One of These Is True, the Other Is a Dream

1. Two work colleagues and I piled into a taxi to head out to lunch. The driver, a recent immigrant from India, was unfamiliar with the restaurant we directed him to and asked us to tell him how to get there. Although we were diligent in guiding him at first, we got lost in conversation and were soon enough lost on the road. Despite picking up and extra person who seemed to know the area, we ended up far from where we intended to be. I could not recall the name of the restaurant but, certain that I knew how to get there, I began telling the driver what road to take, where to turn, etc. Our party grew to a small convoy when another car responded to our appeal for assistance by saying, “Follow me.” One of the people in the cab claimed to be about to faint from low blood sugar and asked could we please stop at any store and pick up something small, like a bag of chips. Our driver pulled into a seedy looking corner store in a tough neighborhood. There was little in the store other than sugar—candy, soda, ice cream—and we declined to buy anything, preferring to soldier on to the restaurant. We got back in the cab and were immediately surrounded by young toughs who began beating on the roof and hood of the cab, taunting us for not spending money in their store. I said, don’t worry, they’re making fun of us for being white. The apparent ring leader heard this and started to laugh; he thrust a 40 through the window of the cab and I took it, drank some and passed it to the others. We spent much of the afternoon surrounded and drinking.

2. After obtaining a medical marijuana Rx and a license to grow, a woman in my building began cultivating plants on the roof and, after a few crop rotations, discovered she had an aptitude for producing incredibly strong ganja. Soon, the grow garden on the roof became a small farm that employs a handful of people at harvest time. Unfortunately, the woman’s profound attraction to abusive men is in direct, if inverse, proportion to her aptitude for producing splendid spliffs. As hindsight is universally recognized to be 20/20, we might reasonably argue that she should have seen trouble coming when her crop could be measured in bushels as opposed to plants. After the most recent harvest, one of her helpers stopped by for a brew. Though the harvest was a home grow for personal use, it was not hard to see it as a cash crop worth big money. Another beer and this chap had dollar signs gleaming in his eyes. My neighbor is spunky and when her visitor challenged her for the pot, she put up a fight. That’s when things got very bad. They fought hard and dirty. The woman was battered quite severely but this was not the first time she'd been attacked by a man she trusted. As she was being pushed against the counter, she had the presence of mind to grab a pair of scissors she’d been using to trim the plants and stabbed her assailant in the nuts. Hard. Later, the police were able to gather DNA evidence from the blood on the floor.

