No joy in Motown

But there are smiles in San Francisco, (and, of course, in St, Louis).

Julia has four friends spending the night on her 8th birthday at her Mom's house.



I have three boys staying here with me. Sometimes, the emotional swings at a kid's birthday party are hard for me to handle. Tonight, Julia swung between extremes of hysterical joy, and crying tears in buckets.



Over here, the phone rings. It's a girl, no a group of girls. They are calling for my 12-year-old. So, it's started...



My main gift to Julia was a two-dollar-bill. I explained it was a symbol -- a "gift certificate" of sorts, as my pledge is to take her shopping for whatever clothes she wants.

As a friend told me earlier today, "You know how to make a woman happy."

I'm not so sure about that. I can make a little girl happy; that's easy. But women? I don't think my record is so good on that score.

It's a rare hot night in this town. The kind of night that makes you remember other hot nights, better ones, when you were out and about with a woman who loved you. You remember nights in cars, in swimming pools, on beaches, in hotels, on trains or airplanes, in movie theatres...You remember dancing, drinking in clubs, eating at late-night cafes, riding buses, or hailing taxis. You remember walking around strange cities, as well as familiar ones.

You remember kisses under trees, across tables, in hot tubs, on subways, in parks, in forests, outside museums and cathedrals.

You remember the twisted blankets and open windows of southern towns, the bright lights of eastern cities, the quiet roads of northern counties, and the vast beaches of the western edge where you've made most of your love, by far.

You also remember warm nights in Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, and Moscow; Ottawa, Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Djakarta, and Taipei. You remember Hong Kong, Singapore, Delhi and old Bombay. You remember Goa and Cochin. You remember cold nights in Brussels, Helsinki, Quebec City, New Haven and Boston. Hot nights in Chicago and London. Cold nights in Frankfurt and Milan. Hot nights in Rome and Mexico City and Tokyo. Cold nights in Melbourne and Sydney. Warm nights in Perth and Tehran. Hot nights in Beirut and Bermuda and La Paz and the Kona Coast. Hot nights in Honolulu, on the beach. Hot nights in Papeete and out on Moorea. Cool nights in Kyoto and Osaka and rainy cold nights at points further west.

You think about warm nights in Gold Country, in San Diego, and of course recently in Vancouver. You think about hot tubs in Big Sur, during visits twenty-five years apart. You remember nights in Napa, Sonoma, and all over the Sierra -- Tahoe, Reno, Yosemite, points north and points south. You especially recall nights in the south -- Sanibel, Captiva, Key West, on a boat in the Gulf, in Mobile, in Biloxi, in Pascagoula, and New Orleans. You remember Memphis.

There are other night memories as well-- Dallas, Atlanta, St. Paul, Pittsburg, Kansas City, L.A., Portland, Seattle, and Santa Barbara. You remember Kunduz, Khanabad, Mazar-i-Sharif and Taloqan.

Remembering all these places and so many more requires remembering so many faces and bodies and so many lips, kissed softly under moonlight swimming in a gentle bay, or urgently in an alley while snowflakes fall, or mixed with tears on an impending farewell in the rain, or in the dark corner of a bar where neither of you should have been that particular night.

You remember nights in tents, nights under the stars in sleeping bags, on roofs to escape the heat, in the back of a van wedged between two trees. You remember nights in hotels far above bustling cities, and also in villages thousands of feet above sea level, where natives, half-wild and high on weed danced wildly around bonfires.

You remember nights in hospitals, sad nights and happy nights. Nights when you welcomed a special new person into this world, and nights when you kept vigil as a special old person slipped away.

Nights come, nights go. I am not a wanderer by nature; I prefer to go to bed in my own home, surrounded by familiarity. But I've spent many a night on the road, and with enough different people lying next to me to know that all of us share a common humanity, no matter what language we speak, what god we worship (or not), or whose love we share.

I sleep alone tonight, a warm night in sensuous San Francisco. But it won't always be so, and on the nights a lover comes to me, I will add another experience to my memory bank.

It's a melancholy night; my Tigers lost the Series; Julia's emotionality confuses me; the energies of children distract me; the memories of a robust life consume me. I feel like I want for something to happen to me, but I know not what.

Mostly, like all working people, I show up at my job, earn what I earn, bring home the Canadian bacon, and wonder why my hungers never get quenched. When we I arrive at the place where I belong?

Or am I already there, awaiting my partner, as yet unknown, to open Act Three of this strange life on the edge of a continent, above unstable ground, with a wounded world depending on those of us who can speak to tend to its wounds?

If so, I better get to work. The world needs the like of you and me.

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