Bonjour!  I’m posting this photo, snapped by me about 4 years ago, because today (more than most days, you understand, although on a certain level this is more or less a permanent condition) I am longing for France.  My sister and brother-in-law are there now, fêteing his 40th birthday, and when my buddy passes go to Paris, I always feel like I should tag along and kind of tend to them.  I just figure, if my seniority date is going to show up on the manifest, my butt should be maxed out in a First Class seat with a glass of champagne to justify it.  (An attachment which, I should note, falls off drastically when my buddy passes are going to, say, Baltimore or Sacramento.)

I also post it for motivation.  Our friends at JMS Books put out a call for submissions recently for, among other things, Gay Vacation Romance stories, and the hope is that this photo will inspire me to write something brilliant and sunset-tinted about falling in love in (with?) France.  And I haven’t been in four years, so I’ll pretty much have to take the five days off I have at the end of this month, traipse off to Paris, drink wine and look at boys and call it research.  Cuz otherwise, my last “vacation” was hundred-hand penny Video Poker and chicken-fried steak and eggs in Central City, and nobody wants to read about that…