Durango.

My first music show: Long story short: I have a newfound respect for music DJs! NEWS IS *EASY*.

Overnight Freeform. 1-5 AM, Tuesday morning. Didn't prepare correctly. It was kinda rough. Only gave myself 24 hours to prepare. Not enough. Found myself sleepless, thinking "I could start with this, and move to that, then that" and so on.

Come 10 PM, with three hours to air, I'm panicking that I don't have four hours of material all pre-scripted out and recorded to play. I haven't had the chance to digitize those LPs that I want to play. I'm panicking. What I *do* have is a couple of half-hour segments and a shorter one. All old stuff from the archives. "Free Form" thrives on the blending of as many genres as possible and as much new stuff as possible. You also get "points", so to speak, for emphasizing local music that might not otherwise get airtime.

Give me news! Give me from 18:30 to 19 to tell the weather to a *huge* and disparate state. Give me facts to report. Give me a minute to do rewritten headlines from wire. This whole "flexibility" thing has me more panicked right up to the minute I go on air than *anything* else I've *ever* done in radio. When I do go on air, though, I've got a full half hour of programming lined up, which gives me time to search the library for what works right, *after* the last thing that I play, and then what works right after *that*, while hopefully eventually leading into my next prepared segment. I wind up enjoying it completely. *Especially* those parts of the program which sent me off in different directions and *made* me break my precious plan. Even if I sounded dumb.

I start with the Wurlitzer. Why not? No one else plays theatre organ music. Or old Broadway showtunes. Or soundtracks. That's all together on one CD I've prepared which buys me time: it's stuff nobody else plays, which I play from front to end while I prepare for the next segment. All the time I'm panicking 'cause I don't have double and triple backups synched online like we do for network programming. Finally I get to where I've got all four CD players lined up and *can't* check any new music in cue. I'm forced to relax. And I *love* it.

Then a little Rufus Wainright -- just a bit, and *not* his newest song, either. Then Camper van Beethoven. That leads, naturally enough, to a new CD (thank god!) from some group called "the Waterboys" (I'll leave it to your vivid imaginations why that name caught my eye in the first place), and then "Amplified Heat" from my personal collection. A little more "hard rock stuff" rounds out that portion of the evening. I'm shocked how much I've played. It's not music I am innately drawn to, but I think that which I played is some of the best. Anyway -- time moves on, and I can't get stuck in a rut. We get progressively experimental.

Back to the '20s and '30s for songs from the Mexican Revolution. Then to a hip-hop track. Some Portuguese Blues, which I broke my "don't apologise on air" rule for in order to apologise for butchering the performer's name, because I *know* I did. One piece from a Kenyan vocal group was terribly misplaced, but I hoped the listeners might get lost in the John Cage set that followed. Naturally, from there we went to Gamelan. From that we went to Chinese traditional ensemble music, which led right into Messiaen, and finally wound up in Bach. I gave the credits right down to BWV numbers. From "I was lucky enough to hear this band in Austin when they were doing benefits for the Humane Society" to "that was, of course, none other than the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, under the conduction of Sir Neville Marriner". Then to one last cut of Rufus -- another old one -- to transition to the satellite feed. The whole song played out. If I do this again, that may be my "sign off" song again. It's *too* perfect for that exact time of night. I *did* cut off the "G" from NPR's "good morning!", but not too shabby for a first-time music host, if I say so myself.

Then home to crash.

Then up to Durango with Charles. This is a long, complex, involved, and evolving story. Forgive me if I lose anyone.

Charles is the guy I work for. For money. We're basically servants in the 19th Century sense of the word, with a few of the more onerous restrictions on servants considerably relaxed since that day. (Thank gawd.) The main focus of what I do for Charles involves gardening.

Bill, with whom Charles lived for some years, is in very bad shape. As in "multiple undetected small strokes" bad shape. Bill is the landscape architect. One of his designs, executed by Charles, made it into Martha Stewart's "Living" magazine before the whole Martha Stewart fiasco -- another made it into "Better Homes and Gardens" -- all of which should, if nothing else, attest to the quality of work that the people I work for are *recognised* for.

The same day Charles pulls me from one account to another, Bill slumps over the steering wheel of his car at Plant World. He's taken in an ambulance to hospital, where he's apparently denied potentially life-saving medical care by one of the state's leading insurance companies and hospital operators (I'll call them LHP for no particular reason) on acount of a single past-due bill for eighty-four dollars.

I help Charles track Bill down to the hospital to which he's been finally transferred, but eventually go out to deadheading roses and watering flowers again -- not because it's my job, but because it's a joy. Charles is left dealing with clients, which is what he does best.

Charles has no legal rights that I know of where Bill is concerned. Charles was Bill's closest freind for many years. Charles was in large part the reason Bill's business continued to flourish, even as Bill's health deteriorated rapidly. But now he's got to deal with hospital bureaucracies that at a whim tell him he can or can't see Bill, or even find out how he is doing. Charles isn't Bill's next of kin, you see. The next of kin, who live in the same city, would see Bill *maybe* one time per year -- at Christmas -- and otherwise don't seem to care about him until his fabulously quaint estate comes on the real estate market. And now who gets to make medical, legal, and financial decisions is already shaping up to be a royal mess.

I love Charles, but he doesn't understand bureaucracy. He is an artist. So was Bill. What several hospitals have done in dealing with Bill, and Charles' relation to Bill, I am nearly convinced, are thoroughly illegal. Meanwhile it's kinda up to me to navigate the medical bureaucracy as best I can as a disinterested outsider without getting directly involved. This isn't for the news. I just don't want to see my freinds get totally screwed over.

But it doesn't stop there.

Charles' cars are still in Bill's driveway. And a lot of Charles' heaviest antique furniture remains in Bill's house. Last we heard, Bill was heavily sedated and restrained in bed to prevent him from tearing out the IVs from his arms. More specific details are harder to come by, and open to a wide variety of interpretation, since Charles has no legal standing on which to base his decisions.

Charles and Bill cared for eachother and took care of eachother in ways I think most hetero couples would struggle to begin to understand, because they can afford to take certain legal relationships for granted. Watching this happen is an excercise in watching a train wreck in slow motion, and hoping for the best that may result.

Bill was my lifeline to the world when I was in jail -- if I hadn't gotten bailed out by an anonymous drag queen from Ireland, I would have had to depend on Bill to make all the financial arrangements to spring me, which I *know* he was doing when I just happened to get sprung. I think after I got out, I non-specifically said "thank you" to him. But that's just not enough.

Bill paid for all those collect phone calls. I still don't know what that cost him. I was afraid to ask, lest he present me with a bill. He never did. He started juggling his assets and his credit just to bail me out before the drag queen from Dublin swooped in from out of nowhere and saved me. Bill bent over backwards to get me out. He was the most hopeful prospect I had in jail. He kept me going, day to day. Hour to hour. I *knew* someone was working for me on the outside in large part because of him, and that kept me alive. I want to tell him that before he dies.

Charles, for his part, helped out the best he could -- he broke into my apartment in order to feed my cats. Charles *hates* cats. And he's *not* the sort of person to break into *any* building -- even under specific instructions -- least of all by someone in jail. Charles still feels guilty for not having stood bond for me, but as far as I'm concerned, he did the single most important service anybody did while I was in that hole. I knew my cats wouldn't starve because of him, and therefore lived another day.

Long story short: Bill and Charles were a *huge* part of whatever "support network" I had that got me out of that rut.

Now Bill appears to be dying. I've been through this sort of thing before. Sometimes it happens fairly quick. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it drags on for years. Charles has never been to a funeral in all his life of thirty-some-odd-years. He's flying by the seat of his pants. I try and help him navigate. He's got the helm, I've got the compass. That's how I see it, anyway. This isn't my story. This story's his. The best that I can tell is my peripheral observations on it.

So. Long story short: Charles needs someone to drive up one of his other cars to Durango, where he's now living, and which he considers "home". Rightly. I offer. I juggle like mad. He juggles no less madly. Somehow, it works. He's a strong-headed man. He's never had help moving before. So it's a tricky thing to negotiate, even right down to "can I help you carry this up?" or "shall I stay and make sure the dog doesn't go down the stairs?".

Charles' German Shepherd is also in the process of dying. She hardly eats and has gone mostly blind. She's weak in her hindquarters, and bumps into things, and falls down stairs. She's to the point where she won't eat a morsel unless Charles has cooked it, himself.

Charles is amazing on a grill. He breaks all the culinary rules and (he being Charles) there's not much you can do but stand back and hope for the best. Good intentions, misdirected, might be met either by his calm and pleasant "would you mind?" voice, which would make *anyone* roll over; or possibly, and increasingly rarely, by the "evil" streak he swears he inherited straight from his grandmother. Since you're a guest in his home, the best thing you can do is let him do whatever he needs to. Take nothing personally. Thirty seconds later, he will *always* be cool. And the "evil" moments are fewer and further between, and less intense. Charles may not be perfect, but he's clearly *aware*.

What results is absolute perfection. Medium rare steaks come out medium rare by his "two cigarette rule". Pork tenderloins seared in a pot *far* too small for the purpose are still tender and juicy and can be cut by the side of a fork, while the crust developed in searing retains its original "crunch". Then there's that one caraway seed between the meat and your tongue. He uses *just* enough caraway seeds that they *always* surprise you. Again and again.

Durango was lovely. This wasn't the same town I've visited counteless times as a tourist, out to go on the train or show an out-of-country visitor what we americans did for fun.

Durango was a town where people lived. A lovely small town. A precariously built tinderbox set aside a mountain where nobody locked their doors or had curtains to shield their activities from public view. I *love* Durango like I haven't loved it since I was five years old. A hillside city of creative geniuses waiting to either burn away or be washed into the river of lost souls. I wonder how long it will last.

It was a beautiful trip. I'm glad to have played some small part in it.

There's enough from these last three days for a novel.

This isn't a novel.

This is an online journal. Anyone can read it, and know truth from fiction.

I wore the single most expensive article of clothing on this trip that I have ever worn in my entire life, simply because I got chilled and Charles offered it to me. I learned a lot about coutoure (sp?) by looking and listening and asking questions. Charles has *exquisite* tastes. Perhaps if I am lucky something small rubbed off on me. Not like I care if I'm fashionable.

We sat up laughing 'til late hours, even hounded by death everywhere. Infinitely more important. I hope that in my own dying hours some memory of these few days may come through.