Season of the Witch

Exactly one year ago I moved from leafy, suburban El Cerrito to the trash-lined streets of West Oakland where I live in what a friend charmingly calls a cement box and I call a loft. The trajectory from a single house to the shared ownership of a condo is kind of a salmon run—backwards by most standards—but then no one would ever file me under “Ordinary.”
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If forced to use one word to describe the core principle of my personal weltanschauung, it would be: escape. I cannot stay in any one place for too long and I use “place” loosely to mean apartment, relationship, house, geography, frame of mind, or job. The one exception to this rule is: obliterating obsession. When I latch on to something or, rather, when something locks onto me, it is with a kind of rigor that is unbreakable, as though I am under a spell cast by a fairy tale witch. I believe my house years were a form of obsession in exploring the idea of home, something I’d never experienced and was intensely curious about. The enchantment lasted 17 years. Despite the long residency, I was, in other matters, perpetually in flight; more comfortable as a wanderer, more Moses than Henry Darger although I have much sympathy for Mr. Darger and his monstrous, introverted talent.
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At not-quite-sixty, I have lived long enough to profit from some form of life review and can see a well-established pattern of destruction and renewal that has defined my years and provided them context if not meaning. Before Augusten Burroughs, whom I admire very much as an artist, won his private war, he drank because he needed distraction from his emotions. I obsess because I need to rub them raw and then run. Both are attempts at some form of control. And control, or the illusion of safety it brings, is important to those who grew up among alcoholics or other crazy people. So I surprised myself when I left a monochromatic, predictable suburb for the volatile intensity of a highly passionate neighborhood sandwiched between a freeway and the ocean. I was done with substituting living space for home. They are not at all the same.
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For all its many virtues, Jack London has some serious flaws. We have a lot of police action nearby, it’s noisy and dirty. The air quality is noxious and the port is loud 24/7. Even more tiresome from a practical, quotidian standpoint, Jack London has no grocery store. I have learned the easiest way to get food is to take a quick hop under the bay through the Webster tube and pop up in Alameda, an island in the estuary where one is instantly transported back to the Eisenhower/Kennedy years with the exception of a spiffy new Safeway and a Trader Joe’s literally right next door to it. Crawling up the sleepy main drag of the town that time forgot, my new Acura transmogrifies into one of my mother’s enormous old, high-seated, cavernous Plymouth sedans from the 40s. They weren’t even new when we had, first, a mint green Leviathan and, then, a blue and white two-tone; both with steering wheels the size of a hula hoop because it took the strength of Hercules to turn a corner.
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In this state of drifting reverie, I notice, for the first time in scores of grocery runs, a trim little shop set back from the street, its recessed entrance neatly bisected—half in slanting shadow, half in searing white—its slatted blinds drawn tight against the hot, late-August morning. I feel an instant vibration between me and that door which is open, but barely ajar. I have learned to recognize when I am being called and I am helpless to resist so I get out of the car to hop on the magic bus to see where it might take me this time.
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A small, neat sign instructs more than asks me to knock, and I do leaning in to scan the shaded interior of Biche’s, purveyor of rare books and collectible first editions. The room, when my eyes adjust to the low light, is as I imagine would be Mr. Toad’s of Toad Hall: filled in that meticulous way that suggests every item has been thoughtfully selected and placed and, when room had run out, concessions had been made but, while space had grown tight, the perfection of neatness had not been forfeit. The bookshelves lining the walls reach floor to ceiling and are stacked in clean, orderly rows. The center cases are lower, made of richly grained and polished wood that captures and holds the honeyed hues of morning. Instead of the chaotic jumble of every other used bookstore I have been in, there is an immediately discernable principle of order that is so welcoming to my categorizing brain that I am flooded with relief and intense curiosity—a charmed mixture that always makes my heart sing.
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M. Biche is at first nothing more than a detached voice from the center of the room telling me I may enter but, soon as I am fully in the shop, he rises from the concealing embrace of a circle of bookcases to greet me. The first thing one notices about M. Biche is that he hasn’t shaved in two days so that the stubble on his cheeks matches the cropped hair on his balding dome. He is fastidiously dressed in khaki shorts and a pressed Hawaiian shirt neatly tucked behind a brown leather belt with a shiny brass buckle. He’s not at all strange, but I get the distinct feeling he could go there in an instant. I feel comfortable enough to take a risk so I introduce myself with my recently-learned open sesame to the book trade. I extend my hand to him and say, “Hi. I collect.” At once the man and the chamber all around us are transformed as though touched by what Proust would call “the uplifted finger of day” so that everything shines in that exacting light of the transient intersection where truth and unconscious longing made manifest meet and open their welcoming arms to one who has traveled so long without rest.
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I am made as welcome as the angels that visited Abraham and invited to browse as long and deep as I wish through two rooms of precisely arranged books of spectacular quality and presentation. My eyes spin in my head until the plums are all aligned and the jackpot bell rings while plumes of smoke blast from my ears. There is treasure everywhere I look. This is more than a used bookstore. This is a whole new level; a true antiquarian book store where every dust jacket wears mylar and every spine is visible like pretty maids all in a row. Patterned rugs quiet footsteps and give the open, clear aisles a cozy warmth rather than an intimidating veneer of ostentation. I like it here. M. Biche is a discerning rag picker, selecting only the best copies for his store. There are no broken spines nor did I see a chipped jacket and yet the prices are reasonable; certainly higher than at my neighborhood seller where the goal is simply to move product regardless of collectability. M. Biche is in the business of satisfying those of us who are in the thrall of book collecting.
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I am curious about who such people are largely because I appear to be one of them—a late life surprise. The idea of owning a mint condition, first printing of all the Pulitzer Prize winning novels hit me with stunning force only this year. I have been swept into a community of rare and specific delight. It is one of those diversions that take a life and completely recalibrate it, providing new language, new associates, new routes through the stretch of years that remain. M. Biche is a harbinger. I must pay close attention for he is a guide.
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“My first career was as a search and rescue pilot for the Coast Guard,” he tells me as though to explain his low-fat, swimmer’s physique and a sartorial style that hints at a military past. “Now I search out and rescue old books.” It is an occupation, I learn, that is not for the faint hearted. M. Biche explains that when he first delved into collecting, when he was a novice, he says pointedly and looking directly into my eyes, he became consumed but was without focus. He bought everything that he came across; there was no strategy. I shift uncomfortably and glance away to see what might be happening on the street, i.e., nothing. “I burned through a ton of money,” he says instructively, “To the point where it caused harm in my marriage.” He pauses for an instant. Perhaps he has not looked at this aspect of himself since the last time a rookie bounded in from left field. “I mean, we divorced.”
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I may not be a Pulitzer Prize winning author, but I know the start of a terrific story when I hear one and did the only thing I could in that particular situation. I sat down and said, “Then what happened?” The answer, predictably in any initiation to a way of being or a spiritual practice, was that he acquired discipline. He transformed himself from an idiot to a savant. We talked for over an hour. These randomly encountered sellers are my teachers. I learn language, practices, conferences, bad guys, good guys, how to look for and recognize the signs of my tribe. I tell him of a book purchase I am considering and he walks me through the valuation process step-by-step, instructing me, shaping me. I leave having ascended a few steps in the order. I am no longer a white belt. As proof, I am holding a complimentary pass to the rare book dealer show later this month in Sacramento. I am M. Biche’s guest.
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When I shut the door behind me and walk back to my car, I have the pleasurable feeling of having penetrated some membrane, of having stepped through some veil and entered non-ordinary, luminous space; of having temporarily left the mundane world for the numinous. They were there all along. My people. And I need not worry whether I have found them or they have found me. I am home.

