Daylight Savings Time

Just watched the little clock in the corner of my screen jump from 1:59a.m. to 3:00a.m. Earlier tonight I'd gone through the house manually changing all the other clocks: my wrist watch, the stereo, the clock radio, the tv, the vcr, the answering machine. For a few hours they were all out of synch; if I wanted the real time I had to look here. Now they're all back in balance with each other, now it's the same time wherever you look in my apartment. Like most big changes in time or season, it brings back memories....

Like some time in the mid eighties, at a closing night party for a show I'd helped produce. It was at the home of a lesbian couple, one of whom was one of my favorite people in the world, as well as a sometime drunken makeout buddy. What can I say, alcohol made her curious. We sat in the back yard looking up at the huge clock faces on the Williamsburg Bank building in downtown Brooklyn, just a couple of blocks away. At the stroke of two the hour hands, lit up in colored lights, began to move at speed visible to our eyes and went straight past two to three a.m. We clicked our beer bottles in a toast and kissed. My girlfriend was inside, kissing the other half of the lesbian couple.  At least I'm pretty sure that's what happened.

Or the year my mother died, and her wake spanned the weekend when the clocks changed. A month or so earlier I'd broken up with the girl who I thought would be the love of my life. A couple of months before that I'd lost the job I thought would be my life's work. And now my mother was dead. It really wasn't a good year. My ex and I left the wake together and went to Rocky Horror at Eighth Street. Back then they ran videos as part of the pre-show, and that night the video was the J. Geils Band with "Love Stinks". No thought, no question, she and I jumped up on stage and joined the floor show, gave that song all the hurt, all the sorrow, and all the laughter and relief we both were feeling. Much later on, as the sun was rising, we made love in a secluded corner of a large park in Queens. I walked her home, went back to my place, showered, changed clothes and went back to the wake. To this day I bless her for that night.

And tonight, as the rainy night loses one hour of its life, given over to man's greedy hand,I thank the night for its gift. May we all use it well.