It’s just one of those mornings, gang.

While I did get to spend some time talking on the phone with Peitor when we were both finally in the same time zone, it was stressful, anxious, sad.

As soon as he left France, his mother, who has been very ill for a very long time and is now in a full-time care facility in Nice, took a very bad turn for the worse. They did not think she would survive the night last night, but she did. And now he is heading right back to France.

We spoke a couple times last evening and, as you can guess, he was unbelievably stressed out.

Tomorrow is his birthday. It is conceivable at this point that she could die on his birthday…

Either way, this is one of my favorite photos of him from last summer. He is in France, with a Swedish friend who is likely going to be involved in our micro-short film, Lita måste gå! (Lita’s Got to Go!).

And while I was hunting for a different photograph altogether, I found this recent photo of my best friend, Valerie in Brooklyn! (far right) This was right before her mother died (her mom is on the far left) (and yes, Valerie is very tall!!):

I was only planning to post about my dear friend, Paul Martin, whose birthday is today.

He would have been 64. He has been gone now for 24 years. So he has officially been dead now longer than I knew him. (We were friends for 23 years, before he died of AIDS at age 40.)

I wanted to write about him today because I connected some spiritual dots this morning, at 6am, while thinking of him on his birthday and getting the many cats fed and getting my own breakfast together, putting the coffee on…

It finally dawned on me that he would be so thrilled with this play I’m doing with Sandra right now, and our progress with it after so many years, because he was in the theater professionally — he was a set designer. At several different theaters, but most notably, he was the set designer at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Co in Washington DC. And this led to him becoming a set designer for motion pictures and moving down to Wilmington, North Carolina, to work at what was then Carolco Studios:

But anyway. I sometimes forget that he loved theater so much. As much as I did. We met in the high school theater department, in fact. He did some acting (he was incredibly funny), but mostly he designed our sets.

By the time we graduated high school, we were incredibly close friends. And not just because of the theater connection, but he was openly gay and I was openly bisexual, which weren’t popular things to be, so we had a sort of “safe zone” when we were together.

He had this wonderful vintage 1965 VW camper van — just like this one:

And we would hang out together between classes out in the school parking lot, in the camper. Usually he smoked weed, but I was never a fan of smoking marijuana. But, anyway, we always had a blast together. We loved the same music, the same Broadway shows, the same movies (and he turned me on to softcore gay-guy porn magazines, which really blew my 17 year-old mind!) (Until then, I was a big fan of my older brother’s Hustler magazine collection. So, suddenly, my porn horizons greatly expanded…)

Paul’s dad restored classic cars as a hobby, and had this awesome 1955 Chevy Bel Air that looked exactly like this (and sometimes his dad would let us drive it but we weren’t allowed to go very far):

These recollections about Paul led me to realize that Saturday is the 45th anniversary of us graduating from high school! Jesus. When the heck did all this time fly away, right?

At graduation, I was the Valedictorian (there were two of us — one guy, one girl). I was one of the kids graduating at the top of my class, but to be selected as one of the Valedictorians, you had to write a speech and then audition it for the heads of the school. (And I could write like a motherfucka, even back then.)

Anyway — so I was smart. And that is the sole reason I went away to college — because everyone basically forced me to go. They said I was too smart to not go to college. but all I wanted was to go to NYC and be a singer/songwriter. Instead, I went to college and studied theater — to be an actress, because I’d had the female leads in all the school plays.

I lasted 3 whole months because I hated college. And I hated acting. While taking my theater courses (at age 18), I realized that I would much rather be writing the words that went into the actors mouths, then just being some sort of talking puppet…

Well, you know, I did go to NYC and did become a popular singer/songwriter for a while (until I got tired of writing songs and just wanted to write erotic fiction). But the entire time I was doing all that, I was still seeing every play I could, whether it was on Broadway, Off Broadway, or Off-Off Broadway, or way down in the darkest, deepest, farthest and lowest bowels of some dank basement theater in lower Manhattan…

I have always loved theater. And I always adored Paul, with all my heart. My life has never been the same after he died. And regardless of all the other things I feel about “The Guide to Being Fabulous,” I realized just this morning that Paul would LOVE this show, and he would love Sandra — and is probably somewhere right this minute, loving that I am doing this.

And the definition of “DOING THIS” — according to Sandra: “Marilyn, you write like a motherfucka, you know that?!“

Well, anyway…. Here is one of my favorite photos of Paul. It was taken in 1981, the year Foun Kee and I got married. Paul was visiting us from Washington DC, where he was the set designer for Woolly Mammoth Theatre Co.

