Sharing the Joke: 2009

There is in all things a pattern that is part of out universe. It has symmetry, elegance, and grace—those qualities you find always in that which the true artists captures. You can find it in the turning of the seasons, in the way sand trails along a ridge, in the branch clusters of the creosote bush or the pattern of its leaves.
We try to copy these patterns in our lives and our society, seeking the rhythms, the dances, the forms that comfort.
Yet, it is possible to see peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. It is clear that the ultimate pattern contains its own fixity. In such perfection, all things move towards death. ------Paul Mua’Dib as recorded by Frank Herbert in Dune

Prologue

On July 14th, 2000 struggling with a losing battle against depression, suffering from a severe case of kidney stones, and having been brutally beaten by my new husband I decided to end my life with a bottle of 60 painkillers. I lay in a semi-comatose state for the next five days while my family and friends watched helplessly as a team of doctors and nurses fought to pull me back from the brink of death. Upon awakening I initially couldn’t walk, wash or feed myself, and I had severe cognitive disabilities and partial amnesia. However, despite all the odds, somehow with the help of some remarkable people I managed to pull myself out of the pit and resolutely fought to recover my mind, spirit, and body.
Over the months I chronicled my struggles via emails to an ever-expanding pool of supporters, many of whom have written back to express their admiration for my resilience as well as their appreciation for my sharing of the experiences with them. Many of them have traveled the same roads, and I came to realize that none of us stands alone, and that if the lessons I have learned could help others then every tear I shed, every sleepless night I tossed and turned, every uphill battle I have fought, every word over which I have agonized and put to paper (or pixel as the case may be) has all been worthwhile.
And so I’ve decided to gather all of my writings—emails, essays, anecdotes, and random thoughts into one collection to be offered to a larger audience comprised of individual souls who might also have walked the same paths and who might take a modicum of comfort in knowing that they are not alone in this wide world. It is my hope that those readers who do not have the support system with which I have been blessed, till find here as a sympathetic surrogate friend. I know what it’s like to feel alone, but take comfort that none of us truly are.

Dan Tyler

March 30, 2000
I spent a great deal of time agonizing over the many efforts in my life where I believed I had failed, but as things turned out, the only thing I ever really failed (despite my best efforts to do otherwise) was my attempt at ending my own life.
For a couple of weeks just prior to my attempt I had been suffering from a nasty case of kidney stones which relentlessly sent me into moments of sheer torture as they passed through my urinary tract. On two occasions the pain was so intense I had to go to the emergency room where even under heavy doses of Demerol I spent hours sobbing helplessly. After each episode I was discharged with a large bottle of Percocets to counter the pain at home, and so it came to pass that when my emotional and mental pain began to approach my physical agony I decide to administer what I thought would be a lethal overdose of prescription drugs.
The last coherent images I have of that supposed-to-be-final morning after Anthony beat me up were of writing a suicide letter addressed to him and my best friend Caren; taking a final look around the apartment; and then frantically cramming all 60 pills into my mouth and rinsing them down with a glass of water. Then my dog, Tucson, sensing, I reckon, the dire nature of my actions, curled up at my side as I cried myself into what I hoped would be a final sleep.
A lot of things happened in the next six or seven hours, and what I have been able to piece together is mostly based on my own reckoning and the speculation of the many doctors, nurses, and paramedics who resuscitated me and dragged me back from the brink over the next month or so.
Apparently I was only able to partially digest my bellyful of painkillers before my stomach decided to take matters into its own hands and expel its contents, thereby buying me some time. I unconsciously vomited up a rather icky mass of drugs, bile, and what-have-you, which I then slowly began to choke upon. Anthony came home from the hair salon where he works and found my body turning blue on the floor of the extra bedroom and immediately called an ambulance.
It’s strange, but months later, I would come to have an overwhelming sense of that moment, in which he cradled me in his arms and wept, crying, “Oh baby, why did you go and hurt yourself?” It’s nothing I can confirm with him as we have since stopped talking, but I have a gut instinct that’s how things happened.
Anyway, the paramedics came and intubated me on scene—that is, they discovered that I had “breathed” in some of my vomit, so they forced an airway into my lungs as well as began the difficult task of pumping my stomach.
Hours later in the emergency room I achieved a state of aggressive unconsciousness and fought strenuously against the team of medics and nurses, tearing the tubes from my throat and the intravenous lines in my arms. Eventually they would have to lash my arms and legs into leather restraints as well as administer heavy doses of the sedative Haldol to keep me still.
And that’s pretty much the state I which I remained for the next five days.
Now the next bit of my log is merely an educated guess on my part as no one on site at the time had access to a detailed medical history of mine, but my current doctor believes my theory entirely plausible.
The funny thing about the Percocet overdose is that it wasn’t the prescription drug in them which nearly killed me but the acetaminophen (Tylenol) of which they are also comprised. The Tylenol was more readily absorbed by my body in those few hours, and rather than working away at my brain (which it never really got much chance at) it ravaged my liver, and without that key filter, any other substances in my body became very toxic.
All this my doctors presumably knew, but what they did not know was that seven years prior to this accident I had brushed with death in an entirely different fashion, but one which would complicate matters much further.
When I was eighteen years old, coincidentally enough, also feeling very depressed and potentially suicidal after being refused the opportunity to go to college directly after high school, I decided to embark on a life-long dream and go live in the wilds of Africa—Kenya to be specific. The details of that journey will perhaps be covered in another book, but the event pertinent to this story is that during my stay overseas I contracted a very serious form of malaria and suffered a mild stroke as one of the consequential effects. I nearly died there in the bush, but I was luckily discovered by some local people and brought to a hospital where I was nursed back to some semblance of health.
However, one of the tricky things about the malarial parasite is that through drugs, antibiotics, luck, and stamina your body may be able to throw off the effects of the disease, you may retain the little buggers in your system for the rest of your life. Even though test results may come up negative, that may just mean that the parasites exist in your body in quantities too small to show up on a screening. But they may still be there, and the particular strain I acquired just so happens to like to go dormant and hide out in the liver.
So, it is my belief that the Tylenol slammed into my liver like a runaway truck, and those little creeps woke up and started feeding on my red blood cells once more, collapsing them into tiny blood clots which eventually made their way to my brain and caused similar damage to my initial stroke seven years before.
Fact or fiction, anyway you look at it, my body was pretty much put through the wringer, and I lay in a coma in the Intensive Care Unit at Boston Medical Center for the next five days.
Anthony, I am told, hardly left my side during that time, taking a leave from work, and only exiting the hospital to pick up my sister Autumn and my mother from the airport a couple of days later. My older brother Glen showed up on the following day, having flown all the way from Great Britain, mainly I think to take charge of the situation for the sake of my sister who was a complete wreck and my mother from whom I had been estranged for several years.
Caren came down from Portland, Maine where she had been living, and together the four of them along with Anthony agonized as the doctors pumped me full of fluids and detoxifying medications and tried to determine if I would live.
I cannot imagine what hell they must have gone through during those torturous days as they could do nothing but sit and wait and hope and cry and pray. Worse must have been the torment they suffered when on the fourth day the medical team presented my family with the option to discontinue feeding me and just let me die as it was their professional opinion that I would never wake up.
Caren, who had been my best friend and constant companion for the past five years, was adamant that I would never have wanted to live as a vegetable and should be allowed to die with dignity. Anthony was also of like mind whereas my mother was fiercely against the notion of assisting my suicide. That made matters very difficult for the others as she was the legal keeper of my fate as the closest next-of-kin. My sister was a mess (they all were), but it was my brother who ultimately stepped forward and assumed the mantle of responsibility for my family, with I think, the blessing of my other brother Rob, who was flying out from Oregon later in the week and my father, whose own health prevented him from coming to Boston.
I expect it was with poison knives in their hearts that my family at last made the decision to let me go.
And the next day I woke up.

This is when the fun really began.

Most people only get the opportunity to be born once in their lifetimes, but for some reason I was given a second chance at life, and when I opened my eyes the world appeared to me much as I would expect it would appear to a newborn.
I must have lain there in a haze for some time, but eventually the fog began to clear and I could discern my sister, Anthony, and Caren sitting alongside my bed, watching me anxiously as an unfamiliar woman began talking to me.
“Dan, do you know where you are?” she asked, and I could only shake my head, no, and weakly murmur that I did not.
“You are in a hospital room at Boston Medical Center,” she explained gently, “Do you know why you are here?”
I was scared and worried about my family, but at the time I had no recollection of anything that had happened in the last week so I guessed, “Have I been in a car accident?”
The woman, a psychiatric nurse named Monique, took my hand and said, “No, you’re here because last week you took an overdose of 60 Percocets and tried to kill yourself.”
That was like a pail of ice cold water in my face, and as the truth of that revelation dawned on me, so then did the looks of pain and grief on my family’s faces hit home at last, and I fell apart, sobbing brokenly, consumed by a horrendous sense of guilt for putting them all through so much. And then everyone was crying and holding me, and holding on to each other and saying things were going to be all right.
I don’t recall too much else of what happened for the rest of that day except that afternoon a team of doctors and a man I did not recognize came to visit me and ran a series of tests. My sister noticed the cold way with which I reacted to the strange man and asked me, “Danny, do you know who that is?”
I shook my head and replied tentatively, “A doctor?”
She said, “No, it’s Glen.” And after I still didn’t comprehend, she prodded gently, “Glen, Glen-Paul. From England.”
Then I finally understood the gravity of the situation. That my brother (from whom I had been estranged for several years) had flown all the way from the other side of the world to be there meant that I had really affected everyone more deeply than I thought possible, and again I broke down and cried. And much to everyone’s surprise my brother knelt at my side and cried too. Perhaps to the casual observer that wouldn’t have seemed so strange, but to the best of my knowledge no one had ever seen Glen cry, at least not since he had been a very small boy. Months later my sister would tell me it was the most beautiful moment she had ever been blessed to witness, and the more I think on it, the more I agree.
My brother and I had never been close, and after I came out of the closet several years before, I didn’t think he wanted much to do with me, but here he was, in this sterile, cold hospital room holding me close and crying like a baby—tears of pure, unashamed love and relief and hope. It is a moment I hope to cherish for all my days.
So I was reborn, and at least I could talk (if weakly) and more or less understand what was said to me, but I was otherwise as helpless as a babe, and only time would prove if I would regain any of my normal faculties and abilities.
Through some sort of drug interaction I lost most of my hearing, and I was unable to focus my vision on very many things at once. For several days after I woke up I was administered a foul tasting drug called Mucomist which was supposed to help cleanse my liver, but the really yucky side effect was that it left me completely incontinent, and so like a baby, I found myself strapped into diapers 24 hours a day. Additionally I was left with very poor motor control, and I usually needed assistance in feeding myself.
An occupational therapist came to visit me for a couple of weeks, and when we first began our sessions I could neither read nor tell time. I also couldn’t differentiate between simple shapes or separate the quarters from the dimes when given a handful of change.
I was so weak from wasting in a coma for five days that I had trouble lifting a fork or spoon, much less manipulating it with any skill, and I didn’t even know how to walk!
So, then began the long and arduous process of rehabilitating me. Retraining and re-educating me to a “normal” level of abilities.
I remember after finishing the doses of Mucomist I was at last able to remove my diapers, but I still needed a lot of help getting over to a toilet. Those first few days of walking were hellish, as I needed a constant companion to walk beside me as I shuffled along, coaching me on the process all the way. Glen would count out the paces for me and hold me by the arm, and my sister would continually remind me to keep my chin up and eyes forward.
All sense of embarrassment was lost in my presence as I needed help to do everything from getting dressed to showering to eating to using the toilet.
I had no concept of time, yet I felt certain each hour was longer than the last. However, I was steadily getting better with each passing day. My other brother, Rob, arrived to help out, and together my siblings, Caren, and Anthony taught me to read again; how to tell time; to walk, shave, shower, and eat on my own; and basically they nurtured me back to health at a rate which astounded my entire medical team, who had initially harbored doubts about any possibility of reclaiming even a fraction of my abilities.
None of this came terribly easy for me, but as my brothers observed, “Danny never was the type of kid who could just lay around when he was sick. He was always pushing the limits—getting up and running around, just waiting for the day when he could go outside and play again.” And I guess that kid remains alive and well deep inside of me, for it was true: once I learned to walk again, they could barely keep me pinned down to the room for any length of time as I was forever shuffling off down the hallways, visiting the nurse’s station or stepping outside for a bit of fresh air.
My family recalls that after those initial days from hell when all they could muster were tears, there was a surreal transformation in everyone’s mood once I was up and ambulatory as I was forever doing or saying the most absurd and hilarious things. Caren tells how she and our friend Kirstin came to visit one day, and I decided I wanted to go for a walk. They noticed I was naked and suggested I put on some pajama bottoms at least. I agreed, but apparently could not figure out how to get them on, and eventually settled for having them on not only inside out, but also backwards with the drawstring fly open in the back!
On a similar occasion Anthony left our friend Tom to look after me while he stepped out for a coffee, and again, I got the notion to take a little stroll. While naked,. Tom offered to help me into a pair of jimmies, but I became so frustrated with all the openings and sleeves and strings I vented by peeing on Tom’s leg. (We often laugh about that incident now, although at the time poor Tom was rather discombobulated.)
The weeks passed slowly, but with each day I managed to recover some of the skills necessary for living a “normal” life, and I enjoyed a continual stream of visitors from various departments of the hospital who ducked in to take a peek at the “Miracle Boy” who managed to beat all the odds and was making a ferocious comeback.
I progressed with my occupational therapist and spent daily sessions with Monique as we probed my reasons for feeling such despair. My siblings eventually had to return to their respective homes, but through it all Anthony remained by my side although he also had to return to his clients at the salon during the day. However, he made his way to the hospital every evening after work, and at night I fell into a fitful sleep in his arms.
And so it came to pass that the medical team at the hospital decided that they no longer had much to offer me as an in-patient, and with hope and eagerness in my heart I prepared to go home at last. Nearly a month had passed since I was first admitted, and summer was winding down. I missed my pets terribly, and I ached for the softness of my own bed as well as the personality and life within my clothes, knick-knacks, and other personal effects.
Anthony brought me home on August 6, and even though my hearing was still pretty bad, and my body was wracked with tremors of varying intensity, we thought the worst was over, and that now, finally, we could get on with the business of living.
Unfortunately, things weren’t destined to be that simple, and within a few days new, unforeseen problems began to surface, testing once more my resiliency, patience, and very sanity.
As I mentioned, I had aspirated a certain amount of my drug-laden vomit after I OD’d, and outside of the relatively clean, filtered air circulated in the hospital my asthma suddenly became much more severe, and almost immediately upon my discharge I had two life-threatening asthma attacks which landed me back in the emergency room.
I had barely returned home from those two episodes before yet another problem arose as I began to feel horribly anxious, the manifestation of which showed up in an almost completely incapacitating stutter and accompanying panic attacks. Even in the midst of that awful time I had to appreciate the irony of my predicament. I mean, here I was, once honored as one of the best public speakers in the nation during my high school debate years, and now not only could I just barely stammer out any sort of coherent thought, but any sort of interpersonal conflict reduced me into a quivering, sobbing wreck (for which again I was sent back to the emergency room several times).
Nobody had any idea of what was wrong with me, and as I was as of yet uninsured no clinics wanted to take me on as a patient. While I was in the coma my family had applied for Medicaid, but I had yet to be approved, and unfortunately without a secure means of paying a doctor, my follow-up care was being postponed until they heard back from Uncle Sam.
So I was in pretty much a shitty place, no question about it. My hearing sucked, I had balance and vision problems, and I trembled like a Parkinson’s patient. Worst of all, along came this stupid fucking stutter which sealed off much of my ability to communicate, and to top it all off I suffered a completely unnerving anxiety when I came in contact with other people.
However, I had a few saving graces: number one being a determination not to just sit back and feel sorry for myself and to find the help I needed. Secondly, I found that although I had trouble managing a pen due to my tremors which left my handwriting practically illegible, I could still type reasonably well, and lacking a therapist I began to write everything down and began to rely on my email friends and family to give me some much needed positive feedback. Finally, and best of all, I had my dog, Tucson to accompany me whenever I ventured out in public, serving a dual purpose both as a hearing guide dog to help me navigate traffic (I had an especial difficulty hearing low frequencies such as car motors) as well as a companion and emotional defender to assist me with my social anxiety disorder. Another bit of juicy irony is that when I had worked with disabled clients in a group home in Maine; I had trained Tucson to accompany me as a therapy animal at work. He has a very gentle temperament, is unfazed by large crowds, and is very responsive to my commands. Thus, he was perfectly suited to come to my aid when I found myself struggling with a number of disabilities myself.
So, with him at my side and a heart full of hope and fear I ventured back into the world, writing all the way--initially as a means of self-administering therapy, and later in the hopes that maybe my story would give hope and inspiration to others who have found themselves similarly struggling.
I shall begin, then, with my email entries written just some two weeks prior to my suicide attempt after which followed a long silence, as it were, as I struggled to learn how to read and write again. My tremors prevented me from writing much by hand that was legible, but I was pleasantly surprised that my typing ability quickly returned with only a little practice. Thus, after I was discharged from the hospital I began to write at a furious pace, pouring out all my heartache and frustration on the keyboard as I really hadn’t any other outlet.

Hey Everybody, July 7, 2000
Sorry to have been out of touch for so long, but I was off-line and out of reach for about three weeks, and even now, since I am no longer cable-internet connected via Roadrunner, I am spending less time online and hence less time “connected” to all of you. Anywho, to recap: After a short debate over the merits of waiting tables during a slow-to-start tourist season in Maine, I decided to slip away to the south. Well, a hundred miles south at least, where I found myself in some sort of limbo state; living out of a suitcase at Anthony’s place while I searched for a job and joined a month long celebration of Pride parties throughout New England.
For starters, we hit Boston Pride around the 10th-ish, and for those of you in the know we danced with Kristine W. and hung out with her after the block party which was needless to say, very fierce.
Fast-forward a few days to the 15th when we celebrated Anthony’s 24th birthday in a rather nice surprise party put together lovingly by yours truly. A week later found us skipping on down to NYC for the biggest party of them all—Dan & Anthony’s Wedding Day!!! Oh, yes, and there was that New York City Pride-thing going on as well, but truly the 2 million or so revelers were just there for us, don’t you know...
Actually, it was very romantic. We hopped an elevator 86 floors up to the observation deck of the Empire State Building first thing Sunday morning where we exchanged vows and two lovely platinum and diamond rings. Then we slipped down to the city where we danced away amidst the parade and the Pier Dance, and a celebrated a wild night at the Sound Factory with Susan Morabito spinning.
Word!
Honestly the best party since Velvet Nation in DC, with probably the most phenomenal altogether DJ I have ever had the pleasure to twirl to.
Anyway, back up to Boston the next week to do the final move into our new place in the South End. And finally, a rather sedate Fourth of July. I must admit Boston has the best fireworks display of any town I have yet seen, but other than that, a pretty tame evening all things considered.
Work, you say?
Oh, yes, it seems as if amidst all the excitement I forgot to get a job. Well, I was working as the manager of a little Italian restaurant for a while, but I quickly realized they wanted more of an android slave for the position, so I packed my bags quietly and left while the getting was good.
Now I am back on the job detail, but I must admit that since I am back in the world of cyberspace (and emailing and faxing resumes) life among the employed seems a much more sure thing. I have been getting offers and more calls for interviews than I thought possible, so I expect to settle down into something next week. I am hedging my bets that I will re-enter the somewhat shaky world of social services, and while the money is not what it could be, the less tangible rewards I think will make it more worthwhile than sticking it out in the restaurant biz.
So, that’s my tale for now. Smooches to all, and thanks for not giving up on me. Please send future emails to me here at the yahoo.com address.
Everyone’s Favorite Gypsy,
Dan

July 14, 2000—My Final Entry
Dearest Anthony and Caren,
I am feeling so low and sad and hurt right now with no hope for something better.
So, I am giving up.
Everything I have ever tried to accomplish in this life has been a failure, so why not my life itself? School, work, friendships, romance, EER, Maggie, everything has been a failure, and even though I try and I try, I just cannot seem to get a break.
And so, now I’m done trying.
Anthony, when we met I finally had it all for a brief period in time. And you lifted me up to a higher place than I had ever been. The problem is that everything else fell out from under me, and when you dropped me I didn’t have any place to land.
Caren, I am so sorry we lost one another, and even though it seems we keep trying to reconnect, I am afraid the rift has grown too wide.
I am hoping Tucson and Dori will go back to you, Caren, but as for everything else—divide it up to whomever.
I have an IRA worth about $5000 with Caren as the beneficiary as well as some cheap life insurance plans that might pay out a few thousand. The paperwork is either on the hard drive of the computer on in the gray file box.
I am more sorry than either of you will ever know for the pain I have put you through, and for the pain this final act of mine will cause you.
Be consoled that there was nothing you could do. I have always known I would take my own life when I felt I had done all I could do. Ask Maria; she knows that I knew I would die before 25 was up.
I love you both so much, but I no longer have love for myself, and so now I am moving on.
I hope there will either be nothing or something better waiting for me because I think I already know what hell is like.
Give my love to Tucson and Autumn and Jason and everyone else.

Dan
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Dear folks, Aug 15, 2000

Okay, let’s try this again. I spent an hour and a half this morning writing out a long "this-is-how-I-am-doing" letter, but technical difficulties invoked their curse on my server once more, and the message is now lost in cyberspace. I shall try to recall the more important points as follows, albeit in a more-condensed version. Anywho, keeping my chin up in the face of adversity is the name of the game right now. Each day I have my list of various appointments with various doctors and various government agencies as I try to piece together myself physically and mentally as well as (hopefully) financially as I file application after application for aid. Learning to accept my various disabilities is a test of my mettle, I guess, but laying them before complete strangers and asking for their help is sometimes a bitter pill to swallow.
I have always been frustrated with this country’s social services, having previously dealt with them on the behalf of others in my volunteer work in the past. Now, ironically, I find myself group among those “others” in what I can only hope is a terribly amusing joke to a rather twisted god.
Well, let him laugh at me, I’m sure I will laugh at myself eventually.
For now, though, it is a daily struggle to overcome my hearing loss and vision problems, the constant ringing in my ears, the helpless stutter, and the unnerving panic with which I have to deal. Fortunately I have on my side an almost unseemly number of very supportive friends here in Boston as well as around the country who have helped me pull through this little crisis of mine, not to mention that when all is said and done I have come to find that my family as a whole is made of much stronger stuff than I ever imagined, and they haven proven to be a steady foundation on which I can stand.
I also somehow managed to find the most incredible, loving man in the world to stand at my side and hold me in his arms when I grow weak.
Finally, I have been blessed with a canine companion who assists me as both my ears and as my best defense against my terrible, nameless anxieties. I didn’t mean to get so caught up in all my problems, because despite everything I have managed to gain a new perspective on my life. I am luckier than many, and worse off than some, and so it goes, I reckon, for most other people as well.
So, let me just say in summary that I am often scared, angry, and frustrated.
On the other hand I am more consciously proud of myself and how far I have come than I have ever felt in the rest of my life.
Eventually, with help (for which I have learned not to be afraid to ask) I hope to return to school with the overall goal of becoming a counselor for the newly disabled and their families; as I have come to a whole new level of understanding, discovering myself on the other side of the fence.
I am fairly certain that I have regained nearly all of my cognitive abilities, and while my physical handicaps and my anxieties currently prevent me from doing many things, I am hopeful that eventually I will be able to drive a car, ride my bike, and go dancing and rollerblading once more. But let’s take things just one step at a time, shall we?
My most difficult challenge, right now I think, is trying to figure out who Dan Tyler is anymore. I can tell you who I was prior to the suicide attempt as well as who I was not, but each day when I look in the mirror, I see a pale, gaunt stranger gazing back, and at night when I lie back and try to peel away my anxieties and worries, I often feel lost and alone. I guess it’s all a slow, sometimes tedious process. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and I try to keep that in mind as I shuffle through the pieces and try to make some sense of it all.
I have discovered my ability to write is still relatively intact, so I shall likely pen down a few of my thoughts and submit the script to a major network which they can make into a movie of the week. (Ha-ha)
But seriously, I have made that into sort of a project for those boring days when I don’t have to fill out any application forms (and, I might add, get subsequently told that they will review it and make a determination within 90+ days...)
So that’s me, in a nutshell (more or less).
As they say in Program (imagine me tipping my imaginary hat to my dearly dysfunctional mother): Progress, not Perfection.
Okay, thanks for your time.
I shall expect a heaping mass of get-well-soon cards and lilies before the week is out.

Dan
“In Germany they first came for the communists and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew... Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me - and by that time no one was left to speak up.”---Pastor Martin Niemoller

Friday, October 6, 2000
Okay, here we go again: back by popular demand! The unfolding drama that is better known as my life, or “How I tried to kill myself, woke up from the coma and had a variety of somewhat interesting physical, mental, and emotional disabilities.”
Chapter IV The dark days aren’t over yet, and our hero is left alone to fend for himself!
As I am sure you all can tell, my flair for the melodramatic is still alive and well despite Allah’s most devoted attempts to squash my spirit.
But seriously folks, this has been one of the more un-fun weeks since my return to the land of the living.
Most significantly, my all-too-brief marriage to Anthony ended on Monday when after several months of coping with madness and assorted versions of hell, he decided (understandably) that he had had enough.
We had been picking and snapping at each other for a few weeks, so I guess I should have seen it coming, but all the same, I admit that I was taken by surprise, not to mention despair when he said he wanted to end it with me.
So, anyway, to cut things short (or at least reasonably so) I guess this means things are really over although give us some credit for giving it that o’ college try. He is in the process of moving out, while I am remaining at the apartment.
Not that I am jumping up and down for joy about keeping the place and the car.
I must admit I am more than a little bit worried about trying to afford the place (okay, I am terrified).
Of course, I didn’t marry Anthony for the financial security, but since I spent the summer in the hospital and have not been able to return to work as of yet due to my myriad of problems (which in case you have forgotten include a 75% hearing loss, losses of balance and visual acuity, an almost totally incapacitating stutter, and a severe social anxiety disorder which resulted in several hospitalizing panic/asthma attacks) I have come to be dependent on his income, as distasteful as that admission is to me.
But, now, as I have told many of you tearfully over the phone, I am on my own again which amounts to the somewhat depressing end result of being alone and flat broke.
I guess there’s not a whole lot I can do about the first problem. If he doesn’t want to work on our relationship, I can’t force it; moreover, I don’t want to force it either even if I could. The real bummer is that I’m not only losing a husband, but also my best friend, which as you can imagine is a rather bitter pill to swallow. Still, I am trying to maintain some semblance of hope for us, at least that we’ll manage to salvage our friendship eventually.
Anywho, getting back to the second problem, once more I have had to swallow my pride and face the practicality of the situation, which is: that without help I don’t eat, much less pay rent. And so I asked many of you for money.
Thankfully, again, many of you have been able to say you would help out as best you could (which quite often I think is better than I deserve, and more than you know.) And so, I believe I will be able to pay my bills, and I have a great many thank you’s to make.
Thank you, thank you, and thank you.
I don’t believe I could say it enough times to truly express my deepest gratitude.
Although since my suicide attempt I have been able to ask for help for more readily than I had ever been able in my stubborn, pride-filled past, this was probably the most difficult thing I have ever had to ask for. Even now when I look in the mirror I cannot help but think of what a shitty thing it is to do to take advantage of my friends and relations in this way, and I can only hope that you all will forgive me and understand that I only did so because I am feeling like I am at the end of a distressingly short rope.
I have tried to get a variety of forms of government assistance, but under the best of circumstances it takes at least 6 weeks and up to 6 months before they will process my applications and make a determination. And in some instances, I have been turned down for several reasons.
Number one being the fact that my primary care physician, who has not maintained any follow up care to speak of once I was officially discharged from the hospital, gave inaccurate reports of my status to the disability review boards for Social Security and welfare.
Number two, I have also gotten several refusals because on paper it may seem to the untrained eye that I have a sizable asset in a mutual fund I opened several years back. On closer inspection, however, one would discover that the money is locked up in an IRA from which there is a sizable chunk taken out in penalty fees and other taxes for trying to redeem it before I turn 62 years old. Despite that fact, I decided I would go ahead and accept the fees if it meant I could get some money in the bank, but as luck would have it, it turns out that since I didn’t officially change my address on the account after I moved to Boston (being at the time rather busy in the hospital), when I tried to make the redemption over the phone, I was informed by the mutual fund company that in order to prevent fraud or theft they were going to freeze my account for 30 days, in which time (3-7 business days) they would send me the requisite paperwork needed to officially change my address and request the redemption. I am told that once my request has been received it will take the account managers an average of 20 days to close the account, send their info to the government, take out the necessary fees and cut me a check, which again will take up to a week to be sent through the mail to my apartment in Boston. For those of you without a calculator handy, that comes out to about 57 days, or shall we say, 2 months before I can get my hands on any of the money I had tucked away for a rainy day so long ago.
My caseworker at Massachusetts Rehab Commission has provided me with the forms and assistance to appeal Social Security and welfare’s decisions, but like everything else, the appeal process is a lengthy one, so even if it is successful (which is by no mean guaranteed) I am still looking at 3 months at least before I would get what minimal financial aid they can offer.
Still, at least I do have something to hope for, and once more, I have been learning how to stretch out my patience to get me through all the bureaucratic red tape, confusing jargon and frustrating slowness.
One point on which I feel some sense of pride is that at least I have opted not to take all the ineptness and jerking around on the part of my medical team sitting down, and I placed a formal complaint with the patient advocate at the hospital yesterday. It seems to me (and I have at least been backed up on this position by my case worker at Mass. Rehab) that it was at the very least unethical, irresponsible and unprofessional, perhaps even criminal to allow a kid who has already tried to commit suicide once and is still suffering from extreme anxiety and depression as well as a host of physical disabilities to leave the hospital without any sort of follow up care in place for him. They also provided neither reference resources nor agency contacts to myself or Anthony so that we could try to access outside help on our own save a referral to a treatment program for which I was completely unsuited and would not have been able to help me in the least.
As many of us who are in the health care profession are aware, the law requires that within a health care system the care of a patient must either continue until the patient is “better” meaning physically and mentally stable and no longer in danger from outside factors or to themselves. And once a health care professional takes on that responsibility, they re obligated to continue with it or transfer the patient to an equally or better trained health care professional. A failure to do so results in what is know as patient abandonment, both a legal and moral crime which could result in the loss of licensing, assessment of fines, and/or punitive damages, and at the very worst, harm to or death of the patient or other people as the result of the patient’s actions.
As a strong case for abandonment has been suggested by my case worker at Mass. Rehab, I felt impelled to fill out the complaint to the hospital about my inpatient care team as a whole, although I have managed to resist the temptation to vindictively sue them (which I hope is a sign of moral integrity).
An explanatory moment on Mass Rehab. It is the state agency which deals with people with disabilities. Their ultimate goal is to get people into the workforce in some fashion according to their ability and they do so through a variety of training and counseling programs as well as evaluations and assessments. They can also provide legal advice and financial living assistance, and they have case workers trained to help disabled people an their families in the long and confusing processing of applications to various government and non-profit agencies.
I take comfort in the fact that I am now being taken care of by a compassionate and professional case worker, but I am frustrated that I could have avoided the last 7 weeks of hell: searching out various agencies, standing in long lines, and filling out longer applications, and interviewing for hours at a time if I had gone to Mass. Rehab on Day One upon my release from the hospital. They also would have secured the specialists and referrals and analysts that I have needed and will need in the future without having to pull the teeth I have had such trouble with in the past two months, and I would have gotten into a mental health treatment program by now. And I wouldn’t have had to have done it all by myself. Who knows, if we had had the proper support, maybe Anthony and I would still be together now.
Don’t get me wrong, I guess in the long run it gave me something to do, and at least I finally have gotten into this agency, and I am more proud of my achievements than I have ever been before in my life, but it wasn’t easy. And I am mad dammit, because I slipped through the gaps in the hospital, and who knows where I would be if I hadn’t had the drive and ability to suck it in and go out there and fight for myself?
And that’s really what my goal has been in filling out this formal complaint—that in the end, the next time someone like me comes through the system, maybe they won’t have to go through it all alone--especially if they aren’t as driven or as capable as I have been lucky enough to be. It is not really in my nature to point fingers and say “Shame, shame, you guys really dropped the ball on this one!” Nay, rather, I would like my criticism to be taken constructively so that yeah, if I get an apology, that’s all well and good, but if they learn from their mistake and improve in the future, that would be reward enough for me.
Okay, enough of all the bad shit for now. Let’s look at the good shit going on in Dan’s life.
For starters, about three and a half weeks ago I felt a really profound physical change going on in my body. It was as if somebody flipped a switch one Thursday and all of a sudden after weeks of feeling lost, alone, afraid, and generally fucked up, BOOM, just like, that I was “normal” again. I suspect it was my medication, which I have been advised, needed to build up in my system, finally kicking in. Because all of a sudden not only was there this return to normalcy, but a relaxing of the tension and anxiety I had been suffering since my return home. My stutter virtually vanished and I began to feel at ease once again in large groups of people. I haven’t had a panic attack in weeks, and my self-confidence and self-assurance returned to more or less pre-suicide attempt levels.
Because of the tinnutis (constant ringing in my ears) I have been having a difficult time getting to sleep or sleeping for very long at a stretch, and I had been using Benadryl as a sleep aid since leaving the hospital. However, eventually that medication rapidly lost its efficacy, and I returned to my old friend, Prince Ambian to give me a goodnight kiss. For those of you unfamiliar with Ambian, it is a fun little pill that initially gives you some of the milder visual distortions of a light acid trip, yet unlike LSD, Ambian not only allows you to sleep, but it encourages it gently. And I might add you have the most interesting dreams, albeit with the sometimes-undesired effect of distorting the lines of dream and reality when you wake up.
Still, I like it very much, and my sleeping pattern has returned to something approaching normal, and I have been feeling much more rested.
Which is a great improvement.
Also, about a week and a half ago I had the most incredible dream the details of which I shall spare you, but the end result was upon wakening I found that not only were all of my deep, philosophical and pseudo-religious questions answered, but I also recaptured a truly integral part of myself that I had all but forgotten about.
It may surprise some of you to know that I had (and now have again) deep philosophical and religious/scientific beliefs, views, and values. I suppose it has been a build up over the years from various sources, and integrating them into my system of thinking and acting, but the biggest moment for me came a couple of years ago when I was in college and taking classes in Religion & Science, as well as Statistics, and Philosophy.
Somehow the readings and discussion periods came to me in a moment of epiphany in which I, at the tender age of 23, at the time gained an understanding of the mysteries of life, the universe, and existence itself.
If, dear friends and readers, you are interested in my thoughts on these matters, I would like at this time to insert two or three papers I had written in college which I feel give a fairly succinct version of my beliefs and my reality. And if you are brave enough to delve into the twisted paths of my logic and come out unscathed, you will I think agree, that the most impressive achievement for me (considering my brain injury, and cognitive troubles when I first woke up) is that not only was I able to remember all of this, but I was also able to process it and understand it, and that more than anything else made me feel that my recovery has become nearly total.
One last point I would like to bring up, before you get into the really deep stuff (which you may want to print out and save for another day’s reading) is that my physical recuperation is also almost total. I still suffer from an acute hearing loss as well as the damned ringing in my ears, but I am back driving, rollerblading, biking, dancing, and (obviously) typing as well as or better, even than before my little” accident”. I recently saw a neuro-opthalmologist who gave me some drugs and inserted some special plugs into my eyes to fix my vision. And I even have hope for restoring my hearing in another couple of weeks when I see an Audiologist and neurologist who I think will be able to fit me for hearing aids. Even the ringing I have hope might go away as I am currently seeing an acupuncturist for a non-traditional treatment for it, and if I get into the Fenway Mental Health Care program (they tell me they cannot see any reason why I would be refused) I may be able to get a psychiatrist to hypnotize me into not hearing that ringing, or at least not be bothered by it so much.
So, overall I am doing really well despite my problems with Anthony and my financial straits. But the financial problem seems to have a bright light ahead (thanks again to so many of you and your help), and finally, perhaps the best news of all is that I have been offered a part time job due to start in 2 weeks doing the books for a restaurant and maybe getting a few hours as a prep-cook as well. Additionally, my case worker at Mass. Rehab says he is confident that he will be able to get me into the spring semester of school so I can finish up my degree at long last, and they will pay for most or even all of it.
And even with Anthony, I am still keeping my hope alive.
After all, stranger things have happened in these last few months, and he may surprise me.
Thank you, everyone.
I love you all, and I am grateful for your support.
RSVP when you can

Dan

(What I ultimately get out of the next few articles is both an understanding of the Universe and the meaning of life, as well as a reaffirmed belief that hope and dreams are real and justified. And that makes my dark days much easier to bear and the light days so much closer.)

