The Lost Art of the Mighty Pen (or pencil)

Writing, it's just not done anymore. Technically, I'm not even writing this. I'm not typing it either. I'm simply speaking into a headset and software is translating my voice into text. Isn't that great?

35 years ago, I would be hand writing this. Just like everybody else. I wrote more often than most people, having the letter begging itch and all. I used to write five or six letters per week. and I would receive handwritten letters in return. Granted, some of the people I correspond with had very poor handwriting. Which was a challenge, but just a normal consequence of hand written communication. Losing a bit of the content of the letter wasn't completely unexpected. It was more important to have received the letter than to fully understand every bit of information it contained. Although good handwriting is always appreciated.

 

I've written a few letters to people I know over the last couple of years. I don't think they knew what to make of it. If I had sent them an email with the same information, they would've responded almost immediately. Or certainly within a day or so. But to expect a handwritten response to letter seems to be too much to expect. I wonder what reaction the person had when they opened up an envelope to find a friendly letter inside from a friend? I have a feeling that they were just so very slightly annoyed with me. Probably not annoyed to the point of even being aware of it -- but worrying about what to do in response to this unusual form of communication. Did I expect a handwritten letter in return? Why had I written to them in this archaic manner? Was it a joke? A test?

I don't know if the art of handwriting a casual letter to a friend has already been lost. I don't even know how to research this, and I haven't yet tried. I hope people still write to each other, but I think email and texting has pretty much co-oped this former means of communication. A lot of people might tell me that the new forms of communications are signs of progress. And they would be correct. Yet, not all progress succeeds in completely replacing it's old counterpart in a satisfactory manner.

I think I will write a letter to somebody I know today. I don't know who, but to somebody I know fairly well. I wonder if they will write back. Maybe they'll send me an email in response to the letter. That would be less satisfying than a hand written letter but better than no response at all. 

Note to reader: When was the last time you wrote to a friend, folded the piece of paper, placed it into an envelope, affixed a stamp and mailed it (snail-mail)? If you wrote to a friend today, would you know what to say in the letter?

Just so you'll know, if you write to me, I will write back!

Specific Readers Wanted

This Blog Caters to:

Secular Humanists
Ignostics
Atheists
Nontheists
Agnostics
Theological Noncognitivists
Skeptics
and Disney Cartoonists
(and pretty much everyone else)

Choose Wisely

I went through this gate two times every day for 9 months and
I don't remember the Slow Down and Live Sign at all!

My Extended Family (unabridged version)

     When I was young, it was customary to go "visiting" on Sundays. I'm not sure if was prearranged or if we just showed up at a relative's house. It seems likely that we would call ahead. In any case, visiting was a fairly common weekend activity. It always occurred on Sundays in the afternoon.

     This is how keeping in touch with the extended family was done. I don't know if people still do that today. Perhaps they do. But when I was young it was something that many people did. Back then, there was no Internet providing email or cell phones helping people stay in touch through video chat and texting. Visiting was the only way you’d have real face to face conversations and meaningful family-wide socialization. Also in the past, people were more aware of making long-distance phone calls in order to keep their telephone bills in check. So, even the limited experience of phone conversation was not always a viable way to keep in touch. These days, most people have some sort of regional calling plan and don't have to be as concerned about toll calls, but a voice-only communication method lacks body language, which is a vital component of communication between people. Perhaps, unfortunately, the people of today rely too much on technology to provide a lot of their extended family interactions. I think the connection to the extended family identity is lost if the practice of “visiting” is no longer a routine activity.

     Visiting was always an exciting event, at least in most cases.

     Once every six weeks or so, we would visit my father's parents. They lived in four different places during the years that I knew them. The first time I can remember visiting them they were living on McBride Street in Northbridge, MA. I'm pretty sure this is where my father grew up. Perhaps not in the same apartment but I'm pretty sure they lived somewhere on that street when he was young. That would have been in the early 1930's. They lived upstairs in a multi-family building on the second floor. I have no memory of the inside of this apartment. But I do remember the nearby park and its baseball field.

     Soon thereafter, they moved to a building one street over from the McBride St. apartment. This apartment was a textbook example of what is called a tenement. In later years, they moved to a smaller apartment in yet another multi-family building that was very close to their son Lucien's house. Lucien was, of course, my father's brother.

     The last place that they lived was on Main Street in Rockdale in an apartment that was very close to the bar that my grandfather used to frequent. I have pictures of him sitting in a booth with his friends, all of which had a beer in front of them and I think most of them were smoking cigarettes. The Main St. apartment is the place that I remember the best. It also was in a multi-family building and once again, they lived on the second-floor.

     Whenever we visited, my father spent most the time sitting in the living room with his father and they would watch a baseball game. There was very little conversation. My mother, brother, sister and I sat at the kitchen table with my grandmother. My grandmother spoke very little English. And my mother spoke very little French. So the visit wasn't very exciting. The highlight of the visit would be when my grandmother opened a bottle of Coke, and gave each of us kids a cup. We didn't drink soda at home, so this wildly exotic carbonated beverage seemed like a treat. Oh yes, my grandmother also occasionally took hits off of a bottle of Vermont Maid pancake syrup.

     On most Sundays, we visited one of my aunt’s or uncle’s homes. My mother had three brothers and six sisters and my father had two brothers. If we visited them in an orderly one-after-the-other fashion, we would only see each relative about once a year. But the visits were not evenly spaced out. My parents had favorites and we would visit them more often than some of the others. The black sheep of the family were my mother's brother Ernie's wife Virginia and my mother's brother Sam's wife Joyce. They were visited less often. There were other relatives that we saw very often, so they didn't even need to be on the visiting schedule. 

     With the exception of visits to grandparents, all the visits we made included seeing cousins. I had a lot of cousins.

     Here are my mother’s six sisters and their children:

• My Aunt Ann and Uncle Walter had three children (Walter, Jimmy and Sandra).
• My Aunt Cecile had a husband but I never met him. I don't even know his name but apparently he showed up now and then and as a result that adds eleven cousins to the list (Butch, Smoky, Linda, Pat, Steve, Diane, Becky, David, Dennis, Denise and Richard (who was from a different husband).
• My Aunt Ruth and Uncle Alvin had two kids (Bruce and Eddie).
• Aunt Blanche and Uncle Rene had two children (Donna and Rose).
• My Aunt Mabel and Uncle Noel had eight kids (Henry, Noel, Joel, Linda, Lucy, John, Albert and Mary).
• Aunt Bernie and Uncle Jerry had five (Glen, Tommy, Michael, Andy and Chris).

     Now for my mother’s brothers:

• Uncle Ernie and Aunt Virginia had three children (Christine, Patty and Billy).
• Uncle Sam and Aunt Joyce had five (Peter, Michael, Bobby, Kathy and Debbie).
• And finally, my Uncle Henry and Aunt Connie had three children (Priscilla, Eugene and Denise).

     On my father's side:

• Uncle Leo and Aunt Lorraine had five children (Jim, Jerry, Theresa, Jeanne and Annette).
• And my Uncle Lucien and Aunt Frannie had five (Mickey, Tommy, Danny, John and Cathy).

     My father's brother Lucien's family was comprised of seven very strange people. Seriously, they were ALL weird. My Aunt Frannie smiled a lot but I never knew what it was she was hiding behind that smile. There was something sinister going on in her head. Their oldest son, Mickey was the closest to normal person in the family. Of course, he was a lot older than me so maybe I just didn't know him well enough to learn his dark secrets. Tommy and Danny were a lot alike; they were both very creepy. I think Danny could possibly have grown up to be a serial killer or other miscreant. He was just too weird not to have become something sociopathic. Tommy is probably in prison. John was hospitalized for some mental illness. No one in the family ever talked about it so I have no idea what that was all about. Kathy didn't really talk much, and subsequently, I know almost nothing about her. That didn't stop her from appearing slightly dazed and confused.

     On the other hand. my father's brother Leo and his wife Lorraine had a very nice family. Their oldest son's name was Jim and he was gay. I didn't know this until many years later when I was an adult. My only memory of him is seeing him handling some sort of shiny purple ascot and talking to his sister Theresa. He moved away and no one ever heard from him again.

     At one point we lived only a few houses away from my Uncle Leo and Aunt Lorraine and I saw Theresa and Jeanne all the time. Jerry accomplished something significant in his personal life. I don’t remember what it was but it was the talk of the family for a long time to come.There's a good chance it had something to do with the Catholic church.

     Now let's get back to my mother's side of the family. We'll start with Ann. Aunt Ann and Uncle Walter were very nice people. They were very connected to the South Grafton community in which they lived. I think my uncle played horseshoes. I remember visiting them and hearing my aunt ask if anybody wanted some pop. She was talking about soda pop. She was the only person I knew or have known that used the word pop to describe soda. They drank a lot of ginger ale and tonic water. They lived in a side-by-side duplex house. Their attic was very, very large, and up the attic stairs led to an abundance of all sorts of things, the most interesting of which were old board games and toys. There were magazines and books as well. Playing in the attic was the preferred activity when visiting Aunt Ann and Uncle Walter. It seemed to be a place of never-ending surprises.

     My cousin Sandra was not particularly interested in her own attic, so we didn’t interact very much during family visits. When she was older she married and she and her husband moved to Puerto Rico.

     Her brother Walter remained in that apartment after his father died and his mother moved elsewhere. He was a quiet person, who kept people at a distance. Walter had been in the military. He was the right age to have been deployed to Vietnam but no one ever specifically mentioned whether he had been there or not. If so, it would explain a lot about his personality. He married a woman named Chris, and I have mentioned Chris in a different blog entry related to the time that I came out in 1992.

     The remaining cousin was named Jimmy. He joined the Grafton Police Department, and he is also mentioned in a past blog. He was the policeman who detained me and my cousin Bruce after Bruce had made disgusting and inappropriate remarks to two girls that were walking down the road as he drove by in his truck.

     Aunt Ann had a different mother than my grandmother (who was affectionately known as Memere). Memere's husband had been married before he met her for a very brief time. His first wife died soon after giving birth to my Aunt Ann. Ann was about two years old when her mother died and my grandfather remarried within a year. So the only mother Ann ever knew was Memere.

     However, Cousin Jimmy didn’t recognize Memere as his grandmother. There was a time that he pulled me over while I was driving Memere’s car. Apparently there was a taillight out. He came up to the window and told me to tell my grandmother to get the light fixed. When I told Memere what he had said, she was very perturbed and said that she was going to give him an earful the next time she saw him. I’ll sure she did.

     My Uncle Walter died in 1973. My parents were still overseas and they asked me to attend his funeral as the representative of our family. I didn’t want to go, but I went. It was the first funeral I had ever attended I didn’t particularly like it. Also, I think it was a silly concept to send an emissary from the family to attend the funeral.

     My Aunt Ann has the distinction of being the first to die of my mother's siblings. Just as Memere lived to be 99 years old, so did Ann.

     The next aunt to discuss is my Aunt Cecile who had many children and had to raise them by herself. She was one of my favorite aunts. She was well-liked by the extended family but made some people uncomfortable with her abundant use of profane language. She grew all her family’s non-meat foods and canned an enormous amount of goods in the late summer and early fall. Besides canning, she was an incredible cook and baker.

     Cecile's oldest son was my cousin Butch. He's probably in his late seventies now as my Aunt Cecile is in her late nineties. Actually, my mother told me that Cecile is not well and is expected to die soon.

     My Cousin Butch was a very nice guy who played the guitar and sang. That's about all I know about him. Oh yes, he had a TV repair shop back when TVs were usually worth repairing when all that might be needed would be a new vacuum tube (before the digital age).

     Next is my cousin Smokey. Very little is known about Smokey. He was named after his father, but of course I don't know what that name was. Nobody ever said anything bad about him so he must have been an okay guy (there is an interesting note about Smokey that we will get to a little later on). I do know that he left home at an early age and it was suggested that he was a wanderer like his father.

     Now I'll mention Pat. She had a very infectious laugh and always seemed happy, even though she had an abusive husband named Ken who was into Satanism. I guess Satan wanted him early because I think he went to hell in his early forties. But Pat also had a really incredibly large Hammond organ. It took up almost their entire living room. It was BIG! There was a time when she lived on Main Street in South Grafton and she used to let the play the organ. Well, not so much play on it, more like experiment with it. It fascinated me and was probably the first real keyboard I ever touched. Whenever she played it, I was mesmerized by her ability and by what I was hearing. It seemed magical.

     Cecile's 4th oldest daughter was Linda. Linda was always smiling and somewhat demure. She ended up having quite a few children and she always seemed very happy.

     After her, comes Steve. Steve had a car accident in which he lost an eye. He had a strange look about him that reminded me of any member of the Rat Pack (Frank Sinatra, Joey Bishop, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Peter Lawford). Well not so much of Sammy Davis, Jr. because Sammy was, after all, African American. Steve usually had a cigarette in his hand and I always expected him to break out into song.

     Her next two sons were very close in age I used to think they were twins, but they weren't. David moved to Ohio and won $5 million on a scratch ticket. I don't have any idea about what might have become of Dennis. He seemed troubled.

     Diane and Denise looked quite similar even though there are few years between them. I remember them often sitting on the front porch of the huge house in which they lived. The house was owned by the town. I'm not sure what arrangement was in place but they didn't pay rent. It was like a town charitable housing project consisting of just one home; it was a truly magnificent house.

     Anyway back to the kids, I remember Linda, Diane, and Denise sitting on the front porch singing along with the radio as the song Angel of the Morning played. They all sang so well that they actually sounded like they were part of the recording. It was very cool.

     My Aunt Cecile's last son (Richard) had a different father from all the rest of her children. His father’s name was Shorty Linnell. I don't know what his real first name was, but I bet it was Richard.

Here's where the note about Aunt Cecile's son Smokey comes into play. Shorty was a friend of Smokey's and this is how my aunt came to be introduced to him. They soon got together and after a short time, they married. Obviously, Cecile was quite a bit older than Shorty; I think there was about thirty five years between them. This didn't seem to bother anyone. In fact, my parents were best friends with Cecile and Shorty. They were such good friends that they bought burial plots together; the headstone reads Dion with the name Linnell underneath it. I'd never heard of a combined headstone/burial plot arrangement such as theirs. To me, when you look at the headstone, it looks like someone named Dion Linnell is buried there.

     Shorty was a truck driver and unfortunately he got into an accident and was killed. So although he was the youngest of the four, he was the first one to be buried in their combined burial plot.

     Cecile and Shorty's son Richard (and his partner) were said to be the first gay couple in Massachusetts to adopt a child. I remember my mother mentioning at that time the fact that the “mother was still involved.” I could tell that this was some sort of caveat she felt compelled to attach to the arrangement of two men adopting a child. I think she heard it from her sister Cecile and it made them all feel better to have this (fantasy) arrangement known. The mother’s only actual involvement was signing over her parental rights to Richard and his partner, Gary Chalmers.

     In doing research, I was unable to verify that these two men were the first gay couple to adopt in Massachusetts. However, I did discover that they were among the plaintiffs that brought suit against The Massachusetts Department of Public Health. This was the suit that took the issue of same-sex marriage all the way to the Massachusetts Supreme Court (and won the case three years later). So he was instrumental in legalizing same-sex marriage in the State of Massachusetts. Which is way cool.

     After Cecile there is Ruth's family to talk about. My Aunt Ruth is a very creative person. She paints, and makes pictures out of ocean-smoothed stones and glass that she finds on the beach. I remember that on my fifth birthday, she noticed that the kids didn't have party hats. So she immediately made party hats out of construction paper that looked a little bit like sailboats. I'm pretty sure any picture of this party would show these hats.