Whil'st Summer Lasts and I live Here (Cymbeline, IV, 2)

I will celebrate my first year of living in Jack London Square in September, making this summer the last season to experience for the first time as an Oaklander. But summer does not come. Summer cannot find me here in my new home. It has stopped raining. The days have grown longer, true. Temperatures have risen and continue to climb. But it is not summer. Now that it is the middle of July and the season is growing old, like me, I have to wonder if summer will come at all. I mean the feeling of summer; being aware of every day as a summer’s day—just the thought of it is so luxurious—the incredible light pouring over your hot, animal skin. That is what is not happening.
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If I have been robbed of summer, there are two prime suspects—becoming old and moving to a new home after 15 years of living in the same house. I have only within the last few weeks absorbed the emotional truth that the door to my youth has closed permanently behind me. I am in a new place: old. Though I can look back and still see those earlier years, they are like trees along the roadside, shrinking first to miniature as the distance between us grows and then they fall away entirely. I don’t know what lies ahead but one thing that is sure is that it will be different and I doubt that I’m as prepared as I tell myself I am. So it is possible that feelings of loss and the approach of a terrible uncertainty sap my attention away from the light, evening breeze through the leafy maples and the close, fat moon at night. I find the feeling impossible to describe. Not devastating or depressing but elegiac in a way so piercingly beautiful that I am not enough of an artist to be able to tell you what I feel. Perhaps I am too self-absorbed for summer to make itself known to me.
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Or, perhaps it is that for the first time in 17 years, I do not have a garden. As anyone who has worked the same patch of dirt continuously for more than a decade can tell you, a garden so deeply known becomes an internalized world moving in time with the universe. I saw my garden as the face of a living sundial—it told me unfailingly when winter had departed and then when spring had collapsed into the arms of summer. I tend nothing here except my spirit, as did Whitman, but I can still feel the old pull of languid afternoons in the slanting light of late August as the shadows crept toward us where we lay panting in the damp and twisted sheets.

