Cool nights

It’s mid-August, and still hot summer in Palo Alto, but the nights are now cool (quilt time is upon me) and it’s cool when I get up (around 3 am), moving me to put on a thick flannel shirt and gelling the coconut oil I use to treat my body (it becomes a thin clear liquid in the heat of the day, but the gel is what you want if you’re using it for skin and hair). The quilt. It’s one of a set, made from old t-shirts of mine, assembled into quilts by Janet Salsman, with the collaboration of Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky and Kim [now Kaine] Darnell. This is specifically the queer quilt: A grab-bag of the political and the outrageous; I once managed to get a photo of me wearing row 2 / column 1 on my Ohio driver’s license, thereby snaring a queer card from the state of Ohio The flannel shirt. I have a collection of these too. Warm, sturdy, and lumberjack-gay. Unfortunately, the fabric is so thick that my disabled fingers can’t get the buttons through the button-holes, so I can’t button up.…