Unhappy Days

We were two deeply hurt persons. I was in that curious space of fearing that I was gay, knowing that I was gay, being absolutely convinced that I couldn’t be gay, worried that my parents would find out….

…that I was gay.

How was all this contradictory thinking possible? That, Dear Reader, is precisely the point: I was all over the map, which meant that confusion and fear ruled the day. Or rather the long days that stretched into years.

A young man showed me, some years ago, the photo his mother had taken of him and his boyfriend sleeping together in a hammock in their backyard. It was remarkable on many levels: that he had been comfortable enough to expose his intimacy so casually to his parents. That his mother had thought it charming, and had taken the photo. And lastly, for me, was that the young man had found nothing remarkable about his mother taking the photo. He valued it for nothing else than the memory of that day, and of that love.

For those of us who grew up in the fifties and sixties, it was all very different. We enjoyed the doubtful pleasure of being both sick and criminal. So you got it from both ends: you were going to have bitchy, short-term relationships for the rest of your life, since everybody knew that male homosexuals had fragile egos, and could never sustain a relationship permanently.

That, of course, was for the liberals, who were pitying us. Ah, but the conservatives knew better: we were not sick, we were disgusting, and if caught had to be taken away, put before the judge, and charged. That, then, would get into the newspapers. So there would come the knock on the apartment door: hadn’t you signed a lease in which you agreed not to engage in “immoral behavior?”

You probably hadn’t, since who ever reads a legal contract? You were busy trying to figure out how you were going to pay for the apartment, and how you could sneak in your lover. Yes, that’s what we did, and if you were slightly effeminate—or he was—the tongues would wag.

In fact, I had read the contract, and protested the “immorality” clause. Which had led my landlord to demand just what in hell I was planning to do? Surely I didn’t do anything immoral, nor was I planning to, right? Or did I?

I caved and signed the thing.

One stopped noticing it, after a while. Friends would make fag jokes—you would laugh. People who were more obviously gay would be singled out, and jeered at—you would join in. The people who were most homophobic, of course, were most likely to be secretly gay.

There weren’t many places to go. There were the parks, but that was tricky: that really good-looking guy—was he really gay? Or was he a cop. Oh, and he’s early twenties and got the body of a Greek god, and you’re mid-forties, and your belly shows it. But he’s definitely cruising you, and what if he just is into older guys? Are you going to pass up….

Wait—another possibility. What if he’s straight? ‘Cause then it was two things: he’s going to jump you, slash your face up with a knife, break some bones, and—worst case—well, remember Matt Shepherd? You know, left to die on a barbed wire fence in Colorado?

Oh, but then again, it may just be a robbery. Which, of course, you would report if you were out at night returning home from your church’s choir practice. But do you really want to explain to the police what you were doing at Hoyt Park at 11 o’clock at night. So it was, as the old saying had it, easier than stealing candy….

Of course, now you think maybe it’s too complicated, too risky, and besides, Hoyt park in the middle of the night in January? You’re going to expose your private parts to that?

The bar! Oh wait—wasn’t it raided last week? You know, the typical scene: cops coming in the front door, the gay guys rushing out the back door. Oh, or jumping out the bathroom window, since it’s surprising how agile you can be when the cops are at the door…

That left the dirty bookstore, since by the sixties, there were two or three in Madison, Wisconsin. The first, on the main drag, had the glass windows painted out, and also the First Amendment painted in full on one of the windows. Yes, it was a heady combination of high-minded liberal thinking and good old-fashioned smut.

The front of the store sold the magazines, the paraphernalia, the “novelties” and, later, either the 8 mm films or, later., the VHS tapes. And you had cruised the Goodwill store for a film projector, undoubtedly donated by some suburban dad who had no more use for home movies. Had the children grown, or had the divorce occurred? Anyway, it was there, and even on your student budget, you could buy it.

Or, of course, you could go into the backroom of the porn shop. There, the management had put in booths. You would close the door, put the five dollars of quarter you had bought by your side, and then stick the first quarter into the slot of the machine on the wall. The projector was behind you; the grainy film would unravel on the white screen on the back of the door. After a minute or two, the film would stop: it was time to insert another quarter or two….

