Falling Short

A few years ago, now, I received a totally unexpected package from a fellow writer named Sue Hartigan, whom I’d met through a couple of the many online lists to which I belong. Sue’s posts were unerringly charming, caring, and cheerful. Yet I knew she had been battling cancer for some time. We corresponded a few times as kindred spirits.

When I opened the package, I found a delightful little ceramic statuette of two cats snuggling atop a book. I can’t describe how touched by and appreciative of this small act of gratuitous kindness I was. I have the statuette directly to one side of my computer monitor and it serves as a daily reminder of how very much even a small act of kindness can mean. It has even more poignancy for me now, since Sue lost her battle about a year ago.

It also reminds me, should I ever forget it, that I’m not a very nice person, sometimes. I am far too self-absorbed (which you may have noticed from these blog entries), often thoughtless, too quick to judge, too quick to speak and too slow to listen, too often petty. I do not express my appreciation for things or people nearly as often or as strongly as I should, have not one scintilla of patience, and do not suffer those I consider fools gladly. I often disappoint, embarrass, and shame myself by falling so short of being the person I—and others—expect me to be. My temper frequently has a very short fuse. I have rock-bound opinions and attitudes which I would never tolerate in others, and I’m sure drive those around me to distraction.

And yet for all this, I have never knowingly, deliberately set out to hurt anyone. To cheat or rob or take unfair advantage of another human being is truly incomprehensible to me. That there are so many people who seem to go out of their way to inconvenience or harm others, who are incapable of common courtesy, let alone respect, care, concern, or compassion for anyone but themselves astonishes and deeply saddens me. I would, had I the chance, gladly pass judgement on these people, and it would be harsh indeed—which, it could be argued, would make me no better than them.

People who take obvious pleasure in duping and swindling others without one single thought or qualm about the effect of their actions deserve a special place in Hell. (Granted, I also cannot comprehend how so many people can be so gullible as to fall for these schemes.)

It could be argued that predators and prey are part of the balance of nature, and that since man is biologically an animal, we are subject to that same balance. The Nigerian barrister offering complete strangers millions of dollars is no different than a lion in wait by a waterhole for a passing gazelle. The hucksters, shills, and con artists who flood every email “in” box are merely piranha waiting for something living to fall into the water.

Among humans, those without common sense are natural prey for those without morals, conscience, or scruples. But it is axiomatic that without an ample supply of prey, the predators would have nothing to feed on, and both groups, sadly, seem to be increasing exponentially.

Man is the only animal with a concept of the future and the ability to shape it. I can be better than I am: we can be better than we are. The question is, are we willing to put forth the effort? I find it infinitely disheartening to realize that, from even a cursory look at the world around us, the answer seems to be “no.”

Well, I’m not the rest of the world. I’m me. And I can try to be better. Hey, it’s a start.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

Normal

Normal, adj.: According to, constituting, or not deviating from, an established norm, rule, or principle

Well, I’d pretty much scratched that one off my list of Things I Want To Be When I Grow Up by the time I was five. The last thing in the world I wanted, even then, was to be like everyone else, and I’ve subsequently worked very hard to avoid the pitfalls of normalcy.

I have, perhaps unfairly to those people who are normal, always equated being normal with cookie cutters: to be normal is to do what everyone else does and think what everyone else thinks. That’s fine if being normal is an unconscious choice. But far too many people are “normal” not so much through choice but because they feel the necessity to follow the cardinal rule for normalcy: “Do what is expected of you and don’t make waves.” Again, that’s fine for those who are truly comfortable obeying rules. I do not like rules.

Have you noticed how even social “rebels”—hippies in the 60s, rappers in the 90s and teenagers of every generation— try to prove their “difference” by looking and acting just like everyone else in their group? I have never felt the need—and certainly not the desire—to have my body covered in tattoos or have various body parts pierced or wear black eyeliner or spiked hair or, back when it was in vogue, a mustache, to call attention to myself. I know I’m different…I have no need to prove it to anyone. (Though, you’ll notice, I apparently have the need to tell people about it.) Not that people don’t notice I’m not quite like them, but I would hope they might have to give some thought to it before reaching the conclusion.

I am sufficiently self-conscious not to want to be considered “abnormal,” or to be so far from what people might think of as normal that I might be pointed out in a crowd, though I am finding that the fact of aging is taking this option out of my hands: I do stand out simply because one look tells people I am no longer like them.

Even within the range of “normal,” each of us is of course different in our own way, some through choice and some through circumstance. I vastly prefer “different by choice” to “different by circumstance.”

I don’t consider my being gay makes me particularly “different.” For one thing it is not a matter of choice, and for another, though gays are in the distinct minority of the general population, the number of gays in the United States far exceeds the entire population of the continent of Australia. But undoubtedly being gay contributed to my aversion to the more blatant outward forms of demonstrating my lack of normalcy. Being part of a persecuted minority tended to create a deep-seated and understandable need to not be easily spotted.

But my awareness of not being “normal” means I’ve never felt comfortable among groups of people I do not know well. Being surrounded by large groups of “normal” (read, for the most part, “heterosexual”) people can be particularly unnerving.

If being normal is your choice, more power to you…I certainly don’t mean to be dismissive of those who freely choose normalcy. Life is infinitely easier for you, I’m sure. But there are far too many people who choose to be normal because it frees them of the need to ask questions—such as why things are as they are, or are not as they should be. To be normal is to be far more accepting of life than I am or have ever cared to be. I can and do respect normal people and perhaps even envy them a bit. But I would never, never want to be one of them!

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

The Likes O' Me

I take a certain degree of pride in the fact that I am not “normal.” I have never been “normal” and have never had the slightest interest in being so. I have, in fact, spent most of my life avoiding normalcy like the plague, and were anyone to refer to me as being “normal”—though no one ever has—I am quite sure I would be rather insulted.

Of course, having been gay since I was five years old, I never really had much of an option. Society made it very clear that I was not like everyone else, and though I have never (until, perhaps, recent years) flaunted the fact, having witnessed what those who did flaunt it had to endure made self-evident the old saying “discretion is the better part of valor.” In the case of gays and lesbians, it was often a matter of “discretion is the better part of survival.” And because my sexual orientation is such a major part of my character, it is axiomatic that I would and never could feel “normal” in a world of people so different from myself.

To be normal is to belong, and I have never belonged—again, largely through choice. My family, bless them, have always fully accepted me, even though they all knew I was gay long before I told them. I have heard far too many stories of individuals cast out from those they love and are supposed to love them, and every time I hear of this happening, my heart breaks for the outcast even while I am filled with renewed gratitude for having the family I have.

There are so many things—many of them touched on in these blogs—that I honestly and sincerely do not understand, such as bigotry and hypocrisy and hatred, and blind acceptance of what other people say is right or wrong. How can people not question? How can people not see the utter lack of logic which underlies racial, ethnic, and sexual orientation prejudices?

It is the “likes o’ mes” of the world—the outcasts, the ones who have been repeatedly told directly or indirectly but always emphatically, that they do not belong with “normal” folk…who push civilization forward. And I am embarrassed to acknowledge that while I, personally, share their attitudes and opinions, I am nowhere as brave as they in expressing them. I deeply admire and envy those who put everything on the line for the things they fervently believe in. I am not a barricade-stormer, or a flag-waver or soapbox orator. I do what I can far more quietly, through words on paper and computer monitors.

Deeply held beliefs and how they are expressed are, like so much in life, a two-sided coin. The difference lies in whether the belief and its expression is inclusive or divisive, positive or negative. Any belief based on the denigration of others in any way is unequivocally wrong.

I suppose, on thinking it over, that the constant strife that humanity has always endured…the wars, the conflicts, the diametrically-opposed belief systems—might be a calculated (by who or what we cannot know) means of keeping us sharp and alert as a species. Without conflict, agonizing though it often is, there would be only complacency. Conflict creates progress and keeps us moving fore.

There must, therefore, always be people set aside for scorn and persecution, for it is they who initiate change. And it is “the likes o’ me,” I would truly love to believe, who, without shouting or fighting, can quietly hold up small arrows along the rough and twisted road to the future saying: “This way!”

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

Worst Enemies

“Beat me! Beat me!” cried the masochist. “No,” replied the sadist.

The concept of sadism, or of physical masochism, is utterly beyond my comprehension. To take pleasure from inflicting or seeking out physical pain is inconceivable to me. However, when it comes to mental masochism—to the constant and merciless berating of one’s self—I have been a lifelong practitioner, and I simply cannot break myself of it.

The origins of my mental masochism I’m convinced lie in my compulsion to be so very much more than I am or could ever possibly be. I began pointing out my flaws at an early age, as a rather warped means of beating other people to the punch. Rather than wait for someone else to say, as they inevitably would: “Jeezus, Margason, you suck!” I step right in and say it before they get the chance. I won’t give them the satisfaction of thinking I am not already aware of my shortcomings.

And over time this self-deprecation became a way of life. Unfortunately, running myself down as a form of preemptive strike has, not surprisingly, been counterproductive. I’ve often told the story (and why wouldn’t I? It’s self-deprecatory) of seeing a letter one of my best friends in college had written another. In it, in mentioning me, he said, “You know, Roger keeps on telling everyone how worthless he is until eventually you begin to believe him.” That should have been a wake-up call. It wasn’t. More than 60 years later, I’m still doing it. How I have managed to get this far in life without an ulcer is a miracle.

I’m not sure whether it could be called ironic, or perverse, or perversely ironic, but I see my self-loathing, as indicated above, as a form of reverse narcissism. I demand far, far more of myself than I expect of anyone else because…well, because I’m me! I am fascinated by—and take what, despite all my vehement protests to the contrary, has to be a…well, masochistic…delight in—my own flaws and failings. I am not fishing for denials whenever I say that I am incompetent; I truly and completely believe it, and past experience offers solid proof. Given 10,000 opportunities to do something right or to do it wrong—especially if the task involves anything with moving parts, electricity, or the internet, the odds are that I will do it wrong 9,955 times out of the 10,000. And that is a conservative figure. It is also irrefutable fact. I don’t like it, but that’s the way it is.

We live in an increasingly technological world. Yet when, after countless failed attempts to do something technological, someone (usually a long-suffering friend) takes me by the hand and baby-steps me to the point where I finally do it right, the chances are 9,999 to 1 that the next time I need to do exactly the same thing, I will have forgotten how to do it or, doing it exactly the way I did it before, it will not work. In fact, it is quite common for me to do even a simple task I have done without problem innumerable times before—press key A and then key B to get result C, for example. Suddenly, with absolutely no change in the way I have always done it, I will press key A and then key B and get result Z, H, R, or K…sometimes in combination. Despite the kindness of people who assure me I exaggerate my inability to comprehend the simplest of instructions, the fact is that they know not whereof they speak simply because they are not me.

While it is sometimes difficult for most people to separate hyperbole from fact, I like to believe that I have raised incompetence to a new level…a statement perfectly demonstrating what I mean by reverse narcissism. “Nonsense,” my friends will tell me. “Everyone makes mistakes.” Yes, but the entire point of this blog is that they are allowed—even expected—to make mistakes. I am not. What I readily accept in them, I refuse to allow in myself. They are mere mortals, whereas I, while not sufficiently narcissistic to deny being mortal, am somehow…more. And if one’s value can be measured by the number of one’s flaws, I am “more,” indeed.

So go ahead, take a look at your own flaws and failings, but don’t even try to compare them to mine: you haven’t the chance of a snowball in hell of winning.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

Generations

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

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

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

Not one single person of the entire population of the planet living when Grandpa Fearn is alive today. Within a few years, the planet’s entire population when my parents were born will also be dead, and within 35 years, every single human being living on the face of the earth on the day I was born will be gone. Astonishing!

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

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

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

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

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

Time Was

My friend Gary gave me a video of the popular singing group, Il Divo, for my birthday. The fact that not only do they sing well, but two of them are achingly beautiful didn’t hurt. I was enjoying both the music and the…uh, scenery…when they launched into an Italian rendition of a song known here as “Unchained Melody,” and suddenly I was not sitting in an apartment in Chicago, watching a video, but sitting at a booth in a small bar near the beach in Pensacola, Florida, eating pizza and talking with my NavCad friend Harry Harrison and I realize the frustration of stroke victims aware of everything around them but unable to say or do anything.

I’m really there, 54 years ago and I want so badly to let myself and Harry know that I’m there, but I can’t.

While I can, and often do, conjure up vivid memories of the past, the most powerful of these journeys are those in which I am whiplashed through time without warning. All it takes is an out-of-nowhere thought, a totally unexpected memory, a song, a sound, a photo, and I am back with friends and lovers and family long gone.

I’m home from college, sitting on the couch in my parents’ home on School Street in Rockford, Illinois, next to my dad, who reaches out and places his hand on my knee, giving it a sharp squeeze which evokes a yelp from me and a rebuke that “that hurts!” And I do not realize until years later that this was his way of showing that he loved me. I’d give anything to be sitting on that sofa right now, next to my dad. And this time, I would not complain.

The sound of a passing single-engine airplane overhead will transport me instantly into the cockpit of an SNJ navy trainer, soaring over the top of a gigantic whipped-cream cumulus cloud and into a beautiful, clear valley surrounded by other clouds, looking down at the green patchwork of fields and roads and rivers far below, and I experience the same indescribable joy and wonder.

Some of these travels back in time I make fairly frequently, but some, like the following, pop up totally unannounced after years and years. Norm and I are returning to Chicago from my parents’ cottage in my new red 1963 Ford Sprint convertible. The top is down, and Norm is sitting in the passenger’s seat, studiously rummaging through a large bag of potato chips, as if he’s looking for something. Apparently finding it, he smiles and pulls out one large, perfect potato chip, and hands it to me.

I’m with my mother, visiting New York City sometime in the early 1960s. We are at the top of the Empire State Building, and I am being cruised by a very nice looking guy. My mother for some reason seemed to be my magnet for attracting handsome gay men, for I was never cruised more heavily, more frequently, or because of the circumstances of being with Mom and therefore unable to do anything about it, more frustratingly.

I often refer, when looking at beautiful men, for example, to my chest hurting. And it does! It’s a combination of intense feelings of longing, too often mixed with the sorrow of the awareness of loss—that something once was and is no more, and can never be again.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

A Day at the Movies

Coronado Theater, Rockford, IL

Whenever I go up to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, for one of my annual follow-up checkups, I like to try to see a movie, which I seldom have the chance to do at home. This time, I saw two; one Sunday and one Monday at one of those 470-screen SuperCinePlexes.

Paying my $6.00 early-bird-or-whatever rate on Sunday, I decided I’d try once again to eat a bag of popcorn. I love popcorn; I always have. But though I am always the optimist, I am never able to finish even a small bag. The kernels break up into a thousand pieces during chewing and, because my salivary glands were destroyed by radiation during the treatment of my tongue cancer, I have no natural way of simply gathering the thousands of pieces, moving them unnoticed to the back of my mouth, and swallowing, ready for the next handful. 

Instead, the broken up kernels adhere to every possible surface of my mouth; between my tongue and teeth, and between my teeth and my gums. Trying to wash them loose with a sip of soda is an exercise in futility.

But I digress, as usual. What I’m getting at is that a very small bag of popcorn cost $3.25 and a small soda cost another $3.25. I was thinking of mentioning to the manager that if they were going to rob the customers, they could at least wear masks and carry guns. So a trip to the movies cost $12.50. And I know the $6.00 ticket price was a steal compared to some theaters. Needless to say, I opted to forgo the snack bar on a return visit.

In the great depression, movie theaters survived not so much on the ticket sales, but on selling popcorn...at 10 cents a bag. I am sure the modern cineplexes operate on a similar theory, though on a far, far grander scale.

I began going to movies on my own when I was around 10, I believe. Every Saturday, my mom would give me $1.25, and with that princely sum I would take the bus (I believe 10 cents a ride) downtown, where I would go to the State or the Times, or the Palace (which frequently had vaudeville on weekends), or the Midway on the other side of town, or very rarely to the Coronado, which was and is a magnificent old Grand Dame of a movie palace.

The Coronado and the Midway showed only first runs from major studios. The Times and Palace often showed second-runs or B-grade movies; The State showed lesser movies, but ran serials every Saturday and was therefore the favorite of most of the kids.

Anyway, I would ride the bus down town, go immediately to Woolworths’ soda fountain where I would have a chocolate soda (when was the last time you had a real chocolate soda? If you’re under 50, chances are you may never have had one. And is there, for that matter, a single real soda fountain left anywhere?). The soda set me back $.25, and I’d also have a hot dog (fifteen cents, if I’m not mistaken). From there I would move on to the theater of my choice, buy my ticket for fifty cents, and a order a huge bag of fresh-popped Manley’s Popcorn, which featured an elephant on the bag, for a dime. If I’d managed somehow during the week to scrape up an extra dime, I would have two bags.

The only Coliseum seating then was found in Rome. The entire audience sat on one level, though there usually was a sloping of the floor to provide some slightly better view of the screen. Most theaters had their seats lined up directly in front of one another; only a few staggered the rows slightly so you could look over someone’s shoulder rather than at the back of their heads.

And it was a wondrous and wonderful time, when a movie cost fifty cents and popcorn a dime.

But as I sat in the SuperCinePlex in Rochester, Minnesota trying to get through a $3.25 bag of popcorn far smaller than the old Manley’s dime bag, and drinking my $3.25 coke and feeling very nostalgic for the old days, I remembered that back in those wondrous, magical, halcyon days, when you were diagnosed with cancer, you died.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

Trains

Like most people…men more than women, I’d suspect…I’ve had a lifelong attraction to trains, from the time Uncle Buck first took me to the train station in Rockford, Illinois to watch the huge black-metal monsters come chuffing up to the platform wreathed in steam and thick black smoke, amid squeaks and hisses. From that moment, I was hooked.

For Christmas of 1938, my dad bought me…well, us, since he played with it more than I did…a five car Lionel electric train. It had a bullet-shaped streamliner engine, a coal car, a baggage car, a diner, and a caboose. I had it until just before my 2006 move to Chicago, when I realized that much as I loved it, it was foolish just to keep it packed away in a box, so I put it up for sale on eBay, and got $1,000 for it. I was of course happy for the money, but even happier that someone who loved trains would be enjoying it. I think Dad would excuse me.

A couple of times, after I moved from Chicago in 1966 to Los Angeles, I took a train between the two cities, splurging on a sleeper compartment with its own tiny bathroom. It was rather decadent, I thought, and a lot of fun, albeit rather expensive. I’d love to do it again, and have always wanted to take a train across Canada. Well, it’s on my wish list.

And now that I am living once again in Chicago, I look out my window and see (and sometimes too-clearly hear) silver elevated trains rumble by half a block away every several minutes. From my vantage point, looking down on them, I convince myself that I once again have my own little electric train set. (The sound, by the way, becomes so much a part of existence that I am for the most part totally unaware of it. All part of big city life.)

I’ve mentioned before that Chicago has one of the best transportation systems in the country, and having an el so close means that I am literally only steps away from any place in the city. If the el won’t get me there, the busses which pass every elevated stop will.

And even though I’ve been back in Chicago for two years now (good Lord! How can that be possible?), the el fascinates me. But what fascinates me more is how everyone in Chicago simply takes this marvel for granted. To walk up a flight of stairs and look down the track to see four-six-and-eight-car silver trains moving into and out of each station. Watching the cars slide past as the train moves up the platform, seeing the doors slide silently open, watch the people getting on and off as though it were no big thing (and in truth, I guess it isn’t, except to me and my friend Gary, who recently moved here from Texas and is still as fascinated with them as I).

Riding through the city on an el, especially as it approaches the Loop and its towers, is to me a never-ending source of awe. Hundreds of thousands of people each day board and alight from the eight separate but interlinked lines serving the city: Red, Brown, Orange, Yellow, Purple, Green, Orange, Pink. In the Loop, the major north-south Red Line, which begins and ends as an elevated line, sinks beneath the ground to become a subway, then emerges again to become an el.

I often wonder how many of those who ride it every day ever stop to think that probably most people in the country have no ready access to such a complex public transportation system, let alone the joy of real trains running back and forth right over their heads, or of how wondrous and complex a thing it is. I know I do. Simple pleasures for a simple mind.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

Shaping Clay

Some primitive cultures believe that the gods shaped Man from clay before breathing life into him.

I think there also might be something to be said for the idea that we are also, when we’re born, the equivalent of cosmic Play-Doh, and who we turn out to be is the result of how we are shaped by the events and circumstances of our lives.

Looking back, I can remember a number of incidents from my childhood which, simply because they’re still remembered after all these years, mean they had to have contributed to who Roger and Dorien are today.

Not surprisingly, most of them took place when I was very young, though I have difficulty now pinning down exactly how old I might have been at the time of each incident. The earliest was when I was old enough to have a tricycle. My parents had called me in for supper (we had “supper” in those days…“dinner” only came with sophistication). I left my tricycle on the sidewalk, and as we were eating, I heard the little bell on the handlebars ringing. I told my dad that someone was stealing my tricycle, but he had not heard the bell and refused to let me go outside to check on it. When I was able to go out, of course the tricycle was gone, and I resented my dad deeply for not having let me go out and save it. And I am ashamed to say that I think this single incident influenced my relationship with my dad from that moment on.

A second incident, about the same time, occurred while I was visiting my grandmother, who lived near a city park. While no one was watching me, I decided to go to the park alone. As I was walking through an underpass beneath the street on which my grandmother lived, I was approached by a man (which at my age could have been any male 15 years old or older). To this day I remember what he said to me, and though it is admittedly rather embarrassing to repeat, it has stuck with me all these years. (A word of caution here: I’m not going to sugar-coat this, so you can skip to the next paragraph if you’re easily offended.) He said, “Let me put my weenie in your can.” It wasn’t until years later that I understood what he was saying, but I remember thinking it was a very strange thing to say. At any rate, I ran off and don’t know if I told my parents or not. But I remembered it. I still remember it, possibly because it was the first time I was aware that there were others like me: males who liked males. He was not the kind of man of whom homosexuals can be proud and, like most pedophiles, it’s unlikely that he was in fact gay.

One incident which strongly did have an effect on the formation of my character occurred when, maybe about 7 years old, I was walking down the sidewalk, happily singing Christmas carols at the top of my voice. A passerby said: “Why are you singing Christmas Carols? It’s summer.” I don’t know why, but that comment so shamed me that I have never since sung aloud other than as part of a group.

Probably one of the most significant of my character-developing incidents happened when I was five, and my parents and I were living in a 14-foot trailer in Gary, Indiana. The trailer park was located next to a railroad track, but separated by a sloping ditch. Whenever we kids would hear a train coming, we’d run to the embankment to wave at the engineer, who always waved back. One day I heard the train coming before the other kids did, and I ran to the ditch and plopped down on the ground just below the rim of the embankment. I had my left leg out to one side and watching for the train.

A little girl from the park came running up and, not seeing me, jumped down the embankment, landing on my extended leg, breaking it severely just below the hip. I of course immediately began screaming and the little girl, terrified, ran off. My mother, hearing me, came running over. And seeing me all by myself maybe three feet down the side of a grassy embankment, she naturally assumed I had merely fallen and was being my own melodramatic self. She knelt down and scooped me up, one arm around shoulders and the other under my rear end. Unfortunately, in so doing, the weight of my unsupported left leg forced the broken bone out through my skin.

The doctors at the hospital to which I was taken told my parents that the break was so severe that my left leg would probably be several inches shorter than the right. However, they said, a visiting specialist from Germany was in town. He was scheduled to return to Germany the next day, but he came in and operated, and while I have a long and very noticeable scar, there was no shortening. The doctor left for Germany the next day. This was September of 1938. The doctor was Jewish.

I don’t think that the fact that it was a little girl who had jumped on me influenced my being gay, but it certainly did make me far more cautious of any activity or anything at all that might conceivably cause me physical pain.

Well, there are many more character-shapers in my life, and I may do another blog or two on them in future. But this, I’m sure you’ll agree, is enough for now.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

Get a Horse

People fascinate (and too often infuriate) me for a wide range of reasons, one of which being the vehemence with which so many resist the idea of change and the total acceptance of it once it has arrived. I started this particular blog a couple days ago, then when time came (today) to post it, I realized it needed to be in two parts: material changes and societal changes. So let’s start with the material, which seem to be faster to come along and generally with less resistance than social changes.

Humans have a general historical suspicion and distrust of technology. The knee jerk reaction to anything new is either “it’ll never work” or “well, I’d never use it.” The first automobiles were greeted with catcalls of: “Get a horse!” Orville and Wilbur’s idea of a flying machine was generally denounced with the firm general conviction that “It’ll never fly.”

Yet we have experienced, in a just a little over a hundred years, a sea change in how technology has totally and forever changed our lives.

I do not think my immediate family…my mom, my dad, and me…had an indoor bathroom until I was approaching puberty. I know we didn’t on the little house on Loves Court in Loves Park; I’m sure there wasn’t room for it in the 14-foot-long trailer in which we lived in Gary, Indiana, where I broke my leg and was in a body cast for a month or so during the heat of summer, and I know we did not have air conditioning. We did not have an indoor bathroom until we’d been living on Blackhawk Ave. for some time. I seem to recall a hand pump for water in the kitchen, and I definitely remember a hand-pumped kerosene stove in the trailer.

Impossible to believe now, but few of us had even heard of television before 1945, and in 1949 people would stand outside appliance store windows to watch the bulky sets with the blurry black and white photos. Radio was our primary source of entertainment, and we usually went to the movies once a week until I was a teenager: then I’d go once a week with my family, and every Saturday afternoon on my own with, as stated before, my “allowance” of $1.25: 50 cents for the movie, a quarter for a chocolate ice cream soda, 20 cents for two tall bags of Manley Popcorn, and 30 cents for the bus to and from.

Mail was delivered twice a day, for three cents a stamp. Electric refrigerators and washing machines were in very few homes prior to the 1940s. On ice-delivery day, you’d put a card in your front window with a little arrow pointing to the amount of ice you wanted, and it would be brought in an open truck with a heavy tarp in the back covering the ice, and all the neighbor kids would run up to it on warm summer days and take little chips of ice to suck on.

It’s impossible to totally separate technological change from societal change, since technology is a river on which society floats.

The past was not all nostalgia and warm snugglies. Now-eradicated or easily treated diseases cut down tens of thousands, and for improvements in medicine alone we should give thanks.

But with change also comes a degree of loss. The more technology takes us out of ourselves comes a loss of innocence, of security, of a sense of physical, emotional, and geological closeness with friends and family.

Like it or not, change is constant and we are carried along with it willingly or no. All we can do is remember what was and use it as an anchor or a guidepost to what is to come.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

Tar Bubbles

When I lived in Los Angeles, I used to enjoy going down to the La Brea Tar Pits to stare out over the still surface of the largest of the pools and watch gas bubbles slowly form little black igloos, linger a moment, and then more melt away than burst. They’ve been doing that for millions of years, and never seem to run out of the gas to create the bubbles.

My mind’s a lot like that. Thoughts and ideas will just suddenly work their way to the surface of my consciousness, remain for just long enough for me to acknowledge them, then vanish. Where they come from and how they were formed I have no idea. I suspect it is some sort of short-circuitry in my thought processes.

I was thinking of doing a blog entry on my school days, and realized that putting 16 years into a one page blog might be a tad difficult. But here are a couple of bubbles that rose to the surface:

Because of my broken leg, I was unable to enter first grade when I should have, and had to wait until the next year. I first attended Loves Park Elementary, though I’m sure it had another name. Shortly after I entered first grade, the United States entered WWII. I distinctly remember my prize possession being a military-type jacket that made me feel very grown up. However, looking at the photo above, I see I may have been mistaken [I was unable to find this photo].

I loved The Weekly Reader, a very early form of news magazine made especially for elementary students.

I remember going from door to door selling packets of vegetable seeds to raise money for the school to buy a motion picture projector. I hated going door to door selling packets of vegetable seeds, no matter how noble the purpose. And just before the projector was purchased, we moved and I transferred to another school, Harry Morris…which was located on the south-west outskirts of town and had a total student body of 68. And after more than 60 years, I am once more in contact with two of my Harry Morris classmates, Dan Sable and Marion (then) Bender.

I remember the mothers (mine specifically, of course) taking turns walking to the school in winter to make hot soup for us for lunch. I remember “milk money” and buying pints of chocolate milk. I remember The Bugville News, my first literary effort, which was a “newspaper” relating the various disasters befalling the insect citizens of Bugville. I would tack each “edition” to the school’s front door.

I remember hating recess if organized sports were going to be involved. They would always choose up teams and then argue over who had to take me. Not a fun time.

I remember many a happy hour, walking home from school, spent wandering around a side-of-the-road dump-yard, breaking bottles.

I remember learning to ride a bike. My dad bought me a used bike much too big for me...I could barely reach the pedals...and one day riding down the hill from school directly into cross traffic and being hit by a car. Luckily, I wasn’t hurt. But I was very badly shaken. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, I all my life have avoided anything that I think might cause me physical harm.

I remember with great, great fondness my teacher, Mrs. Larson, who always reminded me very much of Eleanor Roosevelt. Mrs. Larson was who God had in mind when he created teachers. Her exact opposite was Mrs. Heinz, a redheaded harridan who, for punishment (which was frequent), would make us write every verse of the Star Spangled Banner.

Oh, Lord, I remember so much. So many people; so many more lost to memory. If I allow them, the bubbles rise faster and more thickly, until the surface of my mind is like a vast, rapidly boiling pot and I can no longer separate one memory from the next. I seem to be approaching that point as I write this, so it is time to turn off the burners for now. But don’t be surprised if the bubbles start rising again before long.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Since this blog was written, the egregious “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law has been repealed and, as I fully knew would be the case, it sank beneath the surface without a ripple. But it should never be forgotten that at one time, gays and lesbians were not allowed to serve their country openly.

Were you aware that there is only one employer in the entire United States of America which is free to fire its employees on the basis of sexual orientation? Care to guess which one? Why, the United States Military, of course—an arm of the U.S. government. By refusing to comply with the very laws it has mandated for everyone else, it thereby sets itself as being above the law (hardly a first-time event, but disgraceful nonetheless).

Since the inception of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” rule, well over 12,000 American servicemen and women who volunteered to serve their country have been kicked out of the military simply for being gay or lesbian. Enlisted men and women, officers, highly trained specialists, badly needed linguists/interpreters, holders of medals. No matter. They’re gay, they’re out. This at a time when the military is stretched dangerously thin, and they are lowering their recruiting standards. Well, of course, allowing convicted felons to enlist is far better than keeping a college graduate who has never had so much as a parking ticket, but is a faggot, and therefore a serious danger to the “cohesion”—whatever that is supposed to mean—of the unit.

Is the average heterosexual American soldier, sailor, or marine such a delicate emotional blossom, or so insecure in their own sexuality, that they would feel “threatened” by serving beside someone who was openly gay?

The United States is one of the last major countries in which homosexuals are not free to serve openly in the military. Why? Israel, Canada, Norway, England...are our moral standards so much higher than theirs? Or are we afraid our service men and women are too frail to survive sleeping in the same compartment as a homosexual?

The bitter irony here—one of many, actually—is that there are already tens of thousands of gays and lesbians in the military who chose to serve their country despite the knowledge that they can be kicked out any time they dare to reveal their sexual orientation.

I was one of those who served in silence, and who lived with the sword constantly hanging over my head. I witnessed first hand what happened to anyone who was discovered to be gay aboard an American warship. (I’ve told the story often before, but a guy I knew, a nice, innocent, naive kid, was called into the personnel office. “We arrested a man in Norfolk who said he had sexual relations with you. Now, we don’t want to do anything against you, but if you’ll sign this paper to verify you had sex with him, we can prosecute him.” The poor kid signed the paper and was flown off the aircraft carrier in the middle of the night. Flown off an aircraft carrier in the middle of the night lest he contaminate his fellow crewmen! My mind still reels to think of it.)

That the moral standards of my fellow (but heterosexual) sailors were infinitely higher and more refined than my own, and that they were therefore far more worthy human beings than I was evinced every time we went ashore. Apparently one can get a far better education in bars and brothels than in a museum. Museums are for faggots: bring on the girls!! One of my shipmates contracted gonorrhea no fewer than seven times in the course of our eight-month cruise. He was held in high regard by everyone for being a “real man.”

It appears that finally, finally the days of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” may be coming to an end, and one more outrageously discriminatory ruling will be overturned. And within one year of its repeal, I guarantee you that everyone will not give it a single thought other to wonder what the hell all the fuss had been about in the first place.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: