Cars

[Please note that there will be break of two or three weeks in my posting Dorien/Roger's blogs: I'm in the hospital Wednesday for a new knee.  I'll post one tomorrow, though, and will resume posting here as quickly as I can.     --Gary]
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Please don’t ask me where these things come from…I honestly haven’t a clue. But this morning I was thinking about cars and the memories evoked by them.

When I was very young, I collected pictures of cars…cut them out of magazines. Not sure now what I did with them, but I was fascinated by them. 

Each year’s new models were a cause of excitement. I probably got this from my dad, who I don’t think ever had a car for more than a year. Mom used to joke that whenever the ashtrays got full, dad would go looking for a new car. He actually won one, once…a little Nash Rambler, as I recall, though I don’t remember the details of how he won it.

About the time I learned to drive, Dad had a huge bathtub-shaped Nash and a Crosley, a teeny little car which never caught on in behemoth-on-wheels-crazy America. I remember trying to cross-wire it so I could take it for a drive whenever my folks weren’t around. The trouble with cross-wiring would be that shortly after I had the car running and moving, the wires would come uncrossed. And I remember that one time, after showing it off to my friends, I started to drive away, but they lifted the rear end off the ground and I couldn’t…there, rear wheels spinning crazily in mid-air.

I do remember being totally humiliated when my best friend, Gary, came over to my house the day he got his driver’s license. I was of course green with envy that he had gotten his license first, and when my dad said, “Well, you’ll have to take Roge out with you and teach him to drive,” I could have crawled under the carpet.

Still before I got my license, my folks and I went to visit my grandfather, who had a small farm, around which he was making a dirt road. While my folks were inside visiting I decided to take the Nash for a drive down the road. Dad had made the mistake of leaving the keys in the ignition, so I just got in and took off. I was tooling along probably faster than I should have through Grandpa’s corn field when the road took a sharp turn to the right and ended abruptly, about fifty feet further, in a huge mound of dirt. Not able to stop in time, the car shot up the mound of dirt and balanced there, like some giant teeter-totter, all four wheels off the ground.

My dad was not pleased.

Dad saw to it that I traded cars almost as often as he did, and I can’t really count the number of cars I had while he was still alive. I had a tinny little green Henry J while I was in college, a snazzy little red Ford convertible while in Chicago, a huge Buick convertible while in the NavCads, my grandpa’s equally huge Dodge after he died, which I had when I moved to California, a monstrous ‘68 Dodge Station Wagon I inherited after Dad died, and my all-time favorite, a little grey 1978 Toyota I bought off the showroom floor in Los Angeles and had for nearly 18 years. No one other than me ever drove it, and I loved it. Even after it died, I kept it, hoping irrationally to have it restored.

For awhile I had a large Mercury Marquee LST I bought from my cousin Jack after the Toyota gave up the ghost, and when it in turn died, I bought my current car, a 1999 Chevy Metro also bought off the showroom floor and of which I am also very fond. (At 43 miles per gallon, what’s not to love?)

To me, a car has always been primarily a means to get from point A to point B. I’ve never been big on bells and whistles and all those things over which other people drool and from which Detroit has made huge fortunes.

But as I look back on many of the cars in my life, they come attached to indelible memories. I sure wish I could walk out of my dorm at Northern and get into that little Henry J and drive home to Rockford for a weekend with my folks.

Sigh.

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

Leaky Boats

Since I am quite fond of similes and metaphors—though sometimes hard-pressed to tell them apart—I’m always coming up with new ones to describe my position in and reaction to life. This morning it occurred to me that each of us is afloat on the vast sea of time in a very small and leaky boat. Most people are too busy with living their lives and going to work and having children and watching “reality” shows and paying off credit cards and being generally distracted that they don’t notice their boat is sinking until it is too late.

I, alas, have been aware of my little boat and its inevitable fate all my life. I have made buckets out of words, bailing frantically to slow down the inevitable, or at least in hopes that when the boat does sink, taking me, its captain, with it, the buckets may bob around for a bit longer.

Though I’ve not peeked over the stern to check, I would guess my boat is named R.M.S.Egoism: the reason for the “Egoism” is clear, but the “R.M.S.” is a bit more subtle. R.M.S. stands for “Royal Mail Ship” and my little boat is devoted, after all, to carrying messages. Of course, it also does not escape me that the Titanic was, in fact, designated R.M.S.Titanic.

There’s the old saying that to suspect you may be crazy is pretty solid proof that you aren’t, since those who are truly insane almost universally deny being so. I think I can identify with that, though I’m sometimes not sure from which end of the sentence. I do know that when I am not busy building buckets for bailing, the awareness of the rising waters truly frightens me, and I have to force myself away from whatever may be distracting me and build another bucket.

Of course the fact that I spend so much time recording my life that there is little time left to actually live and enjoy it isn’t lost on me, and is in fact a source of constant bemusement. Who, after all, really cares, other than me? If I were in fact able to record every single second of my life, who, after all, would have the time to read it, even if they had any desire to do so? Subtracting every second of a lifetime from the vast sea of eternity still leaves a lot more eternity than life.

