Holiday Letter 2022: From Seattle With Love

Cross Country Skiing, Snoqualmie Pass,
Dec 31, 2021

December 2022

Season’s Greetings from the Pacific Northwest!

As usual I’m always hoping for a white Christmas. And Seattle leading up to the weekend might just deliver. Fingers crossed because this place is magical when snowflakes fall. Cars stay parked, people cross-country ski on side streets, there is a sense of quiet and awe. The entire world changes.

RJ, Farrah & Me, my long-awaited tome
hits bookstores, June 2022

2022 has been a particularly special year for me. I found a publisher for my book and sold nearly 200 copies. I led a reading and discussion at a local art gallery and hope to do more. I sat for a signing at the end of the summer near the beach where I love to swim. Friends and acquaintances came to buy a copy and offer support. And others emailed to say they had been moved to laughter and tears, and encouraged me to keep writing, which really buoyed my spirits.

This year I dove into adventure and travel. In January I spent a week with my actor/director friend Shawn in Mexico City chilling in the Roma neighborhood and beyond, exploring a place I’d visited briefly in college and enjoyed just as much after a long hiatus. Chapultepec Castle and Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul, her former home which doubles as an art museum, still hold magical memories for me.

Odie and me at tail end of our Camino
Spain, May 2022

In late April I traveled with another close friend, Odie, to Paris and then on to the foot of the French & Spanish Pyrenees to begin our trek along the 500-mile Camino de Santiago. On my last visit to Spain in 2015 I vowed to one day return and trod this path. We completed our journey on May 27^th despite my contracting a mild case of COVID and Odie’s bout with “Disney Rash” (look it up!). We spent the first week of June in Madrid marking my birthday before heading back home. Our antique hotel overlooked El Retiro, the Central Park of Madrid, and each day we enjoyed the passerby and the small artificial lake on which row boats and sculls floated by. Each morning I either strolled or bicycled through the park and fell in love with its bounty—the statuary, trees, and landscape.

Seattle Orca Swimmers at IGLA,
Palm Springs, April 2022

Earlier in April Odie and I traveled to Palm Springs for the IGLA swim
competition, which brought together the international LBGBTQ+ swim community of which I’ve been a part since 1994 when I participated in the Gay Games in NYC. A dozen or so swimmers from our Seattle Orca team joined us, and we placed third in our competition category for teams of comparable size.

Jack & Mary Anne, Lake Michigan,
Chicago, Sept 2022

In late September I travelled back to the Midwest for a family wedding on my mom’s side. I arranged for a layover in Chicago to visit my high school friend Mary Anne, which meant a lot to both of us. Hard to believe 15 years had passed since we last saw each other. Gathering with my family in Indiana to celebrate the nuptials of my cousin Josh and his bride Fayth also made my heart happy. I am grateful I could stay with my cousins Michelle, Lori and Tim and have quiet time with each of them, as well as others, in between all the excitement.

Dare to Dance performance, Tap Dancing
into the Past, Nov 2022

I finished the year with a performance in Dare to Dance: Together Again, a community non-profit providing adults, regardless of ability,the opportunity to rehearse with a choreographer and perform on stage with other amateur and advanced dancers. I pulled an old pair of tap shoes out of my closet and rediscovered the old magic that stretches back a century. I come from family of tappers on my mom’s side. There was a special excitement in buying a new pair of tap shoes, which I hope to use in a future class in 2023.

Last Visit with Oscar Prior to
Bellingham move, July 2022

There were losses too. When I came home from Spain, I decided to rehome my little terrier Oscar with a kind couple who fell in love with and cared for him while I was away. I bicycled over to visit him once more in July before his new owners moved north to Bellingham and took Oscar with them. I know he’s in a good place and living his best life, but in these dark winter months I miss him more. I also lost a former neighbor and good friend, Kay, who passed away after a brief illness at the ripe old age of 94. We both enjoyed swimming and with her red hair, ramrod posture and good humor she was an inspiration for aging well. Our conversations on our back deck left me with a deep love for her. And then there were friends who lost fathers, brothers, a mother, and a partner. I know this time of year is difficult when the people you love start leaving this planet. I held those friends in my morning meditation.

I am hopeful for a more peaceful 2023. Peace begins with me and all of us, then radiates outward.

Season's Greetings, Garden Court Holiday Wreath,
Dec 15, 2022

Wishing you a most peaceful, joyous, and laugh-out-loud holiday season and a happy, healthy New Year.

Much love,

Jack

My Dream Came True--I'm a Published Author!

Dreams really do come true. In the winter of 2010, I sat down and began writing a coming-of-age story. I’d been reflecting on my adolescence following the death of Farrah Fawcett in the summer of 2009. Funny what inspires a person to write, but Farrah’s buoyance and beauty spoke to me as a young man wrestling with his sexuality. Maybe it was her unabashed embrace of being both sexy and wholesome, the girl next door. I bought her poster in the summer of 1976, before her iconic tv show Charlie’s Angels debuted that fall and plastered it on the back of my bedroom door. I was 13 years old.

Around the same time, I had begun attending theatre classes at The Beck Center for the Arts (formerly Lakewood Little Theatre) in suburban Cleveland where I grew up. I met the boy who would become my lifelong friend there in the fall of that year. We discovered we both had an obsession for that same pinup girl. We’d rush to the Rexall Drug store every week to buy the next magazine on which she graced the cover. We bought a lot of magazines since Farrah was the “it girl” of the late 1970’s. So many magazines that we decided to create scrapbooks, which we still have to this day. 

Fast forward 35 years and the idea for a book came alive. Her death led to a meditation on friendship and how my Beck Center friend, RJ, changed my life, perhaps even saved my life. When you are young and questioning your identity, feeling misunderstood, alone, it just takes one friend to make a difference. I luckily grew my friendship base as I entered my teen years but it was RJ who liberated me to start dreaming about possibilities and the future. We both came from Catholic families, but he went to public school and then on to New York to study art, fashion and design. I attended an all-boy’s Jesuit high school and remained in Cleveland to attend college before my escape to Seattle once I graduated. I say on the dedication page of my book that my Mom taught me to fly, my Dad grounded me and my best friend gave me my wings. 

This is our story in all its humor, poignancy and raw humanity. I hope you’ll buy a copy and allow yourself to dream about your own passions and obsessions growing up in whatever era you came of age. I was inspired by Deirdre O’Connell who won her first Tony Award for Best Actress in a Broadway Play last weekend. She said in her acceptance speech: “I am the face of a very large beast that made Dana H.” O’Connell said. “I would love this little prize to be a token for every person who is wondering, ‘Should I be trying to make something that could work on Broadway or that could win me a Tony Award? Or should I be making the weird art that is haunting me, that frightens me, that I don’t know how to make, that I don’t know if anyone in the whole world will understand?’ Please let me standing here be a little sign to you from the universe to make the weird art.” 

Weird, gay, whatever. This is a happy day. My weird inspiration resulted in something beautiful that I take great Pride in. 

Here is the link to purchase a copy of RJ, Farrah and Me: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1953610242

Thanks for all your love and support!

Jack