Puerto Rico Fights Zika!

“It’s the law of attraction,” said Lady, and I snarled immediately.

“It’s blaming the victim,” I told her, and stalked off.

Lady, it seems, does not get mosquito-borne diseases. Is it because she tends to wear long dresses, long sleeves? Is it because mosquitos find her distasteful? Whatever—two years ago, when everyone in Old San Juan was walking around with Chikungunya, Lady was peering at us through braided coils, wondering what the fuss was about.

“Well, at least you don’t have Ebola,” was the incendiary remark at the time.

And the response?

“Listen, if I had the money and the energy, I would travel to darkest Africa, find the highest concentration of Ebola victims, and share food, lodgings, blood and saliva with them. Oh, and probably cannibalism. Because at the moment, a handy little death from Ebola is vastly preferable….”

Now I have Zika.

It was supposed to be no problem: 80% of the people who contract the disease have no symptoms. OK—80% I can do. 80% on a horse? I’d definitely put my money on it.

And I would have lost….

OK—but it was going to be mild, right? You know, just a little joint pain, a little lethargy, and maybe a rash. Over and done in a couple of days, and life would go on.

Ten days ago, I woke up feeling strange. Was that the day that I was freezing cold at five in the morning? Or was it the day after? In fact, one of the curious features of the disease is that chronology becomes meaningless: I only know that I leapt out of bed, put a full set of clothes on, turned off the fan, and dove under the blanket. I was—in August, in Puerto Rico—shivering uncontrollably.

My doctor would have wanted me to take my temperature. And in days past, I would have, but what was the point? I had joined the long ranks of men and women who had come to the tropics, who had pitted themselves against the climate, the weather, and the fauna. It could have malaria, or yellow fever, or any other known or unknown tropical disease. What mattered was not the exact temperature—though I suspect it was well over 103 degrees—but the thrashing awake to clothes and bedclothes that were soaked with sweat. It’s at this moment that one knows: you are not where you are supposed to be.

You were seduced, as so many had been, by the gentle ocean breezes, by the lull of surf on sand, by the full moon glistening at you through palm fronds. But you were never meant to be here: only you, arriving at the café, are given a paper towel matter-of-factly by the staff. Because you walk quickly, striding purposefully down the street: you are still, somehow, in Wisconsin, charging through the streets to get back home, and sit by the fire. In 25 years, have you learned to stroll, to saunter? Of course not.

So the fever announced the disease: then it was the stomach. “Nausea and vomiting,” you read, in the CDC webpage. All right: double check on those. So now it’s day three or four, and everything is supposed to be clearing up nicely, since this disease can only last seven days, right? I mean, that’s what it says…..

News flash: the disease can do whatever the hell it wants….

Well, now it’s time to call my elder brother, because he has two abilities at the least: he can win Pulitzers, and he can attract the weirdest diseases known or unknown to man. So it was no surprise when my mother, years ago, called to tell me…well, wait, here she is:

“Guess what! Eric is in the hospital with Guillain-Barre!”

Indeed he was, and Eric being Eric, he had gotten the disease bass-akwards. Or maybe bass-downwards, since instead of getting the paralysis from the feet going up, Eric had gotten the paralysis from the face going down. This, in fact, was hardly good news, because paralysis is no big deal, really, until it afflicts your chest muscles. These contract, 20 or so times a minute, causing air to flow into your lungs. And so for us long-legged Newhouses, you can take a Hawaiian vacation from the onset of foot paralysis to the day of getting ready for the iron lung. But there isn’t that much time—or distance-–from the face to the chest….

“At least you’re not pregnant,” said Eric to me, and that rang a little bell, since remember, “at least you don’t have Ebola?”

No, I’m not pregnant, but I might as well be, since I am nauseated 24 / 7, have no energy, am sweating in the coolest nights and shivering through the hottest days. Oh, and I had gone off to an art gallery, and then thought to go to CVS, since I was waking up in the middle of the night, and then unable to get back to sleep. So I bought some Benadryl, and the pharmacist commented, “is that for your rash?”

Rash?

So yes, there it is, a maculopapular rash, which was all over by arms, and then my chest, and then my back, and then—unbelievably—in places where body hair would seem to make a rash unlikely, if not impossible. And that meant that I was itching unbearably even in my two arm pits, as well as in….well, I leave it to you to imagine the third area….

So that meant a trip to the pharmacy, since the pharmacies in Puerto Rico are looser, more generous, less anal. Which means that while they may not give you heroin—you have to cross the plaza for that—they will give you hydrocortisone cream, without the need for that fussy little piece of paper. Though in fact, the pharmacist recommended calamine lotion, which, if nothing else, would take you back to your childhood. Remember that? A time when mosquitos bit—OK, that’s fair—but never left you clinging onto the ledge between life and death.

That’s not fair.

So I buy two bottles, and the calamine seems to have changed, since it is no longer pink, and no longer smells. So is it psychological, my belief that the stuff is useless? Because I am itching like crazy now, and I am seriously contemplating: for a couple of months, I suffered agony from a broken back. Movement was torture, and so I lay in bed and counted my breaths up to ten, and then back again. It was hell, but was it worse than this constant itching? As long as I didn’t move, my back was only throbbing. But the itching is fierce, and constant.

“Have you been seeing a lot of these rashes?” I ask the pharmacist, because the world is definitely, well…diverse. Obama has, a couple weeks ago, gotten on the airwaves with a special message to Puerto Rico: take it seriously, guys. Lather up on the mosquito repellent, and empty those flowerpots after each rain. So I’ve done my utterly scientific polling to see if the message is getting through: I have walked through the café and asked everybody if they are wearing insect repellent.

Blank stares….

But wait, Lady did have a response: “I don’t intend to get pregnant….”

Oh, and then there was Jack: “think this has to do with the Fiscal Control Board…”

Zika has, in fact, proven itself able to spark the conspiracist theorists in us all. Montalvo posted on Facebook: Zika doesn’t come from mosquitos, it comes from a substance from…wait, I ran over to Snopes to check it out:

But now a medical organization is challenging that connection, saying that the chemical larvicide Pyriproxyfen is instead to blame.

Snopes pooh-poohs the whole idea, but who knows? And then it was Gary, who sent me this:

DEET is just one part of a binary chemical weapon system that is right now being deployed against the American people... a weapon system engineered to cause mass fear and confusion while even achieving a "behavior modifying" effect as you'll soon see.

Learn more:   http://www.naturalnews.com/055048_DEET_chemical_binary_weapon_cognitive_confusion.html#ixzz4IptlyDb1

And so here I sit, busy trying not to scratch, and contemplating the fact that health authorities are telling pregnant women to avoid a 1.5 mile stretch of Miami, since a fearsome five cases of Zika have been detected there. That’s interesting, since two cruise ships are in the harbor, and that means at least 5,000 passengers and God knows how many crew are strolling an area considerably smaller than 1.5 miles. And then it occurred to me: what’s happening elsewhere in the Caribbean? So here it is, from NBC:

The U.S. is interested in how Cuba responds to medical emergencies like Zika. Two new cases have been reported in Cuba since March. Two thousand cases have been reported in the past week in nearby Puerto Rico.

Cuba, you see, knew just what to do. To start with, the got the “neighborhood committees" out to turn over the flowerpots and ditch the used tires. The neighborhood committees—remember those? Those committed ideologues, working in secret but very effectively, that ensured political correctness and homogeneity for all those decades! And then they got the military out, to lend a hand as well.

Well, it was a pretty picture: all of those neighbors cleaning up the ‘hood, as the Cuba military trained the AR-15’s on them. And presumably, just to keep up the ánimo, they were singing the Internationale and Guantanamera as well!

But we’ve hardly lagged behind, because here, from the head of the Manejo de Emergencias y Administración de Desastres (Aemead) (Emergency Management and Disaster Administration) comes this!

I rest my case…. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Miami Girl Wins Gold

Is it just me, or are we living increasingly more in the land of narrative?

I’m not against narrative: what writer could be? But there is something about the intersection of sports and narrative that I don’t get.

If you don’t know, Mónica or Monica Puig succeeded in getting a tennis ball over the net fractionally more often than her opponent. She went on to win a gold medal, the first gold medal by a player representing Puerto Rico. That’s a crucial difference: Gigi Fernández, who won two gold medals in women’s doubles tennis, was born and raised in Puerto Rico, but represented the United States.

“So tell me about that again,” I asked Mr. Fernández—no relation to Gigi, but definitely related to me (he’s my husband).

“Well, she got some flak at the time, but she said she wanted to represent Puerto Rico, but there was no one for her to partner with…”

Is that true?

I have no idea.

OK—back to Mónica / Monica. No one can deny her personal triumph, and no one can deny that tennis is a superbly difficult game. That she was not expected to win, and that she did, is a gripping story. And even I, as the game was playing out, and Mr. Fernández was cooking dinner, guiltily snuck onto ESPN—quite a novel experience—to check in on how things were going for Monica.

Or Mónica….

Then dinner was served, and one does not, in Mr. Fernández’s house, engage with electronics at table. Fortunately, though, there were people engaged with electronics, since the cigar bar across the road had both the doors open and the game on the large screen. So every time Fernández scored, the street erupted. Sometime just before the end of dinner, the crescendo peaked, and it became clear—the crowd outside was going crazy.

“Well, either Monica won, or Dayanara won the Miss Universe contest again,” I said to Mr. Fernández. Dayanara Torres was the Miss Universe of 1993, and her win was announced by similar street fanfare.

So I checked in, and sure enough, Monica Puig was there , standing on the center and highest dais; the Puerto Rican flag was rising higher than the two others, La Borinquena was playing.  And then Monica Puig was tweeting. Well, after getting the medal, of course. And what was she tweeting?

   

   

“We did it, Puerto Rico,” is a poor translation. “We achieved it,” is literal but equally  poor. So maybe it’s best to say that Monica was saying, “this is Puerto Rico’s win.”

This is the gracious thing to say. It is also emotionally true, since Puerto Ricans, whether living on the island or living elsewhere, feel an amazing connectedness to home.

But is it true in any real sense? Did everybody on the island take turns driving Monica to her tennis lessons? Work a second job to get her the best coach? Hold her hand when it was needed, and tell her to keep her dream alive? Or were we smoking cigars and watching her win, and celebrating our victory?

To some degree, any individual achievement in any endeavor belongs to the community which fosters that achievement. A Puerto Rican singing at the Metropolitan Opera—Ana Martínez—was raised on the island, studied for a time on the island, and then went off to the Boston Conservatory and Juilliard. But still, Puerto Rico has some claim to her. But what about Monica Puig?

Although the 22-year-old moved to Miami as a baby, has spent virtually all of her life living and training in South Florida, and sheepishly admitted she doesn’t know the words to the Puerto Rican anthem, she was overwhelmed with Puerto Rican pride during and after the match. She said she considers herself a true “Boricua” (Puerto Rican) and was energized by the many Puerto Rican fans in the stands who chanted “Si se puede!” (yes you can) throughout the match.




Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/sports/olympics/article95570787.html#storylink=cpy

She says more:

I still have family in Puerto Rico. It’s my favorite place to go when I just want to go to the beach and be with family. That island has given me so much love and support my whole career. I just owe this one to them.”


           Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/sports/olympics/article95570787.html#storylink=cpy

I totally believe her. But take note: she comes to the beach, she visits her family, and

“that” island has given her so much support….

What isn’t Monica experiencing? Well, she isn’t waiting for her tax refund, which the local paper has just announced isn’t coming any time soon. She wasn’t the victim of a murder on a court in a community center at 8:50 PM in the small town of Las Piedras. But there is good news, according to today’s paper: the medical evacuation by helicopter service, which had stopped providing service when the government stopped providing funds, is now up and running again!

I have nothing but praise for Monica Puig. I admire her fidelity to her roots, I applaud her huge personal achievements, I salute her grace in thanking Puerto Rico.

So what’s my problem?

There are things—many things—that Puerto Rico can be proud of. Consider the fact that the students of the engineering school of the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez routinely win first place in national and international competitions. In fact, the school is ranked number four nationwide.

So when a student or graduate of the university goes on to work for Boeing as a senior engineer responsible for “all electrical wire design, integration and equipment installations on the 747 and 767 programs, including the new 747-8 and the 767 Refueling Tanker Programs”—well, we can be proud. We built and maintained that university, recruited the faculty, nurtured the talent. And while it may not be an Olympic gold medal, well, which would you prefer, as you step onto a 747?

Am I being a killjoy? What’s wrong, after a decade of horrendous news in Puerto Rico, with feeling—at long last—a little pride? Joy, at seeing a hometown girl make the gold?

We live by narrative. We tell ourselves stories about who we are, who they are, what our world is. And the truer those stories are, the better we get on with our lives.

I wouldn’t be writing this if it were just Monica Puig. But while researching this, I found out that Gigi Fernández is the cousin of José Ferrer, the famous actor, and where was his fame achieved? Oh, and he went to Princeton, where he wrote a thesis on French Naturalism, and was a member of the Princeton Triangle Club. He died in Coral Gables, Florida, but he did donate his Academy Award to the University of Puerto Rico. Will it soften the blow if Wikipedia tells you, not I:

The award was stolen after being misplaced during the remodeling of the university's theater. 

Ana Martínez—born and raised in Puerto Rico, graduated from Juilliard—stepped in at the last minute to replace an ailing soprano in Madame Butterfly. The Observer called it “a triumph.”

And now Monica Puig? Or remember all that business of Mónica / Monica Puig? Isn’t it fairer to say that this island produces great talent—Ferrer, Fernández, Martínez, Puig? And that they go off, leave, and make their successes elsewhere?

And if that were the narrative we embraced, we would have to look at ourselves, and wonder what we could do to have…

…our very best stay at home.

  

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.