another eye opens

I flew into Denver, and Andy met me at the airport with his cousin’s daughter Melissa and his niece Avery — they were waiting by this amazing VW bug completely covered in beads.

We headed west up into the Rockies to the town of Dillon, where Andy’s family had found a gigantic VRBO (vacation rental by owner) with a beautiful view.

Unexpectedly, the lot next to the house was under construction, but it made to my eye a picturesque ruin.

The occasion for this gathering was to memorialize Andy’s Aunt Helen, who died earlier this year. I never met her, but this trip was a happy occasion to meet Andy’s mother’s other sister, Jean, whom I liked very much.

For Andy, family trips center on time spent with his beloved niece Avery…

…and equally beloved nephew Nathan, seen here in the embrace of Andy’s mom Brooke, aka GeeGee.

The kids’ mother is Andy’s sister Becky, who wowed the assembly with her killer mac-and-cheese whose secret ingredient was bacon. This was a crowd that loves its bacon. As who wouldn’t?

I got to meet almost all the relatives I hadn’t met before, including soulful young Preston, seven-year-old son of Andy’s cousin Heather

When we weren’t watching the Olympics, we headed out to the outlet mall, which was a lot less interesting than the farmer’s market in Dillon, where I picked up some fresh local peaches and tomatoes and a Greek olive with Thai curry tapenade (not pictured).

Dave works in intelligence at the Pentagon and Brian is a grad student in psychology

David runs the Montana Gay Men’s Task Force and Hawk is an activist primarily with sex workers in North Carolina and NYC

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence were a presence in DC, here represented by Sister Eden Ass (aka Brad Vanderbilt), moderating a session on peer-based community health promotion

as usual, Seattle was a strong presence at the summit — Todd Hull attended with a posse from Lifelong AIDS Alliance, including Jennifer Hatlo

I met trans activist Jeffrey Johnston, who works for the federal government as a public health analyst

Sister Glo applied elaborate makeup to lead a session on healing shame and unveiling joy

after the conference, I had dinner at Indique with my dear old friend Joe Martin, who had just attended the wedding of his former boss, Barney Frank

then I went back to spend the night in my dorm room at Thurston Hall

Saturday — after all day at a therapy conference, Ben Seaman and I had a drink at Mad46, the rooftop lounge at the Roosevelt Hotel, which has a great vista but an atmosphere of tension and drink-hustling

Andy and I had a yummy dinner at Terrazza Toscana, where this tribute to Bacchus graces the men’s lounge

Sunday afternoon — I spied this T-shirt in front of Fairway

Its owner was way proud to be photographed and eager to tell me where I could order it online at some website catering to rednecks

Sunday night — after seeing Beasts of the Southern Wild and enjoying drinks at Red58 served by the ever-friendly and handsome Milan, Andy and I and Mr. David Zinn strolled over to Fifth Avenue to check out the life-sized wax replica of Yayoi Kusama in the windows at Louis Vuitton

Kusama has a retrospective at the Whitney, and her polka dots have exploded all over Vuitton’s exterior

Monday night — Andy and I found ourselves in Soho, where the streets were spookily deserted

Our destination: Seize sur Vingt, clothing store hosting a party to celebrate the re-opening on Broadway of Fela!

It was never clear what these shirts had to do with this theatrical tribute to the Afro-beat legend — random cast members nibbled pizza in the lounge at the back while civilians drank cocktails featuring Bushmill whiskey, who apparently sponsored the event — but the DJ’s spun some hot vintage Fela vinyl, and Andy’s takeaway was a fixation with tracking down a digital copy of “Roforofo Fight”

On the N train home, these sweet boys sharing tunes

Wednesday — farmer’s market yield — no corn yet, but I’ll take a juicy nectarine and a tasty local tomato any day

I think I can definitively say this is the seediest fucking watermelon I’ve seen in my life. It’s like the karmic watermelon, containing all the seeds that were genetically removed from other melons I’ve eaten in recent years. I undertook the task of painstakingly de-seeding half of a small spherical melon as a meditative task. I can report that it is an exceedingly tedious job I will never do again, and performing it ran the risk of turning me off from watermelon forever. Just saying.

It also made this the single most labor-intensive salad I’ve ever made (45 minutes). Luckily, I had the Dirty Projectors’ new CD, SWING LO MAGELLAN, to keep me company. Quite good company!

new glasses — bought them in Bologna last fall and just had lenses made

my new favorite non-alcoholic beverage, still on sale at Whole Foods through July 31 — two six-packs for $8!

Watching Lotte Lenya in Jose Quintero’s mediocre film of Tennessee Williams’ THE ROMAN SPRING OF MRS. STONE, I couldn’t help seeing Everett Quinton playing her in a remake/parody/hommage.

The DVD extras go to some length to talk about how sad Vivien Leigh was during the shooting, having just been dumped by Laurence Olivier. Her hairstyles are hideous up until Warren Beatty fucks her brains out, then suddenly she turns pretty. Sex can do that. Doesn’t she look a bit like Ann Magnuson here? Key line: “I won’t know you love me until you hurt me.”