I’ve Got to Stop Eating Chinese

In a week characterized by a string of peculiar but significant firsts, I once again find myself in the kind of Chinatown hole-in-the-wall noodle bar that can easily be mistaken for an abandoned shoe repair shop. Once again my friends and I are the only white people among the twenty or so tables. It is Saturday night in Oakland and business is back to usual after the Mehserle verdict mischief Thursday when darkness had fallen and the reasonable people had all gone home. Even more tiresomely repetitious, Mehserle represents the second time in the ten months I’ve lived in Oakland that I have had to cross a line of police in full riot gear to get home. I want to love Oakland but I don’t trust her. Like that crazy, Play Misty for Me nut job we’ve all dated, Oakland is always fucking up, then crying and promising to be better next time.
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Then I think maybe I’ve gone soft from my long stay in the suburbs. I run a quick mental review of the last two weeks: So I came upon an angry man in a court parking lot where he was brandishing a silver hand gun and cursing some unseen antagonist? What if the businesses along Washington were boarding up their windows in case of rioting? Yes, Jack London Square has served as a staging area for simulated riots for weeks so the OPD can be prepared to protect and serve when Mehserle hit the fan—so?
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A week ago, in anticipation of public rioting should Mehserle be acquitted, I signed up for Oakland Emergency Center alerts and, after answering a few simple questions (email address and mobile phone number) was assured of real time, breaking news bulletins as the trial went to jury. So at 4:15 p.m. on Thursday, July 8th, I was surprised when my admin slid a note in front of me as I was in my office talking on the phone, my silent and dull mobile dutifully beside me and ready to spring into action. Her note said: “verdict in Mehserle trial.” I have an hour commute home and, not knowing what was happening at Broadway and 12th (my BART stop and ground zero for agitators who had promised shattered storefronts and burning cars if Mehserle walked), grabbed my things and headed home to Oakland.
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As the train pulled into the Fruitvale stop where Oscar Grant was shot dead by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle on New Year’s Day 2009, the platform appeared normal but I could see workers boarding windows in shops on the business side of the station. TV trucks were sending antennae skyward and positioning the talent against the backdrop of the BART logo. My stop was next.
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Coming to street level at Lake Merritt I was surprised and somewhat disoriented by, first, the sound of three or four helicopters hovering above downtown and the district. Then I noticed the long lines of cars and trucks strung along every street leading to the freeway. I had never seen that much traffic in the district. I was at Oak and 5th with the entire district to cross to get home. I chose the route because it would keep me out of harm’s way if 12th & B’way was the gathering storm as it seemed to be. From Oak to B’way, young people were heading to city center; first at a trickle and then a stream. The cars, closed, locked and moving forward in either a slow roll or short bursts of small moves, were more worrisome in appearance than the smiling and laughing youths as they called their friends telling them to meet up on Broadway, between 12th and 14th. It was a double exodus of opposing values streaming past one another—a wrong move, an angry response and it would be a long, hot night.
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Once home, I watched the evening unfold from the roof of my building, a location chosen for drama rather than view. I couldn’t see past the freeway. Streaming video on my laptop, however, connected me simultaneously to LA, the location of the trial, and city center some 14 blocks away. Mayor Dellums, pale and looking tired, spoke from Oakland Emergency Center about who he’d been in touch with and who was sending additional personnel to the scene. Behind Dellums stood a short, thick woman wearing a man’s dark suit, white business shirt, no tie. Her straight, shining dark hair was cropped closely on the sides and back, then combed straight back from her forehead like Valentino except for that stubborn boyish lock that fell forward as she cocked her head to listen and nod from time-to-time, her hands folded demurely in front of her. Rebecca Kaplan, Oakland City Councilmember at Large, dyke transvestite, and not incidentally, candidate for mayor, had positioned herself to be within camera range.
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When the Mayor was finished, Kaplan spoke a few words of reassurance to the viewers and then, with the mayor hunkered down at Emergency Center to see what the evening would bring, Kaplan headed for 14th and B’way where she stayed most of the night: on the ground, in the scene, in front of the cameras, talking to the crowd, talking to the media, talking to rioters when the night finally met its destiny.
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I cannot overstate my amazement as the last few moments of the day fade into history. For the first time in our nation’s history, a white police officer had been convicted of killing a black man. On this same day, a federal district court judge in Boston struck down the 1996 federal law that defines marriage as a union exclusively between a man and a woman. And there was Kaplan—a short, squat tranny holding Oakland together; keeping it real. It was 11:45 p.m. and I felt safe. Suddenly, my cell phone sounded the digital burble that tells me I have a text message. It was from Oakland Emergency Center where Ron Dellums was last seen four hours ago. The text read: "Mehserle verdict reached 4:20 p.m."
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And now here we are, two nights later, having our supper in Chinatown. Our food is Szechwan and spicy: exploding chicken, mouth burning tofu, fire bomb beef. ESL descriptions of menu items crack me up. We are drinking beer to quench the fire on our lips, laughing and talking about the adventures the day has brought us. I have gained ten pounds since moving here largely because I cannot stop eating in Chinatown where everything is fried and delicious. I love Oakland.