     My Uncle Alvin was into photography. He wasn't abusive but he wasn't very nice to my Aunt Ruth, at least what Memere used to intimate. It was easy to see where their son Bruce got his opinions about women.

     Ruth and Alvin's son Bruce was a misogynist pig who thought very little of women and wasn't shy about his opinions. You may remember me mentioning him before as there came a time when I moved in with him when I returned from overseas at the age 17. He married his high school sweetheart and they got divorced a year or so after I moved in with them.

     Eddie was Ruth and Alvin’s second son. He was a shy. I don't know too much about him other than he manages my Aunt Ruth’s summer home in Jamestown, MA. He has at least three kids.

     Next we have my Aunt Blanche. Blanche came close to a black sheep but wasn't labeled so because she was an actual blood relative unlike the other black sheep I mentioned earlier that were mere daughter-in-laws. Aunt Blanche was bland. She did nothing in particular that was interesting. She was always pleasant enough to me, but I guess she had some occasional strong opinions and those opinions were not always appreciated by the rest of the family.

     Her husband, my Uncle Rene, (pronounced “Rainy”) had a huge junkyard in his backyard. There must've been many hundreds of cars in all states of disrepair in his private junk yard. Interspersed among them were a few shacks in which he kept chickens. Whenever we visited I would spend almost all the time in the junkyard exploring. In the mid-seventies, he worked as a franchisee landscaper, and one day he had a heart attack while driving his landscaping van and died instantly.

     Their daughter Donna had a Magnus Chord Organ. Hers was the larger model and stood alone on its own legs (most were table top models). I only got to press the keys on it a few times. It was this organ that inspired me to ask my parent’s for one of my own. I don’t remember when, but I did get my own Magnus Chord Organ at some time in the future. I played that thing constantly and my parents never seemed to tire of it.

     Donna had an extremely controlling husband. He expected her to wait on him hand and foot, which she apparently did. She didn't really get to go out much, and I think there were some concerns about exactly how much control he had and what else could be going on.

     Their other daughter, Rose, was a few years younger than me. I didn't like her. She was mousy and feeble-minded. She could be thought of as the reason that my soon-to-be-wife, brother, and I were detained and I was arrested in a park in Whitinsville in the early seventies. She had asked us to meet her at the park around 9:00 p.m. And I have a suspicion that she was parked somewhere nearby watching when we were detained and I was arrested. I could feel her beady little eyes trained on me. Unpleasantly, she had a crush on me (her cousin) and I believe she was jealous and vengeful that I had an actual non-familial girlfriend.

     Now we'll move on to my mother’s sister Mabel's family. Her husband, my uncle Noel, had a heart attack at some point in the late seventies. I don't know the details of this situation but it was known that the doctors had told him that he had about 10 years to live. I remember thinking that this ten year sentence must have been an estimate, but as it turned out, he did die ten years later. I remember a time when he and my Aunt Mabel were sitting in their side yard smoking pot. It was a little bit unusual to see this. I think they had decided to live life to the fullest and to have adventures and make the most the time they would have together.

     They transformed a school bus into a recreational vehicle and traveled extensively. At some time in the early seventies, their son John was in a car accident and was killed. I don't have much memory about their oldest children, namely Henry, Noel and Susan because they were much older than I was. However Linda and Lucy were good friends of mine. They were fraternal twins. My wife at the time was also named Linda. My Cousin Linda's husband was named Rich and the four of us moved to California a short time after my Uncle Noel died. “My” Linda and I moved back to Massachusetts after about a year but Cousin Linda stayed and remains in California to this day. My aunt and uncle’s younger children, Joel and Mary, were a lot younger than I was and I don't know very much about them.

     The next family in line is my Aunt Bernie and Uncle Jerry’s family. They lived in Millbury Massachusetts, and there came a time when I went to live with them. They had five sons, but at some time in the seventies, their third son (Michael) committed suicide. His brother Chris found him in hanging in their garage.

     Michael was gay. Nobody ever admitted this or talked about it, but it was obvious to anyone that was paying attention. I was only 16 at the time and it was obvious to me. The only thing my aunt and uncle ever did in regard to his sexuality was to send him to a psychiatrist, "to get him help." To me, this must have sent him the message that there was something wrong with him. Michael was very involved with his high school’s cheerleading activities. In particular, he designed flags, sabers, rifles, and batons for the cheerleaders. He was acknowledged as being an expert at twirling these things around. He lived in a family with four brothers, all of which were very macho or at the very least stereotypically masculine in their appearance, demeanor, and choices of activities. They were all  involved in some type of popular sporting activity. Michael didn't fit in and I think this had to be a factor in his decision to end his life. I don't think the family ever got over this terrible event.

     Their oldest son was named Glen and he was a really good friend of mine for many years. However, after I came out in the early nineties, he pretty much drifted away. Apparently, Tommy became a hypochondriac although he did actually have some valid medical problems as well. Andy went to culinary school in Rhode Island and moved away to seek out a career as a chef, which he achieved. Chris was the youngest of the five and I believe he worked in construction.

     That takes care of my mother's sisters so now let's get into the lives of my mother's brothers: Sam, Henry, and Ernie.

     Sam and Joyce had 5 children, the oldest was Michael. Michael and I were good friends. He had a really big Afro haircut and was a heroin addict, which eventually killed him. I saw him shoot up all the time. I was the non-druggie guy (think about it, I was the person least into drugs within this group!) in this circle of friends. I think they counted on me to keep a connection to reality so they didn't need to. The family mythology is that Michael was trying to "get better," and that although he was found drowned in a lake, it was generally said that his death was probably an accident.

     I can't remember the names of two of Sam and Joyce's sons. But I was good friends with Bobby during the time in which I lived in Wilkinsonville, MA. Sam and Joyce’s youngest child was a girl named Kathy and I once saw her working at B.J.’s in Westboro in the early nineties. My Uncle Sam died in his early fifties; I don’t know what killed him.

     Next we’ll discuss my uncle Henry. Uncle Henry was a happy and friendly man. He worked in construction using a bulldozer and other large pieces of machinery. Occasionally he would bring them home. He knew that I collected bells and once, while he was on a job digging what would become a foundation, he found an old solid metal bell that was about four inches tall. The bell clapper was broken off but was found along with the bell itself. He welded it back into place. It was a really cool gift and I still have it.

     He and his son Eugene liked to work on cars. There were times when Eugene and I drove some old cars through the woods and on a few occasions we pretty much wrecked them. In that family, wrecking cars in the woods was seen as an appropriate recreational activity for teenagers. Their oldest daughter, Priscilla, teased her hair up into a huge beehive reminiscent of the female lead singers in the B-52s. She was a little strange but was otherwise a really nice person. Their younger daughter, Denise, got into a car accident which resulted in her having some brain damage. It was not severe but it did change her personality.

     My mother's other brother Ernie was married to Virginia, who if you remember, was one of the black sheep of the family. Uncle Ernie was arrested sometime in the late seventies or early eighties and charged with 168 counts of child molestation. He went to prison but he has since been released. His wife Virginia was a very large woman and their oldest daughter, Christine, was very obese. So was their other daughter, Patty. I'm not saying that they were fat. I'm saying they were all really, really big. Billy, once he graduated high school, moved to Alaska to work as a chef and never returned.

     I’d like to mention that I have always heard people say that my youngest sister Norma was my maternal grandmother’s (Memere) 50^th grandchild. I’m not sure how that could be true because that would mean that I have forgotten about sixteen of my cousins. This is impossible. So this claim’s validity will remain a mystery to me. I do know that the number of Memere’s great grandchildren was in excess of 50.

