Ivory Therapy

I made a commitment to my old friend Paula, when she was diagnosed with liver cancer weeks ago, that I would sit at the piano and pound out a "Praise Offering", as it's called, on her behalf daily. I've been there a lot lately. It seems to be the thing I can do most honestly to bring whatever is up there down into these situations.

When my One Drunk Friend ("Mama and My One Drunk Friend", February archives) stopped by before Christmas to regale me with What A Friend We Have In Jesus several times over, I nudged him over on the bench and did a couple rounds of "Great Is Thy Faithfulness". He was surprised in that way that drunk folks tend to be. He got shy about playing and said something about not having taken as many lessons as I did. I told him something I'd never told anyone outside The Church: I've never had a lesson.

When I went to college, lived with Grandma and Pappy, and took to singing regularly in church, I was forever in need of an accompanist. The gracious ladies who obliged me never declined but even just to bellow on my own time was less than fulfilling without some accompaniment. I got frustrated. I hadn't yet completely sold out to the notions of prayer, faith, and the supernatural. I ended up after services one Sunday night locked in a momentous conversation with one of the ladies of the congregation. We talked about prayer and how I wished I was fully convinced of its efficacy. This was in the early days of The Faith Movement.

The Faith Movement, at its inception, had ordinary people running around "Confessin' and Possessin'" as we called it. The notion was - and is - that if you could say it, you could have it. The Bible does, indeed, note that "...the power of life and death is in the tongue..." This particular theology takes note, as well, that several times throughout the Bible, God "calls things that are not as though they are". (Ex: He called Abraham a father of many nations when he was, in fact, the father of but one bastard child.) This was the environment in which I was quickly coming of age.

In that conversation after church, I arrogantly and dismissively ended the exchange with some version of "If God answers prayer, I want to play the piano." I didn't think much more of it. Some time later - I don't recall if it was days or weeks - I happened through the Fellowship Hall where there was a small, tan console piano with a sheet of music propped on it. I sat at the keyboard and in an instant the chord markings above the lyrics made perfect sense. To this day I cannot explain how, in that moment, the music training I'd had as a vocalist, four years in childhood playing violin, one semester of guitar lessons in high school...How these all converged in that moment and resulted in me playing that song.

I didn't - and don't - have the ability to sit down and sight-read a piece or even learn to play it as written. But with the "tabs" or chords, I can fake my way through almost anything. They make "fake books" for just such a purpose. I bought two of them that just arrived on Tuesday. A trained pianist would probably clutch their pearls in agony to hear me. That's OK. I don't play for them. I play for me. It stopped My One Drunk Friend in his tracks. Because he isn't from inside the circle of those who speak of such things, I didn't tell him how, exactly, I ended up playing the piano without lessons. I'm not entirely sure myself. I don't think it's coincidence that it happened shortly after issuing The Challenge in the sanctuary.

I don't think my ability - such as it is - was intended for anyone's edification so much as my own. It has served that purpose well. The only songs I can play from memory are worship songs, hymns, songs from The Tour. Every time I sit at a piano anywhere, that's what comes out. I suppose that's only right, under the circumstances.

So that's my therapy - outside of Therapy. I thumb through the hymn books, worship books and now my fake books playing until my hands cramp up. It's not something I share with everyone, mainly because it's not "real" piano playing, I guess. And it takes too much explanation, if the question gets asked. My "catalogue" of music isn't for everyone. But it reaches a place in me that often seems so remote. King David, it's written, played the harp in his youth to soothe the anger of King Saul. I get that. I really get that. If there is anything that proves the existence of God, it is once through "I Believe In A Hill Called Mt. Calvary" with Guy Penrod. Music soothes the savage beast. And all that.

Even if you're faking it.

C'est La Guerre

It's funny how the smallest things can keep you from tending to the largest things. I discovered a flat tire on Saturday, which has had me grounded until the local Tire, Bait & Bible shop gets two new ones on Wednesday. Meanwhile, "Joe" ("I'm The Hen", January Archives) had a major heart attack.

I'm trying to organize a Plate-A-Day food rotation among some of the other boys to keep his partner fed. "Tremaine", as he was called in this space earlier, is an insulin-dependent diabetic and isn't paying attention to himself while Joe is hospitalized awaiting 6 (SIX!) bypasses on Friday or thereabouts. I'll head to The City on Thursday and Friday to mother hen a little and try to distract. These are good people. As I've said, I know some good people.

I won't likely visit this space often in the next few days. I'm still not smoking (today at 7 a.m. was 14 days, unless you count....). I have a teensy headache from stress, I'm sure. I've delayed the bathroom remodel until next week to clear the schedule for taking care of The Boys. I'm just two tires shy of a Jewish Mother.

One of my favorite faces in our Friday night dinner group is a retired clown (no, really). He unwittingly reduced me to rubble today. Because everything I've experienced in the last week or so has been filtered through the screen of my faith, for some reason, he brought to mind The Widow's Mite. Now, I don't know if this man subscribes to any religion, faith or practice. But his kindness and generosity out of his need pointed directly to this example from the Gospels when I got his email:

Mark 12:41-44 41 And he sat down over against the treasury, and beheld how the multitude cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much. 42 And there came a poor widow, and she cast in two mites, which make a farthing. 43 And he called unto him his disciples, and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, This poor widow cast in more than all they that are casting into the treasury: 44 for they all did cast in of their superfluity; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living.

Luke 21:1-4 1 And he looked up, and saw the rich men that were casting their gifts into the treasury. 2 And he saw a certain poor widow casting in thither two mites. 3 And he said, Of a truth I say unto you, This poor widow cast in more than they all: 4 for all these did of their superfluity cast in unto the gifts; but she of her want did cast in all the living that she had.

I live a comfortable existence without financial worries (today). But this man - and others - have offered out of their need to help these two guys in crisis. What they offer makes a mockery of anything I could give. It's humbling, to say the least. We all share a disease - some more advanced than others - and a name, to some extent. I guess it just strikes me as profound when the help comes from within the circle of affected people. Such a big thing (money) didn't keep him from doing the smallest thing (a plate of food), but my small thing has kept me from doing anything.

The French have a couple of sayings when things deserve little more than a shake of the head. "C'est la vie" is well-known ("That's life!"). I like the other one. It's a little edgier and evokes a lot more with a click of the tongue: "C'est la guerre."

That's war.

Farmisht and Farklempt

Farmisht: (adj.)(Yiddish) Befuddled, mixed up, confused
Farklempt: (adj.)(Yiddish) depressed, distraught; choked up, extremely emotional, on the verge of tears; grieving

How odd that a couple of Yiddish words would best describe my Christian Crisis. My Therapist Would Say this is worth $110. Everyone else would say I'm certifiable. I'm not sure they'd be wrong.

Sometimes, when you get far enough away from something, you get the idea that it would be OK to toy with it. Looking at the sun through a pin-hole box during an eclipse is an example. Lobbing rocks into the Grand Canyon from behind the railing is another. Talking long distance with an old flame....that sort of thing.

I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but I unwittingly invited a Clash of the Titans into my head when I started toying with the notion of going back to church. For several days, I've been listening to little other than Southern Gospel - hymns, most notably. Before I sound truly crazy, let me say that I don't have any doubts about my sexuality. Twenty years has proven it to be pretty much entrenched and undeniable. I'm not close to splitting hairs between "gay" and "homosexual" and giving the keynote address at an Exodus, Int'l convention (which I hear are thinly veiled orgies, anyway). But I've moved two big concepts into one small room of my head and it's gotten pretty crowded.

I've struck up a dialogue with someone who is travelling the same road from the opposite direction, more or less. He's never really left the confines of the Christian fortress but struggles with acknowledging and managing an orientation that seems so incompatible with that world. I left it in a blaze of glory and swore I would never go back. And now I'm inching toward it knowing full well how this plays out in the end. It's not the first time I've inched. I've raced back before. It hasn't ever worked for very long.

This will make no sense to anyone who grew up outside of Fundamental Christianity, so you should stop reading here if you're already confused. My prose is tortured on the best days and today is going to be one of the worst days as I try to get the relevant questions down on paper for my own benefit. I have to enumerate some of my beliefs so I can, at least, see the conflicts. This may be the single craziest thing I've ever done. But I miss it. I can't lie. I miss church and singing and the undeniable presence of the supernatural that only a fool could miss when it happens. We grow up with a belief in those circles that once you've experienced that "touch", you will never walk comfortably outside it. That's probably nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophecy. But maybe it's not.

I believe in God. I believe that I was known before I was born. I also believe that this is a truth outside the limits of what the Constitution allows the government to endorse, so it should not be taught in schools.

I believe that God has a plan for my life, no matter what I wrote before. I believe that individuals can be in and out of God's will. I believe I was supposed to minister. I don't believe that walking away from that made my Grandfather crazy, although that is a tempting, nagging, and narcissistic thought. I've lived 20 years as an openly, happily Gay Man. I've lived half of that time as an openly Gay Man with HIV/AIDS. It doesn't take a genius to figure out whether one can backtrack and pick up where one left off with the ministry gig.

I believe that I am gay, homosexual, etc. Of the Big Three beliefs, this is the one for which I have absolute, irrefutable proof - and references! I believe that I have been so inclined since my youngest memory. I have seen 16 mm film of me on a tricycle at age 3, I think, waving furiously at the camera with a wrist that apparently has no tendons or ligaments. No straight person waves like that - even at age 3. Jokes aside, there wasn't a lot of conscious thought put into this. I was always going to "be this way". I don't know whether I was born this way or made this way. I still don't think it matters. I am this way. That matters.

I believe that one cannot honestly walk away from their love tendency (to take sex out of the equation). I think if we are wired or groomed or born or nudged into a gender attraction that we will always love in that direction. Whether celibacy or pure whoredom ensues does not stop us from loving who we're going to love. No religion I can name identifies the love as bad. They usually focus on the sex. But...and this is where I struggle... Christianity teaches us that "such as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." That's a big one. It seems to say that whether you ever acted on it or not, if the inclination is still there you're still on the cosmic hook for it.

