Things You Can’t Forget

I made that earlier post (#Me Too?) and it is staying with me. I have been a zombie for the rest of the day. Fortunately J came home. We have been together since. We went to Mass tonight. In front of us was a cute little baby with her parents. Made the whole day worthwhile.

And I’m just sitting now. I thought ice cream would pick up my mood but now think, just sitting and enjoying my coffee.

People get brutalized all the time. Remember how you felt. That is how they feel.

#Me Too?

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I’m sitting in my chair. I went to AA earlier. A memory keeps surfacing. It is painful and yet I want to exaggerate my response, minimize the significance, although the incident occurred fifty one years ago on the same kind of cloudy, chilly autumn day that we have today.

I remember details, the reason why I was there and the reason my abuser gave for raping me.

I was seventeen, a track and cross country runner. It was cross country season. And I was a Senior, Captain of the team. And I developed swelling and discoloration in my lower leg. We didn’t know exactly what it was, but it could have been a blood clot. So I went to my family doctor.

His practice was in a building called St Luke’s Hospital on Harrison and Grace Streets. The neighborhood was sketchy then; gay beer joints that you wouldn’t know were places where gays cruised, unless you were gay. There was a movie theater that showed slightly risqué foreign films, like The Lovers with Jeanne Moreau, tame stuff by today’s standards or by the porn explosion that came after Deep Throat.

Richmond Professional Institute (now Virginia Commonwealth University) and the University of Richmond’s University College were there. In 1968, their primary purposes were to provide student deferments to keep middle class kids out of Vietnam. Higher Education, at its best. (note sarcasm and irony in statement).

So here I am at the family doctor, getting my leg checked out. Were I gay, I guess I could have been considered a twink, in today’s patois of the subculture. So my lean, 17 year old muscular runner’s ass is there for a diagnosis, a competent medical opinion about this oddity in my leg, when kindly old Doctor Respectability decided I needed (Get Ready For It!) a prostate exam.

“Drop your shorts.”

Shorts dropped.

“Bend over the table.”

I bend over. He starts probing me with what I assume are fingers. I dunno. When he’s done he hands me a box of tissues to “clean up”. There is some fecal matter there. I pull up my shorts and leave. I leave with this funny feeling that hasn’t gone away after fifty one years. Rape? I dunno.

No subsequent digital rectal examination has ever felt like that one.

I won’t say that my life was messed up because of that office visit. Other stuff did most of that. I won’t say I got warped ideas about human sexuality because of that rather, uh, comprehensive digital exam. The warping began years before.

This whole thing was just one stop in the sexual penny arcade we all visit in the course of living.

At least I am sober today.

Motors This Morning

All over America motors make noise, rumbles, reverberations, humming. Electromagnets, armatures, windings of copper. If I think long enough I can tell you the whole point and purpose of all that, the physics.

Edison, Tesla, Herz, Faraday, Volta, Ohm, Galvani, all the gang.

But for now, I just hear the motors, then the gongs, now the train horn as I watch the Silver Meteor pass through Ashland in the sodium vapor light.

Bed

I went to bed earlier than usual. J had been in bed, asleep, earlier, with the TV on. Hallmark Channel Christmas movie. She sleeps with the TV on. The best I can hope for is to have a DVD of something more to my liking than Hallmark Channel.

So I went in the other room, to the other bed. And slept fairly well.

Lesson learned.

Root Vegetable Discovery

J told me a few weeks ago that she liked turnip roots and rutabegas. So Wednesday, while grocery shopping, I purchased a rutabega.

It has this waxy coating to it and a rind. So I cut the rind off it, cut the thing in sections and boiled it til the sections were tender. She liked it, I liked it. We had it with roasted chicken breast and asparagus. Another dinner at home was satisfying and way less costly than restaurants.

I Did All That Stuff

I did all that stuff I said I ought to be doing today. I awoke at a decent hour. I went to two AA meetings. After the second meeting, I went to lunch with friends. We are all homies. Across from the lunch place is the site of the school building where Haig (yes, he is of Armenian heritage) and I went to elementary and middle school. Part of it had been demolished to construct medical offices. Connecting with people was great.

After lunch I went to the Y and swam. Now dinner is cooking and J will be home soon.

Yes!

I Should Have

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Slept longer, but I did not. Now I sit, waiting for trains to pass through town, tbe coffee to be ready. The train has passed through town, the coffee ready and I am now watching Porky Pig  cartoons, with politically incorrect racial stereotyping, added to the cheap laughs garnered from Porky’s unfortunate stammer.

One cartoon featured a cockatoo, and I thought of the Gillette parrot who would squawk in early TV commercials “How are ya fixed for blades?” Gillette sponsored the Friday Night Fights.

The Friday Night Fights are on the air!” shouted the tv announcer. They would then commence to have boxing matches. Then, in 1962, about the ssme time Etnie Kovacs died in an auto accident, Emile Griffitb beat Benny “Kid” Paret to a pulp. Paret would later die from the injuries. It seemed like the fights weren’t on the air too much longer after that incident. (I later learned Paret had called Griffith a “faggot and Griffitb took exception to the taunt.”)

They used to sing the National Anthem at the movies during World War Two. I wonder if anybody complained.

I am sleepy again. My big plans for going out and being more productive today now hinge on when I wake up again.

“Night folks”.

Self-Care Reset

If you read this blog, you will notice I have had a rough patch. I’m climbing back, doing worthwhile things, but I need to re-establish the set of actions that help me and this household the most.

Little victories this week include no eating at restaurants since Sunday. The key is having dinner ready so J can’t suggest going out. I have a dinner planned for tomorrow. Chicken breasts, asparagus, and rutabega, with baked apples for dessert, maybe fresh pineapple with strawberries and bananas instead.

I need to go swimming at tbe same time every day, right after an AA meeting, when I am out and about. Nights after dinner won’t work in the winter when it is cold and dark outside.

I need to eat breakfast every morning, before I do anything else. Staying up in the morning is also key.

Developing interests outside of the house, like photography or writing about Richmond are important. I think a departure from recovery, Church and health/fitness would be well-advised, although I consider those areas to be critical, the basis, for me, of good self-care.

Lastly tonight, I will stop managing my time and making do-able goals unreachable by over-projecting. Just a little more tomorrow is enough.