Time

 Dear Will:

Jonah and the Whale by Pieter Lastman

I had a couple of weeks of just plain happiness after San Francisco.  I was looking forward to ending my history of depression with ketamine therapy.  I was feeling able to call people.  And then I got triggered.  I had a conversation at coffee hour with a new church member who has Alz.  Then my movie on Sunday night, Metropolis, flopped.  Then a friend told me I'd hurt her feelings last June.  There's also the fact of completion.  You know how I always got when I finished a project -- post show downs.

We were asked to write about a myth in my poetry class and this is what I came up with:

 

THE COMPLAINT

 

 

Have you ever been inside a damn fish?  You think you got so much to say about it.  Sayin’ it ain’t necessarily so and all.  Well, let me tell you it stinks.  It smells like your cat vomited out its dinner, ate it again, then shit it out, ate that then threw it up again.  It feels like you’re bein’ squished by some huge, wet, slippery snake.  It’s dark as a dungeon, deep as a well, you know what I’m sayin’?  But I wasn’t inside for no three days.  No, your boy didn’t need that much time to tap out. But I sure didn’t wanta go to that city, I tell you what.  It was a hella tough assignment. Was why I was on the damn boat in the first place.  He tells me, “Go straighten ‘em out in Nineveh.”  I said, “Hell no, I’m goin’  the other direction, if you don’t mind.”  Then He blows up this storm so I gotta jump the boat and wham!  I’m bait.  I’m thinkin’, “Really?  Really?  This is my reward for years of service, a fucking fish?  So I hollered, “I give, I give” and that thing barfed me back on the beach. So I did it, preached destruction and hellfire if they didn’t shape up.  Just hopin,  y’know, they’d keep sinnin’. No such luck.  No Sodom, no salty lady, no punishment, no rain of fire. Just a hundred thousand people sorry as shit for their sins.  I couldn’t stand it. So I’m sittin’ here under this tree suckin’ my teeth and starin’ at a  beautiful big city that should be smoke and ash.  Ain’t no profit in bein’ a prophet these days.

More Out Coming

 Here's some data about an important quality that Will and I shared.  While both of us worked hard on what we enjoyed and what we were specifically assigned, both of us also didn't feel compelled to do "extra" work on assignments we didn't enjoy.  So we stayed married even at a time when most people would have divorced - in part because of lethargy.

This old fact occurred to me this morning as I thought about how often people need to "come out" if they don't fit the profile.  But why?  Why is "coming out" important? 

I realized last week that I don't even know what label to use anymore. One of my Exploring Faith Matters students in talking about the feminist reading they had for last night mentioned the "13 different genders" and then said something about how challenging it must be to wake up and decide every morning.  Hahahaha...but she doesn't know yet that I'm whatever I am.

Do I have to be politically correct when I label myself?

So, here's a little poem I wrote a couple of weeks ago in response to the prompt, "Write about an object that was important to you in the past.

JACKET

 

It doesn’t smell like leather when I pull it from the closet.

Its black has become gray or brown in spots.

 

The five steel zippers with their stainless teeth

have lost none of their bite.  I slide hands down

 

satin lined sleeves and zip them tight. My fingers find

no holes in the pockets. The epaulets and studs still

 

speak a style once built for combat. Years left of wear.

But not for me.  The decades since San Francisco

 

took me as the man I thought I was have widened hips and belly. 

Age and life in Oregon have softened hunter’s eyes.

 

So I bundle my old armor into bubble wrap and box

and post it to a thrift store on that street in that City

 

where I bought it: the city where I left my heart,

where every gesture had a meaning back in the day

when freedom was in the air there,

when I wore my keys dangling on my left hip,

when I wore a black bandana in my rear pocket,

before I’d ever heard of body dysmorphia.

 

And after our visits to the city, when we returned to Idaho 

smelling it reminded me of that purchase at Hard On Leathers.

 

Wearing it in those days (before the Plague made

my natal gender safer than my chosen one) I felt protected.

 

Safe in black leather and black jeans, I stalked the streets,

my head on a swivel, my eyes dead except in the safety

 

of the Castro or Noe Valley:  a short, plump chick

costumed in Tom of Finland gear. So long ago.

 

Remembering the young queer I once was, I put a paperback

of John Rechy’s The Sexual Outlaw into the inside pocket

 

and UPS past proof of my pirate phallus to Polk Street Thrift

making peace with the living and the dead.

 

San Francisco

 Dear Will:

work by Anselm Kiefer, SFMOMA

I got back from San Francisco a week ago.  I meant to write to you earlier but when I came back I fell into my basement dweller self again, not calling anyone, not writing my thank-you notes, just smoking weed all day and sitting in the basement.  Oh, okay.  Yeah, I did have a great dinner with Stacey on Thursday night and I saw my dentist, my contractors, and the Tuesday group.  So I saw people.  And soon I will be getting my brain softened so I won't keep believing my friends don't call me because they really can't stand me and only put up with me because I force them to.   Soon...maybe by November, I'll actually be able to look at my friends' social media feeds without feeling so whiney!  

I know, I know.  Woulda been nice if my craziness had stopped while you still had your brains.  I remember one time you said, early on, that you didn't have time to deal with your own neuroses because you were so busy dealing with mine.

I missed you terribly the day I got to San Francisco and got sick in a restaurant and started crying, thinking that I couldn't function.  But I went to MOMA and the theatre and the symphony on Saturday and to Grace Cathedral and the Opera on Sunday.  I was popping weed gummies all day each day and felt great.

Do you remember the wonderful Rigoletto we saw in San Francisco, way back in the day?  Inside the set shaped like a box? I think that was San Francisco, anyway.  Could have been Portland. 

I think I was able to love San Francisco and be there by myself happily because it was mine before I met you.  New York was ours, never mine.  Except that one time.

I thought of you most often when I was in MOMA.   Especially when I saw the great Anselm Keifer.  Remember when we saw his work in Germany?  And then went to the great retrospective in the City?  His work is so vast and often ugly yet beautiful in its ugliness.

Like my grief for you.

Love,

Kake

Back to School

 My teacher friends are back at work. And I'm back at work this morning.  I'm taking a poetry class out of Sarah Lawrence Writing Center.  Our first assignment isn't due until next week but I've already written it.  Our prompt was to write something about doorways and have two questions.  So I gave myself the challenge of writing a sestina.  So, ok.  It ain't great.  Doesn't have enough physical detail.  But pretty good for two hours of writing.

AFTER 50 YEARS

 

 

Our first kiss was in the doorway

of your duplex. Chill autumn air

Invited us inside. Why wait?

Do you remember?  When we kissed

you were confused.  It was too fast.

It was too soon. I was too young.

 

I didn’t know that you were young

as well. I didn’t see a  doorway

to something permanent. “Love fast,

die young,” my plan. All up in air

the moment that we hugged and kissed

because I was too hot to wait

 

for freedom. And you couldn’t wait  

for a companion, so took a young

thing home. Were you surprised we kissed?

When we stepped through your doorway

what was your hope?  I sought to air

my youthful lust. Some called me “fast:”

 

an old insult. But we made fast

to love.  Remember the wait

during the blood test?  Orange August air

made us sweat.  We were both too young,

Me 18, you 43.  Doorway

to disaster! But when we kissed

 

something connected.  When we kissed

we didn’t know we’d be bound fast.

You didn’t hoist me through your doorway

and sometimes I couldn’t wait

for satisfaction and sought young

things myself.  “Give her the air,”

 

they said, who didn’t know us air

for each other. When last I kissed

your flesh, it chilled.  I am now young

again in this world, a long fast

of kisses ahead.  A long wait

until I pass through that doorway

 

to find you young, eternity’s air

a doorway bright, sun- kissed:

Love holding us fast. Till then I wait.

Drama - yuck

photo by hidefumi ohmichi on Unsplash

 I talked with a friend (A) yesterday who had experienced a weird communication from the friend I "broke up with" back in January (B).  I told her about the break up and then reassured her that friend B was a good person but that I had grown afraid of him because of my interpretations of his communication behaviors.

I kind of miss friend B but how can I restart a relationship with someone I'm afraid of?  Does my fear make sense?  Yes and no.  What is the reality?  I had a relationship with B for over a decade.  He did nice things for me.  I thought we had a dependable relationship.

And then against my expectations, he expected way more communication skill from me than was possible after Will's death.  I behaved inappropriately and then he blew up in a way that scared me.

I am someone who has had my world turned violently upside down a few times.  And when I say "turned upside down," what I mean is that an event occurred which undercut my understanding of how the universe was functioning.  These are times of extreme disruption of perception.

1. ghosting by first lover
2. oldest sister - "The Hero" - killing her child and trying to kill herself
3. kidnap-rape by strangers and disbelief by family members 
4. Will showing that he didn't accept a core aspect of me after we were bonded
5. relationship with emotionally abusive Irish Catholic
6. death and smelly rotting of best friend in grad school
7. accusation of sexual harrassment by good friend in the workplace
8. dementia of my sweetheart (a saga of dealing with piss and shit)
   
9. death of my partner of 50 years, 66 days, and 15 hours.
   

Here's the point.  I don't think my lost friend understands how PTSD has shaped my brain.  I'm about to read the book, The Body Keeps the Score.  Hopefully, this will help me to understand my fears and why I can't talk to certain people after a blow up.  After I read the book I'll think more about hiring a mediator to help our friendship restart.

The Shooting in Bend:  As I said to some friends the other day, as someone who experienced violence early, I think it's a privilege to live in America without having experienced it.

Memories

 I got an email this morning from my old friend Rosemary.  We were really good friends in the late 70s, early 80s.  She sent me a pdf of this old picture of her and Will in our backyard in Pocatello.

NSFW - Sexy Will

 My sweet Will was a highly physical person.  He lived in the material world in a way that I didn't and don't.  He was very much aware of his body -- all its sensations, positive and negative.  Personality test-wise (for those who "believe" in Myers/Brigs) he was an ISTP -- focused on the material world. 

Thus, it's not surprising that he enjoyed sex up until almost the end.  Not that we were enjoying it together.  During the years of his dementia, we stopped having sex together but he didn't stop enjoying himself.

It was sex that brought us together.  In a later post I'll finally get the story of our "coming together" in print.  But here I'll note that Will and I had a lot of sex over the years in a lot of different places, including the car and in a bedroom at a friend's apartment during a New Year's Eve party.

But today I want to post two pictures of him that I've packed away.  I forget when I made these -- probably in the early Aughts. I decided to present the images here in the state they were in when I took them off the walls to take pictures.  Both works will now go back into my "Will" chest.

 The tall picture with the six Polaroids was framed by Sandy and Steve Miller at Sunbird.  It was actually in a "human figure" art show. 

This collage, with it's pearls and marbles, was supposed to be a solar system image with Will's cock at the center.  Unfortunately, the wire that I bought got very bendy and crinkly so it didn't turn out the way I envisioned it.  But I didn't want to try again so here it is.  (With art as with writing, I don't like "do overs.")