My single greatest fear, often repeated in these blogs, is of being forgotten…of becoming only one more lost-to-memory name on tombstone in a cemetery full of others who have only markers to prove they ever existed. I do not fool myself into thinking that I am anyone particularly special to anyone but myself, or that my words will ever be in the same category as those of the great writers, but it would really be nice for someone, far in the future, to come across one of my books or my poems or (unlikely) one of my blogs and through them get some idea of not only who I was, but the sense that they know me personally.

And a mental picture just formed in my mind as I thought of the Titanic and the fate of all our little boats. The image is of a full moon in a cloudless sky glinting on the vast, dark, calm surface of time, on which a few small buckets float. I hope they are mine.

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

On Being Naive

There is a certain charm to naivety. It is part and parcel of being a child, for whom absolutely anything is possible and everything he or she is told is automatically assumed to be true. There is an element of naivety in any source of wonder, and the ratio of wonder to realization gradually slides from nearly 100 percent on the child’s end of the scale, rapidly diminishing as we age, to almost none for the totally jaded.

The naivety of belief in Santa and fairies and elves and magical things is a precious gift, looked back upon fondly and with longing once it is proven untrue. It simply does not occur to children that something they are told is true is in fact not. Worse, they have no idea of the dangers that lie in their belief.

When I was around four, my parents took me to a carnival several blocks from our home. It was probably my first carnival, and I was enthralled. Less than half an hour after we returned home, my parents looked for me, and I was gone. Guess where? They found me just getting ready to cross a busy intersection across the street from the carnival, having already crossed others on the way. That I might easily have been killed simply never entered my head. Why would it? I had no concept of death or danger.

Naivety and innocence are strongly interrelated. One generally enters life with both, and too often leaves without either. Reality tends to rob us of innocence and sour our naivety. We feel cheated to realize that those things we were told were not true, but the more important those things were to us, the more integral they were to forming who we are, the more cheated we feel, and the more bitter we tend to become. We turn from being plump, shiny red apples to dried-apple-core people. And while cynicism is the subject of a future blog, its contrast to innocence can be summed up in a quote whose source I cannot remember: “a cynic is one who, when smelling a flower, looks for a casket.”

I want to believe in things. I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt, and I generally manage to do so even when I have rather serious doubts. When I meet someone who tells me something that sounds untrue, I quickly examine it for signs of hatred or bigotry and, if I see no harm to me or anyone else in accepting it, I just let it slide. If it is important for the teller that I believe it, and it makes him/her feel better, I don’t see much point in confronting it.

Naivety leaves us in a couple of ways…either replaced by reality in a slow process of osmosis, or stomped out of us, too often by those who have no morals, scruples, conscience, or dignity, but can smell naivety like a shark can smell blood.

And for some reason I’m not able to understand, as we grow older, a mutated and dangerous form of naivety seems to return, and the sharks circle. How can the elderly suddenly seemingly simply abandon every caution they have learned throughout life and fall victim to astoundingly egregious scams promising something wonderful for nothing?

Those who somehow manage to retain some form of the charms of naivety and innocence in the face of the harshness of reality have a very real gift, for those two qualities are fundamental ingredients of hope, without which we are all lost.

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

In Praise of Me

You may have noticed that I have a tendency to be just a tad egocentric. It would appear my favorite word is “I.” This may stem partly from the fact that I work very hard to protect that part of me which still remains a child, and children are the center of their own universes.

It isn’t easy balancing the two…the adult and the child…especially since I definitely prefer the child. This of course, leads to a number of inner conflicts and contradictions, because children are equal parts ego and insecurity. And since I identify more strongly with the child than the adult, I desperately seek and soak up every drop of praise and attention I can possibly get, though on those occasions when someone is kind enough to indulge me, I am totally at a loss as to how to react to it, other than with varying degrees of awkwardness and embarrassment. My “child” is, on the one hand, extremely shy, yet has no compunction whatever about running around in all directions waving my little triumphs and accomplishments for all to see and hopefully respond to with admiring “ooohs” and “aaaaahs.”

This need for praise is undoubtedly one of the reasons I write, running to you with these blog entries, hoping you’ll like them.

I am reminded of the story of a young minister, after his first sermon, greeting his parishioners at the door. One little lady, taking his hand, said: “Reverend, has anyone ever told you that you are absolutely wonderful?” The young minister, deeply flattered, said: “Why no, ma’am, they haven’t.” She patted his hand and said gently: “Then wherever did you get the idea?”

My “adult” does think that I have been blessed with some small ability to express myself in words (written words only…in actual conversations I tend to stumble all over myself), but since it comes naturally to me, like having brown eyes, I can’t really take much credit for it. So how and why I have any logical reason to assume that anyone might be more than politely interested in me, I have no idea.

Some people, it is said, wear their heart on their sleeve. If this is true, I also wear my heart, lungs, lower intestines, and soul on mine. I have no secrets. None. You want to know something about me, just ask, and I’m more than willing to blabber on endlessly until you run the risk of ending up feeling like the little girl whose book report on penguins said, “This book tells me more about penguins than I care to know.”

Much of it, of course, stems from my highly distorted senses of ego and inadequacy, both of which I have blown far out of proportion. I have always believed that I was somehow very special (I saw God in a cloud as a child, after all, and if that doesn’t make me superior I don’t know what might) while at the same time holding myself to totally unattainable expectations. (If I cannot live up to what I expect of myself, how can I possibly live up to what others may expect of me?) So for whatever reason, it is very important that people…that you…like me. My “adult” finds some comfort in the fact that I have finally reached the point where, if someone doesn’t particularly care for me, I see it as their problem rather than mine.

But because I so strongly believe that all human beings are basically alike, both my “child” and my “adult” hope that you might recognize, in my ramblings, certain elements in yourself. In short, I’m more than willing to be the pickled frog in biology class if it might help you recognize some part of you you had put aside or buried under the weight of years. If my memories and feelings strike memories and feelings within you, it only underscores the fact of our common humanity.

The Oracle of Delphi had a favorite bit of advice for those who came seeking guidance: “Know thyself” and if my putting myself under the microscope might be of benefit to even one other person, it’s well worth making an occasional fool of myself.

And if you ever think I’m coming across a bit too pontificatorily (you’re right: there isn’t any such word…but I like it anyway), please take a cue from the little lady at the church and let me know…gently, of course.

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

Neverending

“Johnny, Billy has three apples. He gives Ted two. How many apples does he have left?”

“One, Mrs. Jones.”

“Right, Johnny. Very good. Sally, Jane has three apples. She gives Milly two. How many apples does she have left?”

“One, Mrs. Jones.”

“Right! Excellent, Sally. Roger, Dorien has three apples. He gives Peter two. How many apples does he have left?”

“One, Mrs. Jones.”

“One? Roger, how many times must I tell you? If the cohesive tangent of two is divided equally by the square root of 16, the answer is always…always five, except when it is 7.8 or 11! Please pay attention! Now, moving on…Gloria, if Albert has three apples and gives Richard two, how many apples does he have left?”

“One, Mrs. Jones.”

“Excellent!”

And thus is paranoia born.

I have had my Mac laptop for two weeks or more, now, and I still haven’t the foggiest idea why, if I do something the same way sixteen times, fourteen of those sixteen will be wrong. I have tested myself over and over again. I do something and it works. I go back and do it again, exactly the same way, and I end up watching a YouTube video! I cannot make bigger those things which should be bigger, or smaller those things which should be smaller.

I constantly am merrily working on one thing and suddenly finding myself in a totally different window, necessitating my opening “Documents” then opening “My Writings” then opening “Blogs and Websites” then opening “Dorien Grey and Me” then opening…provided I can find it…the blog I’m working on at the moment. I will suddenly find an entire sentence underlined when I did not underline it and did not want it underlined. And when I try to eliminate the underlining, I go to a YouTube video, necessitating my opening “Documents” then opening “My Writings” then opening…well, you get the picture.

Driven to raging paroxysms of frustration, I call Gary, who stops what he is doing, comes up to my apartment, sits down at my computer, casually extends an index finger, and presses seemingly any key at random, and the problem is solved. What key he pressed, or how pressing it solved the problem, or whether I could press the same key and get the same response is an utter mystery.

I take a perverse pride in having mastered the art of self-loathing. My incompetence is boundless, and I say this in all modesty. But fear not. I am not about to pour myself a tall, cool glass of hemlock. I too strongly agree with Dorothy Parker’s lovely poem, “Resume”:

Razors pain you;

Rivers are damp;

Acids stain you;

And drugs cause cramp.

Guns aren’t lawful;

Nooses give;

Gas smells awful;

You might as well live.

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

The Other Side of the Window

Let’s face it: I simply do not get it. I never have gotten it, and chances are I never will. I have spent my entire life on the other side of the window, looking in and watching life without really comprehending it.

There are so very many things I have never understood. The entire list is far, far too long to lay out here, but here are just a few.

I’ve never understood organized religion. From everything I’ve seen, heard, read, or experienced, it has caused more human suffering than all the plagues and wars—many of which have been fought over religion—in the history of mankind. Despite the occasional notable exception, organized religion has consistently fostered hatred and intolerance and all the things it claims to be trying to counter. I have never been able to comprehend how simply and sincerely following the Golden Rule would not all but eliminate the need for organized religion. I find it infinitely sad that “Do unto others as you would have done unto you” has been corrupted into “Do unto others as you would have done unto them.”

I’ve never understood organized sports. Enjoying the physical activity in the form of sports makes sense, and provides great exercise. Sitting on an overstuffed sofa or a barstool guzzling beer and scarfing down bowls of popcorn, peanuts, and pretzels while watching people you have never met and never will meet do what you’re too damned lazy to do totally escapes me. This week’s BIG GAME!!!! over which people seem to drive themselves into an incomprehensible frenzy, was preceded by last week’s Big Game and an endless string of long forgotten Big Games before that. It will be followed by an infinite string of others. And their point is…?

I’ve never understood computer spam. Do these cretins who so blatantly invade my privacy actually, seriously think for one second that anyone who has had a computer for more than two days is going to open a message whose subject line is: “Hi. Bedroom faucet rises the early…” or “We cure all disease” or, worst of all, those little strings of small squares with no text at all? And how could anyone with the intelligence of a hamster actually respond to a letter from a “Barrister” in Nigeria informing you that a billionaire relative you have never heard of has died tragically in a car accident and named you sole beneficiary to his (interestingly, it’s always a “his”) estate. But they do, and I truly despair for humanity.

And I’ve never understood heterosexuals. Never. I’ve lived among them all my life (“Why, some of my best friends are heterosexual”), but have always felt totally apart from them, as though I were a different species. I love my family—heterosexuals all—, am deeply fond of my straight friends, and I like and appreciate many others, but I have never really understood them, and never fail to be mildly infuriated by the automatic assumption of heterosexuals that everyone is heterosexual…or should be.

But the primary thing I do not understand, and which has caused me more anxiety, frustration, and grief than all my incomprehensions listed above, is why I am not—and no matter how hard I try, can never seem to be—the person I so desperately want to be. But I take some small consolation in the thought that maybe I’m not the only one standing on this side of the window.

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

I Sing the Body Electric

Walt Whitman’s classic poem demonstrates how one human has the ability to sound notes within others, and enable them to identify completely with the message. Such words are comforting proof that each of us is part of a whole. We all have favorite books with which we identify, sometimes without recognizing exactly which specific chords in them resonate most strongly. But it is poems and song lyrics which, by the very nature of their compactness, have a uniquely and directly powerful ability to encapsulate our own, deep-down outlooks, attitudes and core beliefs. Given that most of us are far more often exposed to songs than to poetry, I’m quite sure that each of us can point to at the lyrics of at least one song—probably several—and say “this is me.”

This past weekend, I went to see a production of Cabaret, which I had never before seen on stage. It was an example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts in that while some of the cast members had good voices, they played the part of their character rather than being the character and therefore the spark of magic which makes some productions magical was missing. But there is no question about the power of songs which comprise the show.

All of which is a roundabout way of getting to the point that I’ve always been able to lay out my entire interior makeup in the words of a few songs. One song in Cabaret—“Maybe This Time”—has always grabbed me by the heart and described my sense of longing as well as if not better than I could ever do myself. (Turn on your mental stereo and listen to it carefully. You’re hearing me—and perhaps, if you do not have someone to share your life, yourself.)

With all the emotional rigidity of a blade of grass, I am frequently moved by songs, and believe I did a blog on them before at one time. But after “Maybe This Time” reentered my head, where, as is my wont it has stubbornly remained ever since, I decided to select three song lyrics which, even if you knew absolutely nothing about me as a person, would paint a trompe l’oeil self-portrait.

I chose three because while one could be a sketch, a portrait is seldom done in one color. So I selected “Maybe This Time,” to perfectly mirror my life-long search for romantic love, which I still have hopes, however unrealistically, to this day.

While my being gay is not the only thing that defines me as a human being, it has been a preeminent influence, and my entire life has been colored by it. My attitudes toward—and defiance of—bigotry and stupidity and those who would dictate how others should live their lives were formed and have evolved from it. Hence, the second of my three defining songs: “I Am What I Am,” from Jerry Herman’s La Cage aux Folles. To me, it defines the word “pride.”

And the third song...the one which encapsulates my view of everything I aspire to and know I shall never fully realize, is “The Impossible Dream,” from The Man of La Mancha. Can you possibly imagine what the world could be like if everyone “strove, with his last ounce of courage, to reach the unreachable stars”? I can.

I note that the underlying theme of all these songs, and the underlying theme of my existence, is, as noted in my reasons for choosing “Maybe This Time,” hope. With hope, anything is possible, any star eventually reachable. Without it, there is nothing.

So there you have it. I am what I am, and I cling to the impossible dream in hopes that maybe this time....

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

Songs

I was recently informed by my cable/internet provider that the company was going digital and that I had to have a digital cable box attached to every television set in my home, at a cost (hinted at but I don’t think ever specifically stated, $2.50 per month). I did not see the need for anything other than what I already have, and I certainly did not need to spend another $2.50 a month for something I didn’t want in the first place. Foolish me.

I now have a digital converter box for my TV, and will be spending $2.50 per month for the privilege. However, after all my bitching and moaning, I discovered that with the conversion to digital, I now have available, through my TV, 40 music channels. Everything to Christian Rock (one of my favorites, as you can imagine), through Jazz and Hip-hop (close seconds to Christian Rock).

However, it also contains Big Band, Standards, Light Classical, Classical, and Show Tunes. I guess I can afford the $2.50. So now I get up in the morning, turn on the computer and, passing through the living room to make coffee and let my cat out of the bathroom (a long story), I turn on the TV to one of the music channels...usually Show Tunes.

While I’ve not been really up on musical theater for several years now, and therefore do not recognize many of the songs, they also have all the classics from Oklahoma! on. They’ve just played a couple of my all-time favorites: “What I Did for Love” (A Chorus Line), “‘Til Him” (The Producers), “Somewhere” (West Side Story). Anyone who knows me can clearly spot a pattern here: I’m a sucker for songs which, to me, speak particularly strongly to gays. They haven’t yet played…that I’ve heard, anyway…“I Am what I Am” (La Cage aux Folles), but I’m sure they will at some point. And if by any remote chance they might play “Tell Me, Please” from Boy Meets Boy—a delightful gay musical that originated in New York and which I saw six times in L.A.—I will be a happy man indeed.

While the words “song” and “music” are synonymous, they are two pieces of a whole: “music” implies a broader and somewhat more elevated range. “Music” carries with it the signature of the human race as one of our finer qualities: songs are music on a smaller, more personalized scale.

Songs have significance to different people for different reasons. First, and almost universally, it has to have a pleasant melody, and second, universally, the words have to have some special appeal or meaning to the listener. Where one first hears a song, under what circumstances, with whom it is heard or with whom the listener relates it…influence an individual’s reactions.

There are a few songs that have a power which transcends its words and its music: “God Bless America” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” are perhaps the two prime example for Americans. Yet I doubt they have nearly the same impact on non-Americans. Such songs reach deeply into our national psyche and trigger powerful emotions we lump together under another powerful emotion: “patriotism.” Songs are often closely tied to specific times…World War II, the big bands, rock and roll…which become part of their appeal.

Your taste in songs…and in music…may differ vastly from mine. But the thing is that we each recognize its power to move us, and its impact on our lives. Play it again, Sam.

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

Dangling Wires

I sometimes think of my head as a large, unfinished attic with two windows through which I look out at the world. When it came to the wiring of the attic, however, the electrician(s) must have been in a hurry to move on to a more important job. Rather than neatly color-coding each wire and making sure that each went from point A directly to point B, they apparently left hundreds of exposed live electric wires just dangling from the ceiling, so that when the breeze of thought stirs them, they brush against one another randomly, effectively short-circuiting any attempt at linear thinking.

The breeze that comes with music must be especially strong, since it almost always sends me off in random and totally unrelated (on the surface, at any rate) directions.

Yesterday I heard music from one of the great documentary TV series of the early 50s,Victory at Sea, composed by Richard Rogers, and when the main theme came along, I was instantly transported to August of 1953 and to Broadway’s Majestic Theater. It was my first trip to New York, and the first Broadway show I ever saw…Rogers and Hammerstein’s Me and Juliet. The one hit song from that show was “No Other Love,” which was taken note for note from the Victory at Sea main theme.

But once a short-circuit has begun, it tends to set off a string of other sparkings, as this one did. Another song from Me and Juliet was “Keep it Gay” (a song by the same title was used in the more recent Mel Brooks movie, The Producers). I was 19 years old, gay, and in New York on my own for the very first time. Not knowing exactly where to go to find other gays, I went down to Washington Square in the Village, and remember standing in front of the New York Public Library whistling “Keep it Gay,” in hopes that someone might get the message. No one did, alas.

So now we’re short-circuiting on New York/gay memories, and sparking to 1960 when my mom and I went to New York…her first time. I’ve probably mentioned these two memories before, since I tend to repeat my favorite stories. Anyway, we saw The Sound of Music the night Oscar Hammerstein died, and all of Broadway dimmed its lights in tribute.

For some unknown reason, whenever I was with my mom and unable to do anything about it, I would find myself being cruised by guys I’d have given anything to be able to respond to. I remember we were at the top of the Empire State Building and a really nice looking young man took an interest in me. Utterly frustrating, but I couldn’t very well say: “Wait here, Mom, I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

When it comes to my writing, my mind’s odd wiring has taught me never to try to plot things out too far in advance. I’ve become rather adept, I hope, at making use of these little electrical “pffffffftzzzzzzzzzz” reactions in my writing. (Well, this blog is a perfect example, obviously.) The best I can do is, when I start a book, to do a stick-figure drawing of the plot, and perhaps, at the very beginning, point to a spot on the horizon and say “let’s try to end up over there.” Writers who can and do draw intricate treasure maps of their books before they ever start writing (“three paces due north from this specific event, turn SSE and go exactly six paces to something else specific,” etc.) is fine for them, but I cannot comprehend how they do it, or why they would want to tie themselves down so securely. Part of the fun of writing, for me, is never knowing what comes next. It’s all up to the dangling wires.

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

Marching On

A march is playing as I type…a march I played as part of the Naval Aviation Cadet band at a time, it seems now, both only slightly after dinosaurs roamed the earth and yesterday afternoon. And instantly I am back on the parade field at Pensacola Naval Air Station, sweating in the Florida heat, but almost euphoric with the sense of being part of the music and something much larger than myself.

I played the clarinet, and I did not play it particularly well. In fact, I dreaded the very thought of actually being heard as other than a part of the whole band. But I also know that I played far better when I was one of many than I ever could alone.

The need to feel we belong is an elemental but…other than, perhaps, during our teenage years…seldom considered part of being human. Few things promote a sense of belonging more strongly than patriotism, and patriotism is nothing but an awareness of unity and, underlying it, the human need to feel that we belong. There are, of course, both visual and visceral symbols of patriotism and unity: the flag being most prominent of the visual, music…and especially march music…being the most visceral.

Marches convey a sense of power, confidence, boldness, exhilaration, and inclusion which resonate strongly with something deep inside us all. It is not coincidental that the rhythm of march music has been proven to increase the heart rate. (Drums, the very first musical instrument after the human voice, echo the heartbeat. You can’t get much more basic than that.)

To stand on the curb along a parade route and hear the approaching staccato of snare drums and the flourish that leads into the start of the next march…or even better, to be in the band…never fails to create an almost out-of-body experience in me. I love it, and I am not alone…literally.

It has frequently been suggested that “The Stars and Stripes Forever” should be made our official national anthem, and I agree wholeheartedly. Can anyone listen to it without being infused with a deep sense of patriotism? “The Star Spangled Banner” evokes patriotism, I think, largely through a form of osmosis: we’ve been simply programmed for that response. But it doesn’t grab us with anywhere near the power and force, or provide the euphoria of “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” No need for programming there; it just scoops us up and carries us away.

I think those of us who have spent much of our lives being made to feel like we are outsiders, like we do not belong, take perhaps an inordinate degree of comfort in anything which tells us that we are not, indeed, alone. Music…almost any kind of music…provides this comfort, this escape from the world. Some find it in opera, others in symphonies or string quartets. But for me, play me a march, turn the volume way up, and I’m gone.

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

A Cat's Tale

When my cat Crickett died recently, after 18 years, I determined I’d not get another. Losing any living creature, human or animal, with whom you’ve shared a life leaves a sizable hole in the roof of one’s soul, through which the cold rain of sadness can too freely enter.

But then Gary mentioned that he had gone to PetSmart, a large pet supply chain, with his friend George, who was thinking of adopting a cat. PetSmart gives space to local animal shelters as adoption centers, a fact of which I’d not been aware, but which certainly elevated them in my estimation.

Gary said they’d seen a beautiful 2-year-old named Billy, who was pure white except for a black tail and two small black smudges on his forehead. George had wanted it, but was in the process of moving and thought perhaps it might be too difficult both for him and Billy, with all the confusion.

Well, that set me off, and I went to PetSmart the next day. I truly hate going to animal adoption places, since my heart goes out to all the animals there, and want to bring them all home with me, which is very nice altruistically, but somewhat lacking in practicality. At any rate, on a whim I filed an application for Billy on the spot.

Having done so and given the paper to an employee, I went back to the viewing area and saw there was a section I’d not noticed, and in that area saw a pure black, 1-year-old male named Spirit. I have always had a very soft spot in my heart for black cats, so I asked for the application paper back and wrote in “Billy OR Spirit.” I knew I couldn’t take both, and have always hated making decisions like that, since I never want to hurt anyone’s (not even a cat’s) feelings by rejecting them in favor of someone else.

But the more I thought of it, the more I favored, on a practical level, Spirit. My love of black cats goes back to my beloved Thomas who was with me from the moment I found him abandoned as a tiny kitten in a parking lot in Los Angeles until he died in my lap 17 years later in Pence, Wisconsin. Shortly after Thomas died, I looked out the window one snowy day to see a large black cat in my yard. I learned from neighbors who had been feeding him, that he’d just shown up at their house one day. They called him Sheba, and I took him in.

I’d had Sheba (at the same time as I had Crickett, though Crickett never wanted anything to do with him) for almost 15 years when I decided to move to Chicago. Sheba I’m sure thought of himself as a panther, and he loved prowling the forest across the street from my house. I was always worried about him, what with the predators which roamed the forest, plus his crossing the street to get back and forth. But he was very street-smart, and there was never a problem.

But when the time came to move, I knew I could only bring one cat, and I knew that Sheba could never be happy cooped up 24 hours a day in a small apartment, so with a great deal of regret, which I feel to this day, I gave him to a friend who lived, with her husband, in the middle of the forest, a quarter of a mile from the nearest road. I’ve not checked to see if he is still alive. The chances are very slim, but I simply don’t want to know. That way, he will always be young and sleek, stalking wild mice through the tall grass.

Which brings us to Spirit. When I mentioned my plan to adopt him to a friend, he pointed out that a black cat named Sprit was wonderfully fitting in light of my new Elliott Smith mystery series, which deals with spirits. So back again to PetSmart with considerable guilt to change my application from “Billy OR Spirit” to just “Spirit.” After considerable back-and-forthing and will-they-or-won’t they, they called yesterday to tell me I could come pick Spirit up. He is, thus far, a sweetheart, who craves attention (something we have in common), and who insisted on sleeping with me last night...something Crickett never did. I do hope Crickett won’t mind.

Oh, yes, and when I went to pick up Spirit, Billy was gone; adopted by someone else, which greatly reduced my guilt.

So I have embarked on a new adventure, albeit a small one. But adventures, even small ones, keep us young.

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

Catharsis

When I knew she was dead, I picked her up from the kitchen rug on which she had lain, barely moving, for two days, and laid her on her blanket. I folded the blanket over her, picked it and her up, and put them into a large blue plastic bag. I got the box I’d saved for the purpose, and put the bag, the blanket, and Crickett into the box. It was not an easy fit, but after considerable gentle readjusting of the bag, I managed. I got a roll of clear plastic box tape and closed and sealed the box. I then carried it to the elevator, rode down to the first floor, went out the back door and laid the box carefully in an open dumpster. I covered it with a couple other empty boxes and returned to my apartment.

A large city is not conducive to a dignified burial beneath a tree, or deep within a flower bed. But I’m sure Crickett didn’t mind. Were I one to believe in the Pathetic Fallacy, which ascribes human traits and feelings to animals, I would have felt more guilty than I did. And were I to go down that mental path, I’d have truly grieved at the thought that for her entire 18 years, she may have been outside a total of less than a dozen times, and was terrified each time. To be in a box in a dumpster on a cold winter’s day in Chicago....

I got Crickett when she was a kitten, and she was a strange cat, even as cats go. Yellow-orange and white, she was very pretty, and must have had some sort of genetic disorder because her eyes were always fully dilated, never slitted. I don’t recall ever having seen another cat with eyes like hers. Like all cats, she loved attention, but only on her terms. When she came into my life, I already had Thomas, a huge black male with the disposition of a saint. Thomas was everybody’s pal. Crickett wasn’t much into having pals. She largely ignored Thomas, and they never became friends. She was the same with my dog, Samantha (Sammy), and the several other cats that came and went over the years. She remained aloof from it all. Up until the last month of her life, the only time she ever got on my lap, it was on her terms, not mine. And even then she would sit down, get up, circle around (swatting me in the face with her tail), sit down, get up turn around again, etc. until I’d get exasperated and put her on the floor. Occasionally she would climb on my lap and move up to drape herself over my left shoulder (never my right) as she had done when I would hold her as a kitten. Toward the end, she spent a lot of time calmly in my lap. She seemed to need me more, and that broke my heart because I felt she knew something was not right.

While I have had animals all my life, I have not been present at their deaths more than a few times. When Thomas, who I had found as a kitten in Los Angeles, died in Pence, coincidentally also at 18, his decline was rapid, the result of old age and a good life. I found him lying on the basement floor one morning and knew he was dying. I carried him upstairs, where I put him in my lap and sat petting him until he died…I hope peacefully.

Crickett was not so lucky. She developed cancer at the site of a rabies shot she had received more than two years before. The vet said this is far more common than anyone realizes, and she avoids giving rabies shots to indoor house cats for that reason. At any rate, Crickett’s death was neither quick nor easy. She did not appear to be in pain, and the vet prescribed two different medications which appeared to be very effective in keeping her comfortable. But she lost the use of her leg, which she dragged behind her.

I know, I know. I should have gone along with that infuriating euphemism of having her “put to sleep.” But it is not putting her to sleep. It is killing her, and I could not bring myself to play God. I wanted her to die as comfortably as possible in her own familiar world. (I did, on Friday, call the vet, who said she would come over and kill her at home, but I still could not bring myself to do it, though I felt both remorse and guilt as, over the weekend, I feared she might be in pain. She’d stopped eating or drinking, and just laid there. When she tried to stand or move, she’d fall over. The one medication required being put on her food, but when she stopped eating and refused to be fed, I was left with only the second medication, which I could put into her mouth with a small syringe.

I was sure Saturday night she could not possibly last until morning. But she did. 

AndSunday night.

Finally, at about 2:15 Monday, she died.

I know…she was “just a cat.” But she was a part of my life nearly every day for 18 years, and one more link to my past. And I miss her.

And why am I telling you all this? You never knew Crickett. But if you’ve ever lost an animal who was a part of your life, you know the need for catharsis. Writing this is mine.

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

Pets

Spirit

“Pet” is one of the few English words which is not only both a noun and a verb, but its own definition, like “fly”…a fly is what it is called, and fly is what it does. A pet is what it is called and also its primary purpose: to be petted.

Pets—primarily dogs and cats—have been mankind’s companions for a couple of millennia now. Countless books have been written on our inter-species relationship, its role in our society and in our individual lives. Pets are not human, but our emotional bonds to them can often rival that of all but the very closest of our human relationships.

While comparing cats and dogs is like comparing tangerines and tangelos, they both fulfill basic human needs. Dogs provide around the clock unconditional love. Any time we need, or the dog senses we need, affection, it is right there to provide it. And while cats can also be great sources of comfort and affection it is far more frequently given on the cat’s terms, not the human’s. Call a dog, and it is immediately at your side. Call a cat and 9 times out of 10 it will just stare at you, if it deigns to look in your direction at all. It’s just their nature. Dogs are and have since their first bonding with humans thousands of years ago been “pack” animals. They consider man to be just another member of the pack.

Cats are, by their genetic nature, far more “loners” than dogs. Being part of a group is not nearly as important to them as it is to dogs.

In my life, I have had innumerable pets—probably more cats than dogs, yet it seems on reflection that I am basically more a “dog person” than a “cat person.” The first family pet I can really remember was a Doberman pinscher named Kaiser. Dobermans have the reputation of being a one-person dog, and my dad was that person. Kaiser tolerated my mother and me, but it was to my dad that he was totally devoted. Kaiser once got up on the dining room table when no one was around and ate an entire cake my mother had baked for some special occasion. If Mother was not Kaiser’s favorite person, he was not her favorite dog.

The first dog I remember distinctly as being my own was Lucky, a black mutt who my dad found one day and brought home. Lucky was my dog, and I loved him almost on the same par as I loved my parents. I’m not sure how long we had him, but when we moved into a new home, my dad said we couldn’t have a dog there, and gave Lucky to my grandfather, who lived on a farm. It broke my heart, but Dad was adamant, and that was the last I ever saw of Lucky. Grandpa reported that he had run away. And within two weeks of moving into the new house, Dad bought me a boxer pup, Stormy. I never forgave him for taking Lucky from me, and I have never, after all these years, stopped grieving for him.

I of course eventually grew to love Stormy, who we had from the time I lost Lucky to after my two years in the Navy and completion of college. I forget just how Stormy died, and I don’t want to remember. When I moved to Chicago, I got another boxer, Thor, who had very serious mental problems as a result of inbreeding. He became impossible to keep in our apartment, so I gave him to my aunt, who had a large yard. Thor tried jumping over her chain link fence while wearing his leash and hanged himself. I felt terrible, but it was not the depth of sorrow I felt over Lucky.

When I moved to L.A., I had Cindy, a German shepherd, and Boy, a wonderfully loving large mutt, both of whom died of old age at my home. Overlapping Cindy and Boy was Sammy, another mutt who strongly resembled Toto from The Wizard of Oz. Sammy was a total delight and lived to be 15 or so. She moved with me from L.A. to northern Wisconsin, and died of old age while I was on a trip to L.A.

Bozo, a huge golden retriever, was surely one of the most loving dogs I have ever had. He loved to sit at my feet, with his head on my lap while I was watching TV, waiting for me to feed him popcorn, a kernel at a time. One day I let him out and he did not come back. I found him dead by the side of the road. For months after, I could not eat popcorn without crying.

My last dog was Duchess, a beautiful pure-white Samoyed I found on the street and who no one claimed even after I put an ad in the paper. Duchess was my only “outside” dog in that she loved winter; the colder the better. I built her a large doghouse attached to my garden shed, and filled it with bales of straw. And then one harsh winter I noticed her drinking a lot more than normal. I thought it was because the water in her bowl had frozen, so I brought her fresh water more often. She couldn’t seem to get enough, and I noticed she was getting thin. I will never forgive myself for not taking her to the vet immediately. When I did, I was told she had severe diabetes. I hadn’t even known dogs could get diabetes. The vet said they would keep her overnight to see what could be done. When I called the next day, I was told she had died during the night. Is it any wonder I think so little of myself?

I now live in an apartment and having a dog is out of the question, so now I just have my cat, Spirit.

And I see that I have rambled on and on and have not yet even mentioned the cats in my life, some of which were, like my dogs, memorable.

Well, another time, if you’re interested.

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

High School

For someone who is generally able to dredge up vivid memories of the past, my four years of high school are something of a blank. The fact that I can remember so little of them might imply some sort of negative trauma associated with it, but I don’t think there was one. I simply did not like high school. I did not fit in. To say I didn’t want to fit in probably wouldn’t be true, I’m sure…we all want to be liked. But high school is in effect a four-year class on The Joys of Heterosexuality, and I wanted no part of it.

The high school years are an endless sea of raging hormones, and mine were raging in quite a different direction than the vast, vast majority. It did have some slight advantages, though, in that males that age are often open to experimentation…with the unspoken but absolutely ironclad rule that you were never, never to talk about it. So as a result, I was able to do my own sexual experimenting with about half my high school class—the male half. I’m sure that 99 percent of them went on to marry nice girls and follow the Biblical instructions to be fruitful and multiply. (I was fruitful, too, but didn’t multiply.)

Oddly, now that I think of it, I cannot remember encountering even one other gay or lesbian student. Though statistically in a school of 1,200 there had to be at least 120 of us.

I had two friends during my high school years, one of whom did not attend the same school as I. And I feel obligated to point out that both were notable exceptions to my “half the class” statement. One went on to join and make a career in the Air Force, marrying his high school sweetheart not long after graduation. I’m sure I must have had other friends, and I do recall several names and faces but for the most part I was a loner through both choice and circumstance.

I was a somewhat-above-average student, though not all that much above average, probably due to the fact that I prided myself on never having brought homework home. Perhaps as a result of that dubious distinction, I remember an English exam in which I totally and completely froze, and was unable to remember the answer to a single question. In desperation I wrote a note at the top of the paper saying: “I’m sorry, but my mind has shut down. I could have cheated, but I didn’t.” It was an obvious bid for sympathy or at least leniency from the teacher, but it produced neither.

Throughout my somewhat checkered academic career up to college, my parents collected a sizable assortment of notes from teachers all saying, in effect: “Roger could do much better if only he would apply himself.” Applying myself would have involved patience, and we all know where I stand on that one.

So when I walked out of the doors of East High in June of 1952, they closed behind me and I never looked back. I occasionally, even today, get announcements of reunions and news of my classmates, none of whom I can remember. I’m sure I might be able to remember some, if I really tried, and I’m sure they are all very nice people who have gone on to live happy, heterosexual lives. But each bulletin I receive only serves to remind me of the fact that I did not belong in their world in 1952, and I still do not belong in it today.

If anyone has any questions as to why I do not care for reality and became a writer, I’d be happy to answer them.

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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: