It’s 1979 and Paul Quinn and I are jumping on his bed in our underwear. We’re both excited and we both tentatively touch each other -- our first attempts at exploring a body other than our own. We’re lost in childhood desire, curiosity and innocence. All this stops when Mrs. Quinn throws open the door. "What are you two doing?" she yells. The look on her face is of a deep disgust – a repulsion usually reserved for the murders or pedophiles I see on TV. Paul gets spanked "I’ll give you something to take your pants off for", I hear her say as and I slip past her and out the door for home. I wish she hit me too; the sting of those rapid fire smacks would surely be less painful than the looks of disdain that burned a permanent scar in my head and heart. I don’t know what I did wrong. Whatever it is, I know it’s disgusting. I feel hate. I feel dirty. I’m powerless to do anything about it. What we were doing felt so good, why was it bad? Although I don’t know it then, this is my introduction to the paradox of being gay.
Not soon after my incident with Paul, I get caught again, this time with a girl named Beth Ann. My mother finds me. Here’s when I learn the price of the currency on childhood sexuality. While childhood sexual curiosity may be perplexing and frightening for parents, it’s less frightening when it’s a sanctioned sexual orientation. My mother’s concern is far different from the look of disgust on Mrs. Quinn’s face. I feel my mother’s sense of relief; MY SON IS NORMAL, he's interested in girls. I share in her relief. What I did with Paul is too shameful to name, what I was doing with Beth Ann is normal. My mother sternly warns to, "Never do that again." And while I never do, I never forget her momentary relief that I wasn't messing with boys. She knew what I'd done with Paul -- Mrs. Quinn made sure of that. And I knew she disapproved. No disapproval or expression of disgust or disdain, and certainly not my mother's relief or even my own could sway me from what I knew -- that I preferred boys. I was acutely aware that I liked boys more than girls. They’re smaller versions of my father, and my father looms large in my world. They are a desire, a mystery, a cone I want explained. This attraction and longing confuses me. And although it confuses me, there's a burgeoning liberal in me that simply don’t understand the fuss. I remember thinking "so what if I like boys" but also wincing, as if I was anticipating a smack. Verbalizing that I was gay, the casual "so what", laissez faire shoulder shrug of it all, won't come for years, if ever. Even still, at age six, I can’t understand why liking girls over boys is an expression preferred over the other. Loving boys feels so natural. Later, I find my mother’s Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care open to the chapter on children and homosexuality. My mother has been studying my mystery too. The Doctor assures worried parents that a child’s flirtation with homosexuality is just a passing phase. I wait through my teens for that phase to pass, remembering my childhood example of normal as well as its polar opposite. When this phase never passes, melancholia sets in. Loving the sameness of boys was a taboo that loving differentness of girls wasn’t.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Brendan's Diagnosis
It’s Easter 2000 and Meryl Streep is dying of cancer. William Hurt, her estranged husband, is giving an Oscar worthy speech about the virtues of their love. My boyfriend and I are in bed and we’re crying. Meryl withers and twists into the sheets of her hospital bed, her body a gnarled memory where there once was flesh.
My boyfriend whispers, "That’s not going to be me."
I whisper back, "It won’t, I know it."
But I can’t be sure. The virus is alive in his blood, exciting every nerve and casting a net of doom across his body, see-sawing between the threat of sickness and the hope of health.
"I’m a statistic, I never wanted to be a statistic," I remember him saying 2 months earlier, when his blood still tingled with the news of infection.
I didn’t know how to respond and so I mumbled, "Try to stay positive."
And he said, "That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to avoid."
In sickness and in health. These are the words I told myself when he was diagnosed, although there’d been no ceremonies or vows shared between us. I wasn’t going to flee, although the temptation almost always pulled at my feet and taunted me to safety.
Around the same time, my father did flee. He left my mother, their 32 year marriage and our family. My sister and I felt it coming, but that anticipation did not prepare us for the anger and absence that’s taken permanent residence in our souls. We saw the signs, even though my mother hadn’t. She’d grown blinded by the resentments that build between people who forget to infuse the architecture of their relationship with human hearts. All that stood now was an empty wooden structure where a marriage was once founded. I wasn’t going to let this happen to me and Brendan.
In sickness and in health, I said it again and again until I achieved dream like trances in my waking hours. When I slept the trances where full-fledged epics – symbols of my life and where I’d wound up. I’d dream that I was hovering above our bed, my troubled sleep in sharp contrast to the dreamless nights he’d begun to have. He stopped dreaming when he was diagnosed, a black sleep that offered no fantasy of hope or healing, but also of no doom.
My dreams where vivid. I was always flying - but with one caveat – my feet and hands were bound by twine or fabric and always threatened to unravel. If they did, I’d plummet to the earth. Despite this threat, I’d tempt the gods and soar higher, moving silently from our bed to the places I’d been in my life – my boyhood home, my ementary school, Lake George, New Hampshire, Maine, The Village, 8th Avenue, the cars I’ve fooled around in, other men’s beds, my own empty bed before I’d met Brendan. I’d fly past Mrs. Dubini, the neighborhood grump, who once took my bike and gave me the finger. I flew past Donna Pertrillo who threatened to beat me up in the second grade and whom I avoided by running through neighbors backyards and hiding in bushes because I didn't want to be exposed as a sissy when she finally caught up to me. I passed my elementary school where I was the designated faggot. Brendan has that story too. But where my story stopped with words, his stopped with rocks. I fly past him too, a skinny young boy being stoned by the class bullies who taunted him because he wore yellow pants to school –- sticks and stones break more than bones.
I hover over a hotel room in the Bahamas and see Brendan's mother, a retired nurse, telling me, "My son's a good boy so don't you cheat on him. You know what's out there." I wanted to respond, "It's already in here. And he's still a good boy." Brendan's one fear, other than dying, was his mother finding out his HIV status and retracting the love he'd worked so hard to obtain.
"You'd think I would have known better, my mother being a nurse," He'd say over and over again when he was first diagnosed.
In the beginning, "Yes," was my only response.
I hover over the clinic in Yonkers I’d sat in the week after Brendan’s diagnosis. The clinic was once the building where I attended Sunday School. I was a challace bearer. It comforted me being there - the ghost of a previous life saddling up to my current one. I see the nurse taking my blood and telling me, "My husband doesn’t like gay people, but I have no problem with them."
Them.
I wanted to say, "Hey, I’m one of "them" remember, bitch?" Instead, I said nothing.
Meryl Streep is still dying on TV. I wish I could press rewind and watch her regain health, watch her marriage unifiy instead of divide, see the bud of the flower before it blossomed. But that is just a fantasy.
In the beginning of my relationship with Brendan, I always wished for the rewind. I wished for restored health and unbroken unions and of flying with no boundaries -- no bindings to rub me raw. I wished for no fear of infection when touching can lead to so much more. Through sickness and health, and divorce, and the little deaths that reside in the darkest corners of the soul, I wished for it all to stop because we were so fucking scared. Every once in a while there was hope. You can't live on hope alone though, but I banked on that to sustain us. Sometimes just living felt like a losing hand and other days it was a jackpot of small victories and tiny explosions.
I reach for the remote and press pause – knowing that I can’t go back, but wishing for it to stop, if even for a moment. I lean over and place a kiss on B’s forehead, an offering of hope and health to the gods or angels, or whoever is watching over us.
My boyfriend whispers, "That’s not going to be me."
I whisper back, "It won’t, I know it."
But I can’t be sure. The virus is alive in his blood, exciting every nerve and casting a net of doom across his body, see-sawing between the threat of sickness and the hope of health.
"I’m a statistic, I never wanted to be a statistic," I remember him saying 2 months earlier, when his blood still tingled with the news of infection.
I didn’t know how to respond and so I mumbled, "Try to stay positive."
And he said, "That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to avoid."
In sickness and in health. These are the words I told myself when he was diagnosed, although there’d been no ceremonies or vows shared between us. I wasn’t going to flee, although the temptation almost always pulled at my feet and taunted me to safety.
