Annette was the proud owner of a metallic silver aluminum Christmas Tree with the color wheel and the Christmas ornaments in one color, red, I think. Part of her coolness.
Cousins A Postscript.
22 Thursday Sep 2016
Posted in Uncategorized
Cousins, Part Two.
16 Friday Sep 2016
Posted in alcoholism, Health Issues, Sexual Identity
Tags
When our story left off, Annette had just come out as a Lesbian to me and my wife. This revelation would fall under the heading of Confirming Our Suspicions. Nevertheless, it was a huge deal to come out in the mid to late Eighties. We came to understand that her sexual orientation was just one aspect of who Annette was a person. What Annette never had was an enduring relationship. She had attractions, dalliances, affairs. We never met her lovers.
She was a loving and caring aunt, but a realistic, observant and feisty one. She rapidly discerned that her surrogate parenting job entailed damage control around her brother’s marital and familial escapades. She once confided in me that Leroy had an eye for “White Trash”. He would get married, with all the accompanying optimism. Then the drinking and the late hours at the Safeway would erode the foundation of family life. Finally the once-blissful bride would depart, to “find herself”, leaving Annette with the job of taking care of her niece, then a nephew, whilst Leroy was at the store. It actually worked out fairly well, because Annette had both a sense of responsibility but also fun. There was the pool at Aunt Lois’s for summer days. In its quirky, near dysfunctional way, the children received nurturing and parenting.
Meanwhile, Aunt Ruby’s health was declining, in a predictable descent; diabetes, impaired circulation, nerve damage, gangrene, amputation, and heart disease. Ruby passed, leaving Annette and Leroy in the bedlam.
The niece and the nephew, children of different mothers, grew up. Annette’s health spiraled downward, so that the house she inherited from Aunt Ruby fell into disrepair. An opossum moved into the attic through an open vent. My brother named him “Maurice The Marsupial”. Her obesity had rendered her disabled. She moved in with Aunt Lois. Things were good at first. Aunt and niece would go to farmers’ markets, and cook for the family gatherings that occurred at the holidays.
Annette lived her lesbian life vicariously, through the internet, The Advocate, and lesbian-themed DVD’s. It was no kind of life for anybody to live. Soon the wheelchair was a necessity and the wheelchair ramp became part of the architecture of the postwar bungalow Lois and Annette called home.
Annette became Lois’s reason to live. She took her to dialysis, the numerous other doctors’ appointments, and in January 2006, to the Medical College Hospital, where Annette lapsed into a coma, and died of renal failure. There is a reason why they call it Morbid Obesity.
Leroy was the last of the family, Uncle Jim, Aunt Ruby, Annette were gone. About a decade before, Safeway pulled out of the Richmond market. Leroy then went back to school, and became a computer nerd, earning a good enough living to afford his own house with a swimming pool, private school for his son, and Austin Nichols Wild Turkey Whiskey.
His alcoholism captured him, isolating him from the family. He surfaced for the principal family events, which were now funerals. My brother, through a circuitous system, involving Magic Jack, would contact him of the passings, Aunt Lois in May 2011, my Dad in August 2011, Cousin Bailey in January 2012. He and his son would show up at the funerals.
One day, in March 2012, my siblings, my elder son, and another cousin were cleaning out the house where Pop, Grandma, Aunt Lois, and finally, Annette had all lived, preparing it to sell and settle Lois’s estate. We were interrupted by a call from Leroy. He had fallen and cracked a vertebrae in his neck. He was in the hospital. The neck fracture came from bones weakened by metastatic cancer of the lung. Leroy was still smoking the Marlboro Reds in the box, just like he did in High School. His son was joined by his daughter, now an Army wife, who had flown in from Germany. His ex-wives came back as he now lay in hospice. Within two weeks of that phone call, Leroy was dead.
After Leroy died, we learned his biological father had not died as we were told. Ruby had divorced him. The family was a family of secrets. There were emotions, numbed by food, turned raw by alcohol. Were Leroy and Annette ever happy? Probably not.
Cousins On Hold, Random Thoughts
14 Wednesday Sep 2016
Posted in Uncategorized
The story about my cousins will have to wait. Here’s the deal. Sitting is uncomfortable for me right now. I’m good for a little while, but the back pain can be a distraction.
