my tongue hoping they would get the hint when the bus started on its journey and the overheads were turned off. I wasn’t hopeful but was taught to give people the benefit of the doubt. Anyway, these two women were nightmares. There’s no two ways about it.

The lights were turned off but their VERY LOUD conversation was not turned down. Finally, I was afraid I was going to have a stroke so I whispered to the woman, “Can you please not talk so loud? This is quiet bus!”

Really? She replied loudly. “Where does it say that?”

“They usually play an announcement at the beginning of the ride.”

“Then go make him play it.”

I wasn’t about to walk up the aisle on a moving bus and ask the bus driver to play the announcement although I was sorely tempted.

“Everyone else is quiet on the bus. Does that tell you something?

“If every other fly is eating shit should I eat shit too?”

Now, mind you, I shouldn’t tell you this, but I would have liked to have pulled her hair at this point. Or I wanted to throw her purse on the ground or rip her sweater. I wanted to do something to let her know I wasn’t happy with her. I know Mother Theresa or Helen Keller would have blessed her.

Come to think of it, Helen wouldn’t have even known the woman was talking too loudly. Sometimes I think she was the luckiest of us all.

So instead I said, “Really? You are going to be rude like that?”

That seemed to shut her up although as I type this her friend is in the middle of a loud phone call. They are nightmares, I tell you.

I hate confrontations. I’m always surprised when I have them with strangers. It’s that issue I have about people being unfair. I hate when people are belligerent about something they are doing that is in the wrong.

I go to the theatre a lot. People seem to still not understand that texting there is just wrong. The Broadway star Patti Lupone understands this. She once snatched an audience member’s phone right from their hands as she exited off the stage. That is why I love Patti–although I have a feeling she would be loud on a bus.

Once a very handsome man sat next to me at a performance of A Glass Menagerie starring Sally Field. I was excited a handsome man was next to me until he started texting repeatedly. Mind you, this was a play that at certain points played in total pitch black darkness so his screen lighting up was particularly galling. Finally, I said “Can you please stop texting?” and the guy replied, “I’m trying to meet up with someone after the show.”

How is this my problem?

How is it Sally’s problem? I wanted to get her attention so she could grab this handsome guy’s phone out of his hands but she was too wrapped up in trying to get her daughter to stop fiddling with her glass animals and go on a date.

Another time I was in the theatre in New Hope where I assumed people would be much more polite. This woman next to me kept texting and texting and texting and finally I asked her to stop.

At intermission, she turned to me and said, “I’m mad at you!”

“What?! You can’t possibly be.”

“Do you want to know why I was texting?

I didn’t. The rule is NO TEXTING and that is that.

‘I have a dying person at home and I was trying to have a fun night out.

Now this is tricky. I wanted to say, “I don’t believe you” because I didn’t believe her, but there is that benefit of the doubt thing that bedevils me. I wanted to say “If he or she so close to death that you can’t not text them for an hour then you shouldn’t be here. This production is amateurish at best!” I wanted to tell her if she was going to take a break then take a break an turn off her phone or at the very least stand in the back of the theatre!

Again, Mother Theresa would have probably asked to visit the dying friend and Helen well…why the hell is Helen Keller at a play anyway? And if she was, would I be annoyed that someone was signing in her hand for the entire performance? It is almost like texting.

My mom was very loud and would have been pretty similar to this nightmare woman sitting next to me on the bus. Maybe that is why it bothers me so much. I mean, I loved my mom but I would be painfully embarrassed by her as a child when she would be at the store with me and yell something like “Honey don’t you need new underpants? The ones you are wearing have holes in them!”

But isn’t’ everyone bothered by these things? Do these bus women get bothered when someone invades their space? Do those texters think everyone should be texting in the theatre?

I like to think of myself as a good person but they challenge that concept. I fantasized about strangling the woman who was texting her dying friend for months afterwards. In my fantasy, the last words she’d be hearing would be, “Now you and your friend are both dying! Hahahaha!”

It’s a great fantasy but it doesn’t make me look good.

Zen books always have lots of stories telling you that you can’t go find peace by meditating in a cave—that’s easy. Find peace next to people who text in the theatre.

Another Zen story says serenity is an ugly woman running after you with a club screaming NOW! NOW! NOW! NOW! Saul and I read that one together and don’t quite get it.