Around the same time, my father did flee. He left my mother, their 32 year marriage and our family. My sister and I felt it coming, but that anticipation did not prepare us for the anger and absence that’s taken permanent residence in our souls. We saw the signs, even though my mother hadn’t. She’d grown blinded by the resentments that build between people who forget to infuse the architecture of their relationship with human hearts. All that stood now was an empty wooden structure where a marriage was once founded. I wasn’t going to let this happen to me and Brendan.
In sickness and in health, I said it again and again until I achieved dream like trances in my waking hours. When I slept the trances where full-fledged epics – symbols of my life and where I’d wound up. I’d dream that I was hovering above our bed, my troubled sleep in sharp contrast to the dreamless nights he’d begun to have. He stopped dreaming when he was diagnosed, a black sleep that offered no fantasy of hope or healing, but also of no doom.
My dreams where vivid. I was always flying - but with one caveat – my feet and hands were bound by twine or fabric and always threatened to unravel. If they did, I’d plummet to the earth. Despite this threat, I’d tempt the gods and soar higher, moving silently from our bed to the places I’d been in my life – my boyhood home, my ementary school, Lake George, New Hampshire, Maine, The Village, 8th Avenue, the cars I’ve fooled around in, other men’s beds, my own empty bed before I’d met Brendan. I’d fly past Mrs. Dubini, the neighborhood grump, who once took my bike and gave me the finger. I flew past Donna Pertrillo who threatened to beat me up in the second grade and whom I avoided by running through neighbors backyards and hiding in bushes because I didn't want to be exposed as a sissy when she finally caught up to me. I passed my elementary school where I was the designated faggot. Brendan has that story too. But where my story stopped with words, his stopped with rocks. I fly past him too, a skinny young boy being stoned by the class bullies who taunted him because he wore yellow pants to school –- sticks and stones break more than bones.
I hover over a hotel room in the Bahamas and see Brendan's mother, a retired nurse, telling me, "My son's a good boy so don't you cheat on him. You know what's out there." I wanted to respond, "It's already in here. And he's still a good boy." Brendan's one fear, other than dying, was his mother finding out his HIV status and retracting the love he'd worked so hard to obtain.
"You'd think I would have known better, my mother being a nurse," He'd say over and over again when he was first diagnosed.
In the beginning, "Yes," was my only response.
I hover over the clinic in Yonkers I’d sat in the week after Brendan’s diagnosis. The clinic was once the building where I attended Sunday School. I was a challace bearer. It comforted me being there - the ghost of a previous life saddling up to my current one. I see the nurse taking my blood and telling me, "My husband doesn’t like gay people, but I have no problem with them."
Them.
I wanted to say, "Hey, I’m one of "them" remember, bitch?" Instead, I said nothing.
Meryl Streep is still dying on TV. I wish I could press rewind and watch her regain health, watch her marriage unifiy instead of divide, see the bud of the flower before it blossomed. But that is just a fantasy.
In the beginning of my relationship with Brendan, I always wished for the rewind. I wished for restored health and unbroken unions and of flying with no boundaries -- no bindings to rub me raw. I wished for no fear of infection when touching can lead to so much more. Through sickness and health, and divorce, and the little deaths that reside in the darkest corners of the soul, I wished for it all to stop because we were so fucking scared. Every once in a while there was hope. You can't live on hope alone though, but I banked on that to sustain us. Sometimes just living felt like a losing hand and other days it was a jackpot of small victories and tiny explosions.
I reach for the remote and press pause – knowing that I can’t go back, but wishing for it to stop, if even for a moment. I lean over and place a kiss on B’s forehead, an offering of hope and health to the gods or angels, or whoever is watching over us.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Faggot
You're nine and the boys in elementary school begin to call you faggot. You know the word has a pejorative meaning that complements the sense of differentness you've felt since you were three or four. In response to these taunts, you say nothing. You feel threatened, like something unknowing and evil will happen to if you challenge their accusations. If you go to a teacher or a friend you worry that you’ll be admitting something about yourself that they will hate you for too. You decide you’ll be whatever the boys say you are, as long as they leave you alone. You go numb and lose yourself in world where there’s fairness and retribution – they’ll get theirs. When you get home, you stand in front of your bedroom mirror, open your mouth and pretend to scream -- arms flailing in desperate flight, as a look of horror contorts your face. You try to purge the sting and assault of the school day but no amount of silent screaming will fill that deepening void. You think of screaming for real, but what will you alert your parents to? A faggot of a son? Who will help you? Who can you tell? You are desperate. Years later when you study art, Edvard Munch’s "The Scream" becomes a favorite painting -- a silent scream framed on the wall. Finally, someone understood.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Very Odd Things, 2.
1) Currently, I have a very good dermatologist. However, prior to finding him, I had one who asked to "see my shaft" during a skin check. I looked behind me, thinking perhaps he was talking about the elevator I failed to noticed when I first stepped into his office. There wasn't one. He definitely meant my penis. Then he asked me to turn around and pryed my butt cheeks open like he was peeling apart an orange and concluded his examination. "Did the dermatologist ever ask to see your shaft?" I said to my coworker who referred me to this doctor. When he replied "no" I then realized I would never return to that doctor again.
2) I was not exactly a model student in religious instruction classes and gave every teacher a pretty hard time, "Maybe it wasn't an Arc, but a raft with a few chickens. How did this priest get AIDS? I'm reading Greek and Roman mythology and don't see many difference between this and the Bible." Were favorite questions. It also pissed off my instructors to no end, which is why I suspect Father Dwyer, who looked like if David Letterman, Randy Travis and Frankenstein had a baby, called me one Sunday night to ask "Would you like to come and work in the rectory?" He said rectory slowly, drawing out the R-E-C-T part until my brain filled it in with rectum. "No I would not like to work in the rectory," although who knew it would be a place I don't mind visiting now and again as an adult. This refusal is why I had to write and read an essay about why George Michael's I Want Your Sex was damaging to the moral of Christians everywhere at my Confirmation retreat when I was in the 8th Grade.
2) I was not exactly a model student in religious instruction classes and gave every teacher a pretty hard time, "Maybe it wasn't an Arc, but a raft with a few chickens. How did this priest get AIDS? I'm reading Greek and Roman mythology and don't see many difference between this and the Bible." Were favorite questions. It also pissed off my instructors to no end, which is why I suspect Father Dwyer, who looked like if David Letterman, Randy Travis and Frankenstein had a baby, called me one Sunday night to ask "Would you like to come and work in the rectory?" He said rectory slowly, drawing out the R-E-C-T part until my brain filled it in with rectum. "No I would not like to work in the rectory," although who knew it would be a place I don't mind visiting now and again as an adult. This refusal is why I had to write and read an essay about why George Michael's I Want Your Sex was damaging to the moral of Christians everywhere at my Confirmation retreat when I was in the 8th Grade.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Very Odd Things That I hadn't Previously Thought Very Odd, But Now That I Am Making a List, Realize How Very Odd They Are.
1) My high school gym teacher encouraged the boys to wear shorts for grades of "A". She stabbed her husband in the hand in a local bar the year after I graduated H.S.
2) Mom made me give her foot massages until I was 12.
3) My Uncle Puggy had a urine collection on his window sill. He did not like to use public restrooms and would cut holes in all his pants pockets, insert a jar, pee, cap it and save it on his window sill for posterity.
4) I have a former uncle who claimed to have penis radar, "Women send vibes to my crotch and I can tell they want me."
5) When I was 19 I was a maid for a 75 year-old man who paid me $25 dollars an hour to move Undergear and International Male Magazine from one end of his living room to the other. When he answered the door for the first time wearing only a button down shirt and underwear I said nothing. When he grabbed my ass as he hugged me goodbye I thought "I don't want to give up the money" And agreed to go back several more times. He was beaten by a mugger and died from the injuries when I was in my late 20's.
6) My dead Aunt Ann was a friend of Jennifer Lopez's mother who broke and entered Mama Lopez's house upon their first meeting.
7) My italian great grandmother died when she discovered that what she thought was her 10th pregnancy was actually a very large tumor.
8) My mom's friend, Diane Suatner calls her husband "fuck face" and keeps his favorite watch hidden in the glove compartment of my mother's car.
9) My father married a woman with the same first, middle, and confirmation name as my mother. Of course she took our last name and sometimes gets my mom's social security info.
10) Her son, Lou, hit on my sister at my Dad's and her wedding. "I'd like to get to know you in different circumstances," so said Lou.
2) Mom made me give her foot massages until I was 12.
3) My Uncle Puggy had a urine collection on his window sill. He did not like to use public restrooms and would cut holes in all his pants pockets, insert a jar, pee, cap it and save it on his window sill for posterity.
4) I have a former uncle who claimed to have penis radar, "Women send vibes to my crotch and I can tell they want me."
5) When I was 19 I was a maid for a 75 year-old man who paid me $25 dollars an hour to move Undergear and International Male Magazine from one end of his living room to the other. When he answered the door for the first time wearing only a button down shirt and underwear I said nothing. When he grabbed my ass as he hugged me goodbye I thought "I don't want to give up the money" And agreed to go back several more times. He was beaten by a mugger and died from the injuries when I was in my late 20's.
6) My dead Aunt Ann was a friend of Jennifer Lopez's mother who broke and entered Mama Lopez's house upon their first meeting.
7) My italian great grandmother died when she discovered that what she thought was her 10th pregnancy was actually a very large tumor.
8) My mom's friend, Diane Suatner calls her husband "fuck face" and keeps his favorite watch hidden in the glove compartment of my mother's car.
9) My father married a woman with the same first, middle, and confirmation name as my mother. Of course she took our last name and sometimes gets my mom's social security info.
10) Her son, Lou, hit on my sister at my Dad's and her wedding. "I'd like to get to know you in different circumstances," so said Lou.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Crystal Meth Sunday Morning
One Sunday morning I found a vial of drugs in front of my apartment door. Right there in the hallway. I knew it was illicit by the way it stared back at me. Torn and crumbled pornography pages would beckon me the same way when I was in junior high school. I just knew within those folds of paper might be a penis or a vagina, or even better, both. I developed a sixth sense for all things illicit. I knew this vial at my door signaled me the same way. Whatever it was, my spidey sense tingled. I shouldn't have this. I did though. The dog inspected it first. I grabbed it from his mouth. Last thing I needed was shih tzu on meth, or crack, or whatever it was. I've heard those stories. In the 90's I had a friend who had a cat who acidently did coke and boucned off the walls for several days before landing face down in its tender vitles. Even more recently I heard a story from friends on Fire Island who had a sharemate who's chiunaa had become addicted to cocaine after licking the residue of the table and floors from his owenr's use. This is serious shit. I've listened to it daily for years. My social work job sees to it that I hear stories of the worst of the addictions. Crystal Meth stories are never pretty and I was pretty sure that crystal meth was staring up at me from this tiny vial on the ground.
I wasn't even sure if I truly had a drug in my possession. Maybe it was crack cocaine. Maybe it was Meth. How do you know? I grew envious of the common drug dealer who I'd bet my left testicle could tell from a across a football field if I was holding was crystal meth, crack or organic carmelized sea salt from Whole Foods.
But me? Crystal Meth? Crack cocaine? Flintstone chew-ables? How would I know? I've never touched the stuff, never wanted to. The extent of my drug taking has been one toke of pot in 2000 at a New Year's Eve celebration. I say toke like I'm a 60 year old stoner. I "smoked" with a a local news anchor and promptly passed out in his guest bedroom. The next day I watched as he downed a bag of Doritos for breakfast, fascinated with the way the orange crop dusting of powder over took his finger tips and corners of his mouth. The only other time I smoked pot was in 2006 when a friend tipped my head back like a PEZ dispenser and blew smoke into my mouth because I was too timid to actually hold the little smoldering joint in my own hands. This is not A Million Little Pieces.
But I did have an illegal substance in my house and I loved it. I felt dirty and excited, like I'd just found condoms and porn in the back of my Dad's underwear drawer. I was the good kid doing something unexpected and wrong. This was better than tapping on blind peoples windows at The Jewish Home for the Blind and yelling "look!" How would those blind jewish people ever know if it really was Jesus if he came to town? I was doing a test. Because I suspected at least some of them had partial vision.
I uncapped the vial and smelled the acrid little rocks. The odor permeated the room for hours after and it disgusted and intrigued me in equal measure. The smell reminded of the way addicts smell -- a little meth, a little bad breath, a little few days too long with the same clothes on.
I called and told a bunch of friends. Several suggested I drop the vial down the garbage chute and be done with it. They were afraid I'd get arrested because I had an illegal substance in my possession. One even sited the Patriot Act. As far as I'd known I wasn't under surveillance or part of a drug ring. Part of me enjoyed making my friends a little nervous. Another part of me enjoyed listening to their own paranoia unfold. These are the same friends who don't step on a crack or reveal a few days too soon their pregnancy news. Other friends revealed their own meth snorting experiences, which did not surprise me in the least, as I've also known them to fuck random Jamaican men on the beach and fashion bongs out of Barbie doll heads.
Since I've been looking for a hobby, I figured I'd try to smoke some. And holy shit that was a rush. I'd never felt anything like it. It was like a perpetual orgasm. But the smell -- Pine Sol, baby farts, and armpits of the homeless -- is what kept me from smoking the entire vial.
Kidding. I didn't smoke the drugs. I did begin my own exhaustive Internet DEA-like search of meth making sites, looking for images that would verify that I had meth and not crack. Crack is so passe. And then I got bored. Which is something I imagine the addict in the throws of binge doesn't do. I placed it on my kitchen table and went about my business. By the end of the day, I'd forgotten about it. The meth had become part of the table. The red topped vial fit in snuggly next to my Easter chocolates and over ripe bananas. It just was.
I always wonder how that could be. When does the drug, with it's taboo and shame, just co-exist with the toilet paper and the coke cans and the Brita water filers? I'm not sure if there's an easy answer. Part of the problem seems to be that after a while, it just does fit in. One day it's there and one day you're not.
This morning I took the vial out with the recyclables. Then I took the dog for a walk and battled her leg lock. When I came back inside, I looked for another vial. I wondered where it came from and who it was intended for. My middle easterner neighbors with their four children and one bedroom? Or the gay couple next door who I thanked for holding the door minutes ago? Neither fit the profile of the drug addict. I may fit it the most. And for a moment on Sunday, if an stranger walked in and looked on the kitchen table, it would be true.
I wasn't even sure if I truly had a drug in my possession. Maybe it was crack cocaine. Maybe it was Meth. How do you know? I grew envious of the common drug dealer who I'd bet my left testicle could tell from a across a football field if I was holding was crystal meth, crack or organic carmelized sea salt from Whole Foods.
But me? Crystal Meth? Crack cocaine? Flintstone chew-ables? How would I know? I've never touched the stuff, never wanted to. The extent of my drug taking has been one toke of pot in 2000 at a New Year's Eve celebration. I say toke like I'm a 60 year old stoner. I "smoked" with a a local news anchor and promptly passed out in his guest bedroom. The next day I watched as he downed a bag of Doritos for breakfast, fascinated with the way the orange crop dusting of powder over took his finger tips and corners of his mouth. The only other time I smoked pot was in 2006 when a friend tipped my head back like a PEZ dispenser and blew smoke into my mouth because I was too timid to actually hold the little smoldering joint in my own hands. This is not A Million Little Pieces.
But I did have an illegal substance in my house and I loved it. I felt dirty and excited, like I'd just found condoms and porn in the back of my Dad's underwear drawer. I was the good kid doing something unexpected and wrong. This was better than tapping on blind peoples windows at The Jewish Home for the Blind and yelling "look!" How would those blind jewish people ever know if it really was Jesus if he came to town? I was doing a test. Because I suspected at least some of them had partial vision.
I uncapped the vial and smelled the acrid little rocks. The odor permeated the room for hours after and it disgusted and intrigued me in equal measure. The smell reminded of the way addicts smell -- a little meth, a little bad breath, a little few days too long with the same clothes on.
I called and told a bunch of friends. Several suggested I drop the vial down the garbage chute and be done with it. They were afraid I'd get arrested because I had an illegal substance in my possession. One even sited the Patriot Act. As far as I'd known I wasn't under surveillance or part of a drug ring. Part of me enjoyed making my friends a little nervous. Another part of me enjoyed listening to their own paranoia unfold. These are the same friends who don't step on a crack or reveal a few days too soon their pregnancy news. Other friends revealed their own meth snorting experiences, which did not surprise me in the least, as I've also known them to fuck random Jamaican men on the beach and fashion bongs out of Barbie doll heads.
Since I've been looking for a hobby, I figured I'd try to smoke some. And holy shit that was a rush. I'd never felt anything like it. It was like a perpetual orgasm. But the smell -- Pine Sol, baby farts, and armpits of the homeless -- is what kept me from smoking the entire vial.
Kidding. I didn't smoke the drugs. I did begin my own exhaustive Internet DEA-like search of meth making sites, looking for images that would verify that I had meth and not crack. Crack is so passe. And then I got bored. Which is something I imagine the addict in the throws of binge doesn't do. I placed it on my kitchen table and went about my business. By the end of the day, I'd forgotten about it. The meth had become part of the table. The red topped vial fit in snuggly next to my Easter chocolates and over ripe bananas. It just was.
I always wonder how that could be. When does the drug, with it's taboo and shame, just co-exist with the toilet paper and the coke cans and the Brita water filers? I'm not sure if there's an easy answer. Part of the problem seems to be that after a while, it just does fit in. One day it's there and one day you're not.
This morning I took the vial out with the recyclables. Then I took the dog for a walk and battled her leg lock. When I came back inside, I looked for another vial. I wondered where it came from and who it was intended for. My middle easterner neighbors with their four children and one bedroom? Or the gay couple next door who I thanked for holding the door minutes ago? Neither fit the profile of the drug addict. I may fit it the most. And for a moment on Sunday, if an stranger walked in and looked on the kitchen table, it would be true.
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Wee Dog
"Excuse me, is that your sneaker? Please tell me that furry thing is your sneaker." This is asked by a drunken Irishmen on Poop Alley, a street in Sunnyside, Queens so named because this is where the entire neighborhood goes to relieve there dogs. And sometimes themselves. No it's not my sneaker. It's my shih tzu, Samson, 6 months and 2 weeks old and resting comfortably on the same sidewalk as Drunky McAlcoholic, Jr.
"That's a wee dog."
He really said "wee". Vomit McPowers: The Sneaker Who Dogged Me.
Samson looks at him and looks away. He can smell the wiff of an insult the same way I can smell the multiple pints of ale that stain Drunky McFuckerson's polo.
"He is wee. But he thinks he's a Saint Bernhard," I say.
This gets a laugh from Drunky McShitstains but he quickly turns serious.
"Please tell me you've got a girlfriend or a wife."
"Nope, neither. It's just me and a cute small dog."
I see the letters that spell G-A-Y sky written by a small imaginary plane launched from the hangar in his head. GAY hangs and evaporates for a few moments and dissolves into a wry expression. He wants to fuck with me and is going to. At this point in my life I can count being called a faggot in so many different ways, I welcome what might be a new creative way to insult the homosexuals of the world via me. I doubt it will be as funny as what my gay friends sling at each other ("You're so loose, it's like throwing a Twinkie down a hallway" still gets my biggest laugh) and considering Drunky McBeatshiswife current state, I'm betting on something less than stellar.
"Well..uh...."
Here he goes. I see the sputter before the take off. This plane is going into a tailspin before it even leaves the ground. He looks up. He looks down. Slowly. I'm pretty sure the street spins for him. He looks at me. There's not that much to make fun of. Although if he stepped closer, I do have nice naturally arched eyebrows that looked plucked, but aren't'. He seems disappointed. I'm not going to tell him about all my moles and freckles that if connected could create Perseus's Belt, The Big and Little Dipper and part of the solar system, at least up till Uranus. And then he's back on my sneakers.
"Just don't wear those sneakers and good lord those socks."
I'm wearing black Pro-keds and socks with two solid blue and green strips around the tops. Which I'd find cute and fuckable if the long haired beautiful 22 year old Colombian college student in my building who keeps trying to seduce me through my dog were wearing them. Maybe Drinky McStumblenuts wants to fuck me. So he attacks my sneakers. Maybe he has a foot fetish. Making fun of my shoes is hardly the insult I was anticipating. Then he mumbles something about the worlds number one tennis player Roger Federer. Who I'm pretty sure is not gay but who does wear black sneakers on the courts at the U.S. Open. He also wears all black and takes to the courts (at least in Queens the night I saw him) to the Imperial March from the Star Wars movies.
I'm perplexed and so is Stinky McDrunkoughy who looks to me as if he's just taser gunned himself in the testicles -- numbed and Life Goes On retarded. He's run out of steam and insults, even as poor as they are.
Barfy McVomitorium waves and stumbles off, obviously disappointed by his inability to effectively make fun of me and Samson. Samson watches as he walks away. He has not moved from his spot on the sidewalk. He then gets up to where Stanky McBreatherson was sanding, circles for a moment and takes a dump. Satisifed and guilty that I let the dump sit there a little longer tha usual, I clean up, slip on my dog sneaker and head home.
"That's a wee dog."
He really said "wee". Vomit McPowers: The Sneaker Who Dogged Me.
Samson looks at him and looks away. He can smell the wiff of an insult the same way I can smell the multiple pints of ale that stain Drunky McFuckerson's polo.
"He is wee. But he thinks he's a Saint Bernhard," I say.
This gets a laugh from Drunky McShitstains but he quickly turns serious.
"Please tell me you've got a girlfriend or a wife."
"Nope, neither. It's just me and a cute small dog."
I see the letters that spell G-A-Y sky written by a small imaginary plane launched from the hangar in his head. GAY hangs and evaporates for a few moments and dissolves into a wry expression. He wants to fuck with me and is going to. At this point in my life I can count being called a faggot in so many different ways, I welcome what might be a new creative way to insult the homosexuals of the world via me. I doubt it will be as funny as what my gay friends sling at each other ("You're so loose, it's like throwing a Twinkie down a hallway" still gets my biggest laugh) and considering Drunky McBeatshiswife current state, I'm betting on something less than stellar.
"Well..uh...."
Here he goes. I see the sputter before the take off. This plane is going into a tailspin before it even leaves the ground. He looks up. He looks down. Slowly. I'm pretty sure the street spins for him. He looks at me. There's not that much to make fun of. Although if he stepped closer, I do have nice naturally arched eyebrows that looked plucked, but aren't'. He seems disappointed. I'm not going to tell him about all my moles and freckles that if connected could create Perseus's Belt, The Big and Little Dipper and part of the solar system, at least up till Uranus. And then he's back on my sneakers.
"Just don't wear those sneakers and good lord those socks."
I'm wearing black Pro-keds and socks with two solid blue and green strips around the tops. Which I'd find cute and fuckable if the long haired beautiful 22 year old Colombian college student in my building who keeps trying to seduce me through my dog were wearing them. Maybe Drinky McStumblenuts wants to fuck me. So he attacks my sneakers. Maybe he has a foot fetish. Making fun of my shoes is hardly the insult I was anticipating. Then he mumbles something about the worlds number one tennis player Roger Federer. Who I'm pretty sure is not gay but who does wear black sneakers on the courts at the U.S. Open. He also wears all black and takes to the courts (at least in Queens the night I saw him) to the Imperial March from the Star Wars movies.
I'm perplexed and so is Stinky McDrunkoughy who looks to me as if he's just taser gunned himself in the testicles -- numbed and Life Goes On retarded. He's run out of steam and insults, even as poor as they are.
Barfy McVomitorium waves and stumbles off, obviously disappointed by his inability to effectively make fun of me and Samson. Samson watches as he walks away. He has not moved from his spot on the sidewalk. He then gets up to where Stanky McBreatherson was sanding, circles for a moment and takes a dump. Satisifed and guilty that I let the dump sit there a little longer tha usual, I clean up, slip on my dog sneaker and head home.
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