Fallout

The day after I was out with my friend Mike, he wasn't answering his cell phone, or more accurately I kept getting the message ' the customer you are trying to reach is not available.' I assumed he was suffering from the depression thats usually the fallout after a manic phase. After two days, I called the hospital and went to visit him. He had been mugged and severely beaten entering his apartment by someone behind him trying to get in the building without a key. Rightfully, Mike didn't let him in.
He doesn't remember what the criminal looked like, partly because Michael has a bad habit of taking too many tranquilizers, in strong enough doses that would put an elephant in a coma for two days. They also effect his judgement and he switches from beer to double vodkas.
I took him clean underwear, socks, deodorant and t-shirts. The roof of his mouth had been shattered so he has to have surgery, and his teeth removed. His Mom sells dental equipment, and Mike had very beautiful teeth. He hadn't filed a police report, so we called them and gave them as much information as we could, though I was not with him at the time. He was so out of it, he couldn't remember his address, and because he recently moved there, I didn't know it either as I've only visited his apartment twice. Plus I'm terrible at directions. I helped him find this place, in what I thought was a relatively safe neighborhood, but according to my spouse, it's sketchy. Rent's are high downtown, bachelors run for 1000 a month or more, and very tiny, but I think he's better to live in 1/4 of the space in a safe neighborhood that where he currently is, even though it's still a short trip to downtown. Then I called his Mom, who I really like, and helped her find a deal on a plane ticket as she's not computer savvy, and she's flying out tonight.
So today I was going to visit Mike at the hospital again, but he's been discharged, is not in another hospital and I can't get a hold of him because he has no phone. He had my number on speed dial on his cell phone, and I left him my number again at the hospital, but I'm sure he lost it, because he was so out of it from the pain killers and pyche medications. He takes the highest dosage of Prozac possible, the dosage they only give to severe anorexics. And methadone, not that he was a junkie, but it is used for extremely bi-polar people.
Then he told me he's thinking of moving back to the small town he came from, Sault Ste. Marie, but six months ago, he told me his life might as well be over if he moved back there, so I hope it was just the drugs talking and not something he's seriously considering. Gay, bipolar people do not do well in small places.
I called the police today and asked them to check on him, and give him my phone number. They won't give me his address, and I could probably find it, but there were too many similar buildings in the area, and I don't know his buzzer code.
I hope he's o.k.
Two months ago he got a huge income tax refund and his Mom suggested he buy himself a really nice watch which he spent a ridiculous amount of money on.
Someone mugged him for that too.
Vancouver is a safe city, but like Lions on the Savannah, some seek out the damaged, the drugged and the vulnerable.

Manic Rain

Yesterday I ran into my friend Mike, the one who's severely bi-polar, and sometimes I think his manic phases can cause one in me, either that or I just get caught up in his enthusiasm and it sets it off. We ran into each other at Main and Hasting, I was looking for a tranquilizer because I wasn't having a good day. Mike gave me one of his and we ended up going to this seedy bar, that wasn't as seedy as I thought it would be for that area. Anyway, I invited him over and gave him an expensive leather jacket, suede with baseball stitching, that I love, but I bought it without trying in on and it never fit me properly. Apparently a medium, but more like a large. Then I got carried away and started to give him other clothes that I rarely wear, plus a shirt I bought in Germany for my sweetie that he never liked.
Then we headed downtown to a gay bar, and this guy kept putting his hands down the back of pants, and to be honest I liked it. Just rubbing the small of my back and slightly lower. What I didn't know was that his very jealous boyfriend was in the bar and asked me if his bf had his hands down the back of my pants, and I said no, partly because the man was 6.5 feet tall and looked like he drinks testoterone for breakfast. I also whispered to the groper "you totally owe me". Mike started drinking Havey Wallbangers, a drink that reminds me of the 70's, and kept losing his stuff, so I packed everything up and showed him all the zippered inside pockets in the jacket I gave him so he wouldn't lose anything else.
RB keeps telling me to find some more normal friends, but with Mike, he gets it, he understands, I don't have to explain myself .

Let Your Freak Flag Fly

Yesterday, on my way to the parade I was stunned by how packed the skytrain was assuming that there must be a football game on, so I asked where everyone was going, and they looked at me like I was from Mars and said the pride parade. These were not your typical urbanites but wives,husbands, and children from deepest suburbia.
I love Vancouver. I was planning on going with my severely bi-polar friend but he was feeling sick so I ended up sitting with a middle aged husband and wife and we had great seats along a brick wall and the weather was perfect, though a little hot for me, meaning over 70. I'm a heat sissy, must be my Irish Swedish DNA. The crowd was estimated at 400 thousand, it's largest ever, and remember the metropolitan area of Vancouver's population is estimated at 2.2 million, with Vancouver proper having a population of just under 600 thousand people.
There didn't seem to be as many Americans visiting this year which I suspect is due to our dollar being at par with the American for the first time in thirty years. Miss those big butch hairy brutes. Five years ago our dollar was only worth 60 or so cents. War is expensive. The parade, for the first time had a contingent of East Indian gays and lesbian, and I admire their bravery because that's still a huge taboo in their culture. I stood and cheered for them. One guy had a sign reading I wasn't born gay, Bollywood made me this way. Best sign ever!
And a Rabbi, along with members of his synagogue had a float with signs saying we marry Jewish lesbian and gays. Another big cheer. There were also people marching with different signs reminding us of how gays and lesbians are murdered in many countries simply because of their orientation, and the methods in which they are murdered and tortured.
Air Newzealand had a float and I know corporate sponsorship is controversial, but financially they saved the parade a few years ago due to rising costs of insurance etc. Yet New Zealand only has a population of three million people so I can't really see it as a gay mecca tourist destination, though it's a beautiful country. I went to a bar for a few beer after, and as usual ended up having the most interesting conversations with the women in the bar. Home by ten, in bed by 11, but all in all a wonderful day. Plus the valium helped.
And all you heteros who support people like us, a big Bravo and and warm hugs to you.

Like Sunshine Ater Rain

He's doing better but almost died, and slowing becoming healthier than ever. Don't watch Grey's Anatomy if a loved one is having surgery. Thank you for all your kind comments and I apologize for not updating regularly. Facing the possible loss of the one person who loves me unconditionally, who can read my mood by a simple tilt of my head, a slight change in the tone of my voice, who forgives my manic phases and depressive bouts, was like living in some sort of alternate nightmarish reality. He's a stubborn Scots man with that Celtic cheeriness, the opposite of my brooding self. It's hard to write about him, in part because I'm embarrassed by how much he means to me. My one true thing.
And how I never thought someone like him would choose to be with me.
This is how naive I was about him. He likes violent Clint Eastwood, Bruce Willis movies, Martin Scorcese gangster sagas, but I rented Torch Song Trilogy where the Mathew Broderick character is gay bashed and murdered and RB's body spasmed in horror. I was confused, this is the man who didn't blink during the gory scences in Scarface. It took me years to figure out that he wasn't afraid for himself but terrified that something like that would happen to me. He passes, is often mistaken as a cop. I, though not a screaming queen,( most of the time at any rate ) do not always pass.
RB was married at 21 and had three children by the time he was 25, but he's never come out to them. Officially.But it's unspoken, the twighlight zone and that which must not be named. We used to argue about it, and I sometimes feel like I'm living in 1950, but I couldn't stand to upset him, and I don't have children, so when he's ready, if ever, that's his decision. Once, during a heated argument about his coming out, his body shook, and tears welled up in his eyes. Sick the gay pride police on me now, but I came out in a redneck town in Northern Canada at 17 and was promptly whisked away to my first psyche ward visit so cut me a little slack. During his illness his eldest daughter called me and wanted to talk to me privately to get the honest version of her Father's health as RB has a tendency to minimize. It was a little awkward as I know she knows and at first I thought she was going to ask me if we were a couple. His other daughter married a therapist who counsels gay men, and the last time they were over for dinner ( I have to de-gay the condo, meaning hide the pictures of the two of us hugging etc ) She said" We know more than you think you do". I said no, I know you know, but what you don't know is how long we've been together, because at one time when the family visited I would leave for the evening. In hindsight I wished she had said those words to her father and not me.
This is what is unique about his sexuality.
He had no idea until he was thirty something and was wrestling with a friend and had an orgasm. The friend thought he was having a heart attack as they were fully clothed. I didn't believe this tale, until I got to know him better and now I believe it, because denial can be extremely powerful. Six months later his wife's sister and three out of the four children were murdered by her husband. He was an undiagnosed schizophrenic. The surviving infant daughter was put in a foster home whilst an expensive custody battle raged between RB his wife, and the paternal grandparents. RB and wife won, partly because at that time they had the financial resources to hire good lawyes. A year later RB's Wife left him not coping with her sister's death and there were problems with the businesses they were running and RB, was slowly coming around to accepting that he might be gay. RB said they were in constant competition with each other. She's since been through four marriages, the last one a gentle man from Pakistan, named Surinder, who I jokingly referred to as Surrender, because the ex is a very difficult, angry, efficient woman.You know the type. I met RB's eldest daughter before I met the ex, and couldn't figure out how someone as easy going and good natured as him could have such a high strung angry child, and three minutes after meeting the ex, I understood. RB's mother introduced as during a visit to Kelowna, and the wife who has remained on good terms with RB and his family showed up. RB's Mom said " Have you met Lotuslander". She refused to even look at me let alone say hello. This is 14 years after they split up.
His first born son contracted meningitis in the hospital and can live without supervision, but of all the step children he's the one who's company I enjoy most and the one who likes to hang out with me. He does have brain damage, and his co-ordination is off, and he has problems with speech, and sometimes he's mistaken as a junkie. The second son, was born with spinal problems and spent years in the hospital as a child having his spine stretched, science that was learned in Nazi Germany where they used human guinea pigs to find just how far they could stretch a spine before it snapped.. He's very short, not a dwarf, but under five feet and has to buy his clothes in the children's department.
Friends of mine say RB's family history give them a headache, when I've explained the dynamic.

The post title comes from one of my favorite lines about love from Shakespeare.
"Love comforteth like sunshine after rain."

Bad Stuff

Haven't posted. My spouse had knee replacement surgery, and, just when I thought it had gone extremely well because he also has a not- Aids-immune disease, they found a blood clot on his lung, so I've been spending most of my time in the hospital with him. I hate seeing him in pain and unhappy and frustrated, and wish I could take his place.

Coffee Talk

There's a new coffee shop on my block called Kenya Organic run by a black guy with an obscure accent I can't place. He only makes drinks with espresso, so if you order coffee you get an Americano for the same price. It's dark and strong and good, but he likes to chat and lately, give me lectures about not working. He has magazines placed neatly on the window sills, mostly womans - Oprah and fashion and gossip, stuff that I imagine is his girlfriend's, because I doubt his family is here. It used to be a crepe place run by France french guys that went bankrupt not knowing that duck mousse crepes four blocks from Crackville wouldn't be the wisest business venture. The Muslim lady at the convenience store keeps asking about my fake blonde hair and I think she secretly wants to throw off her hijab and bleach hers and put on bright red lipstick and horrify her family. Her sister doesn't wear a scarf, but I like the hijab woman more, she's nervous and cautious at the cashier and smiles shyly.
I have a friend from Pakistan who won't eat meat unless it's killed and bled according to Muslim dietary laws, yet he's gay and doesn't seem to have any problem breaking that rule, which I'm sometimes tempted to point out, but don't, thinking that maybe he's just trying to hang on to what he can. I slept all day, a bad sign, and with the shorter nights I can't avoid daylight because it's light out when I fall asleep and light when I wake up. I have periods where I'm on a normal cycle, but eventually I end up nocturnal , and to break it I have to stay up around the clock and go to bed that night.
I haven't taken a tranquilizer for a month, and I'm restless and uneasy and in awe how a small pill can create an entire bubble of a world that keeps most of the sharp things away or at least, gives the illusion of it. Since the war, Valium is sold without a prescription to housewifes in Iraq by the handfuls - just 20 cents a bottle. But I know if I stay on them too long, I'd dig a deeper hole.

A Room With No View

Most of the time, except when he is home, I keep the blinds shut so I don't have to look out at the ocean and mountains and feel like the view is demanding something of me. I found this article on line about Alice Munro who lived in Vancouver at one time and many of her short stories are set here.

Ms. Munro has neglected to mention this stupendous setting — the echoing curves of
bridge and cove and mountain, the dull silver of the sea, the green-black hump of Stanley Park, all this grandeur of land and water so close it's as if the great northern wilderness laps at the city's feet.

But Ms. Munro was always oppressed, almost crushed by Vancouver's fabled vistas.
"Well suppose you're in a low mood, and you get up and here spread out before you is this magnificent view. All the time, you can't get away from it. Don't you ever feel not up to it?"

"Not up to it?"

"Guilty," said Eileen, persistently though regretfully. "That you're not in a better mood? That you're not more — worthy, of this beautiful view?"

The macho cherry trees are in bloom, big fat pink popcorn blossoms. The delicate early blooming Japanese cherry trees have lost all their blooms and when I walk through the courtyard there is pink confetti scattered on the sidewalk. And the rhododendrons, which I can never look at without seeing vomiting, convulsing goats, because a friend of mine has a hobby farm in Richmond, and his goats escaped and died from eating them.
Once, in another city, I rented an apartment, because it was built around a glass elevator, and if you sat in the tiny kitchen you could watch the elevator go by like looking at a giant bug scurry up a tree. The whole apartment was built around the elevator with odd shape rooms, and the rent was low because of it's size and most people didn't want an elevator zooming by their window.

Ms. Munro's Vancouver is an outpost where new wives blink through the rain and wonder when their real lives are going to begin.
"Winter in Vancouver was not like any winter I had ever known," Ms. Munro writes in "Cortes Island," a story in her 1978 collection "The Love of a Good Woman" that matches detail for detail with her first months in Kits. "No snow, not even anything much in the way of a cold wind." After a day of wandering the city vaguely looking for work, the story's nameless narrator (dubbed Little Bride by one of the other characters) returns to Kits Beach at dusk as "the clouds broke apart in the west over the sea to show the red streaks of the sun's setting — and in the park, through which I circled home, the leaves of the winter shrubs glistened in the damp air of a faintly rosy twilight."
Maybe you have to grow up here not to feel like your living in some alien world.