Short Circuits (8 page)

At one point he worked for a local dairy as a truck mechanic. Crates of milk were conveyed from the dairy to the trucks by putting them, like train cars, on a long track of metal rollers. He often worked weekends, and on such occasions, I'd go with my cousins Jack, Cork, and Fat to visit him. Those were my favorite times, because one of them would put me in an empty milk crate at one end of the rollers and push me, giddy with delight, down to the other end, where one of the other boys would catch me.

And I remember the dairy still had an old horse-drawn delivery wagon. It was no longer used, but it was there.

One of my earliest memories is of standing in the back yard of Aunt Thyra's and Uncle Buck's house watching him while he worked on the engine of a car in the driveway. It was the first time in my life that I was aware of the sound of someone
breathing.
And I see him in the coal bin of the basement, shoveling huge mounds of dusty coal into the fiery maw of the house's furnace.

Often, when Mom and I were living apart from my dad, Uncle Buck would come by in a dairy truck and pick me up and take me with him wherever he was going.

Oh, yes…and I was never “Roger” to Uncle Buck. I was “Guggenheimer.”

But our very special time together was when he would take me down to the train station to watch the trains come in. He would put me up on one of those large, high-wheeled baggage carts that were high enough to be level with the doors on the baggage cars. I'd stand there, lost in wonder as the iron monsters chugged ponderously past, not eight feet away, grinding to a stop in a cacophony of clanging bells and groaning brakes, all wreathed in steam and smoke from the engine's smokestack. And one time, while Mom was with us, Uncle Buck actually handed me up to the engineer and I got to stand in the cab of a
real train!
And it wasn't until the engineer went about getting the train ready to move that Uncle Buck took me down. Mom was furious with him, sure that the train was going to pull out with me still in the cab.

Uncle Buck was probably the quintessential big brother. My mom worshiped him, and it was clear that he was always, first and foremost, her
big brother.
It wasn't a matter of lots of kisses and hugs and open affection: they weren't necessary…love often goes far deeper than that.

I was just getting ready to enter my sophomore year in college when Uncle Buck developed cancer. He'd been a heavy smoker all his life. No one in my immediate family had ever died before, so it never occurred to me that Uncle Buck might die. But he did. I got the call at college and immediately returned home.

A strange thing about immediate grief. There is much comforting and consoling among family members, yet each one suffers in his or her way, alone. I remember the funeral. I was there physically, but totally numb. That man in the coffin wasn't Uncle Buck. Not
my
Uncle Buck. I last saw
him
in St. Anthony's hospital and remember knowing, when we left, that I would never see him again.

At the funeral, I was sitting in the seat furthest away from the aisle and as everyone got up to file out, I managed to stand too, praying that I could make it outside. I couldn't. The dam burst and I was swept away by a grief I'd never known until that moment. I heard someone say to my dad: “Get Roger.”

I don't remember the rest of the funeral, or the burial. I do vaguely remember going back to Aunt Thyra's and Uncle Buck's big house on School Street…the house in which my mother was born and her mother and Uncle Buck died…for sandwiches and coffee, as that was what people did after funerals.

But what I do remember with crystal clarity to this day, and will remember until the day I, too, die, is Uncle Buck and how much I loved him.

* * *

TIME AND COFFEE CUPS

Humans, as you may or may not have noticed, are an unusual lot. We seem totally incapable of fully appreciating what we have until it is gone.

I was thinking of my mom this morning and how desperately, after 40 years, I miss her. Mothers are as special as humanity in general is unusual. My mother was the best mother in the whole world. Your mother was the best mother in the whole world. It's all a matter of perspective, but our individual perspective is the only one we have.

Mom was, I know, far from perfect. She smoked probably a couple packs of cigarettes a day; it seemed she was never without one. Even walking down the street, she'd have a cigarette dangling out of the corner of her mouth. I used to literally beg her to stop smoking. I would hide her cigarettes. At times I would carefully take an open pack and punch pinholes in them in the apparent belief that they would not then burn.

Mom paid for her addiction with her life, and I nearly paid for it (and my father's and all my friends and crowded bars and just about everyone around me) with mine.