I believe when our souls come to earth this is like an advanced class with hard lessons to master–not just the big things like death, and break-ups and scary Presidents–but the everyday messiness of dealing with all these other humans milling aobut. It’s a constant navigation though people that think differently from you.

It’s like the famous prayer: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot and courage to change the things I can.

So maybe this woman and those texters are actually mini practice for the big things—they help me to build the courage to push against the racism and sexism and ignorance and bullying and cruelty. Maybe I need to stand up for what is wrong and see it won’t kill me. Maybe sometimes speaking up and taking action is just as spiritual as retreating and praying and meditating.

Sometimes people need to be silenced, right? I struggle with this and want everyone to have their say but  I think I need to call people out and say enough is enough.

I had a revelation with the woman on the bus. After our confrontation, I sat here nervously for about 20 minutes. Then I had a thought. “What am I afraid of? Really what can this woman do? I didn’t need to stew all this drama and emotion. She quieted down and I got a great new topic for my blog. It was a win-win.

Like the bible story where Jacob wrestles with the angel and gets him in a headlock and demands “I will not let go until you bless me,” I’m going to try to use these every day irritations as opportunities for growth.

And if I have to put a few theatre texters in headlocks while doing that. I think I’m okay with it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Keith Hoffman doesn’t understand why you think unwrapping a noisy piece of candy slowly is less disruptive during a play than doing it quickly and being done with it. And why are you noisily unwrapping candy during a play  in the first place? He is married.

I was walking through a very crowded Port Authority today and had the sudden thought that every single person in the very packed terminal would be dead one day including me. These are the kinds of thoughts I get from time to time.

I think about what I want to be remembered for. I hope I’m remembered for the book I’m slaving away on every day but also hope that, like my sister, I’m remembered for my humor and kindness. My sister is also remembered for the time she got drunk in a concert and got her head stuck in a fence, and for the time she was out mowing her lawn and didn’t realize her tube top had fallen below her boobs. I think the men in her neighborhood remember her most for that.

I know what you are thinking. My goodness, Keith. Another blog about kindness? Sorry. It’s either that or another blog about Trump.

A high school friend of mine related a very moving story to me the other day. She is a reader of this blog so I will protect her identity and give her an assumed named. I will call her Gladiola.

(Speaking of kindness my bus crush is back in the seat next to me  and just blessed me when I sneezed. I was very moved.)

Anyway, Gladiola got pregnant in high school at a time when that was a very big deal. No one got pregnant in our high school and she was not one of those girls from the wrong side of the tracks.  She wrote me last week and told me a story that I didn’t remember at all.

She said that on the day everyone found out about her condition, kids were gossiping and pointing and saying things about her behind her back. It was the darkest day of her life. Then she told me that in the last period of the day in speech class, I sat in the desk in front of her,  turned all the way around and faced her and said, “So what is new with Gladiola today?”.

She said me treating her like nothing happened saved her day.

I was so moved when I read that message. Since I had no memory of doing it and it was almost like I was reading about someone else. My memories of high school tend to be more about things like this big kid named Bob tying my belt loop to my chair/desk combo so when I stood up at the end of class the desk and chair came with me and I collapsed to the floor with the  furniture on top of me and the laughter of my classmates surrounding me.

I was surprised and relieved to discover that as a kid I was thoughtful enough to look out for a friend and not judge. And it was generous of Gladiola to share that story with me. I’m sure it’s not a day she loves to think about.  But now that story is a bond wewill forever have together (unless she reads this and sues me for libel or defamation of character.) By the way, Gladiola is a really amazing person and pretty much looks like the coolest grandmother in the world , so all those people who judged her in high school were way off the mark.

A heard another story this week about kindness.

A man in my recovery group we will call Ebenezer was standing outside his first meeting years ago  trying to decide if he should come back again or just keep on drinking himself to death. He wanted to smoke but his hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t light his cigarette. A woman came up and gently took his matches and cigarette.  She lit it and handed it back to him. He decided in that moment he would be back the next day. You never know how those little things can make a big difference.

I am far from perfect. Someone approached me when I went out for coffee today and tried to shake my hand and I knew he was about to launch into some kind of spiel asking for money. I felt my personal space being invaded and blurted out “I just want coffee! I just want coffee!” before getting up and walking away.  I felt horrible and guilty about it afterward. If he was Jesus in disguise, I am screwed.

I’m also really, really bad when people ask me to pick something up for them while I’m out running an errand. Like today if someone would have said “Can you get me a non-fat caramel latte while you are out getting  coffee with disguised Jesus?”, I would not only have said no but would have mostly likely secretly felt enraged that they had asked me. My friend Sara figured out this was because my big brother Greg used to demand I get him Doritos throughout my formative teen and preteen years. And he didn’t just do this when I was running out to the store. I could be watching TV or taking a bath and he would constantly harangue me with “Get me Doritos” “Get me Doritos” “Get me Doritos” over and over and over in an incessant monotone chant until I would finally snap and walk to the damn store to get him his damn Doritos. Even though I know this is why I hate getting people things now that I’m an adult, I don’t yet seem to be capable of change or movement forward on that issue.

But other than that, I do my damndest. My Aunt Jody and my previously mentioned sister are my role models. Aunty Jody is the nicest, holiest person I know. If I don’t make it to heaven because I was not gracious to that man in the coffee shop today, I know once she is there herself, she will put in a good word for me. There is a guy at my bus stop every morning who always wants to talk to me. He has an annoying voice and is not someone who would ever be a candidate for Bus Crush2. All I want to do in the morning at the bus stop is read my book. I’m reading about the making of the Broadway Sondheim 1971 play Follies right now which is every theatre geek’s dream book. But this annoying man wants to talk about the weather or if the bus is late, or how much he hates his job or my banana (my morning snack, you perverts). I was very annoyed until I told my Aunt Jody and she replied, “Maybe God put you there because that guy needs someone to listen to him.” Ever since then I stop reading and talk to him. It’s not as bad as I thought.

Two stories about my sister Julie:

!) She would tip people in parking lot booths “Are you supposed to tip them?” I asked the first time I saw her do this. “I don’t know but they have to stand in that booth all day smelling exhaust fumes, so why not?” was her reply.

2) She was vice president of a cemetery in Cincinnati and I once heard her demanding that her boss give a woman a free burial for her child. The woman had left her baby in the back seat of a hot car because she had picked up pastries for a staff meeting that morning and was off her routine and forgot. The entire city in my hometown seemed to hate her for leaving her baby in a hot car and accidentally  killing her own child. What kind of Mother does that? But Julie had compassion. “She has to live with that,” she told me. “And she has another child to raise so she can’t even kill herself.”

That’s why she is my role model.

I saw a post today asking for three words that express happiness. The words people used were things like God is Good, God loves me, Christ has delivered etc. That world they are from is such a foreign world to me. To me happiness is about connecting to each other here on earth. (My three words would either be STARRING TYNE DALY or BEA ARTHUR RESURRECTED. I guess the second one is a little bit religious).

My husband Saul and I have a friend Jen from my work who I got to know through a writing group I started in the office. She is shy and would admit herself that she is a bit of a curmudgeon. Last weekend she was in a writing competition up in Vermont about six hours away and asked us to come the night when they announced the winner.

Jen did two big things in Saul’s and my lives. She told us about the writer Mary Karr doing a workshop in Greece two years ago. We decided to go and it was a life-changing experience. My writing changed and got better from the workshop. She also told us about the bed and breakfast in New Hope called Porches on the Towpath that Saul and I began staying at before we moved here. Saul and I ended up loving the place so much that we got married there. But l hemmed and hawed about going to Vermont to support Jen,  and didn’t commit until we literally were pulling out of the driveway last Friday afternoon. “Okay you can text her now and say yes,’ I announced.

The drive was beautiful but the best thing was Jen ended up winning. We were thrilled to be there for her as no one else was able to make the long trip Who doesn’t need someone to cheer and hug them when they win a big prize?  I’m sure even Meryl Steep still wants someone to congratulate her.

So, when I’m gone remember me for something kind I did for you, or that time I made you laugh. At the very least  remember me for my boyish good looks. Just try to forget about the time I didn’t get you Doritos.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Keith Hoffman often worries that a cleverly disguised Jesus is out to get him. He lives in New Hope PA.