"27 yo, GWM, 5'9", 145 lb, bl/gr, smooth, vers, 6" cut, DDF, UB2"
UB2...You Be, Too. (For the cave dweller, DDF is Drug & Disease Free.)
Emphasis on Disease Free. UB2.
That has a name now. It's called Serosorting. Sounds kind of like office work: collating, xeroxing, filing, serosorting. It's not, though. It's an accident of segregation between HIV-negative and HIV-positive men that is thought to be a contributer to a slowing of HIV infection rates among the gay male population in at least one major city: San Francisco. I find myself on a shaky soap box with this one for a couple reasons.
First, I should disclose that I am a Serosorter. I dated a man a few years back who swore on a stack of Blueboys that he was "fine with it" when I told him the night we met that I was HIV+. He wasn't HIV+. He later patted my foot in the hospital and pronounced "I just don't do the 'sick thing'". And he left. So now I serosort. It won't prevent that same incident from happening. But the next time I cry on my pillow over the same situation and wish him dead in a weak moment, I won't have as long to wait to see if it happens.
I serosort because I question the knowledge and mental health of HIV-negative men who might want to date me. Stay with me here....this is not an indictment of anyone else's practice. We're talking about my choices. It takes a lot to convince me that a negative man really, really "gets it" when it comes to dating, let alone being, someone HIV+. Popular phrases I've heard include, "That's no big deal."
Note to Mr. Next: That is the wrong answer. After almost 10 years of puking, head sores, kidney stones, wasting, thrush, bone marrow extractions, spinal taps, diarrhea, staph infections, Stephens-Johnson Syndrome (look it up...I'm not your doctor, but be warned: My Therapist Says the description of that episode gave him nightmares),etc.....It is a Very Big Deal. The least someone could do is avoid minimizing it. And a negative man's willingness to knowingly expose himself to what I've been through makes me think there's something wrong in his head. "But I Luuuuuuuuv You," they say. Bullshit. They don't love themselves enough to stay out from in front of a moving train. I suspect they can't love me. But that's my choice and I leave it to anyone else to make the one that's right for them.
I have the privilege of being co-leader of an HIV Social Group that meets in Kansas City (www.yahoogroups.com/group/kchivsocialgroup). We had a message sent to the group yesterday that described Serosorting as "The Only Way To Stop The Spread of HIV". It's the first time I've ever hit the Delete Button instead of sending the message on to the membership. I exercised censorship. I was conflicted, but not a lot, about doing that. I am, after all, a card-carrying member of the ACLU. Censorship bothers me. So does telling other people to stay in their ghettos, which is how the Serosorting message struck me.
It's the new Anti-Miscegenation movement - only based on blood, not skin color. The thought goes that if all "you" people with HIV stay over there and date each other and all of "us" HIV-negative people stay over here, society will be the better. Here's where I fall off the bandwagon. What I decide for me....that's for me to decide. But it's not for me - or anyone else - to prescribe or proscribe someone else's choices. I've been in the teeth of The Plague just long enough to remember when some thought it would be a great idea to put us all in isolation camps to prevent the spread of the disease. A naive person would call that protecting the public health. A sane person would call it rounding up the diseased cattle for quarantine...or worse.
Let's be truthful for a moment and deconstruct the serosorting as Public Health Policy myth. First, it is NOT the only way, as some would hold forth, to prevent the spread of HIV. If we were 100% honest, we would say that killing off everyone with HIV is a much more sure way to halt the spread of the disease than simply making dating rules. But that's not our official policy.....yet. Serosorting also does nothing to stop mother-to-child transmission (Positive Woman + Positive Man may equal Positive Baby - with or without pre-natal prevention.) So serosorting is not "the only sure way to stop the spread of HIV" as our message stated yesterday. It is, however, a fear-based attempt by those without the disease to ghettoize those with the disease. It is also largely ignorant of the procreating heterosexuals capable of handing the virus down a generation. It's a load of horse shit as public policy, to be perfectly frank.
I know what we call "sero-variant" or "sero-discordant" couples: pairs with one HIV- and one HIV+ partner. In most cases, over long, long years, cross infection has not occurred because of dumb luck, the difficulty in actually transmitting the virus, or negotiated practices between them to reduce risk. I am happy for them. I wouldn't do it. But it's not for me to say that they shouldn't.
Haven't we learned enough from the Religious Right battles that one man's choices aren't another man's obligations? Come on guys.....screw who you will. But for Christ's sake...spare us the sweeping mandates on who should be doing whom. Some of us are grown enough to make those decisions for ourselves without imposing them on others.
UB2
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Sunday, February 26, 2006
A Day Late
If this doesn't churn your stomach, you have too keen a sense of irony or no soul. I can't imagine that there is middle ground on this one. I live in Kansas, which is no secret. This is my home and has been since shortly after my birth on a naval base in Chicago. I've lived in Kansas City, MO; Omaha, NE; Council Bluffs and Des Moines, IA; Elmhurst and Chicago, IL; and San Francisco. But Kansas has always been my home.
This red state that sports an Attorney General, Phill Kline, who is seeking to ferret out all sexually active teenagers via clinic subpoenas is also home to the most reviled American this side of the Bush cabal: Fred Phelps. I have some personal history with Fred. He's made national news over the years for a variety of his outrageous acts with regard to the picketing of funerals. Lately, he's a friggin' cause celebre. If you print a newspaper or air television news without mentioning this creep, you're just not doing your job, it would seem.
In 1990, I was an out, energetic, freshly-minted gay man with a chip on his shoulder and a Pentecostal ring in his voice. I made the campus radio station and a couple of TV news reports in connection with local violence against gay men. I had death threats left under the one functioning windshield wiper of my beat-up vehicle. I joined all-night vigils at the Chancellor's residence demanding a better life for gays on campus. Either to shut us up or because he really cared, Chancellor Gene Budig, at the time, appointed me to be the University of Kansas' first "Graduate Assistant for Gay and Lesbian Concerns" - the institution's liaison, if you will, to the gay community. The Chronicle of Higher Education had a blurb about me. The FBI investigated me as a suspect in a campus bomb threat I didn't make. ("No War for Big Oil" was the telephone call placed around the time of the first Bush's war in Iraq. The FBI clearly did not know my specialty was sodomy, not Sadaam.) I was something. I was proud, at least.
Not long after my appointment and shortly after I'd settled into the boiler room they'd cleared out for my desk, a typical Kansas storm blew into Lawrence. Lightning hit Hoch Auditorium, one of the older buildings on campus. It burned...to the ground. All that was salvageable was the brick facade. It was a spectacle for a few days as the embers smoldered and officials trudged through the rubble scratching their heads. And then there was The Fax.
Fred's weapon of choice in those days was The Fax. He would fire up his machine and send them to every media outlet from here to Kingdom Come. This particular time the subject was Hoch, God's Wrath, and me.
Me!
The rationale, if you could call it that, was that The State of Kansas had on its payroll an "avowed homosexual" (moi), ergo, God had heaved a lightning bolt at Hoch Auditorium as a biblical shot across the bow in what we now call "The Culture Wars". God evidently didn't know that a couple of high-placed administrators had dated me prior to my appointment. Or maybe I was just the 'Mo that broke the camel's back. Or maybe I was the only avowed homosexual who inspired lightning strikes. I like that one. Let's go with that. I didn't remember having taken any vows, but I was decidedly homosexual. I thought it would be interesting to write some homosexual vows for we, the avowed, but I never got around to it.
"I (State Your Name) do solemnly swear to wear only natural fibers, to maintain a gym membership for as long as I own tank tops and never to badmouth Judy, Liza or Barbra in the presence of heterosexuals. Amen."
Funny, we used to call it a Civil Rights Struggle. Now it's a "culture war" or "values issues". My, how times haven't changed all that much. Because there is a sense of humor that attends some reactions to Fred's antics, the Chancellor's assistant was dispatched to smuggle one of the first of the collapsed bricks for my keeping. (Seeing as how I was the reason for Hoch's demise, and all, it only seemed right, I was told.) The rest of the bricks would be sold off to alumni to raise funds for the rebuilding. I would come face-to-face with Fred's clan shortly thereafter.
I had one date with a young man named Gordon around that time. Gordon and I played on the same gay softball team. He was opera and china patterns. I was cigarettes and porn. He cooked Duck a l'Orange for dinner at his place and I discovered in one fell swoop that I cared for neither Duck a l'Orange nor Gordon, bless his heart. But it was a nice gesture. Gordon died shortly thereafter - the first person I'd known personally who died of AIDS. I didn't know he had it before he died. But the news made the rounds courtesy of some of his more intimate friends. Fred's family showed up at the little chapel on campus where Gordon's memorial service was held. Some of us threw up in the bushes from the combination of shock and disgust. I'd never heard of such a thing. Words do not adequately convey the feeling you have when a funeral is desecrated. You just have to be there. I'm quite surprised that someone better armed and less cowardly than myself hasn't taken these people out yet.
Comes now to the party a veritable Million Mensch March of media talking heads, legislators and common citizens who are outraged that the same desecration is being visited upon the funerals of those killed in military duty. The thinking goes that God Hates Fags ---> America has a tolerance level just shy of a genocidal tendency for gays -----> so God killed your soldier. The folks at the GRE might want to write that one down for next year's exam.
I have two words for the suddenly shocked throng: Fuck You. Where was your outrage when these people were doing their "God Hates Fags" shtick at our funerals? I'll tell you where it was -- nowhere to be found. Why? I'll tell you why. You may need to sit down for this if you're heterosexual because it's going to come as something of a shock.
They were clucking their tongues and snickering behind their hands when "God Hates Fags" was the sign at a fag's funeral. No legislation, no general outrage, no media specials featurning Ashleigh Banfield or Anderson Cooper when it was Randy Shilts or the boy in Laramie, Wyoming - Matthew Shepard - or Gordon, for that matter. Fine and dandy up until they picketed a marine's funeral. Stomach churning, indeed. But Fred and his family aren't the most disgusting figures in this nasty little dance.
That distinction is reserved for those who only just now have figured out that this guy is off-kilter and should be stopped. Their disgust rings rather hollow after 20 years. They're at least a day late.
This red state that sports an Attorney General, Phill Kline, who is seeking to ferret out all sexually active teenagers via clinic subpoenas is also home to the most reviled American this side of the Bush cabal: Fred Phelps. I have some personal history with Fred. He's made national news over the years for a variety of his outrageous acts with regard to the picketing of funerals. Lately, he's a friggin' cause celebre. If you print a newspaper or air television news without mentioning this creep, you're just not doing your job, it would seem.
In 1990, I was an out, energetic, freshly-minted gay man with a chip on his shoulder and a Pentecostal ring in his voice. I made the campus radio station and a couple of TV news reports in connection with local violence against gay men. I had death threats left under the one functioning windshield wiper of my beat-up vehicle. I joined all-night vigils at the Chancellor's residence demanding a better life for gays on campus. Either to shut us up or because he really cared, Chancellor Gene Budig, at the time, appointed me to be the University of Kansas' first "Graduate Assistant for Gay and Lesbian Concerns" - the institution's liaison, if you will, to the gay community. The Chronicle of Higher Education had a blurb about me. The FBI investigated me as a suspect in a campus bomb threat I didn't make. ("No War for Big Oil" was the telephone call placed around the time of the first Bush's war in Iraq. The FBI clearly did not know my specialty was sodomy, not Sadaam.) I was something. I was proud, at least.
Not long after my appointment and shortly after I'd settled into the boiler room they'd cleared out for my desk, a typical Kansas storm blew into Lawrence. Lightning hit Hoch Auditorium, one of the older buildings on campus. It burned...to the ground. All that was salvageable was the brick facade. It was a spectacle for a few days as the embers smoldered and officials trudged through the rubble scratching their heads. And then there was The Fax.
Fred's weapon of choice in those days was The Fax. He would fire up his machine and send them to every media outlet from here to Kingdom Come. This particular time the subject was Hoch, God's Wrath, and me.
Me!
The rationale, if you could call it that, was that The State of Kansas had on its payroll an "avowed homosexual" (moi), ergo, God had heaved a lightning bolt at Hoch Auditorium as a biblical shot across the bow in what we now call "The Culture Wars". God evidently didn't know that a couple of high-placed administrators had dated me prior to my appointment. Or maybe I was just the 'Mo that broke the camel's back. Or maybe I was the only avowed homosexual who inspired lightning strikes. I like that one. Let's go with that. I didn't remember having taken any vows, but I was decidedly homosexual. I thought it would be interesting to write some homosexual vows for we, the avowed, but I never got around to it.
"I (State Your Name) do solemnly swear to wear only natural fibers, to maintain a gym membership for as long as I own tank tops and never to badmouth Judy, Liza or Barbra in the presence of heterosexuals. Amen."
Funny, we used to call it a Civil Rights Struggle. Now it's a "culture war" or "values issues". My, how times haven't changed all that much. Because there is a sense of humor that attends some reactions to Fred's antics, the Chancellor's assistant was dispatched to smuggle one of the first of the collapsed bricks for my keeping. (Seeing as how I was the reason for Hoch's demise, and all, it only seemed right, I was told.) The rest of the bricks would be sold off to alumni to raise funds for the rebuilding. I would come face-to-face with Fred's clan shortly thereafter.
I had one date with a young man named Gordon around that time. Gordon and I played on the same gay softball team. He was opera and china patterns. I was cigarettes and porn. He cooked Duck a l'Orange for dinner at his place and I discovered in one fell swoop that I cared for neither Duck a l'Orange nor Gordon, bless his heart. But it was a nice gesture. Gordon died shortly thereafter - the first person I'd known personally who died of AIDS. I didn't know he had it before he died. But the news made the rounds courtesy of some of his more intimate friends. Fred's family showed up at the little chapel on campus where Gordon's memorial service was held. Some of us threw up in the bushes from the combination of shock and disgust. I'd never heard of such a thing. Words do not adequately convey the feeling you have when a funeral is desecrated. You just have to be there. I'm quite surprised that someone better armed and less cowardly than myself hasn't taken these people out yet.
Comes now to the party a veritable Million Mensch March of media talking heads, legislators and common citizens who are outraged that the same desecration is being visited upon the funerals of those killed in military duty. The thinking goes that God Hates Fags ---> America has a tolerance level just shy of a genocidal tendency for gays -----> so God killed your soldier. The folks at the GRE might want to write that one down for next year's exam.
I have two words for the suddenly shocked throng: Fuck You. Where was your outrage when these people were doing their "God Hates Fags" shtick at our funerals? I'll tell you where it was -- nowhere to be found. Why? I'll tell you why. You may need to sit down for this if you're heterosexual because it's going to come as something of a shock.
They were clucking their tongues and snickering behind their hands when "God Hates Fags" was the sign at a fag's funeral. No legislation, no general outrage, no media specials featurning Ashleigh Banfield or Anderson Cooper when it was Randy Shilts or the boy in Laramie, Wyoming - Matthew Shepard - or Gordon, for that matter. Fine and dandy up until they picketed a marine's funeral. Stomach churning, indeed. But Fred and his family aren't the most disgusting figures in this nasty little dance.
That distinction is reserved for those who only just now have figured out that this guy is off-kilter and should be stopped. Their disgust rings rather hollow after 20 years. They're at least a day late.
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Alterations
So My Therapist Says, "That sort of thing in childhood permanently alters a person." That will set you on your heels. Here I've thought I was right off the rack and come to find out, I'm couture. But not really in a good way. I'm cut to fit, taken in at the sides, hems let out....altered. Permanently.
I don't remember much what I was like before I was altered....IF I was altered. Even if I remembered, it wouldn't be terribly relevant. You're nobody, really, before the age of 8 - certainly not who you become. I'm OK with the alterations. I like who I am. The highest compliment I ever got from anyone - ever - was being told that of all the people they knew, I was the one "most comfortable in his own skin". I hadn't ever considered that before. But I am. Well, I was. Now I find out I'm comfortable in an alteration and it leaves me to wonder how comfortable I might have been in a less altered state.
I don't much like thinking that I am permanently changed. I've never been a fan of permanence, immutability, constancy, stability and the like. I've always liked the ability to shift this way and that when circumstances required. I've loved being able to pick up and move at a moment's notice. I really enjoyed reinventing my life at several different junctures. I don't mind change, I rather like it. It's the permanent part that has me a little rattled.
Some alterations I was aware of: AIDS changed me permanently, for example. I had a roommate once who was also HIV+. He said something incredibly wise and prescient that didn't mean much to me when he said it at the height of my career. "The thing about AIDS," he said, "is that we're constantly renegotiating our lives." But I had a vote, sort of, in that alteration. I don't know when or where I got it. I'm glad for that. I'd be saddled with a grudge the size of which boggles the mind if I knew who to blame, besides myself. That I was a party to seroconversion makes this permanent alteration not so hard to wear. But the other... I'm not sorry that I had the early relationship - if it was such a thing - but I'm troubled that it altered me, if he's right. I didn't - couldn't have - known that was part of the bargain when I was 8...or 12...or 16. That's just wrong.
What was I before I was changed? Absent intervention, what was I going to be? I'm defiant enough to think that if I knew what the original course was, I could jiggle the rudders and get back to wherever I should have been going. This permanently altered thing isn't good. That's a truck load of What Might Have Been. There's nothing but regret in that. I don't do regret. That's a weak person's folly. "Own your shit!" That's what I tell people - and myself. No regrets. My plan is to die without any. Of all the things The Good Doctor has said - and this was a throw-away line, mind you, in the course of an hour (50 minutes, if you've been paying attention) - this might be the one that bothers me most.
If he's right - and he often is - I was measured and cut and sewn back together without my consent. I was completely, willingly, lovingly, happily complicit in the situation. I would never infer that I was mishandled without my consent. I was as blissful as a child gets when I was with him. But there are scraps that were cast off that I might have kept if I'd known they belonged to me. What got thrown away without so much as a vote? I'd like to know that.
Altered.
Permanently.
That's disturbing.
