Full Mast

It was a patchworky weekend, resettling myself in my space after being away so much, shaking off the kinks of a dispersed life. Laundry, lots of visiting with babies and little kids, getting trapped in the santa claus parade crowd while walking home after brunch with D, fun gay boy party at which I comprised 1/3 of the women in the room.

The gay boys were the best graze of gays I've encountered in a while -- all very sweet and pretty and full of burble about their interesting jobs. One of them -- a contemporary dancer -- had been doing quasi-improvisational dance on the subway yesterday as part of a city project to... I dunno, put confrontational art into public spaces? Very cool -- I'd like to be on a subway car with an unexpected coloratura sometime.

Lots of little weavings -- the party was Trev's, and I went with S (pointing to blog links over on the side -->), and S and I had dinner with her brother B first. First we established the requisite degrees of separation ("I was at a lesbian running party in Riverdale last weekend" -- "I'll bet it was my friends B&E" -- "Yeah, that was them! And there was this guy I was SURE was gay but he claimed to be straight.." -- "my friend K!" -- "YEah, that's him!"....)

And then we moved into Gothic WASP Family territory, with B recounting the tale of his and Stephanie's grandmother and an Unfortunate Confession while he was driving her to the cottage a few years ago, her somewhat deaf then-husband obvlious in the back seat. "She told me about my grandfather's affair, about coming in and discovering him 'at full mast with that woman.'" B paused and arched his brows. "Full mast." Pause. "FULL MAST." Pause. "I nearly drove off the road." (Muttered) "Full mast."

For the rest of the evening, at any lull -- "Full mast." Darkly uttered, ironically uttered, exasperated. A catch all term for everything unspeakable. Invoking Wittgenstein: What we cannot speak of, we must pass over in silence.

Edit: Heh, I click on Stephanie's blog and see that she indeed posted about this same story today. Reached us both at the marrow :-).