     That is the summary of my extended family as I remember it from the time I was quite young right up to approximately 2005. Because I have a large extended family there are more opportunities for unusual circumstances to occur, and like all families, my extended family had a lot of diversity. It has included good people, bad people, strange people, some criminals, families in crisis and families living the good life, artists, friendly people and boring people, people who didn't speak English, those that died young and some who lived to be 99 years old, drug addicts that died from an overdose, heart failures, cancers, car accidents, brain injuries, lottery winners, people living with abusive spouses, child molesters, musicians, Satanists, (potential) sociopaths, people with brain damage and missing body parts as well as people who would generally be considered as normal.

     These days,if you are not a Catholic or a Mormon, you probably won’t have more than two or three children.  But fifty years ago or more, families seemed to be much larger than that. Many families lived on a farm, and having a large family helped distribute the workload. Birth control was also less available if you go back far enough. Fewer children mean smaller extended families.

     Having smaller extended families limits the advantages of the old-fashion large extended family. People say blood is thicker than water (which is, at the very least, physiologically true). So it would seem advantageous to have the larger family if given a choice in the matter. Seemingly, it is to one's  advantage to have as many blood relatives as possible if they are the ones that you will be able to count on when it really matters.

     That is, if you keep in touch with them.

There's a Terry in a Town Near You

Terry's in trouble and Terry's terror does tremble.

While Terry's mom bakes a cake that won't crumble.

Over the bridge straight into town
Terry's fear doubles so Terry does frown

Help! Trouble!
Help! A Cake!
Just how much noise can one Terry make?

French Canadian Poetry Mart

Anna's Case

Simple Wimple Dimples Do.

Pimple Simple Dimples Two.

All to Anna, Anna Who,

Takes it All.

Takes everything that isn't nailed to the Goddamn floor.

Bitch.

This is silly.

The Famous Diving Giraffes

 

But I know someone who likes giraffes.

Magic Wish 1: Scrap my previous wishes all of them

Magic Wish 2: My mum will adopt Demi and Dion from Southwark adoption. Dion is a thoughtful and bubbly girl. She is sociable and engages easily with both adults and children. Dion is thriving and loves school and has made strong friendships. Dion loves painting, drawing, reading and writing. Her reading is advanced for her age. Dion is a good dancer, she loves drama, and playing football. 

Demi is an intelligent child; she has settled well within her foster placement with her sister and has formed good secure attachments. Demi is age appropriate in her development and in some areas is already ahead of her peers. Demi is a is contented, playful and happy child. She enjoys playing with her dolls, browsing through picture books and creating the story to these pictures. Dion and Demi are thriving within the placement. They are described as a delight to care for. Both girls have made a good attachment to their foster carer and are exceptionally bright.

Magic Wish 3: My mum will adopt them on Sunday 19th January 2014, in other words tomorrow at 5:10pm without me my brother and my dad. My dad and brother will be happy and approve of this. Dion and Demi will go to Trinity primary school. 
Visit the Magic Wishing Well

Unlikely and Definitely Superfluous

This is as ironic as it gets....

Click Here

to see my comment about the

 Target Credit Card Security Breach

BTW, I cancelled all my credit cards and got new numbers. I was one of the lucky few that actually DID have an unidentifiable charge on one of my cards. It was for just under ten dollars.

You may wish to consider getting new CC numbers yourself!

I need faeedback!

Tim Blais, again...

Tim Blais is at it again. Don't be impatient, the loops take time to create and sync with... 

this video is really great!

...and if you didn't watch Bohemian Gravity....
CLICK HERE

It's so easy to do...

     I’ve done some research on sending care packages and/or letters to service men and women overseas.I wanted to support them in some way that was within my budget, which is not high, but still be something that would be useful or appreciated.

     I started with Operation Paperback. It has sent books to military personnel in many countries. They’ve been doing this since 1999. I sort of missed the “paperback” part of their name. yes, really. I thought they’d take any kind of book. They will accept other kinds of reading materials but they’re considered “special shipments.” So, I kept looking, I don’t even own ONE paperback book (as far as I know).

     Next, I found Keystone Soldiers. They have a much broader focus. They send care packages, letters and can set up pen pals. Their login system is REALLY touchy. If you make 2 mistakes, they lock out your ability to login altogether for some unspecified amount of time, which I found very annoying. I ended up creating a new account rather than sit on the sidelines. I haven’t received a password from them yet, which is disappointing because I’ve already got 6 pen pal envelopes ready to go. The way they set up pen pals is to send your pen pal letter to any service person. Each letter you send goes to a different soldier. So, I put the same letter in each envelope. I also put stuff like stickers, a lens cleaning cloth, a bunch of pictures of my tattoos, a bumper sticker about a goat and other random stuff that fits into an envelope and doesn’t go over 2 ounces (66¢ total postage). I hope they send me a password so I can send these letters to them. After that, I’m moving on to…

AnySoldier.com

     This is the organization I’ve decided to work with. They’ve been in business (so to speak) for a very long time and I was able to find them referenced by other organizations, some of which monitor the legitimacy of outfits designed to support military personnel overseas. There are a lot of websites for sending care packages or letters to active military personnel on the Internet. After a while, it got a little overwhelming to compare one site to another make sure they were a legitimate organization. After all my research I have decided to work with Any Soldier.

     I’m only going to send letters for now. Sending a package is more complicated but I may do that in the future. You can only get two addresses per day from anysoldier.com. They have rules to help keep the packages and letters coming in from legitimate sources and not from a irrefutable scammers and other miscreants.

     If you want to write a letter to someone who is probably not getting any mail or much mail, you can send your letter to me and I will send it to one of the soldiers listed on the Any Soldier website. I hope you'll consider doing this. If you’re not sure what to say in a letter, just write as though you were writing to a friend. You can write about your job, family, and/or interests. Essentially, you can write about anything that you’re comfortable sharing. According to Any Soldiers, letters are the number one request made by the soldiers that contact them to participate in their programs. Also, they report that the soldiers like to hear anything about life "back home." When you write (see how I'm planting the seed of your cooperation) it's OK to say thank you for your service or other thoughts to that effect. But it's better not to write about their difficulties or to comment on any political agenda. In other words, you're just writing to let them know that people back home care about them.

     Any Soldiers is not associated with any religious or political organizations.  Their nondiscrimination policy is excellent and encompasses pretty much everything I would hope to find listed. My intention is to write several letters per week. It’s pretty easy to write a letter, and many of the soldiers and other military personnel don’t really have anybody “back at home” to write to them.

     One of the websites I visited had made a comment that I’ll paraphrase here:

“No one should have to walk away from mail call empty-handed.”

     I couldn’t agree more.

Enjoy a Tribute to Richard P. Feynman, theoretical physicist

Bohemian Gravity by Tim Blais

a tribute to

Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988),

scientist, teacher, raconteur, and musician. 

It’s Just One Coming Out Story After Another

It’s Just One Coming Out Story After Another

(Misadventures of the Mind)

Paul N. Dion - January 2014

(PROLOGUE)

When the skies turn to grey

And all the light is far away

When a cool visitor warns

The daylight will wane

And maybe the rain

Will cry feeling forlorn 
~by Paul N. Dion, from the song Down the Frozen River to the Sea
featured on the CD entitled Tell Me Where You've Been

There came a time in 1992 in which I “came out of the closet” and began a difficult transition from living a closeted life to living as an openly gay man. I used quotes around “came out of the closet” because I don’t know when that phrase began to be used, who coined the phrase, or why we need a description of a process for which, in an ideal world, there would be no need. It reminds me of the problem I have with the word atheist. We have a name for people who “don’t believe in God,” yet we don’t have a name for people who don’t believe in astrology… gravity… devil dogs…

Note to reader: this story contains personal information and observations from my point of view. The content mentions others such as my children, my ex-wife, friends, husband and many other people that I knew 20 odd years ago. No one is mentioned by name, at least not anyone of any significance to me. No personal information about others is included for which advance permission would have been appropriate. However, the story contains facts and describes situations and events that may or may not be known to the reader or be the same as what the reader remembers. It is an honest retelling of events and is unabashed in content. I have tried to keep the timeline accurate but there are sure to be a few inevitable discrepancies or some overlapping of the sequence of particular events.

(Part One)

Up, Up and Away, in my Beautiful, my Beautiful Balloon.

~by Jimmy Web from the song Up, Up and Away recorded by the 5th Dimension

The late eighties and early nineties were very significant years in my life. It was during those years that I experienced a major manic episode, an episode that would (ten years later) be identified as the defining event necessary to accompany years of untreated depression (unless you count self-medicating with vodka) to be given the diagnosis of a Bipolar Type II Disorder (There's some question about whether I have a Bipolar Type I or Type II disorder. I voted for Type II)

The high side of the disorder felt good. Actually, it felt great. I was very energized and active and began to enjoy things that I would NEVER have considered doing before, which is a classic symptom of a bipolar condition.

One day, for no reason that I can now identify, I thought it would be a good idea to ride a bicycle (presumably for exercise). My brother had an English Racer and I borrowed it and I rode it from my house in S. Grafton to the town of Rockdale. It was a 2.5 mile ride, a round trip bike ride of approximately 5 miles. It was fairly easy to ride to Rockdale but more difficult to ride back.

On the way back, a bicyclist passed me by, at what seemed a fast pace. He was wearing bicycling clothing and was riding a mountain bike, a bicycle that looked more appropriate on the road than the English Racer.

A week or so later, having several jaunts to Rockdale under my belt, I went to a Trek Bicycle shop near my house and bought a mountain bike, helmet, water bottle, speedometer, and riding gloves. This was a $450.00 purchase, which was more than 2 weeks wages for me at that time; the purchase was a bad financial decision.

I think it’s important to back up and present the sequence of events in the best order I can relay. So, before we continue discussing the bicycle and subsequent activities, let me give you an understanding of my financial situation at that time. The purchase of the bicycle was a very significant identifiable event but there was already a pattern of fiscal irresponsibly in place.

In the late eighties, I had some credit card debt, perhaps not much more or less than many people at that time. As time went by, the debt increased. By the early nineties, I had amassed a large amount of credit card debt.

One method I used to manage the debt was to only pay the minimum due on any card. Another method was to apply for and get new credit cards to which I would transfer the balances of other cards. Also, sometimes in order to pay the minimum due on one card, I would borrow money from another. This juggling act was fairly easy to continue and at some point, the idea of repaying the debt was replaced with the business of simply treading water.

By 1992, I owed at least $40,000 which is around $64,000 in today’s dollars. To put this in perspective, it would have taken me twenty years of paying $948 per month at the (then) average rate of 17% interest to pay off the debt. In the end, the $64,000 dollars with interest would be a repayment of $225,300.

Since my average income at the time was about $950 per month, I think it would be safe to say I was financially irresponsible. Paying off the debt was quite literally impossible. The situation of incurring financial debt or making poor financial decisions is also a fairly common symptom of a Bipolar Disorder. In fact, people often do far worse than I did in this regard. If the reader is wondering how this financial fiasco was ultimately resolved, it was settled by declaring bankruptcy.

Anyone that was paying attention would have noticed other frivolous spending habits that included buying a $2000 camcorder and installing 2 extra phone lines to accommodate the BBS system ^[1] that I had created. The BBS system was transferred to my brother’s home on a few occasions which necessitated forwarding the phone numbers to his area code (at additional cost).

There were other signs of manic behavior that the people in my life didn’t perceive as unusual or feel the need to bring to my attention. No serious questions about over-spending were made nor were explanations or inquiries for my behavior or sudden enthusiasms discussed. Of course, I don’t know what people were keeping to themselves; there may have been some unspoken concerns.

On one occasion, the family had taken a trip to Franconia Notch in New Hampshire to explore the Lost River Gorge and other tourist attractions of the area. For some reason, my brother Ron was unable to make the trip with us. He almost always accompanied us on outings (and spent practically every weekend at our house). But in this case, he missed the trip.

I decided that he shouldn’t miss out on having the experience, so the next day he and I took the three hour ride to Franconia Notch. We duplicated the family trip and then immediately drove back home (all in one day even though the family trip had included an overnight stay at a motel). 

There are other examples of changes in my behavior that I could provide, but at this point, we can get back to the bicycle and how it marked the beginning of a sequence of events that would alter my life profoundly. The process of change would take many years to finish.

(Part Two)

Sees the Sun Going Down and the Eyes in His Head
See the World Spinning ‘Round.

~by Lennon/McCartney from the song The Fool on the Hill recorded by The Beatles

At some point after I started riding the bicycle, a work-out gym opened only a mile or so from my house. I had been watching its progress and it finally opened sometime during the warm weather months. At that time, I was riding an average of 250 miles per week. And yes, if that sounds like a lot, it probably is. My bike rides sometimes started at my home in S. Grafton, MA and went as far as the Rhode Island state line in Millville, MA, where I always made it a point to cross the state line, even if only for a foot or two. At other times, I had taken the bike to my parent’s house in Worcester, MA near the W. Boylston, MA town line (I believe that was a 38-mile round trip).

One day, completely out of character, I stopped by the gym and went in and met the owner. I told him I was interested in weight lifting and he gave me a tour of the gym. I bought a month membership and soon started lifting weights. I didn’t know anything about the exercises or how to target certain muscle groups, but I slowly started to learn by reading, watching others, and asking for help. After a couple of months, I hired a personal trainer. After that, I didn’t have to think about what to do. I only had to as instructed. A few months after that, I started to see results and within six to eight months I saw significant changes in my appearance.

During this time, I noticed that there was a step aerobics class in a large room connected to the weight training area. I decided to give it a try. It was great. It was sort of like dancing, but only in the sense of moving rhythmically to the deep bass beat of the energizing music. I was hooked. I started attending classes every other day with weight training on the alternate days. Of course, I continued riding the bike too.

This degree of aerobic exercise, weight training, and having a healthy diet was very good for me physically. I was in the best shape I’d ever been or likely will ever be. I weighed 178 lbs. and none of it was fat. My focus was intense and unwavering.

After reaching this state of health and vitality, I was able to sustain the intense schedule for a little more than six months or so before things began to change. Slowly, I started to become aware of the excessive amount of time I was spending away from home. Depending on circumstances, I was often out on the bike instead of at home with the kids while my wife was at work. This began to weigh on my mind and I reduced the time I spent on fitness routines to some degree.

Soon thereafter, I started to become depressed although it was an internal state of mind that was not apparent to those around me. My job at the time required me to spend a lot of time out of the office visiting clients and attending meetings all over the region. As my mood continued to change, I became more and more depressed. I found myself crying in the car on the way to appointments and having to compose myself before going in to an appointment once I reached my destination. ^[2]  It became harder and harder to do my job and I changed my schedule from full time to part time, which cut my caseload by a little more than half. This reduction in work hours was very helpful but only to a point. Soon, there would come a time when I was no longer able to work.

(Part Three) 
To all your friends you're delirious, so consumed in all your doom. 

~by Linda Perry from the song Beautiful recorded by Christina Aguilera

In August of 1992, I turned 37 and my wife and kids went on vacation with my mother-in-law, sister-in-law and two nieces. This was not unusual and had pretty much become an annual event. As they left, I realized that things were going to change dramatically although I hadn’t consciously planned for this to be the time that I would come out. I never had a plan to come out.

An internal need to be honest with myself and others about my sexuality came to the forefront of my attention. With it came immediate and intense emotional turmoil and an acute state of panic and fear. But you can't un-ring a bell or get toothpaste back into the tube (so they say) so I was on a one-way trip into the unknown.

During the week I had on my own, I found myself alone and in crisis. There were two forces at work. I was devastated by the knowledge that I would soon be separating from my family. And I was also transitioning from mania to depression. And I was a falling hard and fast. I had not been able to sleep and had been up for 4 nights. When I would lay down on the bed, I experienced visual hallucinations, mostly swirling lights and colors. But it was unlike anything I'd ever experienced before. Because of the severity of my symptoms, I called a crisis line but when the phone was answered, I was unable to speak on the phone and had to hang up.

Along with the visual stimuli came strong feelings of sadness, despair and confusion that were accompanied by a psychological pain so intense it made me want to cry out as one might when subjected to a significant physical injury. But since this pain originated in my mind, there was no remedy, no first aid or other intervention that could be deployed. When I experienced this for the first time, it was overwhelming.

This would not be the last time I would have this experience. This, and other equally painful manifestations of my depressive illness were things that I would have to endure in the future. This was before being treated for a bipolar disorder which meant having ten years of unsuccessful treatment of my illness because the treatment was incomplete. It only addressed half of the problem. While the high of bipolar mania feels good, the low of depression sinks much further away from the middle ground. The depressive side of the bipolar disorder is devastating.

There were occasions during which I would cry and not be able to stop. I would cry until I would not be able to breath and that sense of not being able to inhale would induce panic. A few times, during one of these intense crying jags, my husband was about to call "someone," as he put it, because he didn't know how to help or if I would be able to calm down on my own.

At other times, I would experience prolonged bouts of generalized depression that would affect all aspects of my life, making daily routines difficult and sometimes simply impossible. As is often the case, I lost all interest in hobbies, activities, and things I previously enjoyed, and I had a diminished sense of satisfaction with life. My depression also affected my physical being. There were occasions where doing things like getting up and out of a car required a extraordinary amount of physical energy. 

Regrettably, my depression also had a component of anxiety. This would manifest itself in the form of irritability, distractability, moodiness and a sense of nervousness and undifferentiated fear. These unpleasant aspects of depression were expressed outwardly through negative emotions, much to the annoyance of the people around me.

(Part Four)

 Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are (Ding Dong the Witch is Dead).

~by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg from the movie The Wizard of Oz

But now I will return to the matter of my coming out to my family when they returned from their vacation. 

Despite my trying week, I forged ahead and when my wife and kids returned from vacation, I told my wife that I was gay. Her immediate reaction was to say: “Then, we’ll have to get divorced.” I don’t think she really knew what to say at that time. I mean, what does one say in such a situation?

A short time later (on the same day), I told my kids that I was gay and I explained to them what that meant. My older daughter (age 14) seemed to understand fairly well and it made her sad. She cried. I don’t know what part of the conversation or situation made her cry, but it was a terrible experience for me. (I’m not being insensitive to how it made her feel, but this isn’t the forum for that discussion.)

My other daughter listened and paid attention to my explanation of what being gay was, but she didn’t have any particularly significant reaction. She was 11 years old at that time.

Over the course of the next few days, she told a friend that her father was gay. Her friend’s mother called me to tell me that my daughter was saying something “not nice” about me. She thought I should talk to her and tell her that she shouldn’t say what she was saying. My reply was to say that whatever my daughter had said was true. That didn’t go over so well and she reiterated that what was being said was “really, really bad.” I repeated myself and told her that whatever my daughter had said was true and then I hung up. I wasn’t in any way interested in this person’s opinion nor did I like the fact that she’d called at all. ^[3] 

I stayed at the house for about two more weeks as the gravity of the situation sunk in. Everyone had to adapt to the situation and nobody knew what to expect from day to day.

Having nowhere else to go, I eventually asked my parents if I could stay in their basement until I could find a place to live. Obviously, I had to come out to them before making this request. Their reactions were not what I expected. My mother said, “That’s the way I always thought it was,” and my father didn’t say anything but came over and gave me a big hug. I was not expecting his reaction at all.

At that time, my brother was living in the basement of my parent’s house because he was trying to save money to buy a house of his own. Therefore, the basement was full. I had to set up a cot in the utility section of the basement next to the water heater. It was not a pleasant environment at all. In this space I had to find room for everything I had, which was not much. I had my clothes, records, CD's and a box or two of miscellaneous personal belongings. I also had one piece of furniture; it was a tall dresser that had belonged to my grandfather.^[4] 

Soon after moving out of the house I came out to my coworkers and friends. In regard to my friends, it would only be a few weeks before they “drifted away.” I don’t know why I was so surprised, but I was. I was especially disappointed that my best friend (we’ll call him Joe) stopped calling and that our friendship slowly and without ceremony ended. He had been my best friend for over 20 years, and I find it almost impossible that he would not have had any idea whatsoever that I might be gay. After all, a lot of the guys that we hung around with were misogynistic pigs that didn’t have a lot of kind things to say about the women in their lives. I, on the other hand, didn’t have their unfortunate heterosexual chauvinistic characteristics. Lacking those qualities made me different and I was keenly aware of the fact that they knew I was different. In the back of my mind, was the fear that somehow they would know that I was gay. But nothing was ever said.

At work, I decided to tell Sheila (the good Sheila from the “The Cake Bully” short story that you may have read on my blog) and my supervisor. Telling these two people was all I needed to do. They both knew that I wasn’t telling them a secret. So slowly, and in a nonchalant and appropriate way, everyone at work learned of my coming out. No one treated me differently or made any particular comment about it unless the comment was supportive in some way. A few people may have inquired about something they were curious about.

At that time, there were only two men on the staff, me and another man named John. After I came out at work, he began referring to me as the office “token gay.” This he said in good humor. His reference to me as the office’s token gay was meant to be a sarcastic statement about labeling people. It was also a cynical reference to then fashionable practice of seeking out a gay person to be in one’s social circle or have as a coworker for the sole purpose of showing one’s political correctness (or worse even, a show of magnanimous tolerance).

My department was comprised of only two people. The two of us had worked together for about nine years so I thought I would tell her my news personally. I tried to tell her one afternoon as she was (as usual) scurrying about getting ready for an appointment. She was very flustered, and wasn’t in the mood to have a serious conversation with me. But I finally got a moment of her attention and told her that I was in a new relationship, but this time with a man. She immediately said “oh good, I was afraid you were trying to tell me something bad had happened.”

Only two weeks had gone by since coming out to family and friends before I came out at work. There wasn’t any particular reason to “officially” come out at work but the reason I did was to get from point A to point B quickly. Coming out to the office as a whole was easier than having to come out over and over again to each individual coworker as the need arose.

But before I get too far ahead in the story I want to mention that during those two weeks, my wife and I thought it would be good to talk to the minister and his wife of the Unitarian Universalist Church, a church that we had been attending for at least 11 years. We were very involved in the church, and were among the very first members of the small congregation to welcome the new minister and his wife when they came to town.

(Part Five)

I am what I am. I am my own special creation.

~by Jerry Herman from the song I Am what I Am featured in the musical La Cage Aux Folles

Our family had a very close relationship with the other members of the church and with the minister and his wife. At that time, my wife was very involved in religious education and I was a trustee on the Board of Trustees. We were involved in all of the church’s activities; we supported the church financially, and were one of the prominent families within the congregation.

We called the minister to ask if we could come over and talk about something, we didn’t elaborate and I think the minister’s wife was concerned about what it could be. When she learned that the news was about me coming out, she had a similar reaction to that of my coworker and said “oh, I was afraid you’re going to tell me there was something wrong with one of the kids.” So far so good…

However, what followed was very disappointing to me. The conversation started with some facts and dates and times. Some feelings were discussed and some practical concerns came up in conversation. At some point in the conversation I commented on the fact that both my wife and I were in human services and worked within the same circles of care providers. (This was before I came out at work.) I expressed a concern about being outed before I was ready to get into it with coworkers and the other service agencies that were involved. I wanted to deal with the situation myself and do so on my own schedule. As far as I could tell, my wife had no problem with this at all. I don’t think she had any particular opinion about it one way or the other.

But then the minister’s wife said: “If Paul’s going to be gay, he has to be gay all the way.” And although it may not be immediately apparent in those 14 words, what she was saying was that I had to come out then and now and to everyone at the same time. Apparently, my ability to do so, comfort in doing so, or the schedule I wished to follow in regard to telling people this personal information about myself didn’t matter to her. For some reason, she had a very specific idea about how such things were to be done.

While addressing the situation to the children, she told them that one of her daughters was gay. And although she suggested that she was “okay” with it, she also told them that when she first heard the news (here puts her hands together over her heart) she had thought to herself: “no,” “no, I don’t want it to be that way.” This was a confusing comment to me so I think it might have been confusing to the kids. In any case, I had already begun to disengage from the conversation right after the “gay all the way” comment was made.

In the process of my coming out, the family’s transition, and all of the events surrounding this intense period of time in my life, this comment was the most inappropriate, disappointing, confusing and insensitive comment I ever heard.

To say that I was disappointed is an understatement. It was confusing to try to understand why she said what she did. And, what the hell does it mean to be “gay all the way”? I couldn’t understand why she had an opinion about the circumstances under which I might come out at work, especially about how I might come out to people that were in no way connected to the family. I wondered if the subject had awoken unresolved feelings she had about her own daughter’s sexuality.

Soon, the conversation comes to a close. At which time, the minister makes his only comment during the entire time. It’s almost worse than his wife’s opinion about how and when I must come out. He makes a lightly humorous face and says “well, all we have to do now is decide who gets the church.” ^[5]

(Part Six)

Every Turn a Surprise, With New Horizons to Pursue.

~by Alan Menkin and Tim Rice from the song A Whole New World from the movie Aladdin

Two weeks after moving out of the house, I met a man named Allen. We dated for 2 weeks and then I moved in with him. Yes, two weeks. It was both exhilarating and surreal. The general consensus was that he was “rebound man” and that the relationship wouldn’t last. Generally speaking, people thought I was being foolhardy. However, at the time, it didn’t feel all that strange and it took very little time for the arrangement to feel perfectly normal. Defying the odds, the relationship stuck and is currently in its 21^st year.

This was the time when I first told my doctor that I was feeling depressed. He prescribed Amitriptyline. It gave me an unpleasant dry mouth and didn’t have much of an effect on my depression. This was my first foray to the pharmaceutical world of anti-depressants and drugs to treat a bipolar disorder. ^[6]

(Part Seven)

I've Seen Lonely Times When I Could Not Find a Friend.

~by James Taylor, from the song You've Got a Friend

It’s still 1992, and I am living in Shrewsbury with my new boyfriend. I was in the 11^th year of publishing a zine called The Brave New Tick. Out of many dozens of contributors only 6 or 7 sent letters of support or acknowledgement of the news published on the cover story of the February 1993 issue of The Brave New Tick, in which I formally came out to the readership. Within a few short months, I stopped getting submissions for the newsletter and most of the general correspondence stopped. I stopped publishing newsletter soon thereafter. Considering the underground nature of the zine culture, one might find it unlikely that so many alternative-minded people dropped me as a publisher because of the fact that I was gay. But that’s how it played out.

The end of publishing the Brave New Tick was a significant loss for me.

(Part Eight)

Help, I need somebody, Help, not just anybody,
Help, you know I need someone, Help.

~by Lennon/McCartney from the song Help featured in the movie Help by Richard Lester

During this time of change, stress, confusion and disappointments, I made an appointment with a therapist to help me cope with my situation. I actually saw two therapists at that time.

The first therapist was a woman but I don’t remember her name. As she introduced herself to me she let me know that her specialty was working with Lesbians. I don’t know why she told me that, but she did. She was a Lesbianic (yes, I just made that word up) therapist, whatever that is. After some routine intake questions, she asked me what it was that she could do for me. It was a fair question but hard to answer. I told her of the events I’d experienced over the preceding months.

After I finished giving her a synopsis of the recent events in my life, she asked a few questions about some of the things I had spoken about. We had a conversation of about 10 minutes or so, at which point she tells me that I am a “worrier.” I don’t know what we talked about after that, but I do know that the session soon ended after she gave her assessment and announced my diagnosis as a worrier.  What was that supposed to mean? Was I unnecessarily worrying about, oh I don’t know, my whole world turning upside down? Did she mean that I wasn’t supposed to be concerned about the consequences of coming out, moving out of the house, getting divorced and starting a new relationship, all in the course of less than a month? Just another day at the office I guess.

When I think of that session, I remember the feeling of disappointment (again).  As a person working in the human services profession, I had an expectation that a therapist would be, well, helpful. But that didn’t turn out to be the case. Although the experience was disappointing, I made another attempt at reaching out and I made an appointment with another therapist.

This time, the therapist was a man and he was not just a therapist, he was an actual psychiatrist. His name was Mark Christianson. I remember his name well. Again, there were the general intake questions to get through and then it was time for me to present my case. He got the whole story about coming out, the pain of moving out of the house and not having my daughters in my daily life, my loss of friends, having difficulties at work, entering a new relationship and I threw everything else that came to mind.

After listening intently, and without having any questions about what I had just told him, he said (these are his exact words): “it’s a good thing you had girls because if you had boys people would worry about what might have happened to them.” In case you haven’t grasped the meaning of that statement just yet, that’s OK. I didn’t understand what he meant either. Then, a few seconds later it hit me. He was telling me that if I had sons instead of daughters, they would have been at risk of being sexually abused (because I was gay). The manner in which he made this comment made it clear to me that he was including himself in the “gay men are likely to sexually abuse their sons” camp.  If you’re finding this hard to believe, I don’t blame you.

I don’t remember exactly what happened immediately after that. I do remember feeling somewhat numb and I felt a strange (undeserving) sense of embarrassment. I think I was actually on the edge of having a panic attack, and although I knew he was wrong, I couldn’t muster up the energy necessary to respond in any way. I was truly dumbfounded and all I could do was to get up and walk out.

Years later, on the advice of my primary care physician, I sought out a psychiatrist. My primary care physician had been treating me for depression for quite a few years with mixed results. He told me that my misadventures in being treated for depression may be indicating that I had something other than generalized depression. He suggested I see a psychiatrist to explore the possibility of having a Bipolar Disorder. As I sought out an appropriate psychiatrist, I had a few sessions with a man who worked at a mental health clinic near Elm Park in Worcester, MA. I saw him three times, during which “he prescribed” a few different medications, all of which had side effects that I wasn’t willing to endure. In the end, I stopped seeing him because the meds he prescribed didn’t help, he was a very crude man, and wasn’t a doctor or L.I.C.S.W. or other independent care provider. He had a master’s degree and some letters after his name that had no valid medical meaning. 

At some time after this, I finally met a doctor who was willing and able to help me. He had a private practice. His name was Dr.Cutler and I saw him for almost 7 years. During that time, we came up with a medication regimen that addressed all of my needs. It took a few years to identity and fine tune these drugs. I am still on the schedule he prescribed to this date. He closed his practice many months ago and moved to New York. It was difficult to say goodbye to him on our last session.

Today, I am still in the process of finding a doctor to replace Dr. Cutler. It's been a daunting task. both my health care plan and the agency they employ to deliver mental health care services have websites with lists of available doctors. The lists are impossibly long and the ability to filter out unwanted professions is limited. I have been trudging through these lists for several months. In a few weeks, I am meeting with a L.I.C.S.W. that has office hours right here in my home town at the Listening Center. I've never met with a social worker before so the idea of trying something new is appealing. If she doesn't meet my needs, she has indicated that she could make other referrals.

(Part Nine)
 Conclusion

 These Boots are Made For Walkin'.
~by Lee Hazelwood and recorded by Nancy Sinatra

In the range of what could have happened or what outcomes might have come to be, my coming out story may not have been rosy, but it wasn’t devastating either. Young people brave enough to come out to their families are still being unceremoniously kicked out of their homes. Gay marriage is becoming more acceptable to the majority of people and is becoming legal in more states. The momentum towards equal rights and acceptance of diversity continues but prejudice still exists. Religion remains the champion of hate, discrimination and divisiveness, yet the resolve of equal rights advocates pushes forward. Life is complicated.

When I was in my late thirties, being openly gay was novel and I was exposed to various circumstances in which sexuality somehow mattered. That is to say, in polite conversation with strangers I had to decide how and if I wanted to make reference to my boyfriend as people talked about their spouses or partners (who were understood to be heterosexual). Since my partner was man, I had to either fit that fact into the conversation or gloss over it using euphemisms. There are many circumstances in which your “significant other” (my least favorite title ever) comes up in conversation. Or perhaps it might be necessary to indicate your marital status on a form, application or other document. Sometimes applications and forms ask the actual name of your spouse. In such cases, it’s possible to lie, improvise or ignore the request for information. I’ve done all three.

In the 22 years that I have been out, I have never had anyone get up in my face and make a disparaging comment, make a disapproving face, or worse, confront or assault me in any way (except for one ignorant Indian doctor that I will discuss in the epilogue). This is quite amazing, actually. And back in the early nineties, it never occurred to me that there would come a day that same sex marriage would become legal. But it did.

Today, I am married (legally) to a man, I have children and grandchildren, a non-judgmental family and I live in a town in which being gay doesn’t seem to be of any interest to anyone. I don’t often think about being gay and I don’t have hesitations or have to be guarded when in casual conversation. If my husband comes up, he’s just that, a husband. Not a same-sex partner, not a lover, or <shudder> a significant other. No, he’s not something unusual and no longer something novel, but don’t tell him that <smile>.

The gay people of today have a much easier time of it than the people of the past. Therefore, I hope that in the future, people will live in a more accepting world where differences aren’t scrutinized as intensely as they are today.

Eventually, I hope that a person’s sexuality will only be seen as only one aspect of their individuality and not the defining attribute. In most circumstances, nobody cares if you’re a carnivore or a vegetarian, a lefty or a righty, or a Virgo or Capricorn. I’d like to see sexuality lose its current prominence in how a person is perceived (and perhaps judged) and relegated to the interesting and defining traits of what constitutes an individual but without prejudice. I think that would be nice.

(EPILOGUE)

Don't Fear the Reaper.

~by Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser of Blue Oyster Cult

In 1993, I had an emergency appendectomy. As a result of the operation, and after I’d gone home from the hospital, I found that I was having some trouble; I kept passing out. As it turns out, I was having an adverse delayed reaction to the anesthesia. The problem wasn’t immediately apparent to me, and I was at home alone at the time. I called my boyfriend and my brother. They both accompanied me to the urgent care center in Worcester, MA.

As a female Indian doctor questioned me, I was still having trouble remaining lucid enough to respond as quickly as she wanted me to. I sensed her impatience and it frustrated me. When two EMT’s came into the room, she decided to cut to the chase and dispatch me tout suite by getting in my face and asking one final question, “Are you gay?” I was too out of it to protest her bedside manner and her inappropriate and dismissive, inappropriate final question, and I said “yes.”

That was all she needed to hear. She put on gloves, even though she hadn’t yet touched me and certainly wasn’t going to touch me now. As she did, she gave the EMT’s a look that said, “Here’s another one of those gay guys with AIDS, better put on gloves.” These guys didn’t need to touch me at all. They just picked up the edges of the sheet and transferred me to the ambulance-gurney thing and slid me into the back of the ambulance for my ride to the hospital. We didn’t have sex on the way to the ambulance and I didn’t bite them (which is not a good way to transmit HIV) or make them share my heroin needles with them, but they weren’t taking any chances. They also didn’t speak to me or even look at me during the ride. This is true.

That behavior was typical of the left-over hysteria from the mid-eighties that made people afraid to have any physical contact with a person that was only suspected of being in risk group for exposure to HIV infection. In their view, all people with HIV infection had AIDS and getting AIDS was easy to do (it isn’t). Imagine how my boyfriend and brother felt after being told I was going to the hospital by ambulance because I was suspected of having AIDS.

The rest of the story isn’t so much about coming out but it does wrap up the story about what I experienced after my appendectomy and the complications I encountered. 

Once at the hospital, I had to wait in a waiting room filled with people and screaming children. One of the symptoms I had been experiencing was a great sensitivity to sound. The loud noises at the urgent care center and siren of the ambulance had given me quite a headache. Now, I was in a room with far more noise and it was terrible. My condition was getting worse just by being at the hospital.

Eventually, I was seen by a doctor and he and another doctor decided I needed a spinal tap. I wasn’t too thrilled with this diagnosis. Well, it wasn’t really a diagnosis; it was a procedure to see if I had meningitis. I don’t know why they thought I might have that condition. Anyone who’s had a spinal tap knows it isn’t fun. I was positioned on my side with my knees drawn up to my chest and was told not to move, at all.

The result of the test showed blood in my spinal fluid and this wasn’t good news for me or the doctors. They began to tell me the possibilities of this situation, and none of them were good. I was still having trouble being alert and I didn’t fully understand everything they were saying, but I resigned myself to having a serious medical problem. Another doctor suggests that the spinal tap be repeated, and it is. This time, there’s no blood in the sample. I’m told that the first doctor “did it wrong.”

At this point, they don’t have any other ideas so they send me home with instructions for people to watch me. Things went well for a day or so and then I started to have the same problems, but to a lesser degree. I refused to go the hospital, and a few days later I started to feel better. 

^[1] A BBS (Bulletin Board System) was a precursor to the social networking that exploded when the technology allowing for the internet came to be. A BBS communicated with only one or a small handful of users at once. A user had to call a BBS using a phone line and the BBS would answer the call using an incredibly impossibly slow 300 baud mode. (A 300 baud modem would take something like 10-15 minutes to load just one page of a current day typical website, at best.) Once logged in, a user could upload or download files or software, play games, or otherwise interact with other members of the system. Traditionally, a BBS served its local area as people were likely to avoid toll calls.

^[2] During this time, I started to eat junk food, most of which was in the form of some kind of chocolate. Eating chocolate is thought to be common in people with depression, although there are those who think it helps and others who think it can actually cause depression. In my case, the depression came first.

^[3] This woman was my Cousin Walter’s wife. Her name was Chris. Although it isn’t really relative, she was very unattractive. In any case, she was very much a busybody and gossiper and that made her the perfect person in the extended family to find out that I was gay. It was now unnecessary for me to come out to anyone in my huge extended family.

^[3] I kept some loose change on the top of my dresser. One day, my mother took a quarter off of my dresser because I had made a toll call. I'm not sure how she knew I made a toll call. I was only there for 2 weeks so it seemed unlikely that she'd actually seen the phone bill. And even if she had, how did she know the toll call was made by me?

^[5] Although I had never had any heroes, mentors, or significant role models in my life, I was still susceptible to disappointment when someone in a potential position of support fell short of my expectations. Ministers are generally thought to be people who counsel and guide, and I was surprised at the complete lack of emotional support that we, as a family, received. The minister’s insensitivity, awkward humor, and cavalier attitude reinforced my opinion that role models, heroes, and mentors had not been nor were likely to ever be impactful people in my life.

^[6] My medicine cabinet, at some point, has contained all of these medications:

Amitriptyline (Elavil) 
Buproprion (Wellbutrin)*

Citalopram (Celexa)

Diazepam (Valium)

Escitalopram (Lexapro)

Fluoxetine (Prozac)

Lamotrigine (Lamictal)*

Lithium (Eskalith)

Lorazepam (Ativan)*

Mirtazapine (Remeron)

Quetiapine (Seroquel)*

Temazepam (Restoril)*

Topiramate (Topamax)

Venlafaxine (Effexor)

* Current Medication