He did his dissertation, he said, on this sort of thing. So he should know, right? Right? Well, riddle me this: If you're permanently altered, you're not who you were supposed to be. So who was I supposed to be? And would it matter if I knew?
(cue music)
"Who am I anyway?
Am I my resume?
That is a picture of a person I don't know.
What does he want from me?
What should I try to be?
So many faces all around and here we go."
- "I Hope I Get It" (From "A Chorus Line", Marvin Hamlisch and Edward Kleban)
I don't remember much what I was like before I was altered....IF I was altered. Even if I remembered, it wouldn't be terribly relevant. You're nobody, really, before the age of 8 - certainly not who you become. I'm OK with the alterations. I like who I am. The highest compliment I ever got from anyone - ever - was being told that of all the people they knew, I was the one "most comfortable in his own skin". I hadn't ever considered that before. But I am. Well, I was. Now I find out I'm comfortable in an alteration and it leaves me to wonder how comfortable I might have been in a less altered state.
I don't much like thinking that I am permanently changed. I've never been a fan of permanence, immutability, constancy, stability and the like. I've always liked the ability to shift this way and that when circumstances required. I've loved being able to pick up and move at a moment's notice. I really enjoyed reinventing my life at several different junctures. I don't mind change, I rather like it. It's the permanent part that has me a little rattled.
Some alterations I was aware of: AIDS changed me permanently, for example. I had a roommate once who was also HIV+. He said something incredibly wise and prescient that didn't mean much to me when he said it at the height of my career. "The thing about AIDS," he said, "is that we're constantly renegotiating our lives." But I had a vote, sort of, in that alteration. I don't know when or where I got it. I'm glad for that. I'd be saddled with a grudge the size of which boggles the mind if I knew who to blame, besides myself. That I was a party to seroconversion makes this permanent alteration not so hard to wear. But the other... I'm not sorry that I had the early relationship - if it was such a thing - but I'm troubled that it altered me, if he's right. I didn't - couldn't have - known that was part of the bargain when I was 8...or 12...or 16. That's just wrong.
What was I before I was changed? Absent intervention, what was I going to be? I'm defiant enough to think that if I knew what the original course was, I could jiggle the rudders and get back to wherever I should have been going. This permanently altered thing isn't good. That's a truck load of What Might Have Been. There's nothing but regret in that. I don't do regret. That's a weak person's folly. "Own your shit!" That's what I tell people - and myself. No regrets. My plan is to die without any. Of all the things The Good Doctor has said - and this was a throw-away line, mind you, in the course of an hour (50 minutes, if you've been paying attention) - this might be the one that bothers me most.
If he's right - and he often is - I was measured and cut and sewn back together without my consent. I was completely, willingly, lovingly, happily complicit in the situation. I would never infer that I was mishandled without my consent. I was as blissful as a child gets when I was with him. But there are scraps that were cast off that I might have kept if I'd known they belonged to me. What got thrown away without so much as a vote? I'd like to know that.
Altered.
Permanently.
That's disturbing.
He did his dissertation, he said, on this sort of thing. So he should know, right? Right? Well, riddle me this: If you're permanently altered, you're not who you were supposed to be. So who was I supposed to be? And would it matter if I knew?
(cue music)
"Who am I anyway?
Am I my resume?
That is a picture of a person I don't know.
What does he want from me?
What should I try to be?
So many faces all around and here we go."
- "I Hope I Get It" (From "A Chorus Line", Marvin Hamlisch and Edward Kleban)
Thursday, February 23, 2006
The Love Exemption
I picked up my mother from her trek to bury her brother and was/had a captive audience for 45 minutes in a Ford Escort. We were treated to the disgusting details of a family brouhaha over the "estate" of a man who died in utter squalor. But I took the opportunity to try to impart, via Socratic Method, some of what I was stumbling upon in therapy.
"So why do you think Uncle Kenny was that way?" I asked upon learning that he had been married and divorced 7 times (!), had innumerable step-children and grandchildren, had been horrifically abusive to all concerned and, as previously noted, was a notorious opponent of the truth. Attribution was made to their parents, my grandparents.
My mother's biological father who "didn't leave, she threw him out when he went for 3 days on a preaching jag and left us with no food or money" was horribly abusive. He would pinch the skin on her brothers' arms and twist it until he drew blood, she told. Never to her, though. Her mother "hated us" she said, for no better reason than they reminded her of him - in looks and, of course, by descendance. She summarized, "So your father leaves you and your mother hates you because he left." Her mother, the indictment reads, only wanted what she could get from her children - monetarily, most notably. When she created the beauty shop for my mother's aborted career as a cosmetologist, she took all of the earnings save $4 a week for mama's compensation. We have a sweat shop history, too, it would seem.
"So why do you think your father was that way?" I asked, hoping to inspire an amateur Aha! Moment (a la Oprah). His father, her grandfather, had been equally abusive, she related. He once threw her grandmother down the basement stairs because she refused him marital favors in the pantry. Then he nailed her on the basement steps, to prove a point, I suppose. The children (my mother and her siblings) were sent to this grandparental nightmare for 2 weeks every year and were often made to sit in the blazing heat in a horse and buggy under an apple tree for hours on end because they weren't wanted in the house.
"So your grandfather was this way, your father was this way, your mother was this way and your oldest brother was this way...." I hoped this would inspire some self-revelation, to no avail. She labeled her surviving siblings, each in his turn, as being alternately jerks or timid creatures as a result of their history. There was no indication, outwardly at least, that she saw herself as fruit of the poisonous tree. That has to be a hard admission to make to yourself. But I saw us both. I made the ill-advised move of hinting at so much to my father who cut me off short with "Don't even infer that she treats people like they do." I don't think he'd ever used the word "infer" before that. He's either blind or 40+ years into Stockholm Syndrome. Or he needs to clue me into what I don't know before I set this idea in stone.
But the light bulb was on for me. I finally had a plausible, if not admirable, explanation for a lot of things. She will continue to make the treks to Timbuktu to bury her dead, call them on their birthday and Christmas, and harbor contempt for them otherwise because "that's just what you do." She'll grieve when they die and lament that they were assholes in life. And that's just what she expects...from us. For no better reason than familial bond, she will forever expect an exemption from good behavior. Never mind any of the other things that you see mothers give on TV. We're down to negotiating for good behavior. That's just what you do. It's the relationship equivalent of Because I Said So. No explanations, no rationale, it just is.
The outside world will get her entertainment face, the happy, ballsy, unedited side-show. Her family will get the ranting, denigrating, belittling heap of poisonous shit that has shimmied unscathed down the family tree. That's what you do. And that's why we'll always be problematic for one another. I don't buy it anymore. But I sure as hell see how I've done it. It's the Love Exemption. If I love you, you are forever exempted from behaving in a loving manner. Love is, in my family, a birthright that comes with no expectations - behavioral or otherwise. But unconditional love in our case is a license to kill. And we use it.
I have demanded of myself lavish praise, attention and sexual prowess to be heaped upon the men I've loved - or thought I loved. From them I demanded nothing. That's just what you do. Where I come from, love requires a lethal mixture of martyrdom and denial. Now I see it. And I see where it originated in a buggy under an apple tree and on basement steps and at kitchen tables over 100 years. I also see that stopping this is going to be like halting a freight train with a palm branch.
That's why we're difficult for each other, mama and I. I never quite bought the entitlement theory of parenthood. I never silently gave a pass for bad behavior when it came to them. I talked back and called it out. I reserved the exemptions for the men I loved.
I'm fresh out of Love Exemptions. The next man will have to act like the people on TV or else. Oh sure...we all have our fits and snits and whatnot. But I'm not going to add any people to the list of those who I'll grieve someday more for what they withheld than what they gave.
The Love Exemptions have been exhausted.
"So why do you think Uncle Kenny was that way?" I asked upon learning that he had been married and divorced 7 times (!), had innumerable step-children and grandchildren, had been horrifically abusive to all concerned and, as previously noted, was a notorious opponent of the truth. Attribution was made to their parents, my grandparents.
My mother's biological father who "didn't leave, she threw him out when he went for 3 days on a preaching jag and left us with no food or money" was horribly abusive. He would pinch the skin on her brothers' arms and twist it until he drew blood, she told. Never to her, though. Her mother "hated us" she said, for no better reason than they reminded her of him - in looks and, of course, by descendance. She summarized, "So your father leaves you and your mother hates you because he left." Her mother, the indictment reads, only wanted what she could get from her children - monetarily, most notably. When she created the beauty shop for my mother's aborted career as a cosmetologist, she took all of the earnings save $4 a week for mama's compensation. We have a sweat shop history, too, it would seem.
"So why do you think your father was that way?" I asked, hoping to inspire an amateur Aha! Moment (a la Oprah). His father, her grandfather, had been equally abusive, she related. He once threw her grandmother down the basement stairs because she refused him marital favors in the pantry. Then he nailed her on the basement steps, to prove a point, I suppose. The children (my mother and her siblings) were sent to this grandparental nightmare for 2 weeks every year and were often made to sit in the blazing heat in a horse and buggy under an apple tree for hours on end because they weren't wanted in the house.
"So your grandfather was this way, your father was this way, your mother was this way and your oldest brother was this way...." I hoped this would inspire some self-revelation, to no avail. She labeled her surviving siblings, each in his turn, as being alternately jerks or timid creatures as a result of their history. There was no indication, outwardly at least, that she saw herself as fruit of the poisonous tree. That has to be a hard admission to make to yourself. But I saw us both. I made the ill-advised move of hinting at so much to my father who cut me off short with "Don't even infer that she treats people like they do." I don't think he'd ever used the word "infer" before that. He's either blind or 40+ years into Stockholm Syndrome. Or he needs to clue me into what I don't know before I set this idea in stone.
But the light bulb was on for me. I finally had a plausible, if not admirable, explanation for a lot of things. She will continue to make the treks to Timbuktu to bury her dead, call them on their birthday and Christmas, and harbor contempt for them otherwise because "that's just what you do." She'll grieve when they die and lament that they were assholes in life. And that's just what she expects...from us. For no better reason than familial bond, she will forever expect an exemption from good behavior. Never mind any of the other things that you see mothers give on TV. We're down to negotiating for good behavior. That's just what you do. It's the relationship equivalent of Because I Said So. No explanations, no rationale, it just is.
The outside world will get her entertainment face, the happy, ballsy, unedited side-show. Her family will get the ranting, denigrating, belittling heap of poisonous shit that has shimmied unscathed down the family tree. That's what you do. And that's why we'll always be problematic for one another. I don't buy it anymore. But I sure as hell see how I've done it. It's the Love Exemption. If I love you, you are forever exempted from behaving in a loving manner. Love is, in my family, a birthright that comes with no expectations - behavioral or otherwise. But unconditional love in our case is a license to kill. And we use it.
I have demanded of myself lavish praise, attention and sexual prowess to be heaped upon the men I've loved - or thought I loved. From them I demanded nothing. That's just what you do. Where I come from, love requires a lethal mixture of martyrdom and denial. Now I see it. And I see where it originated in a buggy under an apple tree and on basement steps and at kitchen tables over 100 years. I also see that stopping this is going to be like halting a freight train with a palm branch.
That's why we're difficult for each other, mama and I. I never quite bought the entitlement theory of parenthood. I never silently gave a pass for bad behavior when it came to them. I talked back and called it out. I reserved the exemptions for the men I loved.
I'm fresh out of Love Exemptions. The next man will have to act like the people on TV or else. Oh sure...we all have our fits and snits and whatnot. But I'm not going to add any people to the list of those who I'll grieve someday more for what they withheld than what they gave.
The Love Exemptions have been exhausted.
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Gershwin Nailed Me
The Thinker at Five
But Not for Me
-- George & Ira Gershwin
from Girl Crazy (1930)
Old Man Sunshine -- listen, you!
Never tell me Dreams Come True!
Just try it --
And I'll start a riot.
Beatrice Fairfax -- don't you dare
Ever tell me he will care;
I'm certain
It's the Final Curtain.
I never want to hear
From any cheer-
Ful Pollyannas,
Who tell you Fate
Supplies a Mate --
It's all bananas!
They're writing songs of love,
But not for me;
A lucky star's above,
But not for me.
With Love to Lead the Way,
I've found more Clouds of Grey
Than any Russian play
Could guarantee.
I was a fool to fall
And Get That Way;
Heigh ho! Alas! and al-
So, Lackaday!
Although I can't dismiss
The mem'ry of his kiss --
I guess he's not for me.
He's knocking on a door,
But not for me;
He'll plan a two by four,
But not for me.
I know that Love's a Game;
Im puzzled, just the same --
Was I the Moth or Flame...?
I'm all at sea.
It all began so well,
But what an end!
This is the time a Fell --
Er Needs a Friend;
When ev'ry happy plot
Ends with the marriage knot --
and there's no knot for me.
But Not for Me
-- George & Ira Gershwin
from Girl Crazy (1930)
Old Man Sunshine -- listen, you!
Never tell me Dreams Come True!
Just try it --
And I'll start a riot.
Beatrice Fairfax -- don't you dare
Ever tell me he will care;
I'm certain
It's the Final Curtain.
I never want to hear
From any cheer-
Ful Pollyannas,
Who tell you Fate
Supplies a Mate --
It's all bananas!
They're writing songs of love,
But not for me;
A lucky star's above,
But not for me.
With Love to Lead the Way,
I've found more Clouds of Grey
Than any Russian play
Could guarantee.
I was a fool to fall
And Get That Way;
Heigh ho! Alas! and al-
So, Lackaday!
Although I can't dismiss
The mem'ry of his kiss --
I guess he's not for me.
He's knocking on a door,
But not for me;
He'll plan a two by four,
But not for me.
I know that Love's a Game;
Im puzzled, just the same --
Was I the Moth or Flame...?
I'm all at sea.
It all began so well,
But what an end!
This is the time a Fell --
Er Needs a Friend;
When ev'ry happy plot
Ends with the marriage knot --
and there's no knot for me.
Monday, February 20, 2006
Un Peu de Proust
I used to read both Esquire and Vanity Fair magazines with regularity. Esquire I would read for 11 months waiting for their Dubious Distinction issue each January. Vanity Fair I would read for the interviews. Both included a questionnaire.
Esquire's was a "What I've Learned" interview with a celebrity. Vanity Fair's was the "Proust Questionnaire", so-named for one that Marcel Proust was asked to take twice as a child. I always found it insightful. And I'm a French major. And I wonder what I've learned in almost two months of therapy. So suffer. Here's the questionnaire and my answers.
What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Forcing a smile when I'd rather commit hari-kari.
Where would you like to live?
Greece, but only after learning the language. And only if I could look as good as I look in my mind when I imagine myself ogling the coast from atop my apartment there.
What is your idea of earthly happiness?
To have enough money to survive, to have enough sanity to appreciate survival, and to recognize love when it presents itself.
To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
Poor nutrition, anger, and resentment.
Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
Oliver Twist, Arnold (Torch Song Trilogy), Mrs. Madrigal (Tales of the City)
Who are your favorite characters in history?
King David, JFK, Harvey Milk
Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
Ellen DeGeneneres, Professor Christine Fogliasso, Grandma The Good, Oprah, Sen. Diane Feinstein
Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
Mrs. Madrigal, Scarlett O'Hara, Idgie Threadgoode
Your favorite painter?
Claude Monet
Your favorite musician?
Barry Manilow
The quality you most admire in a man?
Strength
The quality you most admire in a woman?
Intelligent compassion.
Your favorite virtue?
Integrity
Your favorite occupation?
Conversation
Who would you have liked to be?
Harry Hay
What is your most marked characteristic?
Talking, if not eloquence.
What do you most value in your friends?
Willingness to tell me the truth about me.
What is your principle defect?
I doubt everything.
What is your dream of happiness?
A man to love, a bungalow, a dog and time to exhaust all three.
What to your mind would be the greatest of misfortunes?
Death.
What would you like to be?
More physically desirable and a better judge of character.
What is your favorite color?
Red
What is your favorite flower?
Magnolias
What is your favorite bird?
Eagle
Who are your favorite prose writers?
Rita Mae Brown, Armistead Maupin, James Patterson
Who are your favorite poets?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Frost, Ntozake Shange
What are your favorite names?
Noah, Josiah, Brent, Catherine
What is it you most dislike?
Someone speaking for me.
What historical figures do you most despise?
Ronald Reagan, any Bush, Adolph Hitler, Sen. Joseph McCarthy
What event in military history do you most admire?
Each truce.
What reform do you most admire?
The abolition of sodomy laws, although that's self-serving. Also, Civil Rights reform, Women's Suffrage, all of the common-sense things that were too uncommon.
What natural gift would you most like to possess?
Beauty
How would you like to die?
As the last person ever to have done so. I aspire to immortality or the closest thing to it.
What is your present state of mind?
Beleaguered.
What is your motto?
What kind of creep actually has a motto? "Flattery will get you everywhere," comes close.
Esquire's was a "What I've Learned" interview with a celebrity. Vanity Fair's was the "Proust Questionnaire", so-named for one that Marcel Proust was asked to take twice as a child. I always found it insightful. And I'm a French major. And I wonder what I've learned in almost two months of therapy. So suffer. Here's the questionnaire and my answers.
What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Forcing a smile when I'd rather commit hari-kari.
Where would you like to live?
Greece, but only after learning the language. And only if I could look as good as I look in my mind when I imagine myself ogling the coast from atop my apartment there.
What is your idea of earthly happiness?
To have enough money to survive, to have enough sanity to appreciate survival, and to recognize love when it presents itself.
To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
Poor nutrition, anger, and resentment.
Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
Oliver Twist, Arnold (Torch Song Trilogy), Mrs. Madrigal (Tales of the City)
Who are your favorite characters in history?
King David, JFK, Harvey Milk
Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
Ellen DeGeneneres, Professor Christine Fogliasso, Grandma The Good, Oprah, Sen. Diane Feinstein
Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
Mrs. Madrigal, Scarlett O'Hara, Idgie Threadgoode
Your favorite painter?
Claude Monet
Your favorite musician?
Barry Manilow
The quality you most admire in a man?
Strength
The quality you most admire in a woman?
