Kittens and Puppies

My alter-ego, Dorien, observed the other day that so many of these blogs are rants and raves and dwell on idiocies and frustrations and other not-nice things. Why don’t I, he wondered, devote more time to pleasant things, like kittens and puppies (and his personal all-time favorite, bunnies). He has a very valid point, as always . Dorien has the objectivity, sound judgement, and good sense that Roger too often lacks.

I pondered the question and reached the conclusion that kittens and puppies and bunnies and all other good, gentle, kind things represent the world as it should be, and as I so desperately want things to be. While I am amply aware that the world is not what I want it to be—I’ve spent far too much time trying to walk into the spray of a full-force fire hose—, I still refuse to concede that it cannot be. And as a result I spend admittedly too much blog time on railing against the world as it is, hoping somehow that there might come a “DUH” moment when everyone will stop dead in their tracks and say “You know, he’s right! Let’s try harder to be who and what we should be.”

As you probably have noticed, under all my self-deprecation there lies an enormous granite-like chunk of ego and the soul-deep belief that I am right in my convictions that we all—myself included—have far more power to change ourselves and by extension the world, than we give ourselves credit for.

That there is hope for humanity is evident everywhere in the kindness of our friends and family, and in the incredible courage and nobility so often seen in disasters, in people sacrificing their own lives (the soldier who throws himself on a grenade to save his comrades, the firefighters who risk their lives saving those trapped in burning buildings, and so many others). Even the fact that, as so many people complain, there is so little good news on television and in the media. That is, I believe, simply that we all expect that good is the norm …and there is little news value in reporting the norm. It’s like running a headline saying “Sun Rises in East!”

It’s just that, with 6 billion people now on earth, and billions more expected within a decade or so, there are proportionately more rotten eggs in the barrel…more psychopaths and general scum it truly seems as though we are doomed. And all because God told people a couple thousand years ago when the life expectancy was about 30 years, that they had to go forth and multiply to prevent the race from dying out. And we cling to that edict even in face of the danger of running out of space to live or food to eat. God forbid we should encourage people NOT to have children, or give gay and lesbian couples the rights of heterosexuals. One of the major cannons in the arsenal of nonsense about homosexuality still to this day is “Well they can’t have children.” Well, thank God we can’t. There are far too many kids out there in desperate need of people to love them, and so many gays and lesbians who would, if it were made easier, be willing to take them.

Well, I’m definitely getting off course here, but am quite sure I’ll return to this particular subject soon.

Meanwhile, let’s all go out and pet a kitten and think of a world without bigotry and intolerance.

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Losing it

There are times when I truly fear for my sanity. There is so very, very much I simply do not comprehend.

The other day, my good friend Gary, a former English teacher, was trying to explain to me the differences between and uses of the colon and semicolon which I am almost totally consistent in getting wrong 99 percent of the time.

Now, Gary is an excellent teacher, and very patient. But what I got from his detailed explanation was this: “When using the semi-colon, the framatizer must always, always modify the blasisneker. The colon, on the other hand muzzuzikates the ninimuker only when.........” And of course the fact that I always walk the thinnest of lines of comprehension suspended over the bottomless chasm of utter frustration doesn’t help.

I listen to songs and TV commercials and hear/see them 19,000 times and have no idea what they are saying. (The Enterprise car commercial, for example, where the mother with the two kids rents a car to get them to their soccer game. The kids get out of the car and one of them says: “Nice sspryyzmis, mom!”) I listen closely. I really do. I strain my ears to try to hear what he’s saying. I try to read the kid’s lips. I crane my head forward and squint at the screen, hoping maybe the extra concentration will help. It does not. I watch it over and over and over again (not through choice, I can assure you, but simply because it plays every thirty seconds day and night), and I STILL do not have the slightest clue as to what he’s saying. Finally, while spewing my frustrations to Gary, he looked at me (the pity clear in his eyes), and said: “He’s saying, ‘Nice save, Mom.”

“Nice save, Mom”??? How the hell was I supposed to know that? I have no idea what a “save” is or is supposed to be. Something related to soccer, I assume, but I neither know nor care. Utter frustration.

Instruction manuals should, I am firmly convinced, be printed in Swahili. I still wouldn’t have a clue what they’re saying, but I’d have an excuse for it (“Sorry, I don’t speak Swahili.” Apparently, since they are supposedly written in English, I don’t speak English either.)

How many times have I been so stupid as to buy something requiring “some assembly”? Whatever it might be always comes with simple, detailed instructions which, I am assured by the salesperson, a baby squirrel could follow while blindfolded with one little paw tied behind its back. I spread the instructions out on the floor. I read them carefully. Carefully, I say. I get to step 3 of an 8-step instruction and am totally, utterly lost. I have either put something together upside down, or backwards, or tried to “Insert Tab A into Slot B” to find that Tab A will not fit into Slot B. There may be only one Tab A and one Slot B, but will they fit together? For you, of course. For everyone else in the world, of course. For me? Guess.

“Easy Open” or “Easy Re-seal” bags of potato chips. Boxes of cookies. “Pull tab to open.” Really?

I have a list of names and email addresses, which I want to transcribe to somewhere that requires my leaving the original window. No problem. “Patricia Smith: patsmith@aol.com.” Got it. I switch to the new window and type—if I haven’t already forgotten by the time I get there— “Pat....” and have no idea what comes next. Or I type “patsmith@hotmail.com” or “patricia@aol.net” or God knows what. I carry the concept of “short-term memory” to its ultimate extreme, and am disgusted with myself for it. And does that help? Uh...does what help?

Sigh.

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K'neesheshawna By Any Other Name

I like names, and find it interesting that people say “a name tells a lot about a person,” since the person carrying the name had nothing whatever to do with choosing it. There are books written on the meaning of names. Roger, for example, means “the spear carrier,” though I haven’t a clue as to how that came about. Granted I do a lot of windmill-tilting, but don’t think I’ve ever held let alone carried a spear.

First names, like dog breeds, tend to surge and ebb in popularity. Would you care to make a guess as to how many cribs and playpens full of "Brittany" there are out there at the moment as the "Ashleys" flood our school system? Boys names are a little less trend-driven, but consider “Lance”. Ethnic groups favor ethnic names. It used-to-was that just hearing a name revealed ethnicity. Rastus, Hymie, Sol, Reginald, Gino, Francis. But that has faded over time. Only, it seems, African Americans seem to go out of their way to give their children names which may well reflect their parents’ pride in being black, but may very well tend to haunt the kid for the rest of his or (most specifically, her) life if they have any hope of blending into the mainstream. Of course, Condoleezza Rice hasn’t done too badly for herself, but I do feel, overall, that in-your-face ethnic names are more detrimental than helpful over the long haul. (I am seriously curious as to how many of these names are based in history, and how many simply made up because they sounded exotic. I think of one of our insured when I worked for an insurance company: “Placenta Palmer”.)

For a confirmed Agnostic, I’m very fond of Biblical names and use them frequently for names of characters in my books…especially, I was rather surprised to realize, those beginning with “J”: Jonathan, Joshua, Jared, Jake (the only abbreviated Biblical ”J” name I am comfortable with, since I just can’t picture calling him “Jacob.”) I find I seem to prefer full names to contractions or nicknames, though obviously the first name of my main protagonist in the Dick Hardesty mysteries is a nickname for Richard. I have a good friend I’ve known for more than 50 years whom I…nor anyone else…would ever dream of calling anything but Franklin. The protagonist of my new Elliott Smith mysteries only allows one person to use anything but his full first name.

There’s not much one can do with “Roger”, though some people do occasionally call me “Roge” and I’m okay with that. Both my step-grandmother Anne and my dear friend Uncle Bob always called me “Roggie” and were the only people in my life to do so, I think. To my Uncle Buck, I was “Guggenheimer,” to my mom, I was “Punkin’” or “Beaner.” My dad infrequently called me “Butch”....probably a case of wishful thinking.

Many people use their nicknames throughout life: Chuck, Bob, Brad, Clif, Jack, Frank, Dick, Phil, Don, Rob, Rich, Tom, Mike—though I often tend to prefer the full name: Thomas, Michael, Robert . Most are variations on or contractions of their given name, but some, like my cousins Fat and Cork (Charles and Donald, somewhere in childhood picked up nicknames having no relation to their real names, and carry them through life.

In our egalitarian society where everyone seems to be on a first-name basis, it has reached the point where people who in fact prefer their full name to a contraction or variation or nickname—who prefer to be called “Benjamin” instead of “Ben”, for example—are considered a bit odd, or elitist. So I suppose it is not so much a case of what our names do for us, as what we do with our names.

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On Being Strange

I told the story, in a much earlier blog, of working at my first just-out-of-college job in the customer service department of the Olson Rug Company, and receiving a letter from a lady who wanted the company to give her new rugs in exchange for “The Secret.” She had, she explained, offered The Secret to the Sheriff, but he was sitting on two chairs.

I fear this dear lady went a bit beyond the limits of “strange”, but every human being has his or her little idiosyncrasies and degrees of strangeness. It comes far more naturally to some than to others. While most do their best to hide them, I rather enjoy mine. At times I think I rather cultivate them, like hothouse flowers.

But as I was thinking of this topic, I realized that many of my strangenesses (like making up words like “strangenesses”) are directly related to my fascination with words.