Part I
In the Beginning...
   The concept of a Beginning, that is, a Creation of the Universe which was brought about by some Force, is something about which few people can agree. Modern scientists have put together the “Big Bang Theory” which under most scrutiny seems at least possible if not probable according to the laws of physics as we understand them to exist in the current universe of which we speak. The really great thing about the Big Bang Theory is that it can also, with some adjustments by both parties, be made to fit into the conception of the Universe as created by God maintained by the theologians.
Additionally, discussion about the order and structure of the Universe falls into dissenting camps as the scientists and theologians come to a head over the fact that the Universe under no uncertain terms is conducive to life, on at least one planet that we know of (our own), and that some evidence seems to indicate that the Universe was designed as such: for us.
These are broad issues taking up reams of paper to outline by the various authorities and opinion makers on the topic, yet given the limited space I am allotted here, I propose to not only present a new theory, as well as show how my theory is supported by some other authors and how it conflicts and perhaps even negates several more.
What I propose is this: the universe was forced into creation by the laws of statistics, and that this creative force is what governs, creates, destroys, and evolves the universe as time goes by, nothing more nothing less.
Okay, I agree that statement is less than explanatory, yet as I go though my “proof”, I ask that you, Gentle Reader, try to keep in mind the theory as it exists several lines above.
For starters, I am hardly the first person to propose that mathematics is something more than just two plus two equally four. Some, such as Douglas Lackey, George Wald, and John Polkinghorne used mathematics and more specifically the mathematics of sub-atomic and atomic particles (a.k.a. physics) to establish the Laws of the Universe. From their vantage point of mathematics, they each seemed to fall back in awe at the incredible immensity of the universe and how everything fits together in a wild array of shifting particles and energies that some might call Chaos, but would more appropriately be called Cosmic Harmony. These scientists as well as others have marveled (and justifiably so) at how delicately balanced our universe is from the subtle charges of the tiniest particles to the strange and wondrous properties of simple water molecules to the fiery nuclear reactions within the hearts of stars: all of which, they remarked, are vital to the creation of life, specifically human life in the universe.
Indeed, John Updike may have found the language of God hidden within Mathematics, claiming through such mysterious numbers as ten to the fortieth power (which appears in some not-so-random, yet seemingly unconnected observations) and the differences between the masses of sub-atomic particles as proof for both the existence of a God who thinks in terms understandable to humans as well one who structures things for our benefit.
This somewhat egocentric belief is summed up by the so-called Anthropic Principle proposed by many scientists and theologians alike which argues that as the universe has so many features amenable to the evolution of life, namely human life (which will in turn wonder how we got here), that there has to be some Designer pulling strings in our favor. Unlike Jacques Monod who theorized everything could have come about through chance, many scientists, John Polkinghorne in particular, maintained that there were just too many factors in play for life to have arisen simply by chance. We’ll deal with that argument later, but let me just interject for now, that under my theory life can and does arise simply by chance, and it is chance itself that pulls the strings in favor of life.
Let’s jump back for a minute, some 20 billion years which is a rough estimate of how old our universe is according to contemporary Big Bang theory. Now most Big Bang proponents from the most liberal physicists to the stubbornest theologians have come to agree on several features about the Big Bang.
First, that all matter in the universe was once compacted into an infinitely small mass which eventually became so unstable that it literally blew up spewing out mass and energy in The Violent Eruption from which galaxies cooled and coalesced into groupings of stars, asteroids, comets, and presumably planets, one of which some 15 to 16 billion years later solidified and became covered with liquid water, a supposed rarity in the universe, and physically incongruous in its properties which along with carbon and nitrogen make life as we know it possible. The debate stems from the fact that most scientists are discontented with the idea of what came before the Big Bang and what created the mass of particles which eventually made up our cosmos. Theologians on the other hand can bypass that question, having answered it before the Big Bang theory existed.
The answer simply is God, and few if any scientists are able to refute it. The best they can do is point to poorly understood phenomena to explain this apparent creation of something from nothing as Douglas Lackey did in his examination of the oscillation of quantum particles from somethingness into nothingness and back again, or by stating that just prior to the Big Bang there was a suspension or non-existence of the normal rules of physics which we have not and probably won’t discover as Norman Geisler and J. Kersy Anderson suggested.
Ultimately, scientists seem to have to make a leap of faith as Walter Jastrow suggests, for in the end, there appears to be no fully logical and understandable cause for the universe, except for, as the theologians believe, God.
Okay, that said, let’s hop back to the Anthropic Principle for a moment and address one more issue that most scientists and theologians with a few notable exceptions ignore. That issue is the idea that human life may not be the “ultimate” in the universe; that as Gerald Feinberg and Robert Shapiro suggested, we are not much more than tiny swimmers in a little pond amidst a much more diverse environment, and as such, the Anthropic Principle or the idea that the universe was created just for us is somewhat absurd at best.
Feinberg and Shapiro used a hypothetical conversation between rotifers, unicellular animals highly adapted to their specific environment, to show how probable it may be that life exists outside our universe with forms and features even the best science fiction writers couldn’t hope to imagine. In an infinitely vast universe even if our planet was the only one to produce life such as ours, it seems likely that life in some form or another would arise despite our best predictions to the contrary. Even on our own planet we come across anomalies which seem to go against our expectations: massive tube worms and blind crabs living at depths and pressures that would crush our strongest submarines; flies who live, breed, and die solely on patches of salt crust atop alkaline lakes in central Africa; and algae which can thrive in such varied environments as volcanic vents or sub arctic soils. Given the surprises on our own tiny planet, should we be so skeptical of life elsewhere?
Freeman Dyson introduced the concept of maximum diversity (something I’ll get back to in a moment) and what he postulated is that the laws of the universe are so “designed” as to make the universe as interesting as possible, and hence life, possibly being the most interesting feature of all, arises in all its forms. Following that logic, it seems that the universe in all its vastness would still seem pretty dull if life only existed on one tiny planet.
Now, let’s jump all the way back to my original proposal, which if you’ll recall was: the universe was forced into creation by the laws of statistics, and that this creative force is what governs, creates, destroys, and evolves the universe as time goes by. Arguing from the stance of mathematics is appealing to many people: the scientists most assuredly breathe a sigh of relief when difficult concepts are reduced into logical, linear proposals, and many theologians find the applications of science and mathematics to be useful in confirming their own belief systems. About the only group from whom one encounters resistance are the Barthians, knowing or unknowing followers of Karl Barth who as a counter to John Updike’s proclaimed that it is useless and moreover demeaning to find a logical proof for the existence of God in mathematics or any other science. God is a truth that one encounters through faith, through experiencing the numinous, which cannot be explained by simple words or letters. Furthermore, attempts at doing so relegate God to a God-of-the-Gaps position in science; ultimately explainable by man, who if one is a true believer, is in truth below God.
Barth’s position, I believe, is a good one, because it draws a line in the sand on the issue of faith. Faith and belief, as I have discussed before on the topic of miracles, cannot be questioned, or rather, after a set amount of questioning, faith is the end result: you either have it or you don’t, but those who do; they cannot be shaken.
Fritjof Capra addressed this issue of faith by presenting it as a paradox in that faith is something most people wish to share with one another, yet ultimately it cannot be explained or expressed in mere words, and that everyone has to come to his or her own answers. A good teacher can try as hard as he might to get his students to that point, but no matter how hard he tries, no matter how diligent the student, the leap of faith is only experienced through enlightenment, or the numinous, or revelation.
Whatever you call it, the answer, the truth is the same: either you get it or you don’t, but when you get it, you simply know the truth without explanation or justification.
That said, let me finally get back to my proposal and attempt to explain it (even knowing that you, Gentle Reader would “get it” or not with or without my help).
I believe the secrets of the universe (beginning, existence, and end) are to be found in statistics because statistics is the science of possibilities.
Thus, as Lewis Carroll would suggest I’ll start at the beginning:
First there was nothing.
Okay, that one is fairly easy to conceptualize at least to theologians, but the mere fact of nothingness implies somethingness because it is by the somethingness that nothingness is defined.
Let me put it this way: good things are defined by their relation to bad things; if there was no bad, good would have no meaning. Thus, nothingness implying somethingness yielded the utterly empty void of the universe, as it existed up until that point to the possibility of somethingness.
Now, herein is a paradox, something akin to the ko’an Capra and Buddhist teachers like to pull on their students. Somethingness seems to make sense (after all we are something), but if there is something, doesn’t that imply nothingness by which somethingness would be defined? And if so, how can there be nothingness if nothingness were defined by somethingness, yet if there were something, then there wouldn’t truly be nothing?
No, I’m not trying to play word games here, and truth be told, it can definitely be confusing. But as I hope I have clearly stipulated before: this is where belief and faith and perhaps a generous helping of Enlightenment come in.
Either you get it or you don’t, and it would be a waste of both our time to try to force the issue any further.
Anyway, let’s say for argument’s sake that we agree that something arises out of nothing if for no other reason than the fact that we are here (something) to talk about it. There, I have just shown you how one possibility no matter how slim the chances were becomes fact.
Let’s look at it from another angle. I believe that because of this first development, something from nothingness, that the universe—its birth, existence, and end—is governed by a creative force that rather than God I call Possibility. As such, statistics show that no matter what other seemingly immutable laws to the contrary, anything that is possible will eventually happen. Evidence of this can be found in the seeming miracles and anomalies we experience in our everyday lives. Being dealt a perfect hand in bridge has astronomically high odds against it, yet every so often it happens anyway. Frogs randomly changing sex has even higher odds against it, but ask any amphibian biologist, and they’ll tell you all about it occurring any number of times. Indeed, the idea of any tiny planet flying through the universe coalescing out of so much stellar dust and rotating on a tilted axis and then being pulled into orbit around a medium sized, yellow sun is in itself next to impossible. And then for such a planet to form liquid water on its surface and plants that are able to replace its toxic atmosphere with one breathable by mobile creatures is an additional battle against the odds. And then for life to arise from the sea in its myriad forms...well, you see where I am going, and it’s no wonder some folks see a Grand Design therein.
The secret, however, is that it has to happen!
As I stated before, anything with a possibility, no matter how small the odds, will eventually occur.
Why?
Because the universe has an infinite number of chances to “get it right”.
What’s more, is the almost unbelievable fact, that if it has an infinite number of chances to “get it right” there are an infinite number of times it will get it right! That’s the incredible thing about infinity—it goes on forever. Some detractors would say that the universe isn’t big enough for that, and though it is large, it doesn’t really go on forever. I accede to this point by saying, maybe that’s true about this universe, but what about the last one? Or the one before that? Or the next one? Science has yet to have determined that the last Big Bang was really the first one, and in fact according to current laws of energy and motion, in truth it seems highly more probably that eventually the universe will slow down and collapses in on itself, heading back to that infinitely dense and small particle from whence it came, and indeed, our universe then, may be nothing more than one in an infinitely large cycle of creations and destructions. Or if you’d rather have the simple explanation, chalk it up to the principle of maximum diversity in which it seems that the Universe almost wants to be as interesting and as varied as possible.
These huge numbers (infinite numbers, really) come into play again, however, statistically speaking in the Law of Large numbers, which states: "that the observed mean of a sample approaches the mean of a distribution of any outcome as the number of trials increases" (this is a continuation of the complex answer, so skip ahead if you’d like if you’re already “getting it”).
Basically, what I and my fellow statisticians are stating here is that any possibility becomes more and more possible as the number of trials increases, and when you are talking in terms of infinity, then that possibility inevitably becomes a reality, not just once, but an infinite number of times as well. It is also through this law that any number of “miracles” or incongruities are explained because what happens is things start to take on patterns because once a possibility becomes a reality the chance of that possibility becoming reality is increased.
Thus, Roger’s insistence about the importance of ten to the fortieth power may well have a solid grounding as it relates to the structure of this universe. However, in the last universe that number might have been seven, and in the next it may be eight to the ninety-seventh power. Any possibility can become reality, and will eventually.
So, where does that lead us?
Right back to the start.
I have founded my belief in the idea that the universe is creative and that the creative force in its origin is possibility. It doesn’t matter how it goes about creating, it just does.
Thus, this viewpoint is again ultimately one based on faith, faith based on a moment of enlightenment that I cannot share with another person if I were so inclined.
Throughout this paper, I have used the word “ultimate” perhaps more than I ought, but in real terms, that’s what we’re talking about: ultimate beginnings, ultimate purposes, ultimate ends. Therefore, I don’t believe in any sort of personal God simply because I can find my truth outside a personal God, and I don’t think ultimately the universe really cares about us and what we do with our planet. After all, the cosmos is going to just keep on producing (and destroying) an infinite number of worlds and galaxies and universes for eternity. Thus, I come to one final proposal, that being perhaps beyond the scope of this discussion, and I suggest that because of the uncaring nature of the universe we ultimately have free will. For if nothing we do really matters as far as the Universe is concerned at least in terms of obtaining or being denied some Final Reward by an Ultimate Judge (a.k.a. personal God) then all that we do here on this tiny blue planet has meaning only because we dictate it to be so. We are our own judges of ourselves and each other, and indeed of the rest of the planet, standing as we do at the top of the proverbial food chain.
Perhaps, then I’ll stop now leaving that idea floating around. I have as best as I can “explained” the origin and existence of the universe as well as alluded to its end. But in this day and age, free-willed beings that we are, perhaps it is more important to understand our beginning, our existence, and finally what power we shall wield in determining our end.

Part II Science and the art of reductionism
“In the beginning,” Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson might say, “there were only ants. Yet, from these seemingly inconsequential creatures arose nearly all other forms of animate life, including the highest evolved form of which we are familiar, Homo sapiens—human beings.”
Well, actually Wilson probably wouldn’t put it exactly that way because he knows as well as you and I do that given current evolutionary theory ants and humans are not in any way shape or form related to each other except as common descendants from the first unicellular animals.
However, given Wilson’s proclivity for reducing mankind to the barest essentials coupled with his almost eerie passion for the intricate lives of ants and termites, I find it no small wonder that he hasn’t tried to draw some sort of lineage between the Hymenoptera and the primates.
Wilson is one of the founders and probably the most vocal proponent of sociobiology, which goes one step beyond basic evolutionary theory and draws conclusions about the social workings of species based on their genetic heritage.
He is a reductionist to the nth degree, so to speak.
Reductionism as we have already noted in earlier essays is the explanation of scientific materialists for nearly everything in the universe about which science or pseudo-science can make a speculation. Reductionists “break things down” into their basest levels, stripping them of magic, illusions, and vagaries. Wielding the Torch of Objectivity, they claim to promote the truths of science and mathematics in their observations of the natural world and surrounding cosmos, theoretically in the pursuit of knowledge and an understanding of the workings of the universe in terms of physics, chemistry and mathematics.
Thus, a frog is reduced to “an amphibious life form made up of primarily hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, and water with other trace elements constituting approximately one twentieth of the creature’s mass.” Similar statements could be made about a tree, an elephant, or a person as the reductionists pick away the layers of complexity which make each creature, rock, cloud, and ocean distinct and reveal them for what they “really “ are.
Sociobiology is then a specialized form of reductionism in that it focuses more on behavior rather than physical characteristics and attempts to explain why creatures act the way they do, again in terms of physics, chemistry and mathematics.
Although few sociobiologists will spell it out so clearly, they propose that the purpose of life is to survive (or at least long enough to replicate itself). If living organisms can hang around to help care for their progeny, so much the better, but only in terms of this making the next generation better suited towards survival.
So, Wilson and his fellow sociobiologists wander outside their respective fields of science, which range from zoology and entomology to astronomy and chemistry into the realms of psychology and sociology, offering their research and observations as explanations for the phenomena of the social sciences.
For example, ethics and morals to Wilson are of no intrinsic value in themselves, but rather are valuable only inasmuch as means to the ultimate end: survival. Developing loving friendships, not stealing, and caring for children are genetic guidelines, or as Wilson calls them, “epigenetic rules” by which society abides simply because by following them, humans as a species thrives, breeds, and survives.
Wilson elaborates on his theory in his ideas about the existence of altruism and whether or not it really exists. Wilson points out that altruistic behavior is not very altruistic from the standpoint of any individual’s genes because by doing favors an individual to some extent can expect a return of that favor which in turn will help him or her to thrive and survive, thereby assuring the transmission of the individual’s genes on to another generation.
I could continue discussing the various other points Wilson makes in favor of sociobiology as well as the evidence he presents to support his claims, however this paper is neither long enough nor is that within the scope of what I am trying to point out here. Instead, let us move on to some of the criticisms of Wilson’s theory of sociobiology and namely why I believe them to be valid.
For starters, sociologist, Peter Singer points out that Wilson doesn’t seem to take into account the effects culture has on individual ethics and morals. By Wilson’s reasoning, it would seem that all humans would have a virtually universal code of human rights, adjusted slightly to accommodate for environmental differences. This is where the entomologist peeks out in him, because ants, for example, work and live together much the same way no matter where they reside. Their behavior differs only due to environmental factors, and the same could be said about thousands of “lower” species from insects to frogs to mice to deer.
However, humans are not mice or deer or insects or frogs (a fact I think Wilson tends to forget at times), and our ethics, morals, and cultures are influenced by much more than the environment. Sociobiology cannot sufficiently explain the differences in ethical standards between say the citizens of the Aztec Empire and the invading Spanish conquistadors or the Australian aborigines and the British colonizers. There have been (and still area) huge chasms between the ideas of marriage, care for children, respect of elders, and status of politicians of various cultures that simply cannot be explained by sociobiology. One has to examine the individual cultural influences to make explanations of any sort possible, and as Singer noted, Wilson seems to ignore this crucial fact.
Additionally, theologist, Arthur Peacocke faults Wilson’s claim that all ethics and morals are illusory, and are biologically useful only because we function better when we believe in an ethical code.
I would not entirely disagree with Wilson on this point because I believe that as an axiomatic step in the formulation of an individual’s code of ethics one has to come to this fundamental discovery about life. The realization that just about any and every thing we do has virtually no significance in the “grand scheme of things” is a humbling experience. In my work at homeless shelters I have watched this occur on several occasions with alcoholics and drug addicts who “hit rock bottom”, and admittedly it is unsettling to say the least.
However, given Wilson’s theory, it seems as if that’s all he can accept—that there is no real morality and that all beliefs and ethics are transitory illusions. What he does not understand (or if he does, he does not explain) is that from that base level of understanding a system of ethics, morals, and beliefs can be constructed, and it is significant!
Why?
Because each individual that goes through this process makes those beliefs significant. Oh sure, those ethics and beliefs may not be important to you or I, but for each individual, they are important and significant, and no one, not Wilson, Shakespeare, Einstein or the pope can take that significance, that dignity each individual instills in himself or herself away. In that same line of thinking, I would like to address one final problem with Wilson’s theory of sociobiology, what scientist John Haught calls the “hierarchical vision of reality.”
The hierarchical vision of reality is the essence of reductionist theory, and yet it is also the reason why reductionist thinking fails. Basically, as we have seen, a reductionist sees certain structures whether it be a man, an animal, a mountain, or a culture as a conglomerate of decreasingly smaller parts. Thus, a man is a collection of organic chemicals and elements that react electrically together to create a living organism. There is nothing wrong with recognizing the basic truth of such statements, but as philosopher, Michael Polanyi suggests, it would be extremely wrong to deduce that that is all there is to a man. One is reminded of the old Indian fable about the three blind men who encounter an elephant. They perceive only its parts and deduce faulty conclusions about the nature of the elephant, i.e. it is really a tree, a snake, a fan, but the fact remains, that quite apart from its trunk, tail, and ear, the animal is in reality an elephant. The moral of this fable (and the lesson to be learned from the mistakes inherent in the theory of sociobiology, I might add) is that one needs to realize that besides all the tiny parts, there is an incredible organizational pattern which manifests itself in increasingly complex structures which not only gives dignity to the structure but invalidates the possibility of that structures from being entirely reduced to its elemental components.
A man is not a frog nor is he a tree although all three possess the exact organic components.
However, all three are wonderful and important in their own ways, being defined by the pattern in which they were created, not the stuff of which they were made.
As a final thought, it would seem then that contemporary evolutionary theory matches well with religious ideology in that both epistemologies seem to indicate that life is making progress. More and more complex structures are arising, from inanimate constructs of molecules to full-blown living organisms in a myriad of shapes and sizes. With every new pattern of structure, so too arises a new level of dignity and wonder, and while Wilson and the sociobiologists may do all they can to refute this ideal, picking things apart as best they can, one has to wonder how sad and disgruntled they must be if they truly live with no meaning.

Part III Miracles and God

What is a miracle?
Philosophers, theologians, scientists, poets, and essayists seem to have been struggling with this question along with the rest of mankind throughout most of their lives. Scholars and laymen alike have sought to clarify and condense the concept of miracles into a concise, easily understood universal listing, a Field Guide to the Miraculous, if you will, through which all questions and doubts can be answered and allayed via a referencing process that the youngest child could understand. The very ambiguity and vagaries of the subject matter are so extreme, however, that only a fool or a simpleton would dare to believe miracles could be defined by just a few words. Or perhaps a very wise man could do so; some guru on the mountaintop with all the answers to life, but hardly a person to whom the common man could relate or logistically seek answers.
I propose, however, that despite the complexity and the warring factions, a person need neither be a fool nor a guru, that your ordinary Joe, a person like you and me, with only the simplest criteria, can make the distinction between the miraculous and the ordinary.
Robert Spivey and D. Moody Smith pointed out that the first few books of the New Testament contain references to more than thirty miracles, most of which were performed by Jesus Christ. They state that some arguments can be made from the scientifically skeptical point of view that many if not most of these so-called miraculous events may now be attributed to fairly uncommon, yet entirely scientifically proven natural events. For example, resurrecting the newly dead may be passed off as rousing someone from a deep coma, and many stories of healing might be attributed to the use of herbal remedies and accidental therapies that were not fully understood at the time, but have since found validation through science. However, the stories of the miracles, “real” or scientifically anomalous, served the purposes of the founders of the early Catholic church.
Miracles, by their definition: acts of man or nature which display the power and existence of God, served a two-fold purpose. Unbelieving heathens could likely be swayed to the conversion to Christianity as a miraculous event served as a sign that there really is a God.
Furthermore, miracles served as evidence of the favor of God, in effect bolstering His flocks’ beliefs and strengthening them during hard times.
One of the major problems of holding miracles up to this standard is that skeptics such as the one portrayed in an essay by Paul Davies regularly ask things like “Yeah, but what about when the faithful person prays to be healed, and her prayers go unanswered?” It would seem that if a miracle is an event enacted by God or through one of his chosen to aid his believers, all sincere prayers would be answered, and additionally, all suffering, war, famine, and disease would have no place in the world except at God’s whim. Current interpretations of the New Testament no longer attribute dark emotions like anger, jealousy, or vengeance to God as all these sins are ascribed to mankind alone, so instead of saying God may have caused an evil deed, most believers respond to this attack by stating simply that “God works in mysterious ways and that it is presumptuous of man to even try to know the mind of God.”
I have always found this to be a rather cop-out of an answer, rather akin to the parental “Do as I say, not as I do,” or “Because I said so, that’s why”. Quite simply, these types of responses seem to endeavor to put the questioner “in his place”, reminding him of the superiority of the parent or God. At the very least, this answer is the one held in reserve to be used when a believer’s back is against the wall, because who could refute it? God may well work in mysterious ways, and who among men of faith would dare criticize Him?
Karl Popper, although not relating to the question of miracles specifically, explained this phenomena of “excusing” God’s actions or lack of action by examining the types of theories of beliefs that people propose and maintain despite the fact that integral portions of their theories seem to be invalid. Popper used the term “conventionalist stratagem” as this is the strategy used to explain events that occur contrary to the usual conventions of a theory. As an example, he brought up the Russian Revolution, which according to Karl Marx should not have occurred, at least not in 1917 when the vast majority of Russia and its neighbors was populated by agrarian peasants. Adherents to Marxist communism would present an ad hoc explanation (one that grasps at straws to maintain itself) that, despite the timing and seeming incompatibility with Marx’s theory, Russia was still able to form a more or less ideal Communist society, and anyway, if you looked under the surface of the Bolshevik Revolution, the fabric buried within (or at least the sentiment) would match that required for a Marxist industrial revolution.
Overall, one gets the feeling that the believers of such theories and excuses, religious or ideological are rather wishy-washy. Ultimately, however, as Paul Davies also pointed out, it comes down to a question of faith.
Therein lies our answer to the original question, that being more or less, do miracles exist, and how are they qualified as such?
It is not enough for a miracle to be an event which occurs, however unlikely, that is contrary to popular scientific knowledge. Richard Dawkins demonstrated that nearly all events in at least the physical world are statistically probable because in an infinitely vast and ageless universe all things are likely to eventually occur at least once and often repeatedly.
Most everybody has stories about running into long-lost friends in foreign airports or just missing a bus which later crashes or even more mundane every-day coincidences that have a high degree of probability stacked against them from ever occurring, and yet somehow they do. At the very edge of this type of coincidence might rest the miracles of healing or resurrection or incredible disturbances of the natural world.
One can, I suppose, believe that such statistically improbable occurrences were enacted by God or some supernatural force especially if they had a distinct personal effect on the witness, but openness to other explanations partially shunts God aside to make room for as-yet-to-be-explained processes of science. The God-of-the-gaps finds His niche shrinking as science, even theories of future discoveries increases man’s awareness of the physical universe.
What all these essayists failed to propose is that man, himself, has power over miracles, not so much by enacting them which few men are liable or wont to do, but rather in their interpretation. An individual’s belief is what validates a miracle, and true faith cannot be discredited. To claim otherwise is oxymoronic, because faith in and of its essence mandates a belief in something that can not, and most importantly, will not be explained by pure reason, logic, or science.
I agree with theologian, Paul Tillich in that he believed what creates the foundation of belief, and upholds and supports it, is the “experience of the numinous” which is also what I feel constitutes a miracle. The numinous can be discovered in any experience, common or exceedingly unlikely, which connects man with his perception of God.
Quite often the experience itself helps to shape that perception as well.
I find everyday miracles in my life when I see a sunset or a rainbow or when I play with my dog in the yard. I can understand and appreciate the science of refracting light in air and water molecules that create such colors or the pack mentality that causes my dog to consider me an Alpha male while his “play” is really instinctive training to fight, flee, or hunt. Deep down, however, I also cannot help but believe that something above and beyond all understanding urges the sky to be beautiful and my relationship with the dog to be friendly and joyous.
Miracles, then, are anything in which a man connects with God.
Subsequently, this connection nourishes his faith. Try as hard as they might, people cannot make a comprehensive listing of what is miraculous because it all depends on one’s point of view. As I mentioned, it is a question of faith combined with individual experience.
One thing is for certain, however: miracles do exist if for no other reason than the fact that whether fool, average Joe, or guru, I say they do, and as an aspect of my faith, this statement cannot be refuted.
However, in this often-troubled world, I also find comfort in the belief that other people experience miracles as well.
They would be missing out on quite a lot if they don’t.
In fact, they’d be missing the point altogether!

Dear John, October 11, 2000
You have also been on my mind more than once over the past few years, especially during the times when I have found myself in need of a mentor. To bring you quickly up to date on what I’ve been up to and where I am headed now, I shall briefly relate to you my recent adventures, and I will also send along some attached letters that you may find of interest.
After I left Tucson, my dog (named Tucson for his birthplace) and my then girlfriend Caren and I headed north and eventually settled in Bozeman, Montana, some seventy-five miles to the NW of Yellowstone Park. I found my way back into the university, resuming my studies in sociology, and for a time was fairly successful in promoting and expanding EER. I went on a tour of the West, giving two to three seminars a week to high schoolers, promoting the virtues of living and working and traveling overseas. I also eventually was asked to teach several courses at the Adult Education Center where we had workshops on visa and passport preparation and dealing with the frustrations of culture shock. However, eventually life in the rural West began to wear on me, and the thrill of a small town agricultural school quickly lost its allure, so the three of us packed our bags and headed to New England, first to Portland, Maine, and finally to Boston where I live now.
Caren and I also tired of each other’s company, and I eventually crossed over and came out as being openly gay, even though the two of us are still close friends. I found a new career providing direct care and support to disabled people living in a group home setting, and also met a wonderful man in Boston who persuaded me to move there. Anthony and I were married at the top of the Empire State Building on June 25, and upon our descent to the streets below it seemed as if everyone in New York was celebrating our union because it was, of course, Gay Pride Day then.
I am sorry to say that the party didn’t last long, however, and due to a number of snowballing problems, the largest of which being my long struggle with clinical depression and anxiety, I ended up taking a large overdose of sleeping pills on July 14th and subsequently went through a minor hell upon waking and recuperating from the shock to my system. Most of all that is detailed in the attachments I will send along, but rest assured all is well now, and Anthony and I are stronger and happier than we have ever been including when we were both single.
I am striving to get back to work, and have secured a part time job doing the accounting for a little Italian restaurant near my apartment. And I hope to go back to school in then spring in a program learning how to train other assistive animals as I have worked closely with Tucson to meet my many needs during this crisis.
Please give me a call or write back when you can. I was very much gladdened when I opened your email the other day and would enjoy consistent correspondence with you if you are amenable.
Peace and good fortune,

Dan Tyler

Hey Everybody, October 19, 2000
Sorry to have gone shrieking crazy and then apparently dropping off the face of the earth. After last week I ended up going away with some friends from Maine for a few days. I also got really sick and lost my voice, and I mean REALLY lost it! Else I would’ve called you before now. Just so you now, I was very touched my how many of you responded in my hour of need, especially financially, but as it turned out, I got a windfall of sorts at the last minute, and so I have not cashed any of the checks that were sent to me, and instead tore them up into tiny bits. It means a lot to me that so many of you were willing to help me out, but I know that most of us aren’t exactly living on easy street, so I’d rather not take the money if I no longer need it. I will explain all in a day or so, but for now I am very tired, so off to bed with myself. I will say that life as usual has dole out a new and surprising hand for me, but the tale can wait until the morrow.
Cheers,

