Today is Tuesday, July 11, 2023. It’s late here since Elliot and I just returned from attending our gay men’s reading club discussion group at the Jefferson Market Library branch, on 10th Street and 6th Avenue. The topic of discussion tonight was Larry Duplechan’s coming-of-age story set in the mid-1970s in a suburb of Los Angeles featuring a Black 17-year-old protagonist by the name of Johnnie Ray Rousseau called Blackbird. Usually, we would have gone with the group after the meeting to a local gay bar, but tonight, we were both exhausted – mainly from the high humidity of the day and for me from a rash of mysterious insect bites that have plagued me for the last two weeks or so.

Today I got a definitive answer from an exterminator representing Advanced Pest Management, the company that we regularly use for quarterly inspections – and treatment – of the premises for the appearance of the little critters that are endemic to New York City apartments. The gravelly voiced representative of the pest company looked at my eruptions and came to the conclusion that a spider bit me. During the night, I woke up feeling itchy and eventually left the bedroom to sleep in Elliot’s Barcalounger, so I had a very unsettling night, to say the least. What is peculiar about this experience is that Elliot has not been bitten by this invisible assailant, so I can’t say why I’m the lucky one to be preyed upon. Of course, I don’t see anything in the bed with me; I just feel my leg, elbow, knee, or any other part of my body suddenly becoming itchy. Then I wake up with welts other evidence of an insect bite like a raised red bump. Luckily, I got a prescription for contact dermatitis from my podiatrist. I went to her first instead of a dermatologist because I thought these marks resulted from a topical ointment she prescribed for my toe fungus. She observed my skin and said if I did have an allergic reaction to the ointment, there would have been eruptions around the toe. And there weren’t any.

So there is the full story of my late-night encounters with an invisible foe. After the exterminator sprayed around the bed this morning, I hope my problem has been satisfactorily resolved. I’ll know when I retire for the night later on. I would hate to have to wake up during the night to retire to the living room – once more. By the way, we had an early morning appointment with the pest company; we got a call around 7:42 from “Roger” who said that he would be at the apartment around a half hour later. He buzzed downstairs around 8:40 a.m. He probably had to circle around for a spot, which would explain why he wasn’t at our door within a half hour as he originally indicated. Thus we both woke up earlier than usual to be ready for the pest guy.

Given this situation with some unseen pest, it’s amazing that I didn’t fall asleep during the meeting. We left around 4 p.m. to travel to Hudson Street to have an early dinner at the Bus Stop Cafe, a very reasonably priced restaurant that has been around for many years.

We were able to take a leisurely walk to the library after our dinner -considering how warm it was in the city. We both remarked how Bleecker Street has changed – meaning how many businesses we knew have now closed and have been replaced by more high-end boutiques. From what I could see, these pricey businesses boasted very little clientele – but it is a day in July, so who is to say if this means anything?

When we finally got to the library, Elliot left me to sit in the beautiful Jefferson Market Garden, which is adjacent to the library that once served as a Victorian courthouse in the 19th century. I ascended the nifty spiral network to go to the second floor to look at the books for sale. I bought The Best of Damon Runyon, a collection of the famous journalist’s short fiction, for the unspeakable price of $1. I could have offered 50 cents, but I thought this was embarrassing, so I said I’d give the library $1 instead. As you might know, Runyon was the creator of Guys and Dolls, a mid-50s musical staple.

Act 6:20, we entered the rear room where we meet monthly. I was quite amazed to see that there was no diminution of members because of this being a summer month. All in all, I believe there were more participants at this meeting than the one in June. I would say there were 28 men, if I added correctly. Again, I must say I was awed by the amount of erudition in the room. This time the moderator, “Jim,” did not ask everyone to introduce themselves – he plunged into the main discussion at 6:30. The only time the members digressed was when one of the older guys mentioned the HBO docuseries on the late Rock Hudson. And I provided the other – when I mentioned everyone should watch HBO’s miniseries on a serial killer of New York gays in the 1990s that got scant media attention back then because of the rampant homophobia prevalent in the New York Police Department thirty years ago. The name of the series is Last Call, and it’s based on a book (that I read) by Elon Green. So far, there has been only one episode that has aired.

Anyway, we had a rousing discussion of the merits of Duplechan’s book, first released in 1986, where some of the members thought the novel was light, breezy, and satisfactory to those who thought the novel lacked substance and didn’t really address the race issue since the protagonist is a young Black high schooler. I can say Elliot did not enjoy the book – he never finished it and he mentioned this in one of his remarks to the group.

So that’s it, folks. Tomorrow we are meeting my new cousins “Rivka” and “Dillon” in Manhattan at 7, so I believe I won’t be here tomorrow because of our previous engagement.

Have a good Wednesday.

Stay safe and be well.