Toot-Toot
Beans, beans, the musical fruit,
The more you eat, the more you toot.
The more you toot, the better you feel.
Beans, beans at every meal.
The first time I heard that ditty was during my first week at summer camp. I was probably ten and I thought it was oh so clever and risque. I blush to think of what would qualify as clever or risque to today’s ten year olds.
The reason it probably sticks in my mind is that it has a certain ring of truth. While toot may refer to a night on the town, or to a small amount of cocaine sniffed at one time, it’s usually used in terms of a short blast of a horn, or a noisy passage of gas. Some of us are good tooters. Some are not.
I’m not a good tooter. At least not in terms of tooting my own horn. I’ve always taken great pleasure in working behind the scenes as the assistant this or that, the second-in-command role. But now I’m in a position where I need toot my own horn, and I’m not very good at it.
When I retired from the Washington scene, my secretary asked one morning, “Dr. Siegfried, what do you plan to do in retirement?”
“I’m not sure,” I responded. “I’m thinking of writing pornography for senior citizens. It’s a population group that’s rapidly growing. And, after a certain age, anything in a plain brown wrapper is exciting.” My sole attempt at writing porn was a complete yawner. Even I didn’t get an erection and it was my story. In my decades of retirement I have, however, taken a number of writing courses, attended workshops and seminars, and participated in readings at Borders, etc. What’s come out of all that is a diverse collection of short stories, poems, opinion pieces—many of which have been published in Letters— and my memoir, Gray & Gay, A Journey of Self-acceptance.
I never planned to write a memoir. In writing groups and workshops I usually wrote about relationships and events that I’d experienced over the years. After I read one such episode to a group of aspiring authors, the woman leading the group, said, “John, you should pull the stories of your life together into a memoir.” I followed her suggestion and six years later Gray & Gay, A Journey of Self-acceptance was published.
It’s been an interesting process to reflect on the earlier decades of my life and decide what’s worth telling and what’s not. Also, what’s the overall theme tying the months and the years of my life together? Originally, the working title of my manuscript was Old Dog, New Tricks, A Memoir of Sexual Struggle. I liked the old dog/new tricks double entendre. My publishers, however, at Middle River Press, convinced me that on Amazon or any other book listing my memoir would be categorized as a book about dogs or animal training. No one interested in gay literature would find it.
And while my column in Letters has appeared off and on for more than a decade as Gay and Gray, as a book title, Gay and Gray was already in use. So the title switch to Gray & Gay isn’t a result of my minimal dyslexia. It’s a deliberate attempt to have a title that doesn’t conflict with books already published. As a self-published book, it also has to be self-marketed. And that’s where tooting my own horn, however poorly, comes in.
My job now is to get the word out about this great new book so that straights and gays of all ages will read it. There will be more about that in the next edition of Letters. But in the meantime, I’d like all the members of my fan club—both of you, that is—to reserve the afternoon of Sunday, October 2. I’ll be in Rehoboth for a book signing and reading at the CAMP Rehoboth Community Center.
I never conceived of my book as a supplement to my Social Security, so all profits on October 2 will go to CAMP Rehoboth. I’m anxious to see old friends in Rehoboth and to see the many changes in town. I’m anxious to see whether the rose bed I planted years ago has survived in my absence. But most of all I’m anxious to introduce you to Gray & Gay, A Journey of Self-acceptance.
The book is currently available on Amazon and Kindle and at Proud Books on Rehoboth Avenue. Get a copy and read it. You won’t be sorry.
John Siegfried, a former Rehoboth resident, lives in Ft. Lauderdale. Email John Siegfried