The Doctor Is In and Will See You Now

One of my favorite people in the building is my neighbor who came to the U.S. as a teenager from Berlin, his first home away from home having been born in Poland and lived there as a child. He is every woman’s dream European man—suave and cultured, he speaks five languages fluently although English, his fourth language, can wobble when he gets excited about something and, admirable trait #2, he is frequently excited about something. That’s another thing I enjoy about him, his contagious and unsinkable joie de vivre. Daniel loves life and embraces every aspect of it with heart and soul. He is a gourmet cook. He is the sommelier you want at your dinner party and, best of all for me, he is a walking anthology of contemporary culture, haute and base, able to engage in the most erudite conversation on topics ranging from the rise of impressionism in the ateliers of Paris to the dawn of disco in West Berlin to who’s doing what to whom in Hollywood. He knows music; you cannot name a piece by any composer or arranger he does not know. He showed me a picture of him on his first day of kindergarten. He is wearing a full tuxedo with tails and holding a baton. Opera? He can quote from any libretto and sing the major arias. Early jazz standards are his specialty and he has a record collection rivaled only by the Smithsonian.
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Perhaps best of all, Daniel is a true wit. As we walked down Montgomery Street arm-in-arm one splendid evening, a disheveled and grimy man holding a “Jesus hates queers” sign called to us to inquire whether we have considered the wrath of Jesus as a consequence of our lifestyles (in truth, the man’s question was slightly more vulgar). Daniel, my elegant European prince, suavely replied, “The only Hay-Zeus I pay any attention to is the one who trims my bush and blows me.” Then, he swung from his shoulder a Prada bag the size of a steamer trunk and inquired, “You wanna keep your tooth?”
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I should point out that Daniel was, at the moment, Danielle standing over six feet tall in his size 12W stiletto heels. Danielle is one gorgeous woman, I must say and I believe most would agree with me. She favors short dresses that show off legs Tina Turner would kill for, and accents her couture with Tiffany’s jewelry made in China by forgers so skilled even the people at Tiffany’s cannot tell the difference. The wigs, however, come from Japan and it is here—the hair—where no expense is spared and it shows. Danielle announces her arrival anywhere by fabulous coifs in sunset colors: orange, red, pink, purple, and blue. Often, butterflies or dragonflies adorn her up-do, never anything as mundane as a headband or scarf. “Puh-lease,” she snaps when I show her a Hermés I think would look good on her.
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Going out with Danielle invites stares at a minimum and intrusive comment as a rule. Danielle embodies the essence of drag and drag, when done right, is and should be an affront to the dominant culture. I will return to this idea in another post but for now all you need to know is that Danielle confronts the world and engages on her terms. It’s one of the many aspects of her character I sincerely admire. Of the many schools of drag, Danielle is strictly illusion. Were it not for her size, one would never know Danielle is carrying a standard male package tucked up in her thong because Daniel is a certified, credentialed, card-carrying Hollywood makeup artist who worked at Paramount for years. He also did a lot of time behind the counters of Yves Saint Laurent, Kenneth Cole, and Chanel. Even better, he knows skin.
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Daniel ministers to every woman in the building, guiding us through moisturizers, serums, firming lotions, and eye and lip restoring creams. His first gift to me was a collagen mask. I have been shopping with him and can attest to the fact that no sooner is he in the door than throngs of women begin to flock to him as he stands at the counter and delivers 15 minutes of spontaneous instruction on how to rejuvenate the face and décolletage. These women then trail after us buying whatever we buy and asking questions Daniel is always too polite to ignore. Every sales person in every store is dying to attract Daniel to their counter to tout their brand. It is the closest I will ever come to celebrity.
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Daniel routinely monitors my skin and advises on product. Since beginning my regimen with him about four months ago I can honestly say I’ve seen remarkable improvement. I even have independent verification in the many compliments I’ve received in return for a half hour of work each night applying everything it takes to keep me from sliding further down the path to crone. When I jokingly suggested I’d reached the point where shaving would make more sense than plucking, Daniel immediately gave me a run down on the razors he uses to keep Danielle never farther than a makeup case away. He shaves everything—knuckles, toes, back, chest—as an illusionist would.
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Hair, as one might imagine, is a big topic and I have received his version of a total smack down for the sorry state of my mop in that he gently knocked on my door one evening to inquire whether I was busy. When I said no and invited him in, he replied by hoisting his index finger in the air and actually running back to his own loft. When he returned, he had an arm load of gels, sprays, and masques to coax my hair to luster. Even the man who cuts my hair has remarked on the improvement.
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The upshot is—I don’t even buy lip balm anymore without consulting Daniel. No woman in this building would. We are his loyal students and his living creations; his art extended from Danielle to all of us. So when you are at my loft for dinner or a party and an elegant and refined European man approaches you with the line, “I want to do you,” ask if his name is Daniel. If it is, throw yourself into his eager, hairless arms and whisper, “Je suis vôtre.”

Just So's You'll Know

It is a few minutes after 10 p.m. on a Sunday evening in early June, 2010. We are just finishing up a party that began almost inaudibly, with the deflowering of a bottle of cabernet on Friday after work and built steadily until, by Saturday night, in the wee small hours, it had become a howling frenzy characterized by several self-inflicted calls to the police to report ourselves for fear that we might soon actually cross the consequential, and not too distant, line that separates the as-of-yet unindicted from the incarcerated.

I face these periodic uber parties the same way I imagine a pioneer woman out on the lonely 19th century prairie might have stoically endured a wall of locusts or a towering cloud of sky-obliterating dust tearing up the known world at 200 mph. Mobile destruction is the defining characteristic of parties in my building—once a warehouse serving the Port of Oakland and now a residence hall for grown up artists, doctors, lawyers, advertising moguls, professional chefs, and Indian chiefs. At some tipping point I am too far past my sell-by date to notice, the party suddenly, synchronized, breaks from its moorings in the host loft and bursts into the hall to hunt out and settle a new hive where the food is better and the liquor cabinet not so ravaged.

This is not the first time this has happened since I moved to the building nine months previously and I am prepared. Knowing that I must protect my property with any and every resource available to me, I keep the swarm away from my unit by containing the revelers on the roof. First, I give them a bottle of Canton, the ginger infused cognac that we have taken to like bees to the blossom, burying our faces deeply in the cocktail shaker to draw out the last drop of sweet goodness. Quickly, however, before the crowd can grow restless, I up the ante with a barrel of beer followed by a donkey pulling a giant, oaken cask of vin on a rustic cart surrounded by garland-festooned maidens singing of the coming rut.

At this point, I take a potty break that extends to a shower, a full-night’s sleep, and breakfast with a friend. Coming home mid-Saturday afternoon, I can hear the party in my building from two blocks away. When I arrive, I am hailed in the hallway as though a sailor long lost at sea and presumed dead. They cannot believe their luck at seeing me before them. If anything ever called for drinks, this is it.

By now, the building truly has become a hive. Industrious worker bees fly in and out of open doors carrying plates of food, newly cooked, cork screw reinforcement, “the CD I’ve been looking for since dawn,” and buckets of ice. Other drones have been dispatched to perform specific tasks essential to the survival of the hive: get propane, buy toilet paper, cocktail olives and a bucket of chicken. People now are laughing and throwing their arms around complete strangers vowing never to part. I’ve had several of the newly devised cocktail christened hammer blow.

Even the stalwarts start to drop after 33 hours although a few wanderers cluster around a laptop, watching Google Earth of someone’s home town. 1990s Euro Pop and dance blares from the second floor—our version of house music. Someone on the roof is screaming “please” at the top of her lungs but in a manner that is asking for trouble rather than trying to fend it off as evidenced by her devilish laughter when the object of her desire relents. It’s 4 a.m. and a third wind, less gusty than the second but by no means trivial, has swept up those who were previously comatose and vivified them enough to reconnect with the source of their banging heads.

The sun is up splintering off the true believers, myself among them, who attend services at the Laney College flea. We are carrying the bucket of chicken and attracting roaming curs at an alarming rate. Once through the buck-a-head gate and safely among the heaving throngs we sober up enough to strategize our morning. First, we diversify our diet with corn-on-a-stick and fish tacos sold from a big truck. Then, we aim and launch into the souk earnestly searching for the Balenciaga parfum at a price more reasonable than the $100/bottle last seen at Nordstrom. We are immediately distracted by a table of nail polish in colors reminiscent of automotive touch up paint and buy several bottles including a small vile of glitter additive. It is, after all, June—the month of pride.