Dan Tyler

October 17, 2000

Okay, I am back now. Problems with my DSL line have prevented me from sending out any electric correspondence, but for now (at least) it seems to be up and running again.
I also have not called any of you because last weekend I came down with a fairly nasty cold which gave me a very sore throat, and I could barely talk to the person sitting next to me on the Metro, much less on a static-y phone line.
Anywho, now I am more or less back up to snuff, and re-connected to the world, as it were, so once more, my story unfolds…
If memory serves correct our hero (c’est moi) was lingering on the edge of a somewhat nasty precipice, being dealt a foul hand of lousy options including striking out on my own without Anthony alongside and having to plead with you, the Gentle Masses for financial assistance in order to get by for the next few weeks.
Well, as luck would have it, I was persuaded by my friends to accompany them to the far-off realms of majestic Canada for a weekend of reflection and self-analysis.
Okay, actually, we went to the 10th Annual Black & Blue festival in Montreal (the largest circuit party in the world to you straight shooters). Although I had my doubts about how much fun it would be without Anthony and without drugs, I did realize that I needed to get away from Boston, Anthony, my apartment, and more or less reality for at least a few days, else I was prone to having a nervous a breakdown. And while the financial side of the trip was somewhat of a downer, I figured that there had to be some reason why for all these years I have maintained pretty much the best credit rating in the Western Hemisphere, so like any other blue-blooded American I pulled out my wallet and put the weekend on plastic.
So, what happened?
First, and foremost, I went with my very good friend, Tom, who is also Anthony’s best friend and has been a pillar of support for us both to lean on since my first days in the ICU at Boston Medical. Tom is one of those rare individuals who can manage to be friends with a couple even after they themselves are no longer friends with each other. Tom is also one of those rare men, of whom Aristotle spoke when he professed that the friendship formed between two men is the highest virtue in life. Secondly, I also met up with my friends Brian and Jacques from Portland, Maine with whom I had gone to the Black and Blue last year, and while we are still very good friends, since I have moved to Boston, I don’t get to see them very often, and hence it was great to have something of a reunion with them.
Additionally, I also got to visit my friends Peter and Robert who live in Montreal, and with whom I have been in fairly close contact since we met last year. Peter has especially been very supportive of me since I got out of the hospital, and it was wonderful to get to see him throughout the weekend. We also ran into many friends and acquaintances from Boston and Portland and other circuit parties, and I also met a large number of the highest quality people from all over.
For my straight and/or non-circuit Readers, allow me a moment to discuss what a “circuit party” is. (if you already know, please feel free to skip ahead of this part)
First, let’s start with some history. I guess around the 1950’s a new sort of music evolved in America called Rock and Roll. A mixed up weaving of honky tonk country, swing, big band, and jazz, rock also developed a new sound entirely its own. And the slang to describe the way the music made you feel also evoked an image of what invariably often followed a night of dancing, namely hot, sweaty, good-old-fashioned poke & tickle.
As the 60’s began, rock and roll also incorporated into its flavor the passion and changes vibrant to the era. Revolution, desegregation, feminism, free love, peace, and sexual liberty became the focus of the new rock and roll lyrics. Even the instruments and the way in which they were played changed within a few short years as synthesizers and electric guitars became hugely popular even as the icons of the past—fiddles, horns, banjos, and such were largely abandoned.
Enter the 70’s with a new rush of things to shake up. A sort of neo-classic renaissance of music re-introduced some of the oldest forms of music to the modern age, and the old instruments were dusted off, re-tuned and played again as the music of the age continued to incorporate the rhythm of the times.
Soul music was revamped.
Funk found its way out of the ghettos and into the ‘burbs, and at long-last Disco was born!
What is this mysterious creature called Disco? Its harmonies seem to be in constant contradiction. How else can one explain how Beethoven’s 5th could bring out a new wave of rebellious youths onto the brightly lit, glitter-sparkled dance floors of the hottest clubs around the world? Salsa, tribal beats, post-modern classical rhythms, funk-ified background noises, and sweeping, repetitive, diva-powered lyrics gave rise to music’s greatest achievement: a style that moved the body and unleashed the most relentless, positive passions (joy, desire, freedom, sex, and love) onto the dance floor in a torrent of lights, makeup, costumes, colors, fashions, and fads.
Drugs, which have always accompanied music in humankind’s pursuit of recreation found a new crowd in the 60’s as experimentation of all sorts (drug, political, sexual, etc.) became the latest fad. With the new audience, new drugs were developed and new methods of administering dosages entered the mainstream collective. And while the conservative right noted with increasing alarm the changes of society as a whole, especially the effect of drugs as catalysts of those alarming changes, the sweep of events simply occurred too fast for them to control or even regulate effectively.
And so, as disco was born and matured within an incredibly short period of time, so also drug use also escalated to an all-new level. The good old stand-bys: alcohol, pot, tobacco, and even ancient traditional organic hallucinogens fell by the wayside as society began to realize it was simply more fun to feel “high” while dancing and fucking than dopey , “down”, or drunk and sloppy. Cocaine, once used as a “pep” ingredient in early colas found a massive following in the crowds at the discotheques as a relatively cheap (when compared to the cost of 10 drinks over the night) source of energy with few or little publicized or acknowledged drawbacks. Amphetamines, and hallucinogens (to some degree) also reached a new height of popularity as the club scene raged on into the wee hours of the morning and people needed a boost to keep dancing. And subsequently, downers, or “equalizers” received corresponding attention as people realized they would need to sleep, eat, and go to work, eventually; chores virtually impossible to complete while they were still speeding.
Finally, coinciding with the peak, and crash of Disco, a new drug came on the scene—MDMA, sometimes called MDA, but better known today as Ecstasy (or Stacy, Emily, E, X, or a variety of other slang terms).
Ecstasy is an incredibly cheap synthetic substance to manufacture, and if one has more than a high schoolers working knowledge around a lab, is also fairly easy to produce in volume. The DEA classifies it was a hallucinogen, but it is often combined with amphetamines, cocaine, crystal meth, heroin, morphine, acid, and a variety of other drugs to produce the “e” that one buys on the street. Apart from the speedy sensation or even the visual hallucinatory effects, ecstasy is sought after for it’s good-mood enhancement which it imparts to its users. It does so by stimulating an over-production of serotonin in the body (serotonin being the natural hormone which makes human beings feel “happy”) as well as releasing all of that serotonin in on massive wave, and by blocking the body’s re-absorption of the serotonin (basically causing the body to recycle the hormone over and over without losing much of its efficacy for up to about 48 hours).
So, E is a “feel-good” drug. It imparts feelings of happiness and sensory/sensual pleasure to the user. Basically, music sounds better, lights look prettier, people are more attractive, touching feels better, smells are more enhanced, and everyone (especially if they are using E as well or “rolling as it is called) is your friend. Ironically, most male users’ systems get so overloaded by the drug that erections are difficult, sometimes impossible to get and/or maintain throughout sexual intercourse. And all this is obtained at a fairly reasonable price with few if any negative side effects.
*Note: studies seem to indicate that very little or no damage is done to the brain from MDMA alone. If damage is done, it may be because the flood of serotonin may overload the brain’s synapses-essentially causing them to “burn out”. However, some evidence suggests that these tissues may in fact have regenerative capabilities, and the “burn out” effect varies from person to person. Additionally, the “burning” of these synapses seems to occur on a tiny scale compared to the number of synapses in the average human brain, so even a relatively large “burn” caused by multiple or overly large doses of E may still have no noticeable effect on the regular workings of the body. One effect, however, which is well documented by science, and recognized by most users, is the eventual depression which follows the expenditures of most or all of the body’s serotonin (or happy hormone). In heroin users, the drug diminishes or even “kills” the body’s ability to produce and/or use serotonin after even just a few uses. As any addict will tell you, without serotonin, their ability to even feel happy becomes non-existent, and the natural depression that follows is what makes them crave more heroin. Eventually it becomes a case of not “wanting-to-feel-happy” but rather “wanting-to-not-feel-so-bad”. MDMA, however, does not seem to have such an extreme effect on the body, and thus, is generally considered non-addictive. With time, rest, and a healthy diet, serotonin levels usually are restored within a day or two, so while a user may have a “blue Monday” or even Tuesday after a weekend of partying, by mid-week, life and good mood will generally resume like normal.
However, as a final note, as I already mentioned, you never really know what you are getting in the “typical” E off the street. Dealers cut them with all kinds of stuff ranging from baby aspirin to amphetamine to heroin to drain cleaner. Thus you find within the community of users classifications of “speedy E” or “dopey E” or “groovy E” or “love-y E” generally according to their concentrations of MDMA to other substances. The other substances also account for the variety of negative side effects on the body beyond serotonin depletion, which again run the gamut from minor brain damage to heart attacks or strokes. As with most other “club drugs” the main danger to the body rather than overdosing (most people couldn’t afford to pay for the amounts necessary to OD in one sitting) is dehydration from continual dancing in a hot, crowded space as well as oxygen depletion from hyperventilation of oxygen-poor or contaminated air (due to cigarette smoke, fog-machines, etc.) Those problems can be further exacerbated by drinking alcohol or caffeinated sodas which further dehydrate the system.
Anywho, back to our story, MDMA or E, which had been around since the 1920’s experienced a huge surge of popularity at the peak of the disco era. But come 1979, all of a sudden, the party was over. All of the things that made disco what it was: the music, the glamour, the fashion, the sex, and the drugs also ultimately led to its downfall. For a variety of socio-political-economic reasons America went through a polar change in 1980. People began to realize they weren’t as young as they were in the 60’s and 70’s. Life was suddenly more expensive, more serious, and more difficult. The futuristic “homes of tomorrow” built in 1960 were all of a sudden the high-rise slums and tract homes of the Cold War age.
AIDS brought an end to free love and sexual abandon, just as Jimmy Carter’s hopelessly naïve optimism made way for a conservatively practical Reagan. Film fell before the unstoppable rush to video much as bulky, scratchable vinyl albums became obsolete in the face of inexpensive, compact cassettes. The entertainment industry, long a difficult field in which to make a career, became awash in a sea ofcheap, talent-less acts, fighting for the scraps doles out by the mass media. Cable offered fifty different alternatives to the old big three or four networks, sacrificing only integrity and dignity of the medium, and so music and film followed. “Gone With the Wind, “A Streetcar named Desire”, and “Psycho” were left in the dust by “Police Academy”, “Ishtar”, and any number of slasher flicks; while the Beatles and Led Zeppelin gave way to Wang Chung, Bananarama, and Flock of Seagulls. Suddenly, a society of excesses, vice, and debauchery woke up and realized that perhaps it had gone too far. Concerns that various forms of fun were too extreme for everyone helped lobbyists draw up new rules and regulations that tempered things to a luke-warm level of mediocrity which, while it might not be as much fun for everyone, would be at least tolerable if not exciting. The generation that said “if it’s too loud, you’re too old!” had become too old!
So, what then, is a circuit party?
About ten years ago, gay culture, torn apart and shaken by the AIDS epidemic, and a suddenly intolerant conservatism, began to pull itself back together and rebuilt a new identity.
Gays have always been at the forefront of cultural trends and fashions. Perhaps it is because of the “forbidden or unnatural” substance of who we are that has puts us outside mainstream society, often shunned or reviled, stigmatized and persecuted, that we realized several things.
First, the old axiom: “Whatever doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger,” is true, which can also be read as: “Learn from experience, and BE ADAPTABLE.”
Also, we have learned that, resenting stones thrown at us, we shouldn’t throw them ourselves, and thus we are generally a lot more accepting of fringe society, gay or straight, and may even be defensive and supportive of other “outsiders”. Collectively, we discovered that if we couldn’t be “normal” (and what is normal anyway?) that we might as well good at being abnormal, or as the late, great drag diva Sylvester would’ve said, “Girl, if you can’t be good at least be good at it!”
I also suppose that the fact that gay folk have the most expendable incomes of any economic group, because A.) we tend to be overachievers, and B.) we tend not to have large nuclear families to support (well, at least, that we care to support, anyway) helps us support the arts and humanities.
Another side note, which I may have mentioned once before that I believe it was Johann Huisinga, who said that he thought humankind had evolved beyond into homo ludens, effectively the “people who know”, into “the people who enjoy”.
So, no longer is it the function of our lives just to know about ourselves and our surroundings, but also to take pleasure and enjoyment in the things that we discover. I further advance this theory that gay humans in general most closely fit into this category of more highly evolved human at least in terms of stereotypical demographic groups.
Thus, you’re average queer not only knows who and what he is in life and where he’s going, but also gets a kick out of his own fabulousness and how much fun he’s having.
In fact, I would also venture that this theory helps brings us back to the original meaning of the term “gay”—being lighthearted and fun-loving. If some humans are more highly evolved than others (re: homosexuals), separated from their cousins, simply by having more fun than the lower primates, then the easiest route to a higher level of evolution is through gay-dom.
(On a personal level, by the way, it wasn’t until I heard this theory, digested it, and made my own embellishments that I truly embraced gay culture and became 100 percent at ease with myself)
So, we stretch things to the limits, celebrating the strange and unusual (or the natural in some cases). And as the fringe elements followed, and the ranks of the “outsiders” swelled, suddenly the minorities collectively became the majority, and what the first had begun, the rest followed. Be assured that it is no mistake or accident that the hair styles, art, clothing, and music throughout the ages were created by the most fabulous fags of their times. Michelangelo, Aristotle, and Thoreau, gay, gay, and gay. Liberace, James Dean, and Elton John, yup, gay, gay, gay, too.
Hence, there really is no need to tell you all that today’s music, clubs, and fashions are all the result of the concentrated efforts of ultimately just a few fabulous queens. (I’ll tip my hat for the moment to Junior Vasquez, Gianni Versace, and RuPaul)
Back to 1990, music and clubs had gotten boring.
Drugs had gotten boring.
Even sex had gotten boring, (and dangerous) [all sad, but true].
Indeed, it seemed as if all the themes had been used up and turned into theme parks.
However, we gay men realized that if we didn’t shake things up and do something new, it wasn’t going to get done, so we took the bland contemporary music and turned it on its edge. DJ’s, producers, recording artists, and re-mixers dusted off their vinyl in the attics and started blending things together like never before. Drag queens dug into their closets and started pulling out the thickest tubes of lipsticks, highest platforms stilettos, and the most outrages wigs they could find. And other elements of the fringe pulled themselves away from the sewers and warehouses and threw their own ingredients into the pot. Gothic fetishes, heavy metal, and industrial break-beats found their way into the club scene, and ecstasy, more or less forgotten for the past decade, returned to the States from the European clubs where disco never really died.
Then someone realized that, sure the club scene was being revitalized, and the music, and fashion and drugs were better than ever before, and the vibes were fierce, and the sex was safe, but STILL there was something missing. Clubs, like always, came and went. The music still had its trends in popularity, but the average weekend was pretty much just that: your average weekend. But somebody said, “What if we not only had the best DJ’s from the hottest clubs from all over the world as well as the best singers and best dancers, and we put them into a huge space, bigger than any single club by itself; and we hired the best lighting and special effects technicians, and we extended the party from Friday afternoon and let it go non-stop until Monday morning; and because it was gay men who started it, we’ll design the whole thing for gay men, but we’ll also let anyone else in too; and finally, what if we could charge hundreds of dollars for tickets, but then turn around and give most of the profits to AIDS research charities? That would be so fierce!”
Thus, the circuit parties were born.
They take place all over the world, but the most numerous and biggest parties are held in North America with Montreal as the capital, and Miami’s South Beach a close runner up. It is a time when all prejudices are left at the door with your coat. All problems and worries and fears are put out of sight, out of mind for a few short days. Health, money, relationships, mortgages, drama, and fashion; all is erased from concern. It’s like a little break from reality, reinforced by the fact that there are thousands of other boys around you searching for the same thing. It’s about music and sex and drugs and food and fun and art and dance, but what a circuit party is mostly about is a celebration of life and how we as gay men (and the people who love gay men and women) have overcome our own personal trials and tribulations and have come together from hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles away to raise our voices in joy under one roof with our family.
The Black and Blue is one of the oldest, and definitely the largest and most extravagant circuit party in the world, and it begins on the Wednesday before Canadian Thanksgiving, and lasts all week until the following Tuesday. It is one giant party that spreads itself out over a dozen venues from clubs to hotels to gyms to cafes to parks. At the main event this year on Sunday, over 80,000 people packed themselves into the Olympic Stadium to dance while acrobats and trapeze artists flew through the air overhead. Fire blowers and magicians and jugglers awed the crowds from the stages, and drag queens and divas and dancers paraded around the massive space lit from above by spot lights, strobes, black lights, neon, glow sticks, and candles. The Grande finale culminated in a swirl of gauze curtains rising up from the center of the main stage which coalesced into a 30 foot high wedding dress, out of the top of which popped the bust and head of an incredibly made-up drag queen with, sparkling silver fairy wings and sequin-studded arms.
What did the weekend mean to me?
Like everyone else, I was looking for an escape from the reality of my life at that point.
After months of physical and psychological torment, I had come to what felt like the edge of an unfathomable precipice; my relationship with Anthony had seemingly come to an end, I had no money and no prospects, even my friendship with Caren, my constant companion had reached the breaking point. And so, as I have mentioned I needed a break, a space, time to breathe, time to reflect, and time to just be. I have loved circuit parties since the first time I attended one, indeed I had made them a part of my life over the past year, traveling to New York, Montreal, and Washington, DC to attend various events. Prior to my suicide attempt, I had planned on going to the Black and Blue this year as well, but in light of all my problems since waking up from the coma, I had pretty much signed off on my ability to go this year.
My anxieties and vision and hearing problems made it difficult go to the market, much less a loud, bewildering event with thousands of people. But as luck would have it, many, nay, most of my issues resolved themselves even within the past couple of weeks, and while many people including Anthony, Caren, my doctors, and others doubted my readiness and tried to get me to stay at home, I knew I was ready, more than ready. Not just for the Black and Blue, but to reclaim that part of my life which I held so dear.
And so I went.
And I loved it.
And I was fine.
Oh, I’ll admit, that I ran myself ragged, and it’s a wonder I didn’t fall over after the three days of dancing Tom and I went up for, and upon my return, I had lost my voice and succumbed to a nasty cold, But, I did it, and I’m still here to talk about it. Imagine, if you will, someone who just 2 and1/2 months ago had to be taught how to walk again; who suffered such unnerving panic attacks from the simplest confrontations with other humans that he would spend hours screaming and crying in the emergency room; someone who was stricken with such an incapacitating stutter that he couldn’t speak the simplest sentences; a person who, as he lay strapped down in a hospital bed semi-comatose for over a week as his body wasted away to skin and bones, while his doctors advised his family that in all likelihood he would never wake up, much less, talk or walk again, and if they wanted to they had the option to discontinue life support…
And then imagine this twenty-five year old boy, strong and limber, sparkling in silver glitter and polyester, forcing his way through a crush of thousands of bodies to climb atop a platform and dance with such speed, such intensity, such fluidity and grace, such glory as he twirled brightly flashing lasers in his hands through the air like some mad god as a roaring cheer washes through the crowd and it’s for me! They’re cheering for me! and the closest dancers to the platform freeze and their jaws dangle open in awe…
Magic.
Yes.
Miracle.
Yes.
Beautiful.
Beyond words.
I returned from Montreal that Tuesday, and so here I sit in Boston, once more, recuperating from a cold, but so alive! Oh, so alive!
Upon my return, several surprises greeted me.
For starters, the fund managers of my IRA somehow mysteriously changed their minds, and not only un-froze my account, but also liquidated my assets and sent me two checks.
Money problem solved, for at least a while.
Secondly, I was invited to a birthday party at the last minute, and one of the guests and I got to talking, and I was offered a job doing the books at a restaurant part-time, under the table, so I can both work I maintain all of my doctor’s appointments.
What-to-do-with-my-spare-time problem also solved.
Finally and best of all, Anthony, who was able to take some time and space for himself in the least two weeks, and especially during that weekend, not only realized that he still loved me, but also that he may have lost me, especially to the multitudes of other boys looking to hook up that weekend, and when I got back we sat down, had a long chat and smoothed things out, refreshed and ready to begin things anew. And now our relationship is better than it has ever been even from the early days.
So, marriage problem solved.
*Note. (He really needn’t have worried, since I haven’t even really been able to find another man sexually attractive or otherwise since we first got together, but I don’t suppose we need to tell him that, do we?
Okay, that’s my life in a nutshell.
Well, a big nutshell, I guess.
Thanks to all of you for taking the time to read this massive email so I won’t feel like my time here has been wasted, but I won’t expect anything even remotely close to this size in return.

Cheers, Dan

“I wonder what new and exciting things will happen to me today?” ---Piglet, from the House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne

Nov. 21, 2000

Okay, here we go.
More melodrama to add to a growing list, and I am sure you all are probably sick and tired of hearing about the various degrees of mess my life is in, but I need to get this out, and in any case it’s therapeutic for me to write this down. If you like, go ahead and drop this email in the recycle bin, but if you choose to stick it out, then right now I’ll let you know up front: things aren’t pretty, and although I am doing the best I can, I certainly wouldn’t say no to whatever help and advice you might have to offer. That said, here goes. Things have been strained (to say the least) for the past couple of weeks between Anthony and myself, and it had come down to the point where he said he wanted to end our relationship, and it was agreed that I would move out at the end of this month. Well, as much as it pained me, I tried very hard to accept this fate and just get through each day with as little contact and confrontation as possible, biding my time as it were and trying to tie up all my scheduled appointments before departing for the West on December 1st where I will be spending the holidays with my sister to whom I am giving my car as she needs one, and I can no longer afford it especially in the city. However, inasmuch as I have tried to be cordial and polite to Anthony and just creep around him without touching off any nerves, I guess he wasn’t willing to do the same with me. At every moment, it seemed, he would snap and criticize my every action no matter how small. I begged him to be nice, or failing that, at least to say nothing at all, and just leave me in peace. But I guess his hatred and spitefulness knows few bounds, and so he would do things like remove all the photos of us from their frames, and blast music that he knows would affect me emotionally and leave angry, demanding messages on my voice mail. Finally, today after work, I could take it no further and went to turn the music off, as I needed to use the phone. Like a couple of teenagers quarreling, he crank the volume back up, and as it was my CD player, I just unhooked it to take it to my room. He snatched it from me and hurled it to the ground where it broke, and I, frustrated past my limits, stomped on it and turned to go to my room. He picked it back up and hurled it at the back of my head, and I guess, in that same sad way how time slows down so you can watch in vivid slow motion a car accident as it happens, helpless and impotent even as your face hurtles towards the windshield, I knew in my gut that this was it, the moment of truth when all things would go afoul, and our marriage and any hope for a future relationship had gone past the point of no return, and while I struggled with the notion to throw something back at him, even picking up a glass bowl, and then forcing myself to put it back down, I turned and retreated to my room hoping against hope that the fight would end there. It didn’t and he came after me, ready to descend into a fist fight again, and threatening me with worse. I had sworn after the last fight that I wouldn’t allow it to come to that again, so I grabbed my bag and Tucson and left. Finally, everything came together in my mind, even though Shawn, Caren and others for a long time have been trying to force me to see the truth of it, but I guess I had to come to the realization on my own: I was in an abusive relationship. Verbal and emotional to be sure I had known for a long time, but I had hoped that it would be something we could overcome, but now without a shadow of a doubt, the physical nature of his rage was made evident to me, and as tortured as I am now emotionally, I had to make the decision to end it for once and for all. The last time things turned physical (yes, for those of you who were unaware, there was in fact a last time, and a time before that as well) I tired to convince myself that we were both at fault, and that a pattern had not yet established itself. Yet, how can I, Mister Statistics Himself, fail to acknowledge this pattern which had been so obvious to so many for so long? To bring you up to speed, the last time we came to blows it was in front of Jason and Dale, and I was left with a humiliating black eye for two weeks after. A lot of folks knew about that one, but let me now spill the entire truth; Anthony first lashed out at me physically the night before I attempted suicide. Indeed, it was that beating under which I lay helpless and resigned that was the precipitating and final factor which pushed me over the brink of despair, and we all know what happened when I hit bottom that next day. We had been arguing as usual over some absurd thing, and finally after the months of other extreme drama, coupled with my “natural” depression as well as the terrible drain on my serotonin from too frequent ecstasy use, I gave up on fighting and refused to say another word. I enclosed myself in whatever protective mental shell and tried to put my mind and fear and frustration and pain to sleep, even as I wanted to put my body to sleep. This was not anything he had ever encountered before, I think, for despite his goading, I would no longer speak. He would tell others later that I had slipped into a catatonic trance, and fearing I had OD’d, he gave me a “few desperate slaps” to see if he could wake me. Why then, I would later ask, didn’t he call an ambulance? No, instead he started swinging his fists. In rage, in fear, I know not, but I wouldn’t resist or defend myself. Indeed I almost welcomed the pain for here at least was something tangible—my wounded soul mirrored in my face as his hands battered my head and tore at my hair.
Weeks later, Monique and some other doctors and counselors would try to further explore what happened that night, but my memory was not entirely intact (I didn’t even know I was in a hospital or recognize my brother for several days, for Pete’s sake), and at the time I was only seeing the helpful, loving side of Anthony. And I cannot deny him that. He was my savior, and my strength through that long and dark time, but little did I guess he would come to resent me for “fucking up his life” even as I gained a new chance to live again.
Yet, at the same time, deep down there has been this gnawing pain, a familiarity with this scenario a hundred times over as I recalled how many times my parents had hurt me, sometimes with fists and teeth, or a belt, sometimes by just their words and will alone. Each time, there was that same pattern, of a blow up, then a quick cool down and profuse apology—attempting to heal the hurts...at least until the next time. It took me years before I was strong enough to protect myself, and years longer before the scars would stop aching—indeed there are many which have never really closed, or which have been re-opened and continue to fester. I am hopeful that with time, and at least Tucson and Dori by my side they will close, and I’ll be able to get on with my life. A great, gray cloud of sadness hangs over my heart now—not depression per se, although the difficult position I have found myself in of late definitely has led me to think often of suicide again, but somehow I have managed to turn away from that path, and you’ll just have to trust me (although a prayer or two wouldn’t hoight!).
The good news now, is that out of all of this, and though far from perfect, at least my health overall has gotten better a thousand-fold, and all that is left really is to get fitted for hearing aids.
Mentally, well, I guess you could say things ain’t perfect, but I am working on it, and I have hope that things will get better. I have been accepted to a rigorous mental healthcare program near Boston university where I would go as an outpatient 5 days a week about 7 hours a day for some intensive therapy and counseling for a month or so. I could go now, but with the mess with my car, I have decided to wait until I return from the West. Besides, with all else going on, right now I think the best place for me to be is with my sister, and just put Boston aside for a few weeks. I’m not trying to run away from my problems, you understand, but right now I need a time-out so I can catch my breath and gather my bearings.
So, that’s the story, well, save one part.
I don’t especially enjoy it, but at times, I have found prostitution as a means to an end.
Thus, while I remained faithful to Anthony all the time we were together as a couple, about two weeks ago, as I realized he and I were meant to walk separate paths I came down to this conclusion: I had no money, Anthony wasn’t going to help me any further, my frantic job search had yielded no results, and my applications for government assistance were lost somewhere in bureaucratic limbo. I also have a dog and a cat to think about, and they, or at least the cat, would most likely be turned away from a homeless shelter. And so I returned to turning tricks, hopefully just until I can get my feet back under me again which may happen sooner than later if the government checks finally arrive or if some decent employer will look beyond my tremors and hearing loss and give me a shot. But in the short run, I will do what I must to survive, and frankly this makes me feel like less of a whore than begging friends and family for help.
An unfortunate circumstance occurred, however, in that somehow an email directed at me found its way to Anthony’s mailbox, and it only served to inflame his already burning spite.
Enough said.
So, where are things now?
Well, I gotta admit times are tough, but then again (I might add without any bravado) so am I. I have taken another step in the right direction, I hope. Finally removing myself from an abusive relationship, I can now look forward to better things with a poignant reminder to keep me alert as I make my way over this next hill. And so, another ten days of doctor’s appointments, and then I shall be free for at least a little while to find a nice warm protected corner of the world (warm, Wyoming? okay, metaphorically at least) to lick my wounds.
Then a return to Beantown where first I shall find a place to live somehow, and then a good dose of mental therapy. After that, I cannot really say. I have a chance here to go to school, perhaps even to Harvard and have it paid for, which right now seems like the best plan.
Still, there is a nagging feeling that for me Boston has become a soured place with too few memories of laughter and too many reminders of pain.
We’ll see.
Okay that’s more than enough for now, and I hope next time I write it will be with a more jolly spirit as befits the season.
Wish me luck, and thanks for reading/listening.

Daniel

“Live each day as if it were your last, celebrate your love and friendships, and maintain neither grudges nor regrets.” ----Dan Tyler

A young, likely lad
My brother Glen wept for the first time that anyone could remember when he came from England to see me in the hospital. I and everyone else questioned why this grown man whom we had all thought so stoic, insensitive, even, was crying like a babe, to which he responded that in his mind, Danny was still just a little kid, someone who had never grown up, and who was perhaps supposed to remain forever young and innocent. As Glen and I talked about this in later weeks, I came to understand that for all intents and purposes I had been frozen in the vaults of his memory as the lad with whom he last had real contact when our parents divorced some nineteen or twenty years ago. Eternally rosy cheeked and bright eyed, mischievous grin, and tousled locks. Perhaps a few years ago I would have resented this mental image of me, but as I have grown older and perhaps a bit wiser, instead I think he has paid me a compliment of sorts. It seems none of us can deny the endless mark of the years no matter how valiant our attempts, but perhaps a little boy runs free of worry and care in the intricate gardens of my poet-brother’s thought.
I give to you all, then, a glimpse of me as I have appeared in various guise through the years, and as you struggle to open or translate these images with your browser, hoping against hope that a virus has not somehow encrypted its way into these attachments, I ask you to think on this:
How strange it is that a child so fair, a new parchment on whose surface nary a scratch nor an inkblot is revealed, should have before him a fate in which he will be cut and scarred, rent and bruised, shown the faces of Misery and Torment as though they were his constant companions even as Wisdom, Joy, and Experience etch their own lines into the corners of his face!
As I skim the book of his life, would that I could forewarn him of the trials he shall have to endure!
Yet, who could look upon such a face and divulge such information unto his virgin mind?
Look then hither, fair child, who one day shall become me! And let us spy out the path which your small, pink feet shall eventually tread….                                        *                      *                      *                    *   
Out of pain, madness, and infidelity will you be born into this world, bastard offspring of a lusty mother and a faceless father. Your unwanted birth will both destroy the last remnants of a poisoned marriage, yet somehow your innocence and guileless demeanor shall serve as the glue that maintains that same union until its final days. The two who assumed responsibility for your upbringing will heap on you as much pain, frustration, and resentment as they can without attracting the notice of the neighbors, or at least as such attention that would warrant your removal from their grasp by the guardians of society.
Friendless and alone shall you be as the years drag you out of your cocoon of innocence and treat with your peers.
For your parents will shatter your health and leave you ignorant, to be then outcast by the other children as a weak, ugly, and sickly thing, untalented save for the tremendous capacity of your mind which in turn will doom you to the fear and hatred of those with whom you would seek companionship.
Be true to yourself, yet not overtly so, for there are those in this world to whom truth is as foreign as an original thought, and again will be a reason for you to be hated and mistreated.
Noble, and honorable shall you be, yet these merits shall not keep you from hunger, and indeed you shall struggle in poverty even as those responsible for your care and safety debauch themselves, spending what might feed and clothe you instead on their own gluttonous appetites.
Know then, that this world is not meant to be fair no matter what the storybooks attest.
Nay, all that you shall ever have will not be handed to you on a silver platter like the head of John the Baptist, but shall instead be your reward for work done only by and for thyself. As a child you will yearn for the approval and affirmation of parents, teachers, peers, and others, but will only come to thee from thyself.
But life shall not always be difficult for you although you will eventually come to understand that it is the struggle itself, which makes life worth enduring. By your own determination not to lead a sedentary existence, you shall discover secret passions, untold joys, and forbidden ecstasies the like of which most men can only wistfully dream. Your dreams will become reality more often than no, though their paths to realization shall wander and never appear obvious, and even those which remain but dreams will serve to maintain your spirit and even inspire the hopes and wishes of others.
A bright light, a burning flame shall you appear in a slowly decaying world, and whither your glow is perceived shall all fall back in wonder and gladness. For lo! They shall know of the powers of love and faith come alive in human shape.
Your body shall at times sway from weakness and disease, and the realities of the world shall be yours to enjoy or suffer as you may. Fear and darkness will cloud your vision at times so thickly that even hope shall for a while fail in your breast. Your life will come within a hairsbreadth of failing numerous times; by your own hand, through the actions of others, and indeed by reason of chance alone.
And yet you shall prove true the axiom and grow ever stronger as each peril is overcome.
You will suffer the loss of the truest friends and loved ones, taken from you at times by those whom you may have trusted. Raped and abandoned will you be by one whom you once called brother, and all those you strove to support will desert you in your greatest need.
Your body will you sell to those as you need in order to keep your spirit alive, for of all things material and flesh will you come to grasp their inconsequence.
However, healing and succor will come from the last places sought and searched, and you shall know the love of men and women and animals such as few may truthfully boast.
Happiness shall be yours and sadness as well, ever as your spirit, mind, and body blaze forth like a white flame, and you shall tend the fire with yourself.
Yet contentment will be ever elusive from your grasp for your curiosity and need for change shall never wane, and yet that fact shall be its own comfort. As the years pass so shall you grow in wisdom and experience, and others shall seek your advice and counsel as a sage, yet it is your strength and compassion which they will desire more than all else. For these things you will give unending and willingly and you shall know the limits of all your other gifts.
So, my child, myself, I see before you a life as like to other lives as one stone is to another in an open mine, and some yet prove to yield the brightest radiance as with the polishing of many hands a fair jewel is revealed, though even the most magnificent diamond may not attract attention of naught else but remain secure in the knowledge of its own worth.
Push ever onward, little lad, plucky soul, and know that you have yourself as few men have known their own souls, and though the tide is strong and dark, you are not alone.
Perhaps now you know more of me, my motives, and the paths I choose to tread, and some of you will look on these photos and smile.
Let me know if you do. 

Okay folks, December 13, 2000

Here we go again with yet another edition of Dan Tyler’s Annual Yuletide Recap featuring highlights from the past year of our hero’s sometimes bleak, sometimes joyous, but never boring life as he has trod a somewhat winding path through these last twelve months.
As they say in Wonderland, I shall start at the beginning, and when I come to the end I plan to stop, so let’s put on our time-travel goggles and slide back\ to New Year’s Eve, December 31, 1999.
Our story unfolds as our hero is found to be packing a bag of club clothes, stainless steel jewelry, glowsticks, glitter, and an assortment of other necessities in hasty preparation for a 6-hour trip in the wee hours of the morning from Portland, Maine to New York City. Dan is accompanied by his faithful sidekick, Miss Caren, as usual, and a friend from the Bronx, Mister Rob as they prepare to ring in the new Millennium with the other millions of people in the Big Apple. A stop in Times Square that afternoon overwhelms the companions, and they are separated by the tide of people, although eventually Dan and Caren find each other again. Having made provision in case just such a thing might happen, the couple leaves Rob to his own devices and eventually find themselves within the doors of TWILO, a fairly pumping night club where they twirled their shoes off to a rather uninspired set courtesy of Junior Vasquez. Still, the night was not a total flop given the incredible energy of the room and the variety and quality of party favors available, and Dan managed to find a cute lad to snog at the stroke of midnight.
A return to Maine found Dan immersed in his duties with the “Company”, that is, Residential Resources where he assisted a number of special needs clients with their daily lives at several group homes in the area.
February locked Portland in the fullness of winter, yet somehow Dan and Caren still managed to get out of the city fairly often, heading down to Boston with relative frequency to hit the clubs there, especially as Miss Caren had found a romantic interest in a young lady from the Boston-Worcester area. Dan’s social life also seemed to peak at this point in time as a variety of friends from all walks of life managed somehow to find the new apartment of Taylor Street to be a comfy and convenient congregation place. Thus come Valentines Day weekend, a group of five lads, Dan included, piled into the new Toyota Echo and braved the wintry roads to Montreal for the 2000 Red Party, one of the smallest events on the circuit, but more friendly and intimate than most. Dan’s life was changed at the closing party when he experienced the numinous—that is, a magical, some might call holy, moment when everything came together for him on the dance floor in an instant of pure joy, sound, light, and motion.
It was also at this time that Dan was introduced to DJ Manny Lehman who throughout the rest of the year would have a profound effect on our hero’s life, spinning a medley of tracks that reached into his soul and awakened something not often seen before in this world.
The parties, the cold, the stress and germ-laden work environment, and Dan’s weak lungs came crashing in a few weeks later, and our lad found himself taking a couple of trips to the hospital when for the first time in his life he experienced life-threatening asthma attacks.
However, as the winter finally seemed to be relenting, our hero and his friends decided to gently enjoy the peaceful interlude between the change of the seasons. Springtime brought a 25th birthday to Miss Caren and the promise of a new, unexpected love for Dan when on a late night at Rise, a Boston after-hours club, our lad stared across a smoky room into the eyes of one Master Anthony Gentile. A whirlwind romance ensued, as magical and as passionate as any fairytale or story concocted by Hollywood, and by mid April the two had already pledged their troth and planned to marry upon the arrival of summer.
Now begins, however, a time of shadow for Mister Tyler from which he has yet to fully pull himself out.
It all began at the end of April when he made several poor judgment calls and suddenly found himself out of work. This helped get a snowball of depression rolling which began to pick up other elements over the next 2 months, and would nearly overwhelm him at midsummer.
First, though, Dan and his friend Shawn trekked to the nation’s capital to join the March on Washington and the adjoining Cherry 5.0 circuit party where Dan once more ran into Manny Lehman and enjoyed some VIP treatment with Warren Gluck and Victor Calderone. Dan also made friends with two other boys on the circuit, Oz from Columbus, and Tom from Kansas City, both of whom would become two of the strongest supporters of our lad in the dark days to follow.
The week following the March found Dan and Anthony disappointed by an off night spun by Danny Tenaglia back in Boston, but their relationship continued to grow as both boys were shivered by the bittersweetness of a long distance relationship.
Just before Memorial Day, Dan entered his 25th year, and sadly, it was here that events really spun out of control. A disappointing celebration and a subsequent fight with Miss Caren nearly ended their long time association along with alienating most of Dan’s other friends in Portland. He and Anthony trekked once more to Montreal, this time for the Wet and Wild Weekend where Dan was introduced to several more people who would become deeply important in his life, Anthony’s best friend, Tom, and the M&M boys from Toronto, although at the time no one really could have guessed how things would turn out.
After returning from Canada, Dan bid Portland farewell and accompanied Anthony to Boston where June found them sort of drifting as they waited to move into their new apartment on July First.
Boston Gay Pride found the happy couple face to face with Miss Kristine W, freshly promoting her “Stronger” album much to the delight of Anthony, and the following weekend found the trio of Dan, Anthony, and Tom heading once more to New York where their wedding atop the Empire State Building was cheered by the hordes of people in town for the largest Pride celebration in the country. Unfortunately, however, the fairytale came to a rather abrupt ending upon their return to Boston when I, longtime sufferer of “natural” biochemical depression, and strung taut by the loss of my career and friends in Portland, and saddled with the worries about living in a new city I didn’t really like, and compounded by a number of problems you already know about decided to end my life with the assistance of some 50 or 60 Percocets.
Five days later I came out of the coma and spent the next twenty days or so re-learning how to walk, read, tell time, and deal with my new physical conditions which included a hearing loss, tinnutis, tremors, and severe anxiety.
Remarkably, while it wasn’t as fun as some other ways I might have chosen to come about the same end, my family and friends put aside all our differences and rallied to my aid, lifting me out of the pit and back into the sun. I returned to the land of the living scared and confused, but stronger and determined to fight my way back to the top of the world.
At this point in time, while I had relied heavily on others, at least in the hospital, I found myself nearly alone to face the challenges of the world.
However, my dog Tucson, once an “ordinary” pet came to my side and together we have managed to accomplish every task given and overcome every obstacle laid before us.
And so now let’s leap forward through the Fall to Dan’s greatest accomplishment: rejoining the club kids in the world of dance in Montreal for the 2000 Black and Blue where he once more experienced the numinous and shone with an inner light which blazed before the awed faces of the other dancers thanks to the inspiring music of Mark Anthony and our old friend Manny. He also connected with a group of young ladies who have swelled the ranks of friends and supporters somehow attracted to Dan like proverbial moths to the flame. Dan and Tom also bonded in a rare friendship of which poets and philosophers have written sonnets and odes and treatises.
As we come to the end of November, however, we also come to what my well be the sundering of the marriage of Dan and Anthony as the stresses of the past months have taken their toll on these two.
When last we examined the situation, Dan had moved out of the South End of Boston apartment with Tucson and his cat, Dori and begun a westward exodus to both find himself as well as to turn over the Echo to his sister in Wyoming.
That trip was more than a bit surreal, and more of it has been written in another time and place, but eventually I stumbled in relative safety to my final destination in Sheridan, Wyoming.
Road weary, heart broken, lost, and forlorn, now here I sit gazing into the screen of a Hewlett Packard and wonder where the next year will take me. Offhand, I suspect I will take a trip into Montana next week to reminisce and greet old friends and relations as well as to wrap my arms about my oldest friend, the great old willow in who’s branches I grew up. After skiing with my brother-in-spirit Scott I will return with Tucson to the East Coast, hopefully in time to celebrate New Year’s Eve in New York City once again.
And then, ah yes, and then, a new chapter will have to begin. Most immediate are my needs to find a home and some sort of job on which I can live, and then I have more health concerns, mental and physical, to which I must return my attention.
As I said, I have been rarely bored over the past year, and I cannot really see any time in the near future when I will find myself twiddling my thumbs. I guess I can count myself lucky in some ways in that I never wanted to live a sedentary life, and it seems that wish has been granted.
Come, then, and join me in the New Year as we face whatever new and exciting days lay ahead. Have a happy and safe and magical holiday season!