Intelligent compassion.
Your favorite virtue?
Integrity
Your favorite occupation?
Conversation
Who would you have liked to be?
Harry Hay
What is your most marked characteristic?
Talking, if not eloquence.
What do you most value in your friends?
Willingness to tell me the truth about me.
What is your principle defect?
I doubt everything.
What is your dream of happiness?
A man to love, a bungalow, a dog and time to exhaust all three.
What to your mind would be the greatest of misfortunes?
Death.
What would you like to be?
More physically desirable and a better judge of character.
What is your favorite color?
Red
What is your favorite flower?
Magnolias
What is your favorite bird?
Eagle
Who are your favorite prose writers?
Rita Mae Brown, Armistead Maupin, James Patterson
Who are your favorite poets?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Frost, Ntozake Shange
What are your favorite names?
Noah, Josiah, Brent, Catherine
What is it you most dislike?
Someone speaking for me.
What historical figures do you most despise?
Ronald Reagan, any Bush, Adolph Hitler, Sen. Joseph McCarthy
What event in military history do you most admire?
Each truce.
What reform do you most admire?
The abolition of sodomy laws, although that's self-serving. Also, Civil Rights reform, Women's Suffrage, all of the common-sense things that were too uncommon.
What natural gift would you most like to possess?
Beauty
How would you like to die?
As the last person ever to have done so. I aspire to immortality or the closest thing to it.
What is your present state of mind?
Beleaguered.
What is your motto?
What kind of creep actually has a motto? "Flattery will get you everywhere," comes close.
Sunday, February 19, 2006
What's-His-Name
So My Therapist Says, "He molested you." He didn't, though...molest me, that is. He was only 2 years older than me. He was 10. His family moved to town when I was 8.
He knew things I didn't. I remember showing up to school around 3rd grade and feeling like all the other boys had been to a Boys Only Seminar that I'd missed. They could suddenly point out makes and models of cars, knew the competitive differences between KU and K-State, and understood why a '67 Chevy was an important part of male history. They had inside jokes. I was very suddenly even more an outsider than I'd ever been. And worse...I was the smartest kid in the class. That'll set you apart - and not in a good way - in a hurry. But he liked me, as Sally Field once gushed. He really liked me.
He wasn't bright. But he didn't mind that I was. He was a guy's guy. And he liked me. He was always there. We began in childhood a secret connection that would continue until he married a childhood friend and fathered two children. He was injured shortly after the second was born, began drinking, couldn't keep a job, divorced and abandoned his family to move back from whence he'd come. And to drink. He's 43. I imagine he looks much older.
I had an invitation to see him this summer when I was in that neck of the woods. I was startled and stunned and uncharacteristically speechless. I wanted to see him. I couldn't bear to see him. I wondered if he remembered. I was sure he had to. I wondered if he attributed his self-destruction to our secret. I wondered if he could even think that honestly about it...or himself. I have AIDS and he has a disease of his own. Maybe I thought that there would be enough shame and recrimination to cause spontaneous combustion if we met. I wondered if he ever thought about it...me. I wondered if he ever thought about me.
I know enough to understand that connections you make in pre-pubescence and through adolescence are what they are: born more of need, ignorance and innocence than anything. But it would be dishonest to say that he wasn't, in his way, the first one to walk away and leave me wondering what I did wrong. The whole situation was wrong to begin with. But still...25 years later, I'd like to know why. I think I know that it was convenient and available and perhaps not his primary orientation. I think. But due to my youth, it left a mark. I wonder if he has a mark.
Maybe every time I'm drawn to Mr. Wrong who is "emotionally unavailable", as The Good Doctor put it so nicely, or "narcissistic" as he put it less nicely, I'm hoping that I'll get the explanation I didn't get at 17 when I was shell-shocked by the announcement that he was going to be a father and, soon, a husband. I stood at the wedding in a living room and shrunk back against a wall, acutely aware that I shared too much in common with the girl in the dress. I loved him. And I'd loved him first. And longer. But there he was in a bad suit getting married. I remember feeling ill and exposed and dirty and transparent during the whole congratulatory period that followed.
I remember when I held the baby that caused the wedding and knew that she represented the end of any mention of our past. He would start drinking soon. I would go off to college and date girls - never assuming the obvious about my own orientation. It had been all about him. I didn't stop and consider that it might have been a signpost to my own identity. I figured that out 5 years later. That was my "coming out". I didn't ever let on that there was a sexual identity - let alone activity - that preceded the big milestone. Who would understand? And 20 years later a whole vocabulary had grown up around that sort of thing. None of it was nice or affirming. None of it fit what I felt. And then there was the whole cliche about molestation resulting in homosexuality. I didn't ever want to be summarized so easily. I wasn't looking for an explanation for my orientation. It didn't need one. It doesn't need one.
That baby of his that I held...all those years ago....had a baby today. I got the pictures this evening. He was hardly ever a father, I understand, and now he's a grandfather. I wonder if he knows. His daughters were - are - beautiful. His granddaughter is....well...whatever newborns are, I suppose. She's pink and small and wrinkly and squishy. And she had a name before she was born.
I wish I knew what to call him.
He knew things I didn't. I remember showing up to school around 3rd grade and feeling like all the other boys had been to a Boys Only Seminar that I'd missed. They could suddenly point out makes and models of cars, knew the competitive differences between KU and K-State, and understood why a '67 Chevy was an important part of male history. They had inside jokes. I was very suddenly even more an outsider than I'd ever been. And worse...I was the smartest kid in the class. That'll set you apart - and not in a good way - in a hurry. But he liked me, as Sally Field once gushed. He really liked me.
He wasn't bright. But he didn't mind that I was. He was a guy's guy. And he liked me. He was always there. We began in childhood a secret connection that would continue until he married a childhood friend and fathered two children. He was injured shortly after the second was born, began drinking, couldn't keep a job, divorced and abandoned his family to move back from whence he'd come. And to drink. He's 43. I imagine he looks much older.
I had an invitation to see him this summer when I was in that neck of the woods. I was startled and stunned and uncharacteristically speechless. I wanted to see him. I couldn't bear to see him. I wondered if he remembered. I was sure he had to. I wondered if he attributed his self-destruction to our secret. I wondered if he could even think that honestly about it...or himself. I have AIDS and he has a disease of his own. Maybe I thought that there would be enough shame and recrimination to cause spontaneous combustion if we met. I wondered if he ever thought about it...me. I wondered if he ever thought about me.
I know enough to understand that connections you make in pre-pubescence and through adolescence are what they are: born more of need, ignorance and innocence than anything. But it would be dishonest to say that he wasn't, in his way, the first one to walk away and leave me wondering what I did wrong. The whole situation was wrong to begin with. But still...25 years later, I'd like to know why. I think I know that it was convenient and available and perhaps not his primary orientation. I think. But due to my youth, it left a mark. I wonder if he has a mark.
Maybe every time I'm drawn to Mr. Wrong who is "emotionally unavailable", as The Good Doctor put it so nicely, or "narcissistic" as he put it less nicely, I'm hoping that I'll get the explanation I didn't get at 17 when I was shell-shocked by the announcement that he was going to be a father and, soon, a husband. I stood at the wedding in a living room and shrunk back against a wall, acutely aware that I shared too much in common with the girl in the dress. I loved him. And I'd loved him first. And longer. But there he was in a bad suit getting married. I remember feeling ill and exposed and dirty and transparent during the whole congratulatory period that followed.
I remember when I held the baby that caused the wedding and knew that she represented the end of any mention of our past. He would start drinking soon. I would go off to college and date girls - never assuming the obvious about my own orientation. It had been all about him. I didn't stop and consider that it might have been a signpost to my own identity. I figured that out 5 years later. That was my "coming out". I didn't ever let on that there was a sexual identity - let alone activity - that preceded the big milestone. Who would understand? And 20 years later a whole vocabulary had grown up around that sort of thing. None of it was nice or affirming. None of it fit what I felt. And then there was the whole cliche about molestation resulting in homosexuality. I didn't ever want to be summarized so easily. I wasn't looking for an explanation for my orientation. It didn't need one. It doesn't need one.
That baby of his that I held...all those years ago....had a baby today. I got the pictures this evening. He was hardly ever a father, I understand, and now he's a grandfather. I wonder if he knows. His daughters were - are - beautiful. His granddaughter is....well...whatever newborns are, I suppose. She's pink and small and wrinkly and squishy. And she had a name before she was born.
I wish I knew what to call him.
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Death and Ambivalence
I picked up my cell phone Friday evening and noticed a missed call from my mother. "Bad news", she said in the message she left. Her oldest brother, my Uncle Kenny, had passed away. I called her and expressed my condolences and volunteered, through gritted teeth, to accompany her to Illinois for the post-mortem.
She didn't take me up on the offer, saying instead that she was riding with two of her remaining brothers and would call if we needed to be there. If that seems odd, you need a little more info about that side of the family. They are not, as it's said, "close". And they don't talk about "things". The few people on that side who are big talkers are also congenital liars. That's not name-calling, it's just the facts, ma'am.
My late grandmother, who passed away mere months ago, was a manipulative old bag who pretended to be alternately crazy and infirm so that one of her children would take her in. They had 70 years of "Been There Done That" to back their collective decision to not invite her home. So when she finally did descend into dementia -- for real -- it was quite some time before anyone bought it. Then it was too late. Off to The Home and soon to the cemetery.
My now-late uncle didn't fall far from that tree. "OK, Uncle Kenny" became a family euphemism for "You're full of shit." It is common knowledge that "he would lie when the truth would be more convenient." He bragged (or lied - who knows?) about teaching Minnesota Fats everything he needed to know about billiards. He bragged (no lie here) about living the last 30 years with a bullet lodged near his heart. No war wound this, he was caught in bed with a rifle-totin' man's wife. Good guy. I think I met him 4 or 5 times - and not at all in the last 25 years. My mother called him on his birthday and Christmas faithfully. "That's what you do," she told me.
So that's what you do? Nobody ever really talks about why Grandma or Uncle Kenny might have been the way they were. If not excuses, there are some plausible explanations. Life is hard for everybody. But that family had it particularly rough. Regrettably, these two became people who, even in death, evoked nothing more than ambivalence from their own family. I made the trek to upstate New York for my grandmother's funeral out of sheer obligation to my mother. And I'd been dubbed a pall-bearer for one of the nastiest people I'd ever met in my 40 years. During the service, I dissolved into sobs that would have made a Sicilian Mourner blush. I wasn't sad for my mother or my grandmother or for any sense of loss. I was devastated that I couldn't muster up an ounce of feeling for the little old lady in the box. I was wrecked that I could be so ambivalent about my grandmother.
"Well, they're a mess, but that's the only family I have," Mom offered. I was suddenly sad for her. And I was glad, in a way, that during this mourning period I could find something sad to hang my hat on. I guess that's what you do when you don't know how much of your history is true or filtered or completely altered for public consumption. In the absence of any real feeling or relationship, you grasp at straws to achieve the outward look that is appropriate for the moment's event. And in doing so, you become -- I become -- part of the perpetuated lie.
So sad for poor dead Grandma. No, I wasn't. So sad for poor dead Uncle Kenny. No, I'm not. The truth is sadder than the events. Unfortunately, in both cases, they were one rung shy of Better Off Gone. That's the truth. But you can't say that at funerals. And you can't say that to mama - who is so loathe to speak of her family's history. I just hope that when it's my turn I evoke something more than ambivalence from my own family. Maybe by being a truth-teller, I can do that. Or perhaps that has the opposite effect.
Beats the hell out of "That's just what you do."
She didn't take me up on the offer, saying instead that she was riding with two of her remaining brothers and would call if we needed to be there. If that seems odd, you need a little more info about that side of the family. They are not, as it's said, "close". And they don't talk about "things". The few people on that side who are big talkers are also congenital liars. That's not name-calling, it's just the facts, ma'am.
My late grandmother, who passed away mere months ago, was a manipulative old bag who pretended to be alternately crazy and infirm so that one of her children would take her in. They had 70 years of "Been There Done That" to back their collective decision to not invite her home. So when she finally did descend into dementia -- for real -- it was quite some time before anyone bought it. Then it was too late. Off to The Home and soon to the cemetery.
My now-late uncle didn't fall far from that tree. "OK, Uncle Kenny" became a family euphemism for "You're full of shit." It is common knowledge that "he would lie when the truth would be more convenient." He bragged (or lied - who knows?) about teaching Minnesota Fats everything he needed to know about billiards. He bragged (no lie here) about living the last 30 years with a bullet lodged near his heart. No war wound this, he was caught in bed with a rifle-totin' man's wife. Good guy. I think I met him 4 or 5 times - and not at all in the last 25 years. My mother called him on his birthday and Christmas faithfully. "That's what you do," she told me.
So that's what you do? Nobody ever really talks about why Grandma or Uncle Kenny might have been the way they were. If not excuses, there are some plausible explanations. Life is hard for everybody. But that family had it particularly rough. Regrettably, these two became people who, even in death, evoked nothing more than ambivalence from their own family. I made the trek to upstate New York for my grandmother's funeral out of sheer obligation to my mother. And I'd been dubbed a pall-bearer for one of the nastiest people I'd ever met in my 40 years. During the service, I dissolved into sobs that would have made a Sicilian Mourner blush. I wasn't sad for my mother or my grandmother or for any sense of loss. I was devastated that I couldn't muster up an ounce of feeling for the little old lady in the box. I was wrecked that I could be so ambivalent about my grandmother.
"Well, they're a mess, but that's the only family I have," Mom offered. I was suddenly sad for her. And I was glad, in a way, that during this mourning period I could find something sad to hang my hat on. I guess that's what you do when you don't know how much of your history is true or filtered or completely altered for public consumption. In the absence of any real feeling or relationship, you grasp at straws to achieve the outward look that is appropriate for the moment's event. And in doing so, you become -- I become -- part of the perpetuated lie.
So sad for poor dead Grandma. No, I wasn't. So sad for poor dead Uncle Kenny. No, I'm not. The truth is sadder than the events. Unfortunately, in both cases, they were one rung shy of Better Off Gone. That's the truth. But you can't say that at funerals. And you can't say that to mama - who is so loathe to speak of her family's history. I just hope that when it's my turn I evoke something more than ambivalence from my own family. Maybe by being a truth-teller, I can do that. Or perhaps that has the opposite effect.
Beats the hell out of "That's just what you do."
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Commitment and Irony
I'm only writing today because I told myself I would. This is therapy-eve and I'm two weeks without any fresh insults/insights from this blog's title character. Without his prompting, I'm apparently devoid of original thought. Not only has he suggested that I am co-dependent, I'm apparently now dependent on HIM. How's that for irony?
My brilliant nephew won the school spelling bee this week. I learned of it by picking up our twice-weekly newspaper. The story's headline was "School Spelling Be (sic) Winners Announced". They misspelled Spelling Bee. They misspelled the easy part of Spelling Bee. Again with the irony. And that ain't all. Below his picture was an explanation that his winning word was "collobrate" - a word with which I am not familiar. I called to both congratulate him and chastise him for not notifying me personally of his accomplishment. I never won a school spelling bee. I remember vividly misspelling "coffee" (lost an f somewhere) and "colon" (got lost after c-o-l...). I remember them vividly because any time someone mentioned "spelling bee", my mother would recount my dual failures with great glee - each time demonstrating her own proficiency at spelling both words.
As it turns out, "collobrate" was told to the newspaper as "collaborate". Only "collaborate" wasn't really the winning word, either. It was "contradict". No one at the school could remember, come press time, just what the winning word was, so they picked a plausible "c" word for the paper's purposes. Doesn't matter. They'd have misspelled "contradict", too, given the chance. Funny....I realize just now that my two bungles were "c" words" and his winning word (depending on who you ask) was also a "c" word. That means absolutely nothing. But I noticed it. And it took up 3 more lines of blog, further fulfilling my commitment (another "c" word) to write today.
I'm not good at commitment. I quit violin lessons after 4 years. I quit scouting somewhere around Webelos when they started talking about campouts and rubbing sticks together to make fire. If I had known then what I know now, I'd have been there with bells and a jockstrap on having my first sexual experience with a boy like every other boy scout did. I quit track after I realized that the point of running laps on the quarter-mile track was to see who would vomit first. (That's probably not the point, but it's the lesson I took away from it when I vomited first.) I walked out on auditions for my high school's musical my senior year when it became evident that despite my top ranking in the state for vocal talent and my recent star turn in a play, I would not be playing Harold Hill. When the cast list was posted on the auditorium door and I had been cast in a minor role, instead of initialing like a good child, I wrote "Hell No!". I was a late blooming but fully formed diva at 17.
We know I've never entered into a reciprocal commitment with a man. Hell, I told The Advocate's editor the other day that I twice quit taking pills because I couldn't handle the commitment. (There, I worked in again that I was interviewed by "The National Gay and Lesbian News Magazine". I'm quite tickled, if you can't tell. Watch for me on your news stands in March.)
So maybe we'll talk about that tomorrow in The Good Doctor's Office. Or not. Maybe this is the week I'll tell him that I became sexually active at a shockingly young age...just to see if he blinks. Or not.
Either way, today I kept my commitment. And I suppose that's the way it is with commitment..."One Day At A Time" and all that. I'll consider this boyfriend practice.
P.S. The blog's spell-check feature doesn't recognize the word "blog". Irony everywhere, I tell you.
My brilliant nephew won the school spelling bee this week. I learned of it by picking up our twice-weekly newspaper. The story's headline was "School Spelling Be (sic) Winners Announced". They misspelled Spelling Bee. They misspelled the easy part of Spelling Bee. Again with the irony. And that ain't all. Below his picture was an explanation that his winning word was "collobrate" - a word with which I am not familiar. I called to both congratulate him and chastise him for not notifying me personally of his accomplishment. I never won a school spelling bee. I remember vividly misspelling "coffee" (lost an f somewhere) and "colon" (got lost after c-o-l...). I remember them vividly because any time someone mentioned "spelling bee", my mother would recount my dual failures with great glee - each time demonstrating her own proficiency at spelling both words.
As it turns out, "collobrate" was told to the newspaper as "collaborate". Only "collaborate" wasn't really the winning word, either. It was "contradict". No one at the school could remember, come press time, just what the winning word was, so they picked a plausible "c" word for the paper's purposes. Doesn't matter. They'd have misspelled "contradict", too, given the chance. Funny....I realize just now that my two bungles were "c" words" and his winning word (depending on who you ask) was also a "c" word. That means absolutely nothing. But I noticed it. And it took up 3 more lines of blog, further fulfilling my commitment (another "c" word) to write today.
I'm not good at commitment. I quit violin lessons after 4 years. I quit scouting somewhere around Webelos when they started talking about campouts and rubbing sticks together to make fire. If I had known then what I know now, I'd have been there with bells and a jockstrap on having my first sexual experience with a boy like every other boy scout did. I quit track after I realized that the point of running laps on the quarter-mile track was to see who would vomit first. (That's probably not the point, but it's the lesson I took away from it when I vomited first.) I walked out on auditions for my high school's musical my senior year when it became evident that despite my top ranking in the state for vocal talent and my recent star turn in a play, I would not be playing Harold Hill. When the cast list was posted on the auditorium door and I had been cast in a minor role, instead of initialing like a good child, I wrote "Hell No!". I was a late blooming but fully formed diva at 17.
We know I've never entered into a reciprocal commitment with a man. Hell, I told The Advocate's editor the other day that I twice quit taking pills because I couldn't handle the commitment. (There, I worked in again that I was interviewed by "The National Gay and Lesbian News Magazine". I'm quite tickled, if you can't tell. Watch for me on your news stands in March.)
So maybe we'll talk about that tomorrow in The Good Doctor's Office. Or not. Maybe this is the week I'll tell him that I became sexually active at a shockingly young age...just to see if he blinks. Or not.
Either way, today I kept my commitment. And I suppose that's the way it is with commitment..."One Day At A Time" and all that. I'll consider this boyfriend practice.
P.S. The blog's spell-check feature doesn't recognize the word "blog". Irony everywhere, I tell you.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Really Good Poetry
I'm an awful poet. I admit it. I have trouble avoiding the word "Nantucket" when I write poetry. I'm not even that good a judge of poetry. The extent of my poetic education includes Dr. Seuss and the poems written by my Comp 103 professor to his pregnant wife about how sensuous she was late in her gestation. The latter has been blissfully blocked from my memory.
I was sitting in My Therapist's office two weeks ago and picked up a copy of "O" Magazine (Yes, that "O"). I flipped open to a poem that laid me out. as we say in Mayberry. When I was younger, we used to play Bible Roulette. It was like a cross between Magic 8 Ball and prophecy. Someone would ask a question and we'd flip the Bible open blindly and put a finger on the page. Often, we would slam the book shut due to the eeriness of the passage we'd fingered. An odd man had glommed on to our little music group once and insisted that he could contribute his tambourine skills to our ensemble. Bible Roulette resulted in some variation of "Send your tambourine players over the farthest mountain...." We stayed far away from Odd Steve and Bible Roulette from that moment.
Playing Oprah Roulette was a little more edifying, so I'm cheating today and giving you a portion of this poem by Ntozake Shange, a poet/playwright who penned "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide (When the Rainbow is Enuf)". I was first exposed to Ms. Shange as a high school student when someone presented a cutting from that poem-cum-play in a Forensics Tournament. I remember so clearly the piece began "There was...no air." I think Ms. Woman has found her air. So here's a little post-Valentine excerpt to get through the ordinary days that follow wine and roses:
"oh yes if i love truly" by Ntozake Shange
"what i've discovered in the relationships
where i'm most vulnerable (when i'm in love)
is that accepting the vulnerabilities of the other
is so hard
i need that person to be
maybe
some things he's not at that time
when i'm emotionally fragile
my images of my beloved
rarely include
his righteous anger or disappointment
indifference or incomprehension
i catch
myself
sometimes
before i wander off into my perfected version of
the man i love
that's not who he is
he may not even come close
that's all me
what i need
& that i must give myself without feeling cheated
that's not his job
making me happy is my job..."
I was sitting in My Therapist's office two weeks ago and picked up a copy of "O" Magazine (Yes, that "O"). I flipped open to a poem that laid me out. as we say in Mayberry. When I was younger, we used to play Bible Roulette. It was like a cross between Magic 8 Ball and prophecy. Someone would ask a question and we'd flip the Bible open blindly and put a finger on the page. Often, we would slam the book shut due to the eeriness of the passage we'd fingered. An odd man had glommed on to our little music group once and insisted that he could contribute his tambourine skills to our ensemble. Bible Roulette resulted in some variation of "Send your tambourine players over the farthest mountain...." We stayed far away from Odd Steve and Bible Roulette from that moment.
Playing Oprah Roulette was a little more edifying, so I'm cheating today and giving you a portion of this poem by Ntozake Shange, a poet/playwright who penned "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide (When the Rainbow is Enuf)". I was first exposed to Ms. Shange as a high school student when someone presented a cutting from that poem-cum-play in a Forensics Tournament. I remember so clearly the piece began "There was...no air." I think Ms. Woman has found her air. So here's a little post-Valentine excerpt to get through the ordinary days that follow wine and roses:
"oh yes if i love truly" by Ntozake Shange
"what i've discovered in the relationships
where i'm most vulnerable (when i'm in love)
is that accepting the vulnerabilities of the other
is so hard
i need that person to be
maybe
some things he's not at that time
when i'm emotionally fragile
my images of my beloved
rarely include
his righteous anger or disappointment
indifference or incomprehension
i catch
myself
sometimes
before i wander off into my perfected version of
the man i love
that's not who he is
he may not even come close
that's all me
what i need
& that i must give myself without feeling cheated
that's not his job
making me happy is my job..."
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Say It Ain't So
Because there is always a second shoe to drop, the news of a potential cure for AIDS is followed today by this sobering press release:
"(R)esearchers said on Tuesday that most men who have had penis enlargement surgery are not satisfied with the results.
'For patients with psychological concern about the size of the penis -- particularly if it is normal size -- there is little point in offering them surgery because it makes no difference,' said Nim Christopher, a urologist at St Peter's Andrology Center in London" -- Reuters
I have never had concerns about my own phallic proportions. Although, I do admit to having read in full the first two or three messages in my email about the possibility of doubling or even tripling that which has served me well for quite some time. No sense missing out on a good thing. Then I had the Starving Children In Africa impulse: Why waste it on me, who is perfectly content, when there is the penile equivalent of a starving child in Africa (more likely, in Chicago or thereabouts) who could benefit more? So out of love for my fellow man (and I do mean love for my fellow men), I deferred my own enhancement in favor of one who needed it worse than me.
Now comes the news that it was all for naught. I bypassed Penis Enlargement Surgery so that one of the lesser schlonged might benefit. Reuters would have us believe that 70% are unhappy with the result. Well, you could knock me over with a feather. Clearly, this is a heterosexual man's problem. Gay men know how to handle the desire for a larger penis: Go out and find someone who has one.
The Veep is taking potshots at 78 year old lawyers. Remember, Republicans don't like trial lawyers because they tend to sue corporations owned by Republicans. You notice he didn't shoot any oil executives. And I promise you there were more of those standing there than there were quail. Hairy Leukoplakia will plague you if you smoke and have AIDS. Penis Enlargement won't make you happy. There goes one of life's last guilty pleasures. The news world is all agog that young skiers and snowboarders (the Colorado equivalent of skateboarding slackers) might have gone downhill drunk. What next? Cheney shoots a drunk snowboarder in the crotch necessitating penis surgery with which the boarder is ultimately unhappy? The world is in a downward spiral. And penis enlargement is at the heart of it.
The Advocate called today. Not that they know me from Adam, but I had volunteered to give two cents from Mayberry about the new one-pill-a-day HIV regimen to be released later this year. That was cool. Thank goodness they didn't call asking about penis enlargement. Or Hairy Leukoplakia. Or Valentine's Day.
A friend sent a simple instant message this morning: "Happy Valentine's Day," he said. My response was crude, but lifted verbatim from Torch Song Trilogy "Oh, fuck off."
That's pretty much my response to those who aren't happy with their new dingus, too. Oh...and Happy Valentine's Day to you, too.
"(R)esearchers said on Tuesday that most men who have had penis enlargement surgery are not satisfied with the results.
'For patients with psychological concern about the size of the penis -- particularly if it is normal size -- there is little point in offering them surgery because it makes no difference,' said Nim Christopher, a urologist at St Peter's Andrology Center in London" -- Reuters
I have never had concerns about my own phallic proportions. Although, I do admit to having read in full the first two or three messages in my email about the possibility of doubling or even tripling that which has served me well for quite some time. No sense missing out on a good thing. Then I had the Starving Children In Africa impulse: Why waste it on me, who is perfectly content, when there is the penile equivalent of a starving child in Africa (more likely, in Chicago or thereabouts) who could benefit more? So out of love for my fellow man (and I do mean love for my fellow men), I deferred my own enhancement in favor of one who needed it worse than me.
Now comes the news that it was all for naught. I bypassed Penis Enlargement Surgery so that one of the lesser schlonged might benefit. Reuters would have us believe that 70% are unhappy with the result. Well, you could knock me over with a feather. Clearly, this is a heterosexual man's problem. Gay men know how to handle the desire for a larger penis: Go out and find someone who has one.
The Veep is taking potshots at 78 year old lawyers. Remember, Republicans don't like trial lawyers because they tend to sue corporations owned by Republicans. You notice he didn't shoot any oil executives. And I promise you there were more of those standing there than there were quail. Hairy Leukoplakia will plague you if you smoke and have AIDS. Penis Enlargement won't make you happy. There goes one of life's last guilty pleasures. The news world is all agog that young skiers and snowboarders (the Colorado equivalent of skateboarding slackers) might have gone downhill drunk. What next? Cheney shoots a drunk snowboarder in the crotch necessitating penis surgery with which the boarder is ultimately unhappy? The world is in a downward spiral. And penis enlargement is at the heart of it.
The Advocate called today. Not that they know me from Adam, but I had volunteered to give two cents from Mayberry about the new one-pill-a-day HIV regimen to be released later this year. That was cool. Thank goodness they didn't call asking about penis enlargement. Or Hairy Leukoplakia. Or Valentine's Day.
A friend sent a simple instant message this morning: "Happy Valentine's Day," he said. My response was crude, but lifted verbatim from Torch Song Trilogy "Oh, fuck off."
That's pretty much my response to those who aren't happy with their new dingus, too. Oh...and Happy Valentine's Day to you, too.
Monday, February 13, 2006
Hairy Leukoplakia
After living with AIDS for 10 years, give or take, you get the idea that you've probably heard - or had - it all. Not anymore. Just when you thought it was safe to listen to someone complain about symptoms, side-effects and the inevitable, comes Hairy Leukoplakia.
When I last saw My Therapist, we returned to his intake form where I had basically copped to every STD in the book (not all at once). Now, lest you snicker, that list is not lengthy. I had the itchy one, the leaky one, and the one that would have gotten Hitler had he not gotten himself. I have not had the one where straight people rejoice in commercials that they can control outbreaks and continue to schtup fellow attractive actors. I also haven't had any of the Hepatitis family. But not for lack of trying, they might say. I think he was trying to scare me celibate. That's not likely to happen. I'm over 40, my hairline is receding, and I'm a decade into AIDS. If celibacy hasn't set in yet, it's unlikely to develop absent a ventilator. I don't scare easily anymore. And that seems to be the rub with Hairy Leukoplakia.
I had never heard of Hairy Leukoplakia. Its name is at once disturbing and mildly amusing to contemplate. I can't stop saying it: Hairy Leukoplakia. The experts (and they are legion) say that it is not necessarily hairy in appearance. This would cause one to wonder why, then, they would call it Hairy Leukoplakia. Perhaps, Hairless Leukoplakia, Balding Leukoplakia, or simply Leukoplakia would have been less misleading. I learned of Hairy Leukoplakia in an article in HIV Plus Magazine (www.hivplusmag.com) on smoking among people with HIV/AIDS.
I smoke. I started smoking when I was 22 and teaching junior high students. When you teach junior high, you have two choices: child abuse or smoking. I chose the one that didn't come with jail time. Had someone simply stamped "Hairy Leukoplakia" on the first pack of smokes I bought, I'd have probably taken a swing at one of the snotty prodigies entrusted to my tutelage. The referenced article addresses the challenges of getting the terminally infected to quit smoking. The most common challenge, it would appear, is that once you get the big "A", it's a little hard to rattle your cage with something like lung cancer. Hairy Leukoplakia, though, is a cage rattler.
It's not even the topic of the article. It's practically a footnote in a laundry list of possible trainwrecks that could happen to your body if you're HIV-positive and smoking. (X number of cigarettes)+ (Y number of T-cells) = Hairy Leukoplakia. Frankly, I'm a little surprised that Anderson Cooper hasn't done 90 minutes on Leukoplakia, Hairy or otherwise. It's like tongue crust, if I interpret the medical imagery correctly. And even more disturbing, it changes in appearance daily. So it's a bit like Cher, it would seem. It's like thrush (had that), only it's not - in that (and this will cheer you over dinner) thrush can be scraped off and Hairy Leukoplakia can't.
If you think for a moment that I haven't already been to the mirror with an improvised scraping device, you are mistaken. I did that before I started typing.
My therapist called Friday morning to inform me that their building was on fire and, since my troubles do not trump fires, we would go without new material for a week. I noted on the Caller I.D. that he was calling from inside the building. He is either braver than I would have assumed or there was no fire and I've now been stood up by my therapist. That, combined with the specter of Hairy Leukoplakia, leaves me more troubled than I might otherwise seem.
I think I need a cigarette.
When I last saw My Therapist, we returned to his intake form where I had basically copped to every STD in the book (not all at once). Now, lest you snicker, that list is not lengthy. I had the itchy one, the leaky one, and the one that would have gotten Hitler had he not gotten himself. I have not had the one where straight people rejoice in commercials that they can control outbreaks and continue to schtup fellow attractive actors. I also haven't had any of the Hepatitis family. But not for lack of trying, they might say. I think he was trying to scare me celibate. That's not likely to happen. I'm over 40, my hairline is receding, and I'm a decade into AIDS. If celibacy hasn't set in yet, it's unlikely to develop absent a ventilator. I don't scare easily anymore. And that seems to be the rub with Hairy Leukoplakia.
I had never heard of Hairy Leukoplakia. Its name is at once disturbing and mildly amusing to contemplate. I can't stop saying it: Hairy Leukoplakia. The experts (and they are legion) say that it is not necessarily hairy in appearance. This would cause one to wonder why, then, they would call it Hairy Leukoplakia. Perhaps, Hairless Leukoplakia, Balding Leukoplakia, or simply Leukoplakia would have been less misleading. I learned of Hairy Leukoplakia in an article in HIV Plus Magazine (www.hivplusmag.com) on smoking among people with HIV/AIDS.
I smoke. I started smoking when I was 22 and teaching junior high students. When you teach junior high, you have two choices: child abuse or smoking. I chose the one that didn't come with jail time. Had someone simply stamped "Hairy Leukoplakia" on the first pack of smokes I bought, I'd have probably taken a swing at one of the snotty prodigies entrusted to my tutelage. The referenced article addresses the challenges of getting the terminally infected to quit smoking. The most common challenge, it would appear, is that once you get the big "A", it's a little hard to rattle your cage with something like lung cancer. Hairy Leukoplakia, though, is a cage rattler.
It's not even the topic of the article. It's practically a footnote in a laundry list of possible trainwrecks that could happen to your body if you're HIV-positive and smoking. (X number of cigarettes)+ (Y number of T-cells) = Hairy Leukoplakia. Frankly, I'm a little surprised that Anderson Cooper hasn't done 90 minutes on Leukoplakia, Hairy or otherwise. It's like tongue crust, if I interpret the medical imagery correctly. And even more disturbing, it changes in appearance daily. So it's a bit like Cher, it would seem. It's like thrush (had that), only it's not - in that (and this will cheer you over dinner) thrush can be scraped off and Hairy Leukoplakia can't.
If you think for a moment that I haven't already been to the mirror with an improvised scraping device, you are mistaken. I did that before I started typing.
My therapist called Friday morning to inform me that their building was on fire and, since my troubles do not trump fires, we would go without new material for a week. I noted on the Caller I.D. that he was calling from inside the building. He is either braver than I would have assumed or there was no fire and I've now been stood up by my therapist. That, combined with the specter of Hairy Leukoplakia, leaves me more troubled than I might otherwise seem.
I think I need a cigarette.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Sunday Morning Coming Down
A word to the wise: When two country boys who live in a log cabin offer you homemade brownies on a Friday night, ask more questions than "Are there nuts in them?" That was 36 hours ago. I'm not sure that whatever I failed to ask about is completely out of my system just yet.
The dog woke me up before 7 a.m. by licking my eyes. It would be nice if he were taller, could make breakfast, and I didn't have serious objections to sharing more than casual affection with animals. He seems to have settled into a routine after about 3 years. Correction: I seem to have settled into his routine. It's not so bad to have another creature's routine to consider as you start your day. Despite the eye-licking, even.
I stumbled out of bed, threw on the nearest collection of clothing that wouldn't get me arrested as we went outdoors - me to collect the paper, him to do his morning business. I realized after the fact that I was completely dressed for church, complete with matching socks. I live about 20 steps from the nearest church. I live 40 steps from the next nearest church. Another 2 blocks in either direction and I have more options still. If I started the car, the possibilities are unlimited. I haven't been to a church without the excuse of a wedding, baptism, funeral or child relative musical for almost 20 years.
I enjoy church as I remember it. I come from a group of people who raise their hands to the rafters in sweet surrender as they sing of the mercies of the Lord forever. My people close their eyes and sway as the pianist improvises "in the Spirit", as though God him/herself had taken over the keyboard. Dancing breaks out in the aisles when The Spirit Hits. Not lewd dancing. No bump-n-grind. More of a chicken hop with a hankie. No chickens or snakes or truly odd stuff involved here, it's a letting go of self-consciousness and an inhaling of something truly good. Some of them folks stop swaying after church and beat the holy tar out of each other and their children when they get home, so it don't always take, as we say in Mayberry. But in the moment, it's wonderful.
I miss church. I grew up hearing my grandma's basso voice humming or singing in the bathroom on Sunday mornings as we got ready. I'd do my best to learn quickly the tune, if not the words, so I'd be ready come 10:45. All civilized people have church at 10:45. That's the way it happens. Sunday School at 9:30, Church at 10:45, Bonanza by 12:15 or 12:30 (so the Baptists and Catholics had time to get through the line before we showed up). If you don't know from Bonanza, think Western Sizzler or any of those buffet-type, middlin' steak places.
Today, after the eye-licking, I had a hymn stuck in my head and it struck me just how much it applied to my aspirations on so many levels. It was written by C. Austin Miles, who I'm sure hasn't won a Grammy in eons, being dead since 1946. He quit his training as a Pharmacist to write music. And boy, did he write:
"And he walks with me,
And he talks with me,
And he tells me I am his own;
And the joy we share
As we tarry there,
None other has ever known."
I love that song. I'll sit at the piano now for several long moments and make the dog listen to me sing. I'll think half the time of the God I'm not sure I've met and the man I know I haven't. But I'll close my eyes and sway as much as the hobbled piano bench will allow. And somewhere my grandma will raise her hands to the rafters and close her eyes and one small tear will fall down her face as she lends sincerity to the lyric:
"I go to the garden alone,
While the dew is still on the roses,
And the voice i hear,
Falling on my ear,
The Son of God discloses."
Some day I'll use some portion of this song at my wedding. I intend to have one. The second verse of Charles Austin Miles' hymn seems tailor-made for such an occasion:
"He speaks and the sound of his voice
Is so sweet the birds hush their singing,
And the melody that he gave to me
Within my heart is ringing.."
And he walks with me. And he talks with me. And he tells me I am his own.
Wouldn't that be nice? That's the part of church I miss. I miss the part that acknowledges who I am and inspires me to be more. If only they could clear out the riff-raff who just don't get the rest of it. That's why I'll save my 20 steps this morning. And if I raise my hands to the rafters and bellow out a hymn, no one but the dog will be the wiser.
The dog woke me up before 7 a.m. by licking my eyes. It would be nice if he were taller, could make breakfast, and I didn't have serious objections to sharing more than casual affection with animals. He seems to have settled into a routine after about 3 years. Correction: I seem to have settled into his routine. It's not so bad to have another creature's routine to consider as you start your day. Despite the eye-licking, even.
I stumbled out of bed, threw on the nearest collection of clothing that wouldn't get me arrested as we went outdoors - me to collect the paper, him to do his morning business. I realized after the fact that I was completely dressed for church, complete with matching socks. I live about 20 steps from the nearest church. I live 40 steps from the next nearest church. Another 2 blocks in either direction and I have more options still. If I started the car, the possibilities are unlimited. I haven't been to a church without the excuse of a wedding, baptism, funeral or child relative musical for almost 20 years.
I enjoy church as I remember it. I come from a group of people who raise their hands to the rafters in sweet surrender as they sing of the mercies of the Lord forever. My people close their eyes and sway as the pianist improvises "in the Spirit", as though God him/herself had taken over the keyboard. Dancing breaks out in the aisles when The Spirit Hits. Not lewd dancing. No bump-n-grind. More of a chicken hop with a hankie. No chickens or snakes or truly odd stuff involved here, it's a letting go of self-consciousness and an inhaling of something truly good. Some of them folks stop swaying after church and beat the holy tar out of each other and their children when they get home, so it don't always take, as we say in Mayberry. But in the moment, it's wonderful.
I miss church. I grew up hearing my grandma's basso voice humming or singing in the bathroom on Sunday mornings as we got ready. I'd do my best to learn quickly the tune, if not the words, so I'd be ready come 10:45. All civilized people have church at 10:45. That's the way it happens. Sunday School at 9:30, Church at 10:45, Bonanza by 12:15 or 12:30 (so the Baptists and Catholics had time to get through the line before we showed up). If you don't know from Bonanza, think Western Sizzler or any of those buffet-type, middlin' steak places.
Today, after the eye-licking, I had a hymn stuck in my head and it struck me just how much it applied to my aspirations on so many levels. It was written by C. Austin Miles, who I'm sure hasn't won a Grammy in eons, being dead since 1946. He quit his training as a Pharmacist to write music. And boy, did he write:
"And he walks with me,
And he talks with me,
And he tells me I am his own;
And the joy we share
As we tarry there,
None other has ever known."
I love that song. I'll sit at the piano now for several long moments and make the dog listen to me sing. I'll think half the time of the God I'm not sure I've met and the man I know I haven't. But I'll close my eyes and sway as much as the hobbled piano bench will allow. And somewhere my grandma will raise her hands to the rafters and close her eyes and one small tear will fall down her face as she lends sincerity to the lyric:
"I go to the garden alone,
While the dew is still on the roses,
And the voice i hear,
Falling on my ear,
The Son of God discloses."
Some day I'll use some portion of this song at my wedding. I intend to have one. The second verse of Charles Austin Miles' hymn seems tailor-made for such an occasion:
"He speaks and the sound of his voice
Is so sweet the birds hush their singing,
And the melody that he gave to me
Within my heart is ringing.."
And he walks with me. And he talks with me. And he tells me I am his own.
Wouldn't that be nice? That's the part of church I miss. I miss the part that acknowledges who I am and inspires me to be more. If only they could clear out the riff-raff who just don't get the rest of it. That's why I'll save my 20 steps this morning. And if I raise my hands to the rafters and bellow out a hymn, no one but the dog will be the wiser.
Friday, February 10, 2006
The Hope Thing
Veterans of the AIDS generation (and there are many who have double my time in that category) will tell you that every couple of years we prick up our ears at the sound of something almost too good to be true: Hope. I woke up to my in-box with my bi-annual dose waiting for me.
Hope is a dicey thing. Unless it's the Hope Diamond. That's a sure thing. All other hope is, by definition, a crap shoot. Today's dose came courtesy of the Mormons, or whatever they're calling themselves nowadays. Call me jaded or just plain suspicious, but the last time the Mormons had a "really good idea" it turned out to be really bad news for women. I'm taking today's revelation with a pillar of salt.
"Researchers, including a BYU scientist, believe they have found a new compound that could finally kill the HIV/AIDS virus, not just slow it down as current treatments do." (Bob Mims, Salt Lake Tribune. 2/6/06)
Forgive us if we don't take to the streets over this one. When you've been around The Plague since its inception, you don't start dancing until the band actually starts playing. It sounds hopeful, that's for sure. It trumps a jillion times over the AZT and Protease Inhibitors doses of Hope. If form holds, Hope usually dies in a test tube or a lab rat or a nasty revelation about bad science mixed with good publicity. But Hope, by its nature, dangles just enough out there for you to watch with one eye while you do your best to just keep going.
Like our friends' successes can sometimes highlight our own failures, Hope realized too late is bittersweet. What would The Cure feel like? After the initial street dances and AIDS Is Dead Circuit Parties (one in each color), wouldn't we necessarily grieve for those who didn't or couldn't hang on long enough? Is there guilt in a cure? Why Me Part Deux? Would it birth The New Narcissism? (If I can beat this, I may, in fact, be invincible.)
What happens when those of us who have retired to our recliners and our beds and our regimens suddenly are freed from all three? Does the workplace welcome us home as conquering kings, anxious to reap all we once had to offer? Or are we too late to the party, laden with outdated skills, with too much time on our backs to be worth much on our feet? And once you've spent years dancing at the edge of your doom, do you just step merrily away and waltz on as though it never happened?
Does the dating pool make way for the former lepers? Do preachers who pronounced God's Wrath shrivel up and die of either embarrassment or bad karma? Do we who were once nearly dead live different lives? Should we? Could we? Are the politics of sexual distinction such that we'd be compelled to live the way that nearly killed us? With The Plague averted, would we pick up where bell bottoms and Gloria Gaynor left us, throw a kiss to those who died too young and embrace abandon like we never knew any better? God, I hope so.
So much of Who We Are has died. Without AIDS, there is no platform of fear from which to launch Gay Republicans, Gay Celibates, and all of the other fear-laden, self-loathing, inherently contradictory demographics. Without AIDS, Larry Kramer is writing potty-mouthed musicals, Ryan White is just a kid who made it through school like the rest of us, and a chick who dies after seeing the dentist is just a girl who dies with good teeth.
Hope is nice. I have hope for a lot of things: cures, love, the lottery. But when hope comes calling, it's important to look behind it and see from whence it came. This time is no different. Today's AIDS revelation didn't show up on the front page, in the sports section, or in the comics. It didn't show up in the Health section, either.
Notably - and this is important - the article appeared in the Business Section. That's enough to put a hitch in your hope.
Hope is a dicey thing. Unless it's the Hope Diamond. That's a sure thing. All other hope is, by definition, a crap shoot. Today's dose came courtesy of the Mormons, or whatever they're calling themselves nowadays. Call me jaded or just plain suspicious, but the last time the Mormons had a "really good idea" it turned out to be really bad news for women. I'm taking today's revelation with a pillar of salt.
"Researchers, including a BYU scientist, believe they have found a new compound that could finally kill the HIV/AIDS virus, not just slow it down as current treatments do." (Bob Mims, Salt Lake Tribune. 2/6/06)
Forgive us if we don't take to the streets over this one. When you've been around The Plague since its inception, you don't start dancing until the band actually starts playing. It sounds hopeful, that's for sure. It trumps a jillion times over the AZT and Protease Inhibitors doses of Hope. If form holds, Hope usually dies in a test tube or a lab rat or a nasty revelation about bad science mixed with good publicity. But Hope, by its nature, dangles just enough out there for you to watch with one eye while you do your best to just keep going.
Like our friends' successes can sometimes highlight our own failures, Hope realized too late is bittersweet. What would The Cure feel like? After the initial street dances and AIDS Is Dead Circuit Parties (one in each color), wouldn't we necessarily grieve for those who didn't or couldn't hang on long enough? Is there guilt in a cure? Why Me Part Deux? Would it birth The New Narcissism? (If I can beat this, I may, in fact, be invincible.)
What happens when those of us who have retired to our recliners and our beds and our regimens suddenly are freed from all three? Does the workplace welcome us home as conquering kings, anxious to reap all we once had to offer? Or are we too late to the party, laden with outdated skills, with too much time on our backs to be worth much on our feet? And once you've spent years dancing at the edge of your doom, do you just step merrily away and waltz on as though it never happened?
Does the dating pool make way for the former lepers? Do preachers who pronounced God's Wrath shrivel up and die of either embarrassment or bad karma? Do we who were once nearly dead live different lives? Should we? Could we? Are the politics of sexual distinction such that we'd be compelled to live the way that nearly killed us? With The Plague averted, would we pick up where bell bottoms and Gloria Gaynor left us, throw a kiss to those who died too young and embrace abandon like we never knew any better? God, I hope so.
So much of Who We Are has died. Without AIDS, there is no platform of fear from which to launch Gay Republicans, Gay Celibates, and all of the other fear-laden, self-loathing, inherently contradictory demographics. Without AIDS, Larry Kramer is writing potty-mouthed musicals, Ryan White is just a kid who made it through school like the rest of us, and a chick who dies after seeing the dentist is just a girl who dies with good teeth.
Hope is nice. I have hope for a lot of things: cures, love, the lottery. But when hope comes calling, it's important to look behind it and see from whence it came. This time is no different. Today's AIDS revelation didn't show up on the front page, in the sports section, or in the comics. It didn't show up in the Health section, either.
Notably - and this is important - the article appeared in the Business Section. That's enough to put a hitch in your hope.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
AIDS Out Here
It's time to talk about some elephants that have overrun the living room. Finding love is hard enough in the best petri dish, but it's time to acknowledge that sometimes we set ourselves up to lose.
I chose almost two years ago to abandon my sanctuary in San Francisco for rural domesticity in Kansas. Beyond the blue state/red state differences, any moron can see how love might be more hard to locate in these parts. (Note to Brokeback Mountain fans: This is not 1963. We are not schtupping otherwise straight cowboys behind the Piggly Wiggly and crying in our hat for what might have been. OK...once maybe.)
I have AIDS. That's not a blogging revelation. But it is a dating reality. In San Francisco, it seemed, you're either assumed to be "poz" and it's "no big deal", which always struck me wrong (because it's been a Very Big Deal), or you're required to be HIV+ to meet someone's dating criteria. When I lived on the west coast, I would joke with my friends in Chicago (who think they are quite cosmopolitan, mind you) that you can sum up the difference between San Francisco and the midwest quite simply: by online profiles. In the midwest, you notice that men tend to note the 2 or 3 things they might do if the planets align and your cologne is nice. In San Francisco, you have to list the one or two things you absolutely will NOT do under any circumstances or else you're fair game for whatever you failed to preclude. AIDS in Kansas is a Very Big Deal, particularly in the Dating Game.
I'm lucky, though. I have disposable income, despite my disability, to travel to places where conditions are different. Connections are made. Needs get met. The internet can stream porn into damn near anywhere for the purposes of self-satisfaction. And love reared its wily head once during an 8-day retreat to Puerto Vallarta, but I learned that only fools and children make that mistake twice. Trinkets you can pack in your carry-on bag. Lovers don't tend to make the cut.
It's not impossible. The Good Doctor asked about my friends. Two of my best friends have all of the above: AIDS, residences not far from mine - and one is 20-some years in recovery. Talk about stacked odds. They inspire me. They also make me want to heave bricks at them. Who gets that lucky? We honored their 12th Anniversary together a few weeks ago. Sometimes your friends' successes are tricky to interpret. They're either an indictment of your own failures or a promise of your potential. I haven't decided which one this represents. But I am hopeful, if nothing else, in the face of steep challenges. So I'm probably more inspired than anything. Here, in a red state, two gay men -- with AIDS, one in recovery, and 12 years of partnership. I know some of the right people.
We often joke about "The Good Old Days" when you got your diagnosis, cashed your life insurance, ran your credit cards to The Max and went to Greece and Italy for your final months, leaving some hackneyed travelogue and a mound of debt to your heirs in one final "Fuck You" to the planet Earth. We joke a little less heartily about those of us who ran up the debt, cashed the insurance policy and went to the doctor where we swallowed a protease inhibitor for the first time and were magically granted 20 more years to pay off Mastercard and enjoy projectile vomiting and diarrhea - sometimes concurrently. And lest anyone think differently, the steady Chinese Water Torture of drip, drip, drip that represents our own guys dying of The Plague is still ongoing. I live in Kansas. I can name six men I know personally who have died in the last 18 months from AIDS or related conditions. In Kansas.
I carry on, however, undaunted by the unlikely prospects and shoddily stacked odds. If it can happen for two lonely cowboys in 1963 on the cusp of the Summer Of Love, surely Kansas can bring me a Brokeback Moment or two worth talking about.
I chose almost two years ago to abandon my sanctuary in San Francisco for rural domesticity in Kansas. Beyond the blue state/red state differences, any moron can see how love might be more hard to locate in these parts. (Note to Brokeback Mountain fans: This is not 1963. We are not schtupping otherwise straight cowboys behind the Piggly Wiggly and crying in our hat for what might have been. OK...once maybe.)
I have AIDS. That's not a blogging revelation. But it is a dating reality. In San Francisco, it seemed, you're either assumed to be "poz" and it's "no big deal", which always struck me wrong (because it's been a Very Big Deal), or you're required to be HIV+ to meet someone's dating criteria. When I lived on the west coast, I would joke with my friends in Chicago (who think they are quite cosmopolitan, mind you) that you can sum up the difference between San Francisco and the midwest quite simply: by online profiles. In the midwest, you notice that men tend to note the 2 or 3 things they might do if the planets align and your cologne is nice. In San Francisco, you have to list the one or two things you absolutely will NOT do under any circumstances or else you're fair game for whatever you failed to preclude. AIDS in Kansas is a Very Big Deal, particularly in the Dating Game.
I'm lucky, though. I have disposable income, despite my disability, to travel to places where conditions are different. Connections are made. Needs get met. The internet can stream porn into damn near anywhere for the purposes of self-satisfaction. And love reared its wily head once during an 8-day retreat to Puerto Vallarta, but I learned that only fools and children make that mistake twice. Trinkets you can pack in your carry-on bag. Lovers don't tend to make the cut.
It's not impossible. The Good Doctor asked about my friends. Two of my best friends have all of the above: AIDS, residences not far from mine - and one is 20-some years in recovery. Talk about stacked odds. They inspire me. They also make me want to heave bricks at them. Who gets that lucky? We honored their 12th Anniversary together a few weeks ago. Sometimes your friends' successes are tricky to interpret. They're either an indictment of your own failures or a promise of your potential. I haven't decided which one this represents. But I am hopeful, if nothing else, in the face of steep challenges. So I'm probably more inspired than anything. Here, in a red state, two gay men -- with AIDS, one in recovery, and 12 years of partnership. I know some of the right people.
We often joke about "The Good Old Days" when you got your diagnosis, cashed your life insurance, ran your credit cards to The Max and went to Greece and Italy for your final months, leaving some hackneyed travelogue and a mound of debt to your heirs in one final "Fuck You" to the planet Earth. We joke a little less heartily about those of us who ran up the debt, cashed the insurance policy and went to the doctor where we swallowed a protease inhibitor for the first time and were magically granted 20 more years to pay off Mastercard and enjoy projectile vomiting and diarrhea - sometimes concurrently. And lest anyone think differently, the steady Chinese Water Torture of drip, drip, drip that represents our own guys dying of The Plague is still ongoing. I live in Kansas. I can name six men I know personally who have died in the last 18 months from AIDS or related conditions. In Kansas.
I carry on, however, undaunted by the unlikely prospects and shoddily stacked odds. If it can happen for two lonely cowboys in 1963 on the cusp of the Summer Of Love, surely Kansas can bring me a Brokeback Moment or two worth talking about.
Monday, February 06, 2006
Aunt Fern
I have had the privilege of knowing several generations of family that preceded me. Early marriage and childbearing meant that I knew all of my great-grandparents on my father's side of the family. (One great-grandmother died days before I was born, but by the time cognizance set in, my great-grandpa had remarried.) I knew every great aunt and uncle (my Pappy's siblings). Pappy's oldest sister was Great Aunt Fern. And she was legendary - or infamous - depending on who you ask.
She passed away about 10 years ago, but Aunt Fern is the one who Pappy would say "led him to the Lord". She was a Pentecostal evangelist who preached extensively and had a presence that was imposing, intimidating, or inspiring, depending on your point of view. She was tall. She was large. I never saw her without that jet black wig and enough makeup to cover a small home. She wore enough jewelry to be spotted by a plane flying at 10,000 feet. But she was known for the Tornado Incident.
The Tornado Incident is family legend. Depending on who you ask, it is either a lie of biblical proportions, a delusion worthy of confinement, or evidence of a woman who had tapped into God and defied the forces of nature. I grew up among people who believed the first and second, but I secretly held fast to the third explanation. It was remarkable to me that this woman had performed such a feat. And I didn't doubt that she could.
The story goes that a tornado was heading for Grandma & Pappy's house. This is not a rare occurrence in Kansas. Well, tornados aren't rare. But one hadn't ever headed straight for the family home. As it happened, Aunt Fern was visiting from Arizona. While the family headed for interior closets and crawled into bathtubs waiting for the inevitable, Aunt Fern marched out the front door and into the yard - directly in the path of the oncoming twister. Legend has it that Aunt Fern raised one hand in the direction of the tornado and "commanded it in the Name Of Jesus to turn back and not come near this house." Now, I don't know if someone else's house (without a Tornado Rebuking Aunt), took the hit that was meant for Pappy's house, but his house stands unaffected by tornados to this day.
I don't remember Aunt Fern ever telling that story. But I remember EVERYBODY else telling the story. She came to mind this morning. Not because of the weather, but because of frustration. I've been looking at resentment in my life. I've written that I'm bewildered as to how you stop a feeling or a reaction that seems so instinctual. I've joked about it. But I'm no closer to answers. I could use my Aunt Fern.
Aunt Fern would command resentment to "turn back and not come near this house". That will make sense to people who grew up as I did. I'm not sure it works. It didn't work with being gay. I know that much. Tried that. A lot. Maybe I resent that, too. In the early days when the hints of homosexuality nagged at my brain, I would pray and pray and pray that it not be true. I would rebuke, as I heard Aunt Fern had, but still....the dark-haired god two grades ahead of me was an irresistible focus of my attention and fawning adoration. And I resented that the same parlor trick didn't work on liking boys. Tornados, we could handle. But this was more resilient than tornados, it seemed.
In maturity, I don't resent being gay. I have enjoyed myself to an extent few people allow themselves. I laughed freely and cavorted with abandon. I like being different. There is some solace in being a novelty in a room full of standardized creatures. I enjoy the company of men. It's just that simple. And it's not going away. If it did, I'd be truly bereft. I don't buy for one second these conversion stories of people who, through whatever means, completely alter their gender attraction. Those folks are lying. Period. It doesn't happen. Tornados turn back, seas part, but boys who like boys do not miraculously start liking girls. And thank God. Can you imagine the havoc this would wreak on your little black book? A midlife crisis I can survive. I'm not so sure about a midlife gender-bend.
But resentment....that's a foe worthy of Aunt Fern. I wonder if the neighbors would talk if I walked out to the front yard, put one hand straight out and just did the ol' "I REBUKE RESENTMENT" routine. I'll let you know how that goes.
OK, maybe the back yard.
She passed away about 10 years ago, but Aunt Fern is the one who Pappy would say "led him to the Lord". She was a Pentecostal evangelist who preached extensively and had a presence that was imposing, intimidating, or inspiring, depending on your point of view. She was tall. She was large. I never saw her without that jet black wig and enough makeup to cover a small home. She wore enough jewelry to be spotted by a plane flying at 10,000 feet. But she was known for the Tornado Incident.
The Tornado Incident is family legend. Depending on who you ask, it is either a lie of biblical proportions, a delusion worthy of confinement, or evidence of a woman who had tapped into God and defied the forces of nature. I grew up among people who believed the first and second, but I secretly held fast to the third explanation. It was remarkable to me that this woman had performed such a feat. And I didn't doubt that she could.
The story goes that a tornado was heading for Grandma & Pappy's house. This is not a rare occurrence in Kansas. Well, tornados aren't rare. But one hadn't ever headed straight for the family home. As it happened, Aunt Fern was visiting from Arizona. While the family headed for interior closets and crawled into bathtubs waiting for the inevitable, Aunt Fern marched out the front door and into the yard - directly in the path of the oncoming twister. Legend has it that Aunt Fern raised one hand in the direction of the tornado and "commanded it in the Name Of Jesus to turn back and not come near this house." Now, I don't know if someone else's house (without a Tornado Rebuking Aunt), took the hit that was meant for Pappy's house, but his house stands unaffected by tornados to this day.
I don't remember Aunt Fern ever telling that story. But I remember EVERYBODY else telling the story. She came to mind this morning. Not because of the weather, but because of frustration. I've been looking at resentment in my life. I've written that I'm bewildered as to how you stop a feeling or a reaction that seems so instinctual. I've joked about it. But I'm no closer to answers. I could use my Aunt Fern.
Aunt Fern would command resentment to "turn back and not come near this house". That will make sense to people who grew up as I did. I'm not sure it works. It didn't work with being gay. I know that much. Tried that. A lot. Maybe I resent that, too. In the early days when the hints of homosexuality nagged at my brain, I would pray and pray and pray that it not be true. I would rebuke, as I heard Aunt Fern had, but still....the dark-haired god two grades ahead of me was an irresistible focus of my attention and fawning adoration. And I resented that the same parlor trick didn't work on liking boys. Tornados, we could handle. But this was more resilient than tornados, it seemed.
In maturity, I don't resent being gay. I have enjoyed myself to an extent few people allow themselves. I laughed freely and cavorted with abandon. I like being different. There is some solace in being a novelty in a room full of standardized creatures. I enjoy the company of men. It's just that simple. And it's not going away. If it did, I'd be truly bereft. I don't buy for one second these conversion stories of people who, through whatever means, completely alter their gender attraction. Those folks are lying. Period. It doesn't happen. Tornados turn back, seas part, but boys who like boys do not miraculously start liking girls. And thank God. Can you imagine the havoc this would wreak on your little black book? A midlife crisis I can survive. I'm not so sure about a midlife gender-bend.
But resentment....that's a foe worthy of Aunt Fern. I wonder if the neighbors would talk if I walked out to the front yard, put one hand straight out and just did the ol' "I REBUKE RESENTMENT" routine. I'll let you know how that goes.
OK, maybe the back yard.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
That's What Friends Are For
So My Therapist Says To Me, "Do you choose your friends well? Do you have GOOD friends?"
"I think they'd say so," was my pithy response.
I do have good friends. Not a lot. As I told The Good Doctor, if you spread that around too thin, pretty soon it loses its meaning. At least, it does to me. I can count on one hand the number of people who I think are the real deal, spend the time, person you can call when you're lying naked on the bathroom floor with a headwound friend. And they're really something.
I've known a woman, Sarah Jo Harsen, for 10 years now - a record for me. You see, I moved a lot in my adult years. I was a reverse Army Brat. I only went to one school, but as soon as it was completed, I moved all over the country every couple of years as an adult. I would stay somewhere for a year, 2 years maybe, a record 4 years in Chicago (but 2 different apartments, so...) and took the opportunity at every move to escape that which was bad and reinvent something good. Usually, that meant leaving behind exes (a few of those), bad job experiences (there weren't very many of those), or unacceptable weather patterns. And friends - good or bad - usually fell by the wayside when the the U-Haul pulled up.
Just too much effort, I'd tell myself. Out of sight, out of mind. Absence makes the phone call longer. All those old cliches. Sarah Jo and I met the first time I reallllly moved away from home - 3 hours away. We met in a bar. She tells the story differently than I do, mostly because I apparently don't remember meeting her the first time, she says. I contend that the opposite is true. She doesn't remember meeting me for the first time. I think that's because it wasn't in her finest hour. I remember seeing this really beautiful woman, flanked by homosexuals of varying quality, sobbing on a barstool. I cannot tell you what it was about. For all I know, it wasn't sobbing but a contact lens incident. Nor do I remember why I knew one or more of the people attending her. But I remember, foggily, offering anything I could to help out. (I also remember thinking, "Ideally, this is a situation cured by alcohol and not by automobile repair knowledge.")
It's a 10 year-old flash of memory that has to fight its way through God-knows-how-many obstacles to make its way through to perception. So I grant you that I might not have the details right. But it's the memory I have and for as long I have memory (which may not be long, at this rate), I'm stickin' to it. Ten years I've known this woman. She's getting married this year. If that ain't a kick in the head... Single people seem to carry silent pacts past the age of 35 or so that as long as you don't, I won't. And then when somebody breaks the pact, you really kind of struggle for a split-second between joy for their gain and "Hey....we had a deal!" OK, more than a split-second. But good on her. She deserves it.
Sarah Jo and I only lived in the same town, she reminds me, for about 18 months of this 10 years. The various Bells have built their pools on our dime. When business or pleasure travel brought us into one another's neighborhoods, we'd make it a point to have dinner, take in a show, perhaps. She took me to see The Full Monty - the musical - when I lived in Chicago. Her new boyfriend was there. He's about to be her husband. She's one of the brightest, most literate people I know. She's prickly and witty and quick with a come-back. My kinda gal.
We'd sit in bars, point to a perfect stranger across the sea of standard deviants and tell their story. We'd invent their career, home life, love patterns, psychoanalytical profile, the works. And we'd laugh.... We'd write poetry - bad poetry - really bad poetry - together. It was a party game that nobody else really understood but entertained us immensely. She'd write a line and pass the cocktail napkin and pen to me. I'd write the next line. And back-and-forth we went. As the night got later, the poetry became far more Ginsberg than Dickinson, and we dubbed our collection of cocktail napkins (she saved them!) "The Bar Bards".
We sat shoulder-to-shoulder in an overcrowded pub once. The place's clientele was ambiguous at best, if we talk about sexual orientation. It was the place all the gay folks went when the gay bars closed. Only it was the place where all the straight people already were. So it got to be highly entertaining around 2:15 a.m. Sitting there, a man chatted us up and we three enjoyed ourselves immensely. When he excused himself for a moment, Sarah Jo and I were quite perplexed as to whether he was hitting on one of us. And if he was, which one of us? That's a real friend. Somebody who is more than happy to go home with the stranger, but will applaud as you walk out the door with him instead....that's a keeper. Ten years.
She's the first person I called when I was given the diagnosis. I would call and make her stay on the line the first few times I swallowed the pills that would make me better, only they made me sicker. I was too scared to take them by myself in my miniature apartment in Des Moines and she wasn't embarrassed to hear that. You know you trust someone when you want them there in case you vomit. And I guess you really love somebody if you're willing to sit there while they do it. We exchanged promises over the years. They're the kind of promises gay men and straight women make to each other: "Make sure they bury me in THIS nightie and make sure they leave the casket OPEN!" Those kinds. When I was sick already and didn't know it, she drove with me to San Francisco from the midwest so I could see it on my birthday. Most of those stories will never be printed. Not because I'm afraid to write them, but because she is now a woman of a certain age who has dignity and, soon, a husband. So youthful stories will become ancient secrets.
We've swapped resumes, told hard truths to ourselves and each other, disagreed on things that matter. We've taken different paths: hers more stable, mine more whirling dervish. We both ran bookstores. We both love theatre. Neither one of us knows the name of that character actor who is in everything without resorting to the Internet. She sees a lot of movies. I don't have to - I feel like I have the way she talks about them. We can flush on the phone. I made her promise to tend to the more embarrassing aspects of my personal hygiene should it ever become necessary. She did. And now it's in writing.
There are other friends I'll mention later. But she's the oldest friend I have today - not in age, lest I offend. The Good Doctor's Point was, "If you pick such good friends, why not good lovers?"
Good question. I guess that's why he gets $110 an hour.
"I think they'd say so," was my pithy response.
I do have good friends. Not a lot. As I told The Good Doctor, if you spread that around too thin, pretty soon it loses its meaning. At least, it does to me. I can count on one hand the number of people who I think are the real deal, spend the time, person you can call when you're lying naked on the bathroom floor with a headwound friend. And they're really something.
I've known a woman, Sarah Jo Harsen, for 10 years now - a record for me. You see, I moved a lot in my adult years. I was a reverse Army Brat. I only went to one school, but as soon as it was completed, I moved all over the country every couple of years as an adult. I would stay somewhere for a year, 2 years maybe, a record 4 years in Chicago (but 2 different apartments, so...) and took the opportunity at every move to escape that which was bad and reinvent something good. Usually, that meant leaving behind exes (a few of those), bad job experiences (there weren't very many of those), or unacceptable weather patterns. And friends - good or bad - usually fell by the wayside when the the U-Haul pulled up.
Just too much effort, I'd tell myself. Out of sight, out of mind. Absence makes the phone call longer. All those old cliches. Sarah Jo and I met the first time I reallllly moved away from home - 3 hours away. We met in a bar. She tells the story differently than I do, mostly because I apparently don't remember meeting her the first time, she says. I contend that the opposite is true. She doesn't remember meeting me for the first time. I think that's because it wasn't in her finest hour. I remember seeing this really beautiful woman, flanked by homosexuals of varying quality, sobbing on a barstool. I cannot tell you what it was about. For all I know, it wasn't sobbing but a contact lens incident. Nor do I remember why I knew one or more of the people attending her. But I remember, foggily, offering anything I could to help out. (I also remember thinking, "Ideally, this is a situation cured by alcohol and not by automobile repair knowledge.")
It's a 10 year-old flash of memory that has to fight its way through God-knows-how-many obstacles to make its way through to perception. So I grant you that I might not have the details right. But it's the memory I have and for as long I have memory (which may not be long, at this rate), I'm stickin' to it. Ten years I've known this woman. She's getting married this year. If that ain't a kick in the head... Single people seem to carry silent pacts past the age of 35 or so that as long as you don't, I won't. And then when somebody breaks the pact, you really kind of struggle for a split-second between joy for their gain and "Hey....we had a deal!" OK, more than a split-second. But good on her. She deserves it.
Sarah Jo and I only lived in the same town, she reminds me, for about 18 months of this 10 years. The various Bells have built their pools on our dime. When business or pleasure travel brought us into one another's neighborhoods, we'd make it a point to have dinner, take in a show, perhaps. She took me to see The Full Monty - the musical - when I lived in Chicago. Her new boyfriend was there. He's about to be her husband. She's one of the brightest, most literate people I know. She's prickly and witty and quick with a come-back. My kinda gal.
We'd sit in bars, point to a perfect stranger across the sea of standard deviants and tell their story. We'd invent their career, home life, love patterns, psychoanalytical profile, the works. And we'd laugh.... We'd write poetry - bad poetry - really bad poetry - together. It was a party game that nobody else really understood but entertained us immensely. She'd write a line and pass the cocktail napkin and pen to me. I'd write the next line. And back-and-forth we went. As the night got later, the poetry became far more Ginsberg than Dickinson, and we dubbed our collection of cocktail napkins (she saved them!) "The Bar Bards".
We sat shoulder-to-shoulder in an overcrowded pub once. The place's clientele was ambiguous at best, if we talk about sexual orientation. It was the place all the gay folks went when the gay bars closed. Only it was the place where all the straight people already were. So it got to be highly entertaining around 2:15 a.m. Sitting there, a man chatted us up and we three enjoyed ourselves immensely. When he excused himself for a moment, Sarah Jo and I were quite perplexed as to whether he was hitting on one of us. And if he was, which one of us? That's a real friend. Somebody who is more than happy to go home with the stranger, but will applaud as you walk out the door with him instead....that's a keeper. Ten years.
She's the first person I called when I was given the diagnosis. I would call and make her stay on the line the first few times I swallowed the pills that would make me better, only they made me sicker. I was too scared to take them by myself in my miniature apartment in Des Moines and she wasn't embarrassed to hear that. You know you trust someone when you want them there in case you vomit. And I guess you really love somebody if you're willing to sit there while they do it. We exchanged promises over the years. They're the kind of promises gay men and straight women make to each other: "Make sure they bury me in THIS nightie and make sure they leave the casket OPEN!" Those kinds. When I was sick already and didn't know it, she drove with me to San Francisco from the midwest so I could see it on my birthday. Most of those stories will never be printed. Not because I'm afraid to write them, but because she is now a woman of a certain age who has dignity and, soon, a husband. So youthful stories will become ancient secrets.
We've swapped resumes, told hard truths to ourselves and each other, disagreed on things that matter. We've taken different paths: hers more stable, mine more whirling dervish. We both ran bookstores. We both love theatre. Neither one of us knows the name of that character actor who is in everything without resorting to the Internet. She sees a lot of movies. I don't have to - I feel like I have the way she talks about them. We can flush on the phone. I made her promise to tend to the more embarrassing aspects of my personal hygiene should it ever become necessary. She did. And now it's in writing.
There are other friends I'll mention later. But she's the oldest friend I have today - not in age, lest I offend. The Good Doctor's Point was, "If you pick such good friends, why not good lovers?"
Good question. I guess that's why he gets $110 an hour.
Saturday, February 04, 2006
You GET me! You really GET me!
So My Therapist Says To Me, "You're co-dependent." Me. Co-dependent. I actually gasped and did the whole Clutch Pearls gesture. Really. Of all the objectionable material I'd heard in our sessions, this one was simply ludicrous. (Never mind that all of the other material - with the notable exception of "Sex Addict" - proved true upon further reflection.) I, more than anyone I know, am certainly the relational opposite of co-dependent. He clearly doesn't get me.
"I think you really get me," I said as we started our 50-minute marathon. I like that he pushes buttons that, whether he knows it or not (and I'm sure he does), cause me to chew on his semi-offensive suggestions for the ensuing week. So, quicker than in the past, I already shifted gears from "GASP!" to "Really? You think so?" And it's not even midnight.
For the first time, he flung an insulting comment in the direction of my failed flings. "Flaming narcissists" he called them. That was good. I was hoping for something that ended in "...asshole", but that's probably outside the therapeutic lexicon. I'll take it. I was regurgitating thoughts at warp speed and blurting out a stream of semi-revelatory ideas that had crossed my mind and this blog in the last week. Sometimes you say something that you only hear once it's out of your mouth. Those things that you can't recall even thinking are suddenly out in mid-air and you hear them like someone else had deposited them in the room. I heard myself very rationally say some version of the following:
"I really ask for very little in a relationship. I like a big, strong, silent guy who will just....stand there...really. I don't need a lot of touching and fawning - that kind of creeps me out. I become very interested in their career, their hobbies, their thoughts, what they want...and all I ever ask in return is some time and Please Just Be Nice To Me." In the saying of it, I heard myself and thought, "Oh for Christ's sake. What a friggin' MARTYR!" To verbalize some variation of "I ask for so little and get even less in return" was beyond objectionable to me. Enter the Flaming Narcissist who only needs me as long as his ego is kept inflated by my behavior. Six weeks or six months into this experience, I get the sinking feeling that I'm not really at all a part of this relationship. It's all about them. And then I'm bewildered as to how I might have been so misled. It ends. And then I have the cajones to object to the label "co-dependent". This therapy stuff really works. Pretty soon, you come to the truly embarrassing conclusions outside of public view. I like that part. Of course, then I print them in public. Go know.
So many lightbulbs are going off in my head, it must look like the papparazi caught Paris Hilton with her panties around her neck. My mother is a martyr. Only she's an angry martyr. Everything is delivered in a profanity-riddled tirade. No quiet martyr her, she's cursing loudly all the way to the cross. I had hoped I didn't share that trait. But I do, it seems. Rather than stomping my feet and calling names and making a general scene (with one possible exception - but he's a long way away and can't contest this statement), I walk quietly away with my head up and my stomach in my throat. Then comes the ever-building resentment that I didn't get what I felt entitled to. Big martyr. Just like my mama. I hate this therapy shit.
Putting together the revelation pieces, this means I look for men who act like my father while behaving much like my mother. Oedipus must be spinning in his grave. Freud probably just lit another cigar - which is, sometimes, just a cigar, I understand. And I feel incredibly silly for never having seen it. But, once again, how do you stop it even after you've seen it?
I understand that if I were in the habit of waking up daily and going to the beach to bash baby seals, that this would be a bad thing to do. It causes harm and is generally in poor taste and will get PETA up your ass in a hurry. Recognizing the drawbacks of this pattern, I can see that it would be easy to simply not go clubbing at the beach. Done! However...when it's a feeling or a reaction that you identify as bad for you...and those around you...how do you just turn that off?
Again, I get that resentment is an unfruitful expenditure of energy. I understand that this repetition is the very definition of insanity. But how do you turn off a feeling? Do you practice that? (Hey! I want you to hit me in the head with a tire iron until it stops hurting!) Does it just go away? (Hey! One day I woke up and it didn't hurt to get hit in the head with a tire iron!) Or does it just stop mattering? (Hey! If you really have to hit me in the head with a tire iron, can you make it quick? I have an appointment at 11.) I'm re-stuck. I want apologies, dammit. I want explanations - mostly because I'm an adult and think it's the least 2 adults can offer one another when they stop literally licking each other's most private....well, you get the picture. A simple "Hey! You taste funny!" even, would be a start. (Note: I have never been told that I taste funny. That is a mere example.)
So maybe my adamant refusal to cop out to the influence of my mom and dad was a tad bit hasty. Just like my objection to being "retarded in love" was ill-considered. And just like co-dependency was rejected out of hand. I've behaved like my mother, looking for my father and know that I would never want the relationship that seems to work so well for them. How crazy is that? And would I have ever stumbled upon that disturbing tidbit without my evidently competent therapist nudging me along? I doubt it. God, I love this therapy thing.
I can tell the next 7 days will be like bouncing among the bumpers in a pinball game of self-discovery. The thoughts, disconnected and random, are coming so fast that I can barely get them down fast enough before they evaporate into lost chances. Hold on tight....this train is speeding up.
This is about to get fun.
"I think you really get me," I said as we started our 50-minute marathon. I like that he pushes buttons that, whether he knows it or not (and I'm sure he does), cause me to chew on his semi-offensive suggestions for the ensuing week. So, quicker than in the past, I already shifted gears from "GASP!" to "Really? You think so?" And it's not even midnight.
For the first time, he flung an insulting comment in the direction of my failed flings. "Flaming narcissists" he called them. That was good. I was hoping for something that ended in "...asshole", but that's probably outside the therapeutic lexicon. I'll take it. I was regurgitating thoughts at warp speed and blurting out a stream of semi-revelatory ideas that had crossed my mind and this blog in the last week. Sometimes you say something that you only hear once it's out of your mouth. Those things that you can't recall even thinking are suddenly out in mid-air and you hear them like someone else had deposited them in the room. I heard myself very rationally say some version of the following:
"I really ask for very little in a relationship. I like a big, strong, silent guy who will just....stand there...really. I don't need a lot of touching and fawning - that kind of creeps me out. I become very interested in their career, their hobbies, their thoughts, what they want...and all I ever ask in return is some time and Please Just Be Nice To Me." In the saying of it, I heard myself and thought, "Oh for Christ's sake. What a friggin' MARTYR!" To verbalize some variation of "I ask for so little and get even less in return" was beyond objectionable to me. Enter the Flaming Narcissist who only needs me as long as his ego is kept inflated by my behavior. Six weeks or six months into this experience, I get the sinking feeling that I'm not really at all a part of this relationship. It's all about them. And then I'm bewildered as to how I might have been so misled. It ends. And then I have the cajones to object to the label "co-dependent". This therapy stuff really works. Pretty soon, you come to the truly embarrassing conclusions outside of public view. I like that part. Of course, then I print them in public. Go know.
So many lightbulbs are going off in my head, it must look like the papparazi caught Paris Hilton with her panties around her neck. My mother is a martyr. Only she's an angry martyr. Everything is delivered in a profanity-riddled tirade. No quiet martyr her, she's cursing loudly all the way to the cross. I had hoped I didn't share that trait. But I do, it seems. Rather than stomping my feet and calling names and making a general scene (with one possible exception - but he's a long way away and can't contest this statement), I walk quietly away with my head up and my stomach in my throat. Then comes the ever-building resentment that I didn't get what I felt entitled to. Big martyr. Just like my mama. I hate this therapy shit.
Putting together the revelation pieces, this means I look for men who act like my father while behaving much like my mother. Oedipus must be spinning in his grave. Freud probably just lit another cigar - which is, sometimes, just a cigar, I understand. And I feel incredibly silly for never having seen it. But, once again, how do you stop it even after you've seen it?
I understand that if I were in the habit of waking up daily and going to the beach to bash baby seals, that this would be a bad thing to do. It causes harm and is generally in poor taste and will get PETA up your ass in a hurry. Recognizing the drawbacks of this pattern, I can see that it would be easy to simply not go clubbing at the beach. Done! However...when it's a feeling or a reaction that you identify as bad for you...and those around you...how do you just turn that off?
Again, I get that resentment is an unfruitful expenditure of energy. I understand that this repetition is the very definition of insanity. But how do you turn off a feeling? Do you practice that? (Hey! I want you to hit me in the head with a tire iron until it stops hurting!) Does it just go away? (Hey! One day I woke up and it didn't hurt to get hit in the head with a tire iron!) Or does it just stop mattering? (Hey! If you really have to hit me in the head with a tire iron, can you make it quick? I have an appointment at 11.) I'm re-stuck. I want apologies, dammit. I want explanations - mostly because I'm an adult and think it's the least 2 adults can offer one another when they stop literally licking each other's most private....well, you get the picture. A simple "Hey! You taste funny!" even, would be a start. (Note: I have never been told that I taste funny. That is a mere example.)
So maybe my adamant refusal to cop out to the influence of my mom and dad was a tad bit hasty. Just like my objection to being "retarded in love" was ill-considered. And just like co-dependency was rejected out of hand. I've behaved like my mother, looking for my father and know that I would never want the relationship that seems to work so well for them. How crazy is that? And would I have ever stumbled upon that disturbing tidbit without my evidently competent therapist nudging me along? I doubt it. God, I love this therapy thing.
I can tell the next 7 days will be like bouncing among the bumpers in a pinball game of self-discovery. The thoughts, disconnected and random, are coming so fast that I can barely get them down fast enough before they evaporate into lost chances. Hold on tight....this train is speeding up.
This is about to get fun.
Friday, February 03, 2006
In Memoriam: Randy B.
Yesterday I learned that an old friend had died. He didn't die yesterday, it was earlier in the week. Someone tracked me down online and delivered the news. You have to kind of know People With AIDS (PWA's as we were called in the old days) to understand that many of us share a gallows humor. That sense of humor caused me to question whether I should wait for a punchline or take the hit in my gut.
I got a phone number for who I believe to be Randy's best and oldest friend in Oklahoma. He confirmed the news. I delivered my condolences and was taken into some confidences I might not have otherwise known about Randy's final resting details. I had met this Oklahoman friend of his once - by arrangement, in a bar (like we do) on a business trip years ago. That's one more time than I met Randy.
Years ago, if you picked up a copy of a gay newspaper or - even more years ago - a gay newsletter, you instantly noted the convention of identifying people by a last initial. It conveyed at once shame, anonymity, confidentiality and mystery. Everyone was quoted as "Travis D." or "Martha L." Nobody had real names. Hell, if you met them in a bar and took them home, you didn't always get that much. But nowadays you pick up those same publications and the passage of years and legislation and the maturing of our community has full names printed from coast-to-coast. We've come a little bit of the long way, baby. We're using our names.
Shortly after I was diagnosed with AIDS in 1998, I bought my first computer. I went looking for other people who could help answer the question of "how long do I have?" I found, in the jungle of chat rooms, a few people with whom I bonded over the shared trait of bad blood. We all used screen names that hid, for the most part, our true names. What idiot would put their full name on the internet, anyway? But it reminded me of the old days when our names were cut short for our own protection...or our shame....or that of our family....or our job. In the mix of those with whom I bonded was Randy. Every day, it seemed, for a shockingly long time, Randy was there.
I know what Randy looked like from pictures he shared with the world. But we never met. I know what Randy sounded like from the hours upon hours upon hours we spent on the phone together. We shared a sense of humor in the midst of what might have been a pretty ugly storm otherwise. His voice was thick with the south and I would relax just a little bit more when he started into that drawling cadence that said, "No bad news comes from anything that sounds like this." We would cackle and hoot and gossip until the phones got so hot against our ears we had to hang up and call back later. And we'd always promise that some day - soon - we were going to meet up. Of course we would. Why wouldn't we?
The internet has injected an element into our society that, if not viewed with a cool eye, can be very misleading. Over time, personas that appear backlit on glowing monitors become three-dimensional, the same way that a novel draws you in and for an instant or longer you forget that it's fiction. This internet, this thing, has mixed pure anonymity with creative writing in a way that makes it all but impossible to distinguish the authentic from the purely imagined. As I told Randy more than once about the latest hot guy we had met on the internet, "Remember...all we really know about him is that he can type." Anybody can be anything behind the smoke screen of a keyboard. More than one of us has met an Adonis online and invited him over for coffee (naturally), only to have a troll waylay him and show up in his place. To me, that makes it all the more remarkable that Randy and I shared what we did.
In this venue of artifice, never having shook hands, he was a glowing line of print (usually misspelled or mis-typed, bless his heart) and a voice on the line that walked me through the early years and right up until a couple of weeks ago when he disappeared, the way he would, to re-energize, turn off the backlight and get away from things. I left a couple of messages and sent a couple of emails but didn't flinch when I heard nothing back. Randy protected his privacy and when he got away, he got away. When he re-emerged from his cocoon, he'd call and that conspiratorial excitement mixed with molasses would come pouring through the line again.
I was privileged to learn of some of the final details regarding Randy. He was private, like I said, so I can't share them here. But if Randy were alive today and we knew that anyone else was having the same sort of thing done as a final remembrance, we would hoot and cackle and giggle about it for years to come. It would rarely fail to punctuate a conversation. It would be our newest little inside thing. He took a lot of things with him when he went. He took the other half of my online act and I'll miss it. Randy would mis-type something and I'd call him "Nell", after the Jodie Foster movie. He was proud that he had modified his body in a back-alley type procedure that was the source of most of our jabs at one another. Perfect strangers would have thought we hated each other the way we slung one-liners back and forth through the fiber optics. Quite the contrary.
Anybody who could think such a thing doesn't remember the old queens on barstools in clandestine corners of society who, with wit, a stiff drink, and a few words could topple governments, it seemed. He had a way with words, this voice over the phone. He couldn't type them worth a damn, but it was sure good to see them.
And I can't wait to ask him when we speak next, "Grrrrrrlll.....what on EARTH were you thinking?" Then we'll laugh.
I got a phone number for who I believe to be Randy's best and oldest friend in Oklahoma. He confirmed the news. I delivered my condolences and was taken into some confidences I might not have otherwise known about Randy's final resting details. I had met this Oklahoman friend of his once - by arrangement, in a bar (like we do) on a business trip years ago. That's one more time than I met Randy.
Years ago, if you picked up a copy of a gay newspaper or - even more years ago - a gay newsletter, you instantly noted the convention of identifying people by a last initial. It conveyed at once shame, anonymity, confidentiality and mystery. Everyone was quoted as "Travis D." or "Martha L." Nobody had real names. Hell, if you met them in a bar and took them home, you didn't always get that much. But nowadays you pick up those same publications and the passage of years and legislation and the maturing of our community has full names printed from coast-to-coast. We've come a little bit of the long way, baby. We're using our names.
Shortly after I was diagnosed with AIDS in 1998, I bought my first computer. I went looking for other people who could help answer the question of "how long do I have?" I found, in the jungle of chat rooms, a few people with whom I bonded over the shared trait of bad blood. We all used screen names that hid, for the most part, our true names. What idiot would put their full name on the internet, anyway? But it reminded me of the old days when our names were cut short for our own protection...or our shame....or that of our family....or our job. In the mix of those with whom I bonded was Randy. Every day, it seemed, for a shockingly long time, Randy was there.
I know what Randy looked like from pictures he shared with the world. But we never met. I know what Randy sounded like from the hours upon hours upon hours we spent on the phone together. We shared a sense of humor in the midst of what might have been a pretty ugly storm otherwise. His voice was thick with the south and I would relax just a little bit more when he started into that drawling cadence that said, "No bad news comes from anything that sounds like this." We would cackle and hoot and gossip until the phones got so hot against our ears we had to hang up and call back later. And we'd always promise that some day - soon - we were going to meet up. Of course we would. Why wouldn't we?
The internet has injected an element into our society that, if not viewed with a cool eye, can be very misleading. Over time, personas that appear backlit on glowing monitors become three-dimensional, the same way that a novel draws you in and for an instant or longer you forget that it's fiction. This internet, this thing, has mixed pure anonymity with creative writing in a way that makes it all but impossible to distinguish the authentic from the purely imagined. As I told Randy more than once about the latest hot guy we had met on the internet, "Remember...all we really know about him is that he can type." Anybody can be anything behind the smoke screen of a keyboard. More than one of us has met an Adonis online and invited him over for coffee (naturally), only to have a troll waylay him and show up in his place. To me, that makes it all the more remarkable that Randy and I shared what we did.
In this venue of artifice, never having shook hands, he was a glowing line of print (usually misspelled or mis-typed, bless his heart) and a voice on the line that walked me through the early years and right up until a couple of weeks ago when he disappeared, the way he would, to re-energize, turn off the backlight and get away from things. I left a couple of messages and sent a couple of emails but didn't flinch when I heard nothing back. Randy protected his privacy and when he got away, he got away. When he re-emerged from his cocoon, he'd call and that conspiratorial excitement mixed with molasses would come pouring through the line again.
I was privileged to learn of some of the final details regarding Randy. He was private, like I said, so I can't share them here. But if Randy were alive today and we knew that anyone else was having the same sort of thing done as a final remembrance, we would hoot and cackle and giggle about it for years to come. It would rarely fail to punctuate a conversation. It would be our newest little inside thing. He took a lot of things with him when he went. He took the other half of my online act and I'll miss it. Randy would mis-type something and I'd call him "Nell", after the Jodie Foster movie. He was proud that he had modified his body in a back-alley type procedure that was the source of most of our jabs at one another. Perfect strangers would have thought we hated each other the way we slung one-liners back and forth through the fiber optics. Quite the contrary.
Anybody who could think such a thing doesn't remember the old queens on barstools in clandestine corners of society who, with wit, a stiff drink, and a few words could topple governments, it seemed. He had a way with words, this voice over the phone. He couldn't type them worth a damn, but it was sure good to see them.
And I can't wait to ask him when we speak next, "Grrrrrrlll.....what on EARTH were you thinking?" Then we'll laugh.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Augie and Me
I woke up today bound and determined not to write about Ground Hog's Day. I thought of several ways I could and a few reasons why I should, but I just wasn't "feeling it", to borrow a phrase from another culture and a younger generation.
I watched Oprah today. I usually do. Susan St. James and her family were exposing themselves emotionally regarding the loss of the youngest boy in their family. Moving as the program was, she mentioned a quote that instantly clicked in my brain. Oprah calls these "Ah Ha Moments". Religious folks would call them revelations. Crazy people would call it hearing voices, I guess. But when Ms. St. James repeated this borrowed quote, it convicted me, as we say in Pentecostal circles.
