Rejection

The stories we tell over and over of our experiences in life tell a lot more about who we are than we probably realize. I know I have a number of stories I cannot seem to stop retelling. One of them, which, if you’ve followed these blogs for awhile, I know you’ve heard before. It is the story of going shopping with my mother when I was probably around eight years old. She was looking for a new throw rug for the kitchen. She couldn’t decide between two, and asked me which one I liked best. I did not tell her…not because I didn’t prefer one over the other, but because to choose one would hurt the other one’s feelings.

I hate rejection, a fact that has strongly influenced my life in keeping me from making any move which might result in it. I’d been painfully aware since elementary school how very much it hurt to be rejected...to be the last person standing there while sides were being chosen for a game.

When I decided to stop by PetSmart the other day to see about possibly adopting a cat, I walked in knowing full well that I was going to be miserable. I knew my heart would go out to every single animal there, and that having to actually choose between them would be excruciatingly difficult, and that I would feel sincerely terrible for the ones I did not choose. (I know, I know…they’re cats…or throw rugs…they aren’t aware they’re being rejected. But I am.)

I’ve told, too, the story of how, before I was aged out of the gay community’s bar scene, I was constantly frustrated because I could not bring myself to approach someone to whom I was attracted unless I had clear indication that the interest might be mutual. My single friends had no such constraints, and as a result I would watch in frustration as time and time again they’d go off to approach someone—sometimes the same person I was interested in—and strike up a conversation. Often they’d be back a few minutes later, unfazed by being rejected. But just as often, they’d end up going home together, while I just stood there, afraid to take a chance.

I went so far as to sign up for a seminar promoting itself as being specifically designed for gay men with rejection issues. There were at least 50 guys there, and after a half hour of general mingling, one of the two psychologists moderating the session said, “All right, now. The first thing we’re going to do is a series of exercises to make you feel more comfortable. We’ll take three minutes for everyone to select a partner for the exercises.” Excuse me? I paid $50 to attend this thing and the first thing they want me to do is pick a partner? I was instantly furious, but a guy I’d spoken with briefly who’d said he was as uncomfortable with rejection as I was standing near me and we looked at each other with mutual unhappiness and partnered up.

The exercises were basic…uh…basics. “Tell your partner three things you like about yourself,” etc., then the partner would do the same. Neither I nor the guy I was with paid much attention, both being too angry to do so. But after about twenty minutes of this crap, the moderator said: “All right now, everyone stand up and mill around.” I figured the next section had to be better than this. They’d come nowhere near to addressing the issue of rejection. Five minutes later, the moderator was back for the second half of the program. “All right, now, we’ll take three minutes for everyone to pick a partner and….”

I walked out the door without looking back. It was one of the most excruciatingly uncomfortable and infuriating evenings of my life.

One would think being an author would be an odd career choice for one who feared rejection, and they would be right. But having a potential reader pick up my book in a bookstore, then put it down in favor of another has the distinct advantage of the fact that I’m not there to see it. I can live with that.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

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 long before I received my degree. The results of my efforts are, as you may have noticed, published on my website every Monday and Thursday.

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 magnet 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 Pygmalion 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.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

Kid's Play

Dorien as a Child

When we were living on Blackhawk Avenue on Rockford’s south side, the ten or so kids in my block would get together during summer to have picnics. Tommy Colatta, who lived on the fringe of our recognized play area, was a couple of years younger, and whenever we had a picnic, usually in the empty lot next to my house, Tommy would always show up, but he would never bring anything.

“What’s that?” he’d ask, pointing to something one of us was eating, and no matter what it was, Tommy would say “I like…” whatever it was. You could say “It’s a worm sandwich” and Tommy would say “I like worm sandwiches.” Sometimes we’d share, but most times we wouldn’t. And it never occurred to me, until years later, that perhaps Tommy didn’t bring anything to our picnics because he didn’t have anything to bring. I would certainly hope that was not the case, but that it might have been truly saddens me.

World War II ended and peace broke out during those years on Blackhawk Avenue, but it didn’t make all that much difference to us kids. Our favorite game was “Machine Gun,” which I can claim with no little modesty as being of my own invention. It involved one of us being the “shooter” and the rest of us falling down in the most dramatic way possible as we were “shot.” We had, after all, a wealth of newsreels and patriotic movies to draw upon. The one who died most dramatically became the “shooter” for the next round.

I think I mentioned somewhere before that although I was almost painfully shy and insecure, I was the “boss” of our little clique of kids. I remember once, while my dad was a deputy sheriff and working the night shift, that the gang was getting a bit boisterous in the empty lot, and I yelled: “Shut up! My dad’s sleeping!” so loudly that I of course woke him up. He was not as fully appreciative of my efforts on his behalf as I might have hoped.

With the return of the soldiers, sailors, and marines from the war, the country embarked on a vigorous post-war building boom. Blackhawk Avenue was only a block long, and at its west end bulldozers suddenly appeared to clear the trees for the construction of ten or twelve red-brick cookie-cutter houses. This afforded the kids of the neighborhood endless hours of fascination and fun, scrambling like monkeys through the unfinished houses that smelled of newly-sawn wood and wet mortar.

Anyone doubting the relation of humans to monkeys need only watch a group of kids clamoring over a construction site or…another favorite pastime…climbing as high as we could possibly get in every tree on the block. (And I know for a fact that every kid loves bananas.)

Billy Pearson, who lived two doors to the east of the empty lot, was something of a cipher. My age, he was and wasn’t quite part of our group. He lived in a large, very nice brick home which rather stood out on our block of small-to-tiny frame houses. I don’t recall ever having been invited into Billy’s home, and we all had the impression that Billy’s mom was convinced he was far better than we.

Across the street lived a family with a two-year-old son named Kenneth. Not Kenny: never Kenny. Kenneth. And Kenneth’s mother insisted that when we were around him we speak the King’s English. Contractions were not allowed. “That-there” and “ain’t” were viewed with shocked horror, and anyone who used them within Kenneth’s earshot was in for a firm and increasingly familiar lecture. I wonder if Kenneth ever had a real childhood.

As a matter of fact, do kids today have a childhood? Do they ever climb trees, or scramble through construction sites? I rather fear they are far too busy being hauled to soccer practice (and you can’t convince me that every kid who plays it is doing so out of love of the game), or sitting in front of a TV or computer monitor. Why play games with other kids when you can sit all by yourself and see how many Extruxians you can blast with your Nucleator?

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

Pat

One of my favorite people during my Los Angeles days was Pat Mallon, who when I first met her was secretary to the President of the statewide (and politically powerful) Engineering and Grading Contractors Association. I was working at the time for a firm called NPR, which was contracted to produce a glossy house organ, called simply EGCA. I was the magazine’s editor, so Pat and I were in frequent contact, which developed into a friendship.

Pat was…well, to call her “one of a kind” would not come near to describing her. Pat was one of those wonderful Charo-like souls who, in her passion for life, simply ignored age. She was probably in her 60s when we met. Her hair was very long and pitch black. She wore probably about as much makeup as Tammy Baker, but she wore it much better. She favored toreador pants, spiked heels, low-cut blouses (often tube-top) and lots of expensive jewelry. (She at one time had worked with noted jeweler Harry Winston and conducted a side business selling jewelry. Her business card referred to herself as “The Diamond Lady.”) Unlike so many outwardly effusive people, her joy for living went to her very core. In many ways, including her voice and certain of her actions, she reminded me of Carol Channing, and I found her just as charming.

I’d see her every time I went to the EGCA offices, but our friendship was cemented during an EGCA conclave in Las Vegas, over several French Cannons…a delightfully refreshing libation consisting of a equal parts champagne and brandy, three of which could easily have rendered me comatose. But Pat could belt them back like water and never bat an eye.

When we first became friends, she was married to a great guy named Chuck…I am totally embarrassed not to be able to recall his last name (forgive me, Chuck)…who had been a singer with one of the big bands in the 40s. They lived in a beautiful house in the hills overlooking the entire San Fernando Valley. The memory of looking out from their patio at night, with the valley spread out below like a carpet of glittering jewels that put the stars to shame, is one of my fondest memories of L.A.

Chuck traveled a lot, so Pat spent a great deal of time on decorating the house to suit her unique taste, including curtains made of strands of crystal which, when the sun hit them, became a million prisms reflecting their light on every surface. She also spent literally hundreds of hours painstakingly gold-leafing every door frame in the house.

But though I considered Pat and Chuck to be the perfect couple, apparently they did not, because Pat filed for divorce and their house was put up for sale. She could not understand why the realtor did not feel that all her expensive gold-leaf and hard work would not be reflected in setting the selling price. The fact that the new owners may have different tastes or even want to repaint the house and door frames was incomprehensible to her.

Her second husband, Bob Mallon, was a very nice guy who adored her, but was not overly fond of gays, though he was always very pleasant whenever Pat would have Ray and me over, or invite us to one of her lavish parties, for which Pat would spend several days in preparation. Their house, on a hillside just up a winding road from Ventura Blvd., did not have the view of her old house, but there was a large if steeply inclined back yard set into a hillside, on which she and Bob spent a fortune landscaping and decorating with colored lights.

After I moved from Los Angeles, we more or less lost touch, though every year I would get the same mass-printed postcard saying “Keep in touch!” and signed “The Diamond Lady.”

While reality (my arch enemy, as you know) tells me that Pat may no longer be alive, I cannot (or, rather, refuse to) accept the idea. But I tell myself that of course she’s still alive, bubbly as ever, still throwing her parties and being her effervescent self. In some ways, Pat was for me a symbol of all my L.A. days, and every now and then, I truly miss them…and her.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

Stu

I learned, from the same long-lost friend who sparked my recent “Letter to a Nun” blog, that one of my very best friends from college, Stu, had died of AIDS…20 years ago!How could that be? How could that possibly be? Stu? Tall, crazy, skinny, incredibly talented, hyperactive redheaded Stu, dead? For 20 years??

I met Stu when I entered what was then Northern Illinois State Teacher’s College in September of 1952. He, Zane, and I were all interested in theater, and soon became friends. (Isn’t it odd that even today I hesitate to mention last names out of concern for opening closet doors?) We were something of the Three Musketeers, though Stu and Zane were far more outgoing than I. Not having to even attempt to hide the fact that we were gay when we were together was exhilarating.

During the break between our Freshman and Sophomore years, we agreed to meet in New York City for three days. I got my first direct evidence that my dad knew of my sexual orientation when, after an argument over the money for the trip being better spent in other ways, Dad finally said, in exasperation, “All right, go to New York with your queer boyfriends.”