I believe no one has ever gotten out from under the inclination of homosexuality. If true, and if there is no room in heaven for the homo, then anyone with the inclination is "lost" from the outset. One might change one's behaviors, but if the inclination remains, she's putting lipstick on a pig. I wish I didn't believe this dire, damning theory. I wish I didn't. I wish I could embrace both the faith and the faygelah openly and equally and with abandon. But I acknowledge the conflict.

For nearly 20 years, I've tossed my faith overboard to keep the ship afloat. Improbably, it's crawled back aboard - coughing, hacking, a little worse for the wear. It's a little like the soap opera story line where neither the villain nor the heroine ever really dies - no matter what they say. I'm completely flummoxed that I even have this internal crisis going on right now. I'm about as together on this topic as a person gets, I thought.

They used to ask me, during that brief revival when I would "testify" to having lived as a gay man, if it was "gone", if I'd "repented", if I called it "sin". The only answer I could ever use with complete and total honesty was, "I want God's best for me." I did. And I do.

I spent all day yesterday locked indoors banging my head against the wall with this, telling myself to snap out of it. Nothing snapped. Nothing clicked, either. I told someone yesterday this is a little like ripping stitches out and hoping your arm doesn't fall off. It's a lot like picking at a scab and being fascinated that the wound is still there. Both sides of my brain insist that the whole would be a lot better off without the other half. That's the very definition of crazy, I'm sure.

No wonder I've ended up in the ditch.

Life Is Good

I've stopped counting my smokeless age in hours. It's days upon days now. Today was 11 days (unless you're rigid and legalistic and make me start over from The Friday Night Fall 9 days ago). I am eleven days cigarette-sober. Now I only think about it when I smell it.

Not much to report today. I'm impressed that I didn't get a stack of flaming emails from blog-reading militia men in Idaho after yesterday's post. Maybe we're reaching a point where we can say what's on our minds without impugning each other's citizenship. Wouldn't that be nice. Either way, kudos to the wingnuts...at least until I get the first piece of hate mail. I know those corners of society where there is little more offensive than a queer badmouthing the military and G.W. I know those corners well.

I have most of my M.B.A. to go with my other degrees. I will tell you that in one of the upper-echelon universities in this fair country of ours, there is a hard financial fact that they do not teach in business school. Some of my professors came from Harvard, Yale, Michigan - the big boy schools. They never mentioned this principle. I am doing a little karmic balancing by revealing it here - for the benefit of others. Ready?

Financial Fact: When you have committed to writing a large check for a major expense, such as a bathroom remodel, there will be one large emergency expense AND one very attractive purchase that will confront you in the same pay period.

Flat tire. Four DVD's, Five CD's - $99.95. Gaither Homecoming Series. I haven't been spending the money on smoking. In eleven days, I've saved $44.11. The music really only cost me $55.84, if you think about it. Plus, I love that music and they don't judge when I sing along. My neighbor in the unfortunately-painted Orange House is an auto mechanic. They know something's wrong with me - physically - so he didn't even balk when I sheepishly asked if he could get the donut on and the flat tire off. I know some good people. And it's not their fault the house is orange. They're just renting.

When people ask where I live - and they always ask where I live - the conversation always concludes with "Oooohhhhh...next to The Orange House?" I know full well that much of the traffic past my little corner has nothing to do with daily errands. Some of them make the trip on the off-chance they might catch The Gay Guy and The Orange House in the same tableau. The house is more unique than I am around town. They might not know, but I do, that I am (at best) one of seven gay men in town. I think every time I go through the checkout line without a vibrator, tofu and a stack of Playgirls, they must scratch their heads and vow to watch Will & Grace more often. It's nice to be noticed.

No headache today. No Shoe-in-Glue mouth this morning. I forgot to take the diuretic this afternoon, so I'll be up all night peeing - again. I think the headache and what-not was more sinus-related than anything. I did good, though. I didn't take a single pill - other than Tylenol - to blunt the pain. That's big for me. I do not tolerate pain. If this were 1835, I would endure pain. In 2006, there is no reason to be in pain - over anything. We have enough pills, gas and liquor to numb anything. I love that I live in this era. If you told someone in 1835 that 170 years hence they could be completely pain-free - and have a car - but in exchange would be the reality of AIDS and white women with corn rows....I think they'd have rolled the dice and said, "OK."

With the exception of the corn rows, life is pretty good.

Pair o' Docs

So My Therapist Says we can't meet today on account of a damn good reason. One would hope that might leave me without new material. The well, however, seems bottomless.

Either a sinus infection or the addition of a diuretic has had me in almost constant pain and a foul mood for the better part of 2 days now. I phoned The City to make an appointment with the M.D. - partly to complain to someone who has a prescription pad and partly to be educated on some recent medication changes that aren't making sense to me. I like this doc a lot. He doesn't even flinch when I balk or question. He doesn't seem to mind my controlling tendencies or my insistence that since it's my life on the line, I get to pick apart the treatment decisions. When I'm dead, I won't bother them anymore. Until then, they have a relentless partner in my treatment. I cancelled that appointment when My Therapist cancelled me. I also phoned in sick for the Social Group tonight. I'm spending a rare Friday night in.

When this is read someday - and it will be read someday - I want it noted that I spent nearly 3 months writing before I devoted a good number of sentences to a political screed. I'm fairly predictable, if you ask those who know me best. I don't tend to let what I consider political shondas to go unmentioned. When I decided to boycott Wal-Mart in favor of Target (it can be done - try it!) because of their atrocious record on employee compensation and health benefits, etc, etc... I mentioned their sins any time I heard someone mention their name. I still do that. It's become an impulse. The good but annoying kind of impulse, I like to think. My chest swelled with pride when Christi mentioned that she had taken a potshot at Wal-Mart while standing in one waiting for her paint to shake.

When I was younger, I was more prone to the unprovoked outburst. Now, I reserve my best material for blunt force responses. I rarely pick a fight on the topics anymore. But I don't run from many, either. Yesterday I got one of those fictitious emails that circulate. Some poor soul had supposedly been the victim of a horribly unpatriotic act at the hands of Starbucks. The suggestion was that we should all paint our faces red, white & blue and take to the streets to protest the java terrorists. The retraction came within 24 hours, to their credit, but not before I had replied simply, "Oh dear. How do we differ? Let me count the ways."

I got a civil reply about supporting the troops even if we don't support the war. On the heels of being reminded about Christianity's "Love The Sinner, Hate The Sin" schtick, my buttons were pushed. The parallel did not escape me.

I don't like war. I don't buy that this is or ever was a "war". I think it's incredibly naive of the vast majority of people to allow the commonly accepted term of "war" to be redefined the way it has been. I don't blame the Bushies. If you can find several million idiots and exploit them for your own gain, good on you. I blame the dumb people. Idiocy is its own reward. You get what you pay for. Caveat Emptor. All that.

Before anyone gets their panties wadded, I've held my tongue on this for 3 years while the charade of patriotism has swirled around me. You'll excuse me if I use the soapbox I designed for myself for a few paragraphs of well thought out retribution. I didn't hear this on TV first. That might be a good place for the other side to start when they decide to speak on the topic. And no, I did not serve my country in the military. I had "other priorities" to quote the sitting Vice-President. But more importantly, my country did not want me to serve. I tell. Don't ask me not to. It's a shame. Some of us have some real rage issues that would marry up with an AK-47 fairly nicely. Then again, who wants a bunch of angry gay folks with assault weapons when you're trying to write them out of the constitution. I see where they're coming from, perverse as it is. But I digress.

That said, I especially detest this deployment because this is the first time I've known anyone personally who has been deployed. But for the most part, I think smart people should never have laid down their intelligence at the feet of faux patriotism. This has always been about paybacks. Absent any 9/11, we'd have been here anyway. Anyone who tells you different is simply - and willfully - stupid. All of the lies have been revealed (unless you buy the redefining of the commonly accepted term "lie"). All of the motivations have been deconstructed to reveal the shams they are. You'd think even dimwitted people would have stopped the proselytizing by now. I'm supposed to embrace my distaste for the conflict yet support our people who are engaged in it. I'd like for one person to explain just how the fuck someone does that.

This has to be the second most ignorant concept ever parroted by an unthinking legion of lemmings. The first begins "Love The Sinner...". They are both either a paradox beyond our comprehension as mere mortals...or they're just silly to the point of dangerous stupidity. I lean decidedly toward the latter. If you "support the troops" but don't support what the troops are doing, just what do you support? If you applaud the person who pulls the trigger but don't like that they pulled the trigger, doesn't that make you either schizophrenic or stupid? Again, I lean decidedly toward the latter. I think it's a misplaced sense of obligation. For some reason, it's verboten to say that the people doing the thing you're allowed to hate are, themselves, assholes. I find it far more patriotic to point out the pile of lies (unless you redefine "lie" to mean something other than it means) and to say we shouldn't be doing what we're doing and those who do it should stop.

Just Following Orders doesn't work in the corporate world as a defense to anything. Morally, it doesn't hold any water, either. If your sense of patriotism finds a loophole in Just Following Orders, you have some hollow sense of God and Country. And that probably makes you an asshole, too. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say that no, I don't support our troops - because I don't support what they're doing - and I'll rest easy at night knowing that I didn't slap a magnetic friggin' ribbon to the back of my vehicle three years ago. I have walked away from the front doors of businesses simply because I saw a sign that ordered me to "Support Our Troops". My dollars spend equally well in places where more thought goes into the signage.

I have a question for the 25% of the American populace who have changed their minds about this cabal and its Middle Eastern Rah Rah Tour de Force: Do you feel ashamed or just stupid? As an intellectual matter, I'd like to think they realize that they're probably not qualified to vote anymore. As a moral matter, I'd like to think that they accept responsibility for enabling this whole thing. When someone votes to keep putting other folks in harm's way, I think stupidity is not a valid excuse. When their vote is sold for a Shock And Awe sideshow on someone else's land, they're pretty much just assholes. If more of us said so, perhaps they'd think twice before assuming we goose-step just like they do.

I wonder how they sleep at night.

H2 Woe

I'm probably the last among men of a certain age to start the ritual of The Water Pill. I had the prescription filled a long time ago - a year I think - to complement another regimen. But it seemed so innocuous by its name that I never, honestly, bothered to swallowed one.

Now that I'm in Day 9 of the Cold Turkey smoking cessation plan and hell-bent on lowering my blood pressure lest I stroke out, The Water Pill has returned to my prescribed regimen. This time, I took it. No one bothered to mention - until after I swallowed it at 8:30 p.m. - that it might be best not to take it in the evening. They would have been right. I peed every hour on the hour last night. I have a headache of monstrous proportions this morning. My mouth feels like I chewed on an old shoe covered in Elmer's Glue all night. I can't imagine that this lends itself to lower blood pressure. I'm imagining my de-hydrated bloodstream thickening like gravy by the minute.

I have a very minor leak from the bathtub fixtures. This old house I bought almost two years ago gets a new tub and a real shower next week. When I moved in, it had a shower head with a rubber hose attached to a nipple under the faucet. It has rested in a small bracket attached to the window sill over the tub since I've been here. High on my list of targets for improvement, it never really trumped the new roof, central heat and air, new carpet, replacement windows (...that tilt in for easy cleaning - like I'm going to have the energy for THAT anytime soon. What was I thinking?), new water heater, porch swing, dishwasher and garbage disposal. But the time has come for a real shower.

I discovered in the bid process that my tub is smaller than normal. (Insert penile reference here.) I didn't realize there were different tub sizes. Having always been an apartment dweller before now, I naively assumed a tub is a tub is a tub. Not so. I'll have a good extra 6 inches to soak in when the project is done next week. (Insert penile reference here and get it out of your system.) I'll also have a real shower - complete with fixtures where they belong and a door that opens and closes. It's always the little thing that thrills me about these improvement projects. When I had the windows replaced, I got a new storm door on the front. That was my favorite part. My new carpet is practically seamless. The garbage disposal is remarkably serene in its duty. The roof looks so white. It's the little things. For the shower project, it's the door. I can tell already.

There was snow on the ground this morning: not a lot, but enough to seem inappropriate for late March. The daffodils and emerging peonies don't look appreciative. The burgeoning grass, sprung from the seed I spread earlier, stood there a little horrified at its predicament. I don't talk to plants, but if I did, I would have assured them that warmer weather is coming and that they'd be able to drink that snow within the hour. That would make me a crazy person. So I don't talk to plants. But if I did...

I don't hear well. It's not that I don't listen. Although - in defense of poor listeners everywhere - it really does behoove one to remain interesting if you expect us to continue listening. You can't bring out a nice spinach salad with warm bacon dressing and follow it up with Shoe In Glue a la Lost Interest Five Minutes Ago and expect us to keep eating. That said, I don't hear well because I damaged my eardrum in childhood. Too much swimming, residual problems from the birth defects, etc. conspired to rupture the eardrum in my right ear when I was a kid. That happened twice. It was actually replaced both times. They burned out the old one and fashioned a new one with tissue from somewhere - I forget where.

It hasn't held over the years and everyone concerned - the doctors and I, most notably - have lost interest in continuing to repair what won't hold. So that side manages to catch a lot of muffled tones. It's handy at night. If I put my good ear on the pillow, I don't hear a thing. Then I get to worrying that I can't hear a thing and what if someone were coming in the back door or a fire broke out or the dog was strangling in the covers on the side of the bed or the police were beating at the door warning me of an escaped convict or..... So I take pills to get to sleep and put the bad ear on the pillow. Now I'm more likely to hear someone coming in the back door and I'm less likely to mind the fact.

I have a love/hate relationship with water. I love pools, but I have the ear thing to manage. I will no longer swim in lakes or ponds or most other small bodies of water that may harbor biting things in their murky depths. To say that I have a phobia about snakes would be to underestimate my reaction to them. I happened upon two of them near the house last summer. One surprised me when I had a shovel in my hands and I surprised myself at what I could do to a garter snake with a shovel, when provoked. The other snake was larger by a factor of ten, at least, and had the misfortune to cross my path when I was atop the riding lawn mower. In the Rock-Paper-Scissors of lawn care, Mower beats Snake. I had my feet up on the steering wheel as I made several passes over its carcass to ensure its demise. I have seen the sloughed-off skin of others enough to know that I did not eradicate the species. And don't even start with the mice thing. I don't care what snakes eat. I just want them to do it somewhere else. Mice I can manage on my own.

The ocean, though, has a pull that is almost spiritual for me. When I first put my toe in the Atlantic - in Atlantic City, 1983 - I got a chill. And not just because it was late October in New Jersey. I did it again in Miami in the summer of 1998 - just a toe. But I took my first full plunge in Ft. Lauderdale in February of 1999, I think it was. I remember laughing with that abandon that only children and Julia Roberts seem to achieve. I had no thought of snakes and sharks. I was acutely aware of how ridiculously overmatched I was. Surrender was the only option. And I laughed at the lunacy and the warmth and the salt. I've been awed ever since. That will change with my first jelly fish sting, snake bite, shark attack, etc. But until then I'll be a big beach and ocean fan.

Dottie Rambo sang a beautiful song written by the Gaithers many years ago that comes to my mind every single time it rains. It's titled, appropriately enough, "It's Beginning To Rain". In part, it advises

"It's Beginning to Rain - hear the voice of The Father
Saying, 'Whosoever will, come drink of this water.
I will pour my Spirit out on my sons and my daughters.'
If you're thirsty and dry, lift your hands to the sky.
It's Beginning To Rain."

Another favorite is the title song of the Reach Out Singers tour I did in 1983. "Grace Upon Grace", by Gordon Jensen:

"Grace Upon Grace, like the waves on the shore.
Always enough. Always more.
Grace Upon Grace, like the waves on the shore.
All that we need is ours from the Lord."

That imagery gets me every time. H2 Whoa.

Bingo!

I admit it. I love Bingo. I go weekly. I am not the youngest, the malest, nor the gayest person in the VFW Hall each week. And I win. A lot. I am the scourge of rural Bingo, if you listen in on some of the geriatric conversations. I have brought an impermissible amount of mojo with me that provides an illegal advantage over everyone else. I must be cheating. This is quite nearly the highlight of my week.

The retired music teacher from the local high school actually keeps track of how many more times I've won than he has. It's a running joke...sort of. When I won twice last night, he touched my elbow as I passed and notified me that the number was now 4. He doesn't know my last name. But he knows I've won 4 more times than he has since I started attending. While I was gone from the table briefly to fetch a burger and coke, one old lady groused to my tablemates that "last week was probably the only time he's been here that he didn't win." She's wrong. It had been three weeks since I'd won. But I have them psyched out to where they believe I've won even when I didn't. I know it's wrong to beat up on old people - even psychologically - but it's given me quite the perverse little boost.

Bingo has its own culture, such as it is. There are courtesies, faux pas, and rules of conduct - some explicit, some unspoken. Thou shalt not celebrate excessively. Thou shalt not complain about the smoke. Thou shalt act apologetic and embarrassed if you win more than once in an evening. It's two hours of reverent attention to the words from one man's mouth that bears a strong resemblance to church. Only instead of taking a collection, there are actually disbursements. Church has its own pay-off, I suppose. But you can use your Bingo winnings at the store.

Bingo has moments of high drama and tension that rival any sporting event. Not much compares with hoping for the one final number to launch you into the winner's circle. I'm a little surprised there aren't more strokes at Bingo, given the average age of the participants. My own untenably high blood pressure remains unchanged after a week of not smoking and double doses of medication. I doubt Bingo is to blame. I had hoped that not smoking would have a tangible pay-off, like Bingo does. I was wrong. And I'm a little concerned.

I'm a sucker for short-term reinforcement. Delayed gratification is a stranger to my doorstep. It was true in my career. It's true when I shop. If I bring home 3 shirts and 2 pairs of pants from the store, I will wear them all within 48 hours. If I buy 3 kinds of chips and 2 boxes of snack crackers, I'll have them all open within 24 hours. I have great difficulty denying myself anything. That makes the smoking accomplishment all the more impressive - to me, at least.

I would like it if dating were a bit more like Bingo and a bit less like church. I understand the Walk By Faith, Not By Sight concept of living well in hopes that the afterlife will bring great reward. As a dating parallel, however, that's a crap shoot, at best. I don't think I want to be a good person on the off chance that I'll find Mr. Right. I think there must be a lot of bitter, formerly-good, people in the afterlife who did the right thing and had jack to show for it.

Leave me in the smoky, snarling VFW Hall of love where I have a better than average chance of winning on a regular basis and losing never lasts the whole month. I'm ready again.

Call my number, dammit.

Love Won Out

"On September 18, 2004, a 'Love Won Out' conference sponsored by the national conservative evangelical Christian organization Focus on the Family (FOF) was convened in Minneapolis, Minnesota. According to FOF, 'The Love Won Out ministry provides Christ-centered, comprehensive conferences enlightening, empowering, and equipping families, church and youth leaders, educators, counselors, policy-makers, and the gay community on the truth about homosexuality and its impact on our culture.' This report details the authors' first-hand account of the conference and describes the frames and world view put forth by ex-gay leaders."

So begins A Report From "Love Won Out: Addressing, Understanding and Preventing Homosexuality" courtesy of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force. They went undercover and issued this report just under a year ago. Those are some ballsy folks. I couldn't even make myself go to church anonymously on Sunday and these gals were infiltrating lynch mob training. I don't even remember how I stumbled across the report online today. But it was spellbinding in its calculation and manipulation. It's 20 pages you won't regret having read.

The whole of the report is available for free reading on NGLTF's Web site at http://www.thetaskforce.org/reslibrary/list.cfm?pubTypeID=2#pub229. It reminded me why I don't fellowship with those folks like I once did. It's not that I don't like the idea of God, prayer, worship, etc. I just really don't like the people who congregate there. If they would clean the place out and let me have an hour with a microphone, a piano and the assurance of uninterrupted bliss, I would do it faithfully. But as this report reveals (like you didn't know this already) - these people will say and do anything, including sacrificing their own integrity on the altar of your conversion.

Here's one of those Guide To Life things that has stood me in good stead over the years: If the other guy is lying to bring you to The Truth, something is wrong. Like I've said before, I'm pretty simple when it comes to the big questions. Lest I be too obtuse, manipulation and subterfuge count as lying. If they have to trick you into their idea of holiness, something - yet again - is wrong. When observing two actors in a scene, the one who is most truthful is the one with whom you should cast your lot. Don't trust a liar. Don't believe a manipulator. These people are friggin' creepy scary.

Leave aside the notion that you can trick somebody straight. That they think their choice of words and posture can talk you out of same-sex attraction is just flat frighteningly stupid. They throw around the best psychology 1930 has to offer when they discuss emotionally distant parents as responsible for homosexual children. Wouldn't that be convenient? Nothing is ever noted, however, about the children of emotionally distant parents who are straight. Exceptions do pose problems for rules, no matter what they ask you to believe. But how sweet, in a way, to think that a hug from Dad would cause Vagina Lust to spring forth from my loins. These people are friggin' creepy scary.

And why are they so interested in my loins, anyway? I liked it better when they pretended we didn't exist. If one lie is just as bad as the next, let's go back to that one.

I spent enough time behind the lines myself to know that the very name of this program is a double-entendre: Love One(of those queers)Out(of homosexuality). They have a lot of history at "loving" people out of things...mostly out of their ranks. Most frequently, their version of love toward gay men and lesbians is as toxic as an arsenic martini. I was briefly encouraged by the admonishment they offered one another to drop the Adam & Steve line and to focus a little more on the Love part of "Love The Sinner, Hate The Sin". Never mind that the "ex-gay" leaders who addressed the crowd are, of necessity, congenital liars if their own words are true. Almost to a person, they split the hair between their own definitions of "gay" and "homosexual".

One is "homosexual", they contend, as long as one is unhappy with his or her orientation. One is only "gay", no pun intended, if one is happy with it. Therefore, the "Ex Gays" are not "gay" as they define it, they are merely homosexual. Let's bring this into a little clearer focus. If you cut my leg off, I would be an amputee. Whether or not I was happy being one-legged would not change the fact that I would be an amputee. I could choose whatever label suited me best, but it would be undeniable that I was missing a leg. A rose, by any other name, the man said, is still a queer with a limp. The distinction they draw is clever. Oh, it's still a lie, for sure. But it's undeniably clever. That they can deliver it with a straight (pun intended) face is the scary part.

No real surprises, just sad confirmation that most churches are still being held hostage. Until the God I know chooses to pay whatever ransom these "lovers" require, I'll keep having church at the piano in my living room or, as Mark calls it, "Worshipping at St. Mattress". That's too bad, too. I think we'd make a pretty nice addition to the scene.

Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe [unto him], through whom they come! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones. -- Luke 17:1,2 (King James Version)

Idiopathic

id·io·path·ic (Pronunciation: "id-E-&-'path-ik)
Function: adjective
: arising spontaneously or from an obscure or unknown cause

I did not make it to church on Sunday. I was all dressed up, smoke-free, and ready to get my God on. I ended up an hour and a half away eating some of the world's best fried chicken with my cousins and Grandma. So no one misses out, the world's best fried chicken comes from Chicken Mary's in Frontenac, KS. If you've never eaten at Chicken Mary's (or Chicken Annie's, for that matter), you should not speak when the topic of fried chicken comes up in conversation.

I don't know why I chose chicken over church. When I was in the hospital once and had some obvious malady, I learned the word "idiopathic". It's become one of my favorite words. In medical cases, it has the equivalence of "Well, would you look at THAT!" It does not inspire confidence, but it is a refreshing admission of ignorance in the haze of rushed arrogance that often accompanies medicine's practice. When I was finished being disturbed that there was no explanation for what ailed me, I was rather pleased that my failing body had managed to stump a team of well-trained physicians. I think they should give out cars for that. It's at least as much of an accomplishment as anything on Wheel of Fortune.

On this last day of Winter, the season seems to have come to itself. Temperatures have retreated from the 70's and 80's to the 30's. Snow is in the forecast. Spring will awaken tomorrow in at least a coating of ice, if not snow. We've had Spring all Winter. Now we'll have Winter come Spring. I doubt there's a good explanation for that.

My cousin's daughter is 4 going on 30. Her name is Libby (short for Liberty). She has red hair that most women pay to get. She is jaw-droppingly pretty, as some children manage to be. She has a tiny voice that seems too small to wrap around most of the words she uses. She gives precocious a good name. Grandma told the story over lunch that Libby had sat upon her lap a few days ago and asked her how she was doing. Grandma had told her that she was doing just fine, thank you. "You're looking older," the four year-old advised. We gasped and shrieked and rolled with laughter - Grandma included. The honesty of a four year-old begged for the soothing white lies of kindness so I offered, "You don't look that much older."

"I have a mirror," she deadpanned.

She's 82. She looks much older than she once did, for sure. Not suddenly, but in the last five or six years, she seems to have taken on that haggard, stooped, elderly look. I don't know what compelled me to suggest otherwise.

Except for the Three Fag Stumble on Friday night, I have been smoke-free for a bit over five days. Even if we started counting over from the stumble, this evening I'll hit my magic 72-hour mark. The cravings are few and far between and easily ignored now. I bought an enormous can of mixed nuts at the general store today. That should keep my hands busy. I also bought another skein of yarn to finish the umpteenth afghan I've started. Two of them I've ceded to the dog - one because it was too small for human use (my first attempt) and the other because it unraveled and he liked it that way. I don't know why I keep crocheting afghans. Everyone who wants one has one. I'm going to need another wing to keep them in if I continue. Someone suggested that I make smaller lap-sized blankets for the elderly at The Home. I think those ladies have probably forgotten more about crocheting than I'll ever know. I don't want the criticism of the aged visited upon my hobby. I'm not sure why that is.

It's lovely to have the concept of "idiopathic" firmly lodged in one's brain. It excuses the need for a cogent explanation of every little thing. My Therapist said I smoked because it was an Oral Fixation. More specifically, he suggested it represented either a breast or a penis. I said, "Thank you, Sigmund, but sometimes a cigarette is just a cigarette."

Not everything has an explanation. I'm not sure why that is.

Rainy Days and Sundays

It's raining, it's Sunday, and the wagon keeps roll, roll, rollin' along. I did not smoke in the last 36 hours since stepping off the wagon for a few smokes Friday night. I was rather surprised that the cravings yesterday were weaker by far than they had been. Maybe it's the Hair Of The Dog thing. Anyway, my intention is not to smoke and so far, not bad.

I've been spending more time at the piano lately. I pulled out the folder that holds a lot of the arrangements from my time touring with the ensemble years ago. I played a few of them and enjoyed remembering that year - 1983. I had either started a journal I never finished, or I started a letter to someone that I never mailed. Either way, I found it - for the first time in all the years I must have glanced in that folder.

I was 18, in college, and living with my grandparents. Pappy had asked me and one of the high school kids from the church to go meet the tour bus that was arriving that afternoon and help them unload their equipment at the church. The whole day seemed electric. It was one of those feelings you get when you have a feeling fate is about to take the road in front of you and rend it into a fork. It's the feeling you have when the air gets very still after a storm and you're pretty sure the storm isn't over. I've always been excitable. But this had some deeper undertones than my usual giddiness. The singers were comin'! The singers were comin'!

I'd never heard of the group. I hadn't ever heard their music. I didn't even know if they were any good. I didn't know anybody who knew them. It was just one of those things. They arrived in a 40-foot customized motor home and ten of them disembarked. They were ordinary to a fault but my mouth had gone dry when we stood inside the church and watched the "bus" pull into the gravel parking lot. "THAT," I said to Michael, "THAT is what a person ought to do with a year of his life." I was gone. They could have come in and suggested that we drink Kool-Aid, pick up snakes and eat live chickens and I'd still have gotten on that bus. We helped them lug in speakers, amplifiers, drums, microphone stands, sound boards, guitars... Right now, my heart is in my throat just thinking about it some 23 years later. I'm excited all over again.

"The Reach Out Singers and Orchestra", they were called - headquartered in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Only 1 of the 10 was actually from the vicinity of Sioux Falls. One was from L.A. (!), Wisconsin, New Jersey, Tennessee, Illinois, etc. They split up and stayed with various families in the churches where they ministered. Grandma and Grandpa were taking in the director of the group. I lived with Grandma and Grandpa. We'd be there together. At Grandma's house. The director and I. Together. Wow. He was the one from L.A.

Over dinner at Grandma's house, they embarrassed me by pointing out that I was doing my share of singing in church. I thought that was likely not the sort of thing one offers up to a DIRECTOR of a group that just arrived in a MOTOR HOME! I had the same feeling you'd get if your mother pointed out to Julia Child just how nicely you can make toast. I quickly changed the subject to their travels. I wanted to hear all about the glamorous, glitzy life that was the itinerant musician. I had a bad case of wanderlust. I was in my second semester of college. The road was forking right there at the dinner table.

After their concert that night, which was moving, I was surprised by the director's announcement that they were soon to lose one of their members and would be auditioning prospective replacements as they traveled. Their talent office would also be recruiting, but if anyone would like to make a demo tape, they'd be happy to stick around and help out. Four or five people - including the pastor's wife - encircled me and convinced me that "It Couldn't Hurt". So I threw up in the men's room and agreed to sing for the singers. This is like having your mother tell Picasso you draw really pretty pictures and then having Picasso look at you and say, "OK, paint something." These folks weren't Elvis, but you couldn't have convinced my Central Nervous System of that. I made the tape.

The next morning, I went to the church where they'd be loading up and found them doing aerobics to a Stormie Omartian cassette tape. I was invited to join in the exercise time. We were bonding. I helped them load up the last of their luggage and equipment. I felt like I was supposed to be on the bus, but didn't have the arrogance to assume as much. They pulled away and headed for Oklahoma. In a few days, the phone rang. It was the talent office. In Sioux Falls. They wanted me and could I be about 150 miles from here in 3 weeks prepared to stay on the bus for the next 9 months? Everything in my head went gray. I knew I should talk to my parents. I was in school - it was March. So many things to consider. But this was the single coolest thing that had happened to me since birth. I could make it happen.

My parents said "yes". If they'd said "no", I would have chalked it up to pure heathenism and gone anyway. I know I would have. My grandparents said, "of course"! My professors said, "You've got to be kidding." I was on full scholarship, so the money wasted meant nothing to me. I would pick up where I left off when the tour was over at the end of the year. I had "tested out" of more credit hours than I would miss the following semester anyway. They told me that if I completed all the work, took all the tests, wrote all the papers and took all the final exams due over the remaining 9 weeks, I could have credit for the current semester's courses. They had never done this for a Freshman before, they noted. And it probably wasn't a good idea if I wanted to preserve my GPA, they said. They didn't say I couldn't do it, though. So I called back the talent director, accepted the job, collected all my assignments and stopped going to classes so I could accelerate through the remaining material on my own. Two days in, by priority mail, came the folder I re-discovered yesterday - with a note and a cassette tape - that I needed to learn the vocal arrangements in the same time frame.

I got the best grades of any semester in 8 years of college that time around. I was a very good student in the other semesters, but it happens that my grades that aborted semester topped them all. I learned the vocal arrangements. I got on that motor home in Americus, Kansas at a little Methodist church, I believe, and ended up in Copenhagen, Denmark where I started the abbreviated journal I found yesterday. It mentions spending 9 hours in the airport in Brussels. I don't remember that. I wrote that we made up a song about getting nothing but bread on the plane. I don't remember that.

I remember, though, that we had an overnight lay-over in Brussels and that I encountered my first bidet in that hotel room. The same director who had stayed with us at Grandma's house 7 months earlier told me it was a "foot bath" for weary tourists. I thought that was a marvelous idea. We were dropping our luggage in our rooms and meeting back in the lobby for a walking tour that night across La Grande Place. We saw the Mannequin Pis and all the grand vistas that Brussels has to offer. We walked past NATO Headquarters. I remember all that. I remember feeling so giddy and tired and exuberant that I blurted out, "I can't WAIT to get back and soak my feet in that FOOT BATH!" A general stunned silence ensued. One of the guys said, "What foot bath?" I explained that we had one in our room that bore a striking resemblance to a toilet. One of the women in the group pulled me aside and whispered the truth about bidets in my ear. I was a lot younger than I thought I was.

I think I may head to church this morning. I don't like the expectations that come with it and the inevitable disappointment that it doesn't live up to memory. No buses will arrive to carry me off to exotic lands with bidets where I'll sing a command performance before the Danish Army (that really happened). But I'll probably go anyway. "That's just what you do," to borrow a phrase from mother.

Sometimes you go with your gut.

Three

I had three. I thought I might. But it was only three. This morning at 7 a.m. would have been 3 full days, so the number fits. It wasn't even three whole ones. And I didn't buy any, so it's not like I fell off the wagon, slew the horse and burned the wagon. I just stepped off to pee, really. Now I'm back on. And I'll hear nothing different of it.

So My Therapist Says he smokes. That's very good. I don't much trust people who don't have some obvious flaw, habit, etc. The appearance of perfection is the last refuge of assholes, I believe. I relayed the message from a friend that I should get a refund or a discount every time I make him cry. Then again, I noted, he may just be a weeper. He disclaims that label. He mentioned some deliciously nasty tidbit about someone with a remarkably sad story over which he's shed not a tear. It's all in the delivery, he said. So I've still got it, it would appear. He said music gets him. He asked if it got to me and I answered too quickly that it didn't. I hadn't considered the breadth of options.

Southern Gospel Music makes me cry - when it's supposed to. I spent the last hour trying to find the lyrics to a song that illustrates the kind of music that moves me. I couldn't find them. And I hate to be inaccurate when I quote somebody. But I stumbled across the Web site of one of the men associated with the song. His name is Kirk Talley - a very well-known name in Southern Gospel circles. I don't know Mr. Talley. We've never met. I was looking for the lyrics to a song that his sister-in-law sings with haunting beauty, "Thinkin' 'Bout Home". Instead, I found Kirk Talley's site that chronicles his nightmarish struggle with same sex attraction, extortion, public outing, thoughts of suicide... That made me cry.

I never had the kind of voice that would make me famous. I never had the sort of face people would put on album covers. I was always just a notch below on both counts - in the boundless sea of "Pretty Good!". But people would appear so moved - and not just my Grandma - when I would "minister in music", as we call it. That was always gratifying. I think I always knew that it was more important to make an impact than to reach perfection. If I was never great, I'd be happy just to matter.

My Therapist Says that someone mentioned this Blog to him - without realizing they were speaking to the Title Character. I was excited! This was GOOD!! I wondered what people said to each other about it when I wasn't standing around. I wondered if people said anything. I have gotten some nice notes from people - anonymous and otherwise - that have validated what I thought I was doing. Some of them are funny in their exuberance. Some are ridiculous in their praise. There was a marriage proposal. From a married man.

My Therapist Says his friend really liked it. Something was said about good writing. I'm not a good writer. I am not a good writer. I don't write well, technically speaking. I have no training, aside from Comp 103, in writing. I don't write as evidence of my ability. I write because I believe that in the exhibitionism I will be truthful with myself, above all. I think by doing this out in the open, as it were, I'll be bound to truthfulness as I look at myself and my life. It's become my accountability partner, as we used to call it in church.

My Therapist said the crying thing wasn't so much in the story as in the delivery. That's what they used to say about my singing. I knew I wasn't "great". But I knew I had a presence and that things happened when I touched a microphone in a sanctuary. I know I don't write well, but I hear that people have seen themselves or been moved or gleaned something from my efforts. That's cool. That's really cool. Oh...and I found those lyrics.

"Thinkin' 'bout Home" - by Terry Toler

"A penny for your thoughts" I said to the old man
As he sat there on the park bench all alone
With silver hair and wrinkled brown eyes gleaming
He smiled and said "Just thinkin' 'bout my home"

I sat down and we shared some laughs together
And the cinema of remembrance, it did roll
We talked about life's gains and, yes, its losses.
But mostly he just talked about His home.


"Oh, I'm thinkin' 'bout home.
Thinkin' 'bout goin' home.
Dreamin' 'bout leavin' here.
I'm ready to be movin' on.
It won't be long before the sun will set and I'll be gone.
But until then, I'll be thinking 'bout home."

I said "Tell me old man where's your home and what's it like"
"Oh ain't nothing 'round here that compares
You see a King had it built and gave the deed to me
And all my family's already there"

He said...

"I'm thinkin' 'bout home
Thinkin' 'bout goin' home
Dreamin' 'bout leavin' here"
He's ready to be movin' on
"It won't be long before the sun will set and I'll be gone
But until then, I'll be thinking 'bout home"

Fifty and Nifty

Hi, my name is Tom. And I'm a smoker. It's been 51 hours and 4 minutes since my last dri...err...cigarette. Legend has it that 72 hours is The Hump. But I have a speed bump squarely in my path: The weekly HIV Social Group - rife with smokers - Friday night - alcohol - and St. Patrick's Day. If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere.

I also have, between here and 72 hours, 3 hours of driving. I loved to smoke while driving. 1 1/2 hours each way today. The cosmos is throwing everything it has at me. I will not be defeated. I will not be defeated. I will not be defeated. I could be defeated. I could chuck it all tonight in favor of a good time, relaxing smoke with The Boys. Nothing would smooth over the bumps of therapy like a couple of cigarettes and a soak in the hot tub. The stars are aligned against my success today. Maybe I just shouldn't count Fridays - like Lent. The Catholics get a break today, why shouldn't I? And they're accountable to GOD. Or so they say. I haven't made this deal with anyone but myself. If I cheat, it's not like I can heave a lightning bolt in my own direction.

And I could always lie on here and say that I hadn't slipped up when I did. That would change the documentary nature of this, of course. But for one well-timed drag on a smooth Marlboro Ultra-Light or an elegant Benson & Hedges Deluxe Ultra-Light (in the handsome Gold box - more an accessory than an addiction, really)...who knows what principles I might compromise. On the other hand, maybe next week would be a better time to cheat. Really solidify my sobriety base first and then tempt fate from a stronger, more entrenched quitting mindset. I'll have really quit in another week. Then I can smoke more casually. That's the ticket! I'll make sure I've really, really quit before I smoke again. If only more people knew these secrets.

I'll make myself 1,000 promises and tell myself 100 lies between now and the next cigarette - whether it's tonight or tomorrow or next year or never. I suppose that's what wanting does to you. When you want it deep enough and hard enough, you can make sense out of any circumstance that stands between you and the object of your desire, I suppose. I can almost hear it...nicotine...serenading me from the gas station on the corner:

No wind, (no wind) no rain, (no rain)
Nor winter’s cold
Can stop me, babe (oh, babe) baby (baby)
If you’re my goal


The siren song that woos me from 2 blocks down became a scene-chewing torch song last night around 9 p.m., so I took pills. They were my regular pills, but it made the tobacco's song a little less convincing as it raged:

And I am telling you
I'm not going.
You're the best man I'll ever know.
There's no way I can ever go,
No, no, no, no way,
No, no, no, no way I'm livin' without you.
I'm not livin' without you.
I don't want to be free.
I'm stayin',
I'm stayin',
And you, and you, you're gonna love me.
Ooh, you're gonna love me.

The gentle Diana Ross wisp of smoke morphs into a raging Jennifer Holliday addiction when the sun goes down. It's been a war of wills for over 50 hours. The American Cancer Society contends that as of 7 a.m. this morning, my sense of smell and taste have improved. I will enjoy my food more, they say. My risk of heart attack has begun to decrease. Honey, I ain't even gonna try to pull your leg on this one...that don't hold a candle to Ms. Holliday.

It's going to be a long, long, night.

Quitting Update 3: Hitting The Wall

Hi, my name is Tom. I'm a smoker.

Where are my steps? Surely, by now, I'm on 6 or 7. I'm flying without a net or a sponsor here. I know they say to avoid places where you used to indulge your habit. That presents a problem for me. I only ever smoked outside. Every time the dog has to pee, I reflexively reach for my lighter. Outside has become my enemy. It's come down to this: Agoraphobia or Smoking. Thank God I haven't been an indoor smoker in my home. I'd have to move.

It's been 34 hours and 24 minutes since I had my last cigarette. I find myself pacing, scratching imaginary itches, and flashing back to detox scenes from Starsky and Hutch (the TV version, not the movie). I've had the sweats twice. In the last hour. I think I'm Hitting The Wall.

Heroin couldn't possibly be this difficult to quit. At least it's relatively expensive and inaccessible. For $4.01 I could walk exactly 2 blocks and fix this whole situation. I think even the dog is jonesing. He would reflexively pee every time I reached for my smokes. We haven't been outdoors near as often in the last 34 hours and, now, 28 minutes. I'm probably giving him bladder cancer by quitting. I'm a horrible human being for not smoking. What was I thinking? Poor defenseless animal...

There are probably 5 families in North Carolina who will go to bed hungry tonight because I haven't copped in almost a day and a half. That comes to 7.43 children, if they meet the national average per household, I'll bet. I am personally responsible for the poor nutrition of 7 and almost 1/2 children and the bladder condition of one slightly overweight Yorkie. I'm a horrible human being. I've briefly considered going to church. That's how bad this is.

I'm doing Lamaze breathing when the really tough contractions....err...cravings hit. It helps. I think I just got over a big hill. I feel the tightness in my chest subsiding and I can unclench my jaw now. Thanks for being there. Whoever you are. If I get through tonight without using, I think I'll be home free - more or less.

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can....

Quitting Update 2: Vicks and Chips and Coke

It's been 27 hours and 25 minutes since my last cigarette (but who's counting?). I have a headache the like of which would make a lesser man cry. OK, I cried a little. I've popped all the baby drugs I can think of: Tylenol, Sudafed-lite (since you can't buy the real thing anymore), Aspirin. I've taken all the hot showers my skin can stand.

I broke out the first of the big guns this morning: Vicks Vapo-Rub. I've been huffing Vicks since about 8 a.m. It produces this weird non-high euphoria and only temporarily relieves my headache. But it gives the thrill of doing something very wrong without any of the potential consequences. It's a cheap high, in other words. But it's keeping me from reaching for the Hydrocodone and Klonopin. I have to stay alert to track my basketball picks and I'd zone out with the real pain killers.

I'm bingeing on Ripple Potato Chips and French Onion Dip. My rule when I quit smoking is that I can have anything I want in whatever quantity I want for the first 2 weeks. That's my pay-back for this first 72 hours of hell. I am also highly caffeinated, having decided that giving up two of the major food groups at once (nicotine and caffeine) is just not a nice thing to do to an aging body. The good people at Coca-Cola are my friends. Besides, a 2-liter was only 89 cents at the store today. It's as if God was TELLING me that the answer to quitting smoking was to drink more Coke. So I will. Who am I to argue with God over soft drinks?

I chose Coke over Pepsi in the early 70's. I have never regretted my decision. We were an RC Cola household: not only because RC was cheap and we were poor, but because RC Cola had pictures of the Kansas City Royals on the cans. I had an enormous pyramid of RC Cola cans in my room, along with rows of them on the window sill, across my desk, and around the baseboards. I went to sleep every night with George Brett, Jamie Quirk, Fred Patek, Cookie Rojas, Amos Otis, John Mayberry, Buck Martinez, and many others watching over me. RC was cool.

But when we went to Wayne & Marilyn's house, friends of my parents, Marilyn would always open one of those tall, greenish, glass bottles of Coke for us. The sound of the bottle opener against the glass is to this day one of the sweetest sensory memories I have. It fizzed an inappropriately long time. It's taste was more acidic by far than simple ol' RC Cola. This...this was what the rich folks drank. I was in love with Coca Cola. If I ever had all the money in the world, I'd tell myself, I would only drink Coca Cola. I don't have all the money in the world, obviously. But I only drink Coca Cola. OK, in a pinch, in one of those heretical Pepsi-Only joints, I will break down and have a Dr. Pepper. But that's it.

The good people at Coca Cola gave us the single most moving commercial ever around that same time: "I'd like to teach the world to sing..." they said. I believe to this day that they would have liked to teach the world to sing. Those are good people at Coca Cola. You might say, "Oh sure...You're an addict. Of course you love your dealer." Mayhaps. Nonetheless, I know which side my caffeinated bread is buttered on and I'll not but praise the good people at Coke. They do the Lord's work.

I feel better already. And we're only 27 hours and 44 minutes in.

Update: Quitting Milestone

My last cigarette was at 7 a.m. this morning. According to the American Cancer Society, as of 3 p.m. (about an hour and 45 minutes ago) the Carbon Monoxide in my body dropped and the Oxygen level in my blood increased to "normal".

Exciting stuff. I wonder if it's the Oxygen that has me so jittery. All in all, though, the first 9 hours and 47 minutes haven't been too bad. But who's counting? I haven't heard the voice yet that tells me how one won't hurt, the headache will go away if I just go to the corner and buy a pack, etc. But I've been doing a lot of talking out loud - ostensibly to the dog, but more to myself - so maybe I've just drowned it out.

The next milestone is at 2 days (7 a.m. on Friday) when my sense of smell and taste are scheduled for improvement and, they say, "You will enjoy your food more." I have a feeling I'm going to leave the land of 170 and be shopping in the Big Boy section in no time. Also on Friday, my risk of heart attack begins to decrease.

Humorous Health Note: When My Doctor told me to double my BP medication, I first went to the pharmacist who lives across the street from my sibling's mother-in-law. (This is Mayberry, after all, where everybody knows everybody and most likely lives just down the street from them.) He told me the suggested dosage was at the upper end of the recommended range, but perfectly safe - except, perhaps, for some early morning dizziness.

He suggested that I first sit up and "put my feet on the floor before getting out of bed". Not until I repeated those directions to Joyce on the phone later did it occur to me...There aren't a whole lot of ways to get out of a bed. Most of them include first putting your feet on the floor. I'm open to any alternatives I've been missing out on, though. Feel free to send them along if you happen to be among those who dismount in some way other than feet-first.

Quitting Under Pressure

My blood pressure was 182/122 at the doctor's office on Friday, so I've been under double doses of medication since and alternately fatigued and addled. I quit caffeine yesterday until the headache dictated otherwise. I didn't eat anything with salt. I thought I might need to quit smoking. It's not as easy as it sounds. Smoking is not only an addiction, it's also all wrapped up in a lot of memories.

Yes, I smoke. I've smoked - off and on - since I was 22 years old. I started when I was teaching Junior High and High School. Back then, in 1986, the teacher's lounge had a plexiglassed cave where the teachers could indulge before resuming the day's duties. And I'd met my first smoking friend, Ruth.

Ruthie and I met while she was doing my hair and makeup for A Midsummer Night's Dream. I played Oberon, King of the Fairies. Hold the laughter. That's not the punchline it seems to be. I was fresh out of college and still had designs on the ministry. I was not dating boys. I was sort of dating Ruthie.

We bickered like 12 year-olds while she would apply my highly stylized makeup and weave leaves into the long wig I would wear. I would bark when I felt I'd been in the chair too long and she would let fly with a string of curse words that was impressive by volume, if not by content. Now this was a girl I could like. Every conversation with Ruthie was a charged experience. I was enraptured, if not in love. Everything about her appealed to me. Except the sex thing. That bell was going to ring a few short months later. But our entanglement was going to be set by then. She would get the short end of the stick. I would really, really hurt somebody for the first time.

We never really dated, but we spent every spare hour together. We had the theatre in common - she was a major, I was a dabbler. We did several shows together. She was the first one to pass me a joint. OK...she was the first one since I'd been in elementary school and our junior high babysitter had passed me one in the football field behind the school when I was supposed to be with her at an International Festival. Her friends became mine. They smoked and drank and cursed and acted. I couldn't drink. I couldn't get past the smell and the taste. But the others I took up slowly but surely. The ministry was fading fast.

Ruthie's father was a pastor. We had a lot in common, it seemed. She had fled that life and I was edging close to doing the same. One of the Obviously Gay Men in our first show together kept mentioning to me that there was a gay bar just 20 miles up the road from where we lived. I found that curious, but a short while later it dawned on me that he was hinting at something. He visited my home and mentioned it again so I confronted him, nicely. I got his inference, I told him. And while I was flattered by his interest in broadening my social outlets, I was not what he thought me to be. Besides, as a first-year teacher in a small town, the very last thing I needed to be was gay. I was already the French Teacher. Being gay would push the bounds of redundancy.

A few months later, I swear, out of sheer curiosity, I went in search of The Bar. I put on a pair of black slacks that were popular in the 80's. They came up high in the back, really showing off the tush. They ballooned at the hips and tapered at the ankles. I put on black dress shoes that were so minimalist in design, they resembled dance shoes. I had a white shirt with puffy sleeves and attached a huge broach at the throat. But none of my socks seemed to complete the look. I called Ruthie. We went to the local Five And Dime and bought a pair of white, sparkly socks that put the exclamation point on the all too obvious.

I was on my way to find The Bar. I started the car but left the headlights off as I drove down the alley to the street, as though the lights would have given away my destination. John Mark had mentioned the name and location of the bar so many times, I didn't even need directions. I found it straight away, right where he said it would be. I sat in the car and explained to myself that I was not gay, I just wanted to see a gay bar. Besides, I told myself, I don't even drink. I only prayed that no one would recognize me and jeopardize my job. It only briefly occurred to me that if THEY were there and I was there, we would be in a state of Mutually Assured Destruction, as the Reagans put it.

I sat in a corner with two walls guarding my back as my nerves subsided and I took note of how remarkably ordinary These People seemed. They weren't what I had imagined. They were just ordinary people. Oh, sure...there were a couple of makeout scenes that would have stood out in church, but other than that, they weren't at all different from anybody else. This is what passed for revelation back then. I loosened up enough to make my way to the bar and order a Coke, even though my hands shook as I raced back to my corner refuge. I took a sip and looked up to see one of the most beautiful men I've ever met headed straight for me.

He was blonde, blue-eyed, baby-faced, and had a cocky swagger and sly smile that would have rendered armies helpless. I was stunned. And I was stunned that I was stunned. I wasn't gay. I needed to get a grip on myself. He strode right up to my elevated perch and said the only sentence in the entire language that I'd hoped I wouldn't hear that night, "Hey, don't I know you from somewhere?" I almost threw up on the spot. I didn't think so, I told him, and looked away. He persisted. Where did I grow up? Which high school? Which college? Where do I live now? Ever been to....? He decided we'd debated in college and he remembered me from that experience. I was flattered - mostly because I hadn't debated in college and recognized the effort he was making to connect with me. Yes, I told him, you can sit down.

He was mesmerizing - a god among men. Smart, funny, good-looking, conversant in current events. He suggested that we go somewhere a little quieter to talk at length but I knew what that meant. I let him in on my secret: I didn't belong here. I'm just an observer, I said. He didn't blanch. He suggested the restaurant across the street where we could have coffee and a nosh and get to know each other. We did. He entertained my fascination at how he was gay, yet seemed so "normal"...and I was "not gay" yet really comfortable with him. We would be friends, we said. No harm in that. He'd be at the bar next Friday night if I wanted to meet some of his friends. His name was Jerry. We would become Tom and Jerry.

I went home and called Ruthie at 6 a.m. - that's when I'd gotten home from the restaurant. I'd had this experience and she was perhaps the only human on the planet who wouldn't jump to conclusions about what it meant. She wouldn't because to do so would mean that everything she envisioned would be kaput. I had reeled her in unwittingly and then sprung this on her. Every bit of unfolding that followed must have seemed like a cruel joke to her. But she was right there for everything - with a front row seat - as the Grace to my Will, long before anyone believed there would ever be a Will & Grace.

That was autumn. I quit my teaching job in the spring to pursue graduate school, but mostly to shake loose the bonds of responsibility that came with a sensitive career and a growing interest in Jerry. Graduate school was in the town where The Bar was. That spring, Jerry asked if I would play on their all-gay softball team in the all-gay league in The City. "Would that even be legal?" I asked him. "You know I'm not gay." Oh, he knew, he said. But it would be OK. We just wouldn't tell anybody that I was straight. (Mostly to avoid the chuckles, I know now.) I fell in love with this group of campy, witty, bitchy and surprisingly athletic men. One of them started calling me Mary. I didn't understand. "VIRGIN Mary", more than one of them elaborated. I know I blushed. They laughed. They let me figure the rest of it out on my own.

The inevitable transpired when Jerry pinned me against the wall in my apartment and planted my first grown-up man-to-man kiss on me. The world changed in an instant. I was in love. He was in heat. I saw white picket fences. He saw a conquest. I got hurt. He moved on. And I asked Ruthie to marry me. Don't ask. I don't know why, except that I wanted not to be gay and hurt. If I got married, I wouldn't be gay, even if I was still hurt. Besides, I loved Ruthie in every way except for THAT. It could work. Right? We held out hope for a few months and finally the pull was too great to jump back in and find a man of my own. So we called a spade a spade and remained friends.

We did that again a few years later. We couldn't get each other out of our systems. I moved away after the second time, thinking maybe that distance would do what our judgment couldn't. She followed me. We toyed with a third go-round concurrent with a religious revival in both of us. Could I be Not Gay again? No. I wanted to be in love. And she loved me more than the moon. I loved her back in every way but one. I figured out, like we all do, that it's always the one that makes the difference. I wanted to want her worse than anything. I did. And I seared a part of her soul every time I had to back away from it. It wasn't malicious. But it clearly hurt. I moved farther away. She never followed again.

She got married, had a couple of children and built the life she wanted. Very often when I'd smoke, I'd think of her and how she taught me to hold it just so and how to master ashing out the window of a moving car. I'd think of her when I'd flick the ashes in my amateurish way and how I couldn't ever master that nail-flick she used to do. We've exchanged a handful of emails over the last 10 years. I think we're both acutely aware of the dynamic that develops between us, so we don't talk a lot, even though we have each other's numbers. Giving up smoking is a whole lot tied to giving up Ruthie.

I miss her. And I'll miss them. She quit me under pressure. She had to, I think, or she'd have gone crazy from pain. It's my turn to quit under pressure - the cigarettes, that is. It's that or have a stroke. That's a decent incentive. But it won't make it any easier. That's OK.

I've never done anything easy in my life.

L'Agent Provocateur

So My Therapist Says he was sorry for his choice of words about "this situation". He started to explain, at length, how this and that might have played into it. I stopped him cold. No apologies needed.

I appreciate the role of provocateur. It's no crime, in my book, to push buttons if you're willing to stand there and endure the fruits of your labor. There's no malice in that. I explained that it had been many years since I'd even thought of many of those issues, having tucked them away in the history book. To revisit that time and those thoughts and decisions and all that flowed from them...that was good for me. I'm not weaker for having made that trip. Indeed, it strengthened me.

We talked, oddly enough, about whether or not there is A Plan. He thinks there might be. Everything happens for a reason. There are no coincidences. All that stuff. I grew up with The Plan. I believed in The Plan for a long, long time. Now, I'm not so sure of The Plan. I told him that I think this life is more likely a web of consequences - some good, some not so good, some downright tragic.

For the billions of people who make trillions of decisions every day, it's like the concentric rings from a stone tossed in a pond. A trillion stones. Each one's waves impact the others' and it's hard to tell what caused any given ripple. Einstein said that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, I think. So every time something positive occurs, a negative balances that somewhere in someone's life. Things might seem to come out of the blue. I think they just come out of the balance. Good God. I think I'm an Accidental Buddhist.

It would be hard if I thought that any of this was The Plan. That would be a plan that sucks ass. I'd like to speak with the author of that plan. She/he needs a new hobby or, perhaps, a Plan Seminar on how to design The Plan with a little less drama and a lot more entertainment. But like I said, I don't much buy the Plan Theory. I think we all make decisions, the consequences of which ripple outward - for better or worse - touching people we may never know. The only way to avoid it is to head for a bunker and never interact again. And I refuse to go down that easily. My ripples are going to be rolling out for a while to come. And I'll continue to get rolled by a few I didn't see coming. Sondheim would call that Being Alive, I suppose.

So, no apologies. No plan. He's grown a goatee now, My Therapist. I noticed. I said so. I think I looked at him differently. That's probably not the right thing to do. When we shared our mutual appreciation for healthy provocation, I joked that I was going to pay him one last time and then he was taking me to dinner. He knows, I'm sure, that I wasn't joking all that much.

I didn't get dinner. It probably wasn't in The Plan.

So This is Progress...

He crossed my mind today. For the first time in forever I didn't have the squeezing in my chest or the tightening in my throat. Time was, I would have had to sleep with three, four or more meaningless bodies to flush him from my system. I got by without this time. I guess that's progress. Though it would have been nice to get laid.

It's probably pure coincidence that the first of my daffodils bloomed yesterday. Winter bypassed us, it seems, so everything is happening early. The year's first wasp learned the hard lesson of Raid a few days ago. The tulip leaves are prominent, the lilies are inches tall, the trees are budding and we have our first tornado watch of the year today. The red lipsticks have appeared where the peonies will be. The ants and flies will follow shortly.

I noticed rows of shoots that were barely distinguishable from the greening grass. Yesterday, I sat on the ground and pulled the grass away to reveal three neat rows of something. Much as I don't guess well when it comes to men, I'm a worse horticulturist. They will be something this year, whereas in years past they were obliterated with the first pass of the lawn mower. Where the shrubs were removed last year, something resembling flower shoots have appeared in abundance. They could well be beautiful weeds. But as the saying goes, a weed is simply a flower out of place.

The windows are open throughout the house. I had them installed last year to replace the old wooden pulley windows that were hampered by decades of paint and humidity. Fresh air has flushed out the dullness of winter. The artificial heat has been exinguished. Rain is on the way - or so they've said for the past couple days. I'm beginning to think they predict such things just so we'll tune in to see how close to an apology they come when we're left dry. I threw down several pounds of grass seed in hopes that the rain would bring coverage to the bare spots. That's as much a guarantee of drought as washing one's car is a promise of rain, I think.

Things are better now than they were in January. The temperature is in the 70's. The flowers are up. The windows are open. The rains are coming. The seed is planted. The porch swing will welcome me back in the mornings for my newspaper time. I'll dust off the grill and my nerve soon enough.

I've been invited to join a group of friends for a Pub Crawl on St. Patrick's Day. I've never crawled in a pub. OK, that's not true. I have crawled in a pub. But I don't think that's the primary goal of this outing. The point is, I'm open again. I don't feel like I'm in protective mode like I was a few months ago. I don't first identify as a man done wrong.

Along with the daffodils, peonies, lilies and mystery plants...maybe the temperate winter has brought me out of hiding a little sooner than expected, too. I think that's progress.

Chickens and Eggs

I'm a bit simple when it comes to the larger questions in life. And I'm fairly adamant about my simplicity. If the question is "Which came first: the chicken or the egg?", my response is "Who cares? Whichever one you have now is the one you deal with. And you can successfully fry either. "

Returning to the inference that My Therapist made to "This Situation", I definitely harbor the same opinion. What does it matter what led to it? The only thing to do is accommodate the new reality. If decisions were poorly taken, what's done is done. Whether malice or ignorance was at play becomes irrelevant once you look somebody in the eye and they all but pronounce you terminally ill. I'd have thought that 25 years into the epidemic, we'd be past answering for our disease. I thought wrong.

I don't believe My Therapist meant to impugn my mental health or intelligence in our last session. I am quite troubled, however, that conversations still turn in that general direction. Small wonder so many of us clam up and hide away, doing as much damage to our psyches as the virus does to our bodies. I can't say that the question isn't worth asking. Neither, however, can I get past my irritation at answering for something that doesn't really warrant a question. I've been in the habit of acknowledging the truth of my status and moving on to more interesting topics. We forget, I suppose, that not everyone is on the same page with us.

A new gentleman joined us for dinner at the HIV Social on Friday night. He was several years into knowing of his status but had yet to inform a number of people in his social circle. We talked about how much less stressful it is to exhale the truth than to hold it in. We also talked about how important it is to realize that people have to catch up to us when they learn of our illness. He's had years to process the implications of his infection, his family will require time to catch up. Having been through that process with my entire family many years ago, it was a reminder to me that I will still encounter people who require some catch-up time. On the heels of my last appointment with My Therapist, it was especially instructive.

I'd figured out I was HIV+ the autumn prior to my test results. I am 6' tall and weighed about 124 lbs. I couldn't swallow more than a couple of bites of food before I felt ill. I had white spots in my mouth and throat. Oozing sores would drip down behind my ears from my scalp. A fever would not quit. I couldn't stay awake for more than a couple of hours at a time. Something was wrong. I remember my pharmacist friend used to say (in 1987), "When you're gay, every time you sneeze, you wonder if you have it." So I knew.

I went to a doctor to have the swallowing problem fixed. It was thrush. He informed me, nervously, that grown-ups don't get thrush unless they have a compromised immune system. I knew what that meant, too. I didn't have insurance yet with my new employer, so I was petrified of a positive test prior to being insured. I ignorantly assumed that I would be unable to get the medicines I was hearing might prolong my life. The first protease inhibitor had hit the market 2 years earlier. That doctor refused to treat any of my symptoms if I didn't take the HIV Test. I walked out without so much as a Tylenol in my pocket.

I headed to the Free Health Clinic and laid my cards on the table with a Nurse Practitioner who agreed to treat my symptoms in exchange for my promise to return immediately upon obtaining my insurance for the HIV Test. I kept my word. I traveled to my family for the holidays looking emaciated. We scurried off for a family photo that everyone thought might be our last. I look like a skeleton in a yellow turtleneck in that picture. It hung in my parents' bedroom for too long. At the family home, I encountered something of an intervention. I was labeled "anorexic". I assured them I loved food and was not anorexic, but that they might want to sit down for the real story. They already knew I was gay. That didn't help when I said that I had blood drawn for an HIV Test and that they might want to prepare themselves for the results that I would get on January 2. My father didn't say anything. There were some tears in the mix. And there was this, courtesy of my mother:

"Well, Merry Fucking Christmas."

I didn't take the time to challenge the notion that it was all about dampening her Christmas '97 memories. I was only a few weeks into accepting the probable result myself. I made one phone call, to my closest confidante, during the waiting period to confess my suspicions and begin my own acceptance process. I knew everyone else would be at least a step behind.

A few days ago, a dear friend wrote me to announce she was beginning treatment for a number of malignant tumors. I wrote to her that I remembered the day of my own diagnosis. I sat dry-eyed on the examining table while the Nurse Practitioner and a back-up clinician delivered the news. They looked a little more shaken than I felt. (One of The Boys relates how he had to console his doctor when he delivered the news.) I had already moved past "What if I am?" and was already in "What do I do?". It took a lot of convincing to get them to stop trying to make me break down so that I could satisfy their expectations of how people react to Really Bad News. They had a cute little visual aid that talked about trains and cliffs.

"Your viral load is the speed of the train and the number of t-cells you have is the length of the track. The higher your viral load, the faster the train. The lower your t-cells, the shorter the track. A fast train on a short track sends the train down into The Valley of Bad Things Happening." That's verbatim, as I recall it. They really called it The Valley of Bad Things Happening. I guess that's the secular version of The Valley of The Shadow of Death. Kinda catchy. P.S., they noted, "You have a very fast train on a very short track: 60 t-cells and a viral load over 700,000." Every single person you ask will tell you a different number of "ideal" t-cells for a healthy human. None of those numbers is 60. Anything below 200 automatically qualifies you as having "AIDS" - particularly if you have an "Opportunistic Infection", which my thrush was. All I wanted was the stack of prescriptions so we could start lengthening track and slowing down the train. All they wanted was a breakdown so they wouldn't fear me hurling myself off the tallest building in Des Moines, I think. They underestimated my fear of death. In a suicide pact, I'll always let you go first. You'll never know that I didn't follow through.

I told my old friend, Paula (she of the tumors), that I went past the pharmacy, picked up my pills and then went home and sat in the pitch-black stairwell that led from my rooftop apartment down the back of the old Victorian house where I lived. I didn't flip on the light, I just sat there in the dark and breathed. Out of nowhere, a song overwhelmed me. My voice was shit. Thrush had gone from my mouth down into my esophagus. I had sung at a cousin's wedding a few months earlier with what I thought was atrocious laryngitis. But I sang in the stairwell that day:

"When peace like a river attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll,
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
'It is well! It is well with my soul!'"

And it was. And has been. I put away questions of who, when, where and why in that stairwell. I got up, I phoned Joyce, I swallowed the first pills and we both waited in curiosity for something to go numb or fall off, I think. When we bored of the wait, we hung up and I began the traditional side-effects of vomiting, diarrhea, sweats, etc. But I never asked why me? I remember a television special shortly after that where a man was asked about his misfortune. His words were seared into my consciousness, "It never occurred to me to ask 'Why me?'", he said, "I thought, 'Why NOT me?"

That was all the empowerment I needed to put the questions and the blame and the recriminations behind me for good. No looking back. I would live, for as long as I lived, without regret, shame or blame. I would live in integrity and to hell with anyone who couldn't keep up. Maybe that's the whole layered lasagna that I owed My Therapist when he suggested that I had gotten myself into this situation. Perhaps I should have redefined the situation for him.

What he called an egg was already a chicken for me.

This Situation

I took off my bifocals and leaned forward incredulous that he would use such phrasing.

It's not like I chose a therapist who was a 75 year-old grandmother of 12 who never misses choir practice at First Baptist Church. I made a phone call to a therapist who I had met at our HIV Social Group. I didn't quite know how to broach the topic, so I just blurted out, "I think I need to see somebody and because we've...well...I don't think it should be you, but it has to be a man and he has to be gay because I don't want to spend any time bringing him up to speed on the basics." Then I took a breath. He gave me the name of My Therapist and said I'd be happy with the choice. He was right. I am happy. That's why I was caught so off guard by his choice of words.

I had managed, in over 8 years of knowing I'm infected with the AIDS virus, never to encounter someone who inferred that there was an element of blame in the illness. I knew they existed. I watched what happened to Ryan White and his family. I knew people personally who had been slapped with the same insult to complement their injury. I almost came out of my chair.

"Got myself into this situation?"
"GOT MYSELF INTO THIS SITUATION?"

I bothered to take him back down memory lane to the land of 1987, when I "came out". I was dating a pharmacy student who was a few years ahead of me in the process. He knew all about medicine and tests and things. He convinced me of the truth of the time: that the test available was unreliable. "As many false positives and negatives as true results," he told me. I believed him. Besides, in 1987's Kansas, we also believed that even if you tested positive - for real - there was nothing to do but prepare to die. The first AIDS treatment, AZT, was introduced that same year. Our philosophy was rather "Que sera sera". Why would you want to know if there was nothing you could do about it? So on we went.

"Well, that's a stupid argument", My Therapist Said.
"Come again?" I asked. "Come again?" is what I use in polite company when I'd rather say, "What the hell is the matter with you?"

It was 1987. Today's knowledge doesn't render moot the arguments of 20 years ago. It may have been stupid. It was stupid when people believed tomatoes were poisonous. We think so now. They didn't then. It was stupid when people believed the earth to be flat. They didn't think so then. It was what it was when it was. It was a different time. It was the time, for me, when patterns were set. By the time the consequences of those patterns were made manifest in my blood cells, the inevitable overshadowed the past in a big hurry.

I had never engaged in more than a moment's thought about who may have contributed the virus to my system. I didn't know. I couldn't guess. What was the point? If I knew, as I've written, I'd have blamed them. Better that I would never know. They were absolved of responsibility by their anonymity. And if they weren't guilty, I couldn't possibly be. I was sick, not guilty. If I had become ill as an unfortunate consequence of the pursuit of love and happiness, I couldn't engage in regret. To do so would be to renounce who I was, in a way. So I've focused on going forward since that day in 1998 when I found out that I had skipped right past HIV+ and landed in an AIDS diagnosis.

My Therapist backpedalled, "I mean, if I went to the grocery store and someone with a bazooka mowed everyone down, I would have put myself in that situation."

"Nice try," I said. He gets points for pulling out, I suppose. We discussed the practice of "barebacking" = sex without condoms. We talked about intimacy and all the arguments that surround it. I intimated that I was squarely in that camp. I know the arguments. I know the judgments. I know about "superinfection" and all of the new reasons for prophylactic segregation of you from me. I can't mount an impassioned defense of the practice. I don't feel the need to do so. Everyone makes the decision for themselves.

I just don't think blame, guilt, or stupidity attend that decision. I don't. I know that it seems blame-worthy and stupid and stacked with guilt to make that decision. But no one deserves to die because he chooses to be intimate with someone who - from ignorance, fear or malice - delivers the death knell to his immune system.

I acknowledge that I was there when I got the virus. I partnered with someone in all of the decisions we did or didn't make. To infer, though, that there was some sort of death wish afoot because no one reached for the condom is to oversimplify to the point of stupidity. How's that for a judgment? Infection doesn't happen without a decision made - somewhere along the line - that enables the attack. But retrospect doesn't render those decisions stupid or those people guilty. It's a disease. Can't we just be sick without being guilty or stupid to boot? Please? It's not a lot to ask.

I don't ask for anyone's sympathy - ever. I don't need their money or charity. I'm not a good commiserator over the woes that AIDS visits upon us. I ask only one thing - ONE thing. Don't blame. I'm the only one who has a leg to stand on when it comes to blaming for "this situation".

If I don't, you sure as hell can't.