I really needed to get some more cat food, in case Walter comes for a visit (he didn’t last night). And cookies. But talking even a short walk is risky in this heat, and especially for someone my age. I decided to wait until after sundown and the temperature dropped to at least 95. One of the perks of living where I do is there is a really good Giant Food store that’s not more than a 10-15 minute walk from my front door.

Out on the front porch it was still like an oven but not so intense that I didn’t think I could manage it. So I grabbed a small canvas shopping bag and headed out. All I needed was a few cans of cat food to tide me over until I could drive out to Cockeysville and the Pet Smart there. So I wouldn’t be carrying a lot back home.

What I hadn’t figured into this was that the intense heat of the last couple days had really baked the pavements and everything else in my environment, such that even if the sun wasn’t bearing down on me and the sky was getting dark, the heat was rising up at me from the ground all around me.

But I made it. I have food (and cookies). Probably not venturing out again until Monday when this heat wave is supposedly scheduled to end.

Oh yes…I went on a crash diet. After I reconnected with my high school crush after 30-something years. The pain of holding those Oh So Nice bluejeans in my hands just now was almost as bad as the memories they drew out of me.

So…recently my storage room raised its rent on me, which still isn’t much but I’d like to get it off me before I second-retire this coming September. It shouldn’t be too difficult with all the stuff I’ve decided I don’t need to keep anymore going to recycling. But I have seasonal stuff I still need a place for. Garden stuff for spring and summer, Halloween stuff for fall. My Christmas stuff has a place in the basement, but I might get off a bunch of that too since I don’t see myself putting up a tree here at Casa del Garrett (East) anymore. I’d rather spend the holidays in California with that side of my family now.

I have two cedar chests, one that’s been mine since I was a kid, that allegedly my maternal grandfather built himself. The other a very nice old Lane I inherited from mom. What’s in both of those I think I can let go of, and repurpose them for the seasonal stuff. I also have two old steamer chests I inherited that are allegedly from the trip from England to America mom’s side of the family took when they came here to live. One of those is in use for storing bedding. The other I have completely forgotten what’s inside of it, which is a good indicator that whatever it is I don’t need to keep it.

The fact is I don’t recall much of what’s in the two cedar chests and so just now I opened the one I used to have in my teenage bedroom, only to discover it packed full of shirts and bluejeans I cannot get into anymore, that I could as recently as 2008 – 2016. Those, uncoincidentally, were the years I’d reconnected with my high school crush and I went on a crash diet after he asked for a photo and I was too embarrassed to show him all of me. For about eight years after that I felt that I looked pretty cute. We had our nuclear war in 2016 and for some reason I gained all that weight back.

So I suppose I was saving those shirts and bluejeans on the off chance my waistline would drop back down to 30-31 inches. But that’s unlikely now. A shame because I thought I looked pretty nice in them once upon a time. You get that slight male hourglass (which I define as having a waistline that’s visibly narrower than your hips and chest) and a lot of things look good on you that Really Don’t if you don’t got it. All the low rise hip hugging bluejeans I just discovered in that cedar chest for example.

It all goes to one of those clothing bin drop-offs I see around here.

Sigh.

Been a while since I updated my blog but don’t think that means I’m bored with it. Far from it given how unpleasant commercial social media has become. But the Parkinson’s diagnosis has thrown me for more of a loop than I’d originally thought (that happens) and I’ve been engaged in a process of downsizing and letting go. I’ve taken several large storage containers full of stuff I’ve saved for nostalgia value to recycling because I’m feeling now like that past I had, while valuable and important, is not something I need to keep as close anymore, if I’m to spend a few final years of my life in peace and serenity. And adventure.

It seems to me now that there is a lot I should just let go of, so I can be me, and not as much a replay of the me I was once. Some of it I will never let go of, because it made me the person I am today. But I don’t need the details of my past as much as I’d thought I would. Those 16 and Tiger Beat magazines I saved to remind me of the closeted gay teenybopper I once was, I can send to recycling and let the paper they were made of become something new, just as I can finally become something more than everything I used to be. There is a saying that’s particularly relevant to gay guys my age and my generation, to the effect that the task before us is to remove everything about us we had to become in order to survive, so we can finally be our authentic selves; the persons we were always meant to be, and would have been if not for all the hate we had to endure. And I have always said there is no such thing as growing up, but only growing. I think that diagnosis of Parkinson’s has given me some perspective. I am letting go of a lot of stuff, so I can grow, while I still have time to grow. Before I become a prisoner inside my own body.

