Wentworth

    What the hell is up with Ferguson? Last 30 seconds of Wentworth we see her in a hoodie standing by a fire barrel in a hobo camp. Like Wentworth didn't have enough trouble this season, without her standing around plotting. Next season should be lit!
    I hate it that I turn to shows for 'companionship' as it's just what everyone else in my family does... but they're not popular like me. I can make friends, they can't. I'm here doing what they do because that's all there has been to do. Now I really want to get out of here but playing the waiting game, back to watching TV and wondering when it will end. I'm just so fatigued and beaten all the time, and lonely and isolated; trying to stay chipper but the thing is I have no one to help me plan anything, no help beyond the occasional suggestion from a friend. K says just one day at a time. DUH, K. I know. It's not easy. I wake at like 6 am and wait for the stupid evil sib to leave at 9 so I can do my thing. Running into her out in the common area (I feel like I am in prison so I'll just start using the nomenclature!) brings me down so hard I just avoid it. She walked by my room this morning was I was exercising. She has honestly no business walking by staring into my room every morning but she does it. I'm standing there looking mean as fuck no doubt (frowning, madly, at the ground. My knee hurts and I'm pissed off about it) and I look up and say WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU LOOKING AT?   and from now on I'm going to stand there waiting for her to walk by and I'll say the same thing until she stops going that way and goes around. I always go around and never look into her room, that's called courtesy. I hope she got a fucking eye full and I want to take her MuMu or however you spell it and chuck it up her ass. UGLY fucking nightgown I'm sick of staring at for 4 years. I hate ugly people and my sister is ugly as fuck. FUGLY on the inside. that makes the outside uglier. UGLY nasty writhing snake pit on the inside. Ok end of rant.
   I want to be a good person but who the fuck has any role models like that. All mine died , the selfish fucks. UGH. Ok I'll calm down. I'm a good person now, I'm trying. I've been one before, I can be one again. Only this time it won't be a facade. There is not enough love in the world, I have tons, let's learn to give it out instead of giving out anger, ok Zed? Start your morning over, sis is gone... the day is looking good.  Hug yourself you old coot.

  You're fine. You made it this far, good person or bad, now you have , if all goes well, approx. 45 more years to learn how to do and be good.
*************************************************
   It's the weekend. Most people can't wait for it, I dread it. Sister sits and watches TV all weekend and hogs the kitchen sink. She spends hours at the sink. Washing her bird feeders, or washing her bathroom jars and implements, or cooking, or cleaning cooking pots, she's always at the kitchen sink standing there hogging it every time I go in there to cook.  Who the fuck does that. Gets lost in washing things in the sink. Fucking weirdo.

  She ties up the entire apartment when cleaning because she cleans it like you clean a huge house. All the floors mopped at once. Thanks, sis, I was hoping to have wet floors so I can't use the bathroom OR cook OR do laundry OR leave my room. You're stellar.  I hate her.

  But she did get me an early appointment with my doctor somehow. In a few days. Thank god. My sister is always telling everyone how she knows everything and everyone in the hospital and finally one of her goddam contacts panned out and I got an early appointment. I need my doctor to hear me when I say I need to get on T and I need to go on it yester fucking day. Jesus christ. I need one thing to go right.  Never fucking mind that the fucking physician assistant of his forgot to email me the results of my thyroid test. I'll just fucking endure until I see my closeted gay doc.

The Carol Club

https://www.liveoakmedia.com/Behind-the-Scenes.aspx

Scroll all the way down -- to Carol. I no longer keep any photographs of Carol, I burned them all . I sort of regret it now because sometimes I'd like to look at the head shot again and see if it was really as powerful as it seemed then. I kept an 8X10 headshot of her, in my briefcase, always. Along with that pamphlet.

  You will be one of few poor souls who know this sordid, messy, sorrowful, wonderful Carol and Zed story. Within my own heart, I consider it to be up there with " Wuthering Heights". (Indeed, THAT song makes me tear up, always.)  To even pick up the rake thinking of raking those coals over has me choking up and resisting it heartily so might be I started thinking about getting it out there; like, for real, not in some sort of fantasy journal you hope to be a thing a some day. Tell the real deal. You own it, because you're the one ashamed of it. Not them, or if they are, you'll never know. They've owned it in their own ways. How you own it is up to you. Now...

  It's always bothered me-- and probably always will bother me-- how I was left in the dark for so much of the end of all of this. I was promised an answer. I received only a hint of one; it will never be enough. And, a thread left dangling.

  Once upon a time, in Richmond, Virginia, I was following my instincts and living like a cockroach among the punks in a squat I'd formerly had a 'bed' in with a girl I really liked. I had a job as a bouncer or something, making just enough to keep everybody happy. A little rent, some food, some beer. Some smokes. But the main dude on the lease AND my 'girl' friend left me there, high and dry! What the fuck at least tell me you think I'm a loser, whatever. Holy cow that hurt. I squatted until they locked me out.

  But before they did, I met this guy I'll call Alan because I don't remember the guy's name. Someone may remind me one day and I will correct it. He was an older punk like me, IS THIS BEFORE OR AFTER RUGBY?? I ask myself. I honestly cannot remember.

  Alan was pret-ty cool in my book. I sort of copied him some. At some point, bless his black little heart, he took me aside and asked me if I had ever done any theater. I started talking about how my mother was a director and yes I had done children's theater in Flagstaff (MASTERCRAFT PRODUCTIONS) (then MAGIC CURTAIN PRODUCTIONS). . so Alan introduced me to ...

  Alan took me to this big theater, college I think it was, we entered from the alley way. Alan called over a slim, boyish, impish even, shy happy creature named Terri. I was disarmed. (Get used, dear reader, to me falling in love with people, mostly women, left and right). (And may I please add: I am still in love with each and every one, and always will be; and to think of any or all is to begin to cry. They may seem many to you, but each could only in the end give a small choink, because to give more was to have me try to grab on to all and bring them down in here with me. And to have any large pile of choinks is to be blessed, if you ask me. Because without any human contact (save M. last Sat. night-- the DEAR! God she's fun. ) for so long, what would I be without memories.

  And I will be the first to admit: I do believe my love, my depth of desire and my devotion to some of these women, a very few in fact, is a condensation, an attempt to make known the depth of feeling, of love and gratitude I possess for all they have taught me in all aspects of all areas of life and love. There are those I am in touch with. There are those who have gone no contact. With understanding! Anyone who has weathered the storm of Zed. knows. Just like you read about any other nut job. Mine due to (according to those who have diplomas!) C.P.T.S.D. (I'll get into it at some point, you owe it to yourself to look it up, because.... dun dun dun.... turns out way more people have it than you would think, and the reason is, cptsd is the ROOT CAUSE of all of these little problems that we have heretofore tried to treat individually. It turns out that learning about, and treating C.P.T.S.D.,  we stem the flow of those problems.

  Honestly, if you have read this far, congratulations. That is how I learned about CPTSD: social media. My EX told me via e-mail that a friend of ours on Facebook that I had not been in contact with for a while had been talking about CPTSD. My ex sent me a few books on the subject, self help books.

  Now. Back to the theater. *I am so dramatic. And I would not trade that for the bloody world. I blame Monty Python.

  This young woman Terri comes up to me with a clipboard and introduces herself. I am wearing a black leather jacket with all these sharpened studs and Terri kind of enthusiastically shook my hand-- and we talked about volunteer opps. Eventually I found a place assisting in the raising and lowering of a curtain-- a play IN THE SHOW had a curtain OF IT'S OWN in the fly gallery and I brought it up and down. A fellow named Doug (IS HE A DOCTOR YET? - - YOU call him DOCTOR JONES heh heh) (I can hear Carol giggle)

  (But not Doug. Doug sort of forced me into unfriending him last year when he point blank said "Z, what do you WANT?" (I used to be called Z until H called me ZED and it stuck) --  and I was like, huh? And good ol' dougie whom I had once given a skeleton hoof (please "flesh that out better later, zed-- omg that is a very good pun I must say. Who put the PUN in punk, I did :)  -- this is ridiculously corny right now. Remind me to have one day a week when I post in this blog while smoking keef. Because this is productive if difficult to parse. I will trim it later while leaving raw for perusal by odd passer-by. Because lord knows it may take a while to come back and edit this damned thing. Then again the productive streak may last. I just noticed earlier the pain in my leg was gone and has been for hours. I did feel a bit gleeful this smoke session, which I did not last night. Last night I just felt exhausted, from contemplating the void. I had just cleaned my computer and played Fallout 76 and missed S. so much that I shrugged and kicked myself and brushed my teeth and hung my head and pouted then I raised my head and remembered that we were on good terms again, and the spring in my step was a bit bouncier and  I fell into bed with a sigh of relief to battle other demons.

  At this moment in time, Carol is not answering my e-mails. Or let me say this (because I am going with 100 percent honesty as much as I can) Carol did not answer my last e-mail. I have not the guts to e-mail her again. I think I just asked her how she was doing. I should look it up. I could have said more. I don't think so. Anyway, it's not like her not to answer at all. She has always answered. I assume it is because of my politics. We were Facebook friends (brave of her, considering Brenna and all) then I noticed we were not. I assume that Carol dumped me for my politics.  I go to her page from time to time to make sure she is ok. To see if there is any big announcement. Not that I would dare insert myself. Not without an invitation. (REORDER THIS OR SOMETHING FFS ZED)

  Terri has me doing that curtain thing with Douglas Jones showing me how. When I ask how he got involved he pointed up to the harpist and said "Carol."
I'd not ever seen a real harpist before. To be honest I had had not either noticed the (is it-- quintet? ) up on the platform. They were all dressed in black. The music was haunting! If you have never heard it, it's lovely. Just lovely! The Quartette is my favorite aspect. "The sun sinks low, as low as it's going to go... FIVE O'CLOCK, TWILIGHT.... "   oh it is so beautiful.  Let me post a link.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd4qV8UaKJU

 REMEMBER! OH HOW I LAUGHED! and OH HOW I CRIED!

I am crying now. God I loved this play. And no one ever knew how much Carol was a part of it. Listen to the harp! The harp, Carol's harp. Carol's harp. I'm mesmerized again. Her bare feet pressing the pedals while I record a song for her grandmother. I can hear it in my head. I try to remember it in my head from time to time in case Carol and I ever have some time to kill and we talk about old times. I did and do love that song. I can't remember the name of it. I had a recording of the original recording of this session but it finally gave up the ghost in about 2001. I think it is still sitting there at mother's. Writing about it like this for the first time makes me feel ok about that ... other people have left things at their parents. So what. Many children have tried to reconnect with problem parents despite it being a bad idea simply because of trouble finding love elsewhere and desperately hoping to find it with a parent-- despite that parent not ever once having offered it in any amount larger than a choink. A choink flake that dissolves so quickly in the first teardrop.

  Oh Carol. I do not allow myself to think of you often. As of course I should not. But I want to tell it one hundred percent as it happened to me. I just had a vision, no a recollection, of these 50 page letters I used to write to her. Not expecting anything back, happy to get a hurried but oh so warm and welcome and natural and normal and (I thought) reciprocal phone call each week. Oh how I loved those calls. Did I say hurried? A LIE. Seemingly, because I coveted talking to her so much. Let us go on. I get ahead and all that.

  I was briefly introduced to Carol during that show, and certainly must have run into her at the after party-- or not, I cannot say for certain. I was there with Richard, and we intended to ogle the rich woman's house and drink her booze and lay in her very green grass to stare at the stars. I was quite in lust with the woman who played Desiree, and simply wanted to hover about, while Richard hovered near John Glenn, Oh poor dear John Glenn , RIP. I believe I need to talk about you in BYOD.  Or if it was not John Glenn, who had a vaguely John Purdy look about him, then I'm sure Chard will let me know, were he to get a hold of this blog, I am certain he would set me straight on many aspects and inform you of some very gross things, just thought I would call it first. I threw up on his dashboard, who knows what else. I fucked him at Theater IV, go ahead Chard, I have nothing to hide. You do so-- just remember that. big hugs.   We had a blast, you and I, I'll write about you, in a good light, stay steady mate, be a good buddhist and tell only the truth as I am doing. To yourself as well. It hurts like hell and makes you want to die. But that is the point. To kill off a part of yourself that lies.

  Amazed by the mansion and the gardens, agape at the owner's wealth, Chard and I drank and talked, I did love talking to him all night. He was funny as hell and taught me some things. What, I cannot remember. He did teach me my first 'Spanish phrase'-- ' hey muchos caballos in la douche' or something. That is how I remember it though. I seem to have left out a part where Beverly and Richard and I went to clubs etc, and that was way before Carol. Now Beverly and Richard have graduated and all of that, and it's just Richard and I as friends, and he and she as friends over there. He comes to my play (I'm back stage, Richard is in the audience, I gave him a comp ticket) and watches. He's quite impressed. I was too, it was the best play I ever had the grace of working on. There will never be a better non-professional play that moves me like that, I'm certain of it but I sure am welcome to try! Quilters came close. Theater IV, I miss those days. Terri.  Carol. -- Bruce. Phil. John.  I had a future there. *kicks can. You'll hear what I did later.
   I put myself on the volunteer list and didn't hear back for a while. But I did eventually. Theater IV needed my help as a prop handler or something, I do not remember. The show was "The White Cliffs of Dover" and Terri was the director I think. Or the something. It was a shoebox theater, I loved the experience. We sang along to 'Roll Out the Barrel' every show. It was pretty powerful. A play about WWI, set in England. I became interested in the topic, who wouldn't?

  After that I went around Theater IV offices from time to time, I mean I'm a punk living on the streets now, I just want to do something cool, and be a part of something cool, and I know theater... I just want to be included. I talk myself into LIVING in the OFFICES. It's a town house, a rental. I sleep downstairs. I have a mattress from some other occupant. Not too shabby. On top of hundreds of costumes to try on after everyone has gone home (Terri, Bruce, Phil... please forgive me. If I ever make any decent money I am going to come back there and buy you guys a new shop saw or something I promise)  there is a mannequin. Well, only the top part, and no arms. Just torso and head. She's bald. I immediately call her Sinead, tattoo her head, and dress her in my leather jacket. I now have a friend to sleep with, and life is good. And, yes. Theater IV was aware of this behavior, or so I was led to believe. Who told me, was it Ford? That prankster. It could have been John but, well. It could have been John.

  I spend the days doing theater-y things at the Orpheum (Theater IV's future home, it needs a lot of work) and nights cleaning and messing around in the offices basement. As fas I recall, I earn my keep. I have a pretty good time doing it too. Theater life was always for me. I just never broke into it properly. I did sure enjoy my time at theater IV.

  I volunteered and won "Volunteer of the Year" at the volunteer awards ceremony  2 years in a row. I was a house carpenter for a minute, fly gallery operator, stage manager, and once we had gotten that big theater whipped into shape I moved in there too. I was living in there as well, in the dressing room. I had brought Sinead of course! We were happy enough for a lost waif and her mannequin. I was a good stage manager, I know that. I got a bit of petty cash out, each show, and got each person in the cast and crew a momento. I kept the dressing room clean and stocked well and I had a really good stage manager's kit. I read books on the subject and had a nice time table for the actors to follow etc. etc. ; it was always pretty well-oiled. The actors seemed to appreciate it. I was always happy with the results. I helped around the theater itself as well, often doing things like running up to the roof to secure something that had been knocked loose by the wind... I loved that theater company, I loved the building.

   Then there it was, my plum assignment. I was to stage manage a play called "Ain't Misbehavin' " ...
 I'd not heard of Fats Waller before but the songs sounded so catchy and the cast so lively and fun  I just had to. I threw myself into it. I took a look at the piano they were planning on using and I nearly choked. It was an upright baby grand but it was covered in about 10 coats of paint, the final result being that it looked as if it had been painted to look like a tree by a 5 year old. I had recently learned how to strip furniture, so... I begged Terri to let me strip it. To the wood. Oh my god it was a week long project. So many coats and so much stripper and so many fumes (shh, you) later, this gleaming Mahogany piano shines under the spotlight, and my heart just sings. It's like, oiled UP for fucks sake. And that guy is pounding the keys. OH it was amazing. I could see it all from up in my SM box. -- giggle--
  Those rehearsals must have been as magical for the actors and backstage crew as for me. Just the music, the voices. The instruments. We all got along. And we we all forgot our troubles for a minute. This was what it was all about. A truly appreciate audience, a majestically talented cast and a devoted and dedicated crew, all volunteers save a couple of union folk. Granted, everyone involved in a production like that, of that calibre, should have been paid. And to be fair to Theater IV, they did end up paying me at one point.

  Ain't Misbehavin' rehearsals were coming along quite well and it was nearing opening night. I went into the bar during a break and noticed a pile of flyers on a table. I helped keep the bar clean, and so such things caught my eye. I picked one up. Low and Behold, my roots was shook. There was this image of three people dressed in costumes, one in particular was very tall, with dark short hair, and cocked eyebrows over mesmerizing goddamn eyes, wearing trash can lids on her feet and grinning like a complete and delightful goofball. Or was it a smirk. Knowing Carol-- smirk. I haven't seen the image in decades despite begging Terri/Bruce/Ford, and, yes, John to help find me one. I have also asked for a copy of "A Little Night Music" but to no avail.

  So this image. Swam in my head , so that even after putting it down I would see it still. I'd just pull it out again to make it a bit more solid. I would wear the picture out, go get another, then just resort to taking 10 to be done with it. Hopefully. I had one in every pocket just about, because I was always losing them. I had one pinned to the wall in my booth up above the stage a few nights before Ain't' Misbehavin' opened.

    I'd glance at that bit of paper, tacked to the wall, and tilt my head, wondering, who IS that? How can a photograph have such-- (I would not have used this word then) GRAVITAS?  Pull?  But it was a small picture, the size of a modern cell phone. (Everyone but very poor people know this one, haha! ) (ugh. I suck). How much pull can one photograph have?  One day  a fellow crew member comes up to my booth. Who was that, I want to say Randy. We will straighten it out. He points to the picture and asks ' why do you have a picture of Carol on the wall ' ?   and I explain to him I want to know who it is and no one seems to know before then. So he explains how Carol goes out with the traveling , children's theater part of Theater IV, and comes back to prepare/rest for the next show. She was due back any day, any minute. I was astounded by this great bounty of useful information. I began to search the entire campus several times daily just in case Carol had landed. Every time a Theater IV van was at the dock I was there. Carol? no. Carol? no.  Eventually I sort of half gave up, turning my attention back to my priority, the upcoming musical. When there were hours until opening night, the sun burning brightly outside still, we were told that there was a movie being filmed outside, we were not to use the front entrance directly but would be re-routed to an off-camera entrance/exit. I helped move traffic and direct people, keep people out of camera shot etc-- desperate to be noticed by anyone who had anything to do with this actor named James Woods. Who the hell was this guy. Whatever.
   At some point I'm told the caterers are here, and it's my job to coordinate with them, so I have to go find them as I am not sure where they are set up. KEEP IN MIND all of this is HOW I REMEMBER IT and I'm open to correction by anyone that was there.
  I go into the rehearsal hall and immediately see a door on top of two spread apart saw horses, genius thinking, dishes of hors devours  set all around on top the door/table. One of those rolling Hobarts? I think they had? Oh hell who cares, none of that ever mattered. It all looked so tasty, I glanced all around at it, and then at a pair of these black shoes, up to the slacks, further, it's a tuxedo, it's ... a tailcoat! It's... it's..... Carol.  I must have stood there so slack-jawed for so long that Carol came gliding over to me and stuffed a food in my mouf... just as natural as could be. I blinked and chewed robotic-like, head tilted a bit. Drained of all sense, senses at an alert never felt before. Nothing. Nothing would ever be the same. Nothing ever has been the same. 

   No doubt 70 percent of who I am comes from Carol. If you know me, you know Carol. No matter who she is now, whether she would have anything to do with me -- I'm she and she is me. Ask her about the cowpunk table. Attached to the cowpunk table I made for Carol is the jawbone of the first and only born foal of my second pony, aforementioned Ginger. The jawbone belongs to "Gem Dandy". I tried to save him but he died and we drug him out into the woods (read: I drug him out into the woods, me, a kid). I visited the body some time later, it had mostly been all eaten up, but I got the head off, and tried to get it cleaned up. I had the skull for the longest time, and the jawbone. Now only Gem's jawbone survives, on that cowpunk table.

  Also on that table: a 'flint hammer' I found in the woods outside Flagstaff. Used for making arrowheads by the Navajo many moons ago; I used it as a counterweight to keep the table top from flipping too quickly open. It hangs from below, easily visible. There are coyotes howling and hieroglyphs that mean nothing I'm sure and some Saguaro cactus all painted on. It's pretty cheesy. The Coyote is actually Phoebe, the pointy headed one... we'll get to her.

  Carol tells me to help and I do help them set the food up and light the sterno, my pleasure, ma'am, you betcha. I'm shaking with electricity at the nearness of this person I'd been unable to stop wondering about for some time now. And we just fall into this natural patois. Until it is time for me to go set up for the show, and she tells me to come find her at intermission, she could use the help if I wanted to pitch in. Oh you know it. I'm so there. The show goes quite well despite the interruption with the movie outside. If you watch "My Name is Bill W." you will see James Woods walking past the theater where I am inside doing Ain't Misbehaving. It's so -- weird to me. A moment caught on film from a whole different perspective. Inside, a heart is pounding so hard it's about to bust.

  Opening night was a success, I helped Carol clean up, then I did my clean up and set up for the next night. Fell into bed staring at my picture of Carol. I knew I'd see her again the next night so it wasn't too bad closing my eyes.  Sinead stared up at the ceiling.  The play ran for a few weeks to high praise, I was too busy to miss Carol too much but I did think of her and wonder. One day I was in the bar getting a drink with lunch and I hear her voice. I turn.. she's walking up to me. I'm swallowing my food clumsily. She asks if we can talk for a minute when I'm done eating.  So when I am done eating I go over to where she stands at the bar looking at a script and she asks me if I want to stage manage a play with her as director. I must have turned quite pale because she told me I could think about it. I accepted as soon as I could speak. And I often wonder how my life might have turned out had I declined -- as I wanted to, because how could I be good enough to work with HER? But declining Carol was never an option.

   "Good, it's settled, I'm relieved. I heard you were pretty busy and hoped you'd have time to...." blah blah blah. I heard nothing else from that point on I just made her promise to come find me when the dates were firmed up and then I walked off in a daze. I'd not had something this exciting to look forward to in ages. I got invited to the first script reading and showed up to her apartment terrified. I did not do group stuff like this much, agoraphobic for the most part unless I was on theater business. This was not theater IV business, this was  an independent troupe. I sat and read the part of whomever had not shown up to the reading. Carol's brother and mother were visiting and I was stunned at how much like Carol her brother looked. I could not take my eyes off him as he sat up on the top bunk where C slept, next to his mother, their mother, and they made quips and interjected for a chuckle here and there but mostly listened raptly. The play was an adaptation by Carol's ex boyfriend Doug... based on a short story by Nikolai Gogol entitled "The Nose" . . .

 Written between 1835 and 1836, "The Nose" tells the story of a St. Petersburg official whose nose leaves his face and develops a life of its own.  (Wikipedia). It's quite snarky and witty and I loved every minute of the reading. It was not my first foray into Russian lit however. Being a huge Tim Curry fan and having all his albums, I had really loved the song "I do the Rock" in which he says things like "Solzenitzyn feels exposed, builds a barbed-wire prison".. and so I'd read that book ("A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich") and it became one of my favorites. 

   Brainstorming over how to make a giant nose costume, or how to make it look like a jar was full of live leeches using strips of bicycle tire tubing hanging by fishing line from the cap of a bell jar... these things filled my mind with joy. Sitting next to Carol, so close I could smell her shampoo. To this day, if I smell T-Gel, I am going to have a little nostalgic cry. I kept the best stage manager/assistant director's logs you could ever imagine. No stage manager ever did their job so thoroughly. And one day when I walked out of the rehearsal hall into the kitchen only to walk back into the hall and see Carol wearing my sweatshirt... ("I was cold, didn't think you'd mind")...  I nearly fainted. There was no blood in my  head for a long, long time. I could not concentrate on the rehearsal. That whole session was a wash. They all thought I was ill. When she gave the sweatshirt back I pretended to be unaffected but I slept with it for ages. This obsessive behavior was new to me. In Pasadena I'd just had a crush, it was normal sized. This was huge-- monstrous. Unmanageable. And reciprocal-- although only I saw just how reciprocal. I was agoraphobic nearly-- Carol begged me and coaxed me and cajoled me out of my shell and when I finally started opening up, our friendship really blossomed. I mean it was all alright for a long time. A couple of years we were thick as thieves. Bestest buddies. The play had gone off so well, everyone was just impressed as hell. A solid friendship was born. We were like an old married couple in no time. I spent hours at her place, her cooking, us talking, reading, listening to music, friend stuff. She KNEW I was attracted to her but had firmly told me she was hetero and although she loved me very much ,not in that way. I accepted that and dealt with it. Not well at times, but I dealt with it.  I was entrusted with every aspect of her life with the exception of her love life. I knew she was seeing men but I never met them. They didn't seem to be in her life long. It was always me coming over for dinner, we'd go out and eat, drink, be merry as hell. Nights in a row. I adored my time with her. In the theater, out of the theater, I'd go anywhere with her. She got a dog, I trained it. Phoebe the pointed headed one. She was part coyote, I was sure. I trained that dog so well Carol was stunned. And Carol admitted to Phipps being my soul mate at the time. I got a key to the apartment and got to go hang with Phipps anytime. Life was good. I had a dog and a friend. Richard and I had grown apart, I'd become suspicious he was a dick. He still is a dick. I'd grown lonely living in the theater despite Richard coming over sometimes, he was always only interested in getting something for himself. Borrowing a costume, or borrowing some weed, or some cash. I'd grown tired of him. 
   Carol on the other hand was always good to me. If I was sick, she big me come over and lay on her spare mattress on the floor while she tended to me-- chicken soup, homemade. Reading to me, pointing a fan at me, whatever it took. There was a time when I was particularly despondent and she asked me to come over and I did. We watched a movie on her black and white TV... Powaqqatsi . It's like two hours of imagery with a soundtrack by Phillip Glass. How could she know it would soothe me so? I used my truck to haul her harp around, I picked up her dry cleaning, I deposited her paycheck for her. She cooked for me, took me out, gave me hugs, made mix tapes for me. Turned me on to Lou Reed. Turned me on to one of my favorite albums of all time: RED HOT & BLUE -- tribute to cole porter.  The very first song made me cry the first time I heard it.. it is re-written for this soundtrack to reflect the AIDS epidemic. It brings me back to my brother's death. "I've got you under my skin..."     yeah. Pure pain you're giving me.  Each song specifically crafted to pull at my heart strings. Mix in that I'd grown up on Cole Porter due to my mother's love for movie soundtracks...  the music that Carol introduced me to over the time we were tight will always transport me right back. 

  During all this time I'd managed to clean up my act a little bit, with Carol's help, I found some ability to do art, and  move into a house full of Theater IV people in which I had a yard and did some of my own art, hence the Coyote Table. Carol suggested I ought to go to college. I had no idea at this time that college was a possibility for a  high school drop out who had only a GED. I began to think it over. Meanwhile I had a job at a dyke bar, as a bouncer and a cook, and between that and renovating one of my old rugby buddie's house, and the theater, I had plenty to keep myself busy. Met a girl! J was this wild thing, came in to the bar high as a kite and dancing by herself, glommed on to me for some reason and we hooked up somehow. She was a student (now a lobbyist. An elitist, always stoned lobbyist, obsessed with Carol still, and won't speak to me. Won't speak to me at all. I find this absolutely reprehensible, the COWARD). The absolute chicken shit.

   We'd smoke weed and make love and I told her I was always going to put Carol first-- I'd told her that from the get go, as I had no control over my feelings for C. J said 'fair enough' and accepted my terms. I mostly thought of Janice unless C was demanding my attention. It was only a matter of time before J and C had to meet, and we got that over with one lunch and I thought they got along well enough so we all seemed comfortable around each other. I think you can see where this is going to end up. I can, now -- looking back. 

  I'd spend my time with one and then the other, but one night I was laying with J and the phone rang. J answers it, and goes into this animated, lively conversation with someone. It very slowly dawns on me that she is talking to Carol. Carol has called Janice's apartment without me giving C the number. The blood in my veins turns into ice water. I blink. Several times. It was the beginning of the end.  

****************************************************************************
     So I did it, I got into school. All by myself. I stood in the lines and went to the tables and I picked the classes and got the loans and bought the books. All done in person at the school itself. Oh for the old ways. 

  I had a guy named Brent in one of my classes. I really liked him. We hung out in the sculpture studio and he showed me a lot of wood-bending tricks. I'd helped my stepfather build a circular oak staircase (I'd handcarved all 72 balustrades myself ) but I had a lot to learn in bending wood for sculptures. Brent was funny and intelligent, made class even better. I loved sculpture studio, I was always pushing the envelope. It was good. 

  Drawing class went well too, I had this teacher I really dug (had a crush on her too! She invited me over for dinner. In fact that teacher took all my artwork home to keep as we  students had no where to store it). That 6 foot tall Saguaro cactus ? Yeah, she took that home to put on her tool shed. I loved drawing class... because I was always doing something different. I took to Gouache and oil pastel for etching. 

This one is called "Carol Schmerol Purple Hairol"... because that is what we called Carol sometimes. Her hair was 'eggplant' color. (Oil Pastel etching over Gouache) 

  There are inscriptions all around the borders that you cannot see, and I cannot remember what they say-- I no longer have any of my own art. But I do remember it was all Carol quotes.  

