FULL CIRCLE

After Christmas, I was able to visit my friends Jeff and Lynette, the same who were part of the group of friends I was with when I did the Polar Bear Plunge as written about here
http://randomthawghts.blogspot.com/2008/10/taking-plunge.html
Jeff was the first person I came out to (after my shrink at the student counselling center). At the time it was difficult for Jeff (though he didn’t show it). In addition to being my friend, Jeff was also my minister at the Church/Foundation I was involved with at the time. My coming out was a slap in the face of the theology he adhered to—that he and I both grew up with. Knowing me as well as he did was incongruent to what I was supposed to be in/with the church. He had to rethink and recalibrate his theology and what the church was saying. The night I came out to Jeff, he told me it didn’t matter, that it didn’t change how he felt about me, which wasn’t totally true, but those were the words that I had to hear at that moment in time, and that much he realized, and realized how a negative reaction would have devastated me. He came around. His theology changed (as did mine), and while he helped me through coming out, I was his friend and confident while his marriage was falling apart, and a new relationship was materializing. We were each in our own closets and self and societal imposed hells, in tandem. Before he was willing to admit to himself (or others) during a Christmas break work trip working on a Habitat for Humanity Project, I took him outside one day and said, “Jeff, I expect to be your best man when you and Lynette get married.” That blew him out of the water. –for the record, I was his best man at their wedding(s) the legal one at the court house and the ceremonial one a few months after for family and friends. But that’s another story. Jeff ended up leaving the church. So, in addition to being a godless homo heathen, I can claim some role in taking a hetero minister out of the pulpit. They became Unitarians. I became an eventual atheist, with Buddhist leanings. But I digress, yet again.
Jeff and Lynette have a beautiful teenage daughter (M), (along with Jeff’s son (F) from his first marriage) whom I have watched grow into the incredible young adults they are. They are the closest I will ever get to children of my own. I’m closer to them than I was my nephews and niece growing up (due to geography and strained familial relations for some years.) I have always had a special connection to F & M. M came out to her family about a year ago. She’s currently dating a girl from school. She really wanted me to know about it, and wanted to tell me about it. But I needed to initiate the conversation. I had to get cues from Jeff, as I wasn’t sure how much I was ‘supposed to know’. I didn’t want to say or ask too much, to embarrass her or anger her at her parents for telling me family stories outside. At one point, Jeff & I walked to the kitchen. He said, “M is dying to tell you about her girlfriend.” That was all I needed to be able to go back to the family room and make/find an opportunity to ask M about her gf. I was honored that she wanted me to know.
Jeff and Lynette live out in a beautiful wooded area. It’s like a retreat for me to visit them. Birds, deer, wild turkeys, and other kinds of woodland wildlife are right outside the windows. On Sunday afternoon, Lynette, Jeff and I took a walk down the road(s). It was a bit too wet, icy and treacherous to tromp through the woods. As we tend to do when together, we conjure up ‘Another Olde Lang Syne” and reminisce with wonder about where the years have gone, how gray Lynette and I both are (Jeff barely has a dusting of S&P at his temples and he’s the oldest!) While on this walk, Lynette thanked me for asking M about the gf, and the manner in which I did so. Then, Jeff thanked me for being who I am, and for teaching him so much as it made all the difference in how he responded to M when she came out to them. I was so blown away and so deeply touched. We have been strong, deep friends for almost 25 years. To have this added dimension—to have been able to have this kind of unexpected impact on all of them is the cherry on the sundae, the icing on the cake--choose a metaphor. It’s really an honor. For many people in my large circle of family and friends, I have been their ‘first gay’. Over the holidays and ‘season of reminiscing, others have told me how much knowing me has impacted them and taught them. It’s sort of like my own version of being Jimmy Stewart in “It’s A Wonderful Life”. They are great reminders to receive, and important for the times when I contemplate my worth and value to the universe. I know that there is a legacy that is mine, that will remain after I’m gone.

©wtf4/rle

D-Day

Some anniversaries are celebrated. Some are mourned. Some are acknowledged or commemorated for the importance of the anniversarizing event. (Yes, I made up/verbicized a word (actually 2, I guess.)
September 23, 1989 is known as Denial Day or “D-Day" or more appropriately, the END of Denial Day. It’s the day I said for the first time, “I’m gay.” This momentous event occurred in a shrink’s office at the Student Counseling Center on Campus. I was scared shitless uttering the words out loud. Although John (my then shrink) would argue that it was hardly out loud. Getting there was a long arduous road, and the path that was ahead of me, following this utterance was equally as long and arduous, if not more so, although at the time, I thought the worst was over.
I had many years of self-loathing and hatred to overcome, indoctrinated by a church and religion purporting to be of “God’s love.” The message I received was that God loves everybody BUT me. I spent years praying for God to change me and “make me ‘right’”. While this wasn’t the solidifying event that led me to, as REM so perfectly sings, “Losing My Religion”, it was the solidifying event that caused me to rethink the concept of ‘prayer’ and the crock of shit that it is, used a bargaining chit to some favor doling entity (IMO) as proselytized by current day religions. I’ve had trouble with the “P” word ever since. The mere mention of it can make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, depending on who may be saying it.
I spent many years as an activist for GLTB issues in the church. This was in large part because the suicide rate for GLTB teens/young adults is at least 30% higher than for others in the same age co-hort. I wanted to effect change, make a difference, as I was nearly one of that statistic. The letters were written. The pills stockpiled. A friend unwittingly stopped me before I followed through with the plan. While never an easy topic of discussion, the passage of time makes it (the topic, not the action) less frightening. I fought within the church to keep other teens/young adults from being part of that statistic. Oddly enough, it wasn’t GLTB issues that eventually brought me to my current beliefs (or absence thereof) to Atheism. But that’s another story.
This story is about burning down everything which was the essence of who I thought I was or tried to be, and the Phoenix that arose from the ashes. I have a love/hate relationship with Autumn. As is fitting with my morbid sense of humor and nature, I like the endings--the death that autumn brings, the senescense. Halloween is one of the “High Holy Days” in the Fagdom Calendar. I’m one of few gay men who does not like Halloween. I spent so many years wearing my ‘masks’, that the last thing I want to do is pretend I’m something I’m not. I’m sure that the Autumn of ’89, plays heavily upon this irrational disdain of Halloween. But, it’s part of who I am in 2008—an out, proud gay man, with few regrets. ©wtf/rle

FLASHBACK: Bamboo Shoot ( Corn) Finger (Thumb)Nail Torture

As I referred to it in the last post, I thought I’d write about the time in undergrad (which falls into the WASTHTR* listing) of when I got corn stalk rind shoved under my thumb nail. I worked in Corn Pathology at the University. The grad student (Brian) I was working with was studying corn diseases (d’oh) . In early summer when the corn was tall, but no ears of corn yet, we went with huge ass syringe guns, (sort of like squirt guns with needles) and buckets of a fungus solution and inoculated the corn with the fungus above the third node from the bottom. Then in August, we went back to check the level of disease/infection. The way we did this was by cutting the top of the corn stalks about chest high with a machete, and then spit the remaining stalk down the center, to see how far the disease progressed.
I must say, I got very proficient pretty quickly and had my rhythm established until I did my swoosh down with the machete, getting my bent thumb a bit too close to the edge of the corn stalk and ran corn stalk rind under my thumb nail, to about the first knuckle of my thumb. I screamed obsecenities like a banshee, which, given that I had just had a machete in my hand (until I dropped it when the thumb thing happened) seems appropriate.
Brian ran over, looked at my hand/thumb, now dripping blood like a river water fall (and throbbing). He wants to take me back. I want to finish the field. It was getting close to lunch anyway. Against his better judgment, he acquiesced. We put a band-aid over the thumb and we continue. Although my rhythm was now completely out of synch. The thumb was still throbbing.
When we go back to the lab, I want to keep it on the DL. He mentions it to the Prof who says that we have to fill out an accident report, and that I should go to the Dr. The Student Health Service at the University was named for our 25th President. When I was a student there, it did not have the best of reputations and was dis-affectionately known as “Mc KILL-Me”. I really did NOT want to go there, but I was over-ruled, outranked.
I go. There’s no one at the front desk. I go looking for someone and find them all in the lunch/break room. I explain the situation of having corn stalk rind jammed under my thumb nail (will blood soaked dripping band-aid and blood running down my upraised arm as evidence). In what was the beginning of what’s become a recurring theme in my experiences in healthcare, someone says to me, “We’re all on lunch right now, can’t you wait?” Even though I wasn’t as ballsy then as I am now, I was incredulous enough to say, “NO! I’m on lunch too, and I have to get back to work!”
I am taken back to an exam room were peroxide is poured over the wound area. They want to try and extract the corn rind. To do this, they are going to anesthetize the area. They have my hand resting on the arm of a chair, and start coming at me with a syringe—UNDER the thumbnail. I retract my arm quickly. They start again. I repeat.
“You’re going to have to keep your hand in place!”
“You are NOT going UNDER my thumb nail with a syringe while I’m still conscious!”
They then decide they will extract it with tweezers. This was as unsuccessful as it sounds. I left, McKILL-Me with all of the corn stalk rind still under my thumb, and the student health service living up to its moniker. It took about 9 months for the rind to completely grow out. There was still a bit of remnant when I graduated the next Spring.
In the workman’s comp/accident report, I was admonished for not wearing work gloves. But trust me, I learned my lesson. I fully understand how this was an effective method of torture. You can call me a lot of things, but wuss isn’t one of them.
*Weird Ass Shit That Happens To Randy

©wtf/rle

How Do You Like Them Apples?

I was reading over on one of my favorite bloggers Dr. Mark, {http://mouseasthma.blogspot.com/2008/08/growing-tails-so-far-so-good.html } about his triumphs with his green thumbery. It reminded me of one of my successes from undergrad days in the pomology (tree fruits) class. One of our class exercises was to graft buds from ‘flavorful’ apples to a good root stock. The apple is in the Rosaceae (rose) family. One of the genetic traits for this plant family is that the ‘beautiful’ or favored flowers/fruit often have poor root stocks or systems that are highly susceptible to diseases and other injurious pests. (Kind of like inbred Royalty families). So, to remedy this, you get a good root (which usually has less favorable flowers/fruit) and you graft a stem/twig/bud from the desirable flower fruit onto that stock. Something else most people don’t know, apples are ambisexual, meaning that the plant contains both male and female components, but they cannot self pollinate. i.e. you must have two trees of different varieties to get fruit.
So, I grafted a bud from a yellow delicious and a bud from a red delicious trees to my ‘good & hardy’ root stock. The damn thing actually survived, and both buds were viable. At the end of the semester, I took my sapling home to Mom & Dad’s and planted it, in an unprotected (yes---unprotected) area of the yard. Again, against all odds, the tree survived and in a few years began to bear fruit—red delicious on one side, yellow on the other. It always caused people to do a double take in late summer- fall when the fruit turned colors , and if nothing else, was a conversation starter. (If only I could have carried it around with me to the gay bars, I might have had better luck at picking up guys. I’ve never been a good ‘barfly’-but I digress.) Making this bi-varietal (ambisexual) tree is one of my better memories from those years. I felt like I’d done something significant or lasting (relatively speaking—I know it’s nothing earth shattering).
For reasons I don’t even remember, that semester was a tough one for me. This was all PGR (Pre-Gay Randy). I completely tanked my first exam and think I ended up getting a C in the class, even though it was one of my favorite horticulture classes. It was the same semester I took “Plant Pathology”, and that class I anticipated being difficult so I took it Pass/Fail which was on option as a non requirement. Early on in that semester, the Professor of this class had an opening for a student worker. One stipulation was that you had to maintain at least a “B” average in his class. By the time this all happened, it was too late to switch P/F classes with polmology, so I had to study harder to keep the higher grade in the class I’d elected as P/F. Such is the story of my life. I ended up working almost 2 years in Corn Pathology. I spent the summers inoculating and infecting corn with various diseases and fungi, and then surveying the results, among other things. In a future post, I’ll write about the time I had corn stalk rind jammed under my thumbnail. Let’s just say that really sucked poorly and hurt like a MF. ©wtf/rle