More later…

At some point, either while I was packing for my December trip to California, or during my train ride there, or while I was there, I either misplaced or lost my passport. And it’s been driving me nuts this whole time, not even being able to remember if I actually Did pack it, or when it went missing during the trip. It’s like a black hole in my memory. If you’ve ever experienced anything like it you know how disturbing it is.

I’ve been mostly assuming it was stolen out of my luggage while traveling, but something that argues against that is it would have been in the same luggage pocket where I also had $200 in cash for miscellaneous trip expenses, and all that money, less what I spent, made it to California. I just can’t remember if the passport did or not, or was even in my luggage at that time. I remember unpacking when I got to my brother’s house, but I don’t remember if I saw or did anything with the passport. What I do remember is when I packed for my return home I looked for the passport, could not find it anywhere, and assumed I must have left it at home. But when I got back home I checked the safe for it and it wasn’t there.

I looked everywhere in the house for it after that, and began to panic when I could not find it, and worse, could not remember what I did with it while packing for the trip, or during the trip, or after the trip. I remembered taking it out of the safe while considering whether to take it with me because of all the ICE activity happening just then, and thinking I might need it for identification. But I kept drawing a complete blank as to whether or not I actually packed it along. It was maddening because I know I would have been careful about what I did with it it and yet I could remember nothing about what I did with it.

For weeks after returning from California, right up until last Wednesday while I was packing to go visit a friend in Sunbury Pennsylvania, I kept revisiting all the places in my house that I searched, hoping to find it in some nook or cranny I’d overlooked, or that it would just magically appear right before my eyes somewhere I’d looked before and hadn’t seen it. I checked every piece of luggage I own for the umpteenth time. I checked my briefcases. I checked all my backpacks, including the ones I plan to give away because I don’t use those anymore. I checked the other safes in the house. I checked my file cabinets. I checked every drawer in the house. Oh…and under the bed.

I asked my brother to double check my bedroom there in his house and he could not find it anywhere I suggested it might be. Which must mean it was stolen on the way out to California. But not the cash too? Nothing made sense, and I could remember nothing.

Since my Parkinson’s diagnosis, which I got finally some months after the December trip, I’ve been wondering if the Parkinson’s brain fog hasn’t played a part in all this.

So I felt that I had to tell the Feds that I’d either lost my passport, or it was stolen, and get a replacement. I didn’t want my passport being used for crime, so the Feds needed to know I didn’t have it.

Reporting it lost or stolen was easy-ish. I got online and filled out a form. But where it asked if it was stolen or lost I had to say I could not say. Maybe it was lost somewhere or maybe someone stole it while I was on the train, or while my luggage was in the luggage room in the first class lounge in Chicago. Those Amtrak bedrooms don’t lock on the outside, and anyone could have got in and rummaged though my luggage, which I hadn’t locked because I was carrying it with me. A mistake I won’t make again. The form asked when the passport was issued and I did not know because I only copied down its number not its issue or expiration date. Another mistake I won’t make again. I made an awkward guess as to the issue date.

I discovered I could not simply ask for a replacement passport, I had to apply for a new one. So I downloaded the application for a new passport form. I would need to submit it with a birth certificate. And so I came to another difficulty: I’d lost one of my birth certificates too. And once again it was a situation where I could not remember what happened to it, and looking everywhere in the house for it and not finding it.

I think the last time I had it in my hands was when I went to the Maryland DMV to get the Real ID thing on my driver’s license. I might have left it there. But I don’t know. I would have taken a folder of identification things with me, including the passport, and like when I applied for TSA Precheck the person behind the desk just glommed right onto my passport and ignored everything else. Which convinced me that a passport is the gold standard for ID.

Luckily I had two copies of my birth certificate. For some reason mom had ordered two copies and I inherited the second one after she passed away. But the second one, identical to the first one, did not have the notary seal on it, but on a separate California document stapled to it with the notary’s signature. I wasn’t sure that one would be accepted, but I went to the post office with it anyway and the application for a new passport I’d downloaded when I submitted the lost or stolen document.

The lady at the post office looked that other birth certificate over and didn’t throw it back at me so I felt a little relieved. She took another passport photo of me, bundled everything together and I paid the usual, not the expedited service fee, since I mostly wanted it for whenever I needed that gold standard ID, and maybe some possible trips outside the country when I retired a second time.

A couple days later I got an email saying my passport application was being processed and it might take six to eight weeks to arrive. I felt a wave of relief. It was short lived. About a week later I got a letter from the State Department telling me my application was put on hold and I needed to submit a birth certificate and, confusingly, the lost or stolen passport form that I’d submitted digitally on the website.

I found myself thinking the digital submission didn’t take for some reason. But the request for a birth certificate was more troubling. The one I submitted was identical to the one that got me my first passport, but it didn’t have the notary seal directly on it, but was stapled to it on an official document with the notary’s signature. I figured that was that sticking point.

So I looked up what the State Department regarded as a legitimate birth certificate and neither of mine looked anything like the sample on their website. They were both official documents from either the State of California or the hospital I was born at, a “Certificate of Live Birth” (that phrase always creeped me out a bit). But apparently they did not meet the standard. My mom’s birth certificate, which I have, looks exactly like the one on the State Department website: a very ornate thing like something you might frame and put on the wall next to your Employee of the Month Performance Award. (Here is my certificate of Live Birth, and here is my Five Years Without A Sick Day Service Award…) Until I looked it up I had no idea birth certificates were so…official looking. Mine looked something like a W-2.

I had a co-worker who was born at the same hospital I was (small world). He retired but I saw him one afternoon in the Institute cafeteria and asked him if he knew how hard it was to get another copy of a birth certificate from that hospital. He told me the hospital was closed some time ago. It was considered a California heritage site but the building had a fire that destroyed a lot of the interior. Our physical records he said, might have been lost.

I began to despair. I stalled for weeks about going to the California website and at least seeing what I might have to do to get a new copy of my birth certificate. I checked a few places. One thing I saw was if I had a passport that would make the process easy. Swell. I considered waiting until I could get out there with whatever documentation I had, Real ID driver’s license, past tax forms, mortgage statements, the old passport with holes in it, anything that might help, and throw myself on the mercy of the bureaucracy.

It was getting scary. In this day and age of Trump/ICE if I’m asked suddenly to prove I’m a citizen, how do I do it without either a passport or birth certificate? That fear was why I’d thought to take the passport with me to California last December in the first place.

This whole thing was severely stressing me out for weeks. Not just that the only ID I had now was my Real ID driver’s license, which I kept hearing was not good enough for Trump’s goons, but also that I could NOT remember what had happened to either my passport or that birth certificate that got me the first passport. And now I didn’t even have the other one because it had been sent to the State Department which it seemed didn’t like it.

Every time I began gnawing at it I would stress myself into a state of despair. It was the perfect storm of executive disfunction: having an array of paths to take, none of which I liked. All I did was stress every time I tried to think my way out of it.

So I just sat on it for weeks.

Last Wednesday I began packing for a trip to Sunbury Pennsylvania to visit a friend, Peterson Toscano, and maybe get my photographic eye opened again because Sunbury always gives my cameras something to love, and I desperately needed to feel that fire in me again after what Parkinson’s has been doing to my mind. While I packed, I took yet another opportunity to visit every place in the house I thought my passport might be. Again. And once again I could not find it. It was becoming a routine.

When I came back home yesterday I saw I’d received a priority mail envelope from U.S., Government Official Mail with a tracking bar code on it. As soon as I picked it up I could feel something like a passport inside of it. I bolted for the kitchen table and opened it up. There Was a passport inside of it.

I was so overjoyed you can’t imagine! All these weeks of stressing over it suddenly over. The wave of absolute relief practically swept me up off my feet. And then, more confusion.

My first thought was this was my lost passport and someone found it, sent it to the Feds and they’re sending it back to me. But no…checking it more carefully I could see it was a replacement, in fact it says on the first page that it is a replacement for a lost passport. It had been issued only a few days previously, and it arrived within the six to eight week timeframe they originally said a replacement would arrive in. But why then did I get that letter telling me my application was on hold until I got the correct documentation submitted?

I have no idea what was going on. None. Maybe my stalling over it for weeks had left it in someone’s inbox and a supervisor took another look at it and decided my old California birth certificate was good enough and yes I’d submitted the lost/stolen form digitally and that was good enough. Maybe my passport Had been stolen and some crook tried to use it and got caught and my passport confiscated and sent back to the State Department, which caused somebody to look and see if I’d reported it lost or stolen, and that broke the logjam on my application. I have no idea but I am So glad, So relieved, that I have a passport again and I’m not without that gold standard of identification anymore.

These days being without ID is risky. I keep thinking of this from the Notebooks of Lazarus Long by Robert Heinlein:

“When a place gets crowded enough to require ID’s, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere.”

Heinlein seems to have thought of himself as a “rational anarchist”. The older I get, the more I have to live in Donald Trump’s America, the more I find myself moving toward Heinlein. But I’m not there yet.

And this is the here and now, and my passport is Not leaving that safe again unless I am travelling with it or going somewhere to have some sort of ID background check done (like another Goddard badge, which isn’t likely now since I’m about to be retired again after Roman launches) and if that’s the case it is going in one of those around the neck passport wallets and Not Leaving My Body until I can get it back into the safe!

Hopefully they send me back the birth certificate I submitted my application with. But I am going to try and get another good one from California. Having the passport now might make it easier. If my original documentation didn’t go up in flames when my birth hospital burned.

I ordered a few books on the subject from Barnes & Noble and I had to laugh when I saw the “For Dummies” title in the list. But then I thought that one would give me an overview that would point me to topics to dig into further, and I ordered it anyway. In addition to these two I also ordered Navigating Life With Parkinson’s Disease (second edition) by Sotirios A. Parashos, MD. PhD and Rose L. Wichmann, PT.  They came yesterday.

Today starts my second week on the meds and I go to one pill three times a day. Last week was a half pill three times a day and those darn pills are a bit too crumbly. I have to be really careful when using the pill cutter on one or I’m taking a dose of pill dust. But for some reason the doctor needs me to ramp up to the correct dose over three weeks. It might be because a common side effect is nausea and they want my body to get accustomed to it gradually. I can say that so far I’ve experienced zero nausea. Which is good because that is the worst feeling ever. I’d rather have a toothache than nausea.

I’m hoping to see some improvement now since I really didn’t see any on the half pill dose. This morning wasn’t a good one when I first got up and took my morning coffee walk, but I’m feeling noticeably less unbalanced now. I have some work in the backyard I want to take care of so I’ll see how it goes.

Nobody is more self aware than the overthinker. I’m getting used to taking the measure of things as I’m getting ready for my day in the morning. How is the balance? The finger tremors? I do some practice quick turns to see how bad the unbalance is this morning. As I make my morning coffee I pay attention to how well my fingers are doing my bidding. Where once was a really irritating loss of focus and precision I had no explanation for, other than every doctor I talked to about it saying oh its just you’re getting old, now I have a reason for what’s happening. I have something to take a measure of. So how’s the Parkinson’s today?

I feel like I should be more angsty about it, but it’s not even close to debilitating just yet. It’s not great, but I can handle it at this stage. See my previous post about altered states of consciousness. I really want to be able to focus on some of the art projects I have in mind before it gets too much worse and the focus isn’t there. I’m really hoping the new meds give it at least some of that back for a while longer. I want to take more road trips while I’m still good to drive, but thank you all the idiots who voted for Trump, fuel prices are making that impossible, especially on a retirement income.

But the big factor as to why I’m not more upset about it is I’m in my 70s now and it’s not like I got this diagnosis in my twenties or thirties (that does happen), and the life I thought I had in front of me suddenly isn’t there anymore. I can look back on a lot of…interesting times…my only regret, and it’s a big one, is I had nobody to share it with heart and soul. But at least most of that is behind me now, not a lost life I could have had in front of me.

At this age your sort of expect it’s going to be Something. I just thought it would be the heart.

Some morning’s when I get up I’m a bit more out of balance, have a bit more hand tremors, then others. At least now I know why. Knowledge is grounding in its way, but the fact of it is still irritating. That said, I and my particular generation may have a slight advantage navigating Parkinson’s. At least some of us.

A friend told me once about how his elderly mom had been given an opiate for pain relief, and how the side effect of being all fuzzy headed was distressing her. He reassured her that it was okay, that happens, and it was all part of the treatment. Then he mentioned how since back in our younger days we’d all been getting high on all sorts of things, we’d become familiar with the feeling of being high, and navigating on foot while a bit wobbly. We had experience with altered states of consciousness, while his mom had not and it was all new to her and a bit frightening.

This may have played a part in why I hadn’t pushed more vigorously about getting a diagnosis. I could navigate the wobbliness because I’d done it often enough before. Coming on out of the blue like that it didn’t scare me so much as irritate me. And confuse me a bit as to what was going on. No, this isn’t just getting old. Something’s up. Maybe if it had sacred me I’d have pushed harder for a diagnosis.

It still irritates me, but at least I know what’s happening now.

I’ve already told those closest to me about this. Yesterday I talked it over with my project lead and his deputy at Space Telescope. Now I’m going to share it with the rest of you. Because at this age sharing our stories about aging is something we can all do for each other. Also, I’m an artist and wearing our hearts on our sleeves, and on the canvas, is just something we do.

For just over two years I’ve been struggling with our wonderful health care system trying to get a handle on what’s been happening to me. I’ve been getting forgetful, fuzzy headed, can’t focus. I’ve been losing balance, nearly falling over sometimes when I have to change course while walking through a crowd, or going back into the house because I keep inevitably forgetting to take something with me. I have tremors, mostly in the left hand thank goodness because it’s my right hand that’s the drawing hand. But that one’s getting them now too ever so slightly. I favor writing with one of my good fountain pens, usually my Mont Blanc 149 (the Diplomat), and lately I’ve had to be extra careful putting down some of the curvy letters of the alphabet while writing. Sometimes when I’m trying to draw I need to steady the pen with both hands. But I’ve also lost a lot of ability to focus and that’s kept me away from my drafting table and my cameras for going on a year now and that alone is killing me inside. For over two years I’ve been trying to get doctors to look at me and tell me what is happening and all I get is oh you’re just getting old take some vitamins. Okay, fine, I’m 72 now, so I reckon yes that’s old, but this didn’t feel like normal aging.

I ended up changing GPs (general practitioner) because my previous one retired and the new one they gave me at Whitman-Walker just didn’t take an interest. I looked for one at Union Memorial because they’ve done all the work on my heart since the heart attack in 2019 and I’ve never felt better cared for there. It’s an easy place for me to get to from home and I thought it would be good if I had all my doctors working from the same sets of data about me. The new GP I got took an instant interest in what was going on and she gave me several referrals.

First was for a brain scan. It showed nothing out of the ordinary for someone my age. Then there was one for a sleep study that I didn’t follow up on because I’d had a really bad experience with one at Hopkins about a decade and a half ago. Third one was for a neurologist. I had a session with him last Thursday, and finally got clarity.

The session was in thirds. First third was he asked me about what was going on with me and I gave him my laundry list of complaints. Pretty sure he was observing my body language and occasional difficulty getting words out. About halfway through he started asking me questions I wasn’t sure as to their relevance. How is my sense of smell? (it’s been nearly gone since the mid 1980s) When you wake up are your blankets all tangled up? Answer is somewhat, but not much unless I’m too hot and kicking them off.

Second third was your usual neurologist reflex/coordination tests. The little hammer on the knee, can you feel this vibrating here, does that feel cold there, follow my finger with your eyes, touch your nose. He had me walk back and forth in the hallway outside the examination room. I think by then he’d already figured out what was going on and he was trying to see how far along it had progressed.

Tests done we had a chat, which he began by saying to me “What I’m about to tell you isn’t good, but it’s not as bad as you might think.”

I have Parkinson’s.

And this might sound strange, even for me, and inappropriate, but my first reaction to that was an overwhelming sense of relief, because in that moment everything Just Clicked. Finally, after over two years of fighting with the American healthcare system to take my complaining seriously I had an explanation for what was happening to me that made sense. No it’s not good, but going for years and years and still not knowing could only let it keep getting worse and worse when I could have been taking the right meds and doing whatever I need to do to keep it at bay for as long as I can.

Neurologist says I have at least five, if not ten more years before I’ll be needing help. I’m going to make the most of this time, however long it turns out to be. I feel suddenly unchained from worrying so much about my future. I’ve never liked that live for the moment philosophy but now I can see some benefits there after all. I’ve been put on a medication that shovels dopamine into the brain and the neurologist said I should notice an immediate and significant improvement in mental clarity, balance and motor functions when I start taking it. I’ll reach a plateau of improvement that will slowly decline because there is no cure for this, only management. Fine. Whatever. I’ll manage.

I’m not going to troll for sympathy. I don’t even like playing the senior citizen card (just give me my discount). But you get to the ages I and my classmates are now and things just start dogpiling on us and one thing we can do for each other is tell our stories. I’ve been blogging my life ever since blogs first became a thing, and I reckon I’ll keep doing that. Also searching out others who’ve had this diagnosis and listening to their stories.

So now the rest of you know. I’m okay. I’ll deal with it and keep you posted.

For decades this blog has been my way of journaling. I’ve said often that it is a life blog. It gets political at times because that’s life in these United States these days. But it’s a life blog, not a political one. It’s where I write about my life. If it gets strange, I’m strange. If it gets disturbing, you should see my life from my perspective. Welcome to my life. Blog. Thing of it is though, I don’t get a lot of feedback here. And even if I did, it wouldn’t be of the kind we all really need. I never found a boyfriend. I never found that significant other to talk with, to share our innermost selves with. It leaves you disconnected, drifting through life. I can get things out of me in my art, and here on the blog, but it’s a one-way conversation. I’ve never had the chance to share my life with anyone, who would share theirs with me. I’ve had no companion on this journey.

I recently bought a couple journaling books in the hope that, at this end stage of my life, I can gain some better insight into myself. Self acceptance is a hard thing to achieve, especially when you believe you’ve already achieved it. I’ve often prided myself on never feeling ashamed of my sexual orientation, but that is one aspect of personality among many, and looking back I had it very hard growing up, in a bunch of different ways. Picking through all of it to rescue the exuberant, curious, expressive boy I was before getting tossed into grade school has been a lifelong journey. He got suffocated, first by my maternal grandmother and most of her family out of hatred of my dad, then by my grade school teachers who thought I talked too much and took excessive interest in my art projects, then by the pervasive homophobia that surrounded me as I came of age. After mom passed away I entered therapy for a brief period, but it was shallow at best. I was told being an only child was a “toughie” and that I “present young”, as if that was somehow a bad thing and not a lost little portion of that exuberant and expressive boy I once was, still trying to live.

I came across a card game with the title “How Deep Will You Go”, and bought it not to play with anyone, but to draw a card every morning and try to answer the questions: What is your biggest struggle right now? What’s something simple that makes you smile? Is there closure you never got to have? What are you afraid to let go of? I thought these could be helpful for solitary me, who never found a soulmate to have these sorts of conversations with. 

Later I saw a daily journal book, each day a page with a similar sort of question at the top for you to write about on the page below it. Write something you’ve been wanting to tell someone. What’s something you haven’t said out loud yet? Write a letter to someone who hurt you. When I went to order one there was another journal you could get bundled with it, inviting you to dig deeper. Where do you go to feel closest to yourself? 

These were both hardbound books and I figured I would write out my answers with my good fountain pens, my awful handwriting might even improve a tad since I seldom write longhand anymore until I’m signing a document or putting my name on some artwork. My handwriting is very scrawly. But the books have arrived and I’ve begun the work, and immediately discovered a difficulty. I have nowhere to actually write, that isn’t a computer desk with a keyboard taking up the space where handwriting would otherwise happen.

In grade school my maternal grandmother bought me a student desk with open shelves instead of drawers so I couldn’t hide anything from her. I used it all through school and when I finally moved out of the apartment I shared with mom and broke it into little bits because I didn’t want anything of hers to follow me into the rest of my life. I’ve not had a writing desk since, but I bought a very nice drafting table while I was still living with mom and it’s followed me to the little Baltimore rowhouse of my own. I’ll do the journaling exercises on that. Seems appropriate. 

I thought I knew what being a solitary was like after all these decades. But I didn’t. I thought I could always handle it. And unfortunately, I can. But I see something I never really appreciated before. And having that significant other, a body and soul connection where our innermost selves feel completely at ease with each other, embraced, loved, seen…grounded…home…would be really good to have now.

I never found him. I’m an only kid. Maybe that made it easier for me to get used to the inner solitude, even in those times when I tried to escape it and couldn’t. Plus the torrent of abuse gay kids got in the 60s/70s, to remind me that love was not mine to have. I tried to find him, but as I became a senior citizen I settled in to the void because there was no where else to live (people who look like that want people who look like that…) and by then I’d made it comfortable. It was the room of my own I always had ever since I left the cradle, where I could occupy myself with pastimes, where love could have been but never was. I never really grasped how it would feel, when I finally came to this moment, and I saw the void was bigger than I realized without that significant other to keep us both steady.

Got my brain imaged at Union yesterday morning. They said they got good data because I didn’t move throughout the procedure. I perfected the art of playing rag doll for the doctor ages ago. The only time I have trouble with it is when they need to examine the area around my stomach because I am massively ticklish there.

The slow steady increase in my memory problems, combined with my having subtle but definite balance issues, and trouble getting words out sometimes, is troubling me lots. So I am keen to see the results of this. There are two possible things that could be causing it, neither of them are good outcomes. But hopefully it’s just I need to be more regular about taking my vitamins at my age, and getting out of the chair in front of my computer more.

Like…now for instance.

This came in the mail yesterday, and I gave it a first try this morning here at Casa del Garrett…

How Deep Will You Go is advertised as a connection conversation card game to play among friends or lovers. “What if the next time you hang out, phones were away and you saw a side of them you never knew?” There are three types of cards: Ice Breakers, Confessions, and Going Deep. But I didn’t buy this deck to play with others. I’m really not comfortable exposing myself that much to anyone, except the boyfriend I never had, I bought it because it looked like it would give me a more structured way to deep dive into my own self, by randomly picking a card every day and thinking about its question. Self psychoanalysis if you like.

This first morning I tried one of each type. Going forward I think I’ll just pick a card from one type depending on my mood when I wake up. The going deep card I pulled asked me to describe my biggest heartbreak and what it taught me.

Oh boy…

That would not be when I discovered my first crush had moved far away, like out of the country far away, and I’d probably never see him again, and I almost jumped off a bridge in front of a train. Which I didn’t do when it occurred to me that it would probably traumatize the engineer. Isn’t it always the case that when you think about how your life affects others it makes you a better person. But then Elon says empathy is western civilization’s biggest weakness.

No…it was my second crush, a few years later, which when it hit me left me overjoyed to think I’d been given a second chance at love after I was certain it was over for me, and we became very close, to the point of intense heart to heart conversations when we were alone, sending love letters while I was away with other friends on a road trip, then only to realize sometime later that I’d fallen in love with a straight guy, and it would never be.

I think I knew then what the future held. And in a culture that back then gave gay guys nothing but venom and static from every direction…

Mad Magazine, July 1978 by Jack Davis

…who was I to think it would be any different?

Well the card deck is working. I probably gave that question more serious thought than I ever did before. What did I learn? Well…it wasn’t a lesson I was ready to take to heart just then, but I knew it all the same: that we are all utterly, totally, completely alone in this life. That the universe does not care about our deepest heartfelt hopes and dreams, and if we cannot make that heart and soul connection with another, then we either treasure and care for our own heart, so as to at least keep being good people and doing our part to keep civilization moving forward, and loving as best we can our families and friends in this life, and somehow some way endure the empty loneliness ahead of you, or you just go find a bridge and jump.

Obviously I haven’t jumped. But there have been moments it really came close. What I have to think about now is I made a bunch of young gay friends during the Love In Action protests, some of whom still stay in touch with me, and I don’t want to set that example for them. It’s such a stereotypical way for gay guys to go. I don’t want them thinking its inevitable. I want them to see a future.

Empathy isn’t a weakness. It’s what makes civilization possible. It’s what makes moving on with your own life possible, absent that body and soul romance you never got.

My new GP set me up with appointments with a neurologist and a CAT scan, to try and get to the bottom of why I’m tired all the time, slightly dizzy all the time, and have a hard time focusing on tasks for more than short bursts of concentration. She also wants me to schedule a sleep study. So naturally I keep ruminating about the results I might get, particularly regards the CAT scan and what the neurologist might tell me.

I’m 72, and I can feel myself losing it. But if I look at it logically I’m actually in pretty good shape for my age. I’ve outlived some of my classmates, but most of the one’s I’ve kept in touch with are still hanging in there. But anyone with the artistic nature I possess, plus a powerful imagination that I’ve daydreamed in since I was a kid…

…can’t really help but ponder all the possible things a CAT scan might reveal, and what that might me for how much longer I have to live, and all the art projects I never got around to starting, let alone finishing.

So it really doesn’t help when you wake up in the morning hearing your mom calling your name. Especially when she’s been dead for over two decades.

(Panel above is from A Coming Out Story)

The trip back on the Silver Meteor was nice, but I’m glad to be back. My deluxe week in my DVC one bedroom villa was worth the time spent, even though I didn’t do much but eat at the nice restaurants and drink at the good bars and wander around Saratoga Springs. This is a problem that’s only getting worse as time goes on. I have no energy, and no motivation to do art much anymore, other than work on my “ghost” story novel. Which I hope to start serializing here eventually. If I can get motivated to make the illustrations I want to include.

Tomorrow morning I have a first visit with the doctor who will hopefully become my new GP, since the one they connected me with at Whitman-Walker after my prior one retired has been very indifferent. My new one will be affiliated with the same hospital my cardiologist and the surgeon who did my ablation are, and hopefully this results in better care for this 72 year old body. I’m going to talk to them about how I’m tired all the time anymore (it was almost too much just to walk to the grocery store a few blocks away to restock some items), and getting way too forgetful.

I put a lot of things down to being single and lonely, but I’m pretty sure I don’t fit the description of someone who is clinically depressed. On the train ride back I had a wonderful time chatting with my fellow travelers in the dining car and at various stopping-refueling points along the way, where passengers have a few moments to step outside the train and get some fresh air. I am not so introverted that I can’t enjoy the company of people I’ve never met before, where the situation provides natural ice breakers. It’s different than the highly competitive and very cliquish crowd at a gay bar, which was my problem with socializing in that environment. Not that they likely ever wanted to give solitary me an assist anyway, but all I ever needed was an ice breaker, and all I ever got from them was gaslighting about being too shy. Tico once told me I was good at getting a stand-offish table at Biergarten talking to each other and having a good time together, but that was Disney World which has an assortment of built-in icebreakers I could use. Actually, I really dislike sitting quietly by myself when I’m out and about. If I want solitude I can get it at home. Or just take a long walk. Go on a road trip.

But that’s probably also a problem, and partly at least, if not more, why I’m so tired and unmotivated anymore. My house is a lonely place. I walk alone. I go places, driver here and there and meet people along the way, but on the road it is just me and my car. That has been slowly killing me for years, I see now. 

There are dark times I keep picking at that I shouldn’t by now, but I can’t help myself. Tico telling me to go away would be one. But seeing, finally, the total indifference of the gay guys I trusted, and thought of as friends, was another, and it is worse. Tico got angry at me. The others stuck a knife in my heart like it was no big deal, and I’m pretty sure to this day they think I overreacted. It is indifference, not hate, as Elie Wiesel once said, that is the opposite of love.

I would add one more thing: friends get angry at each other, strangers just stick the knife in and walk away.

I think I’ve over all that. Or just getting old. Whatever. This is not a day to be spoiling other people’s joy. Instead I’m going to try and cultivate some of my own. Or at any rate, at least some peace of mind.

Alas, the nice local upscale restaurant I would have treated myself to today, La Cuchara, has been closed for over a month now due to a fire in one of its kitchen vents. I’m really hoping they come back. It was expensive but worth every penny.

Probably do Wicked Sister’s. I love their crab cake dinner, and some of their house cocktails are pretty good.