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   Janice and Carol and I got along swimmingly for the most part, despite that nagging phone call. I put it out of my mind. We all spent a lot of time together doing things like going to the pub for nachos or going to a club for Halloween. I dressed as a cowboy on Halloween, and took my rope with me to the bar. Carol and J did not dress up. The band was the Ululating Mummies, and I made a few bucks on bets that I could rope this or rope that. People paid to see me rope. I roped Carol and J together, pulled the rope a bit too tight, looked them in the eye and released the tension. I dropped the rope and let them step out of the loop. I was a bit drunk but I knew something was happening between those two. 
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     There'd been a hurricane, and C wanted to do walk the beach in the tail of it. It was chilly, and the winds were whipping the ocean all about with the sea spray laced with sand pelting our faces. I had on a black trenchcoat, and was carrying my shoes. Carol followed behind, surreptitiously taking my picture from behind with a waterproof throw-away camera. Later on, when I would see the photos, she would say that I looked INTREPID. I was, unbeknownst to Carol,  walking so far ahead because to see her in her eggplant hair, matching color of leather jacket, and black Levi's with a black t-shirt under the coat, all soaked to the bone. it was all I could do to not just sit down on the beach and start crying, I wanted her so bad.  But I kept on up ahead until she asked me to slow down and caught up. We walked as long as we could and finally got back to the car and she turned the heat way up and we got back to the city and changed into warm clothes. We decided to call J, and the 3 of us went out for nachos.  Although J and I sat on the same side of the booth, I wanted to be sitting with C. I guess we both did.
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  Well it becomes apparent to me that the two of them are becoming close and my friend from the studio, Brent, is moving in on it too. I don't even know how Brent got involved. I probably invited him in, naturally. I let the enemy in, always. Those 3 had some good times I came to hear about later. While I was in school pining over Carol, but too busy with schoolwork to really do anything about anything.  I've got a job at the dyke bar still, and I get a ride with Carol sometimes if we've been hanging out. One night the 3 of us women had been hanging and decide to go to dinner before I go to work. Sounds good. When we all sit down the two of them are on one side of the table, and I'm facing them. They have a 'proposal'.  J looks down at the table as she asks me if I'd be interested in a threesome with the two of them. [thinking back I bet they meant to shoehorn Brent in at some point too]. I will never forget my reaction: I bring my fist down upon the table like an ANGRY LORD. The plates jump, patrons turn to stare. I say NO.  They are taken aback and make me promise to 'think about it'. I go to the car and leave them to pay and talk. They actually finish their fucking dinner before coming out to see if I am ok. I should have walked to work. But I sat on the hood of the goddam car. The car whose oil I changed lovingly... the car whose headlights I changed. The car I cleaned. Put gas in. Drove. I kept Carols' car running smoothly. ME.
    When they did come out, I could not talk to them. They dropped me off at work and left. I was in a daze and did my job robotically. When the two of them came BACK to the bar at around 11 pm I lost my shit. I denied them entrance and when my boss said WTF I said 'they go, or I DO, forever". So my boss allowed me to tell them they were banned for the night. But not before they literally chased me into the kitchen to try to force a group hug on me. I stood there as still as a rock. FUCK OFF I screamed.

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 I don't remember the rest of that night. I just remember my boss coming into the kitchen to see if I was ok, after that scream. I was in a strange land. A land where Carol and J were now together and not trying to hide it. And me, on the outside, again. From the safest of places where I had my best friend at hand and a smart if perpetually high lover. Gone in a night. It was never really the same between any of us again. J and I broke up, Carol moved to Kentucky to live near her mom. We spoke weekly... on the phone. I wrote her 30 - 50 page letters. I honestly wonder if she read any of that. But I sure would love to see those letters again... how full of floof and airy longing they must have been.

   My time was taken up by art-- and English -- and girls. Sculpture studio, drawing studio, and Kris. There were these 4 lesbians living on my hall and two of them were hooked up. I had a crush on one of the hooked up ones so I hung around a lot; J and I had broken up and Carol wasn't in the state. We all partied and studied together and even went on a road trip to Atlanta Women's Music Festival-- during which I helped be a 'roadie' for a band called BETTY. Some of you may know Betty from the children's TV show 'ZOOM'. I was really thrilled to meet and work with them; and after that show, I got to work in the kitchen. After 3 days I had my top off and had had been put on security: guarding the perimeter from prying eyes. You'd be surprised how many men skulk about the edges of these things hoping for a look-see.  It was a good time, and I got to have sex with Kris on  her mom's couch while her mom was in the kitchen while we were visiting with Kris's parents for the evening on the way back to Richmond. I wonder what they thought of the age difference. I was 28. Kris was 20.

   The job I had during this time in college was cook at the Village Cafe. This is the place where Carol and I had gone so many times, then J and I and J and Carol and I. Even Brent had joined us a few times. One big happy family-- now all busted up, with me in the kitchen slogging away. I worked like a horse, hot heavy hard work, then to mop and help this big brute of a dude clean the grill etc. I envied him. He washed the dishes by hand, ate well, kept his nose clean. Me, I cussed at the waitresses and threw cast iron skillets at them when they let the food get cold. I had industrial music blaring on the boom box at all times. The owner would walk through the kitchen, turn it down on his way to his office and I'd turn it back up- and he'd turn it down again on his way out. But he knew, there were people in that cafe who came in just to hear my music. They'd sit by the kitchen batwing doors. I had a friend in the dorm that fed me the latest and greatest in INDUSTRIAL music. Ah, Sean. What happened to you, where did you go brother? You haven't lived until you have cooked a hamburger to the song "Hamburger Lady" by Throbbing Gristle, just sayin'.  Now that I think about it, Sean reminded me of John Purdy. We'd sit by candlelight listening to the latest industrial music and talking in soft tones and being high and philosophical. Sean turned me on to RE/SEARCH magazine: other than punk and industrial, this was my first real foray into counter-culture.  One day I'd like to collect those books. I'd read his for hours.

   The Village Cafe. I'd cook all night for punks then, slimey and greasy and tired, slump home towards the dome late at night, tipsy from my shift beers.  One such night I was later than usual having drank longer than usual after work. My good friend had been bartending and we had such a good time when he was working and I drinking. I'd even been to court for him once as a character witness.  Walking past this music venue down the block from the Village, I saw a guy loading equipment into a white van. I stopped to watch a moment then offered to help, citing that I'd helped quite a few bands when I was a bouncer at a punk bar earlier in the decade. The dude said 'sure, thanks!' and we loaded all his equipment in the van all nice and neat. He gave me a beer and I smoked while he told me about the next venue he had coming up and it dawned on me as I sat looking at his face that I knew him.  It was Henry Fucking Rollins. I'd met him at Benny's. We had a laugh about that.

  Richmond was empty for me without Carol. I mean it sounds like I was on top of the world but really it all paled in comparison to how life felt when Carol and I were hanging out together. But, I had to deal. I got along. I got good grades. Halfway through the first semester without Carol I got a phone call from her asking if I wanted to spend the summer with her in Kentucky. I could help her mom out, which would help Carol out. And I'd have a car to use (good ol' PUTT PUTT!).  Sure thing, why not!!! I could see NO downside.

  My first train ride. Richmond to Cincinnati; Carol picked me up in her station wagon. I was beaming. I think she was beaming. My buddy! We talked happily all the way back to Louisville. Nearing her house, she stopped at a 4-way stop sign and asked if I wanted to go to her mom's or to her place. I asked which is better? I didn't really want to sleep on a couch I said.

  So, Carol tells me that I can either sleep in my own room on a 4 poster double bed at her mom's, OR I can sleep with HER in HER ROOM on HER BED in HER DUPLEX.  By this time we have been sitting at the 4- way stop for upwards of 5 minutes. I am now sort of... bloodless and about to pass out. Was... was it happening? Had Carol decided that she was NOT entirely heterosexual? Was she going to bless me with a night in her bed, with her in it? I must have seen quite shocked and perhaps even perplexed. I remember stuttering: (something I do when tired, or overly nervous).. "So, y-y-y-ou want m-m-m-m-e to... "   I must have looked ashen. Carol nodded, said something like 'yes yes it's alright, you can come home with me. My bed's big enough" or the like. She said she had to take a shower first before bed, for me to make myself comfy and get on into bed unless I wanted something to eat.

  I could smell the T-Gel wafting into the bedroom from the bathroom where Carol was taking a shower with the door half open. Like Pepe Le Pew, I got up and followed the scent to the half open door and just stood there a moment before turning to walk back.  There was a hint of spearmint on the air as well... Dr. Bronner's.

   Once in her bed I lay there stiff as a board staring at the ceiling a while then I turned over and put the pillow over my head so that Carol would feel comfortable when walking into her room to go to bed. I didn't' want to be staring. I thought it was just nice she'd trusted me enough to join her for a sleep. The smell of her next to me; I could even press my nose almost into her hair ! But only once, and surreptitiously. I felt guilty. I turned over, and stared at the wall. Until I could no longer keep my eyes open, then I lay there in darkness, awake, feet away from the person I loved more than air itself. I have never been so glad to hear an alarm clock go off.

  Carol stretched, then reached over me to turn off the clock's alarm. For all of 5 seconds or so she had her weight on me, laying across my chest. I'll never forget it. Being frozen like that, so full of desire and pain and longing and fear. Tears ran down my cheeks but she didn't see. I watched her get dressed. There was Carol, before me, in her underwear. The sight I'd longed to see since day one. And not a thing I could do but cry.

  I turned over and waited for her to leave. Then I fell asleep until noon.
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    There was quite the list of  'honey-do's left for me so by the time Carol came home there was a huge pile of horsehair carpet padding in the yard (Carol is allergic to horses. Had she led with that information I may well have never hooked up with her) and she ran by it get some things from her room and then left again. I worked until it was all up, and eventually got it into rolls to be picked up later. I'd scrubbed the floor relentlessly with Pine Sol and then Murphy's Oil Soap. When every fiber of equine fur was gone, I felt like I had made my friend's life better, and her mother happy (mom wasn't going to have to pay someone to do the work!) (although I got paid, in spades. Her mom is a wonderful cook and a great listener).  By the time the apartment was totally horse hair free it was dinner time and Carol came back and we had a nice meal and watched TV and her brother came over and sat with us ... he in a chair, and Carol and I next to each other but at opposite ends of her couch. At some point, she begins to fall to the left, and ends up laying next to me, her head touching my leg. It's like my entire soul is in that little tiny area of contact. I dare not move. This goes way beyond "don't move, you'll disturb the cat". This was 'don't move, the entire universe is inside this moment'.  I did not move, I barely breathed for some time. 

  When it was bed time, Carol bid her brother good night and he left, and she turned to me and asked if I wanted to stay again. 
*******************************************

     My brain said RUN but my body said 'Oh is it ok if I stay here tonight again then? And ... do you think it would be ok if I HELD you this time? I can't sleep otherwise. '  ...
     'Sure'. 

     Same as before, the shower, the half open door, the scent of the shampoo on the air, me in the bed waiting. When Carol had disrobed and put on pajamas, and slipped into bed facing away from me, I slid over to hold her from behind. There was no comfort in it. I was holding a prone leaden carving. Ridgid as a board, I had my arm around her but it was like throwing your arm around a fallen tree. After a few minutes of that, a person can feel more empty than a vacuum. I turned away, and again, lay awake all night, and again the same alarm maneuver, and again, my sleeping until noon-ish when Carol came home for lunch and came up to wake me. I told her I did not sleep a wink. She said nothing. Just got up and went back downstairs... I dressed and went down to eat lunch with her. 

  It happened again the third night. On the fourth, I opted to go mom's house. I stayed the rest of the summer at mom's. [Carol's mom said to call her 'mom'. Carol nor her brother ever said that this bothered them-- until recently].  I had all I could possibly eat, I had a comfortable bed, air conditioning, a pool table, my own bathroom. All I had to do was help out around the properties. Carol's mom had her own house that she got in the divorce from Carol's dad (and to this day, how those two hooked up I'll NEVER EVER KNOW), plus the duplex Carol lived in and didn't pay rent for according to 'mom' who always let me know that. Then there was Carol's grandparents, who lived across the street from 'mom'. Paw-paw and ... I can't remember her grandmother's pet name. I do remember the house quite well for I was always in it or on it, doing some work. I know those 3 properties like the very back of my own hand, if not better.  

   Summer passed fairly quickly, I'd kept pretty busy working around the properties. Carol and I had hung out enough to satisfy and I was in the best shape of my life as I walked Phoebe for miles every day, all the way to the park. Every day, like 6 miles or something. How lovely for Carol that must have been, knowing your dog was so happy.  I sure loved phipps. But you know, summer comes to a close and I gotta go back and Carol takes me to the train station and makes me promise to come for Christmas break. Of course I will! See you soon C!
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School. Sculpture studio is life, I meet up with some cool kids who have this band and they are always in the sculpture studio hogging the damn machines so I talk with them to pass the time. They are not students there but were at one time and the teachers don't mind them hanging out using the machines. I get some free tickets for not whining about them tying up the equipment. I had no idea what I was in for when I got to the concert hall for the band but soon as they came out on stage I knew it was going to be a blast. I'd only ever seen bits and pieces of their costumes but GWAR was one hell of a blast. I came out of that venue with my leather jacket DRIPPING in green slime. My hair, plastered to my  head with fake blood. Just as I am doing that thing where you let stuff drip off your fingertips onto the ground as you stand there wondering just how much crap you are covered in, up comes my sculpture professor on her bicycle. "Seen GWAR eh?"  I nod. "looks like it was fun. See you Wednesday" and off she rode.  This is the teacher who took my sculptures home with her, as well as invited me to dinner... but not telling me she was married to a man until I arrived. At some point this teacher and Carol and I had a meal, I remember that.  How did that come about ?  
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   Elementary school and junior high and high school were the worst times of my life so far and so when the college cafeteria turned out to be the most fun I'd had since Pasadena, well... it was a welcome occurrence. Sean and me and a few others made food sculptures and food bombs and food suitcases; laughter abounded at our table, we were always reluctant to get up and leave. Would that it had been an artist's collective and we had been friends for years instead of a fleeting semester or two. Sculptures were made, and my prof told me she thought I'd be good at performance art; she taught me about robot wars too. I remembered how I loved Laurie Anderson, and I did a video-- a video which went on to be used by the local battered women's shelter. It was about how one day I was just hanging around and Carol came up to me and grabbed my arm and looked at the scars and asked if I had been sexually abused as a child.  I recreated that scene on tape then I recreated the cutting using A/B mixture and a dull razor blade. It was so realistic we had to have a warning up before rolling it.   They.Told.Me.To.Write.Things.Out.

  

   

Georgina-- OR; How I ended up pulling an antique US Cavalry pistol on my sister [Rocky Horror Fans take note]

  This here might be the strangest thing I will ever tell you about myself... wait, wut? No, haha who am I kidding. But it is pretty strange, even from this perspective.

  Northern Arizona University student commons with my best friend Valerie-- my first Rocky Horror Picture Show. There were props, the shoutings of lines, Valerie was mimicking the dance moves in the aisles! Whoa, this blew my farm girl mind. You remember your first RHPS, you know. (if you haven't seen it, do not admit that to me.)

  When I had to leave Arizona and go to Richmond to live with my sister (at 17-- mom couldn't handle me and foisted me off on W. ) , naturally I was despondent. It was suggested that I attend 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' at the Biograph in the Fan. I was take the car, and go alone. I was terrified. I'd been to Richmond alone once, years before, encountered my first black people, and ran terrified. I kid you not. And I was to go down into all that again, alone, just as afraid? Yes, they insisted, argued, made their case, convinced me at last to at least drive by so I'd know where it was. They made me leave early. I found the parking lot after a few wrong turns, parked, walked to the 7-11, bought a 6-pack, and went back to the car to drink a couple. I was sitting in the back with the hatch open when a couple approached.  Oh fuck, I'd forgotten about this!!!! 

   This short, dumpy, sandy haired dude, sort of jocular but with serious undertones: pit-faced, but quite handsome. Richard. And this lovely, fit, charming, shy, coy, funny new wave Brit named Beverly. They were my age, the age of the peers I'd left behind. And they were wondering if I could spare a beer. Of course I could! I could even get more I they wanted. YES! They sure did. It's not that I had a fake I.D. -- I was 16, and looked it. The laws were just that lax, but 'Chard and Bev were too afraid to attempt it. Good students both, with families that would give them grief were they to be caught. I just wanted to get drunk. So I walked in and got what I wanted. In that time, the drinking age was 18, and I was pretty close they figured. (I find it funny that it was 18 when I turned 18 and then they changed it to 21, right around when I turned 21. I got pretty lucky there, in THAT way.)

  So we drank a few beers then went on in, carry a few in our jackets. I had on some pretty wild punk denim with tears, and holes, and sheets torn to strips wrapped in bands around my legs. I got that from a band called Jody Foster's Army; or was it their fans? Either way: I should write about THAT party! (I wrote JFA on a sticky note, I hope  I know what that means tomorrow).

  I had been a fan of the movie for my short time living in Phoenix. (If I got this timeline out of order I will fix it soon). So I knew a FEW really good lines that THIS audience had not heard yet. I realized quickly I had better yell MY really new funny lines LOUDER so that everyone would know I was NEW, therefore maybe BETTER? (my young ego good grief). I yelled so loud and so many people loved me that for the first time I felt real. Soon as the movie was over I felt drunk again, deflated, so we left, dejected it was over. We watched the floor show walk by and Columbia and Magenta looked back at me-- grinning lewdly. At ME! (remind me to replace CAPS with italics, or learn the shortcut ffs).

  Well that was all it took for me to start going to the movie every week-end, Friday and Saturday nights and the Sunday matinee if I could swing it. Always with the beer, always with the props, and always with Richard, and sometimes Beverly. My enthusiasm did not go unnoticed, as I was eventually asked to join and absorbed into the floor show;  Richard and Beverly were thrilled as now they had an 'in' to the really cool kid's area as it were. I started getting to know the people of the floor show, starting with Frank-N-Furter, since I was playing Janet. The dude was massive, like a quarterback, but so into the role he carried it off well. I only did the show with him a few times before he was replaced... by Dan. Dan the Man. This little curly headed twerp I fell for pretty hard. Now he's some Rockabilly DJ somewhere in middle America. But back then he had a job somewhere in a business his fiance's dad owned or some shit and he was stuck in an engagement he didn't want to be in. Patty, his fiance, sometimes came to the show but usually not. Dan and I got along quite well and I sort of began to crush on him, his Frank moves were stellar and I couldn't get enough of him laying on top of me for the scenes. I'd not had any sexual contact since Drexel, no dates, who the hell was I going to 'date', wild child that I was. The floor show WAS my sexual encounter for the interim. It led to actual sex, with Dan the Man. I did not enjoy the intercourse but I did enjoy Dan. Any dude so fully in touch with his feminine side so as to be able to pull of Frank-N-Furter that well deserves some love, hetero or not.
 
   Dan was like this cool dude that took me from my sister's house and taught me cool stuff. Like, he knew about 4711 and even wore it. He had some lovely fishnets and what-not he said his fiance helped him buy. He was funny and quick witted. Everyone loved him. He managed to pull off the absolute depravity of being Frank in the floor show while juggling me ,  his fiance and a full time bank job or some shit. Good for Dan. He's now a DJ doing a rock-a-billy show and that fiance is long gone. We found each other on FB a few years back!

  We had to meet clandestinely of course. And oh fuck I have been saying that I never cheated and I haven't but I HAVE been with someone who was engaged. So now I have to sort of amend that to... I did sleep with an engaged man once. DAMMIT, I hate that I remembered that. I am an awful person.  Well that's a sorry ass thing that I did.

  In the floor show was this strange, red-eyed, wild haired, pale skinned little wraith who played Magenta. She grinned in a way that made you wonder if she was going to sample your flesh. I mean if there was a look or a pose or anything that could be done to make a person wonder if they should run, Georgina had perfected it. When you meet someone like that in a floor show, you wonder if they are really like that, or .. just cutting loose for the night, for the show. Georgie lived it. She was from England,  and although only 16, way more worldly than I at 21.  Short in stature, she was very long on oddness. She was to date the oddest person I'd ever met.

  Georgina was Magenta, Leslie was Columbia, and Greg was Riff Raff. They all lived together in a house Leslie owned. Leslie must have been about 30 something. She said she was writing a book about Francis Bacon being the actual author of Shakespearean plays or something like that, I do not remember exactly. I remember scoffing at that premise though. What did I know?  Leslie's house was very strange. There was cat shit so dried out that you could cut your foot on it (as happened to Chard once, although he deserved it), no one ever cleaned. It was a horrible mess. Georgie's room was painted BLACK entirely! And she refused to come out until the sun had gone down, unless she was absolutely drunk and forgot the sun was up. She had read "Interview with a Vampire" and fancied herself to be Claudia and even called herself by that name.

  Greg lived in the basement. Greg was skeletally thin, earning him the nick name Skeletor, which he hated. He was a kind enough fellow, but demented a bit by his love for Claudia/Georgina. She led him on a bit and he would do ANYTHING for her. Greg and I enjoyed each other's company well enough. I remember going out in the night with empty coke bottles, our faces painted and sing songing WARRIORS, come out to PLAAAAAAAYYYYYY.... clink..... clink.... clink..... WARRIORS..... clink....

  We'd dress all punk and go to the pub. Terry's British Pub, still there, still kickin' ... Terry loved it when we came in and livened the place up. We'd often get a free pint or a free snack. I loved Terry. He gave me a reason to want to walk 12 miles to be somewhere.  Terry's Penny Lane Pub

I'm just

   Imprisoned for 4 years in an apartment. No friends, nothing. Just me in my room. That was ok... when I had the heat sensitivity. I thought I was going to be stuck in this room forever, and had given up. I'd reached 180 lbs, and did nothing but play video games and go for walks.

  The heat sensitivity went away a few weeks ago. Now I want to go and do and be! But I had not prepared myself for this. I thought I was stuck in this apartment forever... destined to die of a stroke or heart failure like all the other nameless generic Americans who die every day an unsatisfied and unfulfilled life working for the man and nothing to show for it.

  I mean, the world is getting hotter, and my condition was getting worse to the point I could not even wear a coat in the winter. Now I can walk around right in the sun and frolic even. So now I can leave this apartment knowing I will not die in some boarding house that has no AC. My options opened up. But where to go?   What  I need is a van. Or a station wagon, RV, something to live in if I can't stand my living quarters/roommate. I can't live with narcissists, that's clear. I can't' live with Republicans or the like. You know, the thought of traveling around in a van for a while whilst looking for a place to live where I am welcome and wanted seems absolutely fantastic. If I could leave this apartment RIGHT THE FUCK NOW and get in a van and drive off, I'd be happy, at last. So that seems to be the solution. Start saving, buckaroo. This may take a while.

HEY! BRO! ANOTHER SETTLEMENT NEEDS YOUR HELP!

  Sis took me to get my blood drawn and I hated every minute of it. She's trying to ask me shit about my doctor's office visit and I'm in hellworld trying to concentrate, trying to speak, trying to walk... she walks up ahead of me while I stumble along, listing to starboard. I embarrass her so much she can't even OFFER help.

  The medical mall is a big impersonal shit hole where you sit and wait to get your blood drawn. The phlebotomist was nice. He reminded me of my brother David. Acne scars, but beautiful hair.  I was wondering if he was cis. Beautiful face. I really need to get out more.

  They make you sign in on a huge tablet and it says "Do you have insurance?" and I yelled at it. YES I HAVE INSURANCE THANK GOD OR they would leave me TO DIE ON THE STREET!  -- the nurse was not pleased with this.

  I learned that there is a smaller needled used for needle-phobes like me, it's called a 'butterfly'.  This information will never be lost from my brain.

  Made breakfast this morning ... a bit too late. I had forgotten I needed to fast before the draw. I made brekkie at 11 a.m. - too late to eat and then fast 6 hours before the draw. So I put it all back in the fridge. On the way home from the med mall, I was so hungry I was nodding off in the car. I look over and see a guy in a van and lo and behold, he has a vault boy bobblehead statue on his dash. I know what I must do.

  We stopped at a light and I start trying to get his attention. Finally he turns to me and I say "HEY! BRO! ANOTHER SETTLEMENT NEEDS YOUR HELP!"  he gives me this confused look and then it dawns on him and he smiles.

How a door in Alaska got cut too short.

  Well having given up on the whole moving thing I feel lighter. I wish I had gone already and was already there but I didn't make it out in time so I'm stuck for a bit.  Letting go of a plane ticket to Portland hurts quite a lot. BUT, K said when the time comes for me to visit she'll help out. So, maybe this winter I will go visit K; while living here, and saving up to ... buy a van maybe? I could buy something that I could travel in. I think that would make me pretty damn happy. So that will be the new thing. I will land on my feet.
  Next up on my agenda of must do immediately: make friends in town. I need to at least have coffee with someone once a week. And play backgammon. That dinner with M the other night was ... like magical and shit. My charisma was off the charts. The waitress was being COY for fucks sake. I think my crooked teeth show when I smile big and they disarm people-- southern folk's missing and crooked teeth always disarm folks. Except when there's banjos playing in the background. But I digress.

   So thinking about getting a van and using it to travel all over and look for a place to die. The place to live until I die that is. Sometimes I wonder if I could make it to Alaska in a van, on my own. And how dad would feel if I showed up asking for that part of my inheritance. That...  allowance of land on the lake. If they cheat me out of it somehow upon his death I'll be saddened. I sort of expect it. I get nothing from any part of the family, although when I went to visit Alaska the first time, and we were waiting for the puddle-jumper to pull up, my grandpa pressed a few 20s into my hand. "I wish it could be more"  he said to me. It was the last time I saw him.

   Ampa. You know, after that time Josh accidentally burned down the tool shed, we all stayed at the homestead for a couple of weeks rebuilding it and the outhouse.  I dug an outhouse hole, I bet that same damn hole is still in use knowing my dad's reluctance to move outhouses. I helped build an outhouse. Then I moved on to the toolshed project. First they wanted me up on the rafters since I was a carpenter's helper in the union but I had vertigo at the time and so they put me notching rafters down on the ground. I had quite a stack of big wood to cut with a circular saw and it took all day. I took only a few small quick breaks as I wanted to get it done before dark. We were far out in the bush, and using a generator to power the tools. We had lights, but not a ton of fuel until more was to arrive the next day.  So I powered through and got them all notched. Towards the end I looked up and saw Ampa in his truck. He had his head cocked and was smiling at me, nodding.  Later he said to me: "I watched you work for two hours. I just sat there and watched you. I have never seen anyone so into their work, and streamlined. I wish I had gotten to know you sooner, you would have been a great help up here".  (This was my first time meeting him, and I was in my 40s).

  Later on, Ampa and I built one of the doors to the toolhouse together. He was nearing the end of  life and his mind was still pretty good; he measured the boards for me. I cut them-- not checking his measurements. These were huge oaken doors. And now one of them was 1 foot too short!  I got a lot of grief from the family for not double checking the door but I get a kick out of knowing that one of the doors has a little addition on the bottom... looks different than the other 'perfect' door... and that's MY door. Me and Ampa's.

DISHWASHER was a noble enough job

  I love the Trap House. [ https://old.reddit.com/r/ChapoTrapHouse/ ] Only far, far leftists need poke around in there. Others will be disseminated.

 I just wrote this [–]wheeldogNo Gods, No Masters 1 point a minute ago 

   "Listen to me bub. I am 57 in Sept.; and what you describe: it is how it used to be. When I was a lad, washing dishes for a living and moonlighting as room service attendant-- I made minimum wage. I ate dinner for free every night on the hotel, I got a free room if the weather was horrible and it was too late for me to bike home. I got free coffee and free soda and a shift drink. I got breaks. I did not have insurance. But my manager paid when I cut myself on a beer bottle in the dumpster. I could afford to see a doctor if I had the flu or whatever. My manager sometimes invited me into his office to listen to DEVO and talk about garnishing the lobster bar. We had a RAPPORT! 

   I drove all over the state sightseeing. went to the beach. Took my friends! I had a cool ride too... honest to god it was a Chevy Malibu 350. Needed some work but she was something. Yeah. I was 19. Had the world by the tail. It was a good job, to be honest. Washing dishes. I got mad one of the waitresses once and slammed a whole bus tub full of dishes on the ground and broke it all up. They said "Don't do that again!" It was Richmond, VA, half white half black staff, all got along pretty well except me and that waitress... she played me haha. I was too naive. oh well.

Last time I washed dishes I stood on a concrete floor with no mat, for 9 hours, I mean I got my breaks. But it was balls to the wall and no one talked to me and I had to prep food in my downtime, with dull crappy knives too. There are so many prep dishes to be cranked out and it's like a factory. You get as many done as humanly possible until the dishes pile up and you have to go back to the dish station. And at the end of the night you take all the mats outside and spray them down and haul them back in, no help-- not that I NEEDED help but at the end of the night, a little help for the hardest job can really lift a person's spirits. That was the last 3 jobs I had... just like that. Oh one of them... you would not believe.

   New Seasons in Portland, Oregon. Best grocer in town... very sustainable practices, etc but the dishwasher is ... omg. We're talking non stop, full blast piled high dishes and pots coming down the conveyor belt all day. All day. And the dishmachine is tiny. There's no one to help on either end. You gotta put them away too. The space is terribly planned out. They treat their dishwashers like shit. It's the hardest job in the place. It's murderous. LOL, it kills me. I mean there was a time in my life when I was a kid, and I thought to myself I just wanted to be the worlds' best dishwasher. And I am pretty sure I am. BUT fuck doing it now, greedy owners and corporations have SUCKED THE LIFE out of an AMERICAN INSTITUTION!

/rant". 

I did not sleep

   Well... there must have been some sleep because there was a nightmare. I don't have nightmares much anymore, thankfully. Plagued with them in my younger years though.  So I am very tired. And hungry. Fasting in case that was what was expected of me: they don't tell me fucking jack on the phone at my doctor's office.  I expect they'd want me to fast for a blood draw, but then again maybe they will want me to have eaten to check my glucose levels? Who the fuck knows. I can always pop next door to the store and grab a donut if they  need me to eat first. I'd have called to just ask but... this fucking satellite clinic (under my hospital's umbrella) puts you on hold for like 5 minutes, every time. EVERY time. NO ONE wants to stay on hold 5 minutes and that is why they do that. So they can get away with one receptionist. But I digress. I have to walk down there in a bit. It's a mile. I need the exercise... plus I can't afford Uber both ways and I do not have a bike lock... fuck.

   Laying there at 3 a.m. with my eyes closed and a very elegant, perfectly formed sentence came to me. I thought it... then I smiled. That sentence was a shiny one. By the time I sat up and wobbled to the paper and pen, it was corrupted. It was about how I knew the year was going to be monumental and full of wild change but I did not know the depths of the morass I would sink into before the change came.

   There are perfectly formed, admirable  sentences in me! But I cannot not sleep every night and lay there hoping one will come to me. How do I dig those beauties out? String them together? When I sit to write I am basically just writing down ideas to hopefully expand upon at a later date. Because right now I cannot focus on expansion of ideas, just getting the ideas written down somehow... plus the memories. It's all such a incoherent jumble !

   wish I knew what they were going to do at the doc's office. I'm going to request an urgent meeting with my doc too. He's booked solid for weeks but c'mon man I need to fucking see you and I need to see you like two weeks ago. I WILL change docs and I will change hospitals if I have to.

     That was the worst morning I've had in some time. After not sleeping, I walk to the doc's office, and wait an hour and a half to be seen. It's freezing in there too. Why didn't I bring a jacket?  Despite having drank a half gallon of water seemingly, I could only pee a tiny bit. But it was enough for them to tell me I do not have diabetes. At all.

    So they kept me in the exam room for an hour on top of all that. It was freezing in there too. Asked me a million questions because they are re-vamping the computer system-- having to re-input everything. All the while I'm about to drop due to having not eaten, and they know this.  I'm waiting waiting waiting for the phlebotomist. They never come. Turns out they left for the day. I have to go to the MEDICAL MALL tomorrow... which is a 15 dollar Uber ride. My clinic is within walking distance but they can't have it done there, not for a month. Booked solid. I want to talk to my doctor, he's booked for a month. I know that's typical in many places but I have been asking to talk to him for ages and he's not getting back to me. I love this guy too. They're going to make him quit piling work on him like this. The place is getting stupid busy. Stupid busy. They need to expand. Now.

   I finally get to talk to the nurse and we decide it's possibly my thyroid. It was perfect last time I went in so it didn't even occur to me. But after talking to the nurse for 40 minutes (I was glad I got that time with her at least. Worth the wait, she's pretty caring) it seems like it might be that my thyroid went off the rails PLUS at the same time the stress and anxiety from living with my sister for 4 years having piled up and now it's ... get out or die.

   It does not feel prudent to move house across the country at this time. I will be re-evaluating everything about everything. I sank down into some weird place and now I have to pull out of it but I don't think I'd best land in a big city and give up my insurance just yet. Portland, abandoned. That is causing some big sad but hey.  I just gotta get out of here first. I can move somewhere near town. I'll get started on that immediately.

   They really need to re-arrange the clinic if they are going have so many patients that they keep accepting. It is ridiculous for me to sit in a room for 2 hours then sit in another freezing room for an  hour only to miss the very reason I came there-- to get my blood taken. Only to find out that the vampires have already left for the day... while I was waiting for them. Unacceptable bullshit... they should have taken my blood immediately, taken a urine sample immediately, then sat me down. You got old infirm people sitting all up in this clinic waiting for hours while the nurses and docs all stand around the computer trying to learn this new fucking system they've been fighting for weeks now. Jesus christ this is hellworld.

BOYD pt. 2-- JOHN PURDY

   I've always meant to write about John Purdy but never did. I think it's because it's a very painful story to tell.

   My mother and I lived in Chesterfield, Virginia when I was littler. Me: about 13 or so when we moved there. It was a small horse ranch; a 3 bedroom house, a huge lovely old red barn with white trim, horse corrals and paddocks and fields. It was all run down though; but serviceable. Mother and I spent hours scruvving the accumulated oil layers off the cabinets in the kitchen, fixing fences, painting. Picking up trash--  lots of room to roam and have a horse and grow corn and the like. It would have been idyllic had my family not been so dysfunctional. I grieve the loss of it daily. I called it "Ginger-Bred Farms" as I wanted to breed my Shetland pony and raise them to sell. I had no idea what was actually going to happen out there... wild debauchery on the part of my siblings mostly with a healthy side of unrestrained wild ruffian hellcat me zooming around on a pony and then a motorbike then a full sized horse.
 
   My mother was a dog groomer and I was in junior high. I will write a seperate story about that debacle. The siblings came and went, living there sometimes, moving back to Alabama sometimes. I had months without them, months with them around. During one particular summer when there was only my brother David living with us, mother gets a wild hair and joins a touring Passion Play of all things. I managed later to sneak a peak at her diary musings from this time and there was not one mention of me: only debauchery, drinking and flirting. It was a 3 month tour.

    During her absence I was left with a Mormon family down the street. As a wild child used to being out on my horse all day every day and doing whatever I wanted to , this was terribly restricting. I rebelled at every turn. I was not to listen to my KISS albums (lectured about how KISS stood for KINGS IN SATANS' SERVICE) even when the house was empty... not allowed to ride my horse with boys unescorted (I had  a friend I rode with often. He was not allowed to ride with me without an escort so he stopped coming around). I was not allowed to hang out in my old room in our own house alone. I would do my farm chores then have to come home to the Mormons where I was just another mouth to feed.  It was a very lonely and horrible 3 months for me. I was so glad when mother came home and I got to go home too although home was only a 1/8th of a mile away... my gay brother was staying up there alone. He was 23 and living it up with the house to himself.

   When mother came back she told me that during the tour she had reconnected with a very old friend, an actor she'd known in Alabama. John Purdy. I remembered him from my childhood when I'd hung out backstage at the theaters my mom directed at. I think he and my sister were in a play once (Can-Can-- they did the Apache Dance).

   Well I didn't think much more about John for some time. My mother found a cowboy in a personal ad in the back of a magazine and he comes to pick us up with this old Dodge Power Wagon pickup and a four horse trailer. We pack up everything in that truck and pack the horses (I don't know what all I had to leave behind. I don't recall but it must have been a lot)-- oh that's where my toys went-- and off we go to Arizona. I'm 14. I leave behind my friends, my other pony, my trails. My woods. My land. They take me to Flagstaff.

  I don't fit in, I'm an outcast at school. I get in trouble. My PE teacher sexually harasses me. I can't do math. I skip those classes. I am always high. I am dealing pot and drinking at school.

  Mother sends me to spend a summer with John. And on my last night home before the trip, I remember sitting on the bed I share with my mother at the age of 16, in our tiny apartment that has no shower-- hearing my mother from the bathroom saying "OH, did I tell you that John was GAY?"

  Here I am. I'm 16. I'm boy crazy. I have like 3 suitcases and a trumpet of all things. I have boxes of stuff for some reason. I sit next to a dude on the Greyhound that fingers me while I sit there paralyzed. He had a blanket ready for such a thing. I can't fight back.
Fortunately he has weed and that makes it palatable.

  I arrive in the LA bus terminal and some guy grabs my stuff and puts it all in his car. I didn't know you could pretend to be a taxi driver and not be a taxi driver. He takes me to John's house and when we get there he's got his hands between my legs. I am panicked. What if I fight back, will he take off with my stuff? I can't fight back, I'm paralyzed. I just sit there, terrified. He does his thing for a while and eventually loses interest thank god and drops me off with my stuff. I pay him.

  There was no way I was going to tell John about any of this. He was at work when I arrived, and I managed to get all the boxes in then read his note for me to come see him at his work. So I put a KISS tape in my cassette player and head on down the road to see him at his work.

   Quite the walk... a couple of miles, past the citrus trees and the lovely Bungalows. The day was radiant. Past the supermarket (KINGS?), all the way to to the Antique Mart.  And there he was, John, in the middle of cutting some carpet for the mart. He was helping his friend Bea. And there was another man named... Don? Also a gay man. Those three were as thick as thieves.

   ********************************************************
 That first morning I was sent to the store down the road a piece, for breakfast ingredients. Tasked with cooking breakfast, I started to do it the way I knew and poor John had to glide over and help out. I'd never put spinach or cottage cheese in eggs... nor used fresh garlic (he taught me how to saute, that morning in 1978!).  Another thing I'd not encountered before was 7 grain bread! To see brown bread for one thing and on top of that there were visible seeds. To be perfectly honest I was afraid to try it. But once I tasted the cold fresh butter on the warm grainy toast I was in heaven. To this day the taste of fresh cold salted butter on grain toast takes me back to that first morning with John and the crew.  I still make my eggs that way most mornings. Saute onions and fresh garlic, with salt and pepper. Then add spinach; then break the eggs in the pan and put in dollop of cottage cheese, and some 1/2 & 1/2. Mix it all up and it is so moist. Ah, John.

   After breakfast we worked on laying the carpet-- I was introduced to adult jokes and terribly embarrassed yet intrigued. " We're Laying carpet " -- "At least someone is getting laid " etc.  I hesitate here to tell the reader that I did not know what getting 'laid' meant and it had to be explained to me when I asked what was so funny. The look on my face when I grasped said explanation must have been priceless because they guffawed and I'm pretty sure John slapped his knee for emphasis.

  I was in top form being a part time ranch hand and a high school drop out (just the month before!) working in a bronze foundry. [When I have a nice grey beard and have someone's kids sitting around listening to my stories no one is going to question my gender when I say my first job was smelting bronze!] Naturally the brunt of the labor fell to me, the young yokel. By the time we were done it was dark out. We'd none of us eaten since brekkie so it was decided we go to ARRIBA! for nachos. Arriba was to become our home of a night; gathered around the table, antique loving adults laughing and flirting and one little ragamuffin 16 year-old sitting there filling up on nachos, listening to adult stories and not knowing half of what is going on in them, and getting huge spoonfuls of Margarita ice from Edward under the table. 10 spoons and I was as happy as they were. Ed was John's FWB and long time confidante. He looked like a cop on a 70s action show. Longer red hair, big stash, patrolman sunglasses,bellbottoms, thick white leather belt,  you know the look. John looked... Jewish. No getting around that. Ed looked middle American cop. Beatrice looked... like a soccer mom. But we didn't call them that then.

  After a raucous evening of drinks and Mexican appetizers we finally left around midnight and went back to the Mart. Drunk as fools all, naturally no one wanted the party to end. John and Ed saunter off into the kitchen and Bea hands me the longest extension cord I'd seen in my life to date, tells me to plug it in over yonder and then carry the male plug up to the roof. I do as instructed and find myself going up this staircase then a ladder and on up to a hatch. I open the hatch and go out on the roof with the cord. There's chairs and a table up there... and you can look right down on the street below. We were about 4 stories up.

  The three musketeers climb up and bring with them booze, a blender, ice and some watermelons. I was about to get ripped and eat watermelon my first night in Pasadena. We got belligerent. I told them stories of my childhood and they immediately become protective over me from then on out.  John promised to talk to my mother about some things, they all promised to teach me things I needed to know and had not been taught. I felt like I had a family for the first time in my life. It was a good night. There was a group hug at the end and then Beatrice, drunk as a lord, decided to throw the watermelon rinds down on the sidewalk. I got involved-- and of course it was me the cops saw when they pulled up. I ran down the ladder and hid so well no one found me for two hours. The cops warned John and John pooh-poohed them and it was just a big laugh the next day. I had some experience running from the cops as a youth. And hiding.

  My life was rich that summer. I was a nervous wreck and anxious and scared of course, as usual, but I felt part of. Walking to the mart every morning and doing work with John-- whatever was asked of me. He 'loaned me out' to the neighboring antique dealers. I remember there was this one lesbian couple, first ones I'd ever seen (that I knew of). They were middle aged. They were creepy. One of them asked me to go up and down the ladder to the loft above their shop to get items. And when I was going up they were at the bottom of the ladder watching and when I came down the ladder I backed right into her. Me being me, I froze and could not move, nor could tell anyone this was happening: so I refused to go over to the lesbian's shop anymore. Not because I wasn't intrigued but because it felt abusive.

  John's apartment was something I'd  never seen before: spartan on purpose. The living room was so sunny and it had in it one huge baroque table and one big beanbag. Oh and a candle stand in every room. At night, everything was candles. In the kitchen: a breakfast nook, also sunny. Lacey breeze blown curtains, squeaky clean glass, an old refrigerator (small!), tiny but well organized and laid out kitchen. I loved it immediately! Such a huge departure from the utilitarian junk my mom pulled from dumpsters to furnish our houses when there was no man to buy us decent furniture. I'd not ever been to any sort of 'bohemian' dwelling like this. It thrilled me. To the bone.

  John was a thoughtful and philosophical man-boy. Approximately 40 at the time, he'd been an actor all his life but only in the past decade become an antique dealer. He had a little car that had no back seat-- for transporting antiques. I adored the little foreign car. Everything about John was unique to me. He smoked pot too BUT his pot was very different from the shake I'd gotten used to dealing in school. His was-- sophisticated. John would smoke me up and then we would read from this book in his bedroom, where there were tons of candles and it was magical. I have been plagued with desire to remember the book's title. I suspect it was something like the Bhagavad Gita; but I cannot be certain. Many is the night I have gone to bed bidding myself to remember it in a dream. Whichever book it was, it was beautiful and I was mesmerized. We read to one another whilst rubbing each other's fingers with oil. A simple sort of thing but one I'd never even imagined. Those reading sessions were so important to me. He taught me something so important. And how then to go back to my cold mother and cold surroundings? After nights and nights of that? How? I have never recovered from it.

  John was an imp as well. There was a 3rd gay fellow at the Mart named Sheldon. He was a larger fellow, jovial, stereotypical one might say. Effeminate he would have been called. Sheldon did not hang out with John and Ed as much as they would have liked; he was more elitist and liked his more elitist friends despite working the Mart with John and Ed.  It was my understanding that "Shelley" (as they called him behind his back) thought he was a better anitquer than J & E & B. So Sheldon talked himself up among the clientele and they loved his lavishly appointed apartment (he seemed to have more money than anyone and kept most of the antiquese he did not sell) so they hung out there quite a bit. Any given night could find 4-10 - ish people sitting about in Shel's salon drinking wine and smoking dope. For some reason this all bothered the 3 friends and we set out to do something about it.

  John gave me some sheet music (I'd brought my trumpet with me of all things) and told me to learn the song BY HEART. I put the mute in the bell and started practicing that hour. We'd work all day then come home and practice -- John would be cooking dinner and listening, nodding approval as I perfected the tune. He wanted it to be as comical in places as it was beautiful in others. Some trilling would be in order, some raspberries. I was having the time of my life. John directed me like a crazed conductor-- high as a lord. The older neighbors must have been rolling their eyes.

   The appointed night for whatever they were planning arrived and I with my memorized song and butterflies for days got into the car to ride to my fate. Ed and John in front, me in the back with BEA on the hard metal car floor. I had my trumpet case in my lap. John parks and we have to walk a few blocks... we walk up the sidewalk, top a hill and I'm confronted with the most terrifying sight I've ever seen: Hollywood at night.   John and Ed inform me it's not the best neighborhood and to keep my eyes peeled. Ed's a fair sized guy so he takes my trumpet for me.  We walk in a bunch and I'm terrified! Every shadow holds a murderer or a rapist! Cars are honking and there are so many lights! But I soldier on and we get to an abandoned lot next to a tall old apartment building. The building looked like it had been somewhat grand in its past. John and Ed and Bea count floors, find the right room and its windows. I am instructed to get ready to play my heart out.

  The song was "The Man in the Moon is a Lady"; and I played it with trembling gusto as the 3 comrades sang to the 5th floor balcony.  I will put the lyrics here for your entertainment as you imagine 'Shelly' coming to the balcony and being irate then hamming it up as his social circle ate it up with huge spoons.
****************************************************

The man in the moon is a lady,

A lady in lipstick and curls;

The cow that jumped ovah cried,

"Jumpin' Jehovah,

I think it's just one of the girls."

She winks at the stars from her bed of green cheese,

That isn't a night-gown,

It's a Saturn chemise.

Oh, her friends are the stars and the planets,

She sends the Big Dipper a kiss;

So don't ever offend her,

Remember her gender,

The man in the moon is a miss.

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   John wanted me to learn some social skills and to assert myself more so one day he drove me to this building in LA and told me to go buy a ticket at the cashier. It was a ticket for a Universal Studios tour!  But I was terrified to go to the window myself. John pushed me out of the car literally and shoved me to the ticket booth where I did finally purchase the ticket and eventually went on the tour. 1978-- "JAWS" had been a HUGE hit and "BRUCE" the mechanical shark was the main attraction. I'll never forget sitting in the trolley as we roll past a body of water and up pops BRUCE! We all recoiled in terror. Fantastic shit. And if you ever mention Jaws I will always mention that his name is BRUCE.  The trolley went on to go over this bridge that 'collapsed', like in the movie "Earthquake", and then it went through a parting of the Red Sea like in the 10 Commandments. It was quite exciting for its time. I even bought a shirt at the end of the tour, which I'd kill to have now. All in all, a good day. I was still drying off from the Jaws exhibit when John picked me up. Not too long after that he took me to a thrift store and bought me some clothing-- a fringed leather jacket, a silk shirt a la disco style, etc. He bought me my first real haircut at a salon- his salon. I'd never heard of Vidal Sassoon. He bought me some shampoo and conditioner as well. And he got me some Yves St. Laurent cologne. I no longer looked like a hayseed. He taught me how to pluck my eyebrows, and how to find a bra at the thrift store. My mother had neglected to teach me anything about bras so I'd gone without for most of school and been teased relentlessly-- it was nice to be able to walk around without worry for once. (If a teen girl comes up to you in school and goes to pull your bra strap to snap it and their fingers find NO STRAP, you are in for it. Or that is how it was back then.) John taught me how to shave my legs, with my own razor. He would talk to me from the other room while I was bathing , ask me about my day if I'd not been with him.  Bea was a real estate agent on the side and I often went to open houses to help her out as well. John liked to hear about those times.

   Things went along fairly swimmingly until I'd been there about 2 months and John needed some privacy. So he asked if I would be ok with going to Bea's house for a week, so he could take a break and have some alone time. I agreed, reluctantly. When I got to Bea's house, I was shown a bedroom, it was messy, there were two beds, one was to be mine, make myself at home, etc.  I moped around poking about until people arrived home later. Bea's daughter was my age, only slightly less tomboyish than me, but with confidence, and attitude. She took right to me and asked if I wanted to hang out at a party in Hollywood Hills later. Um, yes? but what to wear? Other than my new hip leather jacket of course. And the beret John gave me.

  She told me to pick anything in her closet. I remember her saying she had to go do something and would be back later to pick me up for the party and meanwhile to try on and wear anything I wanted. I tried on stuff and then saw a pair of her pants crumpled on the floor and for some reason needed to try those on. When I got them on they were the perfect fit. I'd not worn fitted girls' jeans before and these really were sexy; and something about wearing HER pants, previously worn, really turned me on, I wore the pants around admiring myself in the mirror and developing a crush on the girl via her pants. I can't explain it.

  I did find something clean to wear and we had a lovely time at the party. There were stars! And the lights floating in the sky-- the houses in the mountains-- and the way the party house was on stilts, overlooking the valley. In 1978 the HOLLYWOOD sign had been damaged by the earthquake and not yet repaired. I could see it from the party house. We got pretty drunk, smoked some weed, went walking around the street looking around at the houses, and eventually found our way home. I was crushed out fully by this time. It was a long week. We had fun though, I remember feeling part of.

  It was my first girl-crush acknowledged as such. When I told John I thought I might be bi-sexual he said all kinds of stuff like 'could be a phase' etc. I told my mother when I went home and she said that all gays should abstain from sex their entire life if they can't change otherwise they are going to hell, and where oh where did she go wrong?? Never mind that she had touted the artistic vision, dedication, wit, humor, intelligence etc of 'the gays' for so long that I thought they were angels on earth. Now I am told that while they are wonderful, they are not to be emulated for their sexual orientation, that lands you in HELL. This is the first time my mother has told me I am going to hell. And it won't be the last. She goes on her crying jag and blaming her narcissistic self and doing her woe is me's and what not and I am left out in the cold pretty much, no longer any kind of favored child with any kind of hope for the future. You could see her dreams of salvation die and her eyes go flat. And that my friends would have been the PERFECT time for her to tell me that my brother was gay too and maybe I could talk to him. NOPE. That is kept from me for quite some time to come-- right up until the months before he died of AIDS. Thanks, mom. You're a fucking peach, you know that?
  ***************
  Soon as I was out of Bea's house the crush on her daughter faded and I went back to John's but things were diff now, the 3 Musketeers had banded together in my absence and decided that it was time for me to go back home soon. Summer was drawing to a close and I had to go at some point. I wonder now, since I had dropped out of HS, if any of them ever considered having me stay instead of going back to Flagstaff and my narcissist mother. But it did not happen and I was put on a bus to return home. Some boxes, the things I had bought at the thrift store, and my new shampoos and the like, were to be sent later. I left those boxes at Bea's house and they never did get sent.

  Bittersweet last couple of weeks at John's and the Mart... a few more Arriba! nights, and another party on the roof, and some never-to-be-forgotten memories: like the time John and Ed and I found a mannequin torso and put her in the toilet bowl with a cigarette hanging from her lips half smoked... cigarette ash all around the floor, and a disheveled wig with a flouncy blouse and big movie star sun glasses, some pearls... mimicking Beatrice. We unrolled toilet paper all the way from the door to the toilet just so it could not be missed (knowing that Bea was always first to unlock the building and would find it before anyone else). A few hearty guffaws and a long lasting in-joke stemmed from that prank I can tell you. We'd put a sign by the mannequin that read : fancy a fag?
   
     But leave I did, on a bus, for a long ride back to Flagstaff. My stepfather picked me up, and he had no idea what I'd been through, the changes, any of it. He drove silently home, and did not ask me anything about my trip. It occurs to me now I never asked him to drive me anywhere or do anything for me. He took me to watch some Indians roping calves ONCE. He took me to dinner a handful of times. I knew him not at all.

   So life on the ranch was interesting having been to California for the first time in my life and LOS ANGELES! Pasadena! I'd been to the Rose Bowl and I'd been to Universal Studios and the Hollywood Hills and the beach even! I'd seen it all. Now life on the ranch was absolutely impossible. I called John like always had before, every week, my mentor. We read that from book and we talked about our lives. He told me to stay strong until I could find a good job and leave Arizona on my own.

  A few weeks later a friend of my mother's was traveling from Flagstaff fo Los Angeles and wondered if I would like to ride along, to visit John again and stay a day while she was at business. She'd pick me up on the way home and I'd be welcome company for the ride, with a day to see John again.
Sounded fun and perfect, One day surely he would not mind. I start calling him. He had no answering machine. I let the phone ring.

  The ride was going to leave in a day or so and I kept calling. I started to worry. I called every hour from then on, for 2 days solid. Nothing. I gave up on the ride, because she had to go when she had to go, but I kept calling him. For a week or so. It turns out that John had been lying dead in his bed the whole time I was letting the phone ring for like 20 times. I didn't find out until many weeks later. John.

  I'm sorry.