This is not that sort of blog, so I won’t be too explicit. I do bring you, however, two facts: there were large holes cut between the booths, and do I have to tell you they were at waist high? Oh, and the management at one of the joints had thoughtfully hung up a paper towel rack—it even occasionally had the towels themselves!

That was your life, and is it any wonder that many of us just decided to skip the whole thing? My cello teacher was a beloved conductor of the local youth orchestra, he never married, and he lived with his mother. I am sure his mother is dead, now. I’m also sure that he is still living with his mother. In one sense at least.

So one misstep, and you lost quite a bit. There was your job, of course, since even if all you did was add up sales figures, well, who wants to work with a fag? The apartment was gone, too, and that would be interesting, explaining the reference of you past landlord to your potential future one. You family would be appalled, and you tried to imagine, would it be moral indignation, shame, social ostracism, or horror? And which would be worse?

In the midst of all this, it occurred to me: I could just fade away from the family. After all, if I didn’t call, didn’t visit, wouldn’t they just, well, forget about that third son? Oh yes, now what was his name? So I began priming the well by being just a bit cool, when my mother called.

She, of course, was in panic. Was I on drugs? What had she done? Or had I, as I finally came up with, just awoken from a nap, and was groggy?

The depression started. I planned my suicide. And I told my friend—yes, that friend from the first paragraph of this post. Well, I told her about the suicide, even though I knew or sensed….

…that she was in worse trouble than I.

They who Walk Among Us

They walk among us, but do we see them? No—nobody would imagine that the man in the café playing a classical guitar version of the Bach chaconne would imagine that the guitar is virtually the only thing he own. The rest? Well, he was carrying that in the bag that squash players use to carry their rackets and their change of gym clothes.

Well, he stopped carrying that around a few days ago. He had found, you see, temporary shelter at the Salvation Army, since for the last nine months he has been homeless. Some of that time he was up in the mountains, staying with friends. But there’s a problem: he has, very likely Asperger’s—or so it seems to me—and it’s hard to imagine he has many friends.

“It’s been the best thing for me,” he told me. “They gave me a room, and they told me how to get a free cell phone, which they call the Obamaphone. And I had to go to the police station for a certificate of good conduct, as well as several other agencies. They even drove me to one agency, since there was no bus service at that way. They only thing is that I can’t play my guitar at night, since I have to be in the shelter by a specific time….”

He’s not the only homeless one in the café: there’s Norman, who makes his presence known even before you walk into the café. Why? Because if you see a white Styrofoam cooler attached to some red wheels, you know that Norman is in the house. So Norman has his little business as well: he sells bottles of “the coldest water in the Caribbean,” on the corner of the street where I live.

Of course, I see homeless people in other places, as well. When I go to the beach, I very frequently see a man soaping up the jeans that he is wearing. Makes sense—doesn’t it? How else is he supposed to get them clean? The, the jean still dripping, he moves away, sits on the rock, and shaves while looking out at the sea.

There is the old lady who dives in dumpsters, especially outside Subway—that half-eaten sandwich must be a godsend. And then, of course, there’s the street porter—who makes what living he can by “helping” park cars. Oh, and then protecting the cars, since anything could happen, right? Oh, and you don’t want that to happen, do you? Do you?

Of course, there are the panhandlers, one of who passed me with his cardboard sign, “tengo cancel!” Which would be more help: giving him my spare change, or teaching how to spell “cancer?”

For those panhandlers who have a drug habit, it’s not uncommon for them to exhibit was are the nastiest, most suppurating wounds I have ever seen in my life. I look away, and try not to imagine the real horror: many of these people have veins so bad, after years of drug use, that they are injecting drugs into the exposed veins of those very wounds.

I wonder: what do the tourists think of us? Because on virtually every block, there is another maimed and discarded life presenting itself. Our island has many problems: superbly beautiful, it is also afflicted with trash at every glance. And what about the trees that are so desperately needed? So after we cleaned the island up, and then planted the trees, we could start in on work of watering and maintaining them.

The guitarist has finished his Bach, he is now playing one of De Falla’s pieces for guitar. He’d probably play for the hell of it, of course, but now I know: he’s playing as if his life depended on it.

And it does.

But should it?

The Archbishop Has the Answer!

It feels sort of like an entire island is suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome. OK—cancel that, maybe it’s just that everybody is too stunned to react.

Take yesterday, for example: a weak tropical wave passed over the island. So there were periodic blasts of lightening, a few showers, and…

…the light went out.

Not for me, thank God, but for my neighbor, and for the café, and for the pharmacy.  In fact, half of Old San Juan had no electricity.

“It was a transformer on San Francisco Street,” said Taí, and maybe it was. So that makes sense, right? Obviously, if a transformer blows, well, you should expect to be without electricity for most of the day—anybody can see that!

But wait—it was just a tropical wave. It wasn’t even a storm, much less a hurricane! So what happened?

The morning paper has the answer: today, the cost of electricity is going up, and power outages have increased by 449% over the last three years. In fact, the average customer is without power for an hour every month.

Lady comes by, and put a more human and terrifying spin on the thing.

“I was talking to an electrician,” she said, “and he told me: imagine a giant spider web covering the island.”

“OK—that’s what we should have. But what do we have? Just a single thread. So if a major hurricane hits, Old San Juan will be 4 or 5 months without electricity….”

That’s how fragile the system is….

It’s just one thing of many to worry about, since it now appears that the president has addressed the entire island, and told us that we need to take Zika seriously. So I decide to go back to Lady, and inquire….

“Of course I’m not wearing insect repellent,” said Lady. “I’m not going to get pregnant, so who cares?”

“Well, Barack Obama….”

“There goes our high season,” said Lady. “Do you know, they cancelled an entire convention? I had an order for 130 casitas and now, poof! It’s gone! That was our mortgage payment!”

“Well,” said Jack, “I think this has something to do with the fiscal control board…”

He’s gringo, but he’s picked up the island knack for paranoia.

Or is it paranoia? Because the news is unremittingly bad. Last week, for example, we had to worry about the doctor situation, since we’re losing a doctor a day—and remember, this is a small island. OK—that’s bad, but more worrisome are the doctors who are leaving, since many of them are specialists.

So now the president wants us to wear insect repellent, but it has to be said: why? I know—do it for other people, if not for yourself. Unfortunately, this hits us in our weakest spot, since Puerto Ricans will do anything for their friends. We do friendship great down here.

What don’t we do?

Curiously, we have a word for it, this thing that tends to go by the wayside. It’s called el prójimo and it means the person you don’t know, but have an obligation to. So that means that you don’t park in handicapped parking if you’re hale, you don’t litter the beach that someone will visit after you’re gone, you take off the door of the refrigerator because while no one has a child, well, suppose someone did?

So am I wearing insect repellent?

Of course not. Because there is a little secret that nobody wants to talk about: I can drain flower pots, dispose of tires properly, and do absolutely everything that the president wants me to do. But what am I supposed to do about my roof, which like every other roof in Puerto Rico is flat?

“That’s one problem,” said my friend Manolo. “But what are you going to do about all the swimming pools in abandoned properties?”

Yes, it appears that people are abandoning properties: packing up their stuff, locking the door, and moving away.

How bad is the problem? Who knows, since there’s no register for such things, but here’s El Nuevo Día on the subject:

“Las casas abandonadas van en aumento en Puerto Rico. Es como una enfermedad, un cáncer dentro de la comunidad”, expresó Rolando Ortiz, alcalde de Cayey y presidentede la Asociación de Alcaldes.

So the abandoned houses, says the president of the mayors’ association, are a disease, a cancer in the communities. And now, they are perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be that way: Cuba, every bit as tropical as we, in late June reported that they had had no Zika cases since March. So what have they done? All the sensible things: screening people from Zika-infected areas at the airport, organizing neighborhood groups to go house by house to eliminate breeding grounds, fumigation where necessary. Oh, and they also got the military out to help as well.

We, on the other hand, have over 7,000 cases, and 788 pregnant women who have been infected with the disease. Oh—and 80% of the island is Catholic, and what are we getting told? Put off having children until we get the situation under control. So that spurred New York City to send one million condoms to the island in early May. So then we got a little fight between the health department—which had received the condoms—and the Archbishop of San Juan, who has, in fact, a sure-fire solution to the problem!

Abstinence!

So that’s a problem, since I live just a few blocks from the archbishop, and it really that somebody should tell him: if we can’t do anything about flat roof and abandoned houses and swimming pools….

…do we really have a shot at abstinence?   

Go For It, Hillary!

Well, it was history, all right, but what sort of history?

Bernie Sanders supporters—and do I have to tell that I’m right there among them?—will certainly agree that history was made. After all, has there ever been a primary process that was so utterly and conveniently skewed to assure Clinton a victory?

I wanted to like her. I almost did in 2008. True, there was always something a little entitled about her: was it Farrakhan who said something like, “she just couldn’t believe that a black man would come out of nowhere…?” Think so, but the internet just drifted out the door….

Well, well—it’s the old story: divide and conquer. Stir up the muck, get the minorities and oppressed groups hating each, and bam! Donald Trump—or whoever the jerk of the moment may be—gets off scot-free.

It was fishy for months, and like fish, it didn’t smell any prettier as time went on. There was the huge disconnect of reading The New York Times—Everyone Including Nosferatu Agrees: Clinton WILL Be Nominee, read one headline—and then seeing footage of lines extending from San Francisco to Los Angeles, all just to hear Sanders speak. (Full disclosure—I made all of that up, but you know what I mean….)

Yes, it was all a little bogus, wasn’t it? Even when Sanders won, as he did in Wisconsin, he still seemed to get shafted. I mean, what in the world do you make of this picture?

Right—I checked, and 56% of 86 delegates is indeed 48. So all is on the up and up, right? I can lay aside this particular conspiracy and go back to worrying about the illuminati, can’t I?

Well, no, because here is the Washington Times, weighing in on the super delegates:

If the superdelegates in Wisconsin would do that, Sanders would leave Wisconsin with 12 more delegates than Clinton. As it stands now, the best Sanders can hope for is an eight delegate advantage, but it could be as slim as just two.

So how did it all work out? Did Sanders supporters get the super delegates to agree to be bound to the candidate who won the election? Who knows—and that was exactly the point. Because it was dizzying, this primary season: no sooner did you get done seeing the YouTube clips of Arizona than you were busy worrying about the 100,000 or so missing democrats in the Bronx, and then….

They learned—the best way to get away with anything is to be brazen. Then, when confronted, they could charge that the Sanders people were being “ridiculous,” as some comedian put it on Monday or Tuesday.

In fact, I am very frequently ridiculous. But there are also some rules of the game: if some of the Sanders supporters were at times poor losers, weren’t some of the Clinton people rather poor winners? And really, no matter how much you believe that Clinton was the right candidate, can anyone also not believe that the process was flawed?

The tragedy here is that it never had to happen: running elections is not rocket science. You only need to do three or four things. First, you take every voting machine and sell it for scrap. Second, you print paper ballots. Third, you hold elections on Sundays, when most people don’t have to work. Then, you count each vote by hand, in the presence of representative of all the candidates. I would add, by the way, that you could crowd source the whole thing by use of cameras and the internet: I promise to stay glued to the computer as my precinct’s votes are tabulated.

Right—got that taken care of!

Of course, if you really needed help—I mean, I’m just a blogger, after all—you could call in…now what was his name? Oh yes, Jimmy Carter, since when he hasn’t been building houses, he’s been supervising elections. Or monitoring them. Or doing what he does, but anyway, at 90 plus, isn’t the elder statesman around here?

Oh, and didn’t he have some tart words to say recently about the primaries? Damn, wish the internet were here….

Would I vote for Clinton, if I could vote at all? Honey, I’d vote for Clinton as many times as anybody would let me—but not with a smile on my face. That’s what I told my sister-in-law, who is furious with the Sanders people.

“Do they REALLY want Trump to be elected!” she demanded.

I decided to tell her the truth: I’m one of those people….

But I did sweeten the affair by telling her this (note, drop voice to a baritone, and also intone): At no time in the history of our great nation have we required the strength of character, the wisdom, the leadership, the compassion, the vision, of a patriot who has the proven capacity to…

…steal an election.