Father's Day - In Memorium

I've written here, over the past couple of years, of my troubled relationship with my father.  Neither of us went fishing for trouble -- times and circumstances being what they were, we both got dealt a pretty crappy hand at the old father/son poker table of life.

Well, the old man passed away last Thursday (June 3, 2010) at the age of 83.  It was not unexpected on my part.  He'd been going downhill for the past couple of years.  Physically, that is.  He still had all his marbles.  My step-mom, on the other hand, was sliding off into dementia.  I recognized the symptoms in her because my birth mom had slid down that same slope, starting in the 1980's until she finally died in 1995.

Life just wore dad down and, finally, he just gave out.  I spoke to him in his hospital bed in Florida last week and he said, "I just want to die.  Are you alright?"  "Yes, Dad.  I'm alright."  I found out afterwards that he'd had pretty much the same conversation with everyone in the family.  He was seeking permission to let go, once he'd assured himself that we were going to be "alright."

I used to kid myself that I wasn't really close to my father.  I didn't know him until I was a grown-up and, besides, he was a macho man, and I was a gay geek.

I was wrong.  I miss my father already.  I miss the "potential" that we still had, as long as he was still alive.  So even though we were strangers to each other in many ways, there still loomed the prospect that things would get magically better between us.  But now, even that prospect is gone.

Wherever things stood between us last week is where things will remain until, in due course, I follow my dad "into that good night."

With any luck, when that time comes, we'll be able to pick up where we left off.  At least, that's what I'd like to believe.

Goodbye for now, Dad.  I love you.

Memorial Day

I called my dad on Sunday to see how he's doing (not well) and to thank him for his national service during World War II. He was grateful on both counts.

My dad never talks about it, but he was a tail gunner aboard an aviation fuel refueling ship in the South Pacific during the war. It was the kind of ship that Kamikaze's loved to dive-bomb. Dad got a lot of practice shooting Kamikaze's out of the sky.

His dad, my grandfather, was in the Navy in the 1920's. Pop-pop was stationed aboard a battlewagon, the USS Delaware. He was a Boilerman. But his real job was to be the coxswain for the Navy's championship rowing team. He led the Navy team to something like 4 victories. The Navy was heartbroken when Pop-pop bailed out at the end of his second enlistment in 1927.

I was born under a water sign, Cancer. I came from generations of Navy men. It was inevitable, I guess, that I would go to sea.

I never stroked a championship team, nor did I blast Jap Zeros out of the puffy-clouded South Pacific sky. But I did serve my country, honorably, from 1968 to 1972. I was an aviation electronics technician. I spent most of my enlistment ashore, in boot camp, electronics schools and, for a two year stretch, attached to the Flight Test Division of the Naval Air Test Center located in Lexington Park, Maryland.

I love working there. The best and the brightest of both officers and enlisted members of the services were sent to the NATC. Our test pilots all had "the right stuff." Our enlisted personnel were either on their way to becoming officers or else they had turned down commissions due to their feelings about the Viet Nam war.

Eventually, though, the time came for sea duty, and I was sent to Lakehurst, New Jersey, were I was assigned to HC-2, The Fleet Angels, a Sea-Air Rescue Helicopter Squadron. After six months of non-descript duty aboard the base I was re-assigned to a detachment leaving for six months of sea duty aboard the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, CVA-42.

Rosie was a WWII relic. Rather like dad. She wasn't as fast as the newer nukes. She was smaller than most of the newer carriers. But she was feisty. And she was comfy. She had a "lived-in" look and feel that you couldn't find aboard newer ships. If you look real close at the arresting gear, my bunk was under the the #3 arresting wire. You have no idea how loud a 40,000 pound jet aircraft slamming into the deck at 150 miles per hour is, when it's just six inches above your face.

Rosie had character. I like ships with character.

I don't expect anyone to ever thank me for my duty. It was a great time in my life. I met some great guys, got drunk a lot, and learned how to play well with others.

And do you know that, to this day, I still fold my socks and underwear exactly the way I was taught to do it in bootcamp?

Catholic school was good training for the Navy. But the Navy had much cuter guys.

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UPDATE: California Supreme Court Upholds Proposition 8. Existing same-sex marriages to stand.

Tell me again why I should be grateful to this country for all it does for me?

Parental Love

I drove down to Dover, Delaware on Saturday to spend some "quality time" with my father and step-mom.

All families are complicated, each in their own unique and often horrifying way. Mine is no exception.

