From what I gather, Rand Paul, the Republican Senate candidate from Kentucky, has views similar to his father, Ron Paul. I find much to praise in his father's views. Ron Paul has expressed disapproval over both the foreign wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the domestic Drug War.
Where I differ from the Pauls is their defending the rights of businesses over the rights of individuals. A common libertarian belief is that business owners should have the right to do basically whatever they please, without regard to how it effects individuals or society as a whole. It derives from Ayn Rand, whose last name is Rand Paul's first. Objectivism is alive and well and riding upon the shoulders of the Tea Party.
Noam Chomsky pointed out that government is the only thing that can counter the power and influence of large corporations, something that Ayn Rand never accepted. She believed government was always in the position of tyrant, perhaps because she fled a communist society, where that was indeed the case. In the situation of a capitalist economy, such as that of the U.S., sometimes private power can grow to have such a pervasive amount of power and influence that it becomes tyrannical.
The influence of business interests over government policy has for a long time been of concern to our leaders, dating back as far as the time of Thomas Jefferson. The owners bribe and coerce government officials, one way or the other, to do their bidding, even in cases where business interests conflict with the greater interests of society. This was true in the past and remains true today. Businesses can threaten to remove their operations to neighboring states, causing unemployment and loss of tax revenue in a state or local community. Placed in the position of competing with neighboring states for the jobs and tax base, many states grant generous tax incentives, land grants and other favors even to foreign corporations such as Honda or Mitsubishi. Only the federal government has sufficient power and influence to curb that of corporations.
It troubles me that Rand Paul believes criticism of British Petroleum is "un-American." It also troubles me that Rand Paul believes restaurants have a right to refuse to serve minorities. If restaurants have that right, then by extension, so would gas stations and hotels, and entire spans of our country could become inhospitable to minorities. Imagine driving for hundreds of miles without the ability to purchase gas, eat a meal, or sleep in an inn, only because of the color of one's skin. This is the kind of future Rand Paul envisions? I believe Martin Luther King, Jr., would have begged to differ.
I like Rand Paul when he talks about legalizing medical marijuana, though. I wish he'd support legalizing marijuana for everyone. Perhaps he should talk about the Drug War more, and the Civil Rights Act less. I also like him when he points out the wastefulness of foreign wars. He's got some good ideas, certainly better ones than other conservative Republicans. I'm glad the Republican Party is starting to have ideological diversity, if no other kind. However, I have the feeling Paul is selling out when it comes to businesses. Taking the position that businesses are always right, and government is always wrong may please some of the rich, but where does that leave the poor and the middle classes?
I do not believe Thomas Jefferson would have supported this idea that corporations should be permitted to do whatever they want, and should not be criticized by public officials, such as President Obama. If that ever becomes the situation, then all of us will be owned by companies like British Petroleum. It is bad enough BP's product is entering our food chain at the moment. I don't want them telling me whether I can buy gas based upon my physical characteristics. Government regulation is about the only thing protecting consumers from arbitrary hardships, fraud, and pollution. Government regulation is the only way workers are protected from their employers. It is why many people work an eight hour day rather than a twelve hour day, like my grandfather, who worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week, with a half-day off on Sundays for church.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Best Friends, Chapter 3: The End
This is a continuation of an earlier story, "The Rivalry."
---
Brian and I were standing in his front yard one day when a big dog approached. Brian had a natural rapport with dogs and immediately bonded with it. As for me, I succeeded in petting it, and then it knocked me down and began humping me, as if I were a female dog. I can still remember its member striking my belly. Brian could not help laughing. I thought I could break free on my own, but the dog was surprisingly strong for its size. “Pull him off me!” I shouted. Brian slapped it on the back and shouted, “Bad dog! Bad dog!” and chased it off. Under the circumstances, I could not blame Brian laughing. The danger having passed, I was inclined to smile at it myself.
By the seventh grade, Brian and I had become inseparable. At school, if you saw one of us, the other was not far behind. We always knew what the other was doing. Our constant companionship aroused suspicion. One day in the school cafeteria, an older mulatto boy, a foot taller than either of us, asked Brian a question in a whisper. Brian replied by shaking his head, and looked embarrassed. I walked up and asked what was being said. Before Brian could reply, the older boy turned to me and asked if we were “bonky buddies.” I stammered and said no. He was twice my size, and could have picked me up and thrown me across the room. He said nothing more, however, but let us be. Brian and I never talked about sex, and especially not about homosexuality. Though well aware of being close friends, best friends, we avoided thinking about, much less discussing, other possibilities, which we considered disturbing. That which is not discussed sometimes assumes greater importance than issues that are out in the open.
To compensate for lack of strength, I was inclined to show off, whether it was in chess, which I insisted upon playing once I realized that I was the stronger player, or the fact that I was accepted into the gifted program based upon an I.Q. test, while he missed the cut by a few percentage points.
Brian liked to wrestle with me in his front yard. He was the better fighter. Once he hit me hard in the stomach, and I had to quit. He put his arm around me and kept saying, "I'm sorry. I feel low. I feel like a snake." I put my hand on his shoulder and told him it was all right. He was my best friend, and we would be friends forever. Nothing could come between us. After his arm rested on my shoulder, I had recovered immediately! I felt very happy and warm inside. I wanted to get closer and express what I felt without words. Of course, this seemed impossible, and it was considered wrong by everyone we knew, and most importantly, by Brian, and the fear of crossing a boundary stopped me. My own feelings bewildered me. Were they right? They certainly felt right to me. My feelings disturbed me because of what others might say about them. They were genuine and occurred very naturally to me. I worried that others would think I was bad and hate me. Most of all, I foresaw that Brian would turn against me if I touched him in any way.
We were close anyway and knew each others mind. The trust between us was as strong as steel. There were those who tried to get one of us to say ill about the other or indulge in some petty treachery, but they failed. We remained true to each other, through all adversity, while our friendship survived. Sometimes a boy would approach to retaliate for something offensive that I had said. I had a reckless, caustic wit as a youngster and made enemies. To this day, I still make enemies when I get bored and careless with words. Brian made my enemies back off. It became known that I was under his protection. Bullies backed off.
Two years passed in the manner that I have described. For the young, always developing and maturing, two years encompass many profound changes. For me, the changes were profound indeed.
We spent the night over at each other's house as often as we could, which gave Brian’s mother concern. She thought we spent too much time together and tried to discourage it, suggesting vaguely that it might be better to find other friends, with the obvious implication, but this threat never amounted to anything. Brian’s mother was fundamentalist Christian. I perceived her anxiety that our friendship might have a homosexual dimension. His mother’s good opinion was paramount to him.
I remember his mother well, a fair-skinned woman with short wavy brown hair, no more than an inch taller than I was, wearing glasses over cold gray eyes. She was a hard-working single mother, with stress a-plenty, and worked long hours, and there was not much joy in her life other than the delight she took in her son and her church. Brian loved her like no son ever loved a mother. He saved up money from doing yard work around the neighborhood to buy her a 14K gold necklace, which cost over three hundred dollars.
In the beginning, she approved of me over the neighborhood boys who had a penchant for misbehavior and foul language, but over time, she came to disapprove of me as well, at first due to my lack of religion, and secondly, the emerging specter of homosexuality, for my dual nature became clear to any astute observer over time. I wish that she and I could have become friends. I was forever trying to please her, but she remained cold and distant. She seldom smiled at me, but looked rather suspicious and analytical. I recall her exchanging looks with Brian that hinted at her real feelings toward me.
#
In my seventh grade yearbook was stored the only remaining artifact of Brian. I remember the day that he signed it. I didn’t want him too, but he insisted. He was a stickler for formalities. My reason for avoiding his signature was that I reasoned we’d be friends forever. Signing my yearbook seemed like a jinx to me. I submitted to his demand however.
He wrote in printed letters, not cursive. His writing is bold and clear. Confidence drips from every letter. When he writes the pronoun “I”, he gives it two horizontal lines at each end. Those who have studied graphology know what I am talking about. I liked his handwriting. I used to put my hand over his name and imagine that I could transmit a thought from my mind to his. He didn’t sign his name, but printed it. Maybe that spoiled the magic. He wrote: “To the best friend I’ve ever had. Good luck.” Underneath that was his name. The “good luck” part puzzled me. I asked him immediately, “What do you mean, ‘good luck?’ As if we’re never going to see each other again.” He shrugged and said, “It just sounded like the type of thing you’re supposed to say in a yearbook.” I accepted his explanation. Later, I perceived that he was already reevaluating our friendship, and "Good Luck," meant exactly what I had thought it meant.
One day, as I was talking to him in the hall at school, he pushed me without any provocation. I lost my balance and fell against the wall. Thickly painted concrete blocks, where hundreds of students passed daily, offered no traction for my grasping hands. I slid down to the floor. I thought Brian would help me up or apologize, but he did neither. Brian thought this was the funniest thing he had ever seen. Though he apologized halfheartedly, I saw that he despised me for being weak. In the world of boys, strength matters. My body was a disappointment to me in this respect. My muscles lost conditioning rapidly in the absence of daily exercise, and I tended to be thinner than I should be. Even my mother said so. But to my knowledge there isn’t any place to return a body for a refund, save the grave.
#
Dad had been acting strange, eccentric, and jovial for weeks, and his arguments with Mom had become more frequent. He also grew distant from me and less like his old self, which hurt. This was all I knew, and I had no explanation.
One day, Mother asked me to follow her in the garage, a strange request. Once there, she hesitated, considering how to go about telling me something of grave importance. This annoyed me. I said impatiently, “Why did you bring me here?”
“Because it is the one place in the house where he won’t hear us.”
“Who? Andy?” Andy was the usual troublemaker in our house, the one who was always talked about.
“No, your father.”
I was shocked. “Why?”
She hesitated. She looked so serious. I sensed this was Big. I knew there was trouble in their marriage. “Is he having an affair?”
She laughed nervously. “No. Your father is having a nervous breakdown.”
She then proceeded to list his words and actions that had led her to this conclusion. I laughed at the bizarre list, agreed that the behavior was eccentric, but dismissed the notion of madness in my father. Heresy! Beware the machinations of a woman! I loved my father!
“Wait right here. Don’t leave. I am going to get your brother, and he can tell you himself.”
Alone in the garage, I stood waiting, anxious. Could this be true?
Andy appeared and reluctantly backed Mother. Together they told me that my Father was manic-depressive, had been taking Lithium since I was born, had suffered breakdowns previously and was now in the midst of a manic phase, after which he would cycle to the inevitable depression. This secret had been kept from me all along. Now, at the age of thirteen, I knew.
Our family endured Father’s antics for many months, because he could not legally be committed for eccentric behavior that was completely discordant with the father we had known all our lives. To get the edge off, or whatever rationalization you prefer, I started smoking cigarettes, followed by marijuana.
Father’s condition steadily dissolved. When Father stopped taking his Lithium, his trajectory invariably landed him in the funny farm. He became hostile and acted increasingly erratic. When he made threats against us, Mother asked Andy and me for our opinions, and we concurred that the time had come to approach the authorities. Father was arrested and taken in a squad car to be evaluated at the hospital.
The timing of Mother’s move was important. His illness had to have progressed to the point that he could be deemed by a “jury” of three psychiatrists to be a danger to himself or others, the legal criterion for being committed against one’s will. To my recollection, he impressed the shrinks during his interview and would have been released. When he was told his wife had initiated the proceedings, out of love and respect for her or maybe an awareness of his sickness, he voluntarily committed himself to the custody of the hospital.
Upon his release, he resumed normalcy, behaving much as he always had. Mother stood by him through this, for our sake, for the stability of the family, and in loyalty to her husband, who she was to remain with for over thirty years. Dad was not any different after his return to our household, just wounded, humbled, and saddened as we all were. I cannot say that my brother and I played the saints, because we taunted him at times, with the cruelty of rebellious children. For the most part, however, he regained his former stature. It could have been hoped that he might have switched from lithium to a better medicine, but there were not many alternatives in those days. He suffered often and terribly from gastrointestinal complaints owing to daily lithium use.
Mother confided in Brian’s mother, who told Brian. On being told that Brian knew, I calculated the crisis earned me sympathy from him and, hopefully one of the forbidden displays of affection. Such was not the case. Brian never said anything to me uncharitable, but I felt he looked at me in a different light after being invested with the knowledge. I was no longer just a bright boy with a college professor for a father. I was the son of a madman. Add to that the troublesome thought that the disease, as everyone knew, was hereditary. Who knows, maybe I was a little nutty too. Manic depression runs in families and afflicts a surprising percentage of people. The incurable disease typically manifests in males in adolescence or their twenties. A devilish new question confronted Andy and me and would enter the thoughts of our parents as well, whenever we acted peculiar. Could one of us have inherited the disease? I was always ready to doubt myself, to abandon ship.
Brian was uneasy talking about my father. His own father had abandoned his mother and him, and he judged me luckier overall. I tended to dwell upon my misfortune. He preferred to change the subject. The unspoken thought in his mind was, I should be tough and keep a stiff upper lip. That is how he responded to adversity. The classical stoicism of the Romans and the Spartans was his ideal, which I envied as an unattainable virtue. I was not that tough.
Brian began to view me increasingly as a liability, because I was unpopular, while he enjoyed a degree of popularity. He found other friends, and I became his old guard, a familiar old thing he liked, but spent less time with as time went on.
I began hanging out with the outsiders, the boys who failed at school, the juvenile delinquents, the druggies. Brian associated with those destined to succeed in this world, call them preppies if you like, or straight-A students. He joined the track team in his freshman year and grew physically strong. At the time, I was dissolute, while he was hardworking and ambitious.
Smoking led to bouts with brochitis. One bout lasted over three months, which persuaded my doctor to send me to the hospital in order to monitor the situation and test for pneumonia. Brian surprised me by coming to visit. I was touched, because we were not as close as we used to be. He wore blue jeans and a blue and red coat. I had not seen the red coat before, but that was because I had not seen him in weeks. We did not visit each other anymore. “How did you know to come?” I asked.
“Your mom called my mom.”
“Oh.”
He took his coat off and smiled. He was performing a Christian duty, not so much, perhaps, out of friendship, but it didn't matter to me. I was so happy to see him. I said, “I’m sorry for being a burden.”
“Aw, shut up. It’s not a big deal. I wanted to see you.”
A nurse came in while he was there and scolded me for keeping the Atari game system for so long. I was addicted to the video games. “There are other children in the ward who are far worse off than you, and they haven’t been able to play these games at all!” She carted the system away, and I never asked for it again. I was embarrassed.
Brian said, “Do you want me to go get it back? I’ll tell her supervisor just how she spoke to you. She was rude and offensive! It’s not your responsibility to manage the game system, it is the staff’s!”
I shook my head. “Nah. She’s right. Let the sicker ones have it. They need it more than I do.”
“Alright, if you say so.” He seemed disappointed.
I grinned. “You’re feisty.”
“Yeah!”
“It’s good to see you, Brian. I didn’t expect you to come.”
“Why not? I’m your friend, aren’t I?”
“I guess. But I mean it’s not like it was before, is it?”
“What do you mean?”
“We don’t spend as much time together. You know, we used to talk on the phone every day after school.”
“Ah, well. We’re getting older. You know. It happens. We're interested in different things now.”
“I guess so.”
“You want me to go and let you sleep?”
“You’ve put in enough time. You’re a trooper. You know that? A great friend.”
“Thanks.” He came up and held out his hand. We shook. He left. I looked at the clock. He had been with me ten minutes, just enough time for appearance's sake.
Place on penicillin, or some other powerful antibiotic, or combination of antibiotics, I recovered. I came back from the hospital after a few days, and was finally cured of brochitis after a few more weeks. I remember spitting up so much gunk, having difficulty breathing. I must have had brochitis a dozen times in my youth.
Brian was developing many different interests. He signed up for track. He won academic awards, and instead of congratulating him, I felt envy, because I was supposed to be smarter. He joined after-school clubs that I viewed as meaningless. He exhorted me to join the track team. Such a move might have been my salvation. I sense this now with the advantage of hindsight. Ironically, later in life I took to jogging and loved it. But at fourteen, to me joining any kind of extracurricular activity seemed insane. More time spent at school? Forget it! Brian’s optimism proved no match for my endless capacity for manufacturing excuses.
“But I don’t know anyone on the track team!” I said.
“You know me.” Brian was calm and confident, and what is more, at some level, I knew he was right, but I was a thousand miles away from him. I do not know how to explain.
“Well, the other guys will pick on me!”
“No, they won’t, not if I am around. Besides, they're not that bad.”
“You can’t be around all time. What are you, Superman? I don’t think so. Besides, I don’t like running or jogging.”
“It’s good for you. You’ll catch on, if you just start doing it.”
“It’s too much work!”
“It’s fun. You’ll like it.”
“Look, I’m not like you and don’t want to be like you! You go be a stupid jock! I don’t care about that crap! Just leave me alone about the track team, okay?”
A leaden expression came over his face. He said nothing, but I sensed that I had gone too far. As I watched him walk away, I knew I had made a mistake, but felt strangely helpless to do anything about it. A chill crept over me. I felt dizzy and nauseated.
The last time he came over to spend the night at my house, the distance between us had grown vast. We were both fourteen years old. He had suggested coming over, which puzzled me.
He kept his thoughts to himself, with the stoicism of a Roman soldier, while I rattled on, acting amused, which succeeded in irritating him. When he came up to my room, coins were lying all over my desk and several shelves. Knickknacks littered the floor.
I asked, giggling, “Do you disapprove of the condition of my room?”
He nodded. I know he would have kept this to himself if I had not asked, because he was polite.
I snapped, "I don't care what you think! Neatness is not important! I don’t give a damn!" I laughed.
I did other little things, petty remarks designed to provoke him. I do not know why. Maybe I wanted to break his stoic demeanor and see his temper. “I can see you disapprove of me, Brian. So tell me. Why did you even come over here?”
“Your mother asked me to.” He did not smile, taking no pleasure in the truth.
I was shocked into silence. She had asked him, with much praise and flattery, as a personal favor to her, because she knew that Brian was a good influence upon me. He found it difficult to refuse a woman that he admired. Now, surely, he regretted it.
When night came, we lay down in the same bed, not because I wanted that, only because my mother insisted on this, because she did not want Brian to lie on the floor or resort to using the sofa. It seemed unaccountable to me that my mother suggested we share a bed, at fourteen. She was opposed to homosexuality. I can only assume that she was naive, but we were not, and both of us felt awkward at the unfamiliar intimacy.
Though I usually repressed my homosexual feelings, I felt frisky with Brian in my bed, only two feet away. I rubbed my foot up against his leg in my most brazen provocation yet. He kicked my foot away and told me angrily, “If you touch me again, I’m going to hit you!”
I laid still, in silence. I felt shocked by my own behavior. “I’m sorry, Brian. I was only been playing around.”
He adopted a softer, apologetic note. “Yeah, sure. Whatever. Don’t worry about it.”
“No, it’s not alright. Look, it wasn’t my idea for us to sleep together. I know you feel uncomfortable in the same bed with me.”
“No, I’m okay. Look, I’m sorry. I take back what I said about hitting you. Just don’t touch me, alright? Now go to sleep and forget about it.”
That was Brian's solution to everything: don't talk about it, shut up, focus on what is supposed to be important, and damn the details. I prefer to analyze matters, get to the heart of things, understand the reasons, and try to understand what is going on. That was the difference between him and me. He was a soldier. I was a scholar.
I remained silent, staring up at the ceiling. I got up, taking my pillow with me. “I’m going to sleep downstairs. I don’t think I can sleep up here. We’ll both feel more comfortable that way.”
He argued with me, told me not to go, repeated his apology, and said I didn't have to be afraid of him. He was mistaken. I did not fear him. I perceived that he intended to endure this unpleasant visit, not cause any scene, nor hurt me, because he was after all a guest in my house and he did have manners. I did not like the implication that I was taking advantage of him, forcing him to sleep with me.
I went downstairs and slept on the sofa. The next morning, my mother saw me in the living room and asked where Brian was. I told her he was upstairs sleeping, and she said, “Why didn’t you two sleep together?”
“Because, Mom, he didn’t want that. It was a bad idea. It’s kind of gay, you know. He thinks it’s wrong.”
“Well, my friends and I slept together when I was your age. There was nothing gay about it. Nothing sexual at all about it.”
“But you’re a girl, Mom. It’s different for guys. Especially at our age. We’re teenagers now.”
When he arose from bed, Brian said nothing at all to me other than what was required for civility. He was unfailingly polite to my mother and me, pretending nothing was wrong, even though everything was wrong, as far as I was concerned. After breakfast, when my mother had departed to the kitchen to clean, I said, “Brian, can we go up to my room and talk?”
“Sure. What for?”
“There’s something I wanted to tell you.”
“Let’s go.”
We went up to my room, and I closed the door. He picked up one of my books, “The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien. He started humming a song, tuning me out.
I paused, listening to him hum the same song as when we first met, when we played chess for the first time. I said, “Listen. I know we’re not going to be friends anymore. We’re too different now. It’s just not possible.”
He did not look at me. He was looking at the furniture, the window, the door. “Oh, that’s not true. I’m here, aren’t I? I wouldn’t have come if I wasn’t a friend.”
I smiled. “Brian, you would rather be doing anything than spending your day with me. I understand the reasons why. After we finish talking, I want you to call your mother and ask her to pick you up. You can go on home. I won’t keep you here any longer. I know that you just came because you feel sorry for me. Because of my father’s illness.”
Brian stared at the floor. He knew very well that what I said was true. In his own way he was brave, but in my own way, I was brave too, because I could say things that were true without any hesitation. “Don’t say that. You’re still a friend. I don’t feel sorry for you. Why should I? You have a nice house and nice parents. I think you have a good life. Your parents give you a lot of nice things. You should be thankful for what you have.” He put the book down, glanced at me, then looked away.
We were silent for a time. He went to the window, looked out. His expression changed. "Are you serious? I can leave? There is a party. A bunch of guys are getting together. There will be girls there too. I want to go. Can I call my mom and have her come pick me up?"
"Go and make your call.” I waited. He looked at me, saw I was sincere, turned and went downstairs, as I knew he would, and picked up the phone. He was gone within an hour.
#
In the ninth grade, a sadistic juvenile criminal was placed behind in the seating order in Physical Education, due to the unlucky alphabetical order of my name. Deviating from the seating order was strictly prohibited, though it would have saved me countless beatings and humiliation. My frequent complaints to the Physical Education teacher were ignored, or if anything, he would tell me to shut up and sit where I was supposed to sit. He had an authoritarian personality. One did as one was told, and that was that. The instructor was a redneck and thought it virtuous and manly to be unconcerned about anyone else other than oneself.
Every day the bully hit me in the back with his fists, quite hard, torturing me and calling me names in the presence of the entire gym class, silent accomplices who looked on at the spectacle not with amusement, because they recognized him for a criminal and hated and feared him also, but with indifference. It is easy to watch others suffer and not care. Occasionally, a white boy would sympathize with me due to our shared skin color, since the bully was Hispanic. I would be advised to fight back. Several times, I did so, but the bully always retaliated and was stronger and tougher than me. I seethed with hate but worse than that, self-hate, but physically was puny, while mentally enthralled to depression.
I feared punishment by the school authorities if I did anything to the bully. I feared being arrested. I feared my gym teacher. I feared the bully most of all. I thought he might hurt me or even kill me. It seemed entirely possible. He perceived enough of my fear to know that he could torture me with impunity. I skipped the maximum amount of days in that class. I hated myself, hated school, and withdrew more. When I came home, I went directly to bed and cried. I hated the bully and fantasized of bringing a gun to school and killing him, followed by myself. My fantasies were all centered around suicide, of ending everything at the age of fourteen, putting an end to shame, an end to humiliation, an end to feelings of worthlessness, cowardice, and inferiority.
My parents had a large library of books. I pulled the ones on psychology down from the shelves, the only section that interested me being the one on suicide, for life had no more allure for me. It was dogeared from frequent use. The chapter on suicide made me feel hopeful, like there was an end to pain and misery, and here it was, easy and effective. I could leave this world, and not many people would care, and it would be as though I had never existed. Brian would never feel contempt for me again. Instead, he would feel pity, if he were human at all. If he forgot me altogether, then that was alright too.
One day, our high school counselor appeared at my locker, no doubt referred by an unknown teacher of mine, who had perceived, correctly, that I was a kid in trouble. I asked him why he had chosen to talk to me. He hemmed and hawed, unwilling to divulge his source, which made me distrust him and feel like others were conspiring against me. My energies were set to deducing which of my teachers had betrayed me, instead of evaluating his proposal in good faith. I remember little of the words he said. I was suspicious. My only dealings with adults in this school had been unpleasant, usually involving punishment in the form of detention, suspension, or lost recess. Adults were the enemy. They never helped. They only punished. They were to be feared and hated. I stared into his face. He wore a professional smile and seemed phony. He tried to persuade me to see him and talk about my problems. What else could he do? He couldn't force me to see him, as far as I know, though that might have been the ideal maneuver--indeed, it may have turned my life around, if he possessed skill. But he did not.
I felt I had many things to hide, principally my sexuality, of course, though I was not completely aware of that. I felt he could not understand me, not in a million years. Under the guise of helping me, he might hurt me by telling my awful secret to my parents or to the principal (because, I reasoned, he was duty-bound, if not legally required, to do so). I turned him down. In hindsight, I know this was a mistake. He shrugged his shoulders. He was only trying to help. If I didn't want help, fine. I watched him walk away in much the same way I had watched Brian walk away, wanting to stop him from leaving, wanting to receive help, but not being able to, paralyzed by I know not what.
#
The last memory I have of a D&D meeting is dark. I don’t remember any words that were spoken, but only feelings and images, which is a mercy. By this time, many changes had happened in my life. All of my foundations had crumbled. Increasing awareness of my sexuality loomed like a threatening and alien force. I did not know what homosexuality meant or what would happen to me. There were no examples of any gay people besides the most flamboyant stereotypes in movies and television, who were usually portrayed as villains or victims. My parents were homophobic. The God that I had worshiped since boyhood was dead to me, slain by Reason, and all my old beliefs seemed like evidence of my own gullibility. My family seemed surreal, with a mad father, a hell-raising brother, queer me, and a normal mother who endured just for our sakes. We seemed quite humble and powerless in a vast and hostile world. The entire world was against me, because I was queer, and happiness was impossible. I foresaw that my friendship with Brian would die. He could not respect anyone as different as me. Knowledge of our friendship’s doom filled me with dread. I foresaw also that all of my other friendships would also be severed. Nothing would last.
I felt determined to show creative genius, which I wanted to hold up as compensation for my physical weakness and queerness. I designed an adventure campaign for our D&D group. I stole ideas from Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings,” mapping out the terrain of a fantasy world upon graph paper, with each square representing five miles. In the North, a witch-lord held sway over armies of orcs, goblins and other creatures. Sound familiar? His symbol was not far different from the white hand representing the forces of Saruman. The evil lord rested secure in a deep underground fortress, well-protected by traps, monsters and magic. In short, I stole all my ideas. I envisioned a long campaign that would span many meetings and endure for several years. The evil lord would eventually, after a long struggle, be overcome by the wit and resources of a little band of player-characters, played by my friends. In reality, my designs inspired no one. Mine was but a pale imitation of “The Lord of the Rings” and without beauty. After this one meeting, everyone lost interest, not only in my adventure, but in the D&D group itself, which disbanded.
In defiance of their rejection, I submitted the work to TSR, the role-playing corporation that published Dragon Magazine, in the hopes that I might be published and prove all my friends wrong. The kind editor took time out of his day to write me a personal letter of rejection, but only out of regard for my age of thirteen. Thus encouraged, I sent other letters, other submissions, time-wasters which were ignored. I suspect the editor regretted even responding to me in the first place. I took the hint and stopped wasting postage.
Picture us seated around a table: Alice, Brian, Chris, David, and me. Brian is seated by my side, as always, strong and firm. What I feel for him must never be spoken of, and instead I must keep my mind upon the game. To my recollection, there was no one fatal utterance I made, no one moment of weakness, but rather a general feeling of unquiet filled our meeting. I was not myself, but like one possessed. In my heart was grief, because of the things that I felt and that I perceived, but on my face was a mask.
I have absorbed a vast array of details. I have lost myself in the game. The entire rulebook is committed to memory. My knowledge of the game encompasses minutia such as the hit dice, armor class, attack and movement rate of every monster, the damage rating of every weapon, the effects of every spell and magical item, and more. I know all the details in all the books verbatim, which I was proud of at the time. Even to this day, I can quote the hit dice of certain monsters, the attributes of certain character races and classes.
My friends and I were changing into adolescents. An unspoken thread ran through everyone's mind. Why should we care for role-playing adventures? We could go and make our own adventures. Of course I became aware of this too, especially after everyone quit playing. After a month of playing by myself, I cast my D&D books aside. All my labors and my games seemed like folly to me, of no use, a waste of time and effort.
As through a haze of smoke, I can see once again my old friends’ eyes looking at me with disapproval. Glances flicker between them--observations shared about me that need not be spoken aloud. A certain regard still remained for me, for old times' sake--and perhaps Brian had told them my secrets. The spirit of Brian was far away from me. Cold thoughts were in his mind. I was quite alone with my papers, dice, and pen. He wore a mask when he looked at me. The pupils in his eyes were tiny dots. I saw that all that had once been was unwoven.
---
Brian and I were standing in his front yard one day when a big dog approached. Brian had a natural rapport with dogs and immediately bonded with it. As for me, I succeeded in petting it, and then it knocked me down and began humping me, as if I were a female dog. I can still remember its member striking my belly. Brian could not help laughing. I thought I could break free on my own, but the dog was surprisingly strong for its size. “Pull him off me!” I shouted. Brian slapped it on the back and shouted, “Bad dog! Bad dog!” and chased it off. Under the circumstances, I could not blame Brian laughing. The danger having passed, I was inclined to smile at it myself.
By the seventh grade, Brian and I had become inseparable. At school, if you saw one of us, the other was not far behind. We always knew what the other was doing. Our constant companionship aroused suspicion. One day in the school cafeteria, an older mulatto boy, a foot taller than either of us, asked Brian a question in a whisper. Brian replied by shaking his head, and looked embarrassed. I walked up and asked what was being said. Before Brian could reply, the older boy turned to me and asked if we were “bonky buddies.” I stammered and said no. He was twice my size, and could have picked me up and thrown me across the room. He said nothing more, however, but let us be. Brian and I never talked about sex, and especially not about homosexuality. Though well aware of being close friends, best friends, we avoided thinking about, much less discussing, other possibilities, which we considered disturbing. That which is not discussed sometimes assumes greater importance than issues that are out in the open.
To compensate for lack of strength, I was inclined to show off, whether it was in chess, which I insisted upon playing once I realized that I was the stronger player, or the fact that I was accepted into the gifted program based upon an I.Q. test, while he missed the cut by a few percentage points.
Brian liked to wrestle with me in his front yard. He was the better fighter. Once he hit me hard in the stomach, and I had to quit. He put his arm around me and kept saying, "I'm sorry. I feel low. I feel like a snake." I put my hand on his shoulder and told him it was all right. He was my best friend, and we would be friends forever. Nothing could come between us. After his arm rested on my shoulder, I had recovered immediately! I felt very happy and warm inside. I wanted to get closer and express what I felt without words. Of course, this seemed impossible, and it was considered wrong by everyone we knew, and most importantly, by Brian, and the fear of crossing a boundary stopped me. My own feelings bewildered me. Were they right? They certainly felt right to me. My feelings disturbed me because of what others might say about them. They were genuine and occurred very naturally to me. I worried that others would think I was bad and hate me. Most of all, I foresaw that Brian would turn against me if I touched him in any way.
We were close anyway and knew each others mind. The trust between us was as strong as steel. There were those who tried to get one of us to say ill about the other or indulge in some petty treachery, but they failed. We remained true to each other, through all adversity, while our friendship survived. Sometimes a boy would approach to retaliate for something offensive that I had said. I had a reckless, caustic wit as a youngster and made enemies. To this day, I still make enemies when I get bored and careless with words. Brian made my enemies back off. It became known that I was under his protection. Bullies backed off.
Two years passed in the manner that I have described. For the young, always developing and maturing, two years encompass many profound changes. For me, the changes were profound indeed.
We spent the night over at each other's house as often as we could, which gave Brian’s mother concern. She thought we spent too much time together and tried to discourage it, suggesting vaguely that it might be better to find other friends, with the obvious implication, but this threat never amounted to anything. Brian’s mother was fundamentalist Christian. I perceived her anxiety that our friendship might have a homosexual dimension. His mother’s good opinion was paramount to him.
I remember his mother well, a fair-skinned woman with short wavy brown hair, no more than an inch taller than I was, wearing glasses over cold gray eyes. She was a hard-working single mother, with stress a-plenty, and worked long hours, and there was not much joy in her life other than the delight she took in her son and her church. Brian loved her like no son ever loved a mother. He saved up money from doing yard work around the neighborhood to buy her a 14K gold necklace, which cost over three hundred dollars.
In the beginning, she approved of me over the neighborhood boys who had a penchant for misbehavior and foul language, but over time, she came to disapprove of me as well, at first due to my lack of religion, and secondly, the emerging specter of homosexuality, for my dual nature became clear to any astute observer over time. I wish that she and I could have become friends. I was forever trying to please her, but she remained cold and distant. She seldom smiled at me, but looked rather suspicious and analytical. I recall her exchanging looks with Brian that hinted at her real feelings toward me.
#
In my seventh grade yearbook was stored the only remaining artifact of Brian. I remember the day that he signed it. I didn’t want him too, but he insisted. He was a stickler for formalities. My reason for avoiding his signature was that I reasoned we’d be friends forever. Signing my yearbook seemed like a jinx to me. I submitted to his demand however.
He wrote in printed letters, not cursive. His writing is bold and clear. Confidence drips from every letter. When he writes the pronoun “I”, he gives it two horizontal lines at each end. Those who have studied graphology know what I am talking about. I liked his handwriting. I used to put my hand over his name and imagine that I could transmit a thought from my mind to his. He didn’t sign his name, but printed it. Maybe that spoiled the magic. He wrote: “To the best friend I’ve ever had. Good luck.” Underneath that was his name. The “good luck” part puzzled me. I asked him immediately, “What do you mean, ‘good luck?’ As if we’re never going to see each other again.” He shrugged and said, “It just sounded like the type of thing you’re supposed to say in a yearbook.” I accepted his explanation. Later, I perceived that he was already reevaluating our friendship, and "Good Luck," meant exactly what I had thought it meant.
One day, as I was talking to him in the hall at school, he pushed me without any provocation. I lost my balance and fell against the wall. Thickly painted concrete blocks, where hundreds of students passed daily, offered no traction for my grasping hands. I slid down to the floor. I thought Brian would help me up or apologize, but he did neither. Brian thought this was the funniest thing he had ever seen. Though he apologized halfheartedly, I saw that he despised me for being weak. In the world of boys, strength matters. My body was a disappointment to me in this respect. My muscles lost conditioning rapidly in the absence of daily exercise, and I tended to be thinner than I should be. Even my mother said so. But to my knowledge there isn’t any place to return a body for a refund, save the grave.
#
Dad had been acting strange, eccentric, and jovial for weeks, and his arguments with Mom had become more frequent. He also grew distant from me and less like his old self, which hurt. This was all I knew, and I had no explanation.
One day, Mother asked me to follow her in the garage, a strange request. Once there, she hesitated, considering how to go about telling me something of grave importance. This annoyed me. I said impatiently, “Why did you bring me here?”
“Because it is the one place in the house where he won’t hear us.”
“Who? Andy?” Andy was the usual troublemaker in our house, the one who was always talked about.
“No, your father.”
I was shocked. “Why?”
She hesitated. She looked so serious. I sensed this was Big. I knew there was trouble in their marriage. “Is he having an affair?”
She laughed nervously. “No. Your father is having a nervous breakdown.”
She then proceeded to list his words and actions that had led her to this conclusion. I laughed at the bizarre list, agreed that the behavior was eccentric, but dismissed the notion of madness in my father. Heresy! Beware the machinations of a woman! I loved my father!
“Wait right here. Don’t leave. I am going to get your brother, and he can tell you himself.”
Alone in the garage, I stood waiting, anxious. Could this be true?
Andy appeared and reluctantly backed Mother. Together they told me that my Father was manic-depressive, had been taking Lithium since I was born, had suffered breakdowns previously and was now in the midst of a manic phase, after which he would cycle to the inevitable depression. This secret had been kept from me all along. Now, at the age of thirteen, I knew.
Our family endured Father’s antics for many months, because he could not legally be committed for eccentric behavior that was completely discordant with the father we had known all our lives. To get the edge off, or whatever rationalization you prefer, I started smoking cigarettes, followed by marijuana.
Father’s condition steadily dissolved. When Father stopped taking his Lithium, his trajectory invariably landed him in the funny farm. He became hostile and acted increasingly erratic. When he made threats against us, Mother asked Andy and me for our opinions, and we concurred that the time had come to approach the authorities. Father was arrested and taken in a squad car to be evaluated at the hospital.
The timing of Mother’s move was important. His illness had to have progressed to the point that he could be deemed by a “jury” of three psychiatrists to be a danger to himself or others, the legal criterion for being committed against one’s will. To my recollection, he impressed the shrinks during his interview and would have been released. When he was told his wife had initiated the proceedings, out of love and respect for her or maybe an awareness of his sickness, he voluntarily committed himself to the custody of the hospital.
Upon his release, he resumed normalcy, behaving much as he always had. Mother stood by him through this, for our sake, for the stability of the family, and in loyalty to her husband, who she was to remain with for over thirty years. Dad was not any different after his return to our household, just wounded, humbled, and saddened as we all were. I cannot say that my brother and I played the saints, because we taunted him at times, with the cruelty of rebellious children. For the most part, however, he regained his former stature. It could have been hoped that he might have switched from lithium to a better medicine, but there were not many alternatives in those days. He suffered often and terribly from gastrointestinal complaints owing to daily lithium use.
Mother confided in Brian’s mother, who told Brian. On being told that Brian knew, I calculated the crisis earned me sympathy from him and, hopefully one of the forbidden displays of affection. Such was not the case. Brian never said anything to me uncharitable, but I felt he looked at me in a different light after being invested with the knowledge. I was no longer just a bright boy with a college professor for a father. I was the son of a madman. Add to that the troublesome thought that the disease, as everyone knew, was hereditary. Who knows, maybe I was a little nutty too. Manic depression runs in families and afflicts a surprising percentage of people. The incurable disease typically manifests in males in adolescence or their twenties. A devilish new question confronted Andy and me and would enter the thoughts of our parents as well, whenever we acted peculiar. Could one of us have inherited the disease? I was always ready to doubt myself, to abandon ship.
Brian was uneasy talking about my father. His own father had abandoned his mother and him, and he judged me luckier overall. I tended to dwell upon my misfortune. He preferred to change the subject. The unspoken thought in his mind was, I should be tough and keep a stiff upper lip. That is how he responded to adversity. The classical stoicism of the Romans and the Spartans was his ideal, which I envied as an unattainable virtue. I was not that tough.
Brian began to view me increasingly as a liability, because I was unpopular, while he enjoyed a degree of popularity. He found other friends, and I became his old guard, a familiar old thing he liked, but spent less time with as time went on.
I began hanging out with the outsiders, the boys who failed at school, the juvenile delinquents, the druggies. Brian associated with those destined to succeed in this world, call them preppies if you like, or straight-A students. He joined the track team in his freshman year and grew physically strong. At the time, I was dissolute, while he was hardworking and ambitious.
Smoking led to bouts with brochitis. One bout lasted over three months, which persuaded my doctor to send me to the hospital in order to monitor the situation and test for pneumonia. Brian surprised me by coming to visit. I was touched, because we were not as close as we used to be. He wore blue jeans and a blue and red coat. I had not seen the red coat before, but that was because I had not seen him in weeks. We did not visit each other anymore. “How did you know to come?” I asked.
“Your mom called my mom.”
“Oh.”
He took his coat off and smiled. He was performing a Christian duty, not so much, perhaps, out of friendship, but it didn't matter to me. I was so happy to see him. I said, “I’m sorry for being a burden.”
“Aw, shut up. It’s not a big deal. I wanted to see you.”
A nurse came in while he was there and scolded me for keeping the Atari game system for so long. I was addicted to the video games. “There are other children in the ward who are far worse off than you, and they haven’t been able to play these games at all!” She carted the system away, and I never asked for it again. I was embarrassed.
Brian said, “Do you want me to go get it back? I’ll tell her supervisor just how she spoke to you. She was rude and offensive! It’s not your responsibility to manage the game system, it is the staff’s!”
I shook my head. “Nah. She’s right. Let the sicker ones have it. They need it more than I do.”
“Alright, if you say so.” He seemed disappointed.
I grinned. “You’re feisty.”
“Yeah!”
“It’s good to see you, Brian. I didn’t expect you to come.”
“Why not? I’m your friend, aren’t I?”
“I guess. But I mean it’s not like it was before, is it?”
“What do you mean?”
“We don’t spend as much time together. You know, we used to talk on the phone every day after school.”
“Ah, well. We’re getting older. You know. It happens. We're interested in different things now.”
“I guess so.”
“You want me to go and let you sleep?”
“You’ve put in enough time. You’re a trooper. You know that? A great friend.”
“Thanks.” He came up and held out his hand. We shook. He left. I looked at the clock. He had been with me ten minutes, just enough time for appearance's sake.
Place on penicillin, or some other powerful antibiotic, or combination of antibiotics, I recovered. I came back from the hospital after a few days, and was finally cured of brochitis after a few more weeks. I remember spitting up so much gunk, having difficulty breathing. I must have had brochitis a dozen times in my youth.
Brian was developing many different interests. He signed up for track. He won academic awards, and instead of congratulating him, I felt envy, because I was supposed to be smarter. He joined after-school clubs that I viewed as meaningless. He exhorted me to join the track team. Such a move might have been my salvation. I sense this now with the advantage of hindsight. Ironically, later in life I took to jogging and loved it. But at fourteen, to me joining any kind of extracurricular activity seemed insane. More time spent at school? Forget it! Brian’s optimism proved no match for my endless capacity for manufacturing excuses.
“But I don’t know anyone on the track team!” I said.
“You know me.” Brian was calm and confident, and what is more, at some level, I knew he was right, but I was a thousand miles away from him. I do not know how to explain.
“Well, the other guys will pick on me!”
“No, they won’t, not if I am around. Besides, they're not that bad.”
“You can’t be around all time. What are you, Superman? I don’t think so. Besides, I don’t like running or jogging.”
“It’s good for you. You’ll catch on, if you just start doing it.”
“It’s too much work!”
“It’s fun. You’ll like it.”
“Look, I’m not like you and don’t want to be like you! You go be a stupid jock! I don’t care about that crap! Just leave me alone about the track team, okay?”
A leaden expression came over his face. He said nothing, but I sensed that I had gone too far. As I watched him walk away, I knew I had made a mistake, but felt strangely helpless to do anything about it. A chill crept over me. I felt dizzy and nauseated.
The last time he came over to spend the night at my house, the distance between us had grown vast. We were both fourteen years old. He had suggested coming over, which puzzled me.
He kept his thoughts to himself, with the stoicism of a Roman soldier, while I rattled on, acting amused, which succeeded in irritating him. When he came up to my room, coins were lying all over my desk and several shelves. Knickknacks littered the floor.
I asked, giggling, “Do you disapprove of the condition of my room?”
He nodded. I know he would have kept this to himself if I had not asked, because he was polite.
I snapped, "I don't care what you think! Neatness is not important! I don’t give a damn!" I laughed.
I did other little things, petty remarks designed to provoke him. I do not know why. Maybe I wanted to break his stoic demeanor and see his temper. “I can see you disapprove of me, Brian. So tell me. Why did you even come over here?”
“Your mother asked me to.” He did not smile, taking no pleasure in the truth.
I was shocked into silence. She had asked him, with much praise and flattery, as a personal favor to her, because she knew that Brian was a good influence upon me. He found it difficult to refuse a woman that he admired. Now, surely, he regretted it.
When night came, we lay down in the same bed, not because I wanted that, only because my mother insisted on this, because she did not want Brian to lie on the floor or resort to using the sofa. It seemed unaccountable to me that my mother suggested we share a bed, at fourteen. She was opposed to homosexuality. I can only assume that she was naive, but we were not, and both of us felt awkward at the unfamiliar intimacy.
Though I usually repressed my homosexual feelings, I felt frisky with Brian in my bed, only two feet away. I rubbed my foot up against his leg in my most brazen provocation yet. He kicked my foot away and told me angrily, “If you touch me again, I’m going to hit you!”
I laid still, in silence. I felt shocked by my own behavior. “I’m sorry, Brian. I was only been playing around.”
He adopted a softer, apologetic note. “Yeah, sure. Whatever. Don’t worry about it.”
“No, it’s not alright. Look, it wasn’t my idea for us to sleep together. I know you feel uncomfortable in the same bed with me.”
“No, I’m okay. Look, I’m sorry. I take back what I said about hitting you. Just don’t touch me, alright? Now go to sleep and forget about it.”
That was Brian's solution to everything: don't talk about it, shut up, focus on what is supposed to be important, and damn the details. I prefer to analyze matters, get to the heart of things, understand the reasons, and try to understand what is going on. That was the difference between him and me. He was a soldier. I was a scholar.
I remained silent, staring up at the ceiling. I got up, taking my pillow with me. “I’m going to sleep downstairs. I don’t think I can sleep up here. We’ll both feel more comfortable that way.”
He argued with me, told me not to go, repeated his apology, and said I didn't have to be afraid of him. He was mistaken. I did not fear him. I perceived that he intended to endure this unpleasant visit, not cause any scene, nor hurt me, because he was after all a guest in my house and he did have manners. I did not like the implication that I was taking advantage of him, forcing him to sleep with me.
I went downstairs and slept on the sofa. The next morning, my mother saw me in the living room and asked where Brian was. I told her he was upstairs sleeping, and she said, “Why didn’t you two sleep together?”
“Because, Mom, he didn’t want that. It was a bad idea. It’s kind of gay, you know. He thinks it’s wrong.”
“Well, my friends and I slept together when I was your age. There was nothing gay about it. Nothing sexual at all about it.”
“But you’re a girl, Mom. It’s different for guys. Especially at our age. We’re teenagers now.”
When he arose from bed, Brian said nothing at all to me other than what was required for civility. He was unfailingly polite to my mother and me, pretending nothing was wrong, even though everything was wrong, as far as I was concerned. After breakfast, when my mother had departed to the kitchen to clean, I said, “Brian, can we go up to my room and talk?”
“Sure. What for?”
“There’s something I wanted to tell you.”
“Let’s go.”
We went up to my room, and I closed the door. He picked up one of my books, “The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien. He started humming a song, tuning me out.
I paused, listening to him hum the same song as when we first met, when we played chess for the first time. I said, “Listen. I know we’re not going to be friends anymore. We’re too different now. It’s just not possible.”
He did not look at me. He was looking at the furniture, the window, the door. “Oh, that’s not true. I’m here, aren’t I? I wouldn’t have come if I wasn’t a friend.”
I smiled. “Brian, you would rather be doing anything than spending your day with me. I understand the reasons why. After we finish talking, I want you to call your mother and ask her to pick you up. You can go on home. I won’t keep you here any longer. I know that you just came because you feel sorry for me. Because of my father’s illness.”
Brian stared at the floor. He knew very well that what I said was true. In his own way he was brave, but in my own way, I was brave too, because I could say things that were true without any hesitation. “Don’t say that. You’re still a friend. I don’t feel sorry for you. Why should I? You have a nice house and nice parents. I think you have a good life. Your parents give you a lot of nice things. You should be thankful for what you have.” He put the book down, glanced at me, then looked away.
We were silent for a time. He went to the window, looked out. His expression changed. "Are you serious? I can leave? There is a party. A bunch of guys are getting together. There will be girls there too. I want to go. Can I call my mom and have her come pick me up?"
"Go and make your call.” I waited. He looked at me, saw I was sincere, turned and went downstairs, as I knew he would, and picked up the phone. He was gone within an hour.
#
In the ninth grade, a sadistic juvenile criminal was placed behind in the seating order in Physical Education, due to the unlucky alphabetical order of my name. Deviating from the seating order was strictly prohibited, though it would have saved me countless beatings and humiliation. My frequent complaints to the Physical Education teacher were ignored, or if anything, he would tell me to shut up and sit where I was supposed to sit. He had an authoritarian personality. One did as one was told, and that was that. The instructor was a redneck and thought it virtuous and manly to be unconcerned about anyone else other than oneself.
Every day the bully hit me in the back with his fists, quite hard, torturing me and calling me names in the presence of the entire gym class, silent accomplices who looked on at the spectacle not with amusement, because they recognized him for a criminal and hated and feared him also, but with indifference. It is easy to watch others suffer and not care. Occasionally, a white boy would sympathize with me due to our shared skin color, since the bully was Hispanic. I would be advised to fight back. Several times, I did so, but the bully always retaliated and was stronger and tougher than me. I seethed with hate but worse than that, self-hate, but physically was puny, while mentally enthralled to depression.
I feared punishment by the school authorities if I did anything to the bully. I feared being arrested. I feared my gym teacher. I feared the bully most of all. I thought he might hurt me or even kill me. It seemed entirely possible. He perceived enough of my fear to know that he could torture me with impunity. I skipped the maximum amount of days in that class. I hated myself, hated school, and withdrew more. When I came home, I went directly to bed and cried. I hated the bully and fantasized of bringing a gun to school and killing him, followed by myself. My fantasies were all centered around suicide, of ending everything at the age of fourteen, putting an end to shame, an end to humiliation, an end to feelings of worthlessness, cowardice, and inferiority.
My parents had a large library of books. I pulled the ones on psychology down from the shelves, the only section that interested me being the one on suicide, for life had no more allure for me. It was dogeared from frequent use. The chapter on suicide made me feel hopeful, like there was an end to pain and misery, and here it was, easy and effective. I could leave this world, and not many people would care, and it would be as though I had never existed. Brian would never feel contempt for me again. Instead, he would feel pity, if he were human at all. If he forgot me altogether, then that was alright too.
One day, our high school counselor appeared at my locker, no doubt referred by an unknown teacher of mine, who had perceived, correctly, that I was a kid in trouble. I asked him why he had chosen to talk to me. He hemmed and hawed, unwilling to divulge his source, which made me distrust him and feel like others were conspiring against me. My energies were set to deducing which of my teachers had betrayed me, instead of evaluating his proposal in good faith. I remember little of the words he said. I was suspicious. My only dealings with adults in this school had been unpleasant, usually involving punishment in the form of detention, suspension, or lost recess. Adults were the enemy. They never helped. They only punished. They were to be feared and hated. I stared into his face. He wore a professional smile and seemed phony. He tried to persuade me to see him and talk about my problems. What else could he do? He couldn't force me to see him, as far as I know, though that might have been the ideal maneuver--indeed, it may have turned my life around, if he possessed skill. But he did not.
I felt I had many things to hide, principally my sexuality, of course, though I was not completely aware of that. I felt he could not understand me, not in a million years. Under the guise of helping me, he might hurt me by telling my awful secret to my parents or to the principal (because, I reasoned, he was duty-bound, if not legally required, to do so). I turned him down. In hindsight, I know this was a mistake. He shrugged his shoulders. He was only trying to help. If I didn't want help, fine. I watched him walk away in much the same way I had watched Brian walk away, wanting to stop him from leaving, wanting to receive help, but not being able to, paralyzed by I know not what.
#
The last memory I have of a D&D meeting is dark. I don’t remember any words that were spoken, but only feelings and images, which is a mercy. By this time, many changes had happened in my life. All of my foundations had crumbled. Increasing awareness of my sexuality loomed like a threatening and alien force. I did not know what homosexuality meant or what would happen to me. There were no examples of any gay people besides the most flamboyant stereotypes in movies and television, who were usually portrayed as villains or victims. My parents were homophobic. The God that I had worshiped since boyhood was dead to me, slain by Reason, and all my old beliefs seemed like evidence of my own gullibility. My family seemed surreal, with a mad father, a hell-raising brother, queer me, and a normal mother who endured just for our sakes. We seemed quite humble and powerless in a vast and hostile world. The entire world was against me, because I was queer, and happiness was impossible. I foresaw that my friendship with Brian would die. He could not respect anyone as different as me. Knowledge of our friendship’s doom filled me with dread. I foresaw also that all of my other friendships would also be severed. Nothing would last.
I felt determined to show creative genius, which I wanted to hold up as compensation for my physical weakness and queerness. I designed an adventure campaign for our D&D group. I stole ideas from Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings,” mapping out the terrain of a fantasy world upon graph paper, with each square representing five miles. In the North, a witch-lord held sway over armies of orcs, goblins and other creatures. Sound familiar? His symbol was not far different from the white hand representing the forces of Saruman. The evil lord rested secure in a deep underground fortress, well-protected by traps, monsters and magic. In short, I stole all my ideas. I envisioned a long campaign that would span many meetings and endure for several years. The evil lord would eventually, after a long struggle, be overcome by the wit and resources of a little band of player-characters, played by my friends. In reality, my designs inspired no one. Mine was but a pale imitation of “The Lord of the Rings” and without beauty. After this one meeting, everyone lost interest, not only in my adventure, but in the D&D group itself, which disbanded.
In defiance of their rejection, I submitted the work to TSR, the role-playing corporation that published Dragon Magazine, in the hopes that I might be published and prove all my friends wrong. The kind editor took time out of his day to write me a personal letter of rejection, but only out of regard for my age of thirteen. Thus encouraged, I sent other letters, other submissions, time-wasters which were ignored. I suspect the editor regretted even responding to me in the first place. I took the hint and stopped wasting postage.
Picture us seated around a table: Alice, Brian, Chris, David, and me. Brian is seated by my side, as always, strong and firm. What I feel for him must never be spoken of, and instead I must keep my mind upon the game. To my recollection, there was no one fatal utterance I made, no one moment of weakness, but rather a general feeling of unquiet filled our meeting. I was not myself, but like one possessed. In my heart was grief, because of the things that I felt and that I perceived, but on my face was a mask.
I have absorbed a vast array of details. I have lost myself in the game. The entire rulebook is committed to memory. My knowledge of the game encompasses minutia such as the hit dice, armor class, attack and movement rate of every monster, the damage rating of every weapon, the effects of every spell and magical item, and more. I know all the details in all the books verbatim, which I was proud of at the time. Even to this day, I can quote the hit dice of certain monsters, the attributes of certain character races and classes.
My friends and I were changing into adolescents. An unspoken thread ran through everyone's mind. Why should we care for role-playing adventures? We could go and make our own adventures. Of course I became aware of this too, especially after everyone quit playing. After a month of playing by myself, I cast my D&D books aside. All my labors and my games seemed like folly to me, of no use, a waste of time and effort.
As through a haze of smoke, I can see once again my old friends’ eyes looking at me with disapproval. Glances flicker between them--observations shared about me that need not be spoken aloud. A certain regard still remained for me, for old times' sake--and perhaps Brian had told them my secrets. The spirit of Brian was far away from me. Cold thoughts were in his mind. I was quite alone with my papers, dice, and pen. He wore a mask when he looked at me. The pupils in his eyes were tiny dots. I saw that all that had once been was unwoven.
Best Friends, Chapter 2: The Rivalry
This is a continuation of an earlier story, "Mate."
I asked Brian why he liked me, not quite as confident with people as I am with chess. He told me that I was the smartest friend he had and that he liked me better than anyone else. His single mother was not well off. I remember her and Brian always being concerned about money and living in a neighborhood not quite as nice as mine. None of his neighborhood friends read books or had any interests besides sports. They posed as young toughs, cursing, boasting, insulting each other and everyone else, and spitting, or in other words, accentuating their vulgarity rather than showing any refinement. They bored and disgusted him. He could predict all their opinions and ideas. While they accepted him, because he was strong, he did not more than tolerate them.
Brian and I both did well in school. None of our classes challenged us until we began Eighth grade Algebra, at which time I had difficulty while Brian, who had much better study habits, succeeded. We read the excellent Lord of the Rings trilogy, the definitive fantasy classic, and often discussed each chapter. During recess, we played war games over imaginary continents drawn in the dirt on the playground. We played chess, though less often as time went by. My father and brother played me at home, sharpening my skills. Within a few months, I could beat Brian every game. Consequently, his interest in the game declined drastically until it was nonexistent.
The advent of my friendship with Brian threatened Mick, who learned of it through me, asking why I had not returned his calls. He demanded guarantees that I did not like Brian better than him. Being an honest soul, I could not provide such assurances. Brian told me that he already knew Mick and did not like him at all. Brian was contemptuous of him, but had consented to sleepovers at Mick’s house for the same reasons I had, namely Mick’s excellent library of video games. Brian wished only to have admirable friends and saw little to admire in Mick. He quit returning Mick’s phone calls and just dropped him.
I was flattered by the attentions of both boys, and their obvious jealousy and dislike of each other, and though on the surface I tried to make peace between them, secretly I delighted in their mutual hostility, for it was flattering to be the one that both liked and wished to keep. When Mick realized that he could not dislodge Brian from me, he attempted to make peace with Brian so that his friendship with me could proceed without any complications. Poor old Mick did the very best he could, even going so far as to invite Brian and me both for a sleepover one night which we both attended. He was as friendly and polite as he could possibly be to Brian.
Brian returned his civility, but an underlying coldness was palpable. Brian and I would exchange glances, and when Mick left the room, we would whisper to one another shared observations of his faults. We were horrible, just as young people often are. Mick deserved better. I wish he had made other friends and never even met us. I am not proud of the way that we treated him. However, his persistent pursuit of me and lack of judgment rather aggravated the difficult situation.
I remained friends with both Brian and Mick for about a month further, but Brian’s dislike of Mick only grew in intensity, exactly as I had foreseen. He never relented. Brian’s demands upon my time were enormous, leaving me little time or energy remaining for Mick or anyone else. He would call me up almost every day after school and we would talk until my ear was red. Then I would switch the phone over to my other ear and talk until that too was red. My throat would go hoarse from talking so much. He often complimented me and let me know in countless ways how much he enjoyed talking and being with me. It was not long before he told me I was his best friend. He was never in doubt where my feelings stood. My loyalty to him was unquestionable.
When before I used to spend much time with Mick, I was now spending my time with Brian, sleeping over at his house, where we would typically play board games together. Our favorites were Monopoly, chess, Stratego, and Parcheesi. We went out to the movies, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder and arm to arm deep in our chairs watching popular action-oriented films like “Star Wars” or “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, our favorites. There was always plausible deniability in our friendship. Brian despised anything that was perceived as homosexual or effeminate. I never suspected he might feel the same feelings that I felt, and I never spoke of those things which I knew must not be talked about.
The summer of our eleventh year, Brian and I began playing Dungeons & Dragons with our circle of friends, initially including Mick, because we had to out of common decency, still being his friend nominally if not in fact. Mick had not known the existence of the game until he discovered that I was playing it with Brian, at which point, he ordered his mother to buy him all the books and dice. He learned the bare minimum required. He owned more official D&D merchandise than anyone else, amounting to a hundred dollars’ worth at least.
David and Alice were both founding members also, though David seldom attended, finding the game tedious, an observation I have come to share in later life. Prior to the advent of elaborate role-playing video games, D&D was a fun social occasion. We often invited new friends who sometimes attended for several months before they tired of it. Our bi-weekly meetings, punctuated by incessant talking, arguing and giggling, sounded like a gaggle of geese, a picture reinforced by our being thin, white, and silly. Alice was the sole female in our group. She attended about forty times, which in a bi-weekly group covers the better part of a year, and even hosted meetings at her house on occasion, because we rotated from house to house for variety’s sake and to spare any one mother from having to play host all the time.
Mick’s attempt at popularity was cloying and similar to his mother’s, in that he attempted to buy affection. When he played as Dungeon Master, his dungeons featured powder-puff monsters that fell at the flick of a finger, and our player characters received vast hoards of gold pieces and the most powerful magic items. No player character ever died in Mick’s dungeons. While this was pleasant initially, it disrupted the balance of the game, eliminating the element of risk and challenge, and we expressed our disapproval, eventually proposed banning Mick from being Dungeon Master, which won a popular vote with Brian and me voting against Mick and carrying the others. Alice abstained from voting, not wishing to make an enemy. I believe she tolerated Mick’s approach, because she did not take the game as seriously as Brian and me.
I am confounded at reconstructing the dialogue of a D & D meeting today, because my memories of them are sketchy at best. I fear the proceedings would prove tedious to any reader not already immersed in fantasy role-playing games. RPGs, as they are still termed, were judged abstruse by most people, particularly in the 1980s, when all the rules had to be memorized and interpreted by human players, which resulted in lawyerly debates. Our parents, when they occasionally walked through a room where our meeting was being held, seldom paused to listen, and never elected to participate. The meetings were technical and game-oriented in nature, hence imminently forgettable. Upon my memory, the onslaught of years have performed their appointed tasks.
My competitive nature led me to try to build the strongest and most powerful player character. I spent hours toiling over my player character pages, where attributes were recorded. By rolling the dice numerous times, in effect cheating, I formulated the best, yet still plausible, combination of the six attributes, Strength, Wisdom, Intelligence, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma.
Out of curiosity, wishing to learn how others perceived me, I asked Brian once to write down what he believed were the scores for me (not my player character). He prudently declined at first, but when I persisted, he told me he would write my scores down that evening and hand it to me the next day at school. I made him swear to be honest and not flatter me, and he took me at my word. The next day at recess, I reminded him of this promise. He had hoped I would forget. Reluctantly, he handed me a paper, on which he had written my attributes. I had a below average score in Strength and Wisdom, and only average scores in Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma. My only standout score was Intelligence, which was above average. My low score in Strength had not surprised me, but I had hoped he would think me wise or charismatic. Instead, he was saying I lacked wisdom and was not especially skilled at handling people in social situations. As my instructions had been clear, he could not be reproached, and I had to accept this evaluation in silence.
I remember being quite an infamous rulebook lawyer, frequently arguing against the Dungeon Master’s interpretation of the rules. Whenever the rulebook would be checked, nine times out of ten, I was proven correct, and the Dungeon Master had to reverse himself, red-faced. Not all Dungeon Masters were vulnerable. Of our group, Brian knew the rules just about as well as I did, so I usually accepted his decisions without question. Alice knew the rules less well, and I embarrassed her a couple of times. It was a grave social miscalculation on my part. She quit being D.M. after one of those occasions and forever after was a player-character only. The other two, Mick and Chris, had a very poor knowledge of the rules, and I could frequently find mistakes in their conduct as Dungeon Master. The result was that Brian and I were usually elected D.M.
In my thirteenth year, Brian bought me the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Player's Handbook for my birthday. The generously illustrated hardback book cost $15, a fortune to a kid, especially a poor kid like Brian. His mother worked in a profession making not very much money and struggled to make ends meet. She did not give Brian an allowance or anything of the sort. I asked him how he could possibly afford it. He said that he had worked extra chores for his neighbors, over and above his already enormous amount of chores for his mother, to earn the money.
I had long coveted the book, but lacking the funds, had put off buying it. Adults may find it difficult to understand the importance of a fifteen-dollar book, but it was the rulebook for our games, and without it, one was handicapped in playing these games. Words failed me in expressing my gratitude. I felt honored to receive this gift. In the inside cover, he had written his dedication, "To the best friend I've ever had. May your hit points be eternal!” One of my guilty pleasures, when alone, was to pick up this book, open it and read this inscription, a proof of his affection. A year later, when our friendship ceased to exist, the words became a haunting reminder of my loss. A chill crept up my spine even to lay eyes upon the book, let alone his words rendered obsolete by events. I hid the book behind a shelf, never wishing to see it again. But I never threw it away.
My friendship with Brian assumed supreme importance. On Brian’s suggestion, I stopped hanging around Mick and even stopped talking to him. We decided to exclude him from our D&D meetings by neglecting to tell him the time and place of the next meeting. We informed the other players of our move, namely Alice, David, and a boy named Chris, and cajoled them into going along, and because we were more popular than Mick, it was an easy task. We were incredibly cruel, as young people often are. We completely cut Mick off from our company, ignoring his questions and comments, pretending like he did not exist. In the past, we had spent nights over at his house, playing games on his computer and smiling little fake smiles. Now, he was nothing. As might be expected, he was beside himself with grief, anger, and jealousy. He could not believe that I had betrayed him. He decided Brian was the villain, and that he had to work to open my eyes to Brian’s wicked ways. Perhaps his wisdom score was even lower than my own.
Every day after lunch at school Brian and I and one or two other kids would go off to play War, a schoolyard game akin to RISK played with imaginary continents scratched into the ground with a stick. Mick stood alone in the distance, watching us mournfully, every day, a ghastly apparition. Though we felt pity, we felt annoyed by the skulking presence of “Gollum,” our new nickname for Mick, taken from the sad and lonely creature from The Hobbit. He was always watching our faces, gauging how we were getting along, whether our friendship was still healthy. He was deeply jealous. I felt flattered but also annoyed.
Brian would say, "Just ignore him, maybe he'll go away." We cracked jokes about him, invariably cruel ones, while he watched, knowing that we were talking about him. He often approached just to yell something hateful, usually a reference to homosexuality, which is ironic. I can still recall his runs, when he would charge at us, screech a silly insult such as “you guys are a bunch of queers!” and then flap his arms around like a chicken, and run away before Brian could seize and throttle him. It was both humorous and sad, because we had come to despise him. His true motivation, which I saw clearly, though Brian assumed it mere malice, was actually hope, the hope that Brian and I would have a falling out, and that I would come back to him. On one of these runs, he came close to me and whispered in my ear, "Brian will turn on you just like he did me!" Those were prophetic words, though not in the way he believed.
For several weeks, or it may even have been months, Mick devised pitiful ploys with the objective of changing my mind or at least making me feel guilty, which I did, at times. However, what Brian and I shared seemed so strong and good that in the final analysis, I did not care what Mick thought, and did not care if we were cruel. He needed to learn how to adapt. He was not my responsibility.
After he realized his schemes were fruitless, he turned bitter and tried to make us as miserable as he was, or at least, since that was not possible, give us a small taste of it. He watched us carefully and would howl with glee like a madman if one of us looked angry or disturbed. He would run by to throw pinecones, rocks and sticks at us, darting away before we could return fire. Brian could aim well and throw a stick very hard, as Mick soon learned!
All three of us wrote and distributed cartoons about each other, Brian's and mine expressing mutual admiration, but only contempt for Mick's intelligence and character. Mick's cartoons insulted both of us, but sometimes favored me while insulting Brian, in a vain attempt to sow discord. Mick's cartoons were crude and poorly drawn. When it attacked me in some way, Brian replied with his own comic strip, contrasting what he saw as Mick's idiocy and sniveling with the good qualities he saw in me. Brian’s cartoons usually referred to the Spartans, a people whose ethos he admired. His favorite saying was “death before dishonor.”
I wish we had kept those cartoons, because they were funny, if cruel. I have read that most humor requires a lack of sympathy with another’s misfortune. I believe Brian’s Mother discovered and confiscated the bulk of our cartoons, which may even have been for the best. I am of the opinion we were evil. When a person’s affection is spurned, how good is it to rub salt in their wounds? Sure, if Mick had been wiser he would have taken leave of us. Eventually as I recall, he did just that. He took about six months to do so, however, and a month to a youth is like a year to a grown man. Time moves extremely slowly for the young. Be not nostalgic about your childhood. If you remember truly, it was hell. For my part, I am glad to be old. It is a calmer and more pleasant state of existence.
I asked Brian why he liked me, not quite as confident with people as I am with chess. He told me that I was the smartest friend he had and that he liked me better than anyone else. His single mother was not well off. I remember her and Brian always being concerned about money and living in a neighborhood not quite as nice as mine. None of his neighborhood friends read books or had any interests besides sports. They posed as young toughs, cursing, boasting, insulting each other and everyone else, and spitting, or in other words, accentuating their vulgarity rather than showing any refinement. They bored and disgusted him. He could predict all their opinions and ideas. While they accepted him, because he was strong, he did not more than tolerate them.
Brian and I both did well in school. None of our classes challenged us until we began Eighth grade Algebra, at which time I had difficulty while Brian, who had much better study habits, succeeded. We read the excellent Lord of the Rings trilogy, the definitive fantasy classic, and often discussed each chapter. During recess, we played war games over imaginary continents drawn in the dirt on the playground. We played chess, though less often as time went by. My father and brother played me at home, sharpening my skills. Within a few months, I could beat Brian every game. Consequently, his interest in the game declined drastically until it was nonexistent.
The advent of my friendship with Brian threatened Mick, who learned of it through me, asking why I had not returned his calls. He demanded guarantees that I did not like Brian better than him. Being an honest soul, I could not provide such assurances. Brian told me that he already knew Mick and did not like him at all. Brian was contemptuous of him, but had consented to sleepovers at Mick’s house for the same reasons I had, namely Mick’s excellent library of video games. Brian wished only to have admirable friends and saw little to admire in Mick. He quit returning Mick’s phone calls and just dropped him.
I was flattered by the attentions of both boys, and their obvious jealousy and dislike of each other, and though on the surface I tried to make peace between them, secretly I delighted in their mutual hostility, for it was flattering to be the one that both liked and wished to keep. When Mick realized that he could not dislodge Brian from me, he attempted to make peace with Brian so that his friendship with me could proceed without any complications. Poor old Mick did the very best he could, even going so far as to invite Brian and me both for a sleepover one night which we both attended. He was as friendly and polite as he could possibly be to Brian.
Brian returned his civility, but an underlying coldness was palpable. Brian and I would exchange glances, and when Mick left the room, we would whisper to one another shared observations of his faults. We were horrible, just as young people often are. Mick deserved better. I wish he had made other friends and never even met us. I am not proud of the way that we treated him. However, his persistent pursuit of me and lack of judgment rather aggravated the difficult situation.
I remained friends with both Brian and Mick for about a month further, but Brian’s dislike of Mick only grew in intensity, exactly as I had foreseen. He never relented. Brian’s demands upon my time were enormous, leaving me little time or energy remaining for Mick or anyone else. He would call me up almost every day after school and we would talk until my ear was red. Then I would switch the phone over to my other ear and talk until that too was red. My throat would go hoarse from talking so much. He often complimented me and let me know in countless ways how much he enjoyed talking and being with me. It was not long before he told me I was his best friend. He was never in doubt where my feelings stood. My loyalty to him was unquestionable.
When before I used to spend much time with Mick, I was now spending my time with Brian, sleeping over at his house, where we would typically play board games together. Our favorites were Monopoly, chess, Stratego, and Parcheesi. We went out to the movies, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder and arm to arm deep in our chairs watching popular action-oriented films like “Star Wars” or “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, our favorites. There was always plausible deniability in our friendship. Brian despised anything that was perceived as homosexual or effeminate. I never suspected he might feel the same feelings that I felt, and I never spoke of those things which I knew must not be talked about.
The summer of our eleventh year, Brian and I began playing Dungeons & Dragons with our circle of friends, initially including Mick, because we had to out of common decency, still being his friend nominally if not in fact. Mick had not known the existence of the game until he discovered that I was playing it with Brian, at which point, he ordered his mother to buy him all the books and dice. He learned the bare minimum required. He owned more official D&D merchandise than anyone else, amounting to a hundred dollars’ worth at least.
David and Alice were both founding members also, though David seldom attended, finding the game tedious, an observation I have come to share in later life. Prior to the advent of elaborate role-playing video games, D&D was a fun social occasion. We often invited new friends who sometimes attended for several months before they tired of it. Our bi-weekly meetings, punctuated by incessant talking, arguing and giggling, sounded like a gaggle of geese, a picture reinforced by our being thin, white, and silly. Alice was the sole female in our group. She attended about forty times, which in a bi-weekly group covers the better part of a year, and even hosted meetings at her house on occasion, because we rotated from house to house for variety’s sake and to spare any one mother from having to play host all the time.
Mick’s attempt at popularity was cloying and similar to his mother’s, in that he attempted to buy affection. When he played as Dungeon Master, his dungeons featured powder-puff monsters that fell at the flick of a finger, and our player characters received vast hoards of gold pieces and the most powerful magic items. No player character ever died in Mick’s dungeons. While this was pleasant initially, it disrupted the balance of the game, eliminating the element of risk and challenge, and we expressed our disapproval, eventually proposed banning Mick from being Dungeon Master, which won a popular vote with Brian and me voting against Mick and carrying the others. Alice abstained from voting, not wishing to make an enemy. I believe she tolerated Mick’s approach, because she did not take the game as seriously as Brian and me.
I am confounded at reconstructing the dialogue of a D & D meeting today, because my memories of them are sketchy at best. I fear the proceedings would prove tedious to any reader not already immersed in fantasy role-playing games. RPGs, as they are still termed, were judged abstruse by most people, particularly in the 1980s, when all the rules had to be memorized and interpreted by human players, which resulted in lawyerly debates. Our parents, when they occasionally walked through a room where our meeting was being held, seldom paused to listen, and never elected to participate. The meetings were technical and game-oriented in nature, hence imminently forgettable. Upon my memory, the onslaught of years have performed their appointed tasks.
My competitive nature led me to try to build the strongest and most powerful player character. I spent hours toiling over my player character pages, where attributes were recorded. By rolling the dice numerous times, in effect cheating, I formulated the best, yet still plausible, combination of the six attributes, Strength, Wisdom, Intelligence, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma.
Out of curiosity, wishing to learn how others perceived me, I asked Brian once to write down what he believed were the scores for me (not my player character). He prudently declined at first, but when I persisted, he told me he would write my scores down that evening and hand it to me the next day at school. I made him swear to be honest and not flatter me, and he took me at my word. The next day at recess, I reminded him of this promise. He had hoped I would forget. Reluctantly, he handed me a paper, on which he had written my attributes. I had a below average score in Strength and Wisdom, and only average scores in Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma. My only standout score was Intelligence, which was above average. My low score in Strength had not surprised me, but I had hoped he would think me wise or charismatic. Instead, he was saying I lacked wisdom and was not especially skilled at handling people in social situations. As my instructions had been clear, he could not be reproached, and I had to accept this evaluation in silence.
I remember being quite an infamous rulebook lawyer, frequently arguing against the Dungeon Master’s interpretation of the rules. Whenever the rulebook would be checked, nine times out of ten, I was proven correct, and the Dungeon Master had to reverse himself, red-faced. Not all Dungeon Masters were vulnerable. Of our group, Brian knew the rules just about as well as I did, so I usually accepted his decisions without question. Alice knew the rules less well, and I embarrassed her a couple of times. It was a grave social miscalculation on my part. She quit being D.M. after one of those occasions and forever after was a player-character only. The other two, Mick and Chris, had a very poor knowledge of the rules, and I could frequently find mistakes in their conduct as Dungeon Master. The result was that Brian and I were usually elected D.M.
In my thirteenth year, Brian bought me the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Player's Handbook for my birthday. The generously illustrated hardback book cost $15, a fortune to a kid, especially a poor kid like Brian. His mother worked in a profession making not very much money and struggled to make ends meet. She did not give Brian an allowance or anything of the sort. I asked him how he could possibly afford it. He said that he had worked extra chores for his neighbors, over and above his already enormous amount of chores for his mother, to earn the money.
I had long coveted the book, but lacking the funds, had put off buying it. Adults may find it difficult to understand the importance of a fifteen-dollar book, but it was the rulebook for our games, and without it, one was handicapped in playing these games. Words failed me in expressing my gratitude. I felt honored to receive this gift. In the inside cover, he had written his dedication, "To the best friend I've ever had. May your hit points be eternal!” One of my guilty pleasures, when alone, was to pick up this book, open it and read this inscription, a proof of his affection. A year later, when our friendship ceased to exist, the words became a haunting reminder of my loss. A chill crept up my spine even to lay eyes upon the book, let alone his words rendered obsolete by events. I hid the book behind a shelf, never wishing to see it again. But I never threw it away.
My friendship with Brian assumed supreme importance. On Brian’s suggestion, I stopped hanging around Mick and even stopped talking to him. We decided to exclude him from our D&D meetings by neglecting to tell him the time and place of the next meeting. We informed the other players of our move, namely Alice, David, and a boy named Chris, and cajoled them into going along, and because we were more popular than Mick, it was an easy task. We were incredibly cruel, as young people often are. We completely cut Mick off from our company, ignoring his questions and comments, pretending like he did not exist. In the past, we had spent nights over at his house, playing games on his computer and smiling little fake smiles. Now, he was nothing. As might be expected, he was beside himself with grief, anger, and jealousy. He could not believe that I had betrayed him. He decided Brian was the villain, and that he had to work to open my eyes to Brian’s wicked ways. Perhaps his wisdom score was even lower than my own.
Every day after lunch at school Brian and I and one or two other kids would go off to play War, a schoolyard game akin to RISK played with imaginary continents scratched into the ground with a stick. Mick stood alone in the distance, watching us mournfully, every day, a ghastly apparition. Though we felt pity, we felt annoyed by the skulking presence of “Gollum,” our new nickname for Mick, taken from the sad and lonely creature from The Hobbit. He was always watching our faces, gauging how we were getting along, whether our friendship was still healthy. He was deeply jealous. I felt flattered but also annoyed.
Brian would say, "Just ignore him, maybe he'll go away." We cracked jokes about him, invariably cruel ones, while he watched, knowing that we were talking about him. He often approached just to yell something hateful, usually a reference to homosexuality, which is ironic. I can still recall his runs, when he would charge at us, screech a silly insult such as “you guys are a bunch of queers!” and then flap his arms around like a chicken, and run away before Brian could seize and throttle him. It was both humorous and sad, because we had come to despise him. His true motivation, which I saw clearly, though Brian assumed it mere malice, was actually hope, the hope that Brian and I would have a falling out, and that I would come back to him. On one of these runs, he came close to me and whispered in my ear, "Brian will turn on you just like he did me!" Those were prophetic words, though not in the way he believed.
For several weeks, or it may even have been months, Mick devised pitiful ploys with the objective of changing my mind or at least making me feel guilty, which I did, at times. However, what Brian and I shared seemed so strong and good that in the final analysis, I did not care what Mick thought, and did not care if we were cruel. He needed to learn how to adapt. He was not my responsibility.
After he realized his schemes were fruitless, he turned bitter and tried to make us as miserable as he was, or at least, since that was not possible, give us a small taste of it. He watched us carefully and would howl with glee like a madman if one of us looked angry or disturbed. He would run by to throw pinecones, rocks and sticks at us, darting away before we could return fire. Brian could aim well and throw a stick very hard, as Mick soon learned!
All three of us wrote and distributed cartoons about each other, Brian's and mine expressing mutual admiration, but only contempt for Mick's intelligence and character. Mick's cartoons insulted both of us, but sometimes favored me while insulting Brian, in a vain attempt to sow discord. Mick's cartoons were crude and poorly drawn. When it attacked me in some way, Brian replied with his own comic strip, contrasting what he saw as Mick's idiocy and sniveling with the good qualities he saw in me. Brian’s cartoons usually referred to the Spartans, a people whose ethos he admired. His favorite saying was “death before dishonor.”
I wish we had kept those cartoons, because they were funny, if cruel. I have read that most humor requires a lack of sympathy with another’s misfortune. I believe Brian’s Mother discovered and confiscated the bulk of our cartoons, which may even have been for the best. I am of the opinion we were evil. When a person’s affection is spurned, how good is it to rub salt in their wounds? Sure, if Mick had been wiser he would have taken leave of us. Eventually as I recall, he did just that. He took about six months to do so, however, and a month to a youth is like a year to a grown man. Time moves extremely slowly for the young. Be not nostalgic about your childhood. If you remember truly, it was hell. For my part, I am glad to be old. It is a calmer and more pleasant state of existence.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Best Friends, Chapter 1: Mate
Welcome once again to the vault of my memory. I am opening another chest and moving some of its contents to my blog. This is the story of how I met my best friend in middle school for the first time. I call this story, "Mate."
---
I found a dozen boys gathered in a classroom, an unusual event for recess, when most would be out playing tag or another improvised sport. The chess club membership was exclusively male. There was only one chessboard available. All boys deferred to one player who was regarded as an authority on the game. To apprehend the name of this premier player, I approached Mark, an acquaintance who cheated off me on tests in exchange for occasional favors, like the loan of a pen or paper. Mark informed me that the premier player was named Brian, and that he defeated all the boys that he played.
I had studied the games of the old masters: Reti, Alekhine, and Lasker. I knew the openings and was accustomed to crushing both kids and grown-ups with impunity. The idea of a boy my age even thinking that he could beat me was outrageous. I declared, "I don't care if he beats every damn kid in this school, I know he can't beat me!" Mark replied, "Oh yeah? Come on and try him, then."
I viewed Brian as an upstart. Nevertheless, as I watched him play, I could not help being impressed. Brian was a cut above every other boy in the room, utterly unlike them, poised, more controlled and mature, the natural leader of them all, with the possible exception, I allowed, of myself. He had straight black hair parted neatly to the side, wore glasses that gave him an intellectual appearance, was two inches shorter than me, but of better build, and had his shirt tucked in, unlike all the other boys, including myself. While considering his next move, he whistled a tune I had never heard before, and each note sounded true. I did like him right from the start. Soon my purpose changed, and I wondered not just whether I would beat him, but whether he would like me.
He crushed his opponent in a lightning blitz combining the queen and both knights that I watched with admiration. I seized my opportunity to challenge him to a game. Since we had never met before, he stood up and shook my hand like a proper gentleman, impressing me further, and told me his name, which I already knew. I was overcome by shyness and in awe of him. I said little, but when prompted by him, did say my name. He asked, politely, if I even knew how to play! He even offered to teach me! Such a gentleman he was! I smiled, for he had underestimated me and would therefore be careless, but on further thought, I disdained winning through his carelessness. I wanted to encounter his full strength and crush him. No other kind of victory would have meaning to me. Therefore, I revealed that I had played since the age of four. He shrugged his shoulders and explained that many boys were ignorant of chess. He was right, of course. That is a deplorable state of affairs for this country.
Brian brought out his queen early, an unsound tactic seldom encountered from the more seasoned, adult players that usually played me. Unwilling, due to my pride, to let him seize the initiative and to set the tone of the game, I paid little attention to his moves, which I judged rash. My excessive confidence was exposed when he actually captured material. With the instinct of a seasoned general, he pressed the offensive relentlessly until, to my astonishment, he won!
Brian was magnanimous, confessing that I had given him more of a battle than any of the others, a compliment I accepted reluctantly, because I had fully expected to win. Was I really defeated? Was I standing up to let the next boy play the winner? I felt even more in awe of him than I had before. Was I upset or angry at losing a chess game? No, I was happy to find at last my equal, someone worthy that I could learn from and admire.
The other boy who replaced me played a game not worth watching. I became bored and tempted by the thought of leaving. Though my feet wished to walk away, my mind forbade any movement. I could not leave until I had talked with Brian alone. The thought filled me with dismay, because I was a shy boy, most reluctant to approach strangers. No one on Earth impressed me like he did. I had to know if he would be my friend.
Everyone wanted to play him, and so I had to wait until the lunch period ended. The bell finally rang, a million years late as far as I was concerned. I approached him, but could not get through the crowd. Somehow, he noticed me over the noise and commotion of others, seized me by the elbow, took me aside and listened. He seemed friendly. The noise was so great that I had to cup my hand over his ear and speak, an unanticipated intimacy that made me blush. I did not bother with any preliminary small talk. “Would you like to come over to my house sometime to play chess?”
My breathing paused. To my delight, he said, "Sure," like it was the most natural thing in the world. He took charge of all the rest, removing every remaining obstacle by volunteering his phone number and then asking for mine.
The rest of the day, I was elated. My loss in chess had transformed into a great victory. Brian was my friend! We would play chess at my house. Maybe we would become best friends! My only desire was for the end of the school day to arrive and for me to get home, so that I could call him up. Watching the clock ticking ever so gradually toward 2:20 P.M. was torture. There were butterflies in my stomach when the last bell finally rang. When I came home, I told Mother that I had made a new friend who was smart. That is the word I used to describe him, because I knew she would approve of that. Mother sensed my happiness and shared in it, as she always did. When l asked if he could come over, she immediately said yes. Brian told me when I called him that he had liked me from the start. I could not have been happier.
---
I found a dozen boys gathered in a classroom, an unusual event for recess, when most would be out playing tag or another improvised sport. The chess club membership was exclusively male. There was only one chessboard available. All boys deferred to one player who was regarded as an authority on the game. To apprehend the name of this premier player, I approached Mark, an acquaintance who cheated off me on tests in exchange for occasional favors, like the loan of a pen or paper. Mark informed me that the premier player was named Brian, and that he defeated all the boys that he played.
I had studied the games of the old masters: Reti, Alekhine, and Lasker. I knew the openings and was accustomed to crushing both kids and grown-ups with impunity. The idea of a boy my age even thinking that he could beat me was outrageous. I declared, "I don't care if he beats every damn kid in this school, I know he can't beat me!" Mark replied, "Oh yeah? Come on and try him, then."
I viewed Brian as an upstart. Nevertheless, as I watched him play, I could not help being impressed. Brian was a cut above every other boy in the room, utterly unlike them, poised, more controlled and mature, the natural leader of them all, with the possible exception, I allowed, of myself. He had straight black hair parted neatly to the side, wore glasses that gave him an intellectual appearance, was two inches shorter than me, but of better build, and had his shirt tucked in, unlike all the other boys, including myself. While considering his next move, he whistled a tune I had never heard before, and each note sounded true. I did like him right from the start. Soon my purpose changed, and I wondered not just whether I would beat him, but whether he would like me.
He crushed his opponent in a lightning blitz combining the queen and both knights that I watched with admiration. I seized my opportunity to challenge him to a game. Since we had never met before, he stood up and shook my hand like a proper gentleman, impressing me further, and told me his name, which I already knew. I was overcome by shyness and in awe of him. I said little, but when prompted by him, did say my name. He asked, politely, if I even knew how to play! He even offered to teach me! Such a gentleman he was! I smiled, for he had underestimated me and would therefore be careless, but on further thought, I disdained winning through his carelessness. I wanted to encounter his full strength and crush him. No other kind of victory would have meaning to me. Therefore, I revealed that I had played since the age of four. He shrugged his shoulders and explained that many boys were ignorant of chess. He was right, of course. That is a deplorable state of affairs for this country.
Brian brought out his queen early, an unsound tactic seldom encountered from the more seasoned, adult players that usually played me. Unwilling, due to my pride, to let him seize the initiative and to set the tone of the game, I paid little attention to his moves, which I judged rash. My excessive confidence was exposed when he actually captured material. With the instinct of a seasoned general, he pressed the offensive relentlessly until, to my astonishment, he won!
Brian was magnanimous, confessing that I had given him more of a battle than any of the others, a compliment I accepted reluctantly, because I had fully expected to win. Was I really defeated? Was I standing up to let the next boy play the winner? I felt even more in awe of him than I had before. Was I upset or angry at losing a chess game? No, I was happy to find at last my equal, someone worthy that I could learn from and admire.
The other boy who replaced me played a game not worth watching. I became bored and tempted by the thought of leaving. Though my feet wished to walk away, my mind forbade any movement. I could not leave until I had talked with Brian alone. The thought filled me with dismay, because I was a shy boy, most reluctant to approach strangers. No one on Earth impressed me like he did. I had to know if he would be my friend.
Everyone wanted to play him, and so I had to wait until the lunch period ended. The bell finally rang, a million years late as far as I was concerned. I approached him, but could not get through the crowd. Somehow, he noticed me over the noise and commotion of others, seized me by the elbow, took me aside and listened. He seemed friendly. The noise was so great that I had to cup my hand over his ear and speak, an unanticipated intimacy that made me blush. I did not bother with any preliminary small talk. “Would you like to come over to my house sometime to play chess?”
My breathing paused. To my delight, he said, "Sure," like it was the most natural thing in the world. He took charge of all the rest, removing every remaining obstacle by volunteering his phone number and then asking for mine.
The rest of the day, I was elated. My loss in chess had transformed into a great victory. Brian was my friend! We would play chess at my house. Maybe we would become best friends! My only desire was for the end of the school day to arrive and for me to get home, so that I could call him up. Watching the clock ticking ever so gradually toward 2:20 P.M. was torture. There were butterflies in my stomach when the last bell finally rang. When I came home, I told Mother that I had made a new friend who was smart. That is the word I used to describe him, because I knew she would approve of that. Mother sensed my happiness and shared in it, as she always did. When l asked if he could come over, she immediately said yes. Brian told me when I called him that he had liked me from the start. I could not have been happier.
Intelligence
Intelligence is a slippery virtue. Take a savant out of his comfort zone and place him in an unfamiliar intellectual arena, and he may seem mediocre or worse.
I have been humbled myself. Although people tell me that I'm smart, from time to time, their words bounce right off me. I know that in certain areas, I am not smart at all, but middling or worse. Chemistry mystifies me. Biology eats me up and converts me into adenosine tri-phosphate. Physics makes me sick. Calculus makes me cuss.
When someone tells you that you are intelligent, bear in mind that human intelligence tends to specialize. Taken out of your niche, would you still be at the top or would you be another amateur?
I have been humbled myself. Although people tell me that I'm smart, from time to time, their words bounce right off me. I know that in certain areas, I am not smart at all, but middling or worse. Chemistry mystifies me. Biology eats me up and converts me into adenosine tri-phosphate. Physics makes me sick. Calculus makes me cuss.
When someone tells you that you are intelligent, bear in mind that human intelligence tends to specialize. Taken out of your niche, would you still be at the top or would you be another amateur?
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Good Riddance to a Prohibitionist
Republican U.S. Representative Mark Souder, a self-proclaimed evangelical Christian, pushed for tougher drug laws and argued that Republican policies weren't conservative enough.
It's funny how these sadistic and pompous prohibitionists set one standard for the lower classes and then do whatever they want to do until such time that they get caught.
I think Souder should spend time with the families of Americans whose father or mother is behind bars right now as a result of U.S. marijuana laws. He should speak with them and learn about their suffering. That will help him to put his own tiny problems into perspective and understand the harms he inflicted upon this country during his time in office.
It's funny how these sadistic and pompous prohibitionists set one standard for the lower classes and then do whatever they want to do until such time that they get caught.
I think Souder should spend time with the families of Americans whose father or mother is behind bars right now as a result of U.S. marijuana laws. He should speak with them and learn about their suffering. That will help him to put his own tiny problems into perspective and understand the harms he inflicted upon this country during his time in office.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
My Experience with Private Health Care
This was my experience with private health care. Bear in mind I am a middle-class working stiff.
When I suffered a herniated disc, I was told by the clinic to just walk on in! It was like Jesus telling the cripple to get up and walk. The clinic lacked the mojo of Jesus. I had a better chance of sprouting wings and flying to Russia than standing up, let alone walk anywhere. You know there is something wrong with a clinic that does not understand the ramifications of severe lower back pain. To tell a patient, get up and walk, when he says he cannot get up, shows a lack of competence with communication, language, medicine, anatomy, and physics.
It was not possible to get up and research on the Internet to diagnose my condition myself. I was only able to do that much later, and in my opinion I have made a 100% accurate diagnosis--after the fact. Herniated disc, generic variety, nothing special, and simple to treat--if only the doctor had bothered to treat it or at a minimum, told me how.
There was no advice, no counseling, nobody came to see me, and I suffered alone in agony all night long. Sleeping was impossible. Like clockwork, every ten to twenty minutes, my lower back muscles would spasm. Waves of agony would radiate from my lower back to every cell of my body. The pain was like an insane monkey beating a drum right next to my ears all night long. There was no end to it in sight. This is when the air conditioning decided to fail in my house as well, so the temperature climbed up to 99 F.
After several days of intense suffering, when I was well enough to inch my way to the clinic, taking tiny steps and walking like the cripple I was, the doctor saw me for two minutes, gave me a prescription for Naproxin and offered to write me a script for opiates so that I could forget about the experience. I turned her down, because I'd rather blog about my suffering than forget about it.
I'm reminded of my experience as I read articles about the so-called teabagger movement. They claim to be concerned about the national deficit. Why were these vampires silent while the wars drained hundreds of billions from our nation's treasury? National deficit, my foot. They just don't like having a black man lead the country. That's the long and short of it. For my part, I could care less what skin color Obama has. I just want him to do a good job. I want him to succeed. That is the definition of patriotism. A traitor is someone who says he wants our President to fail. If our President fails, the whole country fails. You can guess where this logic places Rush Limbaugh.
The only reason I can see that people would oppose socialized medicine is a desire to see some people suffer, particularly people of a different race. Our neighbors, Mexico, Canada and Cuba all have socialized medicine and they love it. In France, the doctors come to you when you have a medical condition. I don't know why the mainstream media tries to cover up all the good things that happen in other countries. I watched Michael Moore's film, "Sicko," and it made up my mind that socialized medicine is the way to go. Some people have made up their mind to refuse to admit to any problems in society. They stick their head in the sand like an ostrich. They call themselves patriots. That is not the definition of patriotism. That is the definition of intellectual laziness. Real patriots like Benjamin Franklin were not lazy. "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise" was his proverb. He established the nation's first paper mill manufacturing paper out of marijuana, which fools of the modern era have banned for no particular reason.
I am aware of England's recent regime change. The Conservative Party over there has swept into power through a strange alliance with the Liberal Democrats. I wonder how many Republicans in the U.S. realize that English conservatives have absolutely no intention of eliminating socialized medicine, that they indeed love their country's socialized medicine. Around the world, socialized medicine is not a football thrown between political parties of left and right. Instead, both sides embrace it, and why? Because it is good for everyone and to oppose it would be political suicide.
When I suffered a herniated disc, I was told by the clinic to just walk on in! It was like Jesus telling the cripple to get up and walk. The clinic lacked the mojo of Jesus. I had a better chance of sprouting wings and flying to Russia than standing up, let alone walk anywhere. You know there is something wrong with a clinic that does not understand the ramifications of severe lower back pain. To tell a patient, get up and walk, when he says he cannot get up, shows a lack of competence with communication, language, medicine, anatomy, and physics.
It was not possible to get up and research on the Internet to diagnose my condition myself. I was only able to do that much later, and in my opinion I have made a 100% accurate diagnosis--after the fact. Herniated disc, generic variety, nothing special, and simple to treat--if only the doctor had bothered to treat it or at a minimum, told me how.
There was no advice, no counseling, nobody came to see me, and I suffered alone in agony all night long. Sleeping was impossible. Like clockwork, every ten to twenty minutes, my lower back muscles would spasm. Waves of agony would radiate from my lower back to every cell of my body. The pain was like an insane monkey beating a drum right next to my ears all night long. There was no end to it in sight. This is when the air conditioning decided to fail in my house as well, so the temperature climbed up to 99 F.
After several days of intense suffering, when I was well enough to inch my way to the clinic, taking tiny steps and walking like the cripple I was, the doctor saw me for two minutes, gave me a prescription for Naproxin and offered to write me a script for opiates so that I could forget about the experience. I turned her down, because I'd rather blog about my suffering than forget about it.
I'm reminded of my experience as I read articles about the so-called teabagger movement. They claim to be concerned about the national deficit. Why were these vampires silent while the wars drained hundreds of billions from our nation's treasury? National deficit, my foot. They just don't like having a black man lead the country. That's the long and short of it. For my part, I could care less what skin color Obama has. I just want him to do a good job. I want him to succeed. That is the definition of patriotism. A traitor is someone who says he wants our President to fail. If our President fails, the whole country fails. You can guess where this logic places Rush Limbaugh.
The only reason I can see that people would oppose socialized medicine is a desire to see some people suffer, particularly people of a different race. Our neighbors, Mexico, Canada and Cuba all have socialized medicine and they love it. In France, the doctors come to you when you have a medical condition. I don't know why the mainstream media tries to cover up all the good things that happen in other countries. I watched Michael Moore's film, "Sicko," and it made up my mind that socialized medicine is the way to go. Some people have made up their mind to refuse to admit to any problems in society. They stick their head in the sand like an ostrich. They call themselves patriots. That is not the definition of patriotism. That is the definition of intellectual laziness. Real patriots like Benjamin Franklin were not lazy. "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise" was his proverb. He established the nation's first paper mill manufacturing paper out of marijuana, which fools of the modern era have banned for no particular reason.
I am aware of England's recent regime change. The Conservative Party over there has swept into power through a strange alliance with the Liberal Democrats. I wonder how many Republicans in the U.S. realize that English conservatives have absolutely no intention of eliminating socialized medicine, that they indeed love their country's socialized medicine. Around the world, socialized medicine is not a football thrown between political parties of left and right. Instead, both sides embrace it, and why? Because it is good for everyone and to oppose it would be political suicide.
Spinal Disc Herniation
In my studies in human anatomy, I concluded recently that I have been a sufferer, twice, of spinal disc herniation, based upon my symptoms, outcomes, and contributing factors such as age and job conditions.
None of my doctors ever suggested anything of the sort. Instead, I was met with a blank stare when I asked what the cause of my back pain might be. They neither knew nor wished to determine what ailed me. In the brief moments that I was graced with the presence of a doctor, I was given a prescription for Naproxin, which is inferior to Ibuprofen for lower back pain (doctors, of all people, should know that!) and told to get plenty of rest. How to avoid future episodes of back pain, or my prognosis, was never discussed; not once, ever. This is the state of medical care in the United States, even for a middle-class person who is fully insured. We get drugs--as many opiates as we wish (whip-de-doo)--and are sent back to work stoned, but with a doctor's prescription that will satisfy the drug nazis. Then we get hurt again, and again, and again. Each repeat visit to the hospital or doctor generates more money for them.
If you find yourself suffering excruciating, debilitating, almost paralyzing lower back pain, worse than any pain you have ever known; and if you are between thirty and forty, and if you sit down in a chair for long hours every day, and if this back pain seems to go away after a couple of weeks of bed rest, then you may be a victim of spinal disc herniation as well. Doctors won't share much information with you unless you're a rich person, because working stiffs are not worth helping. They will give you a placebo or, if you beg for it, something to get you high, and then send you off to get injured again.
My suggestion, which you can consider only when you get better, is to begin a regimen of light exercise, gentle to the back, such as walks in the park--not jogging, like I was doing. Also, avoid alcohol at all costs. Use marijuana instead, if you seek inebriation. Sleep well. If you must sit down for long hours at a time in order to do your job, then try to rise once every hour or so and walk around, if only to get a drink of water. If you are a caffeine fiend, then try to tone down your habit. I'm not going to bother discussing nutrition, because I was popping a multivitamin on a daily basis and eating a balanced diet when I suffered my back injuries. Americans are well-fed in general. It may help to lose weight, of course. Extra weight causes additional strain to every part of the body.
Above all else, avoid lifting heavy objects by yourself, especially early in the morning before you have had time to warm up. I have come to dread performing any type of lifting. I used to be gung-ho about lifting, wanting to show off my strength. I could lift people that were my own weight and liked to do so at parties. Now, I remember the weeks spent in bed, writhing in agony, and I wait for a friend to help me. I've had spinal disc herniation twice in my life, and believe me, there were times when death seemed like a wonderful alternative. That was before I discovered ibuprofen on my own without the help of any doctor. Ibuprofen reduces the pain by a surprising degree, something that every doctor in the world should know, but many do not (or perhaps they do know, but receive a kickback from manufacturers of other NSAIDs).
Prior to walking or doing any form of exercise, do not perform an elaborate series of difficult stretches, as some exercise gurus recommend. I have found that stretching injures the back. It has never protected me. Our guide to stretching should be cats, because they are limber and agile. If you ever take the time to observe cats, you may notice that their stretching is gentle and quick. They don't make a big production out of it. They may stretch for a few seconds, but then they go about their business.
None of my doctors ever suggested anything of the sort. Instead, I was met with a blank stare when I asked what the cause of my back pain might be. They neither knew nor wished to determine what ailed me. In the brief moments that I was graced with the presence of a doctor, I was given a prescription for Naproxin, which is inferior to Ibuprofen for lower back pain (doctors, of all people, should know that!) and told to get plenty of rest. How to avoid future episodes of back pain, or my prognosis, was never discussed; not once, ever. This is the state of medical care in the United States, even for a middle-class person who is fully insured. We get drugs--as many opiates as we wish (whip-de-doo)--and are sent back to work stoned, but with a doctor's prescription that will satisfy the drug nazis. Then we get hurt again, and again, and again. Each repeat visit to the hospital or doctor generates more money for them.
If you find yourself suffering excruciating, debilitating, almost paralyzing lower back pain, worse than any pain you have ever known; and if you are between thirty and forty, and if you sit down in a chair for long hours every day, and if this back pain seems to go away after a couple of weeks of bed rest, then you may be a victim of spinal disc herniation as well. Doctors won't share much information with you unless you're a rich person, because working stiffs are not worth helping. They will give you a placebo or, if you beg for it, something to get you high, and then send you off to get injured again.
My suggestion, which you can consider only when you get better, is to begin a regimen of light exercise, gentle to the back, such as walks in the park--not jogging, like I was doing. Also, avoid alcohol at all costs. Use marijuana instead, if you seek inebriation. Sleep well. If you must sit down for long hours at a time in order to do your job, then try to rise once every hour or so and walk around, if only to get a drink of water. If you are a caffeine fiend, then try to tone down your habit. I'm not going to bother discussing nutrition, because I was popping a multivitamin on a daily basis and eating a balanced diet when I suffered my back injuries. Americans are well-fed in general. It may help to lose weight, of course. Extra weight causes additional strain to every part of the body.
Above all else, avoid lifting heavy objects by yourself, especially early in the morning before you have had time to warm up. I have come to dread performing any type of lifting. I used to be gung-ho about lifting, wanting to show off my strength. I could lift people that were my own weight and liked to do so at parties. Now, I remember the weeks spent in bed, writhing in agony, and I wait for a friend to help me. I've had spinal disc herniation twice in my life, and believe me, there were times when death seemed like a wonderful alternative. That was before I discovered ibuprofen on my own without the help of any doctor. Ibuprofen reduces the pain by a surprising degree, something that every doctor in the world should know, but many do not (or perhaps they do know, but receive a kickback from manufacturers of other NSAIDs).
Prior to walking or doing any form of exercise, do not perform an elaborate series of difficult stretches, as some exercise gurus recommend. I have found that stretching injures the back. It has never protected me. Our guide to stretching should be cats, because they are limber and agile. If you ever take the time to observe cats, you may notice that their stretching is gentle and quick. They don't make a big production out of it. They may stretch for a few seconds, but then they go about their business.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
The Idea of Love
As a young man, there were two women that I fell in love with, for worse rather than better. In retrospect, looking back through the years, as I listen to "Too Hot," by Kool & the Gang, which always brings back memories of love, I think I was in love not so much with the women, but more so with the idea of love, being a romantic fool. The individuals were, as it turns out, no better or worse than any other person I might pass on the street at random nor any more attractive. But the cumulative effect of a lifetime of rock-n-roll songs, television shows and movies, books and in particular Jane Austin did have an effect, and I wanted to see what all the singing was about; the women were my mistakes.
Knowing what I do know now of these women, I am glad they are not with me now, because I think they were shrews that would make life not worth living. I look with fondness, not at memories of them, execrable memories, but at the years and distance that separate us, and am more than happy to have been forgotten.
Another reason I remember them at all, besides songs from the Eighties, are stories I wrote that were never published, because like the subjects, they were execrable. Publishers said what I should have said in the first moment of acquaintance. If the DNA ain't right, no amount of effort can breathe life into the sorry lump of clay.
Here's an excerpt that's about as good as any other.
She dropped me off at my home, claiming she needed to run errands by herself. I showered and went to bed, napping four hours. After waking, I called her, and she volunteered to pick me up. I dressed again and went out to the front porch where I waited until she arrived. When she picked me up, I noticed her mood had changed from before. She appeared distracted and gave little input to my attempts at conversation. I offered to treat us to a dinner at a restaurant, which she rejected, or even to rent a hotel room, with the obvious implications, which was also rejected, though not out of any concern over sex. She popped in a tape of Jimmy Buffet and turned up the volume in order to silence me. With no particular place to go, she drove around aimlessly for the greater part of an hour through downtown and then across the bridge to the neighboring city.
Around midnight, she parked in the lot of an apartment complex. I asked her why we had stopped. Instead of replying, she kissed me with passion, pushing her tongue into my mouth. I embraced her. We frenched for what seemed like hours. Sometime in the night, we heard loud voices outside and saw the figures of four young men climbing into a pickup parked beside us. They could see nothing inside her car, because our heavy breathing had misted every square inch of every window. They drove off without comment. I could not resist chuckling, and she smiled too. Our passion had protected us.
I leaned back in my seat, exhausted, but she pulled my shirt up in order to taste me. I reached into her pants, but she pushed me back into my seat and knelt over me, unbuttoning my jeans. Suffice to say, neither of us were in a hurry. At the crucial moment, she sat up in her seat, watching with curiosity as the crisis passed.
She pointed to the time, claiming it was late, and drove to a convenience store, where we purchased sodas. She drove to the old historic district and began driving with no particular place to go. Between an old couple silence is nothing. Between new lovers, thorny questions arise in the silence. I sensed danger. I couldn’t see her face. Only streetlights broke the darkness in her car. There were no other cars on the street. There was no one walking along the sidewalks. The electronic clock in her dashboard read 02:41. We were both tired. I wanted to be in bed. This was all wrong.
She spoke in a tone conveying the gravity of what she had on her mind. “Listen. There’s something I have to tell you. I hope you don’t get mad at me when you hear it. I don’t want to hurt you. I like you a lot. It’s just that there is someone else. I knew him before I met you.”
The him was a her, and she was just dipping her toe in the ocean of heterosexuality out of Catholic guilt and to appease her parents; blah, de blah, de blah, de blah. Her deeds weren't as remarkable as me taking hundreds of precious hours to commit the memory into amateurish prose. That was the truly astounding part, the sitting down at a keyboard to write about something that was worth little more than a dismissive chuckle between hits of ganja.
Knowing what I do know now of these women, I am glad they are not with me now, because I think they were shrews that would make life not worth living. I look with fondness, not at memories of them, execrable memories, but at the years and distance that separate us, and am more than happy to have been forgotten.
Another reason I remember them at all, besides songs from the Eighties, are stories I wrote that were never published, because like the subjects, they were execrable. Publishers said what I should have said in the first moment of acquaintance. If the DNA ain't right, no amount of effort can breathe life into the sorry lump of clay.
Here's an excerpt that's about as good as any other.
She dropped me off at my home, claiming she needed to run errands by herself. I showered and went to bed, napping four hours. After waking, I called her, and she volunteered to pick me up. I dressed again and went out to the front porch where I waited until she arrived. When she picked me up, I noticed her mood had changed from before. She appeared distracted and gave little input to my attempts at conversation. I offered to treat us to a dinner at a restaurant, which she rejected, or even to rent a hotel room, with the obvious implications, which was also rejected, though not out of any concern over sex. She popped in a tape of Jimmy Buffet and turned up the volume in order to silence me. With no particular place to go, she drove around aimlessly for the greater part of an hour through downtown and then across the bridge to the neighboring city.
Around midnight, she parked in the lot of an apartment complex. I asked her why we had stopped. Instead of replying, she kissed me with passion, pushing her tongue into my mouth. I embraced her. We frenched for what seemed like hours. Sometime in the night, we heard loud voices outside and saw the figures of four young men climbing into a pickup parked beside us. They could see nothing inside her car, because our heavy breathing had misted every square inch of every window. They drove off without comment. I could not resist chuckling, and she smiled too. Our passion had protected us.
I leaned back in my seat, exhausted, but she pulled my shirt up in order to taste me. I reached into her pants, but she pushed me back into my seat and knelt over me, unbuttoning my jeans. Suffice to say, neither of us were in a hurry. At the crucial moment, she sat up in her seat, watching with curiosity as the crisis passed.
She pointed to the time, claiming it was late, and drove to a convenience store, where we purchased sodas. She drove to the old historic district and began driving with no particular place to go. Between an old couple silence is nothing. Between new lovers, thorny questions arise in the silence. I sensed danger. I couldn’t see her face. Only streetlights broke the darkness in her car. There were no other cars on the street. There was no one walking along the sidewalks. The electronic clock in her dashboard read 02:41. We were both tired. I wanted to be in bed. This was all wrong.
She spoke in a tone conveying the gravity of what she had on her mind. “Listen. There’s something I have to tell you. I hope you don’t get mad at me when you hear it. I don’t want to hurt you. I like you a lot. It’s just that there is someone else. I knew him before I met you.”
The him was a her, and she was just dipping her toe in the ocean of heterosexuality out of Catholic guilt and to appease her parents; blah, de blah, de blah, de blah. Her deeds weren't as remarkable as me taking hundreds of precious hours to commit the memory into amateurish prose. That was the truly astounding part, the sitting down at a keyboard to write about something that was worth little more than a dismissive chuckle between hits of ganja.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
School Sucked
Stories of the Bible, mythology and tales of the supernatural were my favorite reading material as a boy. I remember being far in the outfield during a tee-ball game and thinking not about the game, which seemed unimportant, but about entities that might contact me, for reasons I couldn't begin to understand, and what they might be like, and what they might say, and what powers they might be willing to share to get me out of difficult situations, such as when a ball dropped near me. I missed about three out of four fly balls, even the easy ones, and in truth all fly balls are easy. Back then I was afraid of the ball and thought it might hit me, and at any rate was uncoordinated and had difficulty performing any type of athletic maneuver, a damning fate for a boy. I envied the girls and thought they had an easier life by far, not being expected to do any of the things that I was expected to do.
My school years were difficult due to bullying, which overshadowed other aspects of school life, but the academic curriculum was easy, being little more than rehashes of previous material with a few new concepts thrown in on rare occasion and all of it taught at a snail's pace. I consider the twelve years in school as having been wasted on meaningless humiliations and degradations. None of the administrators, teachers or other students opposed the bullies, but sometimes the teachers and administrators were themselves bullies, because the staff was rife with rednecks. Concerned people such as my parents would ask me how my day went, and I would say it was hell. The better days were only boring, but the worse days were marked by bruises, physical or spiritual. Betrayals were common, friends becoming enemies just to curry favor with the more popular or else the stronger. There was no homosexual presence among the staff; every employee was at least nominally heterosexual or else maintained an impenetrable shield about their personal life, ensuring that I would feel like an alien from Mars. Growing up under such circumstances, I can see why X led to Y and then Z, and it seems to me, the field was sown and plowed by careless hands, and the scant harvest was their deserves.
I have an open mind when it comes to parents that abandon the public school system to try an alternative educational strategy such as private schools or even home-schooling. Home schooling is not just for religious fundamentalists that fear sex education and evolution. It is not just for racists that hate the presence of minority races. It is also for parents that don't want to put their kids in an environment where they will be unprotected from bullies. And the curriculum of some schools is a joke to say the least. Instead of future leaders, they train future Wal-Mart greeters.
My school years were difficult due to bullying, which overshadowed other aspects of school life, but the academic curriculum was easy, being little more than rehashes of previous material with a few new concepts thrown in on rare occasion and all of it taught at a snail's pace. I consider the twelve years in school as having been wasted on meaningless humiliations and degradations. None of the administrators, teachers or other students opposed the bullies, but sometimes the teachers and administrators were themselves bullies, because the staff was rife with rednecks. Concerned people such as my parents would ask me how my day went, and I would say it was hell. The better days were only boring, but the worse days were marked by bruises, physical or spiritual. Betrayals were common, friends becoming enemies just to curry favor with the more popular or else the stronger. There was no homosexual presence among the staff; every employee was at least nominally heterosexual or else maintained an impenetrable shield about their personal life, ensuring that I would feel like an alien from Mars. Growing up under such circumstances, I can see why X led to Y and then Z, and it seems to me, the field was sown and plowed by careless hands, and the scant harvest was their deserves.
I have an open mind when it comes to parents that abandon the public school system to try an alternative educational strategy such as private schools or even home-schooling. Home schooling is not just for religious fundamentalists that fear sex education and evolution. It is not just for racists that hate the presence of minority races. It is also for parents that don't want to put their kids in an environment where they will be unprotected from bullies. And the curriculum of some schools is a joke to say the least. Instead of future leaders, they train future Wal-Mart greeters.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
How to Disable StickyKeys in Windows
Occasionally in Windows XP, StickyKeys gets confused. Even though it is turned off, it decides, on its own, to turn all of its features on. Why? No reason. Just because. Attempting to remove it via the Control Panel | Accessibility Options does not always work.
Here is the trick. If Accessibility Options fails to update the Registry properly, do it yourself. Go to Start | Run | and type in regedit. Find [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Accessibility\StickyKeys ] and set the value "Flags"="506". Say goodbye to the annoyance.
Thanks and credit to Annie Cardenas.
Here is the trick. If Accessibility Options fails to update the Registry properly, do it yourself. Go to Start | Run | and type in regedit. Find [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Accessibility\StickyKeys ] and set the value "Flags"="506". Say goodbye to the annoyance.
Thanks and credit to Annie Cardenas.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Free Desktop Wallpaper
Looking for wallpaper for your desktop? Try this tasteful and non-commercial site, which is quite a rarity. I don't even remember how I found it. It is not one of the top google searches for wallpaper.
Greasle's hobby's [sic]
Of course, I can't be certain there are no ads, because I use Ad Blocker.
Not only does he offer wallpaper based upon masterpieces by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, but beautiful, unsigned, perfect, high-resolution fractals.
Greasle's hobby's [sic]
Of course, I can't be certain there are no ads, because I use Ad Blocker.
Not only does he offer wallpaper based upon masterpieces by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, but beautiful, unsigned, perfect, high-resolution fractals.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
FOX News has a Little Surprise in Store
I used to think of FOX News as the press of Hell, but apparently, they are in favor of the liberalization of Prohibition, which sends me for a loop. I have difficulty reconciling their right-wing views with a solitary enlightened view regarding the wasteful Drug War. Perhaps this precious unicorn represents a minority viewpoint within FOX News, a clique of high-level executives who recognize Prohibition for what it is.
There has long existed a respectable conservative intellectual underpinning for the fight against Prohibition, to be found in Wm. Buckley and his successors, though they always seemed to me to be rather muted and ineffective in their criticism of the Drug War, while being much more vocal on other issues, where they were wrong. In particular, I remember an editorial penned by Buckley and published in my local newspaper, the only Buckley editorial I ever agreed with, in which he pleaded for reduced sentences for marijuana users. Instead of five years imprisonment, he wanted something like a hundred-dollar fine. Even George Will once wrote in defense of a marijuana grower who had been busted because a police helicopter inspected his property without a warrant. George Will made quite clear that he believed the grower deserved punishment. His only objection was to the warrantless search, which he felt was grounds for dismissal of the case. Conservatives sweat bullets at the thought that someone, somewhere, might imagine they have a thinking mind and a beating heart. They always want to appear in step with revered authority figures, even when they criticize certain policies that offend their conscience.
There has long existed a respectable conservative intellectual underpinning for the fight against Prohibition, to be found in Wm. Buckley and his successors, though they always seemed to me to be rather muted and ineffective in their criticism of the Drug War, while being much more vocal on other issues, where they were wrong. In particular, I remember an editorial penned by Buckley and published in my local newspaper, the only Buckley editorial I ever agreed with, in which he pleaded for reduced sentences for marijuana users. Instead of five years imprisonment, he wanted something like a hundred-dollar fine. Even George Will once wrote in defense of a marijuana grower who had been busted because a police helicopter inspected his property without a warrant. George Will made quite clear that he believed the grower deserved punishment. His only objection was to the warrantless search, which he felt was grounds for dismissal of the case. Conservatives sweat bullets at the thought that someone, somewhere, might imagine they have a thinking mind and a beating heart. They always want to appear in step with revered authority figures, even when they criticize certain policies that offend their conscience.
News from Moscow
The idolization of Stalin is a bad sign from the city that denied gays the right to march in a peaceful demonstration.
Monday, March 22, 2010
How to Remove "Send Link" in Firefox
"Send Link" is a pernicious trap for Firefox users that appears whenever the right mouse button is clicked on a link. If this option is chosen, Internet Explorer may load over fifty instances of itself, requiring a power-down of the computer in order for the user to regain control.
The following fix works in Firefox 3.6 and probably previous versions.
In Windows Explorer, navigate to the "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox" folder. Search for "userchrome*.css". (However, see the note below about a possible alternative location.) You may find a file named "userchrome-example.css". Open that file up in a text editor such as Wordpad. Opening it in Notepad may prove problematic due to the way the program interprets certain characters. Add the following text:
Save the file in the same directory* as "userchrome.css".
From now on, no more "Send Link," which was always a bad idea in the first place. I believe it is an option added by Microsoft Office, although I'm not sure.
There may be complications to this fix. On one computer, I discovered that userchrome.css lives in a different place, in the "Documents and Settings" folder. To determine where Firefox polls your userchrome.css, go to Tools | Error Console and enter the following:
This will reveal the precise location of userchrome.css.
*On my computer, the directory was "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\defaults\profile\chrome".
The following fix works in Firefox 3.6 and probably previous versions.
In Windows Explorer, navigate to the "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox" folder. Search for "userchrome*.css". (However, see the note below about a possible alternative location.) You may find a file named "userchrome-example.css". Open that file up in a text editor such as Wordpad. Opening it in Notepad may prove problematic due to the way the program interprets certain characters. Add the following text:
/* Remove 'Send Link' from context menu*/
menuitem#context-sendlink {
display: none !important;
}
Save the file in the same directory* as "userchrome.css".
From now on, no more "Send Link," which was always a bad idea in the first place. I believe it is an option added by Microsoft Office, although I'm not sure.
There may be complications to this fix. On one computer, I discovered that userchrome.css lives in a different place, in the "Documents and Settings" folder. To determine where Firefox polls your userchrome.css, go to Tools | Error Console and enter the following:
alert(Components.classes["@mozilla.org/file/directory_service;1"].getService(Components.interfaces.nsIProperties).get("ProfD", Components.interfaces.nsIFile).path);
This will reveal the precise location of userchrome.css.
*On my computer, the directory was "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\defaults\profile\chrome".
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Are U.S. Pot Laws the Root Cause of Mexican Drug Violence?
In a word, yes.
If pot were legal, the drug cartels south of the Border would fall like a house of cards. But one can never tell a Prohibitionist that the way to win a war is not to fight it. The Prohibitionist prefers tilting at windmills like Don Quixote.
If pot were legal, the drug cartels south of the Border would fall like a house of cards. But one can never tell a Prohibitionist that the way to win a war is not to fight it. The Prohibitionist prefers tilting at windmills like Don Quixote.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Queer the Census
The Boston Edge web site has an article about what the U.S. Census means for gays. Gays can even order a free sticker to affix to their Census form. I plan to participate. Census data is used in innumerable studies in academia and elsewhere. It is of great importance to the country.
Food for Thought
The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) is new to me. I just discovered their web site today when I clicked on a news article regarding a lesbian student in Mississippi who was denied the right to take her partner to the high school Prom.
I agree.
In my day, growing up gay, I did not attend any proms. Not even one. The straight kids were the ones that got excited about the prom and about dating. As for me, there was not much dating. High school represented wasted time. There was no learning, no dating, and little of anything other than marking time in a classroom presided over by a warden (called a teacher) in order to earn a diploma of little value toward getting a job. I would have liked to have had some dating, at least. That would have made the teenage years a bit more interesting. The prom would have been a good, safe place to take a date.
The BBC printed a great article on the controversy that should not be a controversy.
After reading the article, I decided to poke about the PSL web site and see what it was all about. I didn't care for PSL's talk about Revolution or the idolization of Castro*. However, this page critiquing the American government makes good points. While I do not endorse the site, I found it interesting. The writing is of a good quality**. I wish they didn't splash red and angry words everywhere, but I suppose that is the traditional style of old-school commies.
It does disturb me that money plays such a big role in elections. I wish that our government was organized more like Canada's, so that small parties could win at least minimal representation in Congress. We could have a viable Green party, Marijuana party, and more. The more parties, the merrier, as far as I'm concerned. This business of having only Democrats and Republicans is stodgy and dodgy. What does party mean anymore?
*As for Castro, he sounds like a louse. Release the political prisoners! I will never understand why radicals discredit themselves by idolizing tyrants. By doing so, they play right into the hands of their supposed enemies.
**The authors at PSL write better than a certain Prohibition opponent, whose petition on Change.org I declined to sign, because it was ungrammatical. I spent an hour rewriting the petition for her so that she would not appear an illiterate pothead. Her reply? "I like it just the way it is. I don't want it to sound like a business letter. Besides, I'm a published author with three books to my name. But thank you for your email and good luck with your future endeavors." Condescending ingrate! That should be the last time I volunteer my proofreading services to anyone on the web. I only did it for her because I happened to agree with what she was saying, but not how she was saying it.
I agree.
In my day, growing up gay, I did not attend any proms. Not even one. The straight kids were the ones that got excited about the prom and about dating. As for me, there was not much dating. High school represented wasted time. There was no learning, no dating, and little of anything other than marking time in a classroom presided over by a warden (called a teacher) in order to earn a diploma of little value toward getting a job. I would have liked to have had some dating, at least. That would have made the teenage years a bit more interesting. The prom would have been a good, safe place to take a date.
The BBC printed a great article on the controversy that should not be a controversy.
After reading the article, I decided to poke about the PSL web site and see what it was all about. I didn't care for PSL's talk about Revolution or the idolization of Castro*. However, this page critiquing the American government makes good points. While I do not endorse the site, I found it interesting. The writing is of a good quality**. I wish they didn't splash red and angry words everywhere, but I suppose that is the traditional style of old-school commies.
*As for Castro, he sounds like a louse. Release the political prisoners! I will never understand why radicals discredit themselves by idolizing tyrants. By doing so, they play right into the hands of their supposed enemies.
**The authors at PSL write better than a certain Prohibition opponent, whose petition on Change.org I declined to sign, because it was ungrammatical. I spent an hour rewriting the petition for her so that she would not appear an illiterate pothead. Her reply? "I like it just the way it is. I don't want it to sound like a business letter. Besides, I'm a published author with three books to my name. But thank you for your email and good luck with your future endeavors." Condescending ingrate! That should be the last time I volunteer my proofreading services to anyone on the web. I only did it for her because I happened to agree with what she was saying, but not how she was saying it.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Vacation Destination Advice
The countries in blue deserve patronage and affection. If you are fortunate enough to have the time and money, shower them with your tourist dollars and your charity. The orange regions may be considered moderate or otherwise. I would never choose to visit the barbaric countries in red, pink and dark red.
Related news: Cambodia?
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