One weekend at school, Stu got hold of a makeup kit from the drama department and he and Zane decided they were going to give me a makeover. I wasn’t happy about it, but went along. They wouldn’t let me see their work until they were done, and when they finally gave me a mirror, I saw an eyelinered, rouged, lipsticked drag queen. I fainted. Literally.

Stu was, as I’ve said, multi-talented. One time he designed costumes he, Zane, and I were to wear for Halloween (Zane was to be the sun, I the moon, and Stu the stars). They were beautiful. But like everything else Stu started, they were never completed. He was the poster boy for A.D.D. before the condition had a name. He would start one project, then drop it after 20 minutes to go on to another, which would be dropped in the same amount of time.

He was totally impulsive. At one point, while I was on my two-year break from school for the Navy, he decided there was a play opening in London that he absolutely had to see. He somehow scraped together enough money for a plane ticket to London…but not enough for a ticket back…and took off. I still can’t remember how he got back, but he did.

Our friendship was interrupted for the four years it took me to do my two year military service and to finish my last two years of school. When I graduated and planned to move to Chicago, Stu and I agreed to get an apartment together, which we did…six blocks and on the same side of the street as the building in which I am now living after my return to Chicago following a 38 year absence.

Stu could easily have starred in a play about Ichabod Crane, whom he strongly resembled. With his red hair and gangly frame, and his flamboyant style, it didn’t take much for perfect strangers to determine his sexual orientation. People would stare at him, and it would hurt him deeply, and he would react by becoming even more outrageous. If they wanted queer, he’d give them queer.

I got on his nerves (I can’t imagine how that could possibly happen, but it did). One night I asked him five separate times what time he wanted dinner. Finally, he snapped. I don’t remember what he said, but he never spoke to me again, and he moved out of the apartment within a week.

Several years later, I turned on the TV and caught him on a game show…a little older, but the same old Stu. It hurt.

True friends come along very seldom in life, and I always thought of Stu, even in the years after we parted ways, as one of the best friends I’ve ever had, and I was so very sorry to have lost that friendship. That it can now never be rekindled fills me with a renewed sense of loss.

Here’s to you, Stu.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

Lief

Dorien in High School

I have often said that I am not the “hail fellows well met” type who feels totally at ease among a group of people I do not know well. I tend to blend in more with the wallpaper than with other people. But I have been blessed, through my life, with a few “best friends” who have served as anchors in the stormy seas of life.

The term “best friends” is used perhaps a little casually by most people, and I am quite sure I had quite a number of people I might have considered—had I given any thought to it, which I don’t recall ever having done—to be my best friend for varying lengths of time. But few, in reflection, stand out.

Lief Ayen was probably my first “best friend,” and we became so rather by default. We met at Harlem High School in Loves Park, Illinois which I attended during one of my high school years (I honestly can’t remember which one…probably tenth). We both were loners through a combination of desire and necessity. Physically, Leif reminded me of a young Charles Laughton, with an explosive laugh, a sometimes abrasive personality, and a penchant for trying to embarrass me, which succeeded more often than not.

But we shared a decidedly unorthodox and outlandish sense of humor and would spend hours on the phone, laughing. We also shared a love for writing and for science fiction, and once collaborated on a story called “To Hell with Miss Primm” about a school teacher who, upon her death, is mistakenly sent to hell. I’m sure I must have it around somewhere.

At one point, we attended a science fiction convention in Chicago and Lief won a wonderful original oil painting by the noted sci-fi artist Chesley Bonestall. It is probably worth a small fortune today, and I would love to know what happened to it.

Like me, Lief left college to join the Navy, and he despised it with a passion. He was put aboard the heavy cruiser U.S.S. Toledo, and he spent most of his time aboard figuring out how he could get off. He finally came up with what he considered a foolproof plan. Two days before the ship was due to leave its home port of Long Beach, Lief sat down and folded his arms. And he just sat there, refusing to talk, to move, to obey orders. He just sat. So he was removed from the ship and sent to a Navy hospital for observation. He was elated to be off the Toledo and remained happily in the hospital for about a week. The day he was released, the Toledo pulled back into port, and Lief was put right back on board.

I was in the NavCads by this time, and when the NavCad band was sent to Long Beach for an Armed Forces Day program, we played aboard, of all the ships in the Navy, the U.S.S. Toledo. Lief and I had a chance to spend a few days together, and we had our usual wonderful time.

From his navy days in the Pacific, Lief developed a passion for all things Japanese, and he once sent my mom a beautiful watercolor which is currently hanging on my living room wall.

After getting out of the service, Lief returned to Rockford and to college. He met and married a nice girl named Julie, with whom he had two daughters. We gradually lost touch with one another, and it was not until about five years ago that I decided I had to look him up. I had no idea where he might be. His parents by that time were long dead and I assumed his sister had married and would no longer have the same last name. However, after a long search through God-knows-how many venues, I finally located a “Lief Ayen” and a phone number, which I immediately called in great anticipation of renewing one of the most important friendships of my life.

The phone was answered by a man whose voice I did not recognize (and I would have recognized Lief’s immediately, despite how long it had been since I last heard it). I discovered that he was Lief’s nephew, and that Lief had died some years before while working for a radio station in Australia. He and Julie had been divorced, and the Lief to whom I spoke had no idea of her or Lief’s daughters’ whereabouts.

So as I have done so often in the past and continue to do as fate necessitates, I carefully wrapped all my memories of Lief in a special box to be stored…for as long as I am alive, at any rate…in my mind and heart, and engraved his name on my mental Wall of the Lost. I don’t have a single photo of Lief, though I really don’t need one: I can see him when I close my eyes.

And even as I write, I can hear him laughing.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

Miss Piggy's Nose

For the past 10 days or so, I have been spending part of every day at my now-dead friend Norm’s condo, trying to do all the things that are necessary following the death of the owner/occupant. Norm had lived there 40 years, and has 40 years of “things”…some quite valuable, others just the “things” one accumulates over the course of the years.

I touched on this in another recent blog, and remarked that I had already packed and given away all his clothes. Aside from the time it took to pack the 13 garbage bags and 2 or 3 cardboard boxes, it was a fairly straightforward task.

But what do I do with Miss Piggy’s nose? It’s a perfectly good nose, made of pink rubber, and has a thin elastic strap that fits over the back of the head to hold the nose in place. It was in a drawer in his den, along with several decks of playing cards, a lint roller, the remote control for a long-gone television set, a couple rolls of film, six crystal balls of varying sizes apparently once part of a chandelier, a badly dog-chewed tennis ball, and a number of other things, most of which I was unable to identify. Not one of these items simply appeared in the drawer out of nowhere. Norm put them there for whatever reason, and they all once belonged somewhere, served some purpose, meant something or nothing to Norm.

In the bookcase I found a Day Planner for 2002, apparently never opened, and a like new two-volume Funk & Wagnall’s Dictionary. There was also a very nice brick, apparently used as a door stop. There are several shelves of gardening and horticulture books, some of them obviously quite expensive when purchased. The fact that Norm enjoyed plants and at one point went to school for some sort of degree in horticulture is not coincidentally reflected, for those who have read my Dick Hardesty Mystery series, in Dick’s partner, Jonathan, having an associate’s degree in horticulture.

Probably as a reflection of his interest in plants, various closets held four huge and expensive ceramic planters, along with at least a dozen others of varying sizes. There are walkers and seats for the shower and bathtub which have never been used. One tub chair still has the price tag ($145) attached.

And yet what am I to do with them? A yard sale in a 35th floor condominium is a bit impractical, and even if it were practical, the time to price each item would be unimaginable.

So I plan to call in an art appraiser to give me an idea of the worth of some of the more valuable pieces, and hope the appraiser might direct me to a source of potential buyers. When that has been handled, I’ll look for estate buyers—those people who buy the entire contents of a home or apartment—to handle the rest. They pay only a tiny fraction of the value of what the items would bring if sold separately—literally pennies on the dollar—but again it spares the time and expense of trying to sell everything off piece by piece.

Wanting to get as much as possible for his things is not a matter of greed on my part. I’m merely the executor, and all the money, of course, goes into the estate, as will the money from the sale of the condo itself, and there are at least six worthy charities named in the will. I know they will appreciate and make good use of every dollar they can get.

But I never forget that every single thing I am charged with disposing of was Norm’s, not mine, and I can’t help but feel as though I were somehow…what words to use?…“taking advantage of him” certainly doesn’t fit, but there is an element of that feeling…treating it all as if it didn’t really matter; as if it all were just a bunch of things. It’s as if each item had existed in some sort of vacuum and had nothing to do with the real person who bought and enjoyed them. And it is true, of course: a book is just a book, a planter is just a planter.

But oh, Miss Piggy’s nose….

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

The Shallow Pond

I sometimes like to stand on the shore of My Knowledge and look out over its vast expanse, and I try to pretend that under the surface lie vast depths of wisdom and insight and understanding. But the fact of the matter is that it would be possible to walk across it and never get the tops of my shoes wet.

In short, I know a little bit about a lot of things, and a lot about practically nothing. I’m very good at trivia. I can name songs from WWI (“Hello, Central, Give Me Heaven....’Cause My Daddy’s There”), tell you what the last song was played as the Titanic sank (not “Nearer My God to Thee,” but a hymn called “Autumn”). I can tell you what Eartha Kitt, Paul Lynde, Alice Ghostly, and Robert Clary have in common (all were in the cast of New Faces of 1952, which I saw.)

But by and large, my vast knowledge is mostly a series of Potemkin villages (false fronts erected on the banks of a river by Grigori Alesandrovich Potemkin, a minister of Russia’s Queen Catherine the Great, to convince her of how prosperous the country was. Potemkin was also the namesake for the Battleship Potemkin, immortalized in Sergei Eisenstein’s classic silent film). In other words, pretty impressive at first glance, but without much behind it.

Which is why I dread people asking me who my favorite author is or what my favorite book is: I don’t feel myself qualified enough to answer. I’ve read many, many books, but know nothing of literature on a scholarly level. I shudder at the prospect of being asked my opinion on almost any subject. The truth is, I probably don’t have one that doesn’t sound like pap.

I have firm opinions on very few things simply because I don’t feel I know enough about anything to form one. In that regard I’m like the beauty pageant queen who, when asked what she wants to do with her life, grins vacuously and says her goal is to work for world peace. Uh, yeah…like that.

I have a love-hate relationship with those who will pontificate on any subject presented to them. On the one hand, I stand in awe of their knowledge, but on the other hand I have no idea whether they actually know what they’re talking about, or if they’re just blowing smoke.

One of the nice things about being a writer, as I’ve often said, is that your readers almost always give you the benefit of the doubt. Unless you have your hero, caught between the warring Umbizzi and M’gwuba tribes on a hilltop in 1880 Transvaal whip out his cell phone to call for backup, most readers will go along and assume you know what you’re talking about. You can get away with a lot when you sound authoritative, as long as you don’t push it.

Did you know the tradition of “women and children first” in disasters came from the 1852 sinking of the British troopship Birkenhead off South Africa? With not enough lifeboats for everyone, the troops formed ranks on the deck as the women and children were put on what few lifeboats there were. Few of the soldiers survived, but their bravery lit a beacon which still shines today. I love trivia.

But can I intelligently discuss the social ramifications of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published the same year the Birkenhead went down? Nope.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

Letting Go

You’re probably much too young to remember flypaper, but they were coiled strips of sticky paper hung to trap flies during the heat of summer. Once a fly touched it, he/she was trapped forever. My mind’s like that, but it traps memories rather than flies. I cannot let go of thoughts and feelings and memories of physical things and people important to me. They are part of who I am, so how could I let them go? However, far too many things which stick there are wrongs and slights (perceived or real) done me; gaffes, blunders, and stupid things I’ve done; resentments I’ve harbored; griefs and grievances I’ve suffered, anything which the perversely self-destructive part of me can use to torment myself for my inadequacies, are things I wish I could simply let go, but cannot. They are all part of my life, too.

I always state these things as though I were the only human being to whom they happen, or who is aware of them and the reactions they engender, though I know this is not true. If you didn’t share some of the feelings expressed in these blogs, you wouldn’t still be reading them.

The exact details and circumstances of what sparks feelings differs from person to person, but the core results are the same: they made an impact on our lives. Most people seem able to either absorb or release these things. I can’t.

I can remember, when I was probably no older than five, being called in to dinner and, while eating, hearing the bell ringing on my tricycle, which I’d been riding and left on the sidewalk near the front porch. I told my dad someone was stealing my tricycle, and started to run outside to check. Dad told me to return to the table and finish eating. When I was able to go outside later, my tricycle was gone, and for some unknown reason, my relationship with my father was unalterably changed. How very, very strange that I should still be clinging to that memory so many years later.

Standing in my front yard as a kid singing Christmas carols in mid summer and being asked by a passing stranger why I was doing so when Christmas was so far off for some reason made me feel ashamed, and pushed me even further into my closet of shyness.

Along the same lines, while in fourth grade, being asked to sing a song as part of a class project, and being so horrendously embarrassed by the prospect that when I finally agreed, I had to stand facing the wall while I sang. (And I still remember the song; the Irish lullaby “To-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra.”)

Attending a neighbor child’s birthday party and having the mother insist that we must all dance, boy-girl, when I neither knew how to dance nor had the most remote desire to do so (especially with a girl) was one of my most humiliating memories. But it is still there and pops up, unbidden, from time to time.

But of course, the good memories also return: wonderful, vivid, loving memories of times and loved ones, and experiences long gone. I take comfort in them, and yet, perversely, I can only touch on them briefly, for to spend too much time on them replaces joy with a terrible longing and the knowledge that they are now only memories and are gone forever (or at least until the endless movie of time replays them, frame by frame. My belief that this is how time works, and that what was somewhere still is, and will continue to be endlessly, gives me if not total peace, at least reassurance that all is not lost when each showing of the movie ends.)

I am a strange duck. Thank God you’re normal.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

Triumvirate

I was sitting here a moment ago having my afternoon cup of coffee and chocolate covered donut (one of my primary sources for calories) and found myself having to painfully pry my mouth open with my free hand far enough to get the thickness of the donut into my mouth. I was not happy, but Dorien found it very amusing. And in that small incident lies a partial explanation of just why there is a “Dorien and me.”

I have increasingly found myself to be a rather distinct trinity (hardly in the biblical sense, I assure you): physical, mental, and…well, Dorien, who both bridges and transcends the other two parts. Each part has its own distinct function. My physical “third” is solely concerned with maintenance and upkeep of the flesh, bone, muscles, and organs. It doesn’t have the time or need to think much, but it has served all three of “us” amazingly well over lo, these many years.

The “mental” third is in charge of those aspects of daily existence not directly under the purview of basic body functioning, though it shares some responsibilities with my body such as eating and dressing and scratching where it itches. It tends to be unrealistically set on itself, and I am ashamed to admit that it is all too often dismissive and sometimes almost contemptuous of my body. It cannot or will not accept the notion that as my body ages, I simply cannot do those things I once did with such ease. (“Look!” my mind tells my body. “He can run: he can turn and lift his head; he can open his mouth wide enough to eat a double-decker hamburger! Why can’t you?”) My mind knows it is cruel and unfair to do so, but it can’t help itself. And my body just goes quietly about its business. It is well aware of what my bout with cancer did to it, and it grudgingly accepts it even though my mind will not. It knows I am lucky just to be alive.

And Dorien, bless him, remains removed from it all. Totally free of physical limitations or restraints, he can and does do anything or be anything or go anywhere he wishes. Dorien is everything my body and mind want to be and am not. Into his safekeeping my body and mind have entrusted the majority of my hopes and dreams, my faith and fantasies. It is Dorien who provides the imagination for my writing. It is Dorien who creates the stories—my body merely types them out. My mind…that part of it which is separate from Dorien…truly takes great delight in watching what appears on the screen, and is often totally unprepared for what shows up there.

All three parts of me share great concern and infinite regret in the realization that while Dorien could, and I hope will, live forever, my body, again, is subject to all the laws of the physical world, and the years, however hard we fight, do take their toll. It is a battle we all must eventually lose, and my mind knows all too well that when my body dies, my mind, like the captain of a sinking ship, must go down with it.

Death does not frighten me: it never has, for I know that, as I’ve said so often before, it is merely a return to the nothingness from which it emerged. But oh, the thought of everything I shall miss: the people, the sunrises, the fun, laughter, and even sadness…everything that makes us all human and alive….

So I constantly remind myself of what a marvelous gift life is, and try to treasure every second I am given, for as long as I may have it.

May you do the same.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

My Life in Crime

In the interests of full disclosure, should I have any hope of having my application for sainthood approved, I feel I must confess my criminal past, shameful though it is.

When I first moved to Los Angeles, its police department was notorious for its storm trooper harassment of homosexuals under the leadership of its rabidly right-wing chief Ed Davis. Gay bars were routinely raided without reason, and anyone or everyone inside was subject to arrest for “lewd and lascivious conduct”…a practice which ended only when a patron of a bar called the Black Cat was beaten to death by police during a raid.

Young, good looking plain-clothes officers were routinely assigned to the vice squad for the sole purpose of entrapping gays. Arresting gays was extremely lucrative for the city, and the police considered the city’s gay bars and parks equivalent to the Outer Banks for hauling in a profitable catch. They were energetically proactive: if a gay man did not solicit them, they’d do the soliciting. Supposedly, if you asked someone coming on to you if they were the police, they had to admit to it. Sure.

Barnsdall Park is one of the better known in the city. Small and very hilly, it is the location of one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s homes, and its elevation provides excellent views of the city, particularly at night. It was fairly close to where I lived and I went there from time to time. That it was also a popular cruising area didn’t hurt. Though I was hardly a regular, one night I arrived around 9 p.m., parked in the nearly empty parking lot, and took one of the trails leading to the highest point in the park. There is nothing more beautiful than a city at night as seen from above, and while I was certainly not averse to meeting someone, it was not my primary purpose for being there.

There were very few people around, and while climbing the narrow path I passed a guy whom I had to step into the brush to get around. I passed him and went to the top. After watching the city for a few minutes, I headed back down, and passed the same guy on the path. He struck up a conversation, and I knew immediately he was a policeman. But the conversation was totally innocent until he asked “What do you like to do?” Alarm bells ringing, I told him I liked movies and TV and books and the beach, and I figured I was safe because I said absolutely nothing about being gay. We kept on talking and he kept asking what I liked to do.

I asked if he were a cop, and he laughed and said “no way!” I told him I had to get going, and started down the path. He followed, talking all the while. When we reached the edge of the parking lot I asked if his car was there, and he said no, he’d parked further down the hill. He asked if I would give him a ride, and I stupidly agreed. When he asked yet again what I liked to do and like a fool, I told him...though I did not use specific words. No sooner were the words out of my mouth than he nodded, and another man I’d not seen came toward me. I was placed under arrest and taken to the police station, where I called a friend to come bail me out, which he did within an hour.

I immediately made an appointment with one of L.A.’s best known gay attorney (upon whom the character of Glen O’Banyon in my books is based), and explained exactly what had happened. I told him I had not said one single word that I could not have said on national TV or at a D.A.R. luncheon. He merely looked bemused. He defended innumerable entrapment cases and became a very rich man as a result. He said he would represent me, but that I shouldn’t harbor any wild illusions of the outcome of the court hearing.

When I met with him again just prior to going to court, he had obtained a copy of the police report, which he showed me. If the arresting officer wasn’t gay, he certainly should have been… and he could have made a fortune writing gay porn. I apparently had told him I wanted to engage in just about every sex act known to the human species…all of which he lovingly detailed.

When I protested to the lawyer, he simply pointed out that it came down to the word of a minion of public decency against that of a disgusting pervert, and I agreed entirely, except that the roles were reversed in this case. I wanted to fight the charge in court, but he pointed out that that would cost far more money than I could ever afford, and that I’d lose anyway.

So I went to court with about 75 other entrapment cases, pleaded nolo contendre, was fined $365, and sent on my way. The L.A. police were happy. The city treasurer was happy. Even my lawyer, whose fees were in addition to my fine, was happy. I was not happy, but who cared?

And there you have it…the sordid story of my debauched life of crime. Move over, John Dillinger.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

Harry Morris

I never knew Harry Morris as a person. He was, I understand, the first local soldier killed in WWI. But, from the third to the fifth grade, more than half a century ago, I attended the school named for him, and I still have strong memories of it and the students and teachers who were there when I was.

Dan Sable, a classmate with whom I reestablished contact after more than 50 years, recently visited Rockford and took some photos of the old building, no longer a school, though I forget what he said it was now. It looks pretty darned good for its age.

There were only 68 students in the entire school and, I believe, three teachers, though I only remember the two I had: Mrs. Larson, who bore a strong physical resemblance to Eleanor Roosevelt and was the most memorable teacher I ever had, and Mrs. Heinz, who should never have been allowed near a classroom. All I remember of Mrs. Heinz is her flaming red hair and temper to match, her obvious dislike of children, and the fact that if she ever lent you a pencil, you’d better be damned sure you returned it at the end of class.

I have a couple other photos showing the entire student body, and I still recognize many of them, though I’m less sure on the names. There’s Dan and his cousin Marion Bender, with whom I also reestablished contact and met for lunch shortly after I moved back to Chicago. There’s Lillian Anderson, and Jean and Jesse Almond, and Dennis Huffel, and Darwin Shores, with whom I had a running feud, and who Dan tells me is now dead—though that’s impossible because he’s right there in the third row.

I remember the long…probably about a mile…walks to and from school, past a dump where, on the way home, we’d stop and break bottles. I learned to ride a bike around the time I started third grade, but the bike my dad bought for me was really too big for me to reach the pedals comfortably. I was coming down the hill from school one day and couldn’t stop as I approached the intersection at the bottom of the hill closest to home, and was hit by a car as I zipped across the street. No damage, but it scared the bejeezus out of me and my parents, and I largely walked to school thereafter.

I made my stage debut at Harry Morris, playing Raggedy Andy in some school production. My father’s comment: “Did your voice have to be that high?” And my earliest writing was in the form of the periodically-written “newspaper,” The Bugville News, outlining the various disasters befalling the citizens of Bugville. A la Martin Luther, I would post the paper on the front door.

I remember the PTA mothers taking turns coming to the school during the winter to make us all hot soup…tomato and chicken noodle being my two favorites…and half-pints of milk (I always got chocolate), and going to the bathroom in the school’s basement during recess and crying because no one wanted me on their team for some game we were playing.

As far as I can remember, I only skipped school once, during my time under Mrs. Heinz’s regime. Several of us decided we’d stage a walk out…or rather a “not go in.” We played around somewhere most of the morning and then, around lunch, I went home to ask my mother if I could have some money to go to the movies. That was obviously not the wisest of decisions.

There are far more memories of my days at Harry Morris than I have the space here to relate, but they do go to demonstrate how many things lie just below the surface of our day-to-day consciousness, and how long they stay with us.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

The Lakes

We began going to Lake Koshkonong in southern Wisconsin, about 70 miles from our home in Rockford sometime during World War II. Some friends of my parents from the Moose Club, the Olsons, had a cottage there which they rented out. We subsequently spent several summer vacations there, in a small compound of four lakeside cottages all owned by people from Rockford.

Lake Koshkonong is formed by the Rock River. It is about 2 miles wide and 9 miles long and very shallow…perhaps 20 feet deep at its very deepest point. We could wade out from in front of the cottage for a good block and a half without the water reaching our shoulders (and I was not very tall at the time). The bottom was also very, very muddy, and the water was muddy brown.

It could also be deadly. Being so shallow, the winds could quickly whip it into a froth of whitecaps. The last cottage in the row of four belonged to the Skinner family, whom we knew well. One evening, they and a group of friends decided to go across the lake for a fish fry. Nine people crowded into the 16-foot boat, and on the way back the winds rose, the boat was swamped, and seven of the passengers drowned. Their cottage was sold shortly thereafter to the Fines, a very nice elderly couple from Chicago.

When the cottage between the Olsons and the Fines also went up for sale, my parents bought it. It was small…only two small bedrooms…but it was jerry-built pleasant and had a lovely curved stone fireplace. The people who built the place had carefully gone all around the lake collecting different colored stones for it. And somewhere along the way, someone then painted it white.

While I was in college, my “gang” of friends would frequently come up for weekends, during which we’d sing college songs all the way up and back, water ski and sunbathe during the day while we were there, and play charades, cards, and board games at night. And thinking of those days as I write, I feel the sweet ache of intense nostalgia.

One of these weekend excursions was during rehearsals for a play, and several of the cast members came up, ostensibly to rehearse our lines. When we returned, David, one of the guys who couldn’t make it asked how it went, and with the spontaneity of college kids, a tale developed—with each of us who’d gone contributing a piece of the story—of a weekend from hell. My parents, David was told, were religious fanatics of the most fundamental sort. My mother, he was told, had spent the entire weekend doing nothing but quoting scripture and tatting an altar cloth. My father had insisted on loading us all into our boat and taking us around the lake to distribute religious pamphlets. It wasn’t fair to David, of course, but it was great fun.

My parents came down for the play the closing night, and I told David that I wanted to be sure he met them, though he was less than thrilled by the prospect. Just before curtain, one of the girls who had been up for the “weekend from hell” came in to the dressing room to report that she’d looked out into the audience and that my parents were there. “Your dad must really be mellowing,” she said. “He’s not wearing black.”

After the show there was a cast party to which friends and family were invited, and of course I’d asked my parents. Dad was, by pure coincidence, wearing a dark grey suit. I’d told him of the story we had given David, and the first chance I got, I went to bring David over to meet him. Poor David had been totally traumatized by this point and didn’t know what to expect, but he reluctantly came along.

“David,” I began, “This is my father…” at which point my dad, poker faced, raised his hand in benediction and said solemnly “Peace, David.”

It is one of my fondest memories of my college career.

I miss my dad.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

The House on Blackhawk Avenue

I came across a photo of the house in which my parents and I lived for several years when I was a kid, and as I looked at it closely, the memories started flooding back.

It was the first house my parents ever owned. I think they paid $2,500 for it, probably in 1943. It was tiny…a small living room whose main feature was an oil stove which heated the entire house, my parents’ bedroom, my bedroom (which was so small it became the bathroom when dad built on a larger room for me), and the kitchen. At the time we moved in, the house had no bathroom. There was an outhouse at the back of the lot. There was also a small, one-car garage behind which was kept the fuel tank for the oil stove. Our water came from our own well, and the electric pump that brought it into the house was constantly breaking down, necessitating Dad’s frequent descent into the covered hole which held it.

Looking back on it now, I have a mixture of emotions: a very small degree of embarrassment to realize how very close we were to the bottom rung of the “middle class,” but primarily a sense of warmth and attachment, and a realization of the fact that no matter what the conditions are in which a child lives, to him/her, it is totally accepted. It is the way things are, and children have nothing, really, to compare it to.

We lived there for six years, from the time I was in third grade through eighth grade. I remember about a year after we moved in, I planted a tiny tree on one side of the yard, which I was charged with mowing—a chore I hated, since it seemed I never did so to my dad’s satisfaction.

And, I just this instant remembered, my beloved Lucky, shown in another of the photoblog pictures, was with us the entire time. I still truly agonize over what I still can’t help but think of as my dad’s betrayal in sending him away when we moved into our larger, 2-family house on Hutchins Avenue (of which, incidentally, I do not think I have a single photograph).

The Blackhawk Avenue house sat far back from the street, next to an empty lot in which all the neighbor kids would play. On the street behind us there was a small grocery store to which my mom would regularly send me. I distinctly remember one time her giving me a $5 bill (a fortune to me at that time and not a tiny sum for my family) and sending me to buy something. Somewhere between the house and the store, I lost the $5. I have no idea where or how…how can one lose something walking less than a block through an empty lot and in a straight line?…but I managed. My parents were less than happy, but I don’t recall being punished for it.

My Dad, never in my entire life, laid a hand on me, though I am sure he was tempted, and he certainly had ample and frequent cause. Mom would whack me on the behind, and the embarrassment and mental anguish far outweighed the pain.

But I see I am wandering, as you may have noticed I’m wont to do. We moved to Hutchins Avenue the summer before I began ninth grade, and the Blackhawk Avenue house was rented to my maternal grandmother, Gertrude, and her fourth husband, Albert Ameely, who lived there for several years.

After Dad’s death, mom sold the house to a man named Washington, and before he paid off the mortgage, which I think Mom held, the house was gutted by fire. Today it is an empty lot but, last time I passed by there several years ago, the tree, now very tall, was still standing. And of all the billions of people in the world, who but me knows I planted it? Well, now there’s you.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

Domesticity Yet Again

Robert Benchley, talking of an overseas trip, mentions a quaint little Spanish town, whose residents he describes as “simple, childish people, to whom cleanliness is next to a broken hip.” And oh, Lord, I identify with those people!

I’m not talking personal cleanliness…I am not a stranger to soap, water, a toothbrush, or a comb…but to my living conditions. I’ve touched on this subject before but was reminded of it yet again this morning when I was wondering where to install the feeding trough when I saw just what a pigsty my bathroom floor is. It is a very small bathroom: I can stand in the center of it and easily touch all four walls just by raising one arm not quite 90 degrees. It has a tile floor, and I do have a small throw rug. The cat litter box is under the sink. And I try to keep it clean. Really, I do. I have gotten on my hands and knees with a scrub brush and pail of water with Spic and Span, and Pine-Sol, and Soft Scrub and God knows what else. I have scrubbed until my arms feel about to fall off. But trying to clean in the tight confines around the toilet bowl (especially when I cannot raise my head to see what I’m doing) is a total effort in futility. When I finish, apart from having removed various spots and smudges, it is still a mess.

The entire apartment has the same tile floor—the exposed square footage of tile in the entry, the kitchen, and the bedroom are each only slightly larger than the bathroom. I mentioned earlier, I think, having been conned into buying a spray-cleaner Swiffer, which like all things advertised on TV looks like the best thing since sliced bread. Swish-swish, put on sunglasses to protect your eyes from the glare of the gleaming, spotless floors. Right. The button to release the spray is conveniently located right under your thumb, so that when you push or pull the mop, your thumb cannot avoid hitting the button, and you end up spraying far more than you intended.

Each time I am foolish enough to use it—stubbornly refusing to remember the fiasco of the last time I used it—the only real difference I can tell between “before” and “after” is that my feet stick to the floor when I try to walk on it.

God knows when I last dusted. I simply am not aware of it. I never think of it. Every waking hour is filled with something, and dusting not only is not high on my list of things that must be done, it isn’t even in the footnotes. When I do dust, resenting having to take time away from more important things, within ten minutes I’ve forgotten that I’ve done it, and the next time I look, everything’s dusty again.

Living alone helps, I’m sure, as does having no visitors. My friend Gary comes up for coffee every now and again, but clean-freak though he is, he bears his disgust in silence. Had I someone to be domestic for, perhaps my attitudes might change, but I doubt it. When, in the past, I have lived with someone, I was generally lucky enough to have the other person be far more aware of such things and willing to take on the responsibilities. I have, regrettably, aged myself out of the likelihood of ever being so lucky again. Perhaps I could consider hiring a cleaning person, but I could not expect them to do much about the floors, which I see as a lost cause under any circumstances.

I really don’t enjoy being a slob. Truly I don’t. And I sincerely am ashamed of myself for being one. But it is easier to be ashamed of myself than to do much about it. Each of us must set his or her own priorities, and I have set mine. Cleaning my apartment is not one of them. Sorry about that.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com: