The other night I went to the Black Cat to hear John Grant, who was the opening act for Midlake. Grant is a singer-songwriter who used to be in one of my favorite bands, the Czars. (I still recommend the Czars’ The Ugly People vs. the Beautiful People to anyone who ever asks what I like to listen to. It would be among my favorite albums ever, if I could even begin to make a list. It can most definitely be on the playlist while people wait around for my funeral service to begin.)

John Grant has one of the most beautiful singing voices on the planet, I think.

Janet Duckworth and I remember reading somewhere online that he really started singing when he was laid up in a hospital somewhere, in an empty ward, and could hear his voice echo off the tile floors and walls. I gather life hasn’t been easy on him, or else his songs wouldn’t be so awfully sad and broken — and it seems like his career should have gone better, but who’s career doesn’t?

He has a new solo record out, called Queen of Denmark. I bought it at the show. The songs are bolder and more playful than the Czars days. It has this sort of almost-Harry Nilsson quality of larkiness and bluntness to it, not afraid to be goofy or strange.

I don’t write about music for a living, and there’s a reason. I love a song on it called “Silver Platter Club,” which is a bitter apologia from us guys who aren’t very good at pleasing our fathers or anybody else, and we wonder how come we’re the ones who ended up short on confidence and can’t reach that happily oblivious state that blesses so many men who are good at being athletic, oblivious and cool. It starts with something unchangeable (“I wish that I’d been born with skin that turned to golden brown while at the beach relaxing in the summertime,” Grant sings) and then of course, there’s sports (“I wish that that I was good at football, baseball and lacrosse; darts and basketball and poker, golf and chess…”) And there’s this great, sing-along chorus:

I’m sorry that they didn’t hand it to me

On a sliver platter like they did for you.

I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to become

The man you think I should aspire to.

But it goes on. He sings:  “I wish I had the genes of Eduardo Verastegui / That I was effortlessly masculine as well. / I wish that confidence was all you could see in my eyes/ Like those interviews in locker rooms with talented sports guys …

I wish I had no self-awareness like the guys I know

Who float right their lives without a thought

That I didn’t give a shit what anybody thought of me

That I was so relaxed you’d think that I was bored.

This song is worth, like, three-and-a-half therapy co-payments. Happily, it turns out, Grant sings as well onstage as he does in a studio; and it also turns out he’s one of those beautiful people who probably thinks that he’s ugly people.

And it seems like he’s ready to sing lots and lots about his failed relationships with … men. (He has a song on the new album called “Jesus Hates Faggots” that’s pretty wowza; a couple others, such as the title track and “Leopard and Lamb,” feel like they might have been torn from a diary I wasn’t aware I’d kept in a long ago era of bad dating.) This gay angle first dawned on me when the Czars released an album of covers wherein Grant did not change the girl parts to boy parts, such as a ballad version of Abba’s “Angel Eyes” or in Nina Simone’s “Black is Color (of My True Love’s Hair).”

I take it from the seeming lack of gay indie hipsters at the Black Cat on Sunday (and I can always spot them a mile away) that this either hasn’t caught on with that niche crowd, or they’re not into it. I’ll tell you who’s also been overlistening to John Grant all these years, though. Richard McCann, that brazen so-and-so [hee-hee], waiting to talk to Grant after the show and getting him to autograph CDs, and then giving Grant a copy of his very good, very like-a-John-Grant-song novel, Mother of Sorrows. I mean, Marcia, Marcia, Marcia! (Would that I had written a sad novel to give to John Grant. Sigh. Unfortunately, I’m sure he doesn’t need a non-fiction book about suburban Christmas excess — although I will note here that Queen of Denmark was recorded in that curious, indie-rock incubator known as Denton, Texas, which is spittin’-distance from Tammieland! Same county, but utterly different worlds.)

Whatevs. I’m so not a reliable source on anything cool or gay or indie or live-music. The John Grant show and the Soft Pack show last week have been my first bar shows in an age. (Actually, Michael and I saw Dengue Fever at the Mint bar in L.A. on New Year’s Eve, but that was more of a flukey thing.) I would go to more shows, and hope to — at both shows, I couldn’t help recalling how many shows I used to go to, especially in Austin, where it’s what one must do. I feel ready to go back to the clubs and hear music. I forgot how happy it makes me, even when the songs are so sad.

The whole point of this entry? Thank you, John Grant, for years and years of drivin’ and cryin’.

Reached a Yuletide peace in Seattle. The book is out there and doing whatever it’ll do. The flights have all been on time. The hotels have offered solitude and quiet and high threadcounts. The morning TV anchors at Seattle’s Q13 were perky and interested for exactly four minutes, which in their world is lavish attention. The public radio station hosts are always so deft with their questions. The December sky is beautiful; the temps dropped below 30. I queued up my Czars playlist on the drive down to Seattle from Bellingham on Sunday afternoon. Discovered that Seattle does a nice Christmas vibe, with lots of street bustle, lights, pedestrian-shopping. The very thing exurbanites crave this time of year, so long as it doesn’t get too … edgy. Anyhow, enjoy some Czars, and keep reading:

My friend Dan Savage – the syndicated and world-renowned sex-advice columnist, book author, and Xacto-sharp cultural pundit – had me over to dinner (lovely salmon, buttered carrots, delish cookie bars with ice cream) at his house Sunday night, with Terry and The Kid. They’d just put up their tall, aromatic Christmas tree, which Dan trimmed into perfect symmetry, and which Terry very intricately swathed in a multitude of clear mini lights; furthermore Terry insists the tree be adorned with only top-quality glass ornaments. Tammie Parnell would give him a grade of “absolutely phenomenal.” (I showed up with junky ornaments from Bellingham’s Xmas store — absolutely unphenomenal.) It’s interesting to watch what I call “PhD-level homosexuals” in their natural habitat of householdedness: longtime partnered, with an actual child that they raise, living in well-appointed, still-in-progress property refurbishment; add a tiny deaf dog with one eye and chenille-soft fur, and give the whole scene clarity and a sense of absurd purpose. And yet they are still utterly hip and plugged into the world at large. The Kid is a tween now and uses a steely glare to leaven the household snark, such as when both Dads excitedly explain their idea for a rather gay iPhone app; The Kid also hates it when the grownup talk goes down to a whisper. Boy oh boy, do I ever hope he writes a memoir someday! Don’t you?

From his Grand Poobah day job at The Stranger, Dan wrote a nice blog item about me on Monday, trying to get people to come to my reading. He referred back to some of the essays I’d dashed off for The Stranger’s annual, counter-programmed gay pride issues in the last decade or so. I’d forgotten how much fun I had writing those.

Alas, the low temperatures combined with a Monday night ennui combined with my chronic failure to become famous and beloved all o’er the land meant Monday night’s reading remained low-key, but pleasant:

About 15-20 people were there, and they turned out to be a perfect audience. I’ve reached a zazen point with these things. I’m thrilled when anybody shows up and I make it work and I don’t fret about it one bit — no, really I don’t. At this reading, I tried doing the Cookie the Elf scene from Chapter 12, and might do it again in St. Louis, if the situation calls for it. There were lots of good questions afterward.

The fate of the Elliott Bay Book Company is in flux, or so I’ve read, and I wish them well. Frankly, Mr. Shankly, it wouldn’t hurt the store to get out of that neighborhood – historical though it may be, among pretty 19th-century buildings, old-fashioned streets and all. That neighborhood gets slummier and crackier (heroin-ier?) every time I visit Seattle. And that basement off the café, where Elliott Bay stages their readings, a sacred literary space that they are so proud of? Yeah, not so much for me. The upstairs is so much nicer. The bookstore in Bellingham does the same thing – welcome to tonight’s author reading/signing … in the dreary basement! And Powell’s puts you up on the top floor, awash in fluorescence and gray concrete and safely away from, you know, the customers.

So far, I give ambience awards to the brand new Legacy Books, the indie store in Plano; with a close runner-up being Full Circle Books in OKC.

**UPDATE, 12/9: Breaking news: Elliott Bay is moving to Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.

Kim Voynar, a film writer whom I knew in 5^th grade and 9^th grade (it’s complicated; she transferred schools a lot), came to the reading and we went out to dinner. Twenty-five years is just about the maximum amount of time that can pass before a person simply has too much tell you to bring you up to speed; it’s on the precipice of being strangers. So in a way, Kim, it’s nice to finally meet you! She’s having some pretty scary surgery on Wednesday; I’ll be thinking of her.

I think we’re pretty much caught up on Tinsel press, and arn’cha relieved? Hold on, hold on:

• There’s an excerpt in Wednesday’s Washington Post – nice front display from my Style peeps: Thanks, Lynn Medford — and HJ and Cavna and Padget.

• And there was a delightful 20 minutes spent on New Hampshire public radio’s “Word of Mouth” on Monday afternoon, if you want to have a lis’sen.

* * *

MEANWHILE, THERE’S a whole world going on out there that has nothing to do with me. Imagine.

I have been so bad about keeping up with my news diet, but did anyone read this riveting, cannot-put-it-down dreck in the New York Times Magazine on Sunday? Who’d wanna be married to either of the people in this story? Show of hands.

I have seen this marriage – not this specific one, but I’ve seen its many analogues. Two self-reflective quasi-hipsters meet and marry. The husband comes standard-bundled with some all-consuming passion that must be treated as lifestyle, not mere hobby, and preoccupy the entire household. (In this article it’s gourmet cooking, but it could be anything: building a “sanctuary” shed out back, from scratch with reclaimed wood. Carpentry. Rebuilding vintage autmobiles. Growing all your own food. Brewing your own beer. Playing lead guitar in a band. Starting a record label. And the worst: getting a book contract.) The wife plays along until the baby (babies) are born and then she goes understandably batshit on his stunted ass. The grandbaby-obsessed in-laws (her parents, usually) encroach. The blog posts and freelance articles become increasingly personal. Suddenly all this crap ain’t so funny anymore and before you know you it, you are building an entire NYT Magazine cover story around the clever idea of getting your husband to go into all sorts of marital therapy with you. Oh, those straight-n-married white people problems: the NYT will never tire of them, will they? Let’s hope not. Two dollars a word! (Right? More? Less? How would I know.)

Gays, besides the $2-a-word-to-write-about-our-emotional-travails (which the NYT doesn’t buy so much), are we sure this is what we want? Or should we be paying more attention to George Michael, who said this week that he smokes seven joints a day and that he gets casual, outside-of-his-relationship sex twice a week?

Freedom!