There are a number of you bloggers I follow. I love hearing from you and about your lives. I know, from my own experience, how hard it can be to share your lives. What you share is invaluable.
Cousins, Part One.
09 Friday Sep 2016
Posted in cooking, Health Issues, Sexual Identity
Tags
They were born on 21 August ten years apart, he in 1949, she in 1959. We’ll call him Leroy, her Annette. Daddy’s brother, Uncle Jim, married their mother Ruby all of sudden. One week, he was single, living with my grandparents, the next week he was married. He was in his early thirties, a WW II veteran, a CPA. Ruby, they said, was a widow with a child, Leroy. That is what we were told. Being children, not investigative reporters, that was a perfectly good explanation. I remember playing at their house in Highland Park, a North Richmond neighborhood. Then they moved to Lakeside, in a house near my grandparents with a gate allowing passage between the two houses.
Uncle Jim was hard of hearing. He was in the Navy during The War. My mother told me he was based in Australia. He was a sonar man. That was all I knew of his war service until my brother told me he was awarded the Purple Heart when he burned himself with his soldering iron while his submarine was being depth-charged. It is fairly easy to conclude his hearing loss was attributable, in part, to the depth-charging. Imagine, for a while, being in a long steel cylinder, under 60+ feet of water, and people on the surface are dropping explosives on or near that cylinder with the intention of killing you.. Do you think you might be a little crazy after that experience?
So, all of a sudden Bachelor Uncle marries Aunt Ruby and adopts Leroy. They live near Pop, Grandma and my Aunt Lois, who still lives with her parents. We visit my grandparents nearly every week. So we see them a lot. Sometime after 1957, they get a dog, which they name Sputnik, after the Russian satellite. Leroy likes Elvis and The Mickey Mouse Club. Life rolls along, and they next thing we know Aunt Ruby has a baby. Everybody is surprised. I mean she had a weight problem, but hiding, not talking about a pregnancy with a family that’s pretty damn close is weird. We children were hip to the whole Women Having Babies And Being Mothers Thing. Why they would hide it from us because of some sexual inhibition wasn’t an issue. I remember seeing my new cousin at the hospital and learning they named her Annette at the urging of Leroy. To you youngsters out there, Annette Funicello was one of the Mouseketeers on The Mickey Mouse Club. In the prepubescent world of 1950’s sexuality, she was the hot one to the boys.
We keep seeing our grandparents, aunts, uncle, cousins. We now notice that Annette has a weight problem just like Aunt Ruby and Uncle Jim. We start to call them The Tank Family. Cooking was Aunt Ruby’s passion. She was good at it and she expected that you eat! Having plenty of food was an obsession of Depression survivors of my parents generation. Annette’s problem morphed into obesity.
Our nuclear family moves in our own specific areas of interest. We see the Tank Family less and less frequently. They move to a subdivision called West End Manor into a typical tri-level. Uncle Jim gets active in the American Legion; Aunt Ruby participates in the Auxiliary. Leroy graduates from high school, gets a job at the Safeway. Daddy gets him in the Marine Reserve and away from service in Vietnam. Leroy marries someone named Alice whom I never met. The constant is Annette’s weight. Annette is home, going to high school. She isn’t much interested in boys.
The other constant is Leroy’s inability to form a stable relationship with a woman. He divorces Alice, finds some woman named Myrtle, marries her. I never meet her either. Leroy liked women. Women liked him. He also liked to drink.
After my grandparents die, Aunt Lois inherits the house. She has a successful career as a civil servant, with a high-powered job with the Defense Supply Agency. In the early 1980’s she puts in a nice in-ground pool.. The family reconnects at my Aunt’s, like in the days when we were young children. My sons get to know my cousins’ sons and daughters. (It’s a rarity these days when second cousins are close.) The next tragedy is the death from a heart attack of Uncle Jim, in 1985, at age 60. We get even closer as an extended family.
We see Annette more and more frequently. Her obesity spins off into diabetes. Around this time, Annette comes out to my then wife and me. I had known gay and lesbian people before this, but never had I known one to come out. All of a sudden, a distant issue becomes very immediate.
The Primal Act.
08 Thursday Sep 2016
Posted in Uncategorized
I am using my Smartphone so I don’t know if my patience will give out before I say what I want, no, have to say.
I was struck by a fit of industriousness and earnest intention yesterday. Today I wonder where they have gone. ‘Cause, right now, I don’t wanna do nothing! I slept till 1:00 PM , begged off the Y, fixed another pot of coffee, and went online, wasting time.
Yesterday, in the comments to my post, I felt as if I connected with another human being. Some may consider sex, however expressed, as the primal act. I think, rather, it is hearing and being heard, by another person.True intimacy.
Catch Up and Cursive
07 Wednesday Sep 2016
Posted in Depression, Exercise/ Fitness, memoir
Well it’s been a while. I’d like to say exciting things have happened but mostly I haven’t had the privacy I need to write. Mrs CorC? has been home with holidays and the like.
The Y had its annual pool maintenance and cleaning so swimming opportunities were limited. Couple this with some attitude about what I think optimal swim conditions should be and the result is no swimming. I’m finally working my way back.
Am I the only person out there who has this baseline of sadness, like it’s my factory default setting? When I picture my mother, her face is always sad. She was the archetypal depressive in my life. My life is the legacy of her sadness. I know. It’s crazy. But making it go away ain’t easy.
On the lighter side, my latest obsession is Chinese fountain pens. Jin Hao is a Chinese pen manufacturer and they are selling their fine products dirt cheap on Amazon and Wish. What bites you in the butt, price-wise, is the ink. A bottle of Sheaffer Scrip runs $8-9 a bottle. Grant you, a bottle may last forever; it just seems like a lot.
The cool thing about fountain pens is the fun they bring to cursive writing. It is as if the ideas flow from my brain, down my arm, to my hand, then through my hand to the pen to where the ink puts that idea into words on the paper. Erotic? Maybe. Sensual? Definitely. My journal is filling up.
Writing in cursive is very satisfying and, at the same time, daunting for me. I know I am not alone. I am left-handed. When cursive was introduced into the Third Grade curriculum, it was traumatic, at least to Eight Year Old Me. Those lessons taught me that I was different and that maybe something was wrong with me. I should have paid more attention to Sandy Koufax, I guess. My parents, Thank God, never tried to change me to a righty.
When we were kids, the cool item was the cartridge pen. It was a fountain pen that delivered ink from a plastic cartridge, rather than a refillable ink reservoir. I can imagine, today, a bunch of Third Graders trying to fill ink reservoirs, with spilled ink and ink blots making for a myriad of Rohrschachs all across America. The cool color was peacock blue. Every kid had a peacock blue Sheaffer cartridge pen.
Dorothy and I will hit the Y about 1:30. I am looking forward to it. There are some forms the disability people said they didn’t get that I sent them. So I have to re-fax them. Mrs CorC? is working in Williamsburg so dinner is up in the air as to what I fix, if anything. That’s my day.
Kenneth Clark
21 Sunday Aug 2016
Posted in Uncategorized
He has been dead for decades now. I never met him. Yet his television series Civilisation is a constant resource for me. His calm, measured, learned voice holds forth still. He was a master narrator above all else. His observations about what makes a society a civilization constantly intrigue me. Right now, as I write, he is talking about the preservation of the basic texts of Western civilization by Irish monks.
I suppose you could argue about his perspective and points of emphasis, but he knew his subject and his view is a jumping off point for other perspectives.
When I consider my day, the events, both positive and negative, I feel agitated and attached to the situations and outcomes. I am reliving the experiences in my brain. Ken’s story (he preferred to be called Ken) is uplifting, positive, calming. His narrative of human achievement, informed and inspired by faith, at least in the early chapters, is reassuring. We have a culture far greater than the scoundrels who aspire to the power to direct it.
Streaks
20 Saturday Aug 2016
Posted in Love and stuff, Sexual Identity
Tags
Love is nothing without forgiveness and understanding.-Pope Francis
I wanted to tell the story of my two cousins, now deceased, who were both born on 21 August, but 10 years apart. That is going to have to wait.
I have to write about streaks. We all have them. There are those times when everything is going well, or not so well. It seems that the good stuff, or the bad, will go on forever. Then it stops. All of a sudden, our mojo isn’t working any more or starts again, just as enigmatically. I was cruising along, swimming every day, dropping weight, feeling good , taking my vitamins. Then it stopped. You might say I got too deep “in my head”, wondering. I’ve been feeling not so good since the colonoscopy. My first swim after the procedure the following Monday ended at 100 meters when some nausea came on. The next day I did a decent workout. The next day, Wednesday, my younger son and I had dinner at my sister’s and I was all jazzed up about seeing him. Then Thursday brought the trip to Baltimore.
Baltimore includes The Things about which I haven’t written. How I wanted to reconnect sexually with my wife. How it did not happen. Is she afraid? Am I? Are my fears in a dance with hers? I am afraid she will reject me sexually, verbally, with finality, and I will be left with pieces of a life to reassemble at age 65. I am afraid, in that case, I lack the courage to move on. I am afraid that my sexual needs, wants and desires diminish what we do have. Laughter. Conversation. Family.
Then again, how much longer am I going to step over the garbage? Literally. That’s what it is when you live with a slob. And slob-ness is infectious. There is crap accumulating in my respective micro-habitat. Kitchen has crumbs. Trash can is full. Sinks and toilets need a once over.
What’s up? Swimming with tears in my eyes, for sure. Coming back home, doing something to make the house a little cleaner. Avoiding the pop psychology “Self-Esteem” game, but, rather, doing the next right thing, whether I feel better afterwards or not.
This morning on Instagram was a post from Pope Francis, not that he went online and posted it himself. “Love is nothing without forgiveness and understanding.” Thank you, Holy Father, for another growth experience.
Baltimore
15 Monday Aug 2016
Posted in Amtrak, Baltimore, Otakon 2016
Tags
Way back in 2015, we had planned on attending my elder son’s wedding in Philadelphia. We had to back out because my spinal stenosis was just too painful for the trip. Amtrak gave us a voucher for the trip we paid for but did not take. However we had a year to use it. The year was coming to an end, so we booked a trip to Baltimore for this past weekend. We had planned on visiting the National Aquarium at the Inner Harbor and just relaxing.
We left Thursday. Our train was scheduled to depart Richmond at 7:00 PM (1900Hrs). However… Good Old Train #66 from Newport News was stuck behind a disabled freight train on the single track that runs from Williamsburg to Richmond. Sooo…. CSX, who owns the track and runs the freight traffic has to send a locomotive down the line to pull the disabled freight forward in order that Good Old #66 can complete its mission. Around 9:30 (2130 Hrs) we finally leave Richmond. It’s fairly obvious now that a crimp has been put in our meticulously planned getaway. We climb aboard, choosing the quiet car. I was hoping the conductor in the quiet car wore black tights, white face and white gloves, like a classic French mime, but it wasn’t that quiet. He scans our ticket and off he goes.
We proceed, stopping at all the stops between Richmond and Washington; Ashland, Fredericksburg, Quantico, Woodbridge, Alexandria. It seems like an eternity. And we have to pull to a siding to let a freight pass (all part of the “fun” of being delayed two and a half hours). All of you East Coast rail connoisseurs know that trains switch power from diesel to electric in Washington for the trip further North, reversed the opposite way. That’s another thirty or so minutes for the switch. Off we go. It’s now 2:00 AM (0200 Hrs). We’re tired, wondering what we did to piss the travel gremlins off. We stop in New Carrollton, Baltimore BWI, and finally Baltimore Penn Station. It is now 3:00 AM (0300 Hrs) and unbelievably hot still. The easiest piece of the travel epic so far is the speed with which a taxi arrives with a very courteous driver, an African immigrant from, I suspect, somewhere in West Africa. He promptly takes us to our hotel and we check in around 3:30 AM (0330 Hrs) Friday morning.
Our room is an homage to minimalist decor, and not at all unpleasant in its sparseness. There is no dresser, desk, or superfluous chairs.It does have a nice comfortable king-sized bed, honking big TV, and more electrical outlets than I (or anyone else, for that matter) can possibly use. The hotel people did their market research. It was set up for people who travel with lap tops, tablets and smart phones. And, more than likely, Hitachi wands, given the outlet placements.