"Resentment is like taking poison and hoping the other person dies."
I jotted it down and came to the computer to figure out the source of the quote - so that when I posted it on my refrigerator, it would be accurately attributed. God forbid I should plagiarize in the kitchen. My Therapist Says this would be confirmation of his suspicion that I am "obsessive". Pshaw. Obsession is so far down the list of things we could talk about that he may not live long enough to hear about it.
While the quote has been oft-used, I found the most regular attribution of it to Saint Augustine. Now, I am not Catholic. As my Pappy would say, "we are the opposite of Catholic", whatever that means. I have no history in the study of "saints" and was taught that praying to dead people was, in general, a ludicrous and quite possibly heretical act. So I had to rely on the Encyclopedia Brittanica to learn a little about St. Augustine.
If the quote itself didn't speak to me enough, the cobbled-together biography of its author amplified its meaning all the more. According to the EB,
"Inheriting from his father a vehement and sensual disposition, he early gave way to the unbridled impulses of passion, and while still a mere youth, formed a connection, common enough at the time, but at variance with the principles of Christian morality."
Augie and I have a little in common, it would seem. I can see my own vehement and sensual disposition - inherited from my father. I am not begging for comparison to a Saint to better my chances in this or the next life, but it was a similarity hard to ignore. "While a student at Carthage he was particularly attracted by the theatre." If I were a suspicious person, I would find this an increasingly eerie comparison. Regarding the theatrical productions at Carthage (the original Carthage, not the one in your state) "To his enthusiastic and sensuous spirit they were irresistible, and the extent to which he seems to have yielded to the fascination is sufficient proof of his active alienation from Christianity at this period." That's enough for me to get the point.
I don't know if I'm past resentment for the things that didn't cut my way in life. I don't know how to look at them and say, "That was shitty of you" and then walk away without some residue of negative energy balling up in my chest. But I get the the good Saint's point.
Waking up everyday and harboring resentment for 40 year-old or 2 week-old perceived injustices isn't at all unlike the horrendous movie Ground Hog Day. There, I worked it in. I do know that in my theological education, I was taught - and I believe - that you are only accountable for what you know. Similarly, "From those to whom much is given, much is required." I guess now that I look at resentment squarely in the eye, I'm accountable for it.
So, for the first step....I thank Susan St. James for turning me onto ol' Augie's point - and I promise not to take more poison.
But do I really have to stop hoping the other person dies?
Just kidding. Mostly.
I watched Oprah today. I usually do. Susan St. James and her family were exposing themselves emotionally regarding the loss of the youngest boy in their family. Moving as the program was, she mentioned a quote that instantly clicked in my brain. Oprah calls these "Ah Ha Moments". Religious folks would call them revelations. Crazy people would call it hearing voices, I guess. But when Ms. St. James repeated this borrowed quote, it convicted me, as we say in Pentecostal circles.
"Resentment is like taking poison and hoping the other person dies."
I jotted it down and came to the computer to figure out the source of the quote - so that when I posted it on my refrigerator, it would be accurately attributed. God forbid I should plagiarize in the kitchen. My Therapist Says this would be confirmation of his suspicion that I am "obsessive". Pshaw. Obsession is so far down the list of things we could talk about that he may not live long enough to hear about it.
While the quote has been oft-used, I found the most regular attribution of it to Saint Augustine. Now, I am not Catholic. As my Pappy would say, "we are the opposite of Catholic", whatever that means. I have no history in the study of "saints" and was taught that praying to dead people was, in general, a ludicrous and quite possibly heretical act. So I had to rely on the Encyclopedia Brittanica to learn a little about St. Augustine.
If the quote itself didn't speak to me enough, the cobbled-together biography of its author amplified its meaning all the more. According to the EB,
"Inheriting from his father a vehement and sensual disposition, he early gave way to the unbridled impulses of passion, and while still a mere youth, formed a connection, common enough at the time, but at variance with the principles of Christian morality."
Augie and I have a little in common, it would seem. I can see my own vehement and sensual disposition - inherited from my father. I am not begging for comparison to a Saint to better my chances in this or the next life, but it was a similarity hard to ignore. "While a student at Carthage he was particularly attracted by the theatre." If I were a suspicious person, I would find this an increasingly eerie comparison. Regarding the theatrical productions at Carthage (the original Carthage, not the one in your state) "To his enthusiastic and sensuous spirit they were irresistible, and the extent to which he seems to have yielded to the fascination is sufficient proof of his active alienation from Christianity at this period." That's enough for me to get the point.
I don't know if I'm past resentment for the things that didn't cut my way in life. I don't know how to look at them and say, "That was shitty of you" and then walk away without some residue of negative energy balling up in my chest. But I get the the good Saint's point.
Waking up everyday and harboring resentment for 40 year-old or 2 week-old perceived injustices isn't at all unlike the horrendous movie Ground Hog Day. There, I worked it in. I do know that in my theological education, I was taught - and I believe - that you are only accountable for what you know. Similarly, "From those to whom much is given, much is required." I guess now that I look at resentment squarely in the eye, I'm accountable for it.
So, for the first step....I thank Susan St. James for turning me onto ol' Augie's point - and I promise not to take more poison.
But do I really have to stop hoping the other person dies?
Just kidding. Mostly.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Mama and My One Drunk Friend
(Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Please do not let my mother ever stumble upon this blog - especially this posting - now or at the hour of my death, Amen.)
I have done the big city thing. I started small. I grew up in a suburb of Kansas City, graduated to Omaha, stepped up to Des Moines (hey, it's a capital), spent 4 years in Chicago - including 2 in Boystown - and did my year in San Francisco. It was on the coast where The Disease finally progressed enough that working productively was no longer a possibility. Too many sick days, the sicknesses were getting bigger and weirder, stress started doing horrible things to my body...and nobody needs to tell any of us who are the beneficiaries of the "Miracle Drugs" what happens to your digestive system when you swallow them. I had the money to stay in San Francisco and live out whatever I had left embraced and surrounded by a culture that gets me. But I came home. I always thought I might. It seemed like the right thing to do. The Bad Boy I was seeing in San Francisco told me - very nicely, bless his heart - "I Just Don't Do The Sick Thing". Seeing someone with AIDS was fine by him...as long as it was only a theory. So I came home.
I took an apartment in the suburbs of Kansas City while I pondered where I really wanted to settle. My family picked it out for me to save me a search trip before I made The Final Journey home. It was nice. I adopted a dog when I got back to Kansas to keep me company - and keep me walking. He's a Yorkie. Yes, I am THAT gay.
For the first time in 39 years, the urge hit me to own a home, mostly out of fear that one or more of my disability resources might some day vanish. An in-law of a sibling had one down the street from my family, the mortgage on which would be less than half of the rent I was paying in suburbia. The catch -- this place was in The Boonies. No, I mean it. The Boo-Knees. Buh -ooh -ooh -ooh neeeeeees.
There is no Taco Bell where I live. I had thought this to be the first line of demarcation for civilized and uncivilized societies. There is no McDonald's where I live. This, in itself, could have us declared a Third World Country, I believe. We have one grocery store, two liquor stores (!), Sonic, Pizza Hut, and Dairy Queen. We also have Subway - not the kind you ride - the kind that we're asked to believe can help you lose hundreds of pounds if you just keep spending money there several times a day. I have a diet plan like that. Come on by and give me $6 a pop and I'll make sure you lose a pound or two. The closest Wal-Mart is a half hour away - which is fine, since I no longer shop at Wal-Mart. (Power to the People!) The sign outside of town claims that our population is around 3,000. I think they're counting any animal over 50 lbs.
I love it here. I have never lived anywhere that I liked better. I can't hear the delusional roar of Wrigley Field from here. I can't walk to the train and be in the Castro in a matter of minutes. But I can sit on my porch - I have one - on my swing (because I have one) and watch what life looks like when you slow it down to a viewable pace. Garrison Keillor would like this place. The chances of it ever freezing enough to go ice fishing, though, are slim to none. We have our characters - Bicycle Jim, for example. Bicycle Jim walks about town and might grunt at you. I think he must have been clocked on the head at a young age. But he has never been known to do anything meaner than grunt. And most of the time he sits in front of a store on Maple St. with a collection of mostly-fixed bicycles. I think people who approach Jim to buy one of those bikes may be the bravest people I've ever seen. And I once accidentally walked through Cabrini Green.
I have a group of friends in The City (which is what we call any town with a population of more than 5,000, but usually means Kansas City) who I try to see once a week, body and weather permitting. And one of those friends alerted me to the fact that back in my little town of Mayberry was ANOTHER one of "us". So I looked him up and we have become good friends. The kind of friend who stops by just to have a smoke on the front porch and will offer you the last beer in the cooler. I don't drink - much. Certainly not daily. But my friend does. I wouldn't blink if I learned that my friend pours beer over Cheerios for breakfast. He's also the only gay person with whom I will socialize in Mayberry. (I know 5 others, mind you, but they are just not the kind of folks one makes it a point to visit.) And he makes me laugh.
One night - just before Christmas - My One Drunk Friend stopped by and played on my piano "What a Friend We Have In Jesus" several times in a row. It was touching and ludicrous and hysterical and the kind of spectacle I heartily applaud. Now, I do not endorse alcoholism, but if you can manage, in the midst of your disease, to provide some small moment of pleasure for someone else, your karma is a little less fucked-up than it might otherwise be, I figure. He'll probably be a lot less entertaining and I'll have less a friend in Jesus, too, if he ever dries out. I wish for him whatever he wants for himself. He also does hair. My mother needed a haircut. My mother is not a pleasant person. (Have I mentioned that before?) Let me elaborate.
My mother would tell a stranger's child in the aisle of a grocery store, "Get your goddam hands off that!" Picking up a dish that is shockingly hot without using gloves means you are a "stupid fuck". (This from someone who stuck her hand in a whirring garbage disposal to retrieve a dish cloth and mangled herself. Karma, indeed.) I have a cousin who is "a goddam whore" and my mother works with countless "goddam dumb sons o' bitches", though she will someday quit because "I hate that fucking place." My mother is not fit for public consumption. Knowing this, I mentioned that my One Drunk Friend does hair. I don't know what I could have been thinking.
Mama went to My One Drunk Friend and L-O-V-E-S her hair. She also L-O-V-E-S my One Drunk Friend. And he L-O-V-E-S her. "HE'S GAY?!?!" she blurted to me at Bingo last night. (OK, I go to Bingo and the first one of you queens that snickers, I will snatch your wig off and burn it like the Bastille's flag.) "But he's so GOOD LOOKING!" she said, as if the two should have been mutually exclusive. (And as if I wouldn't take the underhanded jab she meant it to be.) And he is. Really. He has a cleft in his chin that you could store office products in. He has that 1970's Please-God-Let-The-Wind-Blow hair and a body that defies his years. He's tall and he's polite and he takes good care of his mama - who lives just a block over from here. (Note: In a town of 3,000 people, everybody lives "just down the street".) And he drinks. A lot. All the time. And my mother L-O-V-E-S him. This can't be good.
I dated a drunk once...briefly. Actually, I dated a bottle of scotch that was conveniently attached to a man with an occasionally functioning penis and an Insurance Agency. That was fun. He gave me a diamond earring and took me to Arizona for my 30th birthday. My friend Joyce (there, I mentioned you. Happy now?) in Omaha, I believe, still wishes that I was dating Scotchy McDroolsalot. So I am pretty gunshy when it comes to dating the bottle. Besides, there aren't any indications that he likes me even half as much as Mama likes him. The real rub here is that My One Drunk Friend will now be Mama's pet Hook-Up Project. My mother, the foul-mouthed Yente. That's not a profession she needs to take up after the age of 60.
And we're not even Jewish.
I have done the big city thing. I started small. I grew up in a suburb of Kansas City, graduated to Omaha, stepped up to Des Moines (hey, it's a capital), spent 4 years in Chicago - including 2 in Boystown - and did my year in San Francisco. It was on the coast where The Disease finally progressed enough that working productively was no longer a possibility. Too many sick days, the sicknesses were getting bigger and weirder, stress started doing horrible things to my body...and nobody needs to tell any of us who are the beneficiaries of the "Miracle Drugs" what happens to your digestive system when you swallow them. I had the money to stay in San Francisco and live out whatever I had left embraced and surrounded by a culture that gets me. But I came home. I always thought I might. It seemed like the right thing to do. The Bad Boy I was seeing in San Francisco told me - very nicely, bless his heart - "I Just Don't Do The Sick Thing". Seeing someone with AIDS was fine by him...as long as it was only a theory. So I came home.
I took an apartment in the suburbs of Kansas City while I pondered where I really wanted to settle. My family picked it out for me to save me a search trip before I made The Final Journey home. It was nice. I adopted a dog when I got back to Kansas to keep me company - and keep me walking. He's a Yorkie. Yes, I am THAT gay.
For the first time in 39 years, the urge hit me to own a home, mostly out of fear that one or more of my disability resources might some day vanish. An in-law of a sibling had one down the street from my family, the mortgage on which would be less than half of the rent I was paying in suburbia. The catch -- this place was in The Boonies. No, I mean it. The Boo-Knees. Buh -ooh -ooh -ooh neeeeeees.
There is no Taco Bell where I live. I had thought this to be the first line of demarcation for civilized and uncivilized societies. There is no McDonald's where I live. This, in itself, could have us declared a Third World Country, I believe. We have one grocery store, two liquor stores (!), Sonic, Pizza Hut, and Dairy Queen. We also have Subway - not the kind you ride - the kind that we're asked to believe can help you lose hundreds of pounds if you just keep spending money there several times a day. I have a diet plan like that. Come on by and give me $6 a pop and I'll make sure you lose a pound or two. The closest Wal-Mart is a half hour away - which is fine, since I no longer shop at Wal-Mart. (Power to the People!) The sign outside of town claims that our population is around 3,000. I think they're counting any animal over 50 lbs.
I love it here. I have never lived anywhere that I liked better. I can't hear the delusional roar of Wrigley Field from here. I can't walk to the train and be in the Castro in a matter of minutes. But I can sit on my porch - I have one - on my swing (because I have one) and watch what life looks like when you slow it down to a viewable pace. Garrison Keillor would like this place. The chances of it ever freezing enough to go ice fishing, though, are slim to none. We have our characters - Bicycle Jim, for example. Bicycle Jim walks about town and might grunt at you. I think he must have been clocked on the head at a young age. But he has never been known to do anything meaner than grunt. And most of the time he sits in front of a store on Maple St. with a collection of mostly-fixed bicycles. I think people who approach Jim to buy one of those bikes may be the bravest people I've ever seen. And I once accidentally walked through Cabrini Green.
I have a group of friends in The City (which is what we call any town with a population of more than 5,000, but usually means Kansas City) who I try to see once a week, body and weather permitting. And one of those friends alerted me to the fact that back in my little town of Mayberry was ANOTHER one of "us". So I looked him up and we have become good friends. The kind of friend who stops by just to have a smoke on the front porch and will offer you the last beer in the cooler. I don't drink - much. Certainly not daily. But my friend does. I wouldn't blink if I learned that my friend pours beer over Cheerios for breakfast. He's also the only gay person with whom I will socialize in Mayberry. (I know 5 others, mind you, but they are just not the kind of folks one makes it a point to visit.) And he makes me laugh.
One night - just before Christmas - My One Drunk Friend stopped by and played on my piano "What a Friend We Have In Jesus" several times in a row. It was touching and ludicrous and hysterical and the kind of spectacle I heartily applaud. Now, I do not endorse alcoholism, but if you can manage, in the midst of your disease, to provide some small moment of pleasure for someone else, your karma is a little less fucked-up than it might otherwise be, I figure. He'll probably be a lot less entertaining and I'll have less a friend in Jesus, too, if he ever dries out. I wish for him whatever he wants for himself. He also does hair. My mother needed a haircut. My mother is not a pleasant person. (Have I mentioned that before?) Let me elaborate.
My mother would tell a stranger's child in the aisle of a grocery store, "Get your goddam hands off that!" Picking up a dish that is shockingly hot without using gloves means you are a "stupid fuck". (This from someone who stuck her hand in a whirring garbage disposal to retrieve a dish cloth and mangled herself. Karma, indeed.) I have a cousin who is "a goddam whore" and my mother works with countless "goddam dumb sons o' bitches", though she will someday quit because "I hate that fucking place." My mother is not fit for public consumption. Knowing this, I mentioned that my One Drunk Friend does hair. I don't know what I could have been thinking.
Mama went to My One Drunk Friend and L-O-V-E-S her hair. She also L-O-V-E-S my One Drunk Friend. And he L-O-V-E-S her. "HE'S GAY?!?!" she blurted to me at Bingo last night. (OK, I go to Bingo and the first one of you queens that snickers, I will snatch your wig off and burn it like the Bastille's flag.) "But he's so GOOD LOOKING!" she said, as if the two should have been mutually exclusive. (And as if I wouldn't take the underhanded jab she meant it to be.) And he is. Really. He has a cleft in his chin that you could store office products in. He has that 1970's Please-God-Let-The-Wind-Blow hair and a body that defies his years. He's tall and he's polite and he takes good care of his mama - who lives just a block over from here. (Note: In a town of 3,000 people, everybody lives "just down the street".) And he drinks. A lot. All the time. And my mother L-O-V-E-S him. This can't be good.
I dated a drunk once...briefly. Actually, I dated a bottle of scotch that was conveniently attached to a man with an occasionally functioning penis and an Insurance Agency. That was fun. He gave me a diamond earring and took me to Arizona for my 30th birthday. My friend Joyce (there, I mentioned you. Happy now?) in Omaha, I believe, still wishes that I was dating Scotchy McDroolsalot. So I am pretty gunshy when it comes to dating the bottle. Besides, there aren't any indications that he likes me even half as much as Mama likes him. The real rub here is that My One Drunk Friend will now be Mama's pet Hook-Up Project. My mother, the foul-mouthed Yente. That's not a profession she needs to take up after the age of 60.
And we're not even Jewish.
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