Dan Tyler

Dec. 17, 2000
A journal entry of sorts.
I am now in Wyoming, enjoying the relative peace, quiet and solitude offered by a small town in the northern Rockies. The trip out here was one of the more memorable I have taken in the past few years, and while the 2700 miles were very real, or at least they have been dully recorded on the odometer of the Echo, the seven days it took to get here have taken on a surreal quality as if they were in a dream or some other life, far, far away.
As I departed Boston Friday morning fear, sorrow, frustration, and worry were my traveling companions, somehow having sandwiched themselves in the back seat stuffed behind the CD collections and snack-y treats.
However, as the miles rolled on by, slowly my companions fell off by the wayside, leaving just me and Tucson and an aching loneliness as we continued on our exodus west.
The sun was shining as we made our way through the woods of western Massachusetts and down into the rolling hills of New York. A lightness in my heart grew to match the weather, but somehow as if it was truly reflecting my mood, as evening fell and the light grew dim so darkened my spirits even as an icy storm rose up and spread a sheet of blinding whiteness across the countryside. It had been a few years since I had driven in a whiteout, but fortunately I kept my cool and managed to plunge ahead steadily until the storm broke just outside of Buffalo.
I knew cheap accommodations would be easy to find in the tourist trap up the road in Niagara Falls, but once there I could go no further even though my planned destination of Toronto lay just an hour and a half away. So Tucson and I cuddled up in a dumpy queen size bed at some no-name truckers motor inn and woke refreshed the next morning to a light dusting of snow beneath a crisp blue sky; as perfect a day to glimpse one of the wonders of the natural world if there ever was one. This impromptu trip to Niagara Falls was the fulfillment of a longtime dream of mine. That is, to visit all of the tackiest places in America, a list of which I had made once with my friend Bret which included the Falls, Mount Rushmore, Dollywood, Graceland, and some place in Texas, I think, where this wacky guy has recreated Stonehenge from the carcasses of old Cadillac’s. I’ve already been to Rushmore; Dollywood closed its doors this year due to lack of profits and I am still unsure of where that Cadillac-henge thing is at, and Elvis can wait for another trip, but dammit, since it was practically on the way, I was determined to see the Honeymoon Capital of the World (or at least the white-trash world).
Having recharged our provision box with a couple of packages of cheap granola bars and a 64 oz. jug of cran-raspberry juice at the local Kmart, Tucson and I headed for the border as we had heard rumor that the Falls were much better viewed from the Canadian side.
I am happy to report that Tucson’s potential to spread disease was not put at question by the security guard on the Peace Bridge, and shortly we came within view of the majestic cloud of vapor rising in the frosty air above the thunderously crashing falls. Much has been written, and many photos shot prior to our encounter with the wonder that is Niagara, so I’ll keep things brief. Let it suffice to say that unless you’ve been there, neither photo, nor description will truly do it justice, and if you have, well, then you know what I’m talking about anyway, so let’s move on. I will take a moment, however, if I may. to describe the taste or lack thereof, of the surrounding resort community. I have been to some of the more horrific tourist traps this world has to offer: Yellowstone Park, Mt. Rushmore, Jackson Hole, Las Vegas, Disneyland, Wall Drug, South Dakota and the Corn Palace, the Statue of Liberty, the Louver, the Vatican, and other assorted points too numerous to mention, but I must admit I was impressed with the sheer audacity exhibited by the sorry excuses of human beings all those “advanced” land developers over the years have proven to be as exemplified in bold neon signs overwhelming every sense with the nightmare that is Niagara. I have unsuccessfully tried to puzzle out to my satisfaction the burning need which is sated by taking a perfectly lovely, nay, incredible, wonder of nature and soiling it with the various trappings of disdain and seek to escape by vacationing in the locale of a pristine, untainted natural beauty to begin with. I have further wondered by what benchmark is an attraction measured which inspires an enterprising entrepreneur to install a machine which takes the tourists’ pennies and supposedly stamps them into commemorative tokens? I have also wondered in the past what sort of people find a heart shaped bathtub to be the ultimate aphrodisiac, but apparently there are enough of them to fuel an economy based on the proliferation of such a dubious novelty as advertised at every hotel, motel, guest house, and chalet lining the approach to either side of the Falls. I mused over all these and other questions as I came around the bend in the road at which point I was so dumfounded that I nearly lost control of the car and plunged over the cliff alongside, so overcome with giggles was I. For rising “majestically” (if indeed any casino can be worthy of such a praise as majestic) off to my right was an edifice so proudly jutting into the air that only the feebleminded or very naive would have not immediately concluded that someone had built an immense, erect penis from oversized Legos.
Again, I have seen the wonders of the architectural world ranging from the Parthenon in Athens to the Sears Tower in Chicago to the Biosphere outside Tucson, but nothing so much as this monstrosity instilled in me a true appreciation for the advanced creative state of the human mind that sets us apart from, if not above, the other beasts crawling about this planet.
As I fought to overcome my mirth it did, however, eventually occur to me that playing the slot machines probably is a lot more fun if you are doing it at the top of a giant cock, and having, I believe, finally understood the point, I bid Niagara farewell, and after successfully cajoling Tucson to stop sniffing at the Colossus, we got back in the car and headed to Toronto.
My physical description of Toronto I will keep short, this is not to be a sightseeing guide so much as it is a travel journal of my various odd experiences and musings thereof.
However, I would like to say that Toronto is in my opinion the loveliest, most modern looking, and cleanest of cities in North America. Go there if you haven’t done so already, and if you have, do it again.
This chapter of my trip, however, I would like to devote to my hosts in Toronto, a pair of lads who call themselves aptly the M&M Boys, named as they are, Mark and Marcus.
I had met these two actually at the Wet and Wild circuit party back in May, and we clicked in that sort of vibe you get from someone you don’t really know very well, but somehow you just have the sense that you would like to.
At that weekend, I had hoped to trade email info, phone numbers and such, but somehow at the end of the party we were separated and even though I looked and looked, I couldn’t find them again. And so it was a delightful surprise when I ran into them amongst the thousands of revelers at the Black and Blue Ball in Montreal this October, and despite the noise and the lights, and the haze of various drugs, we recognized and embraced one another, and swapped contact info right there on the floor of the Olympic Stadium.
Marcus also paid me one of the highest compliments I have ever been given when he said “You know, every once in a while you find someone you meet who has just something special about him, a kind of light that shines from inside and makes you want to get to know him better, and we both felt that way about you when we met you last May.”
Of course he didn’t realize how deeply that touched me at the time as my summer crises was not known to him, but when I returned to Boston, I filled him and his boyfriend in on my life, and they have become two of my greatest supporters as I hop from drama to drama.
Anyway, they embraced Tucson and me as family and opened their home to us in a way that made me feel like I was much more than an overnight guest. They took me around Toronto’s gay ghetto, which was fabulous and refreshing, as Boston’s has dragged at me with the cunty attitude of the attitude there and how caught up in the scene-or-be-seen lifestyle the boys are in the South End.
The boys also took me out to a club that evening, and to put it lightly, it was OUT OF THIS WORLD!!!! Actually, let me amend that to say that the club itself was somewhat of a hole; dirty, crowded, with a crappy light show, and a marginally better sound system, but the energy there was simply vibrant.
I have spoken and written before in the recent past about my reasons for loving the clubs and raves and circuit parties, and tried (unsuccessfully for the most apart, I think) to describe what it is like to my straight friends and family and/or those people which have never done drugs or been a part of the circuit.
Mark and I talked at some length earlier that day about the magical experience of what he calls “finding the center” and which I have extrapolated on and renamed experiencing the numinous. It’s a moment when everything, all worries, all concerns, all energies, come together into one moment of passion. We live such distracted lives most of the time, constantly pissed off or burdened by shit that’s gone down in the past and at the same time worried about or planning for an uncertain future. Thus, it is an incredibly rare thing to find oneself completely and totally in the here-and-now living, living, and breathing and feeling and dancing or fucking or whatever, but completely in the moment if you can dig it. That’s what Mark and I were talking about, and while it doesn’t take drugs or music or anything else to get there, they can act as catalysts to that kind of experience and the club atmosphere functions as a sanctuary, a temple if you like, or a safe haven where, clouded by smoke, sweat, lights, bodies, and darkness one can really let go, freed from inhibitions and the false masks society imposes on us in the daylight on the street or at the office or in school or at the supermarket. And in that moment when the music is pumping, and the bodies are grooving, and the drugs are coursing through your veins, and your emotions and energy are finally let go to break the dam and hop the fence and write on the wall, then baby, then you live as if you never lived before (which you haven’t) and tomorrow will never come (which it won’t) and yesterday doesn’t matter (which it didn’t) and you LIVE!!!!!!!
And like Niagara Falls, unless you’ve been there, you can’t describe it in truth to someone who hasn’t, and those of us in the know can only nod our heads in camaraderie and share a secret smile.
So, despite all the advice of my doctors, the mores dictated by society, and the wishes of even a number of my loved ones, I analyzed the risk, weighed the outcomes, and embraced the scene much as I did in triumph after I traversed my long dark road and then journeyed to Montreal this October. For a brief shining, sparkling moment there in that rancid club whose final night we were celebrating I “found my center”, experienced the numinous, and lived, forgetting the dark, harsh words and pain between me and Anthony, me and Caren, me and my family; throwing aside my fears and uncertainty about the days and weeks and months to follow; forgetting everything but myself, and I let the light burst forth from my soul and I whirled in a dance of pure electric joy and music and ecstasy.
I cried out to Mark “I’ve found the center” and let it take hold of me, and my passion was reflected in the smiles and laughter of the gleefully amazed crowd until finally, hours or perhaps millennia later my body finally began to wear down, and I wound down, exhausted, yes, but infused with a sensation I wouldn’t trade for a thousand wishes. And then, even as I crept off to a corner and laid my head up against a cold window, Marcus and Mark gathered me up and enfolded me in an embrace of pure love and warmth.
How often have you or I or any of us lain in the arms of another content in the moment, completely at ease, without a care to the time or the weather or some useless outside worry or concern, neither kissing nor touching sexually or talking, just happy in the moment as if it would never end, sharing the vibe if you will? And here I found myself in the arms of not one but two such marvelous souls, gently entwined around me and filling me with their love and laughter.
Later, after the club closed we braved the icy streets to the car and returned for a mellow after-hours party at their apartment, and some eight or nine of us soaked in the hot tub in the basement and later sprawled out on the floor of their solarium, chillin’ to some sleepytime music, and while that was nice and all, nothing compared to my moment of shining glory and the loving downtime afterwards with those two.
Okay, next stop, Ohio, so you can be forgiven if you get up and go to the bathroom or get a snack at this point, but don’t forget to hurry back!
Dan and Tucson left Toronto the next day, weary, but recharged in a way no Club Med siesta could match, and they made their way back down into the States.
Our next stop was with a friend who shall remain nameless as he might not wish me to reveal much about his personal life, but like the M&M boys, he gave me something which I had needed for sometime and which I carried away a little lighter of heart.
I met this guy at a circuit party as well, this one back in April during the March on Washington. He was cool then, and we did manage to exchange email addresses, but at the time I sort of figured it was one of those meetings where you never really hear from the other person again as most often happens. I was pleasantly proven wrong when he did respond to my emails, and we developed a very good friendship as the spring turned into summer.
However, it wasn’t until after my encounter with the Percocets this summer and the subsequent drama that I really connected with my friend from Ohio. (By the way, as soon as I crossed the border from Pennsylvania I began singing the theme song from the Drew Cary Show, but despite its assertions I am not convinced that Cleveland really does rock, although I hadn’t the time to really find out for sure.) Anywho, my friend, much as myself, has had a lot of stumbling blocks thrown in his way in the past few months landing him in a place he never really expected to be, and he too, has been struggling with his new set of unplanned circumstances. I won’t go into the details of his drama, but let’s just say that like myself, he found himself in more or less desperate straits, and found himself choosing a path out of his situation he probably never would have believed he would even consider just a year ago. It’s sort of funny h w while most of us would like to believe the contrary, but money, not love, really does make the world go round, and when it comes time to pay the rent, its cash, not cuddles, that comes in handy.
That said, my friend found himself face with two options: choke down whatever moral objections he might have about selling drugs, or find himself on the street and crippled with staggering debt. Like me, he also has some health needs, and a dog to look after, and so together we have choked down our reservations and done what we had to do to survive. We agreed that our high school guidance counselors never really prepared us for such stuff, and just as I never imagined I would have to sell my ass to keep from being homeless, neither did he write down “drug dealer” in the Career Planned section of his standardized tests. We didn’t wallow in misery and share grim war stories as many folks might have at the way our lives have turned out, but I can say that we did share the intimacy one can only experience with another who has felt the same pain. My friend helped me, however, by pointing out that when he closes his eyes, he knows that in his heart, that it is not really him but just someone who looks like him that is doing what he must to let the real him survive. I have had to do that as well to keep myself from slitting my wrists, that is, sort of taking my soul out of my body while I am “working”, reminding myself that I have tried everything else and still fallen short of what I need to keep myself and my family (Dori and Tucson) alive and together, and so I do the deeds and reject what the rest of society says about them, and so I survive. And so does my friend, and in a strange twist he told me that over the months he has felt so close to the edge and was ready to fall many times, but because of me and my writings and my fall and return to the land of the living, he has found the strength to go on and the hope that things will get better.
I have felt success in my life and especially in my struggle, but I guess I feel somehow validated (if that’s the right word) by his impression of me, and he added that he would never judge me for the things that I have had to do to survive.
Thus, we have exchanged gifts as I delivered hope and he offered acceptance, something I have dearly needed as so many have turned away from me in disgust or contempt, I guess, for what I’ve had to do out of desperation.
I left Ohio not quite as cheerily as when I departed Toronto, but I felt a bit stronger and more sure of myself than I had been in the past two weeks when I had to make those choices.
Anyway, a trip across the Great Plains during the onset of winter isn’t nearly as fun as it sounds, but I can thank a hearty stock of CDs and candy bars which kept me awake as I busted my hump to cross that drab, barren, boring expanse of fields and farms until I finally coasted into St. Louis, Missouri just as a snow storm set in.
St. Louis is a city to which I would like to return because from the turn pike it really seemed like a a pretty city (the Arch is something I hadn’t expected to be as impressive as it was, much to my pleasure) but with the snow coming down and night falling I decided I didn’t have enough time to explore and opted instead for a budget motel out by the airport.
The next day was scheduled to be a short one, thankfully, and I blazed a trail across Missouri like a bat out of hell and found myself in Kansas City on the other side of the state just after lunchtime.
Now comes the part that is at once both surreal, and depending on your taste, hysterically funny.
For starters, I could well have made many more miles beyond Kansas City, but I was actually physically and emotionally exhausted by the time I reached the suburbs, and I honestly couldn’t have gone on much further. The night out in Toronto had left me physically wiped out, and I had caught a nasty cold up there as well, and my stay in Ohio, while good for the soul had also dragged at my spirit, on top of which my whole emotional state was a wreck since I had had some 1900 miles to think about my relationship with Anthony.
My friend Tom is another guy I had met at the March in DC, and we had really hit it off and had been writing back and forth ever since then. He too has been in many of the places I have been in and he’s been another wonderful friend as I have been trying to rebuild my life. Now, he used to live in Kansas City, but now resides in San Francisco, but I figured maybe he would know someone who might not mind putting Tucson and me up for the night, so I gave him a call, and asked for a hand. Tom in turn provided me with the number of a couple of people who lived in a big house in town where I was assured I wouldn’t be a bother.
A quick little tidbit of history for those of you who aren’t aware, but Dan and Miss Caren and Tucson all lived together in a commune of sorts many moons ago in Tucson, Arizona (that’s when and where we got the dog, in fact). This house had actually been a great big frat house which some weird lady had bought and then leased out to an eclectic bunch of students and wannabe hippies. I look back on our days at the Spadefoot Co-op with a shudder and a grin as I recall this hug, rambling house in various stages of disrepair full of the odds and ends of anywhere from 18--25 people and pets with nothing in common save their penchant for eccentricity. Ah those were some times, I can tell you! But I digress...
Anyway this house instantly reminded me of the place in Arizona in structure, repair, and decor, but I figured I had slept in worse, and hey! at least it was free, right? And so my adventure with the folks from Kansas City began...
I knew that Tom was in AA, and he even told me that his friends I was staying with were into AA, but I guess over the years since escaping my mother’s company I had somehow forgotten just how much fun (?) those folks can be.
I’ll start by explaining that I had just barely been introduced to the two men most responsible for the upkeep and care of the house, Big Travis and Curtis, before Big Travis inquired of my history with sobriety. I was a bit taken aback at first, but I figured “just roll with it” and I explained that while I did use some drugs occasionally I didn’t have a problem with addiction. We talked however at some length about our families and related problems therein, and slowly some of the other occupants of the house drifted in and joined our conversation. As our little chat progressed it dawned on me that a.) everyone there was gay and b.) they all had substance addiction problems and furthermore c.) I was probably looking at the entire population of gay, recovering addicts in the greater Kansas City area (probably 14 or 15 people altogether), and not only did they live in the same house, but life for them was more or less one continuous AA meeting.
However, despite my distaste for that sort of atmosphere in general (not to mention the ubiquitous clouds of cigarette smoke) they all seemed very friendly and accepting, and they were playing host to a complete stranger and his dog after all, so I just sort of kicked back and relaxed and enjoyed the company of a demographic I hadn’t experienced in quite some time. Eventually as the shadows began to lengthen, Curtis offered to take me around some of the sights of Kansas City which I hadn’t really expected to see (or even knew existed for that matter) and I readily agreed.
Therefore, that is how Dan and Tucson touristed around the KC gay ghetto (such as it is) along with a variety of historic homes and the refurbished downtown business district. I guess I didn’t have any expectations as to what my stay in Kansas City would be like, but I never would have guessed where I would end up next. As the crown jewel of the tour, Curtis took me down to the river (that’s the Missouri, for you geography buffs) and Dan Tyler, Explorer of Many Continents, Trekker of Thousands of Miles, Friend of Diplomats and Royalty, Companion of Mr. Tucson the Wonder Dog, and newly Risen From the Dead was introduced to the phenomena of the Midwest Riverboat Casino! I believe I may have already professed that I never really thought terribly highly of casinos in general, disdaining them as a tacky and more or less un-thrilling way to waste one’s time and money.
Now, however, having had a taste of a Riverboat Casino I have to admit that while I find a casino even more tacky (if that’s possible) when it floats in a muddy pool, we had a lot of fun.
Picture it: a row of forty blue-haired, bee-hived or mullet-headed old ladies in garish sweat pants and floral blouses chain-smoking and tipping back their bloody Mary’s as they rub the heads of little kewpie dolls for luck while they scream “Come on, you suck-ass!” at the unimpressed glass faces of stingy slot machines, and then there’s me: all club-kidded out with my phat pants and earrings and a look in my eyes that says “uh, I don’t think I fit in here...” even as I am barely restraining my giggles as I drop my quarters into the machines in time with them, hollering and swearing all the while, as my poor, infinitely patient dog sits at my feet and suffers the indignation of having cigarette ashes and Bloody Mary’s spilled on him.
Then, to add to the merriment of the evening, Russell treated me to the casino steak house (again, the torment of poor Tucson as we ordered big old porterhouses in front of him) where I found that my roots in pure white trash stock still were planted as deeply as ever when I exclaimed in wonder and commented with the others in line about the variety and quality of the seemingly endless items on the salad bar! (“Do you know what they had, Tom? Those little ears of corn, don’t you know it! Mmm, hmmm, and at least eight types of dressing. Oh, bless my face, was that a treat!)
We packed a doggy bag for Tucson which went a long way to improving his mood once we got to the parking lot on our way home, but I’m afraid that didn’t last terribly long.
When we got back to the house we were introduced to one of the other occupants of the house, a cross-eyed shar pei named Jackson.
Now, Tucson is not the friendliest dog to people.
Some have even called him standoffish or even snobby, but to date he has always been invariably friendly to all types of other animals and most especially to other dogs. Even when other dogs try to assert themselves over him or growl and bark at him, he has always just avoided them and ignored them of they should happen to refuse his invitations to play.
However, you have to remember that in the last week Tucson had been displaced from his home; seen his best friend get into a fight with the other major person in his life; he’d lost his feline companion; been bounced from place to place over the past six days; and was cooped up in the car for almost two thousand miles. To add insult to injury he had just spent the last three hours dodging spilled cocktails and cigarette ashes while we ate some juicy steaks right in front of him (even though he eventually got a few bites) so I guess he was entitled to be a little grouchy.
However, we were both unprepared for what happened when the two dogs met. At first it seemed like a pretty standard dog-hello, you know, sniff here, sniff there, check out each other’s parts and such, but somehow mid-way Jackson did something I’ve never seen before. Shar peis are a strange looking breed to begin with, all wrinkles and big, thick, rubbery lips covered in a nappy, almost velveteen fur, and add to the mixture the fact that he was cross-eyed probably as the result of inbreeding, I reckon, and you have a truly ridiculous looking animal. But imagine my dog’s surprise when this rubber-lipped, wrinkly, cross-eyed dog latched onto Tucson’s pecker and started nursing for all he was worth!
Tucson pretty much went ape-shit, and it was all I could do as I nearly fell apart laughing to keep him from killing that silly-ass looking dog. I tried to explain that it was bad manners to kill the host dog while we were in his house no matter what he did in provocation, but Tucson remained unconvinced and eventually I recommended that we remove him to another room which could be closed off.
As it was nearing bedtime anyway, I asked where it would be convenient for me to sleep, and I was directed to “Little” Travis’s room upstairs. I was not entirely comfortable with that as I hadn’t met him yet, and he wasn’t home either, but everyone insisted that he wouldn’t mind, and besides he probably wasn’t going to come home that night anyway. I reluctantly agreed, and when I got to his room I realized that I didn’t have a sleeping bag (hadn’t needed one so far), and so I asked if I could borrow a blanket. Again they insisted that I should sleep in his bed, and in fact, they offered to go get some clean sheets for me. Again, I expressed my reservations, especially as I didn’t think I would be comfortable having a complete stranger sleep in my bed without my knowledge and permission, but oh no, no, they assured me that it happened all the time, and not to worry about it. Well, as I was brushing my teeth, up came Little Travis with the clean sheets, and of course I hastily introduced myself and tried to make sure I wasn’t unwelcome, but just as they promised he was really friendly and told me to make myself at home, and together we re-made the bed. Of course then I was ready to sleep on the floor with Tucson and a blanket, but again he would have none of it, and as it was a fairly good sized bed, he suggested we share it. Well, I thought, “Okay, we’re both adults, and I’ve slept in plenty of beds with boys or girls and had the night pass sweetly and innocently enough,” so I figured why not?
So we hit the sack and of course as I am sure you have already guessed, we ended up snuggling up next to one another and upon wakening an the middle of the night, one thing led to another, and before I really knew what was happening we were having sex, even as the goofy, cross-eyed dog whined outside and scratched insistently at the door in an effort to get at Tucson.
Okay, so now maybe you will all sort of get the picture as to what I meant by how this lap of the trip was just a tad surreal. In the course of 24 hours I had traveled across the state of Missouri, found myself as the guest in a run down mansion in Kansas City full of gay, chain-smoking alcoholics one of whom ends up taking me on a tour of the city and treats me to an evening of gambling and dining on a casino riverboat only to return to the house where my dog is assaulted in a very curious fashion by a mutant shar pei who is even then scratching at the door while I, myself, am having sex with this guy I just barely met. And the really weird part of it all is that I had an awesome time through and through. I found the difference in my world from theirs very refreshing, and it brought up a bunch of memories I thought long buried and lost. And I was completely surprised that I was able to have enjoyable sex with another person after Anthony. Really since I had first met Anthony, no other boy has been even mildly interesting to me, despite my best efforts to try and find someone else attractive. I spent a lot of time at the Black and Blue, for example, just searching the crowd for someone whose features or the way they danced would catch my eye, but to no avail. This problem has been further exacerbated by the fact that the Paxil I am taking for depression has a side effect of decreased sexual drive and ability, so even if I chanced to spot a face I normally would have considered attractive, I certainly haven’t felt it below my belt, and I had almost resigned myself to a life of bland or no sex without Anthony there to spark my fire. And you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that when sex became a job, I lost all pleasure in it, and so when this guy from Kansas City of all places was able to relight my fire as it were, imagine my surprise and joy. Indeed, I guess that’s been sort of a theme for me this whole trip and my life in general: when it seems as if all hope has vanished, there it is again, when you least expect to find it even if you have given up on looking.
Anyway, that’s it for the Kansas City portion, and as I am about to fall over, I shall end this now and carry on tomorrow.

*Tomorrow *

Okay where were we? Oh yes, continuing along with my account of the trip out West: after Kansas City I spent quite possibly the dullest ten hours of driving in my life zooming through the stark, gray fields of Kansas and on until I reached Denver where I had a friend from high school with whom I could stay overnight.
Jay and his twin brother Ron have been friends of mine since about the fifth grade, and we maintained a close connection up until graduation, but shortly after high school we more or less lost contact especially as I started bouncing around from place to place for the following five years or so. Still, I had heard through the grapevine that the twins had relocated to Denver, and as it was on the way I looked them up and was invited to spend the night at Jay’s apartment.
Jay and I didn’t get to do a lot of catching up when I rolled in as it was some time after midnight, but the following morning before I took off, I accompanied him over to Ron’s workplace, the corporate headquarters for Diners Club International. I have to say that this last leg of my journey was probably the most surreal experience of all, as you will see.
As children Ron and Jay and I spent our summers inner-tubing down creeks and swimming in the ponds on the edge of town. We went to movies and collected G.I. Joes, and as we grew older a large number of our interests mirrored one anothers’.
Of course, by the time we were seniors we had started to branch out and explore other horizons, and indeed I had moved back to Butte and only occasionally spoke on the phone with the twins back in Bozeman. I recall that summer after graduation they each made a trip to Butte to get their National Guard physicals before heading off to boot camp and we’d caught up on the latest news and such even as I made my own preparations to head off to college.
I guess the point I am trying to make here is that while we had grown into young men, the bonds of childhood friendship remained; less strong, perhaps, but intact as the three of us headed off into a future of what we thought at the time would be similar tracks.
And now...
Ron is some sort of data specialist, a paper pusher and number-cruncher at a large corporation. He commutes to work everyday in a bland, utilitarian sedan, and while his position doesn’t demand a suit, he maintains a clean-cut, well groomed appearance as he is keyed in through several security checks beyond which he picks his way through a neatly designed grid of cubicles whereupon he seats himself in front of a computer monitor and he reviews the stack in his in-tray. Several frames on his desk display photographs of his son and daughter along with his wife of five years who shuttles them all around in their new SUV which can be seen parked in the driveway of their new, suburban, factory-panelled-in-unoffensive-beige tract home. He tells me he works 60 hours a week processing credit card data for future marketing use, and after work he likes to spend time with his family and neighbors. Upon questioning, he tells me he has indeed also recently purchased a new gas grill which is a popular focus for impromptu backyard barbecues during the summer. They go to church on Sundays and holidays and he is a member of the Knights of Columbus. Ron says his wife, Sandy, plans to go to the community college once the kids are in school where she thinks she may want to train to be a nurse’s aide (part-time). He keeps a photo in his wallet in which he and she are wearing matching turtlenecks. Ron has worked for this company for almost a year and a half, and while Jay lives five minutes away this is the first time his co-workers have heard that Ron has a twin brother. The revelation cause quite a titter of excitement among them, and a faint whisper of the news echoes through the massive room, flitting from cubicle to cubicle. Ron maintains that despite the long hours, the payoff is worth it. He is making good money and has better than standard benefits. He has never heard of Telly Sevalas. He informs me that when his children are grown he and Sandy plan to travel, and after another six months he will receive an additional week of vacation yearly. Jay is a long-time bachelor, working in another white-collar office complex 2 miles away for Qwest technologies where he answers customer inquiries and assists them with their Internet connection. While he is enrolled in a night class at the technical school he still finds time to visit his brother’s family regularly and occasionally dates a young lady in his department. He invests his money conservatively, seeking advice from a colleague who used to work at Standard and Poore’s. His condo is up for sale, but he says he would prefer not to commit to a mortgage just yet. Both men report to the barracks once a month to train with the Colorado National Guard which again, I am told, offers a better-than-average remunerative package for their time. As I listened to their descriptions of their lives I couldn’t help but glance around a bit, striving to pay attention, but nervously distracted by the clusters of video cameras maintaining a close surveillance on us. I am certain news of Ron’s twin has reached the upper echelons of the powers that be somewhere above, and I wonder what is Big Brother’s reaction to the news of a previously unknown sibling. Ron and Jay shift the conversation to the weather and what the roads might be like should they decide to head up to Montana for a couple of days after Christmas, and my mind erratically plucks a passage taken from Scottish author Irvine Welsh’s book Trainspotting: “ Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit crushing game shows and sit-coms, stuffing junk food into you mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life.... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I’ve got heroin.... People think it’s all about misery and desperation and death and all that shite, which is not to be ignored, but what they forget is the pleasure of it. Otherwise we wouldn’t do it. After all, we’re not fucking stupid.” I played with those ideas for a moment, letting the idea of a canned, sedentary life composed of sterile mediocrity and plastic, microwavable dreams vie for control of my soul with the whispered temptations of a fleeting rush followed by a rotten, black-veined downward spiral. Which is the more wretched, the emaciated addict choking to death on his own tongue in some rat infested back alley or the respectable octogenarian whose lungs are artificially coaxed into some semblance of breathing the warm dry air of the cheerfully pastel day room even as a spaghetti plate of tubes and wires maintain his life indefinitely? Grim thoughts, true. Cynical, perhaps. And yet.... I snapped my attention back to the twins, once my companions, now barely my peers and I realized that somehow without understanding the means or process, we had been transported far, far away, staying on perhaps the same planet, yet living in completely different worlds.
As a final thought as I bid them farewell and returned my visitor pass to the security guard on my way out I imagined what they would feel if they could take a glimpse into my life. While I have some notion of their motivations (although when all is said and done, I would reject their chosen path), I wonder if they would even bother attempting to understand mine. I know that we cannot understand those things of which we are ignorant, and that ignorance breeds fear which in turn becomes anger and hatred ultimately begetting violence, but I cannot help but wonder why people continue to choose to remain ignorant. It’s always the same too. Flower power and free love were foreign concepts to the generation before them, as are any of the hated targets of a fearful status quo. It occurred to me that once a generation reaches the age of reproduction, suddenly they target that which they cannot comprehend as the threats to their norms and mores and values whether it’s sexual liberation, drugs, gangs, Dungeons and Dragons, raves, or what have you. And I realized the dreadful appeal of enclosing ones’ self and family within the climate controlled microcosms of suburban life: erect a wall and keep them out, and nevermind the double-edged consequence of keeping us in. And so I left Denver without looking back unsure of why exactly I have chosen the path which I have when it would be oh-so-easy to slip into their groove and turn my mind onto autopilot. A week later I described what I had encountered to my sister, and I saw her face fall as I painted a picture of what I call the American Dream. She glanced over at her 13 year old daughter who was listening to Eminem on her CD player, and the sounds of her two young boys came from the adjoining room as they argued over the Nintendo, and at the moment we both thought “what’s the point?” What’s the point, indeed? And as I struggled to find an answer which would allay my sister’s fears and restore hope to us both I found myself saying this: “It’s not what happens ultimately that matters, because it is true that we are all going to die, and when all is said and done it won’t really matter how we have lived our lives except to ourselves. Life just is, Autumn, and the only things of any importance are those we deem to be so. Ultimately our function is to encourage the proliferation of our species so that we may “live long and prosper” as it were. As a straight person who has bred successfully you’ve done your part in that sense, but because your children give meaning to your own existence, you can take further satisfaction in encouraging and cultivating their potential, wherever that potential may eventually lead them. As a gay man who has chosen not to breed I don’t have quite that same drive as you, and finding meaning in my life is that much more difficult, but as an pseudo-parental figure I can achieve some amount of that satisfaction by assisting you with the kids and giving them what wisdom I may have to offer. That’s also maybe a perfect reason for the stereotypical mid-life crisis of either straight or gay people, because when they suddenly realize that they are not going to live forever they are hit with the awful reality that maybe no one will know or remember or care about them when they are dead. And so we strive to leave a mark on this world, something that says “Dan was here,” and the easiest way to do so is by creating little versions of ourselves, which we can mold and influence and shape more or less to our design. I think that in general terms that’s why most gay people tend to be so driven, over-achievers and why many of them devote a lot of time to community service and their careers. We are searching for surrogate “children” or beneficiaries of those virtues we for some reason or another have come to value and would like to see passed on when we are gone. The important thing to keep in mind is that we ourselves are responsible for filling our lives with hope, and that if and when we become so jaded that we lose our hope, then we really have died in a figurative sense if not a literal one, and that, I believe, is a sad thing. I had lost my hope for anything better, and so I also lost my will to live this summer. What came out of that is that somehow the rest of you didn’t lose hope, and I managed to live and eventually discovered hope again, and I’m hanging on to it no matter how grim things may be right now. Additionally I have chosen a lifestyle which I think offers less chance of slipping back into hopelessness than that which I saw in Denver. Even then I don’t know that, and I could be entirely wrong about them, and it may well be that their lives are fulfilling and hope-filled, but I have to say that personally I doubt if I would thrive in that sort of environment.” This all seemed to boost my sister’s spirits even as I had inadvertently boosted my own, and we turned our conversation to matters less deep. What have I learned or reasserted in my mind from this trip? Well, I guess it all comes down to that one fact: that life just is and there is no real rhyme or reason for it and all I can do is just find some way to make my life tolerable, nay, enjoyable, for as I have mentioned elsewhere, that is the purpose of my life. And in the pursuit of a joyous life I have reminded myself that that I love the clubs and the drugs and the sex and the friends and exploring new places and traveling and my dog and new experiences and my family and LIVING and that whatever I have to do to survive and continue living an enjoyable life is okay and that when any part of it becomes unenjoyable and unsatisfying I have the freedom to change and choose a different path, and that whatever direction I take, I can take satisfaction that I have left my mark on the world, and I will be remembered even if I were to die tomorrow. These patterns of electrons I have created and recorded on this plate of silicon are proof enough of that. I know this was a long one, but thanks for reading and be safe and warm.
Dan Tyler
3:42 a.m.

