Last year, after a peaceful Christmas Day with my housemate Kurt, I took the train down to Manhattan, where I attended “Harmony,” the decades-in-the-making original musical by Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman that tells the true story of the Comedian Harmonists, a wildly successful group of German comedic singers who were eradicated by the Nazis because three of the six members were Jewish. I would like to say that I loved it, but I barely even liked it. I saw an earlier incarnation a decade ago in Los Angeles, which was flawed but sincere. The version that finally made it to Broadway felt over-thought, overwrought, and second-guessed to death. It played to half-empty houses for most of its run and closed shortly after I saw it. Truly disappointing.
Unfortunately, I returned home to chaos. Kurt was slipping into dementia at an accelerating rate. It had gotten to the point where he couldn’t dress himself, tell time, read a calendar, or drive. I texted him throughout my two-day trip, but without me being present to structure his day, he went to work at 9pm (instead of 6am) and then had a meltdown because I wasn’t there to help him get ready. 
Kurt finally moved out on August 23. With nothing else to do, he spent weeks stacking and restacking his possessions, never putting anything into the boxes I prepared for him, and asking me every day if this was the day his sister was coming. I didn’t want to upset him by packing his boxes for him, so I just let him rearrange things, and made sure to be at work when his family arrived. They packed up everything that was laid out in front of them, and removed Kurt, his stuff, and his car from the premises before I returned home from work.
However, I was never really onboarded on October 7, because my manager was evacuating her home in Florida due to Hurricane Milton, and I was pawned off on substitute teachers who mostly told me to “play around” in their systems instead of teaching me how to use them. 
Thanksgiving came and went. My neighbor Sharon invited me to Thanksgiving dinner at her house. I brought wine. I had a delightful time with her extended family and friends, and was invited back the next afternoon for leftovers.
However, the next day, my trip was redeemed when I attended the long-running off-Broadway revival of “Little Shop of Horrors,” then starring Corbin Bleu and Constance Wu. Corbin Bleu, of High School Musical fame, is a prodigiously talented quintuple threat who can sing, dance, act, do physical comedy, and look stunning while doing it. Constance Wu was also present. The production lived up to the hype, and I was thrilled to meet Mr. Bleu after the show and have an actual conversation with him. He was also the only actor who came out after the show to meet his fans. What a class act.
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| Autographed by Corbin Bleu |
I reached out to Kurt’s sister Marta to let her know that I couldn’t be his unpaid caregiver forever. She agreed to get engaged. I helped Kurt get Mass Health and food stamps, and scheduled a doctor’s appointment for him that Marta attended. That meeting with Dr. Kidd consisted primarily of a memory test, which Kurt failed with flying colors. Armed with the result, Dr. Kidd ordered an MRI, which was denied four times by Kurt’s provider before it finally took place on June 12, with predictable results—it was inconclusive. Meanwhile, Marta scheduled Kurt for a series of appointments with a neurologist, who despite overwhelming evidence, concluded that what Kurt needed was a psychiatrist to deal with his anxiety and depression. Marta fired him.
During this fraught period, I did manage to escape to Manhattan in March to see “The Notebook” (great book, horrid music), “White Rose” (a compelling new off-Broadway musical about Munich’s White Rose Society of university students who resisted the Nazis), and a revival of “An Enemy of the People” with Jeremy Strong and Michael Imperioli (great first act, off the rails in the second act). Marta stayed with Kurt and took him to get his taxes done, so I didn’t have to worry about the house.
In April I went to Manhattan again to hawk my graphic novels at the Rainbow Book Fair, where I did surprisingly well, and took advantage of my time there to attend the new “Great Gatsby” musical (good performances, some memorable music, outstanding scenic design, disappointing book) and the off-Broadway comedy “Oh Mary!”, in which a drunken Mary Lincoln tells her side of the story—funniest thing I’ve seen in years. Go see it if you can!
June was Pride Month. I don’t tend to go to many Pride events, but Ogunquit ME, which has become my new favorite weekend escape, hosted its 4th annual celebration on June 1, so I took Kurt and made a day of it. They raised a Pride flag in the town square followed by a short parade to the local park where a vendor fair was held. Afterwards I took Kurt to lunch at a restaurant overlooking the ocean, then we went to see the musical “Waitress” at the Ogunquit Playhouse. It was a perfect day.
The one other Pride-related thing I did in June was to appear at Q-Con, a one-day LGBT comic book convention in West Hollywood CA. I appeared last year and didn’t sell very well, so I was on the fence about attending again, especially since by then Kurt needed constant supervision. At the last minute I decided to go, and to hire a caregiver to check in on him daily. I ended up selling much better this year, but leaving Kurt alone for even part of the day turned to disaster, as he tried to turn on the stove and— Well, there are various versions of what transpired next, but at least the neighbors came to his rescue and also texted me to keep me informed.
The only good news that came out of this disaster is that it brought me closer to my neighbors, whom I had barely met after living in Haverhill for three years. So amongst ourselves we decided that I should do an open house and 65th birthday party when I returned from West Hollywood. It came together quickly and was well attended by friends, neighbors, and co-workers—and held on the day after Kurt left for Maine with his family, so he was not in the way.
Kurt’s family takes an annual trip to Maine, where they have a beach house. He missed the last two years because he had no paid vacation time while working at Market Basket, and also because he stopped driving. So this year, I talked his family into scheduling their trip to coincide with my trip to San Diego Comic-Con, and to pick him up at the house. This worked out well, especially since they saw firsthand what I dealt with every day, and wasted no time in preparing to move him back home.
This year’s San Diego Comic-Con was a horror show—constant yelling, trampling, and misdirection from the ill-trained, ill-mannered staff. And I didn’t sell well either. They really don’t care about comics anymore, or creators, or attendees—it’s all about the movie stars these days. This may well be my last year. There are better conventions, including larger ones like New York, where comics and creators are still valued.
Of course they missed a lot of things, since Kurt was no longer aware of what belonged to him. So I spent the weekend locating and packing up the rest of his stuff, and restoring order to the house—five large boxes in total, which I placed in the garage, awaiting delivery instructions that never came. (I ended up donating the packaged goods to a food pantry and the rest to Savers.) When I finished, the house felt eerily empty and quiet, for the first time ever.
In July I joined the ranks of Medicare and started making plans for the rest of my life. Since I no longer needed to work fulltime to get medical benefits, I was more than ready to leave Cristek. I pursued a contract AS9100 auditor position with PRI (a registrar like DNV), with the goal of working about two weeks a month and spending the rest of my time reading, writing, drawing, traveling—all the things I promised myself I would do when I finally had the time. I passed all of PRI’s tests and was ready to join them in September. Then fate intervened.
Out of the blue, a recruiter for a different registrar called TUV contacted me just before Labor Day and asked me if I would consider interviewing for a full-time auditing position with them. I briefly recounted how DNV had burned out its full-timers by making them audit all week, then travel, write reports, manage findings, and prepare for the next audit on weekends, all while our laundry was spinning. The recruiter assured me that TUV was not that way—that they did not want to burn out their auditors and watch them leave! He persuaded me to talk to their hiring manager, which I agreed to do on the Friday before Labor Day.
Meanwhile, PRI, which still believed I would be joining them as soon as I resolved my Kurt situation and departed Cristek, informed me that I probably wouldn’t get two audits a month in the beginning, since auditors tend to hold onto their clients as long as they can. So, here I was sitting in a big empty house, with no rental income and no desire to find another tenant. Without at least two audits a month, I would need to consider moving, which I was not yet ready to do.
I spoke with TUV’s hiring manager on the Friday before Labor Day and she convinced me that they value work-life balance. They’re promising no more than 13 audit days in a 4-week month, and occasional weeks working at home as a technical reviewer for other auditors’ reports. We had a lively conversation, and I hung up feeling like we could come to terms.
On Tuesday, the day after Labor Day, the recruiter phoned to inform me that TUV was prepared to make an offer. I have never received an offer so quickly—DNV took 5 months!—so understandably I had some questions. We hashed it out over the next two days, and by Thursday I signed TUV’s offer letter, which will pay me considerably more than Cristek ever did.
So in the span of one week, I accepted an offer from a company that wasn’t even on my radar, enabling me to stay in my house but offering me the flexibility to live wherever I want, should I decide to move, since I will either be traveling to an audit site or working from home.
I asked to start on October 14, since I needed some time to detox from Cristek. They agreed, then came back and asked if I could possibly finish the onboarding paperwork in time to start on October 7, since the 14th was a holiday for them—Columbus Day, which I’ve never had off before. So I agreed.
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| A sure sign that I travel too much |
The next day I boarded a plane to Denver to be a team member on an audit in Berthoud CO. The client hated the lead auditor, but pulled me aside to tell me they liked my approach and wanted me back next year—but not him.
The next week I was the “acting lead” on an audit in Grand Rapids and was witnessed—remotely—by the actual lead, who hated me. Fortunately I don’t think he ever completed the required evaluation form, and the hiring manager waved her magic wand and declared me a lead auditor—which was preordained because I was already scheduled to lead my next several audits.
It turns out there’s a reason TUV acted so quickly when they offered me a fulltime job. I soon discovered that they are woefully behind on their aerospace audits and have been pissing off their clients left and right by failing to schedule them.
Since then I’ve been leading audits with less than a week to prepare, with some of them due way back in April. Besides Berthoud and Grand Rapids, I’ve now been to Rockford IL, Dayton OH, Rochester NY, Sumas WA (near Vancouver), and Marion IA (near Cedar Rapids). One of my new clients called me a breath of fresh air; another called mine the most memorable audit he’s ever had. I’m beginning to suspect that my predecessors set the bar awfully low.
In October I squeezed in an appearance at New York Comic Con, and caught “Stereophonic,” 2024’s Tony-winning Best Play, with my old friend Giulia Hamacher.
On the Saturday after Thanksgiving I headed down to Manhattan for two more musicals, “Death Becomes Her” (hilarious) and “The Outsiders” (uninspired), before flying off to Seattle for my next audit.
I will wind down the year with a local audit in Westfield MA before I leave for Vienna, where I will spend Christmas, followed by Bratislava, where I will ring in the New Year. While I’m gone, I will contemplate when in God’s name I’m ever going to retire—and start doing all the things I promised myself I would do when I finally had the time.
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| Look what bloomed while I was away. |
