The View

When I broke up with my ex-partner this fall, I was not pleased to be on my own again.

The whole hassle of relocating, regrouping, rethinking after three years of thinking I knew who I was, where I belonged and what my purpose in life was just seemed overwhelming.

I relocated from a really pleasant home to half of a rented duplex apartment in rural Tennessee. My next door neighbor, a gay acquaintance, welcomed me with a visit and a sour face, saying, "You're not going to be having noisy sex on that couch --- I don't want to be kept awake at night." I politely told him to mind his own fucking business and go back to trolling playgrounds or whatever it is he does.

So much for neighborhood rapport. We have not communicated much since then and mostly by snippy notes on each other's doors.

My place has two bedrooms, one of which I have converted into an office where I spend too much time on the computer. I get up early --- trying to seize the day, but generally frittering it away and in the first week, discovered that my office window has a view, beautiful any time of the day.

I'm located on top of a hillside and in the morning, get to see the sun slowly peeking over the top of the south mountain wall that forms around the Cumberland Gap, an enormous valley in the Cumberland Mountains that stretch across southeastern Kentucky, northeastern Tennessee, and southwestern Virginia. When I sit down at the computer to check e-mail, usually around 7 a.m., I can see the remains of the night and the beginnings of the day and get a feel for what Mother Nature has in store without checking The Weather Channel.

I've seen deer in these early mornings, picking their way without fear through the yard outside and lots of rural birds --- one red-tailed hawk swooped down on a mouse or a mole furrowed in the ground. A neighbor's quirky dog --- part Dalmatian, part pit bull --- runs around the yard chewing on sticks. The other day he brought a friend, a little chihuahua-terrier mix, full of yaps and horny as a rabbit. And don't tell me that same-sex relationships are limited to human beings. The little guy humped his bigger partner blissfully for an hour, right under my window, last weekend.

My View of the Tennessee countryside clears my head every day. It makes me want to go outside and face the world and clear my sinuses with clean oxygen. For a middle-aged gay man who has found himself suddenly single again, it's a great over-the-counter drug that heals the soul.