Mom was also, it saddens me to say, an unconscious racist. We for a short time in the late 40s or early 50s had a small drive-in root-beer stand made from a converted city bus. One night a black family pulled up. Mom would not let me go out to wait on them. When they came in and ordered coffee, she served them, and when they left she broke the cups they had used. That is the only time in my life that I was ever ashamed of her, and the fact that I had never before heard her make a racist slur made the shame all the greater.

In her defense, if there can be one, is the context of the times, which were themselves racist. She simply didn't know how to handle a situation which she had never encountered before. I'm sure she quite probably had never met a black person.

But I digress (now
there
's a “Stop the Presses” moment!)

I've been blessed, as I've said so often, with a really wonderful family, who have always accepted me totally. And though they do not live all that far away, I seldom see them—certainly not from lack of invitation. But part of the reason is, I think, that to see them is to be too strongly reminded that none of us is who we were.

Shortly after I moved back to the Midwest after 18 years in California, I was invited to my cousin Judi's wedding, where I would see most of my remaining relatives from my mom's side of the family for the first time in nearly 20 years. It was wonderful to see them, but it was also terrible because it forced me to look into the mirror of reality. Reality, to me, is often a terrible thing, and I fear it. But when coupled with time, the effect can be devastating. After I left the wedding, I went out to my car and I cried, because while they were still my family and I still loved them, they were not as I remembered them. Nor, I knew, was I. How could I expect they would be? But I did.

So I give you the advice I cannot take myself: live in the moment and appreciate everything and everyone in your life to the fullest. Live, act, and react as though every day were your last, for one day—though hopefully a long, long way away—it will be.

INSIDE THE BONE-BOX

ANTICIPATION

When I was old enough to go in to Chicago by myself, I'd start getting antsy the day before in anticipation. I'd not sleep very well that night, and wake very early on the day of the trip. I'd catch the Greyhound bus at the Hotel Faust (Rockford's 11-story skyscraper and classiest hotel), and be off on my adventure.

When I took my first trip in an “airliner” (a 21-passenger DC-3) with my mom from Rockford to Chicago's Midway Airport (O'Hare didn't exist yet), probably around 1950, I was an anticipatory basket case for days before we actually went.

When I first began going into gay bars, I would be horribly embarrassed by the fact that I was so nervous…anticipating what the evening might hold…that I would literally shake. More than once I had to explain to someone who was bold enough to talk to me and noticed my shaking that I had a chill.

I've always been big on anticipation, even at times when I would prefer not to be, such as now. I'll be on my way to Rochester, MN as soon as I post this entry, for my six-month checkup following my successful treatment for tongue cancer. I have done this more than a dozen times, now (for the first couple years after my release, I was on a three-month-checkup schedule). Every time I have gone, anticipation starts setting in a week or so before my exam.

August will mark five years—the magic milestone beyond which one is considered to be “cured,” and I've gotten a clean bill of health every exam thus far. I have no reason at all to suspect that this checkup will not go as well as all the others, but that logic does not keep me from being beset by anticipation. What would I do if…. But then I realize that if there were an “if” I would deal with it just as I did the first time. I would look on it as a horrendous and disruptive inconvenience, but have absolutely no doubt that I would get through it just as I did the first time I got the diagnosis.

Anticipation is simply a part of being human, though like everything else having to do with our species, the degree varies from person to person. I sometimes ponder the totally moot question of whether, if one should accept an offer to know the future, it would be a good or bad thing. It didn't turn out too well for Cassandra and I suspect, tempted though we all are to know what lies ahead, it's just as well we can't know what will happen until it happens. (I, for example, do not want to know when I will die. I want it to be a total surprise: and preferably a “boo!” moment where I'm gone before I can worry about it.)

We all tend to waste an awfully lot of time on anticipation, which often does not live up to its press, particularly when it is anticipation of something unpleasant. The time and unhappiness we put into anticipating a visit to a dentist is almost always far out of proportion to the actual visit itself. But even realizing that doesn't seem to have any effect on the fact that we will do it anyway.

I had a friend who had frequent attacks of severe heartburn, and each and every time he had one, he was convinced he was having a heart attack. The fact that the last 47 episodes had passed without incident did not forestall him from the certainty that the 48th was a heart attack. I always tended to be derisive of him. But then, he wasn't going to Mayo for a checkup.

* * *

FRUSTRATION

I do not handle frustration well. I do not handle many things well, but that's fuel for a future blog.

One would think that having spent a great portion of one's life being frustrated, one would become used to it. One would be wrong.

I'm sure 20 years or so on an analyst's couch, sorting though the myriads of colorful and sometimes odorous details which make up every minute of my life, would produce the conclusion that my problem rests with my absolute conviction that the universe revolves around me, and that therefore I should have complete control over everything at all times. Well, we can save the 20 years because I know that already.

The problem lies in recognizing something on an intellectual level and acknowledging it on an emotional level. My logic and my emotions are continually in a pitched battle over which will have control. Were I you, I would not place much money on logic.

Logic tells me I am a reasonably intelligent human being, and with that thought comes loud and raucous laughter from my emotions. The simple fact is that I have never, ever been in complete control of my emotions, which as I have often said never really got beyond the “terrible twos” stage of development. When I want something, I want it, and I want it
now
and can see no reason why I cannot have it.

That I have never understood life, my place in it, or how I am expected to react to also plays a large role in my own little civil war. I see the world, emotionally, pretty much as a toddler sees it. If it's pretty, I want it. And I do not take “no” for an answer. My logic, which spends a great deal of its time shaking its head sadly and sighing, does its very best to explain what it has learned of the world through reading and observing other people. My emotion totally disregards it. I'm the center of the universe, fer chrissakes! How can things
not
go the way I want them to?

How can everyone else on the planet with 1/10th my intelligence (ego, anyone?) do things with total, effortless ease, get it right the first time and, most insulting of all to my emotions, not think a thing of it? They wouldn't write instruction manuals, or give careful, full-color illustrated “Insert Tab A into Slot B” directions for assembling a cardboard box if anyone else but me could not understand them.

And once something…
anything
…triggers my frustration response, all bets are off. My mind totally shuts down to the point where I would be hard pressed to tell you my own name. All rational thought ceases.

I know full well that frustration is a part of life…I'd imagine even you experience it from time to time. But everyone else seems have a built in mental safety switch which I do not have, and which kicks in, allowing them, after perhaps a moment or two of distress, to recover, calm down, and get on with their lives. I can best describe my reaction to frustration by comparing it to pictures of the World Trade Center collapse. Total, utter, instantaneous destruction with no hope for anyone's survival.

I find it ironic that my totally disproportionate emotional reaction to things which trigger my frustration is directly related to my totally disproportionate sense of my own importance. Because I am the center of the universe, how can this be happening to me? How can I be so stupid? My frustration quickly, like the falling towers, dissolves into rage and self loathing so intense it often, and sincerely, frightens me.

It just struck me that this blog may be an attempt by my logical side to subtly convince my emotions not to overreact so strongly. Unfortunately, it's never worked before, and I wouldn't hold my breath on its working this time, either.

* * *

SECRETS

I find it amazing, with six billion people in the world, that there is still room for secrets…that there is sufficient privacy for things no one else ever knows, or sees. Yet we all have our secrets, great or small, which we guard zealously.

I have one or two which I would/can never share, but I came across a couple I've been holding onto for 60 years or so that I might as well ‘fess up to.

Ever since a little girl jumped on and broke my leg when I was five, I have gone to great lengths to avoid anything that might result in physical pain. I have also mentioned that as a motor moron, I have always loathed and avoided sports, probably partly due to the same fear of being hurt.

As a result, I dreaded gym class. When my parents bought a new house that necessitated my changing junior high schools I determined that I would do anything I possibly could to avoid having to take gym. On about the third day of gym class, I reported to the coach that I had couldn't find one of my gym shoes. He told me I had to go find it and not to come back until I did. I took him at his word and never went back. I'm can't remember what I'd do during the time I was supposed to be in gym, and I have no idea how I possibly got by with it, but I did. I never told anyone about it; certainly not my parents, not even my friends.

And when I moved from junior high to high school, I had to come up with another excuse to avoid taking gym. The plan I came up with was actually pretty shameful and I'm still rather embarrassed by it today. And on reflection how I ever got away with it is still a mystery.

I went to my family doctor's office and told his nurse that I was corresponding with a pen-pal in England…which I was…and that since England had socialized medicine they were unfamiliar with the American system. I asked if I could have a couple sheets of Dr. Edson's stationery and envelopes on which to write my friend.

She gave them to me, and I took them home and composed a letter excusing Roger from gym class on the grounds that he had a rare form of bone cancer. I'm sure my “careful” forgery was patently obvious to anyone who even glanced at it, but for some reason, when I handed it to the school nurse, she accepted it, and I spent the hours I should have been in gym in the nurse's office.

How did I come up with these things? How did I get away with it? Who knows. And again in retrospect that I would have used cancer as an excuse to get out of gym is shameful.

But again, I never told a single living soul until this moment. I think I was terrified that if anyone found out what I'd done, they would demand my high school diploma back. I'm glad they didn't.

My secrets, compared with those other people carry around with them, are totally insignificant, but it still amazes me to think of how stupid/naive we all can be, and how capricious life is in calling some of us out for a minor infraction while letting others sail through life on a sea of lies.

* * *

ROLE MODELS

My parents belonged to the Moose Club, and when, on a Saturday night, they were unable to find a baby sitter for me, they would take me along. I wasn't overly enthusiastic about these forays, since there was very little for kids to do. I'd spend most of my time in the large reception room, doing what I cannot remember. There were never very many other kids there, if any at all.

The large main room, where the adults gathered, had a bar and a dance floor with a constantly-playing juke box, and it always seemed to be crowded. I'd wander in only occasionally to ask my folks to get me a Coke or just out of sheer boredom.

Now, I was probably nine or ten at the time and already was well aware that I was fascinated by young men and desperately wanted to be like them. And one night there were two young men at the club. They may have been college boys or, since WWII was raging at the time, perhaps in the military: I can't recall. What I can recall is that suddenly the dance floor had cleared and there, in the middle, were the two young men…
dancing together!
Not slow dancing, of course…jitterbugging. Everyone stood around clapping and laughing. I'm sure it was, to them, the equivalent of a truck driver dressing up as a woman at Halloween: really, really
funny,
you know? If anyone had thought for a nanosecond that the young men were dancing together because they really wanted to dance together, they would without question been ejected from the club and risked being seriously beaten.

But to me…!…I had never seen anything more wonderful in my entire life. Two men! Dancing together!

Children have and need role models. Most little boys want, at one time or another, to grow up to be a fireman, or a policeman, or a soldier or sailor…uniforms somehow seem to fascinate boys, probably because they represent authority, something every child subconsciously wants to have.

But when it comes to specific individuals children can look up to and aspire to be—a sports star or actor or singer or someone in public life, until recently gay children have been completely denied role models—someone they knew was like
them.
To be identified as openly gay was the kiss of death for any public figure.

When I was a child, the only time homosexuals were even mentioned was derogatorily, in a context of utter scorn or contempt. The only time they were portrayed on screen—and even then never specifically identified as being homosexual, but, then, they didn't have to be—were as effeminate, prissy queens whose only purpose was for comic effect. (Sort of the equivalent of the few black actors allowed on screen…Stepp'n Fetchit-type visual jokes.)

As late as the 1950s, homosexuality was classified as a mental illness. Yet it seems to have occurred to no one that telling a gay child that to be gay was to be beneath contempt may very well have created exactly the mental problems they were accused of having.

The slow but steady emergence of actors, singers, politicians, and even a very few sports stars (interestingly almost all lesbian) from the closet speaks well for the progress we have made. And yet that the same people who now accept us once scorned us leaves a bitter aftertaste.

But we'll get over it.

* * *

IMPATIENCE

I think if I were to be a flower, I'd be an impatiens. I'm not sure I know what an impatiens looks like, but I do like the name, since it reminds me of one of my most outstanding characteristics: impatience.

I'm sure it all stems from the fact of my raw-nerve awareness of the passage of time, and that every instant spent other than in doing what I want to do is time which will never come again, and brings me one instant closer to the moment when my mind, trapped as it is in a mortal body, will cease to function and all that will remain of me is what I have managed to put down on paper.

I know that there is much to be said for the joys of quiet contemplation, but I'm largely incapable of it. I've mentioned before that I simply cannot do nothing. I cannot sit on a park bench on a sunny day and just enjoy the act of sitting and being part of nature. I'll be a part of nature soon enough, and enjoyment will have nothing to do with it. Even when looking up at a blue sky filled with puffy clouds, I can't be content with just observing: my mind insists on searching them to find faces and sailing ships and tanks and fish.