We are thirsty and discover that there are two, yes two, plastic cups in the room for our use. There is minimalist and then there is out right, fuckin’ stingy. Then I discover the ice maker and drink machine is one flight up. Fortunately they work. With ice and sodas, I return. We sip our sodas and soon are trying to fall asleep in a strange room with an incredibly noisy air conditioning system, in a city where, at Four AM, every vehicle operating seems to be an emergency vehicle. It seems like we are in a corner of Post Modern Hell.
Our first trip to the Inner Harbor is for breakfast. We schlep down in the heat. Thankfully, it is a very short distance. We find a Cheesecake Factory that looks like the Cheesecake Factory at home with the same menu and the same prices. Nice. I order the Huevos Rancheros and coffee. The service is slow, not terribly so, and the server is courteous and friendly. The food tastes the same as the one at home.
In case we were afraid that everything would be the same as at home, a few thousand of our closest friends decided to stage the Otakon 16 Convention on this very same weekend. We had all these twenty somethings traipsing about in their favorite anime` character costumes. Being old and indifferent, the only character impersonators I could recognize were the Sailor Moon wannabes. All in all, it was fun to watch. Hallowe’en on steroids.
The Inner Harbor has a shopping mall as part of the attractions. The Inner Harbor is a James Rouse project from the 1980’s, when folks imagined the affluence would never dry up. Today there are plenty of vacant stores. Given that a shopping mall is a shopping mall is a shopping mall, we got the idea fairly quickly of what was there.
It did not, all of a sudden, get cold in the hour we were at breakfast. The lack of sleep was taking its toll. We went back to the room and slept, in anticipation of our trip to the National Aquarium at 6:30 (1830 Hrs). The sleep came easily. Evidently, people having emergencies sleep during the day. I heard not nary a siren. Mrs CorC? decided that watching a Gray’s Anatomy rerun would tickle her fancy, so I tried to sleep while all these actors were playing doctor.
Finally we get to the National Aquarium and the experience was well worth the aggravation, inconvenience and pain. The place is brilliant in concept, design and execution. Realizing one visit won’t do it justice, we are already planning a return.
As a finale, we dine at Phillips Seafood Restaurant. It is definitely a little high end in the chain restaurant spectrum,but the food is well worth it. We had the ceviche`. I had the grilled rockfish, she the crabcake and scallop.
By the time we get back to the hotel, all I want is an ice pack at the fusion site and two naproxen gel caps. As non-cable viewers at home, we take advantage of the cable offerings. We watch HGTV’s House Hunters, amused at what the house hunters are looking for and what they have to spend. They must choose from condos in St John’s, The Virgin Islands, and they are bloody picky! I would be tickled to death with indoor plumbing and a refrigerator, but their standards are higher. The shoppers are reminiscent of characters from a Christopher Guest mocumentary and we can imagine Jane Lynch, John Michael Higgins, and Parker Posey as the prospective buyers.
We sleep through the full complement of sirens and cooling systems . Saturday morning comes and I have resolved to leave Baltimore earlier than our 6:17 PM (1817) departure on train 97, The Silver Meteor, to escape the heat. I may as well sweat at home. The train switch to Train 195, is simple. This cabbie is also polite and efficient. We are at the station in plenty of time for the train’s arrival. We discover it is late, but only about a half hour. We climb aboard, find seats, and sit. Heat is the culprit in these travel delays. It plays havoc with the equipment. We arrive home a mere hour past the scheduled arrival.
A mini-vacation in 21st Century America is completed. Recovery from this fun-filled extravaganza takes all of Sunday.
An Epilogue: PEG3350. OMG. KMN.
15 Monday Aug 2016
Posted in Uncategorized
I received the results of the biopsy of the polyp. It was noncancerous. I see The Boy Wonder (Dr. Gastroenterologist) again in five years.
My back and neck were hurting after this procedure and a nurse friend of mine told me that getting me in the proper position for the colonoscopy (fetal position) may have put some stress on my fusion site, but I feel a little better every day.
Dispatches From Dystopia 