My birth mom and my dad were divorced while I was still gestating in the womb. Throughout my childhood my mother, a bitter young woman with a severe drinking problem, used me as a pawn in her relations with her ex husband, her mother and anyone else who got in her way. I know that, and I forgive her for that. It ruined me in many ways, but there's no going back and undoing it. I am nearly incapable of having trusting intimate relations with sexually desirable people as a direct result of that childhood. When push comes to shove, I can't let anyone in... and more importantly, I can't let myself out.

But still, I try.

Eventually I did meet my shadow family consisting of my dad, my stepmom whom I love dearly and my should-have-been siblings, my sister and our younger brother. Over the years we have gotten closer and more loving.

As my sobriety has ripened, I have learned more and more about the important things in life, such as family and friends.

Dad has started having more and more hospital episodes over the last couple of years. This year my siblings had to fly down to Ft. Myers in Florida to literally rescue the folks and drive them home because dad was physically incapable of doing it.

Mom is no help. She never bothered to get a driver's license and, recently, her memory has started to go. She really needs to be watched at all times now. This will only get worse. In fact, both of them are only going to get worse, and to be honest, it will be in very short order.

After they came home from Florida my sister suggested that each of us go to Dover to spend some quality time with them. I knew what that meant. It meant my sister suspects that the end is near for one or both of them and now would be a good time to show them that they are still loved and that they are still a relevant part of their children's lives. I know, from personal childhood experience, what it means to feel like a fifth wheel in life.

I prayed all week about it. I asked God to take charge of the visit on Saturday and to help me keep my mouth zippered shut, to smile, to be loving and considerate and compassionate, to not have any agendas, and to be of service however I could.

Well, God held up His end of the bargain. I sailed through the day, even though were trying times at the drug store and supermarket. I showered them with affection, verbally and physically, whenever the opportunity arose.

Maybe I am learning about letting people in a little bit. Or even better, maybe I'm learning how to let myself out.

I dunno.

But I do know that I'm going to cry like a baby if... when anything happens to either of them.

Gay News Thursday

But first, a quick follow-up to yesterday's post. My 12-Step recovery home group gave me what I'd been looking for my entire life. To wit, a group of loving adults who may not have always had the right answer, but their hearts were always in the right place, who cared for and fretted over me when I was barely capable of taking care of myself. From them I learned how to be a grown-up, how to face my fears, how to accept the unchangeable past and how to move past it. From them I learned to be responsible for my own failures (and successes), and to stop trying to fix blame (and credit) somewhere else.

In short, they are the loving parents I always knew I was missing as a child. And it is that abundance of unconditional love I received from them which it's my duty to pass along to the "youngsters" I come across in recovery.

And that is how it works.

Moving right along....

My buddy Jake over at NoFo wrote a letter responding to a sort of op-ed essay that appeared in the February 9th Newsweek by an evangelical Christian named Robert Mouw who defended his vote in favor of Prop 8 in California last November. The piece, as you might expect, is full of self-pity and outright lies. Jake takes Mouw apart in his response. Needless to say, Newsweek (wimps that they are), didn't run it, but Jake has posted most of it (along with parts of Mouw's original essay) HERE.

In other gay news, in case you didn't know it (or else forgot), it's Oscar weekend. The weekend begins with the Independent Spirit Awards live from a circus tent on the beach in Santa Monica or Venice or someplace -- with lots of drunk movie stars, wannabes, moochers and hangers-on. the Indies'll be broadcast Saturday on IFC (live) at 5:00 p.m. ET / 2:00 p.m. PT and again that night on AMC (edited) starting at 10:00 p.m. ET & PT.

Sunday, of course, is the most sacred night of the year for Hollywood. It's Oscar night. And this years guest host is (be still my beating, girlish, heart) HUGH JACKMAN (SCREECHING)!!!!!!

I'd pay good money just to watch the man disrobe. And have. I saw "The Boy From Oz" on B'way a couple of years back. Hugh's not only hunky, but the boy can sing and dance, too. A fact which the viewing public will find out for themselves on Sunday night, when they get a load of the big opening number starring Hugh and being staged by his fellow Aussie, the new King of Movie Musicals, Baz Luhrmann.

I suspect that most of the fanboys of Wolverine and X-Men out there will be losing their shit when they see all 6 feet 4 inches of HJ strutting his shit all over the stage of the Kodak Theater in a great, big musical tribute to Gawd-Only-Knows-What.

So, if you're in the mood to recharge your gay batteries, go read Jake's piece to get your self-righteous self all fired up (and then DO something about it, fer Chrissakes), then be sure to tune in this weekend for hour upon hour of pure Gollywood Fun & Glam!

p.s. I'm posting this a little early to give you time to run out and see both "Slumdog Millionaire" and "The Reader" tomorrow because, if you don't, you're gonna feel like a fool come Sunday evening.

Hooray for the Red, White & Blue.

Did you all have a wonderful 4th? I went to see "Hancock", which I liked. It was rainy, hot and humid here in the east so I found ways to spend time indoors.

On Saturday I drove to downstate Delaware to visit my folks who are old and not doing so well. I'm glad I went. Dad is in physical rehab so I took my stepmom out for dinner. She was craving Chinese buffet, so we had Chinese buffet. She was sad to see me leave. Dad looked very frail. Much frailer than I'd like him to be. But God doesn't solicit my opinions, thank goodness, otherwise the universe would've been blown to smithereens eons ago. I felt very mortal when I left them late that afternoon.

I drove straight up to Wilmington and then took I-95 to the grand bypass around Philadelplhia known, locally, as "the Blue Route." It swings you west and north of the city until it connects with the PA Turnpike. I was heading towards Doylestown, and a 12-Step meeting I really like (LGBT). I hadn't been there in a couple of months due to gas prices (it's about a 90 mile roundtrip which, I know, is a spin around the block for Californians, but it's real distance to us wimpy Easterners.)

Sunday I slept in until 7:00 a.m., made a real breakfast, watched Sunday Morning and went to the movies again, to see "Wanted" with Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman and James McAvoy. I liked it, too.

Then I was the guest speaker at a 12-Step meeting devoted exclusively to the 2nd Step of Recovery ("Came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.") It's a tricky step. Note that it says it could restore me, not that it WOULD restore me to sanity. I didn't exactly ace it, but I spoke from the heart which is all one can expect. I think my mind is still on my aging and frail parents. And the few remaining brain cells I didn't kill with booze and drugs are, from time to time, waving "bye-bye" to each other.

It wasn't much of a holiday weekend. I did get to see some of the fireworks from the Esplanade in Boston on TV. Craig Ferguson, who hosts the show after Letterman, was hosting and he announced that he'd recently become an American citizen. I thought that was nice.

At this point I'd like to say something snide and snotty about the passing of Jesse Helms but, you know what? Why bother. Wherever he went, let him be. He, like Bush, is no longer worth any effort from those they are leaving behind.

Old Queens

When I got home last night there was a message on my answering machine from my (half)-brother. Our dad is in the hospital. He was delirious and suffering from dehydration (the two go hand-in-hand with the elderly) on Monday, had driven HIMSELF to the hospital (pain-in-the-ass-never-ask-for-help type that he, and the rest of us, is and are).

There is just he and my step-mom in the house. There's plenty of family within driving distance, however. My step-mom's mind is shot and she really shouldn't be left alone. Dad had sense enough to get himself to the emergency room. However, he did not have sense enough (or time enough) to drop her someplace where she'd be safe -- from herself and others. So she was left home, alone.

Although he's 83, he'll probably be fine. This time. But the time is coming when "something" will "have to be done about" them both.

I have a half-sister and half-brother. Dad is really more their dad than mine. Aside from the sperm donation he didn't really have anything to do with me until I was an adult. That wasn't his "fault" (my birth mom was a vindictive, hateful bitch, not to put too fine a point on it), but we don't have a typical father-son dynamic in our relationship. We're more like cordial friends. We certainly don't feel obligated towards each other for anything. Or, at least, I don't.

And that's why I think that they are more my half-siblings problem than mine. Nobody helped me with my birth mom when the time came for me to become her legal guardian and to commit her to a nursing home. I had to walk through that pretty much alone. With an expensive law-firm in Wilmington, Delaware. My mom didn't have any friends at the end of her life, and she'd blown through about five husbands. Nobody wanted anything to do with her -- but it fell to the "dutiful son (me!)" to see to it that she was cared for. If you call old-age hell-holes "care."

So, forgive me for wanting to keep a polite distance from the current familial drama.

However, this coming on top of "H"'s death last week has left me even more distanced from life than usual. And it's not helping matters that this coming Sunday

I__T_U_R_N__S_I_X_T_Y

Is it any wonder, then, that I occasionally lapse into thinking "Please God, just let me die peacefully in my sleep Saturday night"?

At least I'll look pretty good. I'm getting my hair done Saturday morning.

And my friends, L&M, are taking me out for a birthday dinner Saturday night.

Come to think of it, things are actually pretty good right now.

But come Sunday, if I live that long, I, like the late lamented Quentin Crisp, will officially become

One of the Stately Homos of America!

For Your Consideration

I got back from Florida on Sunday.

I love my dad and stepmom. It saddens me to witness the deterioration they are experiencing. When I arrived at RSW in Ft. Myers last Thursday the folks had driven out to the airport to meet me. Dad apparently had gone to park the car and sent mom in to find me. She found me, alright, but then couldn't remember where she had left Dad. We wandered around for what seemed hours. I asked her repeatedly if she had come down from another level. She couldn't remember.

Eventually we spotted Dad driving around and hailed him to pull over. Later I gently suggested to dad that they both get cellphones and learn how to use them and always carry them.

Physically, though, mom's in pretty good shape. It's dad that's physically falling apart. It takes him 2 or 3 minutes just to haul himself out of a chair. He's in pain. A lot. But he sucks it up and acts like everything is fine. Now I know where I get it.

Don't let anybody kid you. It's just as much nature as nurture. I didn't even know my dad until I was an adult. And yet still we have much in common, aside from good looks and our full heads of hair.

Every day was Groundhog Day, with morning discussions about where we were going to have lunch that day. We'd leave around 12:30. We'd be home by 3:00. I learned to love watching "Monk" on USA. I'd never seen it before. I channel-surfed a lot and went to a 12-Step meeting every day. Dad was very generous to me with the use of his big-assed Chevy van.

The trip back to the airport on Sunday was about as bad as the trip on Thursday. This time Dad totally missed the exit for the "Departures" deck and headed into the lower-level "Arrivals" area, instead. And despite my repeated requests for him to stop near the escalator up to the check-in level he drove to the last baggage carrel for Jet Blue. Where I had arrived on Thursday. Despite my sprained ankle I schlepped my baggage back for half a terminal and lugged it upstairs (the escalator wasn't working) to check-in.

I've never been so grateful to leave Florida.

When I got home there were beaucoups envelopes from the Screen Actors Guild containing "screening copies" of DVD's of most of the films up for SAG awards. I'd already seen most of them, but there were a few I haven't seen yet. I plan to watch them this week.

My friends are pea-green with envy that I get "screeners." I assured them that this isn't like being a Member of the Academy (AMPAS), and that I won't be in aisle 3, with my own seat-filler, when the SAG awards are broadcast this coming Sunday, the 27th.

Still, it was kind of exciting to see the envelope stuffers that all began:

"For Your Consideration"

But then, there seems to be no end of things for me to "consider" these days. Most of which isn't good.

The Wild (Black and) Blue Yonder!

Yup, that's me. Last Thursday morning, nearly a week after the accident. Notice the left eye (on the right) which is still swollen shut. This is just before the doctor removed the stitches. I still look like Baron Von Frankenstein's high-school science project. I look slightly better than that now.

A friend is flying from Newark to Cleveland this afternoon. He travels about as well as Southwest champagne, which is to say not well at all.

Like many American travelers he's convinced that if you worry hard enough in advance the plane won't crash.

I'm not much help when I reassure him that all the worry in the world will NOT keep a plane aloft. I know. I flew in the Navy for 4 years. Believe me, it takes talent to crash a plane (or a dedicated religious fanatic).

He'll be fine, of course, because even religious fanatics have no desire to enter Allah's Kingdom via Cleveland.

I, on the other hand, might not fare as well on Thursday when I wing my way from Newark (EWR) to Ft. Myers (RSW) for 72 hours of non-stop thrills and spills with mom and dad.

It would be cruel of me to ask God to send along a religious fanatic on the same flight. After all, none of the other people are going to visit my mom and dad. I'm sure all their moms and dads are just swell.

Actually, mom and dad are okay. I didn't know them until I was well into my 30's (I mean really know them -- long story but my birth mom was an alkie bitch with issues and I wasn't supposed to have contact with my dad and his new family... ever).

But they are getting quite old and quite set in their ways. I have a pretty good idea of how it will go. They'll be excited to see me for about 10 minutes. Then we'll get the early bird special someplace and head back to the house in order to get that all important "afternoon nap." This will be followed by dad wandering down to the clubhouse to hang out with his cronies and play pool while mom disappears into the computer room.

I'll be the unspoken of thing in the living room.

Friday morning I'll steal the family van and sneak off to a 12-Step meeting. The rest of the day will be an eerie recreation of the previous day.

On Saturday it will be more of the same except I will sneak off at the God awful hour of 7:00 p.m. to go to a LGBT 12-Step meeting at the MCC in Ft. Myers. I'll be living large that night.

On Sunday, God willing, I'll be on a plane by noon heading back north.

I love them. I know they love me. Age is taking it's toll on everybody I love, including me.

It's time to make every moment count. At last.

Go hug somebody you love. You both deserve it. It'll take you places. And you won't even need a plane to get there.

p.s. I haven't had the nerve to tell the folks what happened to me. I guess they're gonna crap themselves when I come walking off that plane.