In this photo, he is impersonating me, which is why I love it. He’s sitting at my IBM Selectric electric typewriter, that I’d bought in a pawn shop on 8th Avenue. And he’s sitting at the desk that Foun Kee had bought me as a wedding gift (the desk I still have, at which I have written absolutely everything I have written in my entire career, and am sitting at, typing this blog post right now, in fact).

My guitar, in its case, is leaning in the corner. The window overlooks a gay hustler bar on 8th Avenue at W. 45th Street.

I guess everything comes full circle, in its own way. Happy heavenly birthday, dearest Paul.

And in other quick news…

From Johnny Depp on Instagram just now:

Have a great Thursday, wherever you are in the world, gang!

Thanks for visiting.

I love you guys. See ya!

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As luck would have it, this is the music I was listening to this morning, when all these thoughts suddenly occurred to me about the theater and Paul– the theme from the 1959 groundbreaking film from Brazil, Black Orpheus (Orfeu negro): “Samba De Orfeu” by Ray Anthony, from the Ultra-Lounge collection, Bossa Nova Ville.

(Isn’t the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice all about death and love and that place beyond??? Hmmm.…)

Well, enjoy, gang!!

Whenever I need to go to town to get the groceries — like today, for instance — and I don’t feel up to driving the 50 miles to get there and back because I’ve been doing nothing but sit at my desk and do re-writes and then more and more and even more re-writes and then laundry and then cleaning the house and taking care of 12 (!!) cats and tending to all the flowers (yes! I bought even more flowers!)…. these guys always offer to do the driving to town for me!

Neighbors are great, aren’t they? I just love them!

But, yes. This morning is about running errands in town and then (I think) catching up with Peitor Angell on the phone this afternoon. He is still in New York, so we’re in the same time zone for a change. Yay.

Which reminds me, the other day, I posted the wrong logo for Abstract Absurdity Productions. This is the correct one:

Also, if you are interested — tonight’s Pride special on ABC, “The Freedom to Exist — The Soul of A Nation Presentation,” which includes an interview with Sandra Caldwell (my partner in all things theatrical) will air at 10 PM (US only). And then it will be on Hulu, indefinitely.

I no longer have TV or Hulu, so I won’t be able to see it. But Val in Brooklyn offered to just tape it with her phone and send it to me. So we’ll see how that goes!

Meanwhile, the rewrites on the play, “The Guide to Being Fabulous,” do indeed continue. And they continue to be great — but they also continue to take a lot of focusing from my wee bonny brain. This is a really BIG thing around my house ( and it works!!):

And also lots of THIS over ice!! (Sadly, it does have sugar, even though it’s organic sugar…)

And when all else fails, I sit and stare at this until the brain fog clears!! I love this photo!! (It’s from the other day, in London I think):

But seriously — I am still loving our fantastic play (one-woman musical, to be exact) but sometimes the deadlines get extreme, especially when I am still trying to fit in a regular, albeit part-time, job.

I just feel exhausted most of the time.

I did touch base with Valerie again about our big merch extravaganza– all the covers of my many books put onto coffee mugs over at zazzle! I can’t wait. I think we will be working on that next week, when there will be a brief shining moment of lulls in the rewrites….

A coffee mug featuring this cover will be going to my uncle down in Virginia, because he said, and I quote: “Wow. That is the best book you ever wrote! That was really HOT!” (And he’s 90…. and has read a lot of books!)

And for Wayne, a coffee mug with this wonderful cover will be arriving in his mail. Because of all the many cups of coffee he brought me at 6:30am when I was hard at work at my desk, writing this for 4 years; and the sandwiches he brought me midday, when I was hard at work at my desk, writing this for 4 years; and the Christmas when he barged in, exasperated, dressed in a really lovely royal blue linen suit that I had bought him, a crisp white shirt that I had bought him and a royal blue silk tie that I had bought him, and said, “Come on, Marilyn! Fuck — it’s Christmas! People will be here in 20 minutes!!” (And, of course, when the book won me Erotic Writer of the Year in London, when I was 39, and he said, “Marilyn, I am so PROUD of you!!”):

All righty!!!!

That’s it for today. I hope you have a terrific Tuesday, wherever you are in the world!! Here, it is lovely, yet again!! Beautiful weather for a drive to town and back (with or without the neighbors).

Enjoy your beautiful day, gang.

Thanks for visiting.

I love you guys. See ya!

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My driving everywhere music for today!!!!! Enjoy!!