 
On Hope
I have a good friend whose mother is dying. She has been ill for some time, and she is advanced in age, so rather than letting her die in an institution or hospital he has taken her into his home and hired assistants to help care for her so that she will live her last days in some amount of comfort and as free from pain as they can manage. For this among many reasons I have great respect for him. I believe what he is doing is kind, and brave, and strong, and loving. And I shudder at how painful it must be for him to watch her slip away from this world. Death and dying are subjects especially close to my heart, surpassed only by life and healing in my daily thoughts. Having returned from the dead as I seem to, the riddle of mortality has become rather close to my heart, and I like to believe that I have become a bit of an expert on it, and that is why even though I understand his motivations and her longing for peace I have been somewhat troubled by their situation nonetheless. I know she is old and in pain and diagnosed as being terminally ill. The reality of things is that she is going to die and all they believe they can hope for is that it will be soon and painless. That is what the doctors and experts said, and that is what common sense and practicality would confirm. But I am disturbed just the same. Losing hope, that’s what I’m talking about. Giving up. Throwing in the towel. Bowing to the fates. Having fought the good fight, and graciously conceding to the winner. That is what makes me feel so sad and frustrated and angry all at once, because despite the fact that I know they feel they have done all they can do and then some; despite the knowledge that we are mortal and eventually must die; despite faith and belief in a cycle of life upon which rests everything I hold dear and important; I still want to urge them not to give up and to keep hope alive. Hope. A beautiful word, a precious treasure. The driving force in every action performed by every creature on earth. It is what motivates an army of starving men, what impels a politician to argue to the last. It gives faith to the lost and sustenance to the weak. It is the promise of spring after the bleakest winter, a soothing hand on the shoulder of a weeping child. Six months ago I gave up on hope. Somehow I lost that ability to see a far off dawn in the midst of my dark night, and bruised in spirit and torn in heart I realized something very profound and sad, yet very true and wise—without hope I was as good as dead and I needn’t bother continuing my life any longer. So I did what I thought right and quietly strove to end my misery without even the hope that I would find a better existence on the other side. For five days I lay in a tortured coma, to all appearances mentally vacant as the husk of my body writhed in animalistic pain. The doctors evaluated to the best of their abilities my situation and my odds of any sort of recovery and spoke the most devastating words my family would ever hear: “Danny has essentially no chance of waking up, and now is the time when you should decide whether or not to discontinue his life support and just let his body die.” In what mental picture I have been able to reconstruct of what happened then I see Anthony and Caren slumping to the floor bawling helplessly. My sister cries uncontrollably in the arms of my brother whose own face is haggard and streaked with tears. Then the fighting begins as they tear at themselves and curse impotently and somehow strive to keep from going insane from their frustration and sorrow. Caren believes that I wouldn’t want to go on in that state and they should help me die. Autumn and my mother stubbornly insist that they should cling to whatever chances remain no matter how slim, but their determination crumbles as reality set in. Anthony clings helplessly to my unresponsive hand and grits his teeth in pain and rage and sadness while my brother Glen assumes the mantle of responsibility for the whole family and nods his head weakly to the doctors in defeat and acceptance. My body would be allowed to die, even as by all indications my mind had already gone before it. They gave up hope though it ripped through their hearts and wrenched their stomachs, and they began to prepare for the next steps they would have to take. And the next day I woke up. I have read a thousand stories detailing accounts of miracles. Healing the sick. Raising the dead back to life. Walking on water. Turning water into wine. All that Sunday school crap piled on a stack of supermarket tabloids and paperback sci-fi novels held together with a glue mixed of superstition and blind faith. Bullshit, right? Until it happened to me. The doctors agreed on nothing in my case except that they couldn’t tell what was wrong with me. They tried a dozen therapies and ran a battery of tests. “Danny is suffering withdrawal shock that only heroin addicts go through,” one claimed. “No, no, it’s residual effects of the cerebral malaria he contracted several years ago,” another maintained. “It’s an advanced case of HIV infection.” “No, it’s definitely a build up of ecstasy in his system.” “Uh, uh, it’s got to be the overdose of 60 Percocets.” “It’s probably anoxia from when he finally stopped breathing.” “Actually, I reckon it’s toxemia from when his liver collapsed under all that acetaminophen.” “No, really it’s--,” “What most clinical studies seem to indicate--,” “You should probably try--,” “Maybe if we--,”
No, they didn’t know, and all they could agree upon is that I was as good as gone, and never in all their combined years of experience had they seen a case like mine, and they had never seen anyone with a case even vaguely similar to mine survive the trauma. So they recommended giving up hope, and they were wrong. Not only did I wake up, but I was also ambulatory, and within days I regained the ability to walk and feed myself, and in another week or so I learned to read and write again, and by the end of the month I was showering and shaving on my own, and 22 days after I was admitted to the emergency room I was discharged and returned home to my dog and cat and husband. I myself have since gone through the reams of test results, MRI’s, CT’s and such; read the variety of evaluations and spoken to the residents, specialists, nurses, and other staff; and interviewed and interrogated my family and friends who were there, trying somehow, some way, to put it all together and figure our how I managed to not just revive, but recuperate as fully as I have when in the end even I have to agree that all the evidence pointed inexorably at my death. Therefore I admitted to the miracle and as living and breathing proof decided that there was hope in the world after all, and steeling myself with that knowledge I have forced my way past innumerable obstacles and felt the light of dawn shine at last on my upturned face. It hasn’t been easy. In fact, I can’t count the number of times I have almost buckled under the weight of my problems and succumbed to the temptation to return to the shroud. When I first came home I was stricken with an incapacitating stutter which coupled with a severe hearing loss and tremors which prevented writing or typing almost completely sealed me off from the rest of the world. I was also stabbed with horrible panic attacks, and for weeks I couldn’t face even small groups of people without trembling in fear, and any sort of confrontation was impossible fro me to handle. I couldn’t work and didn’t know how or where to look for help. Even as I discovered various agencies, I was constantly denied my pleas for assistance, and every day became an exercise in frustration and torn patience. Even in my dreams shadow-specters attempted to convince me to give up and slit my wrists or find some other way to die and just end my pain. But somehow I have managed to cling to some tiny shred of hope, some miniscule fragment of the promise of the sun. Even as my marriage dissolved and my best friend rejected me I have held onto the hope that I will someday love again. I lost my apartment and my personal things and all my money, and yet I clasp that tiny light to my breast, guarding it with my life, for it is my life. I sank into strangling debt and resorted to prostitution suffering unspeakable indignities just to survive all the while as my mind has cried out “For what? Is the wispy dream that somehow things will eventually get better worth the agony, worth the pain and sorrow? Why don’t you just give up?” Indeed. Because when all is black and I return from the night bleeding and sore, there is a dog who licks my ear and rests his head in my lap. Because when I stand at the window and look out into the gloom, a ray of light shoots down through the clouds and sparkles on the new fallen snow. Because after a summer of torment when I had lost the ability to even walk, I have spun in a flash and blur of radiance above the faces of a cheering crowd and found my lips smiling on their own. Because what sort of lesson would it be to my nephews if I gave up now when I have come so far? What sort of thanks would it be to Tucson if I abandoned him after he has stood by my side from the moment I returned to him? And why would I do that when I have hope to keep me going strong? I have in my lifetime heard a veritable cornucopia of clichés trumpeting the power of positive thinking, read a million inspirational bumper stickers and posters, and I’ll be the first to admit that I have rolled my eyes and sneered more times than I can count, but since my return to life I have finally learned to see the good in the world and find the magic that I had somehow missed prior to my suicide attempt. I hope to counsel my friend and his mother not to give up hope, and while they may have to bow to nature in the end, I would ask them to wait until the end, and all the while to keep hope alive. For without hope there truly is no life, and life itself may hold its own surprises. I’m proof of that.
Dan Tyler
3:04 a.m.
12-20-00

On choices

I’ve just come in from in from shoveling the sidewalk. I had asked my nephew to do it two days ago, indeed, had attempted to bargain with them by offering the trade of a ride to Wal-Mart in exchange for their shoveling the walk when they got home. But despite my efforts to convince them to help pitch in around the house and yard, when I got home just a while ago, there remained a trampled track of two inches of snow carpeting the walkway and I just resigned myself to completing the chore. I could have threatened them with taking their Christmas presents away or grounding them from their Nintendo until the walk was clear. I could have screamed and gotten all red in the face and even threatened physical pain as I have seen my sister do along with any number of exasperated parents including my own when faced with a battle of wills with their children. I could have verbally lashed out at them and dragged them down with guilt trips and remonstrations and cruel words, but I didn’t. I don’t want to have that power over them. They are young (ages 9 and 7) and they are thoughtless and immature and ignorant and ungrateful for all that I or my sister or any other adults give them. What would they do if they knew that the gifts they feel they have a right to were purchased with money earner by my ass? Could they comprehend that? Would they care? But I don’t say these things to them; I don’t want to lay a guilt trip on them. I want them to live free of that burden. They are children, and things are as they should be, and while I might be tempted to hit them over the head with my values and principles, such as they are, I also know that shoveling a little snow isn’t going to kill me, and after a while it becomes rather fun in a weird way. And when I come in and knock the snow from my shoes, I se a huge pile of presents stacked under the tree, and I smile to myself thinking of what their reactions while be when those presents are opened tomorrow. I had just returned from a Christmas Eve party at my sister’s in-laws where I rubbed elbows with a group of people I didn’t like. White trash, chain-smoking, beer swilling folk crowded together in a sweltering run-down trailer redolent of stale Chihuahua piss and cat shit. I can’t stand the way they treat their kids, their pets, and each other, as if each was a thing not to be touched and only gossiped about at the local bar. Theirs is a low-brow gutter humor where they will talk for weeks about someone’s incessant farting or how fucked up they got last week and ended up puking their guts out in the gravel driveway. They knock back shots of Canadian Club whiskey followed with a chaser of Busch beer even as they puff away through pack after pack of cigarettes and shovel fat and sugar down their throats. They are oblivious to what nature is desperately and unsuccessfully trying to point out: that they are poisoning themselves and everyone else in the room even as the patriarch of the family lies in an ICU ward in Billings, having suffered a third heart attack a few days ago. It was his third, and he has also recently had a stroke. He is diabetic, overweight, and also a chain smoker. His ex-wife went to go pick him up today, and I cannot help but wonder in disgusted fascination why they were so upset about his near brush with death; would the end to his life really been such a terrible loss? I cannot breathe; the kids cannot breathe. The youngest has bronchitis, and yet they still smoke away, and when we go to leave, they try to lay a reverse guilt trip on me by saying sorry about the smoke—if only they had known it bothered me so much, and then waiting expectantly for me to say “it’s all right, I had a lovely time, anyway” which I do to be polite, but we all know I didn’t. Why then did I say it? For as I struggle to lead a new life of rigorous honesty, why should I stray for the benefit of someone I barely know and certainly don’t like? I guess ultimately I did it for my sister who does like them, or at least feels her ties to them also compel her to go through the same sensory torture. She says in the car on the way home, “Thanks for being such a good sport,” and again I merely nod and grunt. We’re talking about choices here: choices to knowingly expose myself to an atmosphere which I know will be bad for my health both physically and mentally. Choices on their part to lead sedentary lives of unfulfilled desires and petty arguments. Choices to expose loved ones to life-threatening dangers. Choices to accept those risks and gather at the home anyway. I wonder, on the way home, whether or not anyone there made his or her choices consciously or not. I know I did, and I chose to keep my comments to myself. My brother does not. I could criticize his life: they way he treats his kids, his wife, his friends. He controls his dogs with shock collars and the threat of pain. His only love in life is hunting to the exclusion of all others, even as his marriage dissolved years ago, and his own children are beset with the anxiety of fatherless orphans. He is the mirror of our parents with his holier-than-thou judgments and his my-way-or-the-highway attitudes, yet the worst insult you can deliver to him is to compare him to our mother and father. Yet, because I love him, I say nothing even though my heart aches for his wife and children, and indeed weeps for his angry soul as well. Choices. My father has led a life of putting on a face which never really fooled anyone except himself, but society dictated that we politely accept his efforts. His parents, his peers, his colleagues and neighbors; everyone saw through the mask he wore but again, for the sake of politeness, chose not to shatter his illusions and tried to look beyond the face. I think he always felt tied down—initially to his sickly parents and later to his wife, kids, and career. Now his own decaying body and alcohol soaked brain prevent him form any chance to recover any sense of his true self. Sadly he is also chained to his new wife who is mired in a swamp of he own design, and they cling to each other, providing an wobbly scaffolding of support even as they drag each other down that much more swiftly. In their retirement they have chosen to live in an RV park in Yuma, Arizona—as close to the pit of hell as I can conceive, and yet he still somehow finds the strength to pass his judgments on me, tenaciously clinging as ever to the dream that if he could only somehow control, mold, or at least guide me down a path of his design, he might achieve some sense of accomplishment in his own life by proxy. It’s not love that prevents me from rejecting him harshly, but pity and sadness for what a waste of potential I have occasionally glimpsed behind the mask over the years, and so I choose to bite my tongue most of the time and allow him what modicum of satisfaction he gets from his delusions Another choice. I’m not sure how or where I got my identity. Freud probably would have said the forming of my ID, my self-aware “adult” persona emerged at a more or less textbook predicated time of post-adolescence. I would disagree and argue that it happened much earlier in life as a young child, and that maybe I’ve always had it, because I had been a precocious youth, very aware of the world around me even as I struggled to find my niche in it. In any case I will admit that I floated around with the rest of the crowd as is the norm until I turned sixteen or seventeen at which time I finally began to break out, choosing new friends, new interests, new clothes, and most importantly new values. By my senior year I was a “new” person, one who I liked much more than the old, yet less liked by my old crowd of friends and peers. I began to distance myself from the old Dan and learned to champion men new found freedom and rights, and I even found the courage to vocalize my beliefs and urge others to do the same. I wrote incessantly, and as an editor of the school newspaper I chose as topics for my editorials such inflammatory issues as gays in the military and women’s abortion rights. And I paid the price for those choices. I was ostracized, criticized, and threatened. My father tried to dissuade me, and faculty members rejected my applications for scholarships, which we all knew, would have been awarded to a quieter Dan, and yet I stood my ground firmly albeit lonely. My depression was severe even then, and indeed, my one belief on which I would not be swayed was that I had the right to feel depressed; even the right to kill myself if I so chose. My mother didn’t agree and tried to have me committed although at the time she played the major role in my depression. Again, more choices. Turning to my mother, I find her the most aggravating of all my family members to the point that I chose to have no contact with her at all although I wish things could somehow be better between us. She claims to be the healthiest person she knows and free to do as she likes, yet she has surrendered herself to her addictions, namely twelve step recovery programs like Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon, Adult Children of Alcoholics and the like even though she doesn’t appear to any of her children to have ever had a problem with drinking. Yet she finds solace in grouping herself with others who support one another in passing judgment in those who do drink, or use drugs, or choose to live their lives in any way not congruent with theirs, for that matter. While I feel twelve-step programs can be helpful as a stepping stone to a more empowered life which ideally should free up ones choices, I have always hated, indeed, held the worst contempt for their creed: that they were powerless over alcohol (or other addictions) and as such their lives had become unmanageable, yet rather than take control, they still choose to let it dominate them. Most twelve-steppers “in recovery” I have encountered seem to believe it is not their behavior which is bad, but the drug itself, and in fact many come to hate not just the drugs, but anyone who uses them. Hating the sinners, and the sin, as it were. Being brought up under this ideology I also passed my judgments upon drugs and disdained all users and any connections to drugs. However as the years went by I came to realize that these chains ultimately prevented me from developing relationships with people who might enrich my life as well as kept me from some important life experiences in themselves. I woke up to this reality while I was trekking through East Africa, and looking back on it, it strikes me as somewhat ironic that my brother, who also loudly condemned my choice to take that trip also praised my new-found wisdom upon my return especially, I think, as it helped validate his own drinking. I also found it funny that while alcohol use was acceptable to him, our father, and society as a whole, other forms of recreational drug use remains taboo. However, I can understand their limited conceptions as I, myself, also felt that way for a long time as well. My own forays into drug culture didn’t come about until several years later, and then as an academic experiment after a fashion. It started as it occurred to me to apply the same lessons I had learned about alcohol one step further, and as I had been working with so many addicts in my social service at the time I realized that if I wanted to help them best it would be by understanding them. Thus, as I learned to understand what it meant to be homeless partly by sleeping on the street myself, I decided that understanding of addiction would come about best by learning what it was like to get high. So I tried a variety of drugs, and liked some, and disliked most. And today while I still don’t know quite what it is to be addicted, at least I have a limited idea of the appeal of the drugs I tried. Ironically the only things which really gave me a sense of what true addiction is like are my love for Anthony, and to a lesser degree but in the same vein, my love for Caren. My initial time with Anthony sent my floating on Cloud Nine, as intense a high as any one could conceive. One so exhilarating that I found myself willing to lose everything else in my life for the chance to be with him. I promised to love him and be with him forever as I thought he felt for me, and I never would have guessed the agony I would suffer without him. Indeed, many are the times I have since felt as if my life has no meaning without his presence by my side, but again, academically I realized that it does despite the pain. I have discussed the meaning of life elsewhere, that is, to “just be” and further, that the meaning of my life is to just be happy, but as I have limped alongside the wheel pain and the leapt though the ring fire I have discovered freedom, ultimately, is the means to this end. I have been to many holy places in this world: the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican; the Parthenon in Athens; Westminster Abby in London; the Jamia Mosque in Nairobi, and the Medicine Wheel in the Bighorn Mountains to name just a few, but none of these evoked such a feeling at the very core of my being as the Fields of Bannock Burn near Stirling, Scotland where Scottish patriots, starving and outnumbered rallied their spirits and fought to win their freedom in 1314. At the time I was overcome—for what do we have in our history to compare with that? Our own revolution against the British is similar, I suppose, but it hardly compares with the thousands of years of oppression the Scots suffered under the outside rule of the many invaders of Britain. Perhaps the Fields stirred something ingrained within my genetic soul awakening the outraged ghosts of my Gypsy forefathers who themselves descended from Hebrew refugee who had been outcast, persecuted, and enslaved for millennia. I can understand this underlying need for the freedom my ancestors were denied, but what is freedom itself? Proponents of pure science would argue that there is in fact no such thing. A deconstructionist such as Harvard entomologist E.O. Wilson would peel back the layers of my ID to reveal at the core of my being those first rules—that life just is, and it’s only real function is to exist and taking this a step further, to procreate whereby the universe is made more interesting as it goes. Thus all motivations, all reasoning comes from various influences set in motion by the natural instincts for self preservation and the continuation of the species, and humans, as mere organic constructions of instinct whose actions and reactions are prodded along by a series of stimuli in an infinite universe and thereby have no free will. It’s not just scientist who subscribe to this credo. At the root of Buddhism, for example, also is the belief that life simply is, and that our purpose is to just exist and let the world flow around us, but they have taken it a step beyond science and believe that because there is a higher plane, humans can transcend the material world and achieve Nirvana which is a state of existence wherein resides perhaps the most literal interpretation of Homo sapiens sapiens—the humans who know. It occurs to me that mankind has always felt it easier to believe in the inevitability of our fate, probably because the alternative is frankly scarier. It is more reassuring to believe things happen for some underlying reason and that there are no such things as purely random encounters. Indeed, that does seem much easier to believe especially in a world when an IRA or Iranian suicide bomber might take out the bus you innocently and unsuspectingly take to work. It’s one of the ways we make sense out of the senseless stuff like that. Early religion promulgated this as evinced by the mythologies replete with tales about the Norns or Fates who spun the threads of a man’s life and arbitrarily cut them whenever they wished. Indeed no man or god could avoid their fate, and the greatest disasters befell those who tried to escape or deceive the relentless scissors. Even most later religious ideologies are focused on that central idea—that one cannot go against the word of God. Right wing conservative fundamentalist literal interpretations of any of the major holy Books, the Bible, the Koran, the Talmud, all lead to the same conclusion that disobeying the word of God or going against His will result in punishment—by death, by pain, by hellfire, etc. Furthermore, adherence to holy law paves the way to heaven. That said, it’s interesting to note that liberal theologians like Christian author C.S. Lewis argues that God’s gift to humanity is free will, and freedom of choice is what sets man apart from and above all other creatures of mere instinct and animal nature. Frank Herbert extrapolated on this idea in his Dune chronicles wherein mankind colonizes the universe as far as they can determine, and encountering no other intelligent species believe itself to be the highest form of life and justified in all that it does. Herbert built an amazingly complex intertwined politico-economic religious society centered on that belief, and as they continue to evolve, it is their struggle to remain free he details over the course of six thousand-page novels which span some four thousand years of history in the universe he created. Thus he envisioned a future in which humans develop self-aware computers which conclude through pure logic that their own continued existence is reliant upon the enslavement and/or destruction of the human race. The Butlerian Jihad is fought, and the humans overcome the robots and computers in a James Cameron-esque Terminator-like showdown after which all artificial intelligence is banned. Additionally, having destroyed the earth with nuclear weapons, all use of atomics is also banned, but the uncertainty of what may lie in the unfathomed reaches of space convinces the humans to maintain secret arsenals in the post-apocalyptic Cold War that follows. An elite class of humans refines their mental and physical abilities to a level beyond the comprehension of most normal people, and the masters of these powers are both revered as priests and scorned as witches. An into this boiling scenario Herbert proposed the ultimate moral question: what if a substance was discovered that enhanced physical strength, cured sickness and slowed aging, and facilitated the fullest extent of the human mind to the point of limited prescience which in the absence of computers allowed interstellar travel, and the only drawback is it is so addictive that without a steady source, one will die in agony. Oh yes, and just to make things really interesting, this substance, the spice melange is only found on one desolate planet in the entire universe guarded by the most dangerous creatures ever encountered, the sand worms and the Fremen who ride them. How then would mankind react? Focal to the Dune books is freedom which is attained by control of the spice. Initially we learn that the witch-priestesses not subject to any sort of standard ethics put forth a plan to genetically breed the universe’s super being whose knowledge of the future will be complete, yet he accidentally comes too soon, born into an oppressed society, the descendants of the Jews of ancient Earth, ever searching for a Messiah to deliver them to the Promised Land, and he, the Kwizartz Haderach leads them on a holy war to freedom. Herbert then shows us that Paul loses his freedom to his prescience which leads him to despair, not power, as has been written many times in other stories, and he commits suicide. However his son strives to give freedom to humanity even as over the next three thousand years, humans reach ever greater physical and mental prowess. The power and addictive danger of the spice is replaced by a new order of witches who can addict any human to their sexual talents, and again wars are fought as humans struggle to become free. I believe Herbert made his strongest statement about the relentless ingrained need to be free in the final book in which the hero has overcome all addictions, and his mind and body have achieved total perfection, and he chooses to reject the gift of prescience and leads his people into the great unknown, preferring to seek meaning in the struggle and the journey rather than any end reward. Where does that leave me? I guess all that helps me to affirm that the desire and pursuit for freedom is in the very fiber of my being, and as I’ve maintained, it is the struggle which makes my life interesting and worthwhile, not some intangible trophy dangling just out of reach. I may complain from time to time that I am locked into a rut against which I am struggling, but I know in reality that I am not—not really. I may not particularly enjoy whoring myself to get by, but I know it’s not the only way. I have chosen to do so because the rewards I see along the way outweigh the negative effects which like the rewards are only transitory, just as I “suffered” through my sister’s in-laws because ultimately I want to make her happy, if only for a short while. I do have bonds and obligations that I want to fulfill, but in the end run, I have also recognized I have the option to let go of them all. There will also be consequences and repercussions for any and all of my actions whatever I decided, some of which I can predict, and some I cannot. But at the heart of it all is my own freedom with which I have chosen to be happy and enjoy my life wherever it leads me or I lead it. Additionally, I guess the maddening thing now is when having chosen to end my life as I did, and having that freedom taken away for a time and being forced to live by Anthony and my friends and family, and then choosing to accept the gift of life I am frustrated by their lack of support or even acceptance for the way in which I choose to live. In fact, sometimes late at night it makes me wonder if given the choice, knowing then what they do know, would they have chosen life for me at all? Often I sit staring at the pages I have just written and wonder why I even bother.
Yesterday one of my friends e-mailed me back to say that although he didn’t actually read my essays, he thought I obviously had some sort of gift for writing, as proven by the quantity I produce, and I should keep at it. Thanks, I dryly, wrote back, but I do continue to write whether anyone reads it or not. Like so many lonely, misunderstood writes, philosophers, and poets before me I struggle for some sort of understanding. It is and has been most often a fruitless exercise, but I plod along diligently anyway. Hope springs eternal as I keep telling myself. I grin at myself sometimes in a self-deprecating, cynical fashion when I think about those authors or literary figures whom I most admire and to whom I feel a kinship. Henry David Thoreau, for example, was deemed eccentric at best by his peers and roamed the woods and waterways of New England in a lonely effort to find himself in nature. I, myself, also rambled aimlessly through the woods of a relatively pristine land when I set off on my three month long excursion throughout East Africa, and when I returned to the States I was amazed at how similar my own journal was to his in Walden. I, too, returned a changed man (for the better I thought) yet when I tried to share some of my experiences with my former peers and colleagues I was also met with indifference and apathy, and I must admit, it was no comfort to learn that he was a literary failure whose worth would be appreciated only by reader decades after his penniless death. The heart-wrenching sorrow and angst expressed in the poetic prose of Charles Baudelaire also in the 19th century struck similar chords in my stomach, especially as I have struggled with sometimes overwhelming depression and forlorn despair. Again, it is hardly a fact I care to remember that he died a wretched drug addict in the back alleys of industrial Paris—the same city which would generations later recognize his poetic genius and ironically name a narrow little street in his honor. But perhaps the figure to whom I feel the closest connection since I first met him years ago is the protagonist of Richard Bach’s Johnston Livingston Seagull, who like me found a love, a passion, in doing something which the rest of the flock couldn’t understand despite his best efforts to explain it to them. They simply couldn’t comprehend why he loved to fly so high and dive so fiercely. They called him a fool. They labeled him as dangerous. They ostracized and exiled him and forbid any association with him as if he could somehow contaminate or infect others with his recklessness. And when at last he dove too fast and broke against a cliff and tumbled lifelessly from the sky, no one among them mourned his passing, though perhaps he alone of the mindless crowd ever really lived. Yes, like Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up, but tempered by the wisdom of experience and touched with a hint of sorrow that only comes with age in Jonathan I found a kindred spirit, and I take some hope that like him I will eventually find understanding companions. I just worry that, also like him; it won’t come to me in this lifetime. We all want the same things, I reckon—to have someone understand and accept us for who and what we are. That’s why it was so important for me at the Black and Blue to not only reach the starts as I did after my summer from hell but to have Tom and Dale there who alone in the midst of the swirling crowd knew what I had been through, who had witnessed the pain and the terror and madness, and who had some semblance of appreciation of how far I had come. And that’s a special gift, there’s no denying that, but why, I wonder, can’t I seem to get Anthony to understand as well, or my family for that matter? I suppose one of the many reasons that I continue to write and puzzle things out in my head on paper or computer screen is that I somehow continue to hope that someday they will. Maybe someday you all will.
11:02 p.m. December 25, 2000
Dan Tyler
Neil Diamond composed the soundtrack for the beautiful motion picture portrayal of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and the lyrics of the introductory song have a special meaning to me.
It is me.

Be

Lost
On a painted sky
Where the clouds are hung
For the poet’s eye

You will find him
If, you will find him

There
On a distant shore
By the wings of dreams,
Through an open door

You may know him
If you may...

Be!
On a page that aches for a word which speaks on a theme that is timeless,
And the sun god will make for your way.
Sing!
As a song in search of a voice that is silent,
And the one god will make for your day.

We dance, to a whispered voice
Understood by the moon, and undertook by the heart
You may know it
If, you may know it

And the sand, which became the stone,
which begat the spark, turned to living bone
Holy, holy
Sanctus, sanctus

Be!
On a page that aches for a word which speaks on a
theme that is timeless
and the sun god will make for your way

Sing!
As a song in search of a voice that is silent
and the one god will make for your day

Be!
December 27, 2000
Just a few words (I know, hard to believe isn’t it?) before I head to bed for the evening. My friend Scott and I went cross-country skiing today with Tucson up Bear Canyon east of Bozeman. It was the first time I had been cross country skiing in, say, fifteen years or so, and initially I didn’t find it all that thrilling. It had dumped maybe six inched of fresh ponder in the last 24 hours, and the day itself was overcast and gray. Thus, visibility was definitely low, and the pseudo-light of the hidden sun cast no shadows making depth perception sketchy at best. Add to this mix my own less-than-perfect balance coupled with my novice’s familiarity with the x-country technique and it made for an unenthusiastic Danny-boy. However, after I stretched things out a bit I quickly fell into a groove with the skis and the trail, and suddenly I became aware of the fact that not only was I skiing right along at a steady clip, but I was also enjoying myself, and moreover that my mind and body were in exactly the same space at the same time, focused on the same purpose—to just be, not really directed anywhere, mind you, but just existing there in a pristine forest glazed in virgin snow. In other words, I had found the center, as my friend Mark would call it, and that rush was no less than that I occasionally have achieved through drugs or study or prayer. Good stuff, and as silly and as obvious as it may sound, but I was really happy to be alive! And not just alive, but sentient and awake and conscious and alert and immersed in the here and now. I guess that’s all I really wanted to say, but again it was a far cry from where I had been just six short, impossibly long months ago. I’ll see you all in the new millennium!!!
Danny

On my unbearable lovable-ness of being

I went out and bought a whole bunch of houseplants yesterday with my friend Tom. The checkout lady looked us up and down as if we had gone mad when we pulled two overloaded carts into her lane. Perhaps we had, or rather, perhaps I had. I’ve never been terribly patient when it comes to redecorating or furnishing a place. Common sense dictates that one carefully pinches pennies until one is able to afford a certain décor of one’s choosing, but I have always fallen far short of meeting that ideal. Nay, instead I have lived by the motto that money unspent has no worth, and taking that a step further (or back, if you’re a student of Reaganomics) I figured that credit unused is also useless credit. So like so often in the past, I made quick use of my extremely long and almost unreasonably high line of credit and nabbed ficus trees, and peace lilies, and palms, and ferns, and ivies galore, and upon our return to my apartment and after thoughtful placement of my newly acquired greenery I have decided at last that my place is furnished to my liking. And palatial it is indeed! Drawing on a sort of French-villa-cum-Mediterranean- garden theme with a few dashes of stereotypical gay-good taste in a hardwood floored Boston flat, I now hang my hat in easily the nicest place I have ever lived with the possible exception of the fabulous apartment in Portland, Maine, which Caren and I shared last year. Where am I going with all of this? After all, any of you who checked out the pics I posted on the Web could get a sense of what my apartment looks like without all the ubiquitous commentary for which I am famous. I guess it’s largely because right now writing is the only thing that is keeping me going. I mean that in the worst possible way. I feel like I am walking along a crumbling edge of a steep cliff, and try as I might, pinwheeling my arms and grasping at the earth as it buckles under my feet, I feel a terrible certainty that I am going to fall. Again. And this time I doubt it will be just a passing phase—something I’ll “get through”. One of the pieces of art I picked up to add the finishing touches to my domain is a large print depicting the tragic Greek legend of Narcissus, the most beautiful boy in the world who, oblivious to his admirers was caught by his own reflection in a pool of water, and if I am not mistaken, he tumbled in and drowned, mourned by all the nymphs he forsook for his own image. This picture is I think a very accurate picture of me, although in my case, while I am pursued my a great many would-be suitors who adore me for my face and body, I myself cannot see who lies behind the reflection in the pool, and it is the wild gang of clinging suitors who are threatening to drown me, weighted down as I am by my own insecurities and disbelief in their praises. Yeah, every day I get calls on my cell phone or emails from men who want nothing more than to claim a piece of me for themselves; tasting a sweet fruit who might otherwise have dangled far out of their reach. But because of some quirk of fate, perhaps, I have become available/assailable and with each passing trick I feel myself losing more and more of the sense of what made me so beautiful in the first place. I was not always so. Or at least I didn’t know I was beautiful for many years as my self-confidence began to fade with the loss of my vision and subsequent need to wear thick, ugly glasses. I grew up weaker and smaller than the other kids, and of course, I was too smart which, when coupled with a stereotypical nerd mask and costume to wear I became the continual object of ridicule and disdain. My teenage years were a nightmare as I began to accept my sexuality, even as I let it slip through the façade I tried to erect in order to keep myself safe. The glasses came off when I was about sixteen in favor of contacts, but I was plagued with acne and I still resided in a slight, skinny, weak body prime for fag-bashing and other joys of growing up in Hicksville. No girls would dare to find me even remotely attractive due to my status as a nerd, and of courses I didn’t really want all that many, being far more interested in the boys even though they reviled me as usually something less than human. Fun. It wasn’t really until I was a senior in high school and I had almost completely distanced myself from my peers that I began to somehow build some sense of worth in my own mind. I spent hours in front of the bathroom mirror squeezing and plucking and grooming, and even as I was partially disgusted with my own body chemistry, I managed to look past the superficial blemishes and slowly began to find myself attractive. Indeed, as I began to accept my homosexuality more and more, so I also began to build a picture of the ideal man for me, and guess what? He looked just like me! Well, not in a twins’ sort of way, but definitely in the hey-I-come-from-the-same-Gypsy-tribe-as-you sort of way. And so I came to realize that I myself embodied most, if not all, of the features I would find attractive in a man, and was my opinion so different from others? Again, it took a few years to realize that yes, Dan, most everyone else was of a like mind, and indeed, my comeliness had behind it an inner beauty, a personal charisma that attracted folks, well, fags and fag-hags, at the very least, like the proverbial moths to the flame. After my romantic involvement with Caren ended and we moved to a very “Out” community in Maine, I truly came into my own, I think. That is, without being cocky or narcissistic about it, I at last understood that I was a very attractive young man. One whose looks drew looks, and could be used to charm and entice. And they also got me into trouble. My friend Eric had professed a love for me for as long as I can remember—several years at least, but I never really took him all that seriously as we were growing up. I mean, I had so many issues dealing with my lack of self-confidence, it hardly seemed believable that another boy should be so taken with my looks. And yet after somebody slipped me some drugs at a party that summer and more or less incapacitated me, Eric at last succumbed to his own desires and had sex with me which upon awakening I would initially claim was rape, but deep down I still have an uncertainty about whether or not I could have avoided it. I mean, sad as it is to say, but it seems like it was more or less bound to happen. If not with Eric than by someone less wholesome and more dangerous. That’s not to say that I enjoyed the experience or even forgive the sin, but I think that I can to some degree understand what happened. After all, were not wars fought over the lovely Helen who was coveted by Paris and Agamemnon alike? And was it not implied that both men, and perhaps many more had their way with her and still lusted after her greedily? My friend John and I have laughed at the irony that while I am “so damn cute” and that cuteness is something akin to that of a kitten or puppy which helps protect him from the older, territorial wolves and lions, it is also that self-same cuteness, my unbearable lovable-ness of being, I call it, that stirs the lions’ testosterone, and while in the end, they allow me to live, their natural instinct is to mount me into submission so that I’ll afterwards cower before them and lick at their jowls to appease their wrath. And let us remember that all that jaw licking and whimpering is not without its own rewards as the alpha male ultimately regurgitates a part of his meal to the hungry pup, and it is upon this vomit that the pup survives in an otherwise cold and forbidding world. Yeah, I may have way overused the fuck out of metaphors here, but I’m trying like hell to make a point. And that point is this: I’m scared and unhappy and finding it more and more a struggle to find reasons to keep struggling. You all expressed remorse after the first time I committed suicide, and now, I am letting out my plea. Please help me. Right now I feel so lost and alone in this city that I hate, but I don’t know how or what to do to pull myself out of the muck into which I have fallen. If nothing else, please write back and remind me what it was that attracted you to me (besides the cute face and butt—I get enough compliments on those). Some have said there is a light within me that shines brighter than many, and I need to hear that again. Please, remind me that you are there. Narcissus is about to fall into the pool, and I am really scared right now that no matter how many suitors I have in tow, none of them will be able to rescue me from drowning. I know this is melodramatic, and I feel like a piece of shit to bring it out like this. We can all thank my friend John Peck in Arizona for talking me through some long nights of tears recently as well as Tucson the dog and Dori the cat for needing me to stay alive for their sake, but as I said, it is getting harder and harder to find reasons for my sake.

Danny
“There is nothing as healing as the expectation of something better tomorrow.”---Neil Martinique
Dear Everyone, January 30, 2001
I just wanted to say thanks to all of you who responded to my last rather dramatic email. Your love and support and a lot of crying for hours late at night while I was talked through things by my friend and mentor John and a whole bunch of Ativan and my faithful Tucson and Dori has gotten me through the worst of it, and I am starting to see more clearly now and think more highly about life in general. Sorry for all the drama, but I’m sure y’all are used to it by now. Two big events happened to me this week as well. Number one, I decided to quit escorting, and while I am unsure of how I’m going to keep things together financially, I do know that I was being hurt mentally and emotionally as well as occasionally physically, and that’s no good, so I’m trying to move on to better things. (advice is welcomed) number two; Anthony finally started talking to me again. I’m not sure how things stand now, but I do know that at last he was able to express some of his feelings towards me and our time together in a more or less constructive way, and I was able to tell him a lot of stuff too, and we both ended up crying and holding each other for a long while. I have no idea where things will go from now. I do still love him, and I believe he loves me too, but there needs to be a ton of changes before I could even consider getting back together with him, and the primary one is that he, himself needs to change and find some sense of peace and harmony within himself before he can hope to be happy with another person. It’s hard for me to watch him as he struggles with the frustrations of daily life because he tends to internalize things and over dramatize them, a pattern with which I myself am all too familiar, and because I do love him I wish him to be happy, but I also know he has to reach that stage on his own. I can’t do it for him, no matter how much I might like to. but when he is ready to ask for help, I intend to be there—at least as his friend, because he did help me through a lot, regardless of his involvement in adding to my pain on various occasions. So that’s me in a nutshell. Well, you know, I’ll never fit a nutshell, but you know what I mean. Other news includes: I received the results of an HIV test conducted last week, and I’m happy and relieved to report they were negative. I am also up for a whole battery of STD testing on Wednesday, so wish me luck, please. I am sadly going to have to go in for laser surgery again in another couple of weeks on my ass, which makes me less than happy, as I needn’t remind y’all about the devastating pain of the surgery (my bum still hurts—even now) but such are the lots of life I guess I have drawn. Buddhist philosophy says life is suffering, and through understanding and acceptance can we transcend to a higher place. I don’t think the Buddha was being quite so literal when it comes to my case, but who knows? Perhaps he really was all knowing.
Okay, that’s all I have to say for now.
Smooches,
Danny

“When you are Bear of Very Little Brain (or sometimes a kid in Boston),
and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seems
very Thing-ish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the
open and has other people looking at it.”----Winnie-the-Pooh

Hi everybody, February 7, 2001

I know things have been a bit grim and dramatic lately, but sure enough, things have taken a turn for the better most recently which is a sigh of relief for I reckon all of us. So I figured as a change of pace I would put together some notes on how things have improved and give you all a few happy thoughts to think upon this yucky, snowy day.
While I had been doing some bookkeeping for a restaurant before I left Boston in December, I want to avoid the restaurant scene again, so I am thinking about temping for a while just to see if there is anything out there that I like. Who knows what’ll turn up?
last night was super extra fabuloso which is my way of saying I had an awesome time. I went first to this club I usually avoid because of the crowd that tends to populate it, but last night for some reason it was an entirely different cross-section of folks, and I had a blast. I met several people which whom I connected (at least I think so) and for some reason I suddenly had all these passes to an after-hours club, so I took these two kids—Joe and Carol, by names, (how’s that for coincidence, Caren?) to Rise, and again we encountered a perfect crowd: enough people there to make it fun, but room enough for me to really get twirling which is rare because the place is normally packed. I can’t say the DJ (Ritchie Rich) is a good friend of mine (yet) but we do have a pretty fair nodding acquaintance, and for like the last hour of the night, long after the club had almost emptied out, he spun tracks just for me since I was really the only one dancing. it was phenomenal! It was like we were both giving off this energy and feeding on one another—he’s spin this tracks that would pull me into this funnel of extreme twirling, and then my dancing would suck him in and he just couldn’t stop spinning. We were way out of control, and I think it was the exhaustion of the rest of the club employees that ultimately made us quit. Otherwise I would have danced until I fell over if he had kept spinning for me like he was. good night. Okay, fucking fantastic night! Especially for my first night out in Boston since I got back, and actually close to the first night out in Boston since my return from the Black and Blue Ball in Montreal in October. so, I have received a lot of paperwork from the school in Maine I had planned on attending to become a nurse but of course that was a pre-suicidal plan, and a lot had changed since then. I do still have an urge to help people, and I know I’d be good at it, but there’s also a lot of emotional baggage that I have before I would feel comfortable working in a hospital setting. just too close to my heart, and I think I’d internalize a lot of my daily stresses, even though I’d strive not to. I have had my faith in love re-vitalized lately as Anthony and I have come to some sort of amends. We’re not getting back together—oh,
he has way too many issues for that to be possible, I think, but at least we can be friends
which is more than I anticipated or expected a month ago, so hooray for that.
I guess I am only twenty-five, so there’s no real hurray for me to meet that “special
someone” just yet, but I will admit I really like sleeping in someone’s arms and waking up to a friendly, familiar face. I suppose we all do. Well, that’s it for me this morning, my friends. You are all in my thoughts and always in my heart.

Lovingly,
Danny

Dear Ritchie, February 9, 2001
I just wanted you to know how important you and the way you spin have been in my life over the past year. Anthony and I met one night at Rise last March when all I really intended to do was go out dancing, and instead we saw each other at about four in the morning as you were pulling together one of the most phenomenal sets I have ever had the pleasure of twirling to. It was the way he danced that caught my eye, and who could have guessed that what began as a magical night of spinning lights and hands would eventually turn into a tempestuous romance concluding with me moving down here to Boston from Maine and ultimately ending up with me in the hospital all summer long after my unsuccessful suicide attempt. I am not sure how or why I got my hand on your email address, but if you have read any portion of the tale I have chronicled through my mass email s over the past few months you have some idea of how injured I had been, both physically and mentally, and emotionally. Six months ago after I woke up from the coma, I discovered I could barely hear and couldn’t walk; that’s how bad things were, and yet somehow deep within my heart I found the strength and will to pull myself out of the depths of despair and learn how to walk, read, count, shower, eat, and do all the other things I had previously taken for granted until they were all taken away. In addition to my hearing loss, for a long while I suffered unnerving panic attacks, as well as an incapacitating stutter which pretty much closed me off from most of society, but slowly and surely I have, managed to overcome nearly all of the obstacles, and at long last, even my hearing has returned to a more or less normal ability. And what I wanted to do most, what I prayed I would eventually be able to do again as I lay in the hospital for four weeks and physical therapy for weeks after that, was dance. To twirl around a room with my hands full of lights as if the night would never end so long as the music played, and as if there were no tomorrow so long as I could spin around clothed in sparkling joy and music. I know that sounds really overly dramatic, but that’s how I felt last Sunday night, Ritchie. I know there were a few other people there, especially towards the end of the night, and for the most part I had the floor to myself, and I just felt so alive, so happy and glorious—as if all the pain and darkness from the past six months had somehow fallen away from my shoulders like so many unwanted husks. You did that for me, Ritchie. I have never heard a DJ spin with so much passion as you do, or who is so attentive to the needs and desires of his crowd—even if that crowd for some reason has dwindled down to a single, rapt dancer caught up in the whirlwind of your tracks and giving out as much energy in the hopes that you are receiving it. I swear, if they hadn’t closed things up for us, I would have danced to your mixes well past noon on Monday even if my feet bled and my joints popped out of their sockets. That’s how completely wrapped up in your music I became. And so, all I can say is “Thank you, Thank you, THANK YOU!!!!!!! And far beyond that I just want you to know there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you, no favor is too large or small to ask of me, and while I am sure you have whole troops of messy club kids who want to hug you or shake your hand or whatever after you have a set at the turntables, I’m more than that, and I want to hang out with you and offer my friendship as sincerely as you can expect from a guy who has come back from the brink and who owes you a lot more than he can articulate for being part of that process. Does any of this make any sense? I hope so, just as I hope that after you get this email you will think it over, and decide that I am not some psycho-stalker, and that I AM somebody you want to hang out with both in and out of RISE. Jung said, “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” I know that I have been transformed by you, and my life has been enriched by the experience. I hope to hear from you soon.
Dan Tyler
“Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing; of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.” (paraphrased)-----Christopher Robin
On Perspective
I sit here staring intently at the computer screen and I feel… something. Something is stirring deep inside of me, and it is a race to try to get it all out in one heaving, gushing tide before it slips away. I have had this sensation repeatedly over the past week and a half, and yet it seemed like each time, the time or the mood or the place just wasn’t right, but now, finally, I have found the time and space to come together like some celestial convocation of the planets coming into synchronous orbit, and yes, the words are pouring out of me like the chanting of some foreign, forgotten spell. Perhaps I shall weave a tapestry of magic tonight. Stick with me, and we’ll find out. Let us begin with a synopsis of what has happened of late. Number one on my, mind were the events of the Red Party from which I recently returned, having trekked up to Montreal with my friends Tom and Erik on a truly wonderful weekend of dance. The record which spun in my head all along the road and while we were there was one which evoked a sense of cycles, of time and events coming full circle; of a great spinning wheel which had brought me and my erstwhile companions a passage which had come to a space familiar to me as if I had walked those halls for time immemorial. In a way I guess maybe I had—the trio of us, it occurred to me—myself, Tom, and Eric was an adult reflection of another trio with the same monikers who traipsed the snow covered fields of my youth. Indeed, my companions were a different Tommy and a different Eric, but then again, wasn’t I also a completely different Danny? Just one point that made me go, “Hmmm…” throughout the weekend. The main event Saturday night was held at Metropolis, supposedly the largest nightclub in Canada, and a space of which I have normally been less than fond. However this evening I realized that I was enjoying the music, the lights, the performance, and indeed the club itself. The hall outside the downstairs bathroom where once upon a time I had kissed my betrothed Anthony and months later where I would console a brokenhearted Tom was now a cool place of respite for a feverish Dan who found his way unerringly there through the pulsating crowd. The live performance that evening recalled the Red Party of a year ago when Judy Albanese sang “You” to a crowd of cheering gay boys, many of whom had been there last year to cheer just as wildly when she sang “You used to Hold Me” accapella after arriving in the midst of a blizzard only to discover her crew had lost her music. Those of us who had been there previously laughed aloud and nodded our heads in shared memory. I thought as I danced there of the boys with whom I had attended last year’s party. Five of us had packed into my then-newly-purchased Toyota Echo and drove from Portland, Maine on an impromptu winter vacation. I really only knew one of them well, and had met the other three the week before, dashing off thoughtless invitations which were unexpectedly accepted, and thus, our journey was one of fresh, new stories as we all came to know one another. Weeks after our return I wound up in the hospital after an asthma attack, and lay deathly ill at home for a week later. All four of the other boys came to my succor, even though two of them had to drive all the way from Boston, and it struck me that I had never had better friends. And there on the dance floor at Metropolis, I was also struck by the bracing fact that I hadn’t spoken to any of them in months. Again the thought occurred to me of how fleeting are our friendships, and how apt is Stephen King’s comparison of friends to busboys in a busy restaurant. They come in and out of wildly swinging doors and most often only briefly stop at your table no matter how frantically we gesticulate at them from across the room. Rare indeed is the waitress or busboy with whom we build a lasting friendship, and to stretch the analogy out even further, rarer is the hotel coffee shop that remains open through the years and maintains that uncommon server in their employ with whom we connected tenuously. And then, out of nowhere appeared Mark, and later his boyfriend Marcus, as if on cue to the patterns of my thoughts, and I laughed with a delight that I simply couldn’t explain even to them at that moment, what with all else going on around us, and somehow it was enough to just embrace them; these two unexpected friends of mine with whom I feel such a connection, and jump up and down and squeal with sheer pleasure. A note on this meeting: I had told them long in advance that I wanted to go to the Red Party, and I’d hoped they would join me there somehow from Toronto. However, as the weeks passed, my attendance became less certain, and I received no word from either of them, and thus when suddenly I became more able to afford the trip, I was fairly convinced that they wouldn’t be there as I thought they were all tied up in Toronto trying to put on a circuit event of their own. Thus, it was perhaps one of the most pleasant surprises of my life to find them both there, grinning like a couple of egg-sucking dogs, if you’ll pardon the expression, with their friend Winslow in tow. Reunions are rather special events, are they not? Especially those that come so unexpectedly. I have spoken elsewhere of how dear those boys are to me, so I won’t divulge the time just now to reminisce, but I would like to take a moment as we are on the subject of cycles to recap some of my thoughts with Mark about the magic of a circuit party and finding the “center” on the dance floor. Finding the center, as we call it, is one of the moments that makes life worth living no matter how dreary and mundane it is on the average weekday. It is that moment of shining glory when all events come together in your mind, nay, in your soul if you can dig it, and you achieve a certain clarity that reveals all the other shit for just was it is: shit; that is, meaningless drivel that when all is said and done cannot amount to a hill of beans. Buddhists might claim it is reaching enlightenment, particularly if you subscribe to their belief that life is suffering. It is a moment of transcendence when nothing else matters. It is a moment of focus, of pure, uncomplicated joy. It’s a moment of understanding and embracing the miraculous. Experiencing the numinous, my friends. A moment of truth when you see the writing on the wall, and get the joke. Yeah, man, that’s what I am talking about. Getting the joke. And laughing! Last summer I spent a great deal of time wandering the streets of Boston and asking God, Allah, the universe, or what-have-you a lot of questions. I painfully felt the weight of the world upon my shoulders, and I was frustrated and hurt, locked into a body wasted by my time in the hospital and struggling with a wide variety of soul-crushing problems. I won’t go into all that again, but let’s just say that I had enough on my plate to ask God if maybe I was the butt of some divine joke, and if so, maybe he would let me in on it sometime. And there, on the second night during the closing party at Stereo (my favorite night club in Canada) as I was washed in a sea of flashing red lights, surrounded by a milling throng of gyrating gay muscle boys, and as a wave of juicy flavor exploded in my mouth while I sucked on my sour apple Blow Pop, and I twirled two shimmering sequined flags like Salome’s veils about the figure of a silver-clad forty-five year old disco queen; there, there, on the dance floor as my senses were overwhelmed in a rush of color, sounds, caresses, flavors, and scents, I got it. I got the joke! And I laughed, and I laughed, and I laughed. I have talked in the past about the idea that some folks are more evolved than others; that some Homo sapiens have risen to become Homo ludens—some of the “people who know” are now the “people who laugh;” that it is no longer enough to just know about the world around us, to be truly evolved to the highest state of humanity, you have to take pleasure in that knowledge, to sit back and enjoy this great, and wondrous, often times very-fucked-up-but-always-entertaining wacky, wild world in which we live. And it occurred to me that as I shook my groove thing with the rest of the crowd: who better to exemplify the Homo ludens than the queers, nay, let me reiterate, the gays of the world. Or at least those gay boys and girls in that club, for in that moment, there was no other world outside the club. It ceased to exist. It never was, and for all we knew it would never be. Four o’clock was a lifetime away; Monday morning incomprehensible. We were there, that’s all we knew, all we had to know, and as I have noted elsewhere it is then, in that moment where time ceases to exist and space has no function that we are alive! A lot of other stuff happened over the course of the weekend; I chipped a tooth, ran into a boy who paid for a cab ride home from the Black and Blue and whom I never got to thank properly, and as I learned how to dance with glow sticks at the Red Party the year before, at this one I learned how to flag—that is dance with silken, sparkling scarves specially weighted so that they flare out dramatically if you twirl them properly. But what I got out of the weekend as a whole was a sense of perspective. I have done a lot of writing over the past six months, and even more thinking, and I like to consider myself fairly self-analytical, to say the least, but when I have been struggling in the thick of things, it has been difficult to step back and look at the situations objectively, although I daresay I have done a better job than many would have if placed in my shoes. January was a difficult month, but February was a good time to rest and reflect and sort of let things settle in my stomach, mind, and heart. I mentioned to Tom and Eric as we drove up that it was sort of crazy how so many people spend their lives struggling to make some impact on a world that ultimately cares not a whit about them. At the time I was gazing out across the Charles River at some particularly large warehouses and lofts and thinking that somebody had dedicated a significant portion of his life to design and build one of those, and at most all he really had to show for it was a plaque with his name on it on the corner stone, or maybe a mason had titled the building across the upper story with a “Fudderman Block” so that passersby twenty years later looking up might idly wonder “Who the hell was Fudderman?” and “Why did he have a building named after him?” Straight people make an impact on the world by breeding and spreading their genetic seeds across the planet. What easier way to achieve some sense of immortality than to pass a name on to your heirs? Buildings may fall and be plowed under; a commemorative watch will invariable get smashed or stolen; but to inscribe your family name onto countless generations of unsuspecting progeny, now that’s an achievement! And yet somehow we continue to strive to leave a mark, gay or straight, father, mother, or sterile and barren. Even in death it seems a large majority of us desire memorialization beneath a slab of marble with our name and some Hallmark eulogy inscribed upon it. Is it any wonder that Generation X has been followed by the “Why Bother?” generation? In the face of all that meaningless insignificance why shouldn’t we just throw in the towel, give up, and just focus on entertaining ourselves? This is where I start to get a little preachy, so brace yourselves, or go make some popcorn and skip this section when you return. It seems to me that we should just face facts: human life is really pretty transitory, and whether you are an optimist or a pessimist is what determines the types of transitions one makes. I don’t think it would be hard to acknowledge that those whose glasses are half full consistently seem to get all the lucky breaks and pretty much float through life enjoying every step of the way whereas the half empty lot invariably lives crises to crises, wallowing in their dumps and surrounding themselves with other pessimists inasmuch as misery loves company. We all know the types: the Ned Flanderses always seem to find twenty dollar bills in the gutters, while the bitter, cunty queens lash out at anyone they perceive as luckier than they, or worse, as miserable as they! I think I speak with some authority on this topic as I have been a resident at one time or another of both camps, and while I pity and even empathize with the half-empties, I consider myself blessed to have hopped the fence to a side where the grass is indeed much greener. So I wander through this life with my little perspectives and wonder if I really am in the know or just making a good show of it. I, myself, often wonder why I even bother to write any of this down. Some of you I know don’t read much of what I have to say. Some even disagree quite vehemently with my opinions, to which I respond “to each his own,” There are even a few folks out there who have asked me not to send anymore of my ramblings as they take too long to download and/or they take up too much space on their hard drives. Hah! Nothing like getting smashed in the face with a cold dose of reality than being told that one’s opinions are less than useless to some members of the audience. Oh well, at least I haven’t gotten heckled yet. So why do I keep writing? I suppose now that I have regular therapist, I write less as I have an audience of one who has to listen, or at least that’s what I’m paying him to do. I reckon that in my own way I am just like everyone else and want to leave my mark on the world in some small way. Tucson and I went to the Museum of Fine Arts this afternoon and were suitably awed by the incredible creative forces which have spurred our species on to create the wondrous, hideous, and tacky. We (or at least I) fell in love with the wing devoted to ancient Egyptian sarcophagi and Mesopotamian artifacts, brushed past the boring display on colonial silversmithing, and fingered our Adams’ apples (do dogs have Adams apples?) appreciatively when we got to the burnished, razor sharp samurai swords. And despite the intense appreciation I have for the arts, and the highest esteem I hold for Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Degas among dozens of other painters, sculptors, and calligraphers, the implacable feeling with which I was left as we departed was one of the irrelevance of their efforts. I had just spent three hours wandering the halls of a building which in itself was a magnificent work of art, and yet hours later, my mind had turned to the next thrill which as it turned out was culinary in nature. I also got to thinking about the security guards who left more of an impression on me than the art which they protected. I have often been struck by the no small wonder as they languish in a semi-permanent purgatory of boredom that they almost pounce on any opportunity to exercise what might they can display when a young unassuming lad such as myself attempts to enter with (horror of horrors) a dog! I often try to figure what testosterone laden thrill this gives them when they assert in as manly a fashion as they can muster that “There are NO dogs allowed,” especially when it seems very plain to me and other casual observers that Tucson wears a service dog vest and harness adorned with an identification badge. All I have been able to come up with in answer is that they too have recognized the average daily uselessness of their positions, and seeing a spark of life approaching, they leap at the chance to flex their badges even if they do in fact see Tuc’s I.D. badge, or perhaps even because of it (damned handicapped people, they already take up all the parking, now they want to bring their mangy dogs in with them?! Hell no, not while I’m on duty!) Sometimes I try to share my perspectives with them in the hopes of spreading the gospel and enlightening them, but then again, it really is easier to say, “why bother?” and just flash them with my I.D. badge. On a funny side note, the other day a security guard tried to intercept me while we were entering the library and when I ignored his yells (selective deafness) and continued walking, he gave a rather half-hearted chase. When it became apparent I wasn’t going to stop and wait for him to catch up (I was walking just a tad too briskly) he gave up, having almost broken a sweat on his pudgy brow. I reckon he figured that the guards on the other side of the library would block our entry, which they also tried to do, but were foiled by my trusty badge. I love fucking with them. I’ve been writing now for about four hours, and I’m still not entirely sure I have managed to say exactly what it was I wanted when I began. Oh yeah, perspective—that’s the point I am trying to make. We need to have it, to keep it in mind, to come back to it when we stray off into right field. Many people lack it, and I think it’s what really separates the half-fulls from the half-empties. I know that little truth probably couldn’t be more self-evident, but I assure you it is incredibly easy to lose track of it. Story of my life! (sigh) I have a few more thoughts, and then I’m going to call it a night. The first is that I am slowly staring to feel a bit wiser as life goes on. For Christ’s sake all of a sudden I am right around the corner from turning twenty-six, my hair is getting grayer by the day, and I sure as hell better have some wisdom to make up for it! The irony of it all is that many of my moments of lucidity of the last six months have come to me in a drug-induced state. I cannot attest that they were enabled by the drugs, although I daresay that sometimes the drugs have acted as catalysts to my little epiphanies, but the ironic thing is that while I and some few of you may recognize some of the wisdom, nay, the enlightenment, I have attained in such a state, mainstream society would disregard and invalidate my findings because they were not uncovered in a socially responsible fashion. Funny, isn’t it? On any given day I pump no less than 15 drugs, vitamins, minerals, and supplements into my body to sustain, maintain, and increase my body’s health and strength ostensibly so that I may go to work, watch sitcoms and “reality” TV shows, and contribute to the GNP on a daily basis, yet if I take one or two non-government sanctioned substances into my body on the occasional weekend away and happen to achieve a moment of lucidity I usually don’t come across on the typical weekday and record it all later, folks roll their eyes at the very least, and at worst disregard everything I have to say, sober or not. Wacky stuff, humans. Even wackier are the Homo ludens. Anthropologist Lyall Watson writes about a group of early humans called the Strandloopers who lived on the beaches of the Ivory Coast in western South Africa. They are an anthropological curiosity as their bones show that they had unseemingly large heads attached to very small, child-like bodies. They left no lasting signs of civilization such as fortifications or much more than the most rudimentary tools, and yet he idolizes them. You see, he has a vision, which I rather like as well, in which these humans made an evolutionary jump far ahead than their contemporary Homo sapiens and became something else, humans with huge brains so large that they eliminated the need for crude tools and the objects of war. Instead they lived naked and free, playing on the beach and napping after simple meals provided by the fauna caught in rocky tide pools. They contemplated the world around them, and took pleasure in raising their small families peacefully under the warm sun and comforting stars. The Strandloopers disappeared without leaving much to account for their existence but a few graves here and there and the imagination of the occasional scientist and his students. The point he tries to make is that maybe humans have already reached the pinnacle of their evolution there by the seas, and after a brief bright speck of light in the evolutionary time line, it quietly burned out. I think back on my journey to the Island of Naxos far out in the Aegean Sea and the beautiful, sun-browned people I found there. My distant Greek cousins have a lovely perspective on life. All the young people are gorgeous; the women are lithe and willowy while the men are supple and strong. They all have a zest, a vibrancy for life, and they live their days fully, devoting equal portions of their time to work, rest, and play. Their island gleams like an incandescent lily in a turquoise sea, and their flocks of goats dot the craggy, flower-covered mountains like satyrs out of a myth. They eat their fill of sumptuous meals and drink and smoke and make merry. By their thirties they all shrink in height while they broaden in girth and no one seems to care a bit. They have perspective; a magnificent sense of perspective and my days there despite a horrible case of bronchitis and bad sunburn were some of my happiest. Perhaps the Strandloopers, Homo ludens are still very much alive. In fact, I’m sure of it. And that, dear friends, is all I have to say about that!
Dan
“Deep in the human consciousness is a pervasive need for a universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic”.—Frank Herbert

On friendship
My friend Mark in Chicago recently sent me an email professing that he believes at times God is laughing at him. He feels this way because after exhaustive searching for the past several years leaving no stones unturned he still hasn’t found a suitable mate with whom to share his life. And as we all know: in Gaydom, as you grow older there is a corresponding decrease in one’s personal attractiveness. Trust me, it’s a sad fact, but very true, that gay boys also have biological clocks, and once we pass twenty-five, it seems like the field becomes smaller and smaller, and it’s almost like a race to find a man who at least doesn’t annoy you too much before you are left out in the cold; alone, baby, and nobody, gay or straight or bi wants to be alone. But why is that, do you suppose? I mean, we are supposed to be far advanced above our primeval ancestors who had to huddle together for warmth and protection. Gay folks in particular ought to be free from the need for companionship as many of us haven’t the urge (or plumbing) to procreate, and yet there is something heartbreakingly sad about the loneliness I have encountered as I dance along, peeking into the lives of random, solitary boys; peers, tricks, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, and chance encounters. I called Mark back a few days later to reassure him that there is still hope out there and that he just hasn’t found the right man, yet. And while, it is true: God really is laughing at him, he’s in good company, as God is laughing at all of us. The trick is, as I think I have professed from the beginning, to laugh right along with God. Not just a nervous titter, either, mind you, but big old country-fried belly laughs, and it is by sharing in that deep, rich, profoundly absurd joke that we can begin to pick out the voices in the crowd and gravitate towards one another until not only do we find that soulmate for which we’ve all been searching, but we will also hopefully have made more than just a few wonderful, cherished friends, nay, brothers-in-spirit, along the way. So, then, this next essay, as I think you can already tell, is going to be about friendship—why we have them, why we need them. And I would like to take this space to introduce you, my friends, to one another by way of yours truly. I asked a few months back for your opinions of me and what drew you variously to me, and I think that some of you, as you read about the attractions, will find yourselves in very good, very familiar, company. And who knows? Perhaps some of you, who are separated by such distances, ages, sexes, and creeds, may find one another suitable candidates to add to your circle of friends. I would like to begin today’s lesson, Gentle Reader, with an excerpt from a paper I wrote a while back in philosophy class discussing the values of my old friend, Aristotle, and those of a rather bitter and jaded old queen by the name of Emmanuel Kant. I know all of you find these little lessons tedious at times, but bear with me; this really is going somewhere. Human beings are social creatures. If nothing else, we learn that simple fact from virtually any course we take whether it be philosophy or history or economics. Like ants, dogs, sparrows and the vast majority of the other creatures on this planet, we seek out relationships with our own kind. Despite any amount of self-sufficiency, and beyond our ability to rationalize, people are drawn to one another, urged on by some primal force that demands the company of others in order to makes one’s own life complete. To this end, people tend to work in groups, form a marriage bond with one or more people, and even procreate new human beings with whom to share their lives. However, Aristotle and Emmanuel Kant both presented arguments claiming that friendship is the most cherished form of human interaction of all, albeit from widely different stances. For example, Aristotle believed in three types of friends: friends based on their utility or the practical things they could do for each other; friends based on pleasure or what one might call one’s “drinking buddies”; and finally real, true friends who are people drawn to one another because of the virtues they share and delight in one another. To Aristotle, this last form of friendship, the true, lasting friendship, was a rare thing, attained at best with only a select two or three people throughout one’s lifetime. Thus, making friendships of the other sorts was inevitable. Just as a matter of practical business, men are prone to building relationships in which no true love or even liking exists; yet they maintain a certain amount of civility as they perform and return favors for one another. Two colleagues with little in common can work together well simply due to the practice of figuratively scratching each others backs as they go about their business. Classmates, business men, politicians—anyone who forms working relationships with other people take advantage of this kind of friendship of utility, using other people just as they are being used. It may be that this type of friendship is what keeps the states together, Aristotle proposed, as lawmakers, courts, and the general populace tend to view the well-being of the nation as dependent on the interactions of people of goodwill towards one another. Building and maintaining friendships of pleasure may also help keep a society together. While drinking, doing drugs, carousing, and causing mischief may not in and of themselves seem to be indicative of a healthy nation, they do help reinforce the bonds between people who might otherwise have nothing to do with one another. Nobody likes to drink alone, yet everyone loves a party. This broad generalization indicates that although people may not have anything in common with one another, they are often still willing to drink, take drugs, or have sex with another person simply because its makes them feel close to a person in general. These feelings of warmth, intimacy, and closeness sometimes become so akin to the feelings of real love, that many people might mistake it as such. Aristotle believed that this type of friendship was especially prevalent amongst the young who perhaps through their search for true friends come across many of these friends of pleasure, possibly entrapping themselves into marriages or partnerships. As people age, pleasure-friends may evolve into utility-friends, especially as people discover that they don’t really like one another, but as they continue to perform some function for one another, they continue making the motions that they really are friends. The rarest friendships, then, are those based on totally equal terms, in which some utility may be performed, yet the friendships exist without it. These types of friendships are developed as two people discover themselves more fully than the average rambunctious youth, so they may not come about until after the hormonal stirrings of adolescence wear thin. These mature self-aware people are then better able to seek others that are more truly “mates”, that is, they search for another person to complement one’s own traits and virtues, and in whom one can delight in both their similarities and their differences. Such relationships, Aristotle admitted, were rare, and they tended to be singular with a person lucky to come into this bond once or twice in his or her lifetime, and seldom forming more. In today’s terminology, this person would be called a soulmate, and Aristotle believed that the natural course of action was for these people to live together. That is not to say that they had to be married or live as lovers, especially because such a friendship transcends the physical acts and is not based on the urge to procreate and raise a family. Rather, it is through and with such friends that one experiences happiness or eudaimonia, the highest goal of the Aristotelian world. And by this sort of friendship, it is perhaps how a human becomes more humane. Leaving Aristotle for just a moment, Emmanuel Kant, on the other hand, although he also believed man was a social creature in need of human contact, firmly denounced the idea that “true friendship” could exist, largely because men constantly take advantage of one another, and thus, a disparity will always exist. Because of favors, which, mind you, Kant insisted are a duty to perform, men will always fall into two categories: one of the debtors who must return a favor, and the other of the benefactors to whom a favor or debt must be repaid. Kant professed the love of mankind as a duty in order to be considered virtuous. Thus, seeking the betterment of others is both a goal and a duty for the virtuous man; he ignores his own desires and happiness, and instead works for the betterment of others to the best of his capacity, hence, he performs favors for his fellow man which presumably will better the other’s lot in life. Thus, friendship, or at least this overtly benevolent sort of good will towards mankind is what maintains order and promotes the growth and prosperity of a society. In Kant’s moral philosophy, however, motives are just as, if not more important, than actions, and thus, a moral man would be motivated to help others not because he expects something in return (although in an ideal world, he would get something back from other men, equally motivated to help others including himself) but simply because helping others is the moral or right thing to do. Regardless of the ethics of the situation, any favor still puts the two people into seeming positions of superiority and inferiority, and the inferior (or recipient of the favor) is hence compelled to repay his debt. And thus the vicious cycle is born and maintained, disallowing for any real sort of friendship. In Kant’s point of view, the best friends, then are those that keep their distance from one another and ask for and perform few favors for one another. A moral friend, which is about as close to a “true” friend as Kant will allow, is one bearing a good disposition and exuding general good will to whom another can turn and vent his feelings and opinions and open his heart without fear of the other later slandering or gossiping about him. Thus, the best friends would be akin to therapists, bartenders, and barbers; people not too close to put a hold on one another, but close enough to share some intimate conversations. However, rather than unbiased opinion givers, Kant believed that such moral friends would find it their duty to point out a person’s faults to him as this is in his best interests. And so, these moral friends also serve the functions of priests, ministers, and even judges who can both criticize a man’s actions and motives as well as suggest a recourse to them. Additionally, not only can they do this, but it is their duty to serve as Big Brother as they strive to promote the betterment of all society. Thus Kant refuted Aristotle’s ideal of true friendship as being unrealistic and unattainable. They both seemed to denounce friendships based on pleasure; Aristotle because it serves little purpose and wastes time and resources, and Kant because sensory pleasure is immoral. Friendship, then, finds a common ground in the friendships based on utility. Aristotle believed this to be the common thread that binds society together although he cherished the idea that there was a higher level of friendship that led to happiness. Conversely, Kant insisted that all friendships were based on some sense of utility as men strive to better their neighbors, and the closest one could get to true friends were moral friends between whom there were few or no debts owed. Thus, Kant cherished utilitarian friendship as a primary goal because it promotes order and prosperity in society, and it stems from moral behavior thus leading to a moral society. In either case, I have to believe that both men were very sad and lonely people, Kant more so than Aristotle. At least Aristotle held onto the hope that a soulmate was out there, one person amidst the sea of humanity to whom one could totally and utterly “sync” although, admittedly the chances of finding that one person were slim indeed. Kant, however, denied that sort of bond’s existence and seemed to have shunted himself off from any sort of intimacy while professing that all men should do the same. They say misery loves company, but in Kant’s world even that statement is a paradox as misery a.k.a. morality was suffered alone.
Let me leap back in here for those few of you still awake to say that as I have maintained from the beginning, there really is no such thing as morality. It’s just another one of those things that is dependent entirely upon one’s perspective. What we do, and how we live are pathways guided solely by our own primal, animalistic instincts. We are naturally drawn to do what feels good, as to do otherwise would be self-destructive, and nature doesn’t create self-destructive creatures, not knowingly, not willingly, and it is only when something is profoundly askew in any ecological system that the inhabitants turn on each other, or in a worse case scenario, themselves. Is it any wonder that humans, despite our myriad failings and our bloody history, given an objective stance, find the self-beaching of whales so unnatural? Scientists, conservationists and volunteer rescue workers scramble to push these creatures back in the water often vainly in an effort to preserve life even when it is obvious those creatures do not want to go on. Perhaps in our efforts to save them we find our own salvation, and our own sense of morality is born out of a self-serving wish to have others do unto us as they would have done unto them. Thus, morality might be an inborn mechanism to ensure the safety and continued existence of our species, one person at a time in a vast sea of individuality. Additionally, ingrained within the very fiber of our genetic makeup is perhaps a mindless drive to grasp for the very last shreds of life, and to that end billions of dollars are spent every year to prolong and enrich our own tenuous lives. Case in point, I, when despite my best efforts tried to leave this world behind, was brought back from the brink, no one gave a thought to how much it was going to cost. Had Medicare not come to the rescue my hospital bill would likely have run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and yet, I have no doubt that my family and friends would have willingly doled out every cent they had and sunk themselves into debt to ensure I got a second chance. But this essay isn’t about life or hope; I’ve covered that material already. Right now we are talking about friends, and where I am going with this is that a life lived alone is not worth living. Fuck the deep shit (pardon my French) of “the life unexamined” and all that. We are social creatures, every one, and the ones that say they aren’t are either lying, in denial, or about to go postal. Indie rock band 311 raps, “if you don’t have someone to do it with, it’s not worth doing.” I concur. Why else do you think I spend so much time writing all this crap down? While it is true that I take a certain amount of satisfaction in my own enlightenment, I also know Nirvana is going to be pretty fuckin’ boring if I’m the only one there. So I write, which I guess, in my own way, is how I try to teach and share the little tidbits of wisdom I have garnered as I have skipped merrily along. My Patron Saint and Source of Continual Inspiration, H.D. Thoreau also achieved an enlightenment of sorts (or so I must believe from his writings) but his journals went largely unnoticed by his peers, and he died penniless and alone. Well, dammit. That’s not the way I want to die (although I admit it once was)! I could really care less about the money, but more and more, I, like you, am driven to continue seeking out my soulmates (for I believe there to be more than one—of course there are, my soul is infinitely large e.g….) and join hands with them for at least a little while as we explore and marvel at the wonders of the universe each in our own way. Gosh that was a long sentence/thought. Let me pause for a moment to collect…
(A moment passes)
Okay, I’m better now and ready to get back to the subject of friends. Tom and I went skiing in Vermont for the weekend a few days ago and all along the way we laughed, ate, and shared stories. We shook off the oppressive yoke of the city as it were and enjoyed stretching our wings out in the sticks with the rest of the ski bums, yokels, and otherwise un-Boston-y folks flying down the slopes of Pico Peak. And invariably because Tom is also Anthony’s best friend, he served as a constant reminder of my relationship with Anthony. Tom and I have a great deal more in common than Anthony and I. Hell, there are any number of boys out there with whom I have more in common than Anthony, and yet, I despite my searching high and low, I am not in love with them. And I am with him. I can’t say why, I just am. Despite our rocky trails, any number of arguments, fights, tears, and even blows, I still love him in a way I haven’t with anyone else to date. And so, like Mark, I can hear God’s chuckling at my expense. However, Marks’ email got me to thinking about the incredible vastness of this world and how certainly I haven’t met all the boys out there (even though at times, it feels like it). But, really, I have tasted just a slice of what humanity has to offer (figuratively speaking—get your minds out of the gutter, sheesh!) So, I want to share with you all some of what humanity has brought to the table. The responses which follow were sent to me a couple of months ago when I was in a great deal of pain and deeply in need of the support of my friends and family. I asked tearfully then what you got out of me, and so now I reply with what I get out of you. Some of those folks were lovers, or potentials, or what-might-have-beens, while others are comrades-in-arms, blood brothers, or otherwise kin to my soul. It’s surprising that I should ever have felt so alone when I have so many people there just a phone call or some other ridiculously short span away. I hope this will help you all to remind yourselves of not only my friendship (which you ought to take as a given) but also of all those around you whose lives you have touched in some wondrous way. Anthony got very sick when we got back from Vermont to the point that he had to go to the emergency room, he was in such pain. When I heard, I rushed over to his place with a bottle of prescription painkillers, and later that week with flowers. Some of you have shaken your heads in exasperation, I know, as you wonder why I even bother. I know what it is like to be in pain. I know what it is like to feel alone and how hard it is to ask for help sometimes. Given all that has happened to me over the past eight months, hell, over the past twenty-five years, given all that, knowing what I know now, and trying to sleep well at night and look at myself in the mirror in the morning, how could I not? So, in closing, thanks for sticking with me. It has been a long, and torturous journey (for you and me both, I know) but a worthwhile one, I reckon. I’ve learned a hell of a lot, and maybe, just maybe, without trying to convert or proselytize, I’ve been able to impart some of me unto you. Anyway, it’s spring again, at last, and I am off to New York City’s Black Party tomorrow to dance, dance, dance my way into other peoples lives and if I am lucky a few embraces as well. But don’t worry, you are not forgotten and I shall write again.
Toodles,
Dan
March 23, 2001
10:42 P.M.
Deep in the human consciousness is a pervasive need for a universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.

----------Paul Mua’Dib, as recorded by Frank Herbert in Dune

So here are some of the replies to my January crisis. I hope they warm the cockles of your heart as they did mine.
What attracted me most to you?   You never stopped dancing.-------Tom Hubbard
* * * *
Dan -
Maybe this isn’t really what you were after, but it’s how I felt, feel, and will feel. When I met you we were on the stage at Cherry 5.0 and both having a great time. Yet we were also both kind of alone. I had friends there and so did you but we had found ourselves wandering around dancing alone. You grabbed my hand and said “This is getting too crowded. Let’s go dance on the box over there. By the way, my name is Dan, what’s yours?” Wow! a fellow box-dancer with toys who wants to play with me! was my thought. We made our way across the floor and up onto that box where we danced for what I believe to be the rest of the party. To be honest, I don’t really remember. What I do remember is that I truly enjoyed being with you. We danced and laughed and talked and played up there and I was in heaven. Well, heaven in a k-hole. I knew I was having a great time and I could tell you were good looking, but the truth is that the K had blurred my vision a bit and I couldn’t really tell. Didn’t really care. I was having a great time and it didn’t matter to me what you looked like. Also, you said you had a boyfriend who wasn’t there so I felt safe. I had met someone I could have a great time with who wasn’t going to try to fuck the hell out of me later in my K’d out state. The k started to lift a little and the fun guy I had been dancing with turned out to be handsome and cute as well! We found that cab to velvet nation and I was so happy to have gone to DC! I was spending the evening with a great guy who was also beautiful and it was a perfect time for me. No stress, no drama, no tension, no “am I gonna get some?” I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I really truly like you as a person. Actually, I love you as a person. The fact that I also find you incredibly attractive is another story. I know many beautiful boys with whom I wouldn’t dance an entire song let alone a whole circuit party. Your looks may get me to dance with you for a while, but it was the you inside who I wanted to spend the whole night! Another thing to remember is that our relationship has been built through our modems and phones. Looks have not been a part of it at all. I grew up in a similar way as you. I was smaller than the other boys and wore thick glasses and was one of the smartest people in the school. I never understood when one of the girls would have a crush on me. I always thought they should want the same boys I wanted! All my life I felt I wasn’t attractive. It was after I “came out” that I finally began to see myself as appealing. It was all those gay boys I lusted after who were actually lusting back for me who made me see my reflection in the pool. All in all, I feel that looks are what gets someone to walk up and talk to you, but it’s the you inside that keeps them there. It’s the you inside I want to remain close to and the you inside I hope to spend more time with in the coming years. It’s the you on the outside that I hope to see in person again real soon! The hard part is telling which is the one I want to hold in my arms all night. I will cherish the night you spent here in Columbus. It was a dream come true for me to hold you in my arms all night while you slept. It was so difficult not to try to kiss you as I didn’t want to be taking advantage of you in a tired state of mind. Maybe someday........but at least for now I know I’ve made a friend for life. And that I will always cherish. I love you Dan!
-----Oz
* * * *
Oh Dan!!!!!!!!!!!
What are you thinking??! Damn it, you’re just like me and it drives me nuts! You think too much about everything...you’re self conscious of everything you do...before the other guy’s even developed a thought, you’ve already thought about all of the thoughts he might have. You know, you are wonderful and you are cute, but most of all, you’re wonderful! I have a cure... while taking a shower, sing to yourself “The Greatest Love of All” by Whitney Houston. I went through a terrible low period in my life while living in a 12’ x 5’ blue room in Hue, Vietnam. I loved a man whose parents wouldn’t allow us to love each other, and I suffered alone for six months in Hue with little friends. You know how you hear alcoholics talk about ‘the bottom’ and how you hit it, well, when I hit it, I knew. It took me two years to pull out of it and I still sometimes feel a pull back there, something pulling me down. But it all starting coming together again when, while standing at the bottom, I decided to take a shower and, while showering in my cold water shower (because that’s all I had in Hue), I started singing to myself, “I believe the children are our future...teach them well and let them lead the way... show them all the beauty they possess inside....” I was crying so hard as I sang it that it was hardly intelligible, but I made myself push on through and sing it, and I made myself physically pat myself on the back. When I hit the bottom, I scared myself because I realized that I was alone and that no one was going to help me. Like now for you, I can write you this email, but I’m hoping that YOU will help you, because I can’t, as much as I love you. I had continued for six months to meet my old love periodically and oh, what a wonderful feeling when we would meet, but the in-between times were hell. And then I realized that it was all hell. I thought a lot about the Buddhist philosophy, not worshipping Buddha, but living according to the philosophy. Life is suffering and acceptance of the suffering is enlightenment. The only way to attain true joy is to accept suffering. Dan, your experiences have brought you over a wall, now you have to let yourself see the beautiful new valley you’ve stepped into. Dan, if you think you’re falling, you are! Stop yourself! When you stop, you really stop, you stop falling. Stop yourself! You love yourself, stop! Don’t wait for anyone to catch you, catch yourself! Stop! Now, when you feel you most need love from other people, recognize that you’re getting temporary relief, but it’s just throwing you deeper down, stop! Stop going to the places where the suitors follow you, that’s not the love you need, Dan! Give yourself someplace, if you are your ideal lover, then BE THAT to yourself, give yourself a space that no one else has access to, buy some really cheesy love yourself music (I suggest Natalie Cole’s “Sophisticated Lady” cd) and listen to it all the time. Surround yourself with upbeat, wonderful people, most notably, yourself. Envision the future, the beautiful future and all that you will be—and BE IT! You know, it helped me a lot when I left the place I associated with me sadness and went to a new place. I still get sad when I go back to Hue. You can talk to me about this anytime, it’s what you need to do, you need to just talk and talk and talk over and over until it gets slowly better. Time is a beautiful and strong thing; it carves away like water does a canyon. Time will work it out and it will work out. I always think, I’ve gotta live to see what happens next! By the way, I’ve always thought you were cute!
Your true friend, -----Cari

* * * *
Hi Dan,
Thanks for your writing to us all and letting us know what’s up. I’m going to send you an email directly, but I think I can speak for us all that we are proud and impressed with your strength to reach out to those who care and to ask for support. Your circumstances are special but your situation is not uncommon. We all struggle to find the proverbial meaning of life and we all question at times whether we would be better somewhere else. Not that I have all the answers, but if we did know the meaning (or the ending) would the life be worth living to begin with? It’s like reading the last page of the book first. My advice is therefore to sit back, relax and enjoy the trip that unfolds daily before you. Open your eyes and see what and who is out there. To realize that perhaps for every high there will be a low, and to expect the best and the worst out of life, but never to let it get the better of you. One day I will be 6 feet under and I want to make damn sure have tried everything at the buffet table before my time us up. If I am full up today, I look forward to the treats appearing tomorrow. And if what I ate makes me puking sick, it doesn’t mean I will never have an appetite again and be back at that buffet. Sending my love to you, and I look forward to seeing you in Feb at Red.
xoxo-----Peter
* * * *
Hello Dan,
Well I consider myself one of the few who wasn’t drawn to you because you are cute or have a nice butt, rather it was your kind nature, your ability to deal with my weirdness, and for treating me like the brother I never had. You have been one of the most profound influences in my life and it saddens me to think that a person who can be so uplifting to others can be so unhappy inside. I have witness the craziness of Boston first hand so I understand, albeit somewhat limitedly, how hard it must be there, but remember there are those of us who are privileged enough to call you our friend out here to talk in time of need and if it is becomes so detestably bad there to just leave and come to one of the many far better places. Someday I hope to invent the cure for the world’s ugliness (and it’s not Rambo!) but until then thing happy thoughts or call I will give you some suggestions. Take care,
Your brother,
---------Jason :)

* * * *
Dan:
I just received your message and I’m very concerned about your well-being. Please don’t go ahead with your thoughts, as you are a very important part of my life since I met you in October with Terra and Shauna. Of all the people at the party.... which were many...I was able to click with you the best of everyone. Of course I wasn’t after your body or your face but became instantly attracted to you for the person you are...a bright, happy, warm and loving person who has brought a lot of joy to my life these past few months. I have enjoyed reading your e-mails that you have sent and would be devastated if something were to stop them. I have no clue how you are feeling right now but I have had times where I have felt that I was better off dead but what generally has stopped me is the thought of picturing the faces of my many friends and family and how terrible of a thing it would be to put them through such misery. I would definitely be out of my misery but at the same time the rest of everyone would be living with this misery until his or her death. If you think about it. Is it really worth it to do this and influence the lives of so many people that you love and that love you for such a long time? I also think that my friends and family would possibly blame themselves for the suicide and never forgive themselves for it thinking that they somehow didn’t help enough or that perhaps they couldn’t read the signs. In all fairness I know the ultimate decision will be yours but for the love and happiness or all your so many friends that love you dearly, please don’t do this. Think about all the things in live that you love so dearly and that you will never have the chance to see or do again. The dancing that you love so much, your best friend, the beauty of the world, and all that you have worked so hard since your last attempt to overcome. It would be a total and absolute waste to see such a person as yourself with such potential to throw it all away. I have few friends that I can relate to like yourself that are able to share some of their deepest and darkest secrets with a person they had just met. I have that kind of bonding with you and I would love for it to continue for many years and for our new friendship to blossom to its full potential. So...I have said enough to be convincing for you to reconsider giving up your life here? I really hope so because you mean a lot to me okay Dan. Please e-mail whenever you need to chat...I will always be here for you and by the support of your friends and family I’m sure that we will be able to get you through this with a positive outcome!
I love you very much Dan! Love always,
--------Beth xxooxx

* * * *
Dan-
You are more than just a pretty face. You are kind, sensitive, generous, and extremely intelligent. Try to embrace your positives and live for yourself not for others. You will not truly find happiness until you have found it within yourself and I commend you for looking so deeply. Please hang in there and let me know if there is anything I can do. Take Care.
Love,
-------Lori

* * * *
Dear Danny,
I just read this e-mail (my Internet has been down since last Friday) and as always I want you to know how much I love you. You are my dearest friend and I love you more than I can ever say. you have so many qualities that I love. You always make me laugh and sometimes make me cry, in other words, you touch the soft part of me that I don’t always let others touch. You are wise and yet sometimes naive, you have a refreshing way of looking at things. You make life fun for those around you and have a good heart. Don’t give up on yourself hon. I know it is a long and weary road back from the dead, I have been there, maybe not as far as you and yet still struggle at times with it myself. Why do you think I have spent the last 3 days in bed. But it is a road worth struggling down. I can’t imagine my life without you. No one understands me quite as well as you do, and I doubt anyone ever will. So if for no other reason Danny, live for me so that I too can live because children or not, I don’t know if I could survive if you died. I love you.
-------Autumn
* * * *
Hey Danny,

It’s me giving life signals to you; I am not (I swear) running away from you. It’s just that I have become a slave (Abe Lincoln forgot about me!!!!) Since I started this new job, the few times I go out to eat is with my friend/brother Pedro, and I have became a good homemaker too! Anyway, this message is about you, and I have to say sorry for not paying attention to your calls as I should have. I am very glad that it seems that though, slowly but very consistently you are getting back to good old???,Danny. Of this last message I can tell you congrats for your sort of make up with your ex. About dancing, every time I play my tunes at home, I can picture you, the glow sticks, the energy, the loooooong hours surrendered to the Goddess of Beat (a/k/a a raging big fat black mama to the rhythm of House...) Sounds like you are doing better, and even if we haven’t come across on our daily paths, feel I am there. I do think a lot about you, and you are just too much of a precious person to give up talking or, reading to.
Hugs and kisses!
-------Carmelo

* * * *
Hey Dan,

Forgive me for taking so long to respond to the emails, but as you have been reading, I have moved in the last week and that seems to take every spare minute of my time. I guess you know how that is as you have recently moved into your new place. I usually considered myself lean in the junk department, but I just seen to have quite a bit of possessions that must accompany me to my new residence. I must say that things are really coming together over here now. Our new place is just fabulous. I hope that you can get down here sometime to see it and visit the warm, sunny south. I am sorry to hear about your latest medical malady. That is definitely something that I would not wish on anyone. Not even Barb Starz of Big Sky Resort, and I really hate her. He He. Anyway, I am also pleased to hear that you have given up escorting. While I understand the financial necessity of doing this, I feel that this can’t be good for your mental frame of mind, much less your self-esteem. On the surface, probably a lot of us think that this would be a really neat thing to do. However, as you dig deeper, can it really be a good thing for you to be thought of as nothing more than a sex toy by your clients? Will they ever really take the time to get to know the real Dan Tyler? Will they ever know how deeply he has touched a great number of people? Will they know that he was one of the few saving graces in my life during the last winter that I was in Montana? I was so unhappy there the last year that I lived there that you and Caren were one of the few people that made it bearable for the time that it took me to find a job down here and move.  Will they ever know the real Dan Tyler who can take me out on a golf course with the “box o wine” and let me to have one of the most memorable birthdays of my life? Will they ever know the Dan Tyler who gets so much pleasure from the simple act of spitting off of the Empire State Building? I don’t think so. So anyway, please know that you are always in my thoughts. I may take a  while to email sometimes, but there is always someone in South Carolina who  considers you one of the greatest people on earth. Again, if you ever need a  place to crash, I am here for you. Keep in touch.
Love,   --------Bret
* * * *

Dan,

I just checked my email today, so I am sorry that it has taken so long to respond, but Dan you are a very special person. You have been through enough in one life to lend to three other lives. I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason. As to why your things have happened to you, I don’t know. But what I do know is that you will come out on top after all of this. This will make you stronger whether you believe it now or not. Please hang in there, Dan. I wish I could be there to give you a hug or something. You have a love and zest for life that most people in the world should possess, but don’t. This zest allows you to look at life and enjoy it for all the possibilities it holds.  Please try to reach inside and find it again... I know it’s in there.  You can do it, Dan.   Just hang in there....   ------Torano

Epilogue

The Black Party coincided with the completion of a cycle of my life. That Sunday night was the one-year anniversary of my initial meeting with Anthony, and I was troubled with a slew of conflicting emotions throughout the weekend.
As fate would have it, I ended up in the arms (and bed) of a mutual acquaintance with whom I had very nice, if not mind-blowing sex. It has been more than a while since I had felt really turned on by another person, and so, in a way I felt sort of new-born and refreshed, especially after a winter of so many negative emotions associated with sex. As the rain, which even as I write this, pours down over Boston washing away the grime of the past season, so too am I cleansed of the dark days of the past months, and I look now into the bright days which lay ahead.
The Black Party is a leather themed event which celebrates one of the stereotypes of Gaydom: leather and latex-clad daddies chomping cigars and tugging along their submissive slave-boys to which they are harnessed and chained. It’s a night of extremes with the perimeter of the dance floor devoted to live sex shows and S & M displays. Yet while some of the fetishes which they indulged aren’t exactly my cup of tea, there is an incredible sense of friendship, acceptance, and belonging in the air. It’s like everybody acknowledges his or her freakishness and stance way to the left of center, and yet everybody is okay with it. It is a celebration of life and love and most of all sex, whatever its form, and far from repelling me, I exulted in it and absorbed the energy of it into my heart and soul.
I had sex several times later that week, each time better than the one before, with several different partners. I managed to sift through my broken emotions; past my attachment to Anthony; past the loss of innocence from escorting; past the physical pain of my surgery; and even past the proffered love and affection of my dear friend Tom, finally reaching a place I had almost forgotten where I could just be me, Dan Tyler, wild, passionate, impetuous, carefree, silly, laughing lad who bounces randomly in and out of so many lives, touching more than a few for the better and often leaving just a glimmering trace of love and hope and happiness for those who care to remember me fondly as I part their company for a distant point on the horizon (second star to the left, and straight on till morning, and all that).
It’s been a strange and twisted journey, Gentle Reader, but perhaps we are both the better for it. I know I am, having come full circle in many ways, yet landing far ahead of any place I might once have dreamed I’d be.
And that’s that story.
Toodles!

Dan Tyler
Boston, March 30, 2001
Lee Ann Womack sings a song she originally dedicated to her children, but I think as you will discover she might as well have been singing directly to me or any other lost soul, fumbling for a friendly hand in the dark. Her words touch me like few songs, poems, or other works of art ever have, and when I feel like sitting it out and giving up the fight, she helps me reclaim my focus.

I Hope You Dance
By Lee Ann Womack

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder.
You get your fill to eat, but always keep the hunger.
I hope you never take one single breath for granted
God forbid love ever leave you empty-handed.
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean.
Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens.
Promise you’ll give faith a fighting chance.
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.
I hope you dance…. I hope you dance.

I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance.
Never settle for the path of least resistance.
Living might mean taking chances, but there worth takin',
Loving might be a mistake, but it’s worth makin’.
Don’t let some hell-bent heart leave you bitter.
When you come close to selling out reconsider.
Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance
And when you get the choice to sit it out and dance,
I hope you dance…. I hope you dance.

Time is a wheel in constant motion always rolling us along
Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder where those years have gone.

I hope you dance…. I hope you dance
I hope you dance.

Okay, here we go again with more random, thoughts from Clubland….

I just got in about an hour ago from probably my last night out dancing at Rise Boston’s after-hours club, and pretty much the only place I’ll go to in Beantown these days. Friday night is trance night, and the music was, in a word, fierce!
Anywho, after spending the last five hours or so all K’d out I have come down pleasantly, and I have some thoughts and perspectives floating around in my head that for some reason or another I felt warranted putting down on the computer, so here goes.

I have really come to like K—for those folks who might read this little blurb, K is short for Ketamine—normally a drug used as an anesthetic for pets. I am not really knowledgeable about how ketamine affects the body’s chemistry, but from an analysis of what it does to me, K puts my body into a slightly anesthetized state so that when I close my eyes and just listen to the beat, I can actually see the visuals that normally I would only associate with deep, REM sleep. Also, as an anesthetic, K puts part of your body to sleep in a way such that while you don’t get the spurt of energy ecstasy or amphetamines give you, you simply require less energy to move. And so flailing your arms about, and doing high kicks and such just becomes easier because in essence, you feel like you weigh less.
K also is a hallucinogenic, although it does not, to my knowledge, stimulate the dopamine and serotonin levels in the brain to enhance your pleasure receptors. It just makes things appear more interesting. To put it bluntly—it fucks up your depth perception and somewhat distorts the angles by which you view the world. As I was walking home this morning from the club in the all-too-bright sunshine I laughed at how similar my little world at that moment was to a Salvador Dali picture with distorted street signs and drooping clock towers and the like.
By the time I got home I was really pretty much down and ready to unwind and cleanse myself of the night’s grime. It had occurred to me at one point in the evening that I was sort of unhappy with how much junk food I have been eating of late, and I wanted to make a resolution to cut the fat out of my diet. And so, as I walked through the door to be enthusiastically greeted by Tucson, I decided I would give him the tub of Oreo cookie ice cream I had bought the other day.
As things turned out, I had a few scoops as well, but I was really rather tickled with the ways in which I began my morning. No well-balanced breakfast of OJ, toast, and cereal! No sir, by George, he and I polished off a quart and a half of creamy, cold, delicious love. That rather set the mood for my morning so after I showered and scoured the sweat and smoke and slime off of my body, I rinsed out the tub and ran a foamy bath with coconut-scented bubbles.
I then splashed luxuriously about singing along to British Indie-rock stars Pulp for an hour or so and read several chapters of a book called City of Night by John Rechy which my very good friend, John Peck bought for me whilst we were visiting in DC. It’s an autobiographical tale of Rechy as a youngman, green and more than a little wet behind the ears kid from El Paso who winds up in New York in the late Fifties and becomes a male hustler. Yeah, I bet you know who can relate on that particular subject. Anyway, he has a very open, coarse, and raw way of writing, and I am enjoying the book very much.

One last little note before I tie this up as haphazardly as I may and head to bed for a few hours. Pulp is a great band with intelligent, introspective lyrics; I would recommend their albums to just about anyone, and there is one song of theirs which I really like called “Common People” in which the singer talks about a little rich girl who decides she wants to be trendy by hanging out with the lower class crowd and do all the things that common people do, which by his accounts is dance and drink and screw because there is nothing else to do. And while I don’t share quite the cynicism he projects throughout the song, I have to admit that he does have a point. For most folks it’s pretty easy to get stuck in a rut of going off to college with high hopes of becoming something or somebody and then getting a girl knocked up and the next thing you know you’re getting married and then all of a sudden you have a mortgage and a couple of young’uns and all the hopes you had at sixteen are out of reach and the best you can do is eke out a living 9 to 5, Monday through Friday, coming home to eat processed meals and watch t.v. with canned laugh tracks looking forward only to weekends filled with tits and whiskey and maybe some dancing thrown in to make you feel like you’re a superstar on those rare moments when you’re really in the groove.
Okay, I guess that did turn into an icky, almost cynical rant, but truly, speaking from an objective standpoint, isn’t that pretty much what life is about? Dancing and drinking and screwing? I mean, c’mon, who are we kidding? We are creatures of instinct, and we do what feels s good, or rather, that’s how I think people should live. Nay, scratch that, that’s how I think I should live. And so I do. Pretty much. Most of the time at least, except on those rare occasion when I am feeling especially cosmic and I start wondering if there really is a higher meaning to all this stuff floating around beyond that whole joke thing that I seem to have a handle on already. But more and more frequently I am still coming back to the same conclusion that life is here to be enjoyed, and as long as you t’aint hurtin’ nobody, then I say go for it. Live life. Have a second piece of cake. Eat tubs of ice cream with your dog on the kitchen floor at 8:00 am on a Saturday morning and wash yourself clean in a coconut-scented bubble bath later.
Yeah, I may be bored every now and again, but pretty much most of the time these days I find myself smiling and getting a kick out of the silly little absurdities which I encounter as I skip, no, dance merrily along this interesting road I have chosen.

Okily, dokily, I’m done now and off to bed with me. Toodles,

Dan
9:30 a.m. Saturday, May 12, 2001

More random thoughts from Clubland….

Just got in from a Saturday night out at Rise—probably the last time I will go there which is not necessarily a bad thing. Although Thursday and Friday I had quite a lot of fun going out, last night was different in that although I was amongst “my people” that is to say, gay boys, I really didn’t care for the energy in the room. Additionally I pretty much hated the music, which consisted of the same old, campy, cunty, gay-boy House with the same old tired tracks played over and over. It’s a wonder they even bother to hire a DJ since they could easily just put together a bunch of CD’s of the same old stuff on which the boys in this town depend and expect.
I brought a couple of pockets-full of lollipops to hand out to the kids who sparked a smile in me, and I am sad to say that I think I brought too many, because the people who made me smile were few and far between. I tried to catch people’s eyes and elicit a smile, maybe by twirling my micro-lights at them or just playing off the beat, hoping that maybe they would play back. But again, I received far too few smiles in return, and after a couple of hours even the best drugs couldn’t rescue the night.
But wait, then something unexpected happened and I am happy to say that although I left the club with a somewhat sour taste in my mouth, I wasn’t in complete dismay. Because there, towards the end of the night I ran into a beautiful little lesbian couple, who were entranced by my lights and who asked me for a bump of K (which I gladly gave them). The one girl, Val, was so delighted by my micro-lights, that in the end, I decided to just give them to her, and she nearly squealed at the present. There’s something intrinsically nice about giving, isn’t there? Something that deep down just feels really good, especially when the gift is something you know the recipient would really enjoy.
Before they left, Val’s girlfriend, Carmen started to tell me about how much I had affected her lover, but in the space of the moment she couldn’t get out what she wanted to say. I smiled and nodded my head, and said simply, “I know. Believe me, honey, I know.” And it was as simple as that, and then they left, and then I left shortly thereafter.

And so now I am pretty much done with Boston. This afternoon I am heading out on a jet plane just like in the song to seek out a new place to call my home in a climate, which I hope will be warmer on a lot of different levels.
I have to admit I am more than a little scared, and I’m more than a little sad that I’m now, really and truly leaving Anthony. And Caren. And this apartment. And a life that I struggled to make for myself here, but somehow never paid out like I wanted.
Things are going to start moving very fast now, but I guess I am “rested” and ready fro the challenge. At least I hope so. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
Okay. Off to shower and bed with me.
I shall write again.

Dan
6:33 a.m.
Sunday, May 13, 2001

Just got in from a night out at Rise. I keep saying it’s going to be my last one, but then I find another occasion to go there. Yesterday was my birthday. I turned twenty-six. Although my sister was here to help cheer me up, it still fell short of what I might once have hoped—especially from Anthony, given how I threw him such a lavish party last year. Oh well; this next year I am really going to have a huge party with heaps of friends.
Something to shoot for, I guess.
I did get some nice calls last evening from Brother-Jason and my Aunt Jackie which really helped bring me back to reality—and that is: that I really do have a large number of really good friends, perhaps not in Boston, but they are out there, all the same. As for my friends here…well, that’s a bit of another story.
Tom called me tonight and wanted me to come over for a chat, which basically ended up with him saying he more or less no longer wants to be my friend. He says there are a lot of things I do that he frowns upon to which I responded that I think there are things about which we can agree that we disagree, but he shouldn’t throw away an entire friendship over it, but I am not sure I made much headway. That really sucks because I had thought Tom was a very good friend. Nay, he has been a very good friend, but right now I suspect his unreturned romantic feelings for me have left him sour towards me completely. I find that every frustrating, but I can’t force him to be my friend, and I’m not going to get down on my knees and beg, especially as I reckon it wouldn’t do any good.
It is my hope, though; that given some time he will come around and decided that I am a valuable friend, but I guess if he doesn’t life will go on. (sigh).
So then I decided to head off to Rise for one last night of dancing even though my ankle hurt and I didn’t have any drugs.
Along the way I was cruised by two guys, and as I have never gotten into the cruising scene I decided to go up to one of the guys’ room with them.
As it turned out, I was only moderately attracted to one of them and fairly repelled by the other. The cute one wanted to smoke crack and just hang out while the other was merely interested in fucking. I’d never tried crack, so I said “what the hell!” and smoked up a bit. Sorry to say, but I just cannot see the allure. It did nothing for me although the cute boy really seemed to be getting his rocks off. Anywho, after a bit, I got bored, much to the relief of the room’s owner as I had made clear early on that I wasn’t getting fucked.
So my first, last, and only time cruising was a bit of a failure, but nobody got hurt, and I can chalk another piece of Gaydom under my belt.
So then I went to Rise, but despite my best efforts, I simply couldn’t score any drugs which was disappointing as I was really in the mood to roll, but as things turned out, I really didn’t care for the music all that much, and the crowd was not very energetic, so I went home early after dancing for about an hour and a half.
The moment of truth is almost upon me, so to speak, as I shakily ready myself for the big move to DC this week. Still haven’t got a place to live yet, and unfortunately have not had any success finding a cosigner. But I am just trying to keep my spirits up and have faith that somehow things will turn out for the best—ala Dr. Pangloss.

So, now, off to bed with me. Wow, I can hardly believe it—26! How did that happen? Last year was a tough year; truer words were never spoken, and I reckon there is only one way to go from here on out and that’s up. At least I’m not bored, right?
Toodles,
 Danny

May 19, 2001 5:55 a.m.
Sometimes life is funny. There are billions of people in the world who have few, if any, options from which to choose in deciding how and where they want to live their life, and here I sit emotionally torn over what I want to do in the next few days. I have several options, and in my mind all of them have equal weight.
Last week I went down to Washington, DC to try to find an apartment in anticipation of my move down there, but I was not immediately successful, and was thus left rather disgruntled and cranky. However, it was still my intent to move there come Wednesday until the other night when I was talking with Aunt Jackie, and I realized how nice it was to visit with an old friend of mine, and I started to consider that I might move out there for the summer, and then go to DC in the fall.
This fits in well with a lot of what I’ve been writing about lately as I just penned out an essay on boredom and how much I’ve been wanting a change, and I was just talking to Jason the other day was well and musing on how much I would like to escape into the woods again as I have done in the past, when we were both younger. I had also recently written an essay on friendship, and talked about how much my friends mean to me, and also about how lonely I have been here in Boston. Tom sort of clinched that feeling up the other night when he informed me that he, like Anthony, no longer wished to be my friend, citing his belief that my use of Tucson as a service dog is morally wrong, and he doesn’t want to associate with someone who does that. Personally, I think that is a bullshit argument especially as he doesn’t seem to have much distaste for doing other “wrong” activities like fucking me, Anthony, and Mony all in the same month, or doing drugs, etc. I figure he’s just trying to distance himself from me, perhaps because then it’s easier to see me go, and thereby truly dissolve his hope for a romance between us. That’s a whole other story, but let me get back to the start and discuss options.
So now, I am trying to decide which is better—going off and playing in the West with my friends or “settling down” in DC and getting a real job, et al.
Two conflicting creeds of mine are tugging me into opposite directions. I am trying to stick with my instincts and live life to the fullest and just laugh and play and enjoy as a homo ludens and yet on the other side I hear the word from I Hope You Dance advising me to “never fear those mountains in the distance; never take the path of least resistance,” which in essence is what I would be doing if I moved back to California. There would be a place to stay for me there, and presumably I would be able to get a job ere long in the Park. I’d have the instant social life with Jackie and Richard, and I imagine I could count on finding some other free spirits to hang out with in the other seasonal employees. But at the same time, I am worried about regressing—about fleeing back to safety, and not getting the change which I have been craving so much of late. I have fled back “home” before, like when Caren and I moved to Bozeman a couple of years ago, and it wasn’t long before the myth was dispelled and I got bored.
But then again, it occurs to me that I could just go to California for the summer and put off DC until the fall and not eliminate DC from the picture entirely—just postpone it.
(sigh)
What to do, what to do?
And if I do end up on California, I’d get to see Tom Hubbard and maybe try for a romance there, or at least work on that friendship, and I’d be able to get a car again, which, though at times, I enjoy the freedom of not having the worry and expense, at heart, I really enjoy the freedom to take off whenever I want.
And in Sequoia I’d get to go biking and hiking and swimming, and I know Tucson would love it. So what am I fretting over? Why not just do it?
Why? Because I’m scared that I can’t trust my own instincts. I’m worried about being impulsive and sinking myself into a problem that will eventually flow over my head.
Well, I guess right now, I’m going to sign off and call my friend John Peck and sound things off to him, and see what he thinks. Maybe his perspective will shed a light on this whole mess from an angle I hadn’t considered before.
Let’s hope so.

Dan
May 20, 2001

So here are yet a few more notes from Clubland.

I rather unexpectedly found myself going out to the clubs last night. I guess I just figured I needed the exercise, and I suppose I also wanted to try and see if things were going to be as bad as I have come to expect. Sort of a last fuck-you in your face what with all the cunty queens and fake celebrities. As things turned out, actually, I had a really fun time. Much to my surprise one of my favorite circuit DJ’s, Manny Lehman was spinning at Avalon, and needless to say, the change in style of music was very fierce. A 1000% better than the usual ho-hum DJ who normally spins on Sunday night. Best part of it was that at the end, when the lights went up, I dashed upstairs to say hello to Manny whom I have met on two other occasions, and believe it or not, he remembered me! He said, “Yeah, you were the kid with the lights!” which, of course is my trademark as I bounce around the circuit, but I felt kind of honored, because he must have thousands of club kids and messy gay-boys who come up to him at the end of the night to tell him how fierce he is, but he actually remembered me. Very cool.
I ran into some guys with whom I had danced several weeks ago and made a great connection, and once more we had a phenomenal time. Very little attitude in the room for some reason (thankfully) and no drama or sketchballs.
That energy carried over to Rise (yeah, I know, I keep saying it’ll be the last night, and then I go one more time) where Richie Rich really had a tight session. That’s what I like about Richie—when he’s good, he’s really fucking good. On the other hand, if he’s off just a bit, he’s really off, and as I have said before often times even the best drugs cannot rescue the evening.
But last night he was perfect, and I really had a great time. Bounced around with a lot of different boys and truly reveled in the drugs and the sex and the music. Clubbing as it should be. Great night.
Yesterday I talked with my sister, brother Rob, John Peck, and Aunt Jackie, and they all agree that I ought to take a break from the city life and head West for the summer. DC will still be there when fall comes, and right now I can just take some time and space to rest and heal and write and regroup, so to speak.
I absolutely adore Jackie and Richard, and I really think this trip will be just what I need.
And so now, I have some finagling to do with my schedule and try to figure out what to do with my stuff and my plants and Tucson and Dori while I am in the South next week. Bitter irony is that I changed my tickets to fly out of DC instead of Boston, so now I’ll have to figure out a way to get to DC and back. Probably take the bus, I reckon.
And if all else fails, I guess I can rent out another storage unit for my stuff. Gosh what a pain in the ass, but at least I don’t have all that many things. Thank god!
So, off to bed with me, but before I go one last note.
I was told by one of the guys I was with last night that he had slept with Anthony last October—a revelation I simply couldn’t have guessed. I’m not so distressed that Anthony had cheated on me; although, yeah, I’ll admit that it does somewhat bug me. No, what really makes me mad is that here he had played himself off as Mister Innocent all the while that he called me a cunt and a slut and a whore for turning tricks after I believed our relationship was over. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
Oh well, that little tidbit of information really finalized my feelings for Anthony. Although it seems everyone has been telling me to say “Fuck him, he’s given me nothing but pain” I have held off because I really thought there was something decent there, but I guess in the end maybe everyone was right and he isn’t worth the thousands of tears I have shed over him. I hate to say that, especially because what does that say about me? And whom I choose to love? But, lesson learned, and now I wash my hands of him and move upwards and onwards.
That’s kind of a bitter note to leave it on, but so be it. I guess life isn’t always going to deal out happy endings. Que sara.
I shall write again.
Dan
Monday, May 21, 2001 7:08 a.m.

Okay, here’s an addendum to my last journal entry. And it ends on something of a higher note. I have been saying all along here that life really is nothing but a grand, infinitely absurd joke, and the events of this morning confirm my theory precisely.
A couple of hours ago I was getting ready to turn off the computer, but as the drugs were still coursing through my system I figured I might as well jerk off and expend some of my pent up energy. I had several opportunities last night to take a boy home, but somehow everything fell through in the end, but I was still rather horny, nonetheless.
Thus, I figured I might be up for some early morning cyber-sex before signing off and heading to bed.
Well as chance would have it, the second person who IM’d me was staying at the Swiss Hotel downtown and was also feeling ferociously randy, so I jumped into a cab and fifteen minutes later was swallowing his cock and prepping him for being fucked. The sex was good—not mind-blowing—but very satisfactory, and afterwards neither of us felt much need to talk about it. Very wham-bam-thank-you-man. Ah, what a delight is no-frills sex!
Then, of course, I found myself in the midst of Downtown Crossing where the shops were just then opening (just thinking about the picture I would have presented at the lingerie counter at Macy’s nearly doubled me over with mirth) and I could watch the lawyers and accountants and brokers scurry to their offices. How perfect and droll was that scene; even as I chuckled to myself carrying a bag loaded with cock rings, condoms, poppers, and lube to the subway station. Watching all the little ants milling about on their way to work as I, the smallest ant of them all wearily trudged homewards.
The joke gets better, however, as I detoured to my doctor’s office to get a scheduled Hepatitis A vaccination (I did just have my tongue in a guy’s ass, for Pete’s sake!) before I stumbled into my apartment ten minutes ago.
There are so many worlds out there on this strange little planet. And how very strange that very few of them collide, although the outcome would be hilarious, I have no doubt.
I, freshly fucked, with my sex-bag marching right along with the lawyers and paper-pushers, who with their briefcases are out to fuck the world. And all along I wonder between giggles if I am the only one to find it funny.

Hmmm…..

And now I really am going to bed.
Dan
Monday, May 21 10:11 a.m.

Wednesday night, May 23, 2001

I have come in from another disappointing night out in Boston.
I had scored a bunch of e from Paul—the guy who told me he and a bunch of other people fucked Anthony at a cracked out party last October, and I guess just having that much on hand made me want to do it and go out dancing, even though I didn’t really have much of a groove going for me beforehand.
Anywho, so I went out to Vapor, which was hoisting its weekly Latino night to which I had never been before. I’m not really into salsa music, but I figured maybe it would be a nice change of pace.
I was wrong. Not only was the music pretty much the same as every other night—you know, campy, cunty, tired gay-boy House but the crowd was the same as usual—campy, cunty, tired clubbers looking to score. I had more or less resigned myself to an icky evening and was ready to bail when a familiar face emerged from the crowd and grabbed a hold of me. I didn’t really know the guy—Ken, but he asked if I wanted a bump, so I said sure and followed him down to the bathroom where he loaded me up with a bunch of coke. Had I know what it was I would have said no thanks, but I thought he was giving me some k, so I snorted it haphazardly.
I’ve never enjoyed cocaine; it doesn’t get me high or make me horny or put me any closer to God. All it really does is congest my sinuses and make me edgy.
Oh well.
As it turned out, my new-found friend was a client of Anthony’s, an art dealer whom I had met previously on a couple of occasions. He let me know that he had slept with Anthony before, and supposedly since then had been fantasizing about what it would be like with me, whom he considered much more attractive. Boys’ll say anything to get another into bed. He also told me he knew all the dirt on me, eg. My escorting, and while he said Anthony had been very upset about it, as far as Ken was concerned it didn’t put him off from trying to get me in the sack.
And so the night stretched out, with me edgy and desperately trying to find a way out—out of the room, out of the club, out of this cold, cunty city, and out of the situation in which I had found myself, but at the same time despairing, and feeling a heartaching loneliness that made me not want to be alone when I got home.
Hence, at the end of the night, I took him home, and we had sex. Nice enough, I suppose, but all the while a reminder of my life with Anthony, and how no matter where I go in this town I find the ghost of him always there to haunt me.
Now here I sit in a room full of boxes with Tucson nervously close to my side—he knows something’s up—and my mind racing, and my heart still aching for that man who turned my life upside down.
I want very much to hate him—it would make life so much easier, I reckon, but I don’t, because no matter the dozens of things he did that hurt me, I still recall the man who patiently sat at my side all those nights in the hospital and helped me shower and shave and get dressed when I couldn’t manage the simplest tasks.
Yesterday I was such I strung out mess with mixed up emotions I ended up taking too many Ativans and Ambiens and can barely remember what happened over the course of some hazy twenty-four hours. Apparently I called Tom and gave him what for and managed to coerce him into taking care of Dori for me whilst I am down South. Now if I can only get Caren or Brett to take Tucson, the vast majority of my problems this next week will be taken care of.
I also apparently called my mother, but for the life of me I can’t recall a word said between us. I guess maybe I am an Amick as that tendency to get fucked up and then call relatives holds true in my blood. Autumn thought that was pretty funny when I told her, but deep down I sort of scared myself. I really, REALLY don’t like being that out of control. Lesson noted.
So now, what to do? I’m really not looking forward to moving all by myself, but I reckon I have overcome more difficult challenges than hauling a set of boxsprings down a flight of stairs on my own. Maybe Paul will help.
And through this all, I continue to find myself ever looking to my friend John Peck who is my mentor and sounding board. I continue to wonder at his patience with me, but I’ll take what I can get as long as he is willing to listen to my rants and rambles. I really don’t know what I would do without him.

So that’s all I have to write for this evening’s edition of “Letters from Clubland”. I’ll probably go out again tomorrow night, as Thursday night Trance at Axis is my favorite night in Boston. Fresh music, no attitude, no drama, no cuntyness. Something to look forward to.
‘Night.

Dan

Addendum to Wednesday Night.

I was just sitting here at around 4:00 a.m. surfing the net, possibly looking to cyber-sex with someone online, when my doorbell rang, and much to my surprise, Ken was standing in my foyer, waiting to be let in again.
Apparently he had driven around aimlessly for the last hour, and finding no outlet for his need, he returned to my place, hoping for seconds.
This time, I let him fuck me, and I am happy to report, that although things were a little tight and painful at first (as I expected) I was actually able to manage being a bottom for him, and I rather enjoyed it as well.
I have been so self-conscious about my butt of late, that it really was a nice experience and a relief to know that I can enjoy that aspect of gay sex. Good stuff.
As things turned out, however, he ended up going soft, so we turned things around and I got to fuck him again, which for some reason just felt better this time.
I would like to note with more than a touch of pride that was able to get him to come. I guess I just have that magic touch, not to mention what I believe is the perfect size and shape of cock—not too big, and not too small; “Just right!” as Baby Bear would say.
And then again, without much ado he was off again, giving me a slight peck on the cheek by way of good night and a dainty wave as he passed through the door.

What is it about being gay that enables us, nay, encourages us to hook up so randomly and without meaning. No, I’m not going to go off on some philosophical spiel right now; I’m tired, and dawn is beginning to peek through the windows. But I do have to question why God or whoever planted in us this aching loneliness, this need to be touched and loved, if even just for an instant, even when we know the moment is going to pass all too soon after that wonderful/horrible creamy release. I can hear the painful lyrics of “The Rose” echoing in my head: “Some say love, it is a hunger—an endless, aching need.
I guess we’re all hungry, and hence this insatiable need to feed, and I have to wonder, will I ever get my fill?
 Dan

On boredom

I’m bored.

It occurs to me that things should not be this way. I live in a large, vibrant city teaming with cultural exhibits, museums, shops, restaurants, art galleries, parks, and theaters. I have a dozen books sitting on my shelves unopened. There are at least three video stores within easy reach and two cinemas just a fifteen-minute-walk away.
I just shelled out some thirteen hundred dollars for a new bike, and of course Tucson is always ready to go for a run, and yet still, I am bored.
I poke through the cupboards and peer into the fridge searching for some culinary surprise I might have overlooked the first ten times.
I have cleaned the apartment and combed out the animals. I have vaguely contemplated lifting weights and doing sit-ups, and still nothing quite interests me.
I think about the evening in which, as the weekend approaches, I again have the option to go out dancing, and yet that too has lost its appeal.
And so now, here I sit, staring intently into this computer screen, grasping at the thin fragments of inspiration I still possess, striving, willing something to appear.
One bit of modern literature haunts me of late. It’s in Irvine Welch’s Trainspotting when Mark Renton, having looked his demons in the eye and suffered through the agony of acute heroin withdrawal now faces life without getting high. And the truth is: it’s fucking boring. So much so that he toys with the idea of putting a shotgun in his mouth and blowing away his useless, meaningless life in one moment of final, exquisite excitement.
I haven’t gotten to that stage yet, but I guess I can relate in some ways. Although it hasn’t always been that much fun over the last six months or so, my life has usually had some amount of excitement, or at least drama, to ensure that I haven’t been bored. But now that things have settled down, as my health has been restored, as I have quit escorting, and as I haven’t even had a good argument with a security guard over Tucson in days, I find myself pondering the meaning of my existence—the meaning of all existence, in fact.
I begin with the premise that the Universe just is; there is neither rhyme nor reason to it, it simply exists just because it does. The only solid fact we can count on is that if we believe in our own reality, then the universe must also be real since we are here to observe it. I guess for those folks who don’t believe in their own reality, they pretty much have carte blanch over the rest of their existence, but I won’t even go there since I, personally, am not one of them.
No, I do believe that I exist and that the universe exists, but that’s about all I will strictly adhere to. However, in observing the marvel of the universe I have come to the conclusion that the Universe exists for a rather singular purpose, or rather one purpose which can be understood by my limited brain, and that is to make itself more interesting.
I fancy the Universe as a sort of entity (some might even call it God, although I don’t) which existed in terms beyond time and space but which I call simply Void, but then for some reason (I reckon boredom) and via some means I cannot even comprehend (although any number or astronomers and physicists might be close to discovery) the Universe sprang into being and from Nothing, all of a sudden there was Something. (if you really want the low-down on how and why this happened, please refer back to my essays on Possibility and Chance and Random Coincidences.)
But for now let’s just assume there is Something and that Something, having already been Nothing has decided to continue with its Something-ness, and so the Universe doth expand and grow, and as it does so it becomes ever more complex and interesting.
I guess I believe if the Universe got tired of becoming more and more Interesting, say if it got bored with that route it would return to its former state of Nothingness which may explain why, as some scientists believe, the universe will eventually reach a point of terminal expansion and will then collapse back in on itself.
Wacky, crazy stuff.
Still, I’m not much closer to being un-bored now than when I began this little ramble, except, perhaps to have bored you, my Sweet Readers.
But then…
My eyes happened to chance across a little book bought several months ago, and pow! My boredom ends in a flash! This cute, little hardbound slice of heaven is a coffee-table book of photos backgrounded by the lyrics of Lee Ann Womack’s “I Hope You Dance”
I have sent off the lyrics to this musical gem, I think at least once before, but let me just take a moment to recount the stanza which says, “I hope you never lose your sense of wonder…”
What a remarkable thing is the sense of wonder. It is something from which comes wisdom and awe and the birth of further curiosity.
If I could give a gift to all my friends and family, indeed, if I could bestow on every living soul on this strange and wondrous planet it would be a touch of the life I see through my dog’s nose. I know that sounds rather silly, but when I sit back on the grass and watch him sniff intently at the most random things I cannot help but wonder what each olfactory presence holds for him. Pheromones, acids, pollen, urine, perfume, vapors, and gasses; there is this vibrant world in which he swims and of which I am only vicariously aware, and yet as I watch him drift about the lawn, I sometimes catch a bit of the information he is gathering, and I smile.
I told my therapist the other day that I have been a bit bored of late and asked him if it was bad to be a thrill-seeker as has often been my wont in the past. I have been determined to resist the manic roller-coaster of emotions on which I rode most of my life until at last I plunged into the pit of despair last summer, and so naturally I have been very wary of the impetus to constantly feel some sort of a thrill, whether positive or negative. We discussed the tracks I have been following lately and what sort of thrill I ascribe to the things I have been doing. And the more we analyzed my life, and where I’ve been headed, the more we (and most importantly, I) decided that pursuing thrills is not only okay, but actually healthy.
I reassert my desire to live more than a sedentary life of sitcoms and game shows. Rather than striving to live vicariously through the glamorous lives of my favorite soap opera stars, I want to be the glamorous star and live that life on my own whether or not there’s an audience at home. I hearken back to Herbert’s Dune in which Duke Leto tells his son, Paul that “Without change, something inside us sleeps and seldom awakens. But the sleeper must awaken.”
And so, before I fall asleep, before the boredom catches up to me an pulls me down into that rut, I have decided to throw myself out into the world and deliberately shake things up.
Thus, I have scheduled a month of excitement for myself where I shall bounce around the Northeast from Boston to New York to D.C. and later on to the South from Charleston to Orlando.
And after such a month of parties, and packing, and birthdays (my 26th is on the 18th) and roller coasters (real ones at Disneyworld, rather than emotional) and moving, I reckon that come June I’ll be ready to be bored again.
But only for a little while.

Just thought I would share.

A Southern Excursion

Okay, so here we go with the long awaited review of my Tour De Sud, that is, my Tour of the South where I encountered the fabled Southern Hospitality, laughed and played with new friends, and reaffirmed my bond with old.
I’m now in central California, back in Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park, hanging out in a funky cabin with my Aunt Jackie and Uncle Richard along with various and sundry dogs and cats, et al. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s hop back a few weeks to my last few days in Beantown.
Actually, I’ve recounted those last couple of nights elsewhere, so for now let’s just say that the final days gave me a dust off that ensured my decision to depart that cold city was not to be regretted.
The club scene and the cunty-ness of the gay boys charged the sour taste in my mouth with a juiciness I could barely stand, and so when it came time to pack all my shit into a pile of boxes and stuff them into a couple of storage spaces, it was with a relief bordering on exhausted joy.
My sweet friend, and sometime lover, Paul helped me with the move, and I was thankful for the emotional support as well as the physical hands with which we maneuvered my furniture. Wow! From a few bags packed into a tiny Nissan Sentra along with the dog and Caren two years ago, all of a sudden I have a whole houseful of oddments! I have a bed and couch and computer and dishes and paintings and candles and toiletries and all the assorted baubles and bangles which comprise a life! I used to be able to fit my life into a backpack, but alas, those days seem to have faded into the not-so-distant past.
Oh well, although it was sort of stressful, and I managed to hurt my back yet again, in a way it was kind of cool packing everything up; deciding which things I could manage on the plane to California, and which things, ultimately I could do without (which I am thankful and proud to say was most of it).
So, having done with most of my belongings, I pawned off my cat on Tom for a couple of weeks, and Tucson and I headed to the South, bouncing first for a one-night stop over in DC before winding up on Hilton Head Island where my friend Bret has an apartment with his boyfriend d Jamie.
Bret has allergies (and typical gay-boy aversion to shed dog-hair) so for the first time in almost a year Tucson and I parted company for four days during which I rented him a room at a kennel (albeit a very nice one with a pool and every possible amenity).
As my back was thrown out, I took every possible opportunity while at Bret’s to laze about and recuperate, and it was really, really nice. I continued reading a book, “City of Night” by John Rechy where I found some timely discourses about life on the street hustling in the ‘50’s, and I got to reflecting about my own dark path tread over the past year. I wrote quite a bit, and managed to churn out a heartfelt letter to Anthony in which at last I was finally able to rant a bit and express my hurt and frustration and disappointment with him and how he has treated me. I enclosed with it my wedding ring, offering it to him with the opportunity to return it to me in friendship if and whenever he chose to ask me to be a part of his life. And that was the end of that.
Bret’s boyfriend Jamie and I had a couple of really good heart to heart talks, and one afternoon in the midst of touring old town Savannah, I found him voicing the unspoken questions of my heart over iced tea and petit fours: what am I looking for in a mate? What qualities do I admire, and which do I scorn? If I were to build the perfect man, what would he comprise?
I found myself listing patience, understanding, intelligence, and humor as being the primary needs Mr. Right has to have with optimism being Number One. Secondarily, he has to be accepting, attractive, and vivacious and someone who can keep up with me when we dance, might be nice too. I want someone with whom I can be friends as well as lovers, and of course, he has to love animals.
I seemed strange to outline it so plainly with Jamie, especially as I found myself wondering how in the hell I had ever come to love Anthony so much as he has few of those traits, and yet I did, to an almost addictively fatal level. Oh well, live and learn, and the next time I’ll have a better idea of what I want and need. Progress, not perfection n’est pas?
Savannah was a funky old town; everything I expected of a gentile, charming Southern city. All wrought iron balconies, and twisted old oaks, positively draped with Spanish moss. I got to sample pralines freshly made at a confectionary, and we got to see where they shot the feather scene from “Forrest Gump”. And the city was littered with those kitschy machines that turn your penny into a stamped souvenir token.
Of course it was hot and humid, and I was amused at the signs warning of gators nearby (who knew they had ‘em in Georgia?) But the best part of the South was the friendly faces and attitudes of every person I passed on the street. I had formerly thought Southern Hospitality to be just one of those sayings you read on Chamber of Commerce brochures, but it actually exists! My, what a nice change from the cold shoulders of New England. Once more, I can’t wait to move to DC (even though Bret assures me it is not, I still consider it a part of the South).
I picked up Tucson from the kennel on the First of June, and thankfully he seemed none the worse for wear even though he latched onto my side like a hairy leech.
Next stop, Orlando, and though we were re-routed due to a nasty storm in Charleston, we managed to get into the hotel in time for me to drop off Tuc’s, change into my swimming trunks, and head to Typhoon Lagoon where I shook things up to tracks spun by DJ David Knapp.
I have to say, that was a really good party, even by my standards, and I fell in love with the concept of a circuit party outdoors on the sand. (Please remember, Gentle Reader, until then, I had only hit the circuit in the North and have still yet to make it to Miami or Palm Springs.) Anywho, the water park is dominated by a huge wave pool, and I have to let out three cheers for technology. I reckon that the brainpower to conceive of and build an artificial ocean with towering waves is one of the defining factors which separates us from the lower apes. So, I would spend a while body surfing in the waves until the music became especially good, and then I would hop out and dance up on the beach until I got too hot, and then it was back into the water with me, and I loved it!
Afterwards back at the hotel I finally met up with my friend Mark with whom I was sharing the room as we had missed each other at the party, and then it was a brief nap before the new day, Gay Day, dawned on us.
I grew up in a small town in the mountains of Montana with straight and narrow, fag-bashing, little people, and hence it is with an almost vicious love that I celebrate in huge gay events where as far as the eye can see you find gay boys and girls, or at the very least folks who love and accept us. And what better place to kick off a month of Pride than the so-called Happiest Place on Earth?
The theme, as usual for Gay Disney is RED, and so at each park, the crowd is a wash of redness, almost as if we’d all sprung up in a field of crimson poppies, direct from the Land of Oz, as it were.
Mark and I first headed over to Animal Kingdom, Disney’s salute to the wonders of the natural world, and although I was braced for a disappointment (I am less than fond of zoos) I was actually rather taken by surprise with the intense creativity of the park, and I loved every minute of it. Highlights came in the form of a spectacular Tarzan themed rock concert which was overrun with catapulting, rollerblading acrobat apes; an astonishing 3D stage show based on the creepy-crawlies from “A Bug’s Life”; and the beautifully sculpted, massive Tree of Life, which towers over the park like a giant baobab tree in the trunk and branches of which over 300 animals are dramatically carved.
Later that afternoon we headed over to the Magic Kingdom which was more or less just like Disneyland in southern California except here in Florida it just seemed a bit fresher and more up to date than the kitschy ‘50’s era tourist-trap in Anaheim. Of course we hit Space Mountain, my perennial favorite, and the standard by which I measure all other roller coasters as well as the ever-amusing Haunted Mansion with the holographic ghosts ala Scooby Doo, but we also took in a few new rides as well. As evening set in, Mark and I decided to bail, and after an amusing mix-up on the tram (we took a much longer than intended detour on our way back to the shuttle bus) we returned to the hotel for a pre-party siesta.
Now Mark has never rolled on ecstasy before, and despite my best encouragement, he managed to abstain that evening. As things turned out, it was probably all for the best, as I had one of my few (and hopefully far between) negative drug experiences.
Actually the evening started off pretty well. The theme of the event was One Mighty Party, hosted at Disney/MGM Studios with Victor Calderone at the turntables. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of Victor as I find his stuff pretty much the standard of gay-boy vocal house with a lot of Madonna remixes and such, but he did spin out a pretty cool mix of R.E.M.’s “Losing my Religion” which, although it’s an oldie, turned out to be fairly creative.
Perhaps it was suggested into my unconscious, but I did experience the numinous, that is, a quasi-religious moment shortly thereafter. I did a bump o’K and had let the music take a hold of me as I as usual closed my eyes and let the lights and sound pull me into a trance. Say what you will about the validity of hallucinogenic epiphanies, but for me, I firmly believe that there are some truths out there that you simply cannot reach without some sort of catalyst, whether it be drugs or fasting or passion etc. Anyway, as has happened on one or two occasions previously I sort of stepped outside of myself, not in some sort of astral projection or anything as hip as that, but rather I just sort of was able to take in the whole picture as a third person as it were, looking out of Dan Tyler, but also seeing myself gyrating along with the rest of the boys. And as I did so, I also took a trip deep down inside of me, past the brain and the heart and my musculo-skeleton system, past the flow of blood and organelles and cells and microbes living in and on and in sync with my body and down at last to the sub-atomic level, checking out my protons and electrons and neutrinos, and finally I saw to the fiber of the universe. I watched in my mind-movie the creation of the Universe—the Big Bang and the relentless expansion of the cosmic dust into the great void. I saw the conception of Life on this planet and comprehended the raw stuff of which we are made. I saw a thousand blazing suns flaring into life over countless millennia as they raced into every corner of Void, and I saw Nothingness and the Miracle of Light.
All this I saw and laughed and wondered if any of the other boys around me had known such a moment, would ever know such a moment; and even now as I write this I wonder would any of my Readers understand or nod in agreement, or would this all be discounted as mere drug-induced ramblings? In any case, it makes me feel both wise, and yet, very alone.
And then as I began to come down, somebody handed me a water bottle, which I accepted gratefully, and yet as I took a long drink, I instantly knew something was wrong. There was something in the water, and my senses came to life in alarm, but I had already swallowed, and of course, five minutes later I felt myself falling off the face of the planet, and I found myself doubled over, puking my guts out, savagely hating in between heaves whoever came up with GHB, which, of course, is what was in the water I had unthinkingly accepted.
So then, poor Mark, without even the benefit of enjoying the up side of a drug like ecstasy got to witness firsthand one of the icky evils of drug use—the kind that they make Just-Say-No commercials about and such. Fortunately I had enough sobriety in me to stagger over to a nice, comfy corner on the ground conveniently nearby a garbage can where I sank into a heap and waited for my system to cleanse itself. Thankfully a Good Samaritan passing by brought me a bottle of pure (sealed) water to expedite the process, and I was back up on my feet within an hour.
But the evening had soured more or less, especially as Victor faded into this bland set of old-school House that in itself would have made me nauseous cold sober.
Tomorrow was a brand new day, thank God, and Mark accepted my profuse apologies, and we headed over to Universal Studios’ Islands of Adventure theme park.
This park is only a few years old, and from what I hear it is vastly over-budget and losing money, but I have to say flatly that it is a much better attraction than anything Disney has to offer. The rides over here are geared along the worlds of Popeye and Spiderman and Dr. Seuss, and if I had thought Disney’s Animal Kingdom was creative and fresh, I was completely floored by what the whiz kids at Universal had come up with.
Number One on my list of completely over-the-top, really-kick-ass cool rides was the Spiderman showcase in which you ride this hover-car through the alleys and across the towering sky-line of New York as Doctor Octopus and his goons try to take you out as they destroy parts of the city. Spiderman, of course, saves the day, but throughout the ride he appears to be bouncing on and off of the car, web-slinging his way through the air as lasers and explosions rock the ride just like you would imagine it to feel like in a cartoon. Yeah, I know I overuse this expression, but in a word it was Fierce!
Other thrills and spill were to be found on a Popeye River Raft; a Jurassic Park tour through the world of dinosaurs; and a grand finale on a tightly corkscrewing set of roller coasters that almost set poor Dan back to hurling (but in a good way, if you can dig it.)
We had run into a few of Mark’s old chums from Miami, and we also met a cute little couple who lived in Orlando and were just out for the day. Mark’s friends had to take off back to Miami that evening, but Michael and Ashley and Mark and I sat down for an early dinner at the Hard Rock Café before bidding each other adieu. They were a nice enough pair, and we had a really enjoyable day with them, but one thing that we talked about really stuck with me. We had been talking about relationships again and what we were looking for in the One, and Michael said he wanted someone who was “chemically balanced”. I really rather liked this expression as it is something that is very close to my heart. I got to thinking back over the years at some really manic times in my life when I felt completely out of control and how un-fun that feeling is. I also got to thinking about how un-fun it must have been to be my friend during those times, and I was amazed that Caren or Jason or my sister or any number of other people have stuck by me through it. Anthony is one of those people that had to suffer through some of that (although I daresay, he provoked a certain portion of it as well), and again I got to thinking about what a shame it is that he never really got to know me now that I am “chemically balanced”.
I am not all that wild about having to take mood affecting medications every day, but then again, it doesn’t really bother me either. And on the up side, I really like feeling in control, without the wild mood swings, and I know this sounds kind of silly, but I am really digging my emotional stability of late. I guess that’s just one of those things “sane” people take for granted everyday, but until you have been insane (which let’s face it, I was) you never get the chance to appreciate it.
So, long story made even longer, when I got back to Boston, I went to got see Caren a couple of times, and I apologized for those out of control, chemically un-balanced times and expressed my wish to build on the good times we shared and go forth into a future friendship of balance, without all the drama of the not-so-sane Dan Tyler (which I know we all love, despite the silliness).
Anywho, back at the farm, after Mark and I got changed we headed to Pleasure Island which is another Disney themed resort packed with nightclubs and restaurants and cafes and such. The gay club is named “Mannequins”, which was actually a very cute space with a revolving dance floor. I know! Wacky concept, huh? I mean, as if the club kids aren’t twisted enough, toss them onto a physically spinning space and then stand back and see what happens. I didn’t see anyone fall, but then again, many times, I myself was concentrating on maintaining my balance and not paying too much attention to how the people around me were faring.
Towards the closing I met a really fun group of quality boys from New York and California, and they invited me to join them at the after-hours party to which I readily agreed as the night was still young, and my drugs this time were much better—properly balanced, if you will.
Although I had a swell enough time at Mannequins, they played pretty much the same music I had already tired of the night before, so it was a welcome surprise to find at the after hours (held in a huge space named “Arabian Nights”) music that was much more to my liking—that is, pounding, industrial techno and trance without all the complicated vocals.
Junior Vasquez was headlining the evening (or morning, if you rather) but as usual, he wasn’t due to come on until 5:00. I don’t know whom the opening DJ was, but she really turned it out in some of the freshest, most creative music I have ever heard. There, on the dance flood, in the midst of a howling, swirling crush of slippery, sweaty, hard bodied men I laughed and reveled in the event. In the gayness, and the sex, and the Life of it all, if you dig me. All my senses were alive and in tune to the spectacle. My hands swirled in a wash of micro-lights and glowsticks and flashing rings. My mouth encompassed the flavors of sour apple lollipops and bubble gum as well as the saliva of any number of boys around me I had kissed as well as the salty pre-cum of the two guys I had gone down on in the bathroom. My ears drank in the pounding beat of the Great Big Goddess of the Dance. And hands and mouths and tongues crawled across my body, groping and stroking and sucking and tugging. To put it simply: it was everything that a circuit party should be with the boys and the sex and the drugs and the music. I loved it, lived it, breathed it, and rejoiced in it. Hallelujah, boys! Can you hear me laughing?
At 8:00 a.m. the party came to a blessed halt, for we were all about to fall over, especially as with the rising of the sun, the already crushing heat threatened to overwhelm our moisture-starved bodies, and the NY/CA crew were nice enough to give me a lift back to my hotel.
Once there I managed to find enough energy to shower and pack, and then I caught a quick catnap before dashing off to the airport destined to return briefly to Boston to pick up my cat and some additional clothes before finally flying to California where I am now.
So, that’s pretty much the gist of it. Here with Jackie and Richard I am feeling very loved and safe, and after sleeping for a good 15 hours or so, I have found myself physically and mentally refreshed.
This morning I was offered a job managing the restaurant up at Grant Grove where I had worked once upon a time as a waiter some six long years ago, and I am eager to rejoin the workforce.
It’s now been almost a full years since I was legitimately employed, and funny as it sounds, I am even happy at the prospect of paying taxes again.
I’m in a very good, safe space here, and I am relieved that the decision to come here for the summer has already paid off as well or better than I had hoped.
So now, the next adventure is finding whether or not I still have got what it takes to put a smile on a guests’ face just like I did when I was Wonder Waiter. I suspect I have.
As a parting note, I had planned for some time now, to go to Toronto for Gay Pride at the end of the month, but given my finances and new time constraints based on my new position, I think that I shall play my hand out a bit more prudently. Anyway, I have some friends in San Francisco, and I reckon that will be just as good a place to celebrate Pride as Toronto, and of course there’s always next year. Hmm, isn’t that a great thing to say—there’s always next year? A year ago those words would have sounded very shaky if we were talking about the same Dan Tyler, but now, I really believe I’ll be around for many more Pride fetes for years to come.
And that’s all I have to say for now. (Hah, 7 pages is all!)

1:08 a.m.
Saturday, June 9, 2001

Dan

Here’s the report on San Francisco Pride. June 30, 2001

As many or most of you may know, or could presume, the
days leading up to Gay Pride this year were difficult
for me on many different levels. We had just passed
Boston’s Pride weekend which I was thankful to miss as
I needed no occasion to remind me of the turbulent
times I was in a year ago, but regardless of where I
was geographically, I couldn’t help but get caught in
the emotions brought on by the would-be anniversary of
mine and Anthony’s commitment ceremony.
I’ll always have wonderful memories of that day, don’t
get me wrong. It was perfect, perhaps too perfect,
for how can you top the exchange of vows at the Empire
State Building and then a whirlwind descent into the
howling streets below where it seemed the entire city
was celebrating our lives and our love? No matter
whom I end up with (and God knows, I am holding on to
the hope that I will eventually find another man to
marry someday) something inside of me wistfully
wonders if I will ever come close to the perfection of
that day.
Anyway, I knew it was going to be difficult no matter
where I found myself last weekend, but I was able to
breathe much easier with the distance of the entire
country between me and the Big Apple.
I had initially wanted to fly back East to Toronto,
at least, to shake things up with my dear Canadian
friends, but as fate and working for the Man would
have it, I just wasn’t able to find the time and money
to make that trip, so I opted for San Francisco
instead, and as things turned out, I am really glad I
did.
A tricky clutch on my uncle’s truck deemed it more
prudent to rent a car for the weekend, so I and one of
the waitresses working for me took a nuts and bolts
Chevy Cavalier off to the Bay Area for the
celebration.
We stayed with my friend Tom Hubbard of whom I have
written before, I think, but let me just insert here
that he is really a wonderful guy whom I met a year
ago during the March on Washington and has turned out
to be a really good friend, and one of my ardent
supporters through last summer’s crisis and the
ongoing drama thereof.
Tom and his roommate have a fabulous apartment right
in the heart of it all, strategically located half a
block from the intersection of Castro and Market
streets, and I couldn’t have picked out a better place
myself.
Pretty much from the time we got there, we wandered
about the streets, taking in the sights and sounds and
smells of all the vendors and gypsies and revelers and
freaks and fairies. A total assault on the senses,
and as with every other circuit event to which I have
ventured, I was suffused with the overwhelming sense
of belonging, kinship, love, and respect we of the
“fringe” bestow on one another.
Tom and I left Jen to her own devices, presumably to
find some nice girls to hang out with and journeyed
down to City Hall to pick up tickets to the main event
that evening. While waiting in line there, we met
this pretty cool guy, Zach, who had parked out front
and who gave us a ride back up to the Castro District.
Actually we ended up hanging out with him for most of
the rest of the night, and we were like the Three
Musketeers as we sauntered into the crowds of luscious
men later on that evening.
Back at the Castro we found the celebration in full
swing after the procession of the Dyke March wended
its way through the streets preceded by the
ever-popular Dykes-on-Bikes motorcade of
Harley-straddling lesbians. On the hill beyond the
city a massive pink triangle had been posted above
which searchlights pierced the sky. Picture me
flagging on the edge of Tom’s roof, silks fluttering
in the wind as below the Sisters of Perpetual
Indulgence cavorted about with candy ravers,
leathermen, drag queens, and snake charmers.
In due time we made our way back to City Hall where
the elders had graciously opened up the marble and
filigree domed space to the children of the night. I
have to admit it was a pretty cool space, but if I
may, I will add the criticism that it just wasn’t
designed with acoustics in mind, and the resultant
echoes and tinny reverberations detracted from the
music, which consisted of pretty standard club tracks.
The show wound down at 2:00 a.m., but of course I was
hardly in the mood to drop off then, so Zach and I
headed over the water to a bathhouse in Berkeley where
I engaged in some naughty behavior for four hours or
so. You know the game: showers, then sex; then shower
again, and then more sex. And so on until I managed a
look at my watch and realized that suddenly it was
almost 7:00 so I hopped in a cab and headed back into
the city for the Regeneration after-party.
If the music and sound system at the Reunion party
earlier that night had been lacking, the production
crew and DJ at the after-hours more than made up for
it. Additionally the energy of the crowd was much
more to my tastes, and I bounced merrily around the
room, twirling about and spreading my own particular
brand of joy with which you all have become so fond.
I met many a lad that morning, and it was here that I
ran into a couple of boys, Gary and Steve, who hailed
from Cleveland and by some odd happenstance knew my
dear friend Oz. After the lights came up we all
staggered out into the far-too-bright sunshine and
eventually made our way to the boys’ hotel downtown
where we refreshed and ate and recharged before
heading back out (forget sleep!) to the parade as it
trailed down Market Street from the Embarcadero.
We savored the festivities all the way back to City
Hall where once more I shook my thing out in the block
party, but after a couple of hours I finally had to
bow my head to the forces of weariness so I went back
to Tom’s and slept the sleep of the dead or nearly so
for some six hours or so.
Of course I was not meant to stay in bed too long,
though, so upon my rising, I headed down to the
closing party, coincidentally named Mass which proved
to be a much happier space for me than Boston, Mass
tended to be.
Even though I had sewn a couple of outrageous flags
just prior to Pride, I actually ended up borrowing a
pair from Tom’s roommate William for this party, and I
was glad I did. Over the past few months I have
progressed from a mere novice flagger to a first-rate
professional, and it was with William’s neon orange
dyed flags that I enjoyed one of those rare moments of
shining glory when everything comes together in a
brilliant wash of color, light, sound, and motion.
By now, it’s almost a cliché, but like a good number
of gay boys, I have a special place in my heart for SM
Tracks’ “Got the Groove” and I know exactly what to
expect when the DJ brings it in. I don’t know—there’s
just something about the way that track pulls it down
to a whisper, and we all looked around and put our
fingers to our lips and said “Shhhh,” and then it
builds, and builds, and builds, and at last it spurts
out like a monstrous electronic orgasm of sound, and
there I was at the tip of a stage which through some
unspoken acknowledgement, the other flaggers at that
moment tithed to me, and I threw up my arms and pulled
those flags into a fiery swirl of orange and gold that
stirred a cheer from the crowd which went straight
through my soul.
Yeah, it was pretty fucking cool.
The rest of the night was marvelous, and believe me,
it was with a heavy heart as well as every other part
of my body that I forced myself to say goodbye.
So I rather surprised myself in contemplating the
weekend afterwards as I found the sting of memories
less bitter than I expected, and as I discovered the
joy of the celebration more momentous than I had
hoped.
After an interlude in the mountains, away from the
drama and negativity of Boston, I was refreshed by how
much I enjoyed life, gay and otherwise, in the city.
So yeah, it confirms my decision to move on with my
life elsewhere. I can plainly say I love the boys and
the excitement and the sex and the drugs and the music
and the dancing and the life, even if I do have to
enjoy it without Anthony by my side.
I know everybody is sick and tired of hearing about
him, probably even sick of hearing about how I have
grown past him, so this may be my last email that
holds any mention of him within its lines. Such a
long, arduous journey, but I am feeling strong and
Proud and clean and well now, and I reckon that
there’s been an underlying reason for all of