I like to make up ditties which, like a spot of raspberry jam on a white shirt, tend to be nearly impossible to remove, cropping up randomly years later. Two which leapt to mind the minute I though of it involve my cat, Crickett, Cricketty Cricketty Crickett, Fell fast asleep in a thicket. Dreamed of a rose shaped like a nose and thought ‘When I wake up, I’ll pick it and Bozo, a marvelous yellow lab I had for only a short time before he was killed by a car: Bozo Bozo Bozo; punch ‘em in the no-zo. Make ‘em pay, then run away, ‘cause that’s the way it goes-zo. Why they should still be with me after so many years, I have no idea.

And I frequently find myself playing a strange word game of rhyming opposites, which I tie together by thinking of them as greetings, and which potentially has no end: “Hello, morning, hello, noon/Hello fork, hello, spoon/Hello here, hello there/Hello sofa, hello chair”…ad infinitum. I find I can play it until my mind grows numb (Hello smile, hello pout/Hello in, hello out…see what I mean?)

I enjoy figuring out how many words can be made from other words without repeating letters: I think I got at least 53 from the word “diplomat”, for example.

For the most part, my idiosyncracies affect no one but me, and I consider them totally harmless. I take an odd sense of comfort in them, and were I just to shut up about having them, most would not be aware I had them (perhaps yet another idiosyncracy: self delusion).

My mind’s tendency to resemble a downed power line, thrashing about and sending off sprays of sparks, provides me with both pleasure and frustration. As I finished the last paragraph…and there is a link between them, obtuse as it may be…I suddenly thought of a guy I met in Los Angeles. He was aboard the Andrea Doria when it sank, so I was fascinated by him. A nice looking guy, he had particularly nice hair. But I hadn’t known him for more than ten minutes when he informed me he wore a full toupee. Now, I never in the world would have known it had he not told me and still cannot figure out why he did. One would imagine people wear a toupee to hide the fact that they are bald. But why go to the trouble if you’re going to tell everyone you meet you’re wearing one?

So I guess it boils down to the fact that, as mentioned above, admit it or not, strangenesses and idiosyncracies are a part of human existence. And as long as we have them, we might as well enjoy them.

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A Day

Writing is a little bit like playing the piano...it requires constant practice and finger-limbering. Here's an example, for those who might be curious.

I sit cross-legged on the floor in the vortex of a category-four hurricane, watching the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years swirl by, and I catch the quickest of glimpses of flying debris: a cardboard fort I got for Christmas one year when I was about seven, a copy of Great Poems of the English Language from college, a ticket stub from a movie theater in Nice, France (The Golden Stag), a playbill for Me and Juliet, the first Broadway show I ever saw, the wooden cabinet my dad made (which I still have), a pair of flight goggles and a book on navigation from my Navcad days, pieces of the sofa Norm and I built when we first got together in Chicago, a couple of the stuffed animals Ray loved to collect, a jar of raspberry jam I made from raspberries I picked myself in the woods near Pence, Wisconsin, my grandfather’s pocket watch, the mesh mask form fitted to hold my head in place during my radiation treatments at Mayo…so many other things whipping past so fast I cannot identify them before they are gone.

Which brings us, more or less to today. Nothing particularly special about today, which is exactly what makes it rather special. Up at 5:30 to finish a blog I’d not had a chance to finish the day before since I was trying to get out the last of 300-plus personalized e-mails to people on my mailing list announcing a special pre-publication sale on His Name is John, the book I’ve been waiting to have released since last December. Watched the NBC morning news from 7 - 7:25, my morning ritual of V-8 juice, coffee, and chocolate covered donut broken by having run out of V-8 juice (and you thought your life was exciting), to the computer for various e-mail sendings and receivings.

Around nine, received the galley proofs for John which, my having waited for for six months to receive it, I am expected to go over and return to the publisher as soon as possible. Having to work both tomorrow and Sunday (well, you won’t be reading this until Monday), and not being able to carry my computer to work with me, I won’t be able to do anything at all on the galley until Monday…which I understand is a holiday of some sort. (Christmas? No, no snow. Easter? Groundhog Day? I have to search my mind to figure it out. But since every day is in fact a holiday for me, it doesn’t really matter. It’s just another day, as are all holidays).

Got about 20 pages into the galley (having to increase the size of the type by 150 percent to be able to read it…my eyes are getting worse and worse, undoubtedly due to staring at the computer monitor 10 hours a day). I’d probably have gotten further except that I am incapable of not checking my email every 30 seconds or so. Lots and lots of emails as a result of a minor tempest at one of the net lists I belong to.

Oh, yes, neglected to mention going out for coffee earlier, and stopping to pick up some V8 juice and a slice of pecan pie from my local Kentucky Fried Colonel. Not bad pie, but I buy it because one small piece has 460 calories, and I need all the calories I can possibly get, since I am eating less and less solid food. One can of Boost (which I really don’t care for, but again, I drink for the 350 calories) and a piece of the pecan pie provides more then 1/3 of my total daily calorie requirements. I understand Drunken Donuts offers a Large Frosted Something-or-Other that contains 3,127 calories (including the equivalent of 16 teaspoons of sugar).

And then I remember I need a blog for Monday, and I sit down and without backspacing once, I went from “I sit” to here without stopping. But you could never tell, could you?

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Cracks

Sergei Eisenstein’s classic Russian silent film, The Battleship Potemkin is rightfully considered one of the finest films ever made. It chronicles the start of the 1918 Russian revolution, when the crew of the Tsar’s battleship, Potemkin, mutinied while at anchor in the port of Odessa. In what is unquestionably one of the most powerful scenes ever put on film, the citizens of Odessa gather in support of the mutineers on a huge flight of stone stairs leading down to the sea. The Tsar’s soldiers appear and begin firing into the crowd, slaughtering hundreds.

The images, once seen, the most famous of which is a baby carriage, the baby’s mother slain, bounding down the steps amid the carnage, are burned into the viewer’s mind.

I referenced the incident in my book The Role Players, when I have Jonathan and Dick’s ex, Chris, go see the film, and Jonathan, amazed, is assured that the massacre really happened.

And today I found out it hadn’t. Eisenstein made it up for his film. To discover that something one has believed all one’s life is not true is…to me at least…devastating (which may be too strong a word, but the most fitting I can come up with).

We’ve all experienced this feeling at one time or another. We all believe things which are not true. As children, fairy tales are real and we sincerely believe they are true…partly because we’re too young to know otherwise, but largely because our capacity for wonder helps protect us from reality. Fairy tales are true because we have yet to fully accept the concept of lies. We look to adults for guidance and to learn, and we believe what we are told is the truth. We grow out of belief in fairy tales…well, most of us do…slowly in the natural process of learning. Fairy tales always, always end happily, and good always triumphs over evil (and please don’t give me examples of when they don’t). That we have to learn, often by hard experience, that things do not always end happily and good does not always win over evil, hardens us.

I’ve mentioned before how I finally was forced to realize that there was no Santa Claus. I may have been one of the last kids on the block to have that particular illusion shattered, but I am still infinitely grateful to my mom for telling me in such a way that at least left the door open to the belief in the goodness of men.

But our beliefs are part of the foundation of our being, and to learn that something that we have believed in for years are not true (that all Presidents of the United States are fair, honest men comes to mind) can create cracks in that foundation. Most are unaware of them or just accept them. Unfortunately, I am well aware that, for myself, it is through these cracks that bitterness and disillusion seep in.

I suppose one answer to the formation of too many cracks is to question more; to not take everything we are told as gospel (and yes, there’s a double meaning there). I always think of one of my favorite sayings, which has several variations but is totally indisputable: “If a billion people believe something that is not true, that does not make it true.”

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Embarrassment

Mark Twain pointed out that Man is the only animal that blushes…or needs to. Being embarrassed is one of Man’s odd little traits, and usually results from our being placed in a situation that challenges our self confidence. Therefore, those of us who don’t have much self confidence to begin with are particularly vulnerable to it. I find myself being embarrassed far more than anyone could possibly be comfortable with.

There are, of course, many degrees of embarrassment, from mild to severe. Mine sometimes surpass severe to excruciating. And I have the annoying tendency not to be satisfied with being embarrassed over the things I do, but for others.

Our beloved President regularly does things…other than putting his foot in his mouth with astoundingly stupid remarks…that make my skin crawl with embarrassment: his insistence on doing little dance numbers to show he’s “cool” and “with it” is a frequently-repeated example.
But sometimes my embarrassment on the part of others is considerably more benign.

I think I”ve told the story of how when my parents and I were in Hawaii, we took a boat trip up Hawaii’s only navigable river, heading for the famous Fern Grotto. Now, my mom and I were very much alike in many ways, one of which was the intense dislike of doing things simply because we are told to do them, but go along with it rather than stand out as being a party pooper.
Anyway, the gratingly effervescent guide (I think being effervescent is a job requirement), as we were gliding up the river, declared that it would be great fun for all the women on the boat to learn the hula.

Mom loved to dance, but she did not want to learn the hula. Still, she stood up with all the other women and followed the guide’s extended-arm, hip-swinging motions. I could see on Mom’s face that she hated it, and I was embarrassed for her.

I am frequently embarrassed for various performers who really are not very good at what they are doing, or for people who are, like Mom was, called upon to do something they really, really would prefer not doing.

A primary source of embarrassment for me, other than my total refusal to think before I say or do something I never would have said or done had I thought first, is in doing things I would truly love to do but can’t—such as anything requiring physical dexterity or grace. Probably the primary example of this is dancing. As I’ve said often, there is nothing more beautiful that watching someone who knows how to dance. But I simply cannot and will not do it (well, a slow dance with a good partner may be an exception).

