John Allen and Island House: Almost Perfect. Never Normal.

Can't wait to return. Here's the story in this week's South Florida Gay News online.

Today at the Beach

Today on the beach a man squatted by my chair and said "Ah luuuv Eye-talians."I didn't reply, but he kept looking at me as if I were obliged to respond. Very slowly I said "I am half Latvian and half Creole. All my uncles have been executed by various governments for the crime of murder. We're an unrepentant lot. All I need to do is just look at a boat and it will sink."

He then said "I once had me an Eye-talian boyfriend. Wouldn't eat nothin but tofu and sprouts. Took me five years to get him to eat some dessert. Now he'll eat thet. I got him a puppy and I said 'Now Tommy don't you make this puppy eat none of thet junk. Well I went over there on Christmas and that puppy had broke its paw in two places and I said 'Tommy ah'm givin this dawg ice cream.'"

After an hour, I said "Please let your name be Lusitania, and if it isn't, please Jesus, let my name be Lusitania and let me see my reflection in your sunglasses."

In 2011, Let's Plan For The Past!?

"You are the only young man that I know of who ignores the fact that the future becomes the present, the present the past, and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don't plan for it!"

-- Amanda Wingfield to her son, in Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie.