Stem the rose

Seems to me you learn something new every day, if you don't you're likely dead or too ignorant to notice God is teaching you a lesson . . . so listen here . .

Was riding to lunch today with two coworkers in the back seat and riding shotgun to a well-respected ( but roundly despised) retired band director who acts as a consultant for our staff once in awhile. He has made an effort to brag about all the work I've done and helped me make a name for myself amongst the other Valley band directors, and I admire him the years of success he achieved while teaching and for acting as a mentor to me when he's around.
So we're driving to Weslaco for lunch and he's got his iPod plugged into the audio jack in his spiffy new Rav4 (much like I have in my new FJ, but anyways) and he's spinning some old Arturo Sandoval tracks so I take the time to explore his playlists . . ..
He's been retired for 3 or 4 years now, and been coming to help us since I was first hired, but this is the only year I've got to really work with him one-on-one. He's in his early 60s, I believe, lives alone and has never married. He's getting a cataract taken care of soon, and has no one to really look after him . . . see, when you work with people, you learn more and more about them than you realize, what they like, what sets them off, you start to dig deep . . .
Anyways, in the playlist menu I note a few interesting items. First was a the East Village Opera Company . . . older women (think Oprah crowd) and tacky gay men LOVE this shit, Amici Opera Band, Il Divo, Andrea Bocelli, Josh Groban . . . it's lets people say they like "opera" or classical music. Hell, I like Metallica but I am no rocker, it's very lowest common denominator, very Lord of the Dance, Yanni, Enya, very PBS Telethon . . . it's catchy and popular but it's like, ugh, not really classical music . . . anyways, I put that on, and it was pretty fey, but the guys in the back seat didn't seem to mind, and we talked amongst ourselves . . . which brought me too Eliot Yamin. I was a big fan of his on Idol despite his dental shortcomings, and I like his first single, but my mentor (let's call him Hank) had purchased the whole album, which I called up and we began to discuss, which led to a whole weird discussion on Idol.
Not only did he like Elliot (sp.?) but he noted that he'd fixed his teeth. He asked me what I thought of Blake's clever arrangement of "You Give Love a Bad Name", whether I'd noticed if LaKisha had lost weight, and whether I thought Melinda Dolittle would win it all . . . . it was surreal only in that I never expected to have this conversation at work, or with someone not my age or younger, female or gay . . . digging deeper into his iPod while I feigned interest in more Idol chatter (hehe, idle, hehe) I noticed in his artists menu Bucky Covington (gross) and Kimberley Locke . . . amongst David Sedaris and Annie Proulx audio books . . .
That chex mix kinda threw me . . . I never 'assumed" he was a confirmed bachelor, but it did make sense. Granted, this is all assumption and conjecture, Brokeback Mountain was a popular story last year and the short story is stunning and soul-wrenching in its terse prose and honesty . . . and Dave Sedaris is quite popular outside the gay community, but . . . I won't say it broke my heart (or my back *snicker) but it did strike me as being . . . anomalous.
I decided that (with this being the exception, and a quick conversation to Mel that was all too brief) I had to keep it to myself. Trying to out him after who knows how many years to even just the confidence of my coworkers or friends didn't feel right or even halfway important. It just made me sad. He loves coming to our school to work and interact and see what we do. He's fought (and lost) a battle to help us do more challenging literature, and he's pushed me out of my rut and inspired me to give my students a desire to do more with music. He . . . he's a nice old man. I don't . . . I look at myself, and the life I live right now and I can say I have freedoms he never enjoyed decades ago when he started teaching. I can be nearly openly gay around my students (no, not like, being gay with them, I guess I just mean being myself) as well as around my family and friends now. I can drive an ubergay vehicle and overdress and mince and spend football season wearing short shorts and cutoff shirts and dance around with a flag and just be ME. He's lived a buttoned up life, for the sake of band music and directing and now he's in, well, not his twilight years, but close and he's . . . alone.
I don't want to be alone . . . I don't mind living alone, but I was looking forward to Ernesto moving in, and still do once my father moves out . . . ugh, that old topic. I am, well, I have to be anyways, pretty satisfied this is something I can keep to myself and not expose to anyone else. It's always funny how someone else's experiences can make you shift the focus on yourself. Granted, the focus is ALWAYS on me . . .but I am making an effort.

Songs for the day

Old: "Buffalo Stance" - Neneh Cherry
New: "In the Morning (Hot Chip Remix)" - Junior Boys
In Between: "I Will Survive" The Puppini Sisters
My jam: "Lost Without U" - Robin Thicke (oh yeah, U = You = GAY!!!)