At least I know the source for this particular problem. When I was about eight, I went to a birthday party of a girl in my neighborhood, and her mother announced that we would all now dance. Dance? I had never danced in my life! I was horrified. And when she started pairing up all the guests…all the worse, it was boy-girl…I was well-past embarrassed, and several stages beyond mortified. It was a truly horrific experience, and I’m sure it affected the rest of my life.
Like my character Dick Hardesty, I often have little voices in my head (no, no, not that kind of voices). One just chimed in: “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Roger, get over it!” I wish I could.

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Something for Nothing

Of all the words in the English language, probably the most irresistible is “Free”. Tacking “Free” onto almost anything will elicit swarms of glinting-eyed, salivating respondents. Who can resist? It’s FREE!!!

While advertisers are often a particularly obnoxious breed, they are smart enough to recognize the power of…what was that word again? Oh, yes…FREE!!! (Exclamation points and Second-Coming typefaces only enhance the appeal.) Who among us, whose eyes have not long since glazed over in disbelief, has not seen the “FREE Credit Report!!!!” ads on TV. If you have the eyes of an eagle, you may be able to read the minuscule type saying: “Contingent upon enrollment in Whatever-in-the-hell-it-is”....which, if you’re foolish enough to take the bait, you find costs an arm and a leg to join. But, hey, the credit report is FREE!!

What store in its right mind would say “½ Off” on something when they can say “Buy one, get one FREE!!!”

The most odious of the current FREE scams doesn’t actually use the word FREE, but it is equally insidious. Banks are spending tens of millions of dollars boasting of their absolutely awesome new program wherein (and I know I’ve mentioned this one before) “We will round up your purchase to the nearest dollar and transfer the difference into your savings account!!” Oh Golly, Gee, folks!!! If I buy something for $9.99, this wonderful, generous institution is going to charge me $10.00 and put one whole penny into my savings account! (Yeah, that’s what I thought.) And the wonderfulest thing of all is that they are taking MY money from MY checking account and then magnanimously putting it in MY savings account! How can they possibly afford this generosity? Surely, they risk bankruptcy in their noble efforts on my behalf. And I do appreciate it, but if I want to transfer money from my checking into my savings, I’m really quite capable of doing it myself, thank you.

I may have commented on a recent version of the ever-popular Pyramid Scheme. I got an email from a friend whose mental facilities, until now, I had no reason to question. This was an offer of an absolutely FREE, top of the line laptop computer the manufacturer was giving away strictly for the word of mouth it would generate. All I had to do is send this same email on to ten friends and then within three days, I would receive in the mail a brand new laptop...FREE! (How they would know where to send it was not made clear.) And each one of the ten to whom I sent the note would presumably also receive a free laptop for sending it on to ten of their friends, and.........and oh, dear Lord, the fact that I even received such a stupifyingly obvious piece of illogic means that someone had to be buying into it! (If you will send me your email address and $4.50 in postage, I will email you a copy of this offer, which I’m sure is still good.)

One of my all-time favorite offers of this type was from some “Not Sold In Stores!!!” gee-gaw absolutely, positively guaranteeing me that my $25.00 (Regular Price $4,399.00) purchase absolutely, positively guaranteed that I would be the recipient of one of three fantastic prizes: A round-the-world trip aboard the QE2, a 2009 his-and-hers set of Mercedes, or a pocket comb.

And my friends are sometimes seriously concerned for the fact that I can be so bitter. I can’t imagine why.

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Gullible's Travels

My inability to comprehend the workings of the world and the actions of its inhabitants is, as you may have noticed, a recurring theme here. I wander through life wide-eyed with disbelief at the boundless gullibility, curable ignorance, and outright stupidity of people who should know better...including me.

Every now and again, when I am in a particularly mentally-masochistic mood, I will glance quickly down the endless list of stupifyingly idiotic message titles in my Spam file before hitting the “delete” button. The other morning, among the dozens of guarantees of sexual potency, invaluable tips on how to make “her”—have you noticed, it’s always “her”?—scream in pleasure, offers absolutely guaranteeing to cure every disease known to man, and amazing ways I can earn $20,000 an hour working at home, there was one offering “uncensored” photos of Miley Cyrus, a young woman recently famous for something or other, and the daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus who had one hit song several years ago. She has attained shock status by posing for photos for a magazine! Can you imagine? I know this only because I’ve been bombarded by it every time I turn on the TV. From what I have been able to determine (and the fact that I have even taken the time to “determine” it speaks poorly of me), the photos are largely innocuous. She’s posing with a lot of skin showing (now there’s a photographic first!), and in one photo she is seen lying in her father’s lap. (INCEST! DEGRADATION! SIN! SHOCK! HORROR! PUBLICITY! CASH!)

My immediate question, and one to which I have been seeking an answer all my life, is why I or any other biped on the planet, should give a hoot in hell? People are out there starving. AIDS is still rampant throughout the world. We are engaged in two simultaneous and endless wars fabricated and led by a president who has done nothing but lie to and mislead the American people for eight glorious years. Gasoline and food prices are steadily climbing. Our nation’s infrastructure is crumbling. People everywhere are suffering needlessly. But take hope: Brittany may get visitation rights for her kids.

And I am expected to give a shit about uncensored photos of Miley Cyrus? Oh, dear lord, it is to weep.

But we humans are experts at the old “Oh! Look over there!” method of avoiding problems. We eagerly distract ourselves with inconsequential garbage. Better, I guess, to stare in breathless fascination at one maggot than see the entire rotting corpse. (Oh, my, that did sound rather harsh, didn’t it? Bitter, even. I do apologize: it’s just that, despite mountain ranges of evidence that I am a fool to do so, I expect so much more from the world than it is willing to give. And once I allow myself to start contemplating egregious stupidity, it’s a very slippery slope.)

I suppose it is human nature to sit in a sandbox with a little pail and shovel and build our own little mountains rather than to go out and try to climb the real ones that are already there, just as it is easier for grown men to go absolutely apeshit over today’s “big game” rather than actually get out there and engaging in some sort of physical activity themselves. It is far easier to distract and delude ourselves by fixating on things which, in the overall scheme of life, mean little or, more often, nothing, than to put forth the effort to do something constructive. And by becoming totally enraptured with the lives of others, we can ignore the fact that we have so little control over our own.

And I, who take great if perverse pride in ignoring reality, have just realized that the Miley Cyrus Syndrome shows clearly that I am not alone in doing so. The difference between me and most other people is that I admit it.

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The Toddler's Creed

I came across one of my favorite poems…well, I assume it’s a poem though it doesn’t rhyme. I delight in it because it is yet another "story of my life." It’s attributed to a Dr. Burton L. Wright, and I’m sure Dr. Wright won’t mind if I quote it here:

The Toddler's Creed

If I want it,
IT'S MINE!

If I give it to you and change my mind later,
IT'S MINE!

If I can take it away from you,
IT'S MINE!

If it's mine it will never belong to anybody else,
No matter what.
If we are building something together,
All the pieces are mine!

If it looks just like mine,
IT'S MINE!

If it breaks or needs putting away,
IT'S YOURS!

As I’ve often said, I really do think that on many levels I never made it past the “Terrible Twos” emotionally. I am totally and irrationally jealous of anyone who has some ability, skill, or trait that I do not have but want. And when I say that often my chest will ache when I will see someone who I think is beautiful, I am quite serious. It’s an actual, physical response.

We all have to grow up, and for the most part—though with great reluctance and resistance—I have, though as you have undoubtedly noticed, I have clung, and still cling, desperately to the past. “Growing up” has always terrified and revolted me because to me “growing up” also meant/means “giving up”…losing forever the wonders and openness that make a child’s life so enchanted and exciting.

There can be only one “first time” for anything, of course, and we run through them quickly as children. Unfortunately, repetition of experiences tends to have a sandpaper effect, wearing away the intensity of the emotions each of those first-time experiences evoked. The all-too-inevitable result, for most people, is to forget how wondrous so many things still are. To this day, I can pick up a pebble on the beach and become totally awed just staring at it, thinking of how it got to the moment in eternity when I picked it up…where it came from, and how very, very long ago, and the odds that I would choose it to pick up over the billions of other pebbles, and what will become of it after I return it to the beach. If I throw it far out into the water, how long will it take it to return to the beach, and what will become of it in the gigantic scheme of things?

For me, the Toddler’s Creed is my view of the entire world.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.

"Cute"

It was Dorien’s godfather, Oscar Wilde, who said: “A cynic is one who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.” Well, I know the value of a good many things, so I hope I don’t quite qualify under Oscar’s definition. However, someone else (it may also have been Oscar, but I'm not sure) said: “A cynic is a frustrated romantic,” and with this sentiment I concur completely.

I hate being cynical, but I am, far more often than I would like. It comes, I suppose from years and years of exposure to unrelenting hypocrisy, lies, greed and manipulation. Make no doubt, I am still a confirmed, rock-bound romantic and I still think there is more good than evil in the world but oh, my, it does seem to get harder and harder to hold on to unadulterated optimism as the years accumulate.

I saw a commercial the other day so seeped in “cute” that it should have carried a warning for diabetics. That I cannot recall what it was or what was being sold is a credit to my mind’s ability to totally block out what I don’t want to remember. Lord, but I hate “cute”!

Well, let me rephrase that: natural cute, as in babies and puppies, is fine. Forced “cute”…wearing baseball caps sideways ala multi-billionaire recording “artists” who can’t string a simple sentence together without several insertions of “ya’ know what I’m sayin’?” and seem incapable of pronouncing the word “ask” …induces in me the urge for projectile vomiting. And I’m not being racist in this: some years ago there was a white rapper named, I think, Vanilla Ice who, aside from his totally ridiculous hairdo, was a rather nice looking guy if you saw nothing more than a mug shot (and as I recall he had several, not all willingly posed). But his actions were just so with-it-cool-man-give-me-five-ya-know-what-I’m-sayin’ that I lump him in with those other cretins. It is not the color of the skin but the quality of their public persona that revolts me. Girls, I understand, thought Vanilla ice was “cute.” They were wrong.

TV has made a cult of “cute” on the assumption that “cute” sells. They inundate us with “cute” commercials featuring “cute” actors and actresses (and I am being charitable here) saying and doing “cute” things.

Kids programs are especially egregious. The “hosts” of weekend morning kids shows are typically really “cute” girls who think that dressing like an apprentice tart and wearing pigtails can hide the fact that they’ll never see 25 again. They address an audience of twelve year olds who are encouraged to look like they are 25. How can one see these things and not be tempted to cross over to the Dark Side?

CBS’s “Sunday Morning” is one of my favorite programs, but one of their featured “reporters” is a man called Bill Geise/Geisse/Ge...whatever: I take the fact that I have no idea of how he spells his name to be an indication of my opinion of him) who always hosts those folksy, down-home, good-ole boys segments which CBS apparently things are really, really cute. The segments subject may have some value, but Geise/Geisse/Whatever’s presentation goes far beyond “cute” to redefine the words “cloying” and “smarmy”. The man is the equivalent of chewing tinfoil, and I often knock things over in my rush to hit the channel changer.

Does this make me jaded? A bad person? A grump? Aw, hell…bring out those kittens!

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.

The Hamster Cage

I’m usually pretty good at fooling myself into thinking I’m doing something constructive when I’m really just running madly around my own little version of a hamster cage. I’m especially good at it when there is something I really should be doing but want to put off. I’ll immediately come up with a thousand diversions: doing the dishes (which have been quietly and I can assume happily sitting in the sink minding their own business). I don’t really have to do them yet…I have an unused plate, two spoons, and a cup, which can double as a glass if I need it to. So there is no rush at all in actually doing the dishes. But I do them anyway.

Or I will go to the stack of magazines I’ve read and been meaning to leave in the laundry room for others to read. How the stack got 10 inches tall I have no idea…I just took a stack there no more than two or three months ago. Perhaps someone has been sneaking into my apartment when I’m not looking and adding to them. Anyway, I then spend an inordinate amount of time playing hide-and-seek with my black marking pen. Finally finding it (how it got there is a mystery). I then carefully cross out my name and address on the magazine covers (or, in the case of my New Yorkers, peel off the label), all of which takes up another good chunk of time. But now that I’ve got that done, I decide to hold off on actually going to the laundry room, and instead come in to check to see if I got any email while I was off doing whatever it was I was off doing. (By this time, I’ve usually forgotten.)

I then hastily respond to each email I have received, realizing as soon as I hit the “send” button that there was something more I wanted to say, or some question I did not answer, or any one of a number of goofs, gaffes, and errors I make with distressing regularity, and have to send a follow-up message apologizing for having sent the first message too soon. Or, as I have just done five minutes ago, respond to an email announcing an event which on cursory reading, did not include the location. I immediately fire off a witty note calling attention to the error, hit “send”, and instantly note that the address was indeed there and I’d just missed it. Which required an immediate follow up note of abject apology for being an idiot.

And so it goes.

One of the most effective ways I have found of not working more rapidly toward the end of my current book is to start reading it over to see if I’d made any mistakes or repetitions, or called a character by the wrong name, or had them do something on page 37 that they’d already done on page 32. Of course there are a galaxy of such glitches and errors and anachronisms, not to mention misspellings to be corrected, changing “but” to “and” in several places, and “and” to “but” in several others. Adding entire paragraphs here, taking others out there, or switching them from one page to another, so that when I am finally finished (for this time around) I will note that if I had reached Page 127 when I stopped moving the plot forward, I am still on Page 127 after spending several hours making the changes, additions, deletions, and corrections indicated above.

But I am always prepared to answer, when asked how my day went or how the book is going…or to volunteer should no one ask, that I spent all day writing.

Oh, and then there is always writing a blog when I should be writing the novel.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.

Paranoia Rides Again

I always liked the bumper sticker that says: “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean somebody isn’t out to get you.” I can relate.

All evidence to the contrary, I really do not like making an ass of myself. Most of the time, I readily admit, I am the instigator. But every now and then…today I wrote a note to one of the groups to which I belong, including a link to my A World Ago blog, which is http://www.doriengrey.blogspot.com. When the message was posted, I saw it came across as “http://www.dorien grey.blogspot.com”, with a space between the “gr” and the “ey” in “doriengrey.” With my sterling track record for screwing up, I knew the error was mine. (Like, whose else could it be? Ya’ know what I’m sayin’?). So I hastily sent a note of embarrassed apology for the error, including the correct link, without the space between “gr” and “ey.”

I checked the site a few minutes later, and there it was...the space where I had not put in a space, where no space should be, and where no space was intended. So, glutton for punishment that I am, I sent yet another note, typing, when I came to the link, each note with one finger and deliberate slowness: “d...o...r...i...e...n...g...r...e...y”. I looked at it for a good ten seconds on the chance that a space might creep in while I watched. It did not. I posted the note again. And when I went to check…yep; the space was back.

This particular site to which I refer is run by Yahoo which, I have noticed, seems to have an absolutely wonderful time at the expense of its customers. We have one member whose every post comes across with a question mark wherever a period is supposed to be. I know he didn’t do it, unless he is so terribly insecure he must seek approval for every sentence. He is not.

Another member of the same list posts frequently. She has been a member for a couple of years, now. Yet every single post she sends is automatically pitched into Yahoo’s Spam bin. I have no idea what she might have done to deserve it, but I’m sure the Yahoo gods are doubled over with laughter each time the poor woman tries to get directly through to the group. (Oh, and tossing here every post into the Spam bin means that I have to go into the Spam bin about ten times more frequently than would normally be necessary, just to retrieve her posts.

And there are two other members with whom Yahoo takes delight in playing some sort of cyber ping-pong. At least fifty percent of the time, their posts will also be tossed into the Spam folder. Exactly the same address each time. Absolutely no reason for it, but, hey…

I received a call on my cell phone yesterday. I answered it (punch the “open” button to talk. I did it exactly as I have done it with every call I have ever received. But instead of being able to talk, or being able to hear, I got a random page from the phone’s “Menu.” I hung up, hoping whoever called would call again. They did. I punched the “open” button. I got a random page from the “Menu”. This went on three times until I literally had to hold the hand with the phone tightly with my other hand to keep me from tossing it through the window.

But, hey, it’s all in jolly good fun, isn’t it? ……I said, isn’t it? Why am I seeing a menu page from my cell phone?

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.

Sign, Part 2

I still remember a few of my favorite signs: “cute” (index and second fingers lightly flicking the chin twice), “drunk” (drawing the hand in front of the forehead while rapidly scissoring the index and middle fingers like a swimmer’s legs), and “and” (closing the tips of the fingers of the open hand against the thumb while moving it in front of the chest-—the speed with which it is done indicating emphasis). Many more are coming to mind as I’m thinking of them, but….

I took a sign class at the gay Metropolitan Community Church in L.A. and toyed for a moment with the idea of becoming an interpreter, but I never came close to the level of proficiency required. But I learned a lot, and found it fascinating.

ASL (American Sign Language) is derived from French, where sign originated as a separate language. It’s quite different from spoken English, primarily in its grammatical structure. (For example, adjectives tend to follow nouns, not precede them as in English.)

Sign is in some ways a form of shorthand. Whereas in spoken English we might say “I’m going to go to the store,” that would most likely be signed as “I go store.” Says exactly the same thing, but far more compactly. And just as the hearing can tell, by listening to someone speak, what part of the country they’re from, so can the deaf. Sign has its own distinct dialects, and word usage varies from one part of the country to the next.

The hearing learning sign tend to sign as they normally speak, in grammatical English, adding all the unnecessary words and putting them in the word order of spoken English. There’s even a sign for “signing English”...the hands clasped together at the waist primly, in the fashion of a spinster’s addressing her garden club.

Before there were personal computers, the phone company provided what were called TTY machines, which were basically Text Messaging machines, complete with a printout feature on adding machine tape. You’d type your message, then type “G.A.” (“go ahead”) to let the other person know you were through. I had one for use with Mark and Rob, and it’s quite likely they don’t even make TTYs anymore.

I got a kick out of the fact that, in large gatherings with other deaf, it’s difficult to have a truly private conversation: anyone who can watch their hands, from anywhere in the room, knows exactly what they’re talking about.

There is an incredibly strong division within the deaf community on the issue of whether or not the deaf should learn to speak even though they cannot hear. My friend Mark was vehement on the subject: deaf since birth, his parents had sent him to a school which insisted he learn to speak. He did learn, but he refused to use it. “Why should I learn to speak in order to communicate with the hearing? Let them learn sign!” Even Rob, having lived in both worlds, felt strongly that to insist the deaf learn to speak was a perverse form of discrimination.

The division is particularly deep when it comes to devices such as cochlear implants, which allow the deaf to hear. Those who support these implants argue with some justification that hearing is necessary to get along in today’s world. Others disagree vehemently, saying their use can destroy the deaf community and culture. It’s rather like someone coming up with a “cure” for being gay. Many...probably the vast majority...of both gays and the deaf see absolutely nothing wrong with being the way God made them and are proud and defensive of their culture. Conformity can be culturally destructive.

I miss signing, and now that I’m back in Chicago, should look into taking a course here. Care to join me? I think you’d like it.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.

Sign, Part 1

The TV show “Cold Case” recently had an episode involving the death of a student at a high school for the deaf, and it immediately reminded me of my experiences (relatively peripheral though they were) with the deaf community in Los Angeles as a result of having made several deaf friends there. Oddly, it did not occur to me until just now how strong the similarities are between the deaf community and the gay community. Each is a distinct subculture which exists, largely unseen, within but totally apart from the mainstream. Each has its own specific if unwritten rules and rituals and its own cultural history, and provides vital support and comfort to its members who are too often ostracized, discriminated against, or ignored by the world at large.

With very few exceptions, neither the deaf nor gays can be picked out of a crowd just by looking at it. For gays, this can be an advantage, but not for the deaf who, not being able to respond to someone trying to get their attention (asking them to move, for example), can provoke anger and rudeness.

The deaf routinely deal with problems the hearing never even consider. They must be particularly vigilant while driving, since they cannot hear the sirens of emergency vehicles. The deaf are far more likely to die in building fires because they are unable to hear alarms or shouted warnings or poundings on the door. Many of the deaf have doorbells hooked up to light fixtures which alert them, by flashing, as to the arrival of a visitor. Simply walking into a store or restaurant or asking for directions present problems the hearing never have to address.

Before I moved to L.A., I had no contact with the deaf, other than to occasionally—rarely, at that—see people signing. I remember wondering why, when most animated, their faces would contort and they would make guttural sounds, while signing, and their gestures would become more exaggerated. It wasn’t until I had the opportunity to make deaf friends that I realized that exaggerated gestures and facial expressions are the equivalent of volume, tone, and emphasis of oral speech.

I had two rather close deaf gay friends, who were themselves best friends. Rob was in his early 20s, puppy-dog cute and utterly charming, so naturally I had a tremendous crush on him. He had lost his hearing to illness when he was 19 and shortly thereafter suffered a stroke which rendered him mute as well. (Every deaf person I have met considers the phrase “deaf and dumb”—even when using “dumb” as a synonym for “mute”—a stinging insult.) I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been for Rob, having lived in both the hearing and deaf worlds, but he was always cheerful and upbeat. Mark was only a little older, deaf since birth, and though a bit more serious than Rob, had a great sense of humor. They both loved to dance, as do many in the deaf community, easily picking up the vibrations from the pounding beat which reverberates through both the air and the floor.

I had, somewhere along the way, picked up a bit of ASL (American Sign Language), mostly limited to finger-spelling, at which I was painfully slow, but which helped establish my friendship with Mark and Rob. They gradually taught me more and the one thing that I still remember and deeply appreciate is how amazingly patient the deaf tend to be with those who are trying to learn sign.

I never did become truly proficient at it, and when I moved from L.A. I had no opportunity to practice it, and thus have forgotten most of what I’d learned.

Oh, dear. Out of space. More on Sign next time.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.

Generations

It’s interesting to think that each generation of mankind is a link in a chain that goes back to the beginnings of our species, and that only a few links can span a very long time.

I think I mentioned in one blog that when I was just starting school in 1941 (probably a couple of links away in your own generational chain), a man I knew as “Mr. Bement” lived on the street behind ours. He was, as I recall him, incomprehensibly old in comparison to my then seven or eight years. He was, I believe, 90. Which meant he was born somewhere around 1853 and would have been old enough to remember the Civil War. My own grandfather Chester Fearn was born the year after the Chicago fire; my dad the year before the Titanic set sail. WWI had only been over 15 years when I myself was born.

I think of these things and am awestruck. I am only two links in the chain of generations away from the Chicago fire. Astounding.

The entire population of the planet when Grandpa Fearn was born no longer exists. Within a few years, the planet’s entire population when my parents were born will also be dead, and within 35 years, every single human being living on the face of the earth on the day I was born will be gone. Astonishing!

Each succeeding generation overlaps the ones before it like the clapboard siding on a house, and the link-forming is a continuous event.

I’ve spoken often of my fascination with cemeteries, and the sense of calm I feel when walking through one, reading the tombstones. I am aware that as I read the names on the older ones and wonder who they were, what they sounded and looked like, what they did for a living, their families, their friends, their hopes and an infinite number of other questions, that I am probably the first person in many years to have been aware that they even existed.

I’ve occasionally, too, wished that I had somehow had children (artificial insemination only, thank you), only to realize that the main reason most people have for having children is to leave a legacy of themselves, and I do that with my writing. While children, and their children, and their children’s children on through time carry the genes of all who came before, individuals, with infinitely few exceptions, are totally lost to time within three or four generations. Family memories seldom go back beyond one’s grandparents.

Every parent wishes the very best for his/her children. They want to protect them, and see them grow to be healthy, happy individuals. But it is inevitable that as they reach maturity, they wander off on their own and begin forming their own lives and families and histories. And it is here I feel I have something of an advantage—though the word “advantage” can certainly be questioned. The characters in my books are in effect my children, and they never change. Dick and Jonathan and Joshua are a loving, happy family, and they will remain so forever. They won’t grow old, or grow apart from me. They live in a world without time, and it is, again, time which is my principle enemy. I could not protect my real children, had I had any, from it, but I can do so for my characters, who are almost as real to me as flesh and blood offspring. And while I cannot hold them in my arms, I can hold them in my heart.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.

The Doctor is In

One of the best things about self-analysis is that there’s nobody to tell you you’re wrong. I have a doctorate in the subject, issued by the prestigious Dorien Grey University and Storm Door Company, and I have been my patient now for as long as I can remember. The results of my efforts are, as you may have noticed, published here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

I also, of course, am well qualified at analyzing others as well and consider myself something of the Jiffy-Lube of psychoanalysis. You have a problem? Just bring it to me for resolution.

In my active-in-the-community days, I seemed to be a magnate for people with problems, which I was more than eager to take on. It bordered on being a Messiah complex: “Suffer little emotionally insecure gay men to come unto me.” Lord knows there were enough of them. I’m quite sure that one of the major reasons I did it was that in devoting my time to their problems, I didn’t have to spend too much time concentrating on my own (one of which, of course, was why and how I really felt qualified to tell other people how to live their lives). I have occasionally looked back with true regret on the amount of money I spent on these people.

It really was rather fascinating: I would walk into a crowded bar and some sort of mystic sonar would start radiating from me across the room: “Emotionally needy? Right this way.” Apparently those who responded saw something in me…a certain stability, perhaps. And compared to some of them, I was indeed the Rock of Gibraltar to their sand castles.

Perhaps there was something of the Pygmalian complex involved. I’ve always secretly enjoyed control. By taking on people with damaged psyches, I was in effect playing Savior of Lost Souls

Let me say in my own behalf that occasionally I really do feel that I did some good. For one thing, I genuinely did care and I did try to do something to help. Unfortunately, too many times they were shattered into such tiny pieces I doubt anyone could ever have put them back together.

And there were, of course, disasters from which I never fully recovered, specifically with one-who-shall-remain-nameless who cost me far more than $10,000 over a calamitous two-year relationship. I think I’ve discussed that one before, but my only excuse for having put up with it was that it was at the time that my mother was dying, and I had far more important things on my mind.

But the fact of the matter is that there are so very many people out there who are, truly, lost and who really can benefit from the help and advice of others. Just listening with an open mind and heart can do a lot. And it is also true that, having led the checkered life I have, I do believe I have a high sense of empathy and can understand how and why people feel like they do. I should point out that this is far more true of gays than heterosexuals who, though I have lived among them all my life, are still largely incomprehensible to me.

Being out of the gay mainstream now, I don’t have the opportunity…or as much of a desire…to play Lucy van Pelt sitting on the curb with her little “The Doctor is In” stand. But, hey, if you have a problem, I’m willing to listen.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.

Dust Bunnies

While standing in line waiting to be born, I was issued the standard grab bag of talents and traits given to all those about ready to enter the world. On opening it, I found devastating good looks, a rapier wit, rock-solid self confidence, and infinite patience. Since I hadn’t been born yet, I had no idea of what use these things could possibly be, so I traded them to the kid behind me for a peanut butter sandwich.

Patience, one of the virtues I subsequently never had, is a great asset for anyone, and particularly for a writer. But it has always been terra incognita for me. I can’t go two hours without getting antsy to get to the computer to write. Far too often, what I do write when I get there is not what I hoped/intended to write, and I don’t have the patience to make it so. I ramble on (really? I’m sure you never noticed!) and the result ends up resembling the contents of a vacuum cleaner bag. Let’s face it, folks…I write the equivalent of dust bunnies.

Just as there is a difference between having no luck and being unlucky, there is a difference between having no patience and being impatient. Writing a book is somewhat different from writing a blog in that books by their very nature and length demand more time. But the impatience factor is always there. When I am writing a book, I can't wait to get to the next page to see what will happen next. When I finish writing a book, I can't wait to get started on the next one. And the waiting period between sending the finished book off to the publisher and seeing it in print never fails to drive me to distraction.

Lately this has become a major problem for me, since I currently have three (count 'em...3!) completed manuscripts sitting in the publisher's pipeline waiting for release. That I am not the only pony in the publisher’s stable, or that they are working as fast as they can, means absolutely nothing to me. The book is written. I want a printed copy in my hand, now.

Partly because of wanting to avoid even thinking about my impatience with my publisher, and loath to do what I should be doing—working on my current book—because to do so would just add another log into the already existing logjam, I keep busy vacuuming these little dust bunnies from the many corners of my mind.

And dust bunnies beget dust bunnies. I am constantly bemused as to why I am so driven to capture and preserve them. Who, after all, can really be expected to care, other than me? If I were able to put down every single second of my life, who, after all, would have the time to read it, even if they had the desire to do so?

I guess it all stems from and goes back to the keystone of my psyche: my desperation not to be forgotten…not to be just another weathered tombstone in the incomprehensibly vast cemetery of time. So I gather me dust bunnies while I may, for old time is still a’flying, and hope that someone, somewhere, might see in them a vague likeness of themselves, and wonder who this strange man may have been.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.

The Spelunker's Rope

Cave explorers often tie themselves to a rope affixed near the entrance to keep themselves from becoming lost or disoriented as they move deeper into the unknown. I’ve always done essentially the same thing, except that my rope is a string of belongings which anchor me to the past and keep me from feeling too alone or afraid of the dark.

Aside from large framed photos of my grandmother, grandfather, uncle Buck, and a painting of my mom I had done in Naples (that one’s a double-link: to my mom and to my Navy days), there is a large framed picture of mom when she was around 2 years old. The glass was broken when I moved to Chicago, but I still keep the picture behind the sofa, planning to have the glass replaced one day. I have no wall space to hang it, but....

In my living room I have a comfortable chair which my mom bought when she moved to California in 1970, plus two wooden end tables she got at the same time. They came as an unfinished kit, so she varnished them and put them together herself.

In my bedroom is a dresser Norm and I bought at Goodwill and refinished shortly after we moved in together in 1958. On the wall directly beside me as I write is a copy of a large Etruscan fresco I bought around the same time.

I have pocket watches belonging to my grandmother and grandfather, a cocoa set belonging to my grandmother, a 100-plus-year-old fruit bowl belonging to my step grandmother, my mom’s set of Fostoria crystal goblets, a set of cordial glasses she bought in the 1930s, a small carved wooden head Dad bought for Mom while we were in Hawaii in 1960; two carved wooden buddhas I bought for Dad in Gibraltar; a beautiful fired clay head made by a hustler friend of my dear friend "Uncle Bob" from Los Angeles..... I have a pair of sweat pants with “Margason” stenciled across the rear end from my NavCad days, and a monogrammed vermouth glass I stole from the Istanbul Hilton hotel. And near my bed are two small Chinese figurines I hand painted while I was in high school, and stuffed animals from my days with Ray. (Hmmm...does the word “obsessive” ring a bell?)

I’m sure many people view all this as foolish. That’s their right. My right is to ignore them. Everything I have has a history and a story which tie me to it and therefore to the past, and I find great comfort in that.

I know there are entire philosophies which believe putting too much importance on “things” is unhealthy, not to mention extremely cumbersome and confining. I suppose they have a valid point.

My dear Uncle Bob, in his later years, held to this philosophy that having nothing is the key to true freedom---which is one of the reasons he gave me the sculpted head mentioned above. I always stood in something akin to awe of Uncle Bob, but while I could respect his belief, and others who share it, it is totally incomprehensible to me. He often would say “Well, Roggie, when you’re dead it won’t matter, will it?” And he had an indisputable point. But I ain’t dead yet.

Oh, look: there’s that fossilized snail shell I found while walking along a railroad track in Chatsworth, California. I was working with Keith and Iris at the porn mill at the time, and I just decided to go out for a while during lunch. And…

Sigh.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.

Obsession

There I am...right there!…standing on the left wing of a bright yellow U.S. Navy SN-J trainer (number 233) in my brown one-piece flight suit, watching a sailor in a whitehat and blue workshirt with the sleeves rolled up fill the plane’s tank with aviation fuel. When he’s done, I bend down to put the cap on the tank, then climb into the cockpit. My instructor joins me, sitting in the seat behind me. I start the engine, taxi down the runway, and the buddy to whom I’d given my camera catches me taking off.

And there I am…right there!…see?…in my dress blues standing under a row of bougainvillea in downtown Pensacola, hands on hips, staring into the camera.

And there, wrapped in a towel with my NavCad friend Harry Harrison on Pensacola Beach. We went out for pizza and beer later, and the jukebox was playing “Unchained Melody” and to this day I cannot hear that song without being there again.

And I had absolutely no idea, at the instant those films were shot, of what I would be doing twenty minutes from that time, let alone that I would be watching them 56 years later with a sense of longing so palpable my chest actually aches.

The occasion for this almost dizzying tidal wave of nostalgia was the viewing of a DVD I just had made from a VCR, which was in turn taken from 8 mm movies of my time in the Navy. And the longing is mixed with the agony of the fact that I did not realize at the time just how beautiful (relatively, of course) I was, or that I would not always be so young.

I don’t think I have ever met anyone more obsessed with time than I. It’s inexplicable, really and the fact that I truly believe that every nanosecond of time is still there, somewhere, and that we relive them time after time after time, on some endless cosmic loop. So that should give me comfort. But it doesn’t. I want to be there on the wing of that plane, and under that bougainvillea and on that beach with Harry NOW!The fact that I am, somewhere, doesn’t help me at this instant.

A recent blog entry centered on the Seven Deadly Sins, and right now I am totally consumed with Greed…greed for what I once had and no longer have; a greed so consuming that even the belief that time is constantly repeating doesn’t help.

It’s sort of like being on a roller coaster ride. Even knowing that I will be riding the same coaster again and again throughout eternity doesn’t prevent me from being aware that this ride is inexorably coming to an end. I don’t want it to end but I am not quite so foolish as to think that stomping my feet and pouting will push that end one inch or one second further ahead than it is fated to be.

Though I know full well I won’t, I’ll just have to learn to settle back, enjoy however much of the ride remains to me, and know that somewhere, sometime, somehow, I am stepping yet again onto this roller coaster just as I stepped onto the wing of that plane so very many years ago.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.

Seven out of Seven

I was checking out the Seven Deadly Sins this morning—I hope you know me well enough by now that you know better than to ask where that came from—to see if they are listed any particular order of sinfulness. Apparently they are not. However, I was a bit surprised—its having been so long since I last checked them out—to find that I am or have been at one time or another, guilty of every one of them.

In case you might have forgotten, they are: lust, greed, gluttony, sloth, anger, envy, and pride.

Lust? Oh, my, yes. The problem with lust is that it is best when reciprocated, and the passing years tend to rob one of the chance for reciprocity. Every time I see a beautiful guy, my chest still aches with longing, but the only result is frustration.

Greed? Yep. I am, as noted several times in these blogs, insatiably greedy for approval and praise. But again, greed is one of those things that tends to be tempered by reality over time. I am always greedy for more money, but know that’s not likely to happen. So I can deal with greed fairly well by simply ignoring it.

Gluttony? Once, but no more. I always associated gluttony with greed, and in a way they are related, but gluttony is limited to food, but my bout with cancer effectively robbed me of both the desire (nothing tastes the same, and certainly not as good) and the ability to eat nearly enough to qualify for gluttony.

Sloth? Alas, yes. If procrastination is a form of sloth, it’s pretty high up on my list. I’m really very good at finding a million things to keep me from doing what I should be doing.

Anger? Uh, if you’ve read any of these entries I think it’s fairly obvious that I am totally at the mercy of this particular sin. I have turned anger into something of an art form, and often go beyond mere anger into outright rage and fury over far more things than I should. But until the world is what I want and expect it to be, I don’t see any improvement in my anger management abilities.

Envy? This is the one of which I am probably most embarrassed. (I actually take a perverse pride…coming up…in some of the other sins). Just as I frequently ache with lust for the unattainable, I far too often ache with envy over what others have/do that I do not. I do not read nearly as much as I should because I become so terribly envious at how well other writers write. I slide into the bottomless depths of envy and despair when I see people with incredible talent in any field, and when that talent is compounded with beauty, as it is in singer/actor John Barrowman and far too many others to count, the ache matches and possibly even surpasses that created by lust.

Pride? This is a strange one, for when it comes to pride it is so often and thoroughly mixed in with self deprecation, insecurity, and a dash of greed, that it’s like a blender set on “puree”. But the fact is that I am extremely prideful. I have formed my own concepts of dignity and will go to any lengths not to violate it. I am proud of who I am, even though I would like to be many things I am not. I am proud of my writing. But probably one of my greatest areas of pride is in my refusal to acknowledge the hegemony of reality. It may be a silly pride, but it is very real to me. And, finally, no matter what, I am a survivor. And I take great pride in that.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.

The Days of Our Lives

“When is the last time you had pneumonia?” the speech therapist asked after I had completed a video-x-ray test of my swallowing.

“Uh...like never,” I replied.

“That’s amazing,” she said. “You are constantly aspirating liquid when you swallow. You’re what is known as a silent aspirator. Luckily, you have a strong cough reflex when you do cough.”

Well, that was encouraging, I thought. I’d gone to see her because I had a test scheduled while I was at Mayo on my recent visit, but the person who was going to perform the test had a family emergency and had to cancel, so I arranged to have the test done at my local hospital.

And the upshot of all this? The solution? The cure? Well, according to the therapist, I am to mix a tasteless thickening agent into everything…that’s everything…I drink: coffee, milk, water, soda, soup. Not only that, but I was instructed to drink everything using a teaspoon, not a cup or glass. 1 teaspoon of thickened liquid. Swallow. Cough. 1 teaspoon of thickened liquid. Swallow. Cough. Right.

I can see myself going out for coffee, carrying my cannister of thickener, leaving my cup on the counter and grabbing a teaspoon. Measure out the thickener, stir frantically to be sure it dissolves. 1 teaspoon of thickened coffee. Swallow. Cough. 1 teaspoon of thickened coffee. Swallow. Cough. The fact that it will take me three hours to consume one cup of coffee won’t really matter, because after five minutes of sip-swallow-cough the entire place will have cleared off, leaving me sitting alone at the table being glared at by any of the staff who were unable to leave with the others.

And no ice cream, which is thick going into the mouth but melts into a very thin liquid which easily flows down the windpipe. And no Jello, which is fine with me since I don't like it anyway.

Doesn’t all this seem like tons of jolly good fun? No, it does not.

But I will do my best, mainly because while I have never had pneumonia, I do not want to get pneumonia. So I will compromise. I will put the thickener in everything I drink, but to hell with the teaspoon. I’ll just take very small sips. As for the coughing after every single swallow, I won’t count on it only because my eating habits already test the mettle and the patience of my friends. To put them through an endless coughing binge would be simply too much.

Either that, or I can simply refuse to drink anything in public, which means I can’t eat anything in public either, since I can’t swallow any solid food without washing it down with liquid.

Donations are now being taken for the construction of a gigantic marble statue in honor of my eternal…but always noble…suffering. I’ll use John Ceda of the World Wrestling Federation for the model (no one will know it isn’t me), and will pose him, in a loincloth, atop a boulder, head raised dramatically to heaven, face incredibly brave in sorrow, with the back of one hand against his forehead, ala silent screen vamp Theda Bara at her most emotive best.

Oh, well.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.

Laughter Revisited

One thing I never have to concern myself with is a lack of things to concern myself with. They just sort of appear, like bugs on the windshield of a speeding car on a summer night. I was thinking again (I think I might have done an entry on it some time ago)about the fact that I don’t seem to laugh nearly as much as I used to, and that I miss it. Laughter is one of life’s greatest underrated pleasures.

I don’t think it’s a matter of things not being as funny as they once were, though a case could be made for that argument. Perhaps it’s just that humor is a personal thing, and one’s degree of appreciating and responding to it changes as one gets older. Things that send a five year old into peals of uncontrollable laughter don’t seem quite so funny when one is ten. Fart jokes, all the rage in high school, lose their charm over time, and that is largely due to the familiarity that comes with repetition. The funniest joke you’ve ever heard loses some of its edge by the fifth time it’s told, and by the twentieth it’s stale beer.

Nevertheless, I do miss laughing like I used to: the kind of laugh that scrinches up your face and leaves you gasping for air: the kind of laugh that lasts so long your stomach hurts. They still come along from time to time, but with each passing year, one is exposed to more and more things, and more and more of them are repeats or variations of things you’ve seen or heard before. A good laugh sneaks up on you from behind and yells “BOO!”: when you can see it coming from a block away, you’re pretty inured to it by the time it arrives.

I can still recall the source of one of my best and longest laughs: It was a (Mad Magazine?) spoof on high school yearbooks. In the section devoted to class photos, there were the usual, typical photos we’ve all seen a thousand times, each student’s photo about 2 x 2 ½ inches, perhaps 24 to a page. A page of Seniors, a page of Juniors, two pages of Sophomores…all typical of annuals. Then turning to the Freshman, there were what looked to be 10,000 tiny, 1/4 x 1/4 inch thumbnail shots. I went into hysterics the first time I saw it, and it still makes me laugh just thinking about it.

And of course, each of us has our own type of humor: things I find laugh-out-loud funny, you may stare at blankly…and vice-versa. Books have been written on what people find funny, and why. Mine tends to lean toward the totally unexpected, out-of-left-field slap up the side of the head, like the freshmen’s page in the year book spoof. But I also go equally for humor that creeps up slowly, as is epitomized so often by covers of the New Yorker magazine. These are seldom guffaw-inducing, but they are incredibly satisfying. An example of that type of subtle humor is also epitomized for me in another New Yorker cartoon of a vase on a table under a mirror. The vase has two daisies: the one facing out into the room is totally wilted; the one turned to the mirror is picture-perfect.

Some humor escapes me totally. I never, as a child, found The Three Stooges—or slapstick in general— to be remotely amusing. I never cared much for Bob Hope, either. Maybe, again, it’s a matter of preferring to have it sneak up on me; to have to think about it for a split second or two.

Scientific studies have shown the therapeutic benefits of laughter, and some even claim that the simple, physical act of smiling—even forcing yourself to grin when you don’t feel like it—has definite health benefits.

It sometimes seems that humor is similar to our planet’s other dwindling resources: and that nothing is funny any more. But it’s still there, if we take the time to look for it, and it is worth all the gold in the world.

I’ll close with a story I’ve told before, of the teacher who asks her class to write down their favorite sounds, and one little boy replies: “My mother’s laughter.”

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.

The Bramble Patch

Having gotten back from my 6-month "all's well" checkup at the Mayo Clinic on Friday afternoon and realizing I had to have a blog for Monday (today), I set out to write one. I do not like deadlines...I'm rushed enough even under the best of circumstances.

But I thought I'd check my email before starting, hoping something there might spark an idea for a subject. And sure enough,after finding buried among the mountain of email that had accumulated in my three day absence, a very nice and totally unexpected note from a woman who had read and enjoyed one of my books. I was, as always, elated by it: I love nothing better than hearing from a reader, and it set me to thinking of the value of praise.

So off I set to do a blog on praise and the risk of becoming dependent upon it. But then suddenly it was Saturday, and I had to work both Saturday and Sunday, which for all practical purposes shot huge holes in the time I had to do anything else. So I set the blog aside, confident that I would get to it and finish it Monday morning, which it is now.

But as so often happens with these blogs, and given the fact that my mind too easily wanders off the path I set for it, when I resumed writing it this morning, I found myself talking of greed and gluttony and quite probably, had I continued writing, would have wandered even further off into the brambles.

The trouble with wandering off the path is it is often impossible to find my way back again. So the more I typed, the more tangled I got up in the brambles of my thoughts. And, of course, the perversity of my mind kept reminding me that it was getting later and later and I still hadn't finished and I had to finish and.....

So finally, as not infrequently happens, I just threw my hands up and decided that there was no way I was going to be able to have a blog for today. And so I sat down to explain why there would be no blog today, and here we are.

I promise to have a blog entry for Wednesday. Really, I do. Honest.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.

The Ways of the World

We are born into a world in which everyone is our peer, or older. Imperceptibly we are subject to the rising tide of time. Minutes become hours become days become months become years. More and more people are younger than us, but we seldom notice, because our peer group remains vast. But as the tide rises higher the more perceptive among us slowly become aware that entire generations of people older than we are no longer there. Our awareness of mortality is only peripheral at first…a family acquaintance, an older distant relative, perhaps a grandparent. Inexorably, mortality comes closer. Still we largely ignore it.

If we stop to think of it—which most of us seldom do—we will notice that our peer group is beginning, again imperceptibly, to thin out. The first deaths of those close to us create gaping holes in our soul, which, if it could be compared to a block of cheese, with subsequent losses more closely resembles Swiss than cheddar.

But the purpose of this entry is not to cast a pall of "Geez, I'm gonna die", but to point out something very few of us ever think of.

Human beings are a gregarious species, and not meant to be alone. As we age, we move—either by choice or from being subtly forced—out of the mainstream. From the time of puberty, sex plays an important role in our lives. It's rather like a fun club to which everyone belongs. But as we age and become physically less attractive in a society which is pathologically devoted to youth and beauty, unless we are lucky enough to have a life partner, we are no longer welcome in the club. The desire, the longing, may still be there, but the practical possibility of exercising those longings and desires all but vanishes as we, ourselves, become increasingly invisible to those around us.

This isolation is not limited to sex. Many other basic human needs—for friendship, affection, and love, remain as strong as ever as their realization becomes more remote. Yet if we are aware at all of the elderly other than those within our immediate families, our response to them tends, even among the well-meaning, to be condescension: and there is nothing more degrading and insulting than condescension.

Granted, many old people seem to revert to a form of childhood, to be confused by things which have not always been a part of their lives, to be hesitant to make their own decisions, or to need help with things they, as young adults, could have done without a moment's thought. But I suspect a large part of it has to do with the fact that these problems result from the sense that they are no longer considered to be viable, worthy, capable people. They retreat within themselves because it is made far too clear to them that they are not wanted or needed by the rest of the world.

Kindness and courtesy cost nothing. We all know how much it means to be given a smile when it is really needed. But the older we get, the fewer people there are able…or, let's face it, willing…to take the time or effort to do so. Have you any idea how much a casual touch on the arm or a hug can mean to someone who has almost forgotten what physical contact with another human is like?

"For I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee. ..." John Donne

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.

The "Worthless" Syndrome

There are those who devote far too much time reflecting on their weaknesses and shortcomings, examining each through a magnifying glass as though they were so many insects-on-pins in a display case. Alas, I am one of them. And while, way down deep, I know I am not being fair to myself, and that I’m not really all that bad, it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve always measured myself against others and inevitably come up short. And I’m talking about it here because, once again, I think I am not totally alone in these negative assumptions.

Though I cannot be absolutely sure from whence my lifelong, deep-rooted sense of inferiority and unworthiness come from, other than my tendency toward melodrama, I think I have put something of a handle on it.

It most certainly was not the result of my parents’ actions. They loved me unconditionally and never criticized me any more than I’m sure any parent criticizes a child. But I think it largely stems from the fact that I have always lived in a world of dreams. I don’t think I ever fully was able to separate fairy tales and Santa Claus and all the wondrous things that I found in books from real life. I expected myself to have all the sterling qualities, all the marvelous talents and abilities that the heroes in books and movies had.

I was, I felt, a great disappointment to my father because of my total inability to grasp the concept of organized sports, which he loved. The fact that I was also what I’ve always unkindly referred to as a “motor moron”—totally lacking in the hand-eye coordination which leads to physical grace—created a very real sense of self-loathing, echoes of which remain with me to this day.

I looked around me and saw how easily other people seemed to be able to interrelate, how effortlessly they understood what was expected of them by life and society, did wonderful things with astonishing grace, and comparing myself to them, how could I not have felt less than they. I could not understand why I could not be what everyone else seemed to be. So many of the things I ached to be, even as a child…graceful, talented, handsome, at ease in any situation, able to fit in anywhere…I knew I was not and never could be. Therefore, obviously, I was inferior and unworthy.

And of course growing up in a world in which the thought of a boy knowing he truly, purely loved other boys was inconceivably disgusting and perverted and disgusting and sick certainly didn’t help. (One of the reasons I had abandoned organized religion by the time I was twelve was because it was constantly drummed into my head that people like me were doomed to the fires of hell for all eternity for my sins. If God considered me to be an abomination, then by what logic should I believe in God?)

I suspect one of the reasons I concentrate so strongly on my own flaws is because I do not feel qualified to comment on the flaws of others. And besides, I know my own so very much better. And I truly do realize that I am not nearly as bad as I insist upon making myself out to be. It’s just that I expect so very much more out of life…and myself…than it is realistic to expect.

Which brings us back to the vast gap between the mind and the body. The mind can do anything. The body has to rely on muscles and nerves and joints and the infinite complexities of the connections between them all. Some bodies are better able to do things than others. And while mine has always been very good to me, and I am infinitely grateful to it, it is simply not able to meet the physical demands my mind makes upon it. And in the end…literally…it is the body which has the final say.

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Chewing Gum

There are few words more guaranteed to have people roll their eyes to the ceiling than: “Now, when I was a boy…”, usually followed by a rambling account of how much better (or worse, depending on the teller and/or the circumstances of the telling—I’m sure good cases can be made for both points of view) life was than it is today.

But I do remember that at one time the worst thing in the world for a student would be to be sent to the principal’s office for a chewing gum in class. If there was an occasional altercation between boys, it involved fists, not guns or knives. I cannot remember one single incident of a girls engaging in a physical confrontation.

There was, I’m sure, a lot of hurtful gossip, since gossip seems to be in our genes, but there was no internet upon which to post gratuitous cruelty for all the world to see.

I often jot down a few lines for a prospective blog, then hit “save” and wander away. I began this entry on the morning of the shootings at NIU, and as I wrote the first sentences, listening to the then-breaking news, the reports were saying that 18 had been shot, but luckily that there appeared to be only one dead. I remember thinking “Only one”?, as if one didn’t really count. Well, that gradually changed as the deaths rose. Still, compared to Virginia Tech, only six dead, as though it were all some sort of grotesque game with a gigantic scoreboard: Virginia Tech, 32; NIU 6. Virginia Tech wins by a landslide!

As our world grows ever more inured to death, destruction, and misery, we as individuals also become inured to it. Six dead, or thirty-two dead, or 250,000 dead? Really too bad, but shit happens. Until it happens very close to home, to someone we know.

The harsh reality of life is that good news does not get anywhere near the attention of some tragedy or other. Perhaps it is because we consider our own lives so lacking in excitement that we look for it in the misery and misfortunes of others. And it can be argued that the news media, a bottom-line (and frequently bottom-feeding) industry, while frequently blamed for using whatever titillation it can to attract more readers or viewers and therefore more advertisers is only giving the public what it wants..

Still, there should be limits. I find it equal parts stupifying and infuriating when swarms of reporters, like pirana with microphones and cameras, swarm the home of some pretty young—usually blonde, always white—coed who has just been brutally murdered. What has become of our humanity when some bright-eyed reporter shoves a microphone in the faces of the grieving family to ask: “And how did you feel when you found out your daughter was dead?” There is no font or typeface large enough to print the appropriate “DUH!”

I freely admit that I find myself mesmerized by accounts of major disasters, but for me the fascination lies not in the physical suffering of the victims, but in the bravery and nobility so often displayed out by those involved. It is for me a reminder that all is not lost, and that we can, under duress, rise above our circumstances and show a glimmer of what we should all be, all the time.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.

Spam and Pond Scum

How many times have I said I don’t understand something? Too many to count, I’m sure, but it seems like just about when I think the pond scum of this life cannot possibly be more infuriatingly obnoxious they, like a mutant virus, come up with something new.

The latest thing seems to be the deliberate planting of computer viruses via “Comments” on websites. I”ve caught three in the past week on my photo blog alone. Fortunately either I or the computer have caught them, but in one case not before I had to sit and wait while my computer examined every single file (some 154,000 of them).

There are two clues: one is, when someone legitimate wants to post a comment, the computer tells me so, and asks if I want to publish it or not. With the outhouse-overflow crowd, it just automatically shows up, and anyone opens the comment at his or her own peril. Fortunately, just clicking on “Comments” will take you to a window which says something like “click here.” The moral is, do not “click here”. I catch them as soon as I can, and I just don’t get that many comments (I’m not sure if that is good or bad).

I’m truly curious as to what motivates these sub-humans? Do they think they are being clever by trying to disrupt other people’s lives and damage their computers? Probably. Or are they just showing off their self assumed brilliance by doing something no one with any sense of decency or concern for other people would ever consider doing? Someone once said: “Those who can’t create destroy.”

Your average, run of the mill “Make her scream with pleasure” and “Our pills cure all disease” or “Genuine Rolex Watches: $4.25" spam messages, which are received by the hundreds each week (I recently read that 70 percent of all internet traffic is spam), are generally spotted and automatically set aside to be thrown into the cyber sewer. But some get through,, and I suppose it’s rather on the same principle of its taking millions of sperm to have just one fertilize the egg. I cannot for the life of me conceive how or why these spammers think anyone with a single living brain cell can fall for their garbage, but obviously someone, somewhere, must. The tens of billions of dollars sitting in Nigerian banks awaiting your response to Barrister M’Gombego’s urgent post must be going somewhere.

While I would love nothing better than to be appointed Ruler of the World, I fear I would be perhaps just a tad harsh on these people. We (note I’m using the royal “We” already) would begin by duct-taping their hands to their thighs, and forbidding them, under penalty of death, to get within 100 miles of a working computer or any other form of electronic device.

But I think the thing that bothers me most about spam and spammers and those who with total impunity wander around trying to make other people’s lives miserable is their anonymity and the sense of helplessness I feel knowing that there is absolutely nothing I can do to prevent them from doing whatever they choose to do.

I like to think of myself as a compassionate man, but I have my limits, and on the other side of those limits rage the fires of hell.

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Alienation

For someone whose life revolves around words, I find the inability to put emotions into words to be infinitely frustrating, yet there are so many fundamental pieces of myself that I simply cannot express. My feeling of alienation, for one. And yes, I realize that I am hardly the only human who feels alienated.

A lot of it goes back to a recent blog entry on my infinite capacity for being unable to understand so much of life.

I live in a world of heterosexuals, yet I am not heterosexual. I have never been heterosexual. I never will be heterosexual, and I have never for one minute of my entire life ever wanted to be heterosexual. And while I have been raised and lived and worked and socialized with heterosexuals all my life, I have never understood them. All those things heterosexuals simply accept as perfectly normal: grow up, get married, have kids, go to weddings and baby showers…are totally alien to me.

It of course all boils down to the latter half of the words “heterosexual” and “homosexual”: “sexual.” While I consider my lifelong attraction to men to be perfectly natural (for me), I honestly and in all sincerity simply do not and cannot comprehend the physical attraction between men and women and how profoundly it affects their day-to-day functioning. And it is the multiple and complex ramifications of that attraction which rules our world.

Recognizing that heterosexuality is at the very foundation of our race only serves to emphasize that I am not like everyone else. Because of the fact that without heterosexuals our race would perish, and that were it not for my parents being heterosexual, I never would have been born rather strongly sets me apart from the rest of our species. (Yes, I also know I’m not the only homosexual in the world, and I’m sure that many if not most gays and lesbians share my sense of alienation. We are, after all, outnumbered 9 to 1.)

Perhaps this sense of alienation is something inbred into everyone, and we, being individuals, simply don’t realize it. The old saying “No man is an island” isn’t exactly true. We are all islands in a vast sea of the unknown. Each of us goes through life only really knowing ourselves (and it can be effectively argued that most people can’t really even say that).

I suppose it is only natural, because we each experience problems and frustrations and an infinite number of stumbles and glitches and niggling little irritations, not to realize that everyone else goes through the same thing. Few people, forced to resorting to using a pipe wrench to open a stubborn jar lid, mention the fact to others. So we look around at everyone else happily holding up opened jars and never give an instant’s thought to how many pipe wrenches might actually have been involved.

We are led, from infancy, to believe that the world is a far more homogenous place than it is, and that anything out of what we are led to believe is the ordinary, means we and we alone in experiencing this or that particular situation. Nobody else seems to have any real problems. Everybody else seems to breeze through life calmly, always knowing how to react in any given situation. Few people seem to question the status quo. (“I can’t do this? Okay.” “That isn’t allowed? Okay.”)—in fact, few people question anything. Saves a lot of thinking that way.

All of which does little to change my belief that I am truly set apart from the rest of the world.

As James Thomson's wonderful poem “Once in a Saintly Passion” says... “Then stooped my guardian angel, and whispered from behind: 'Vanity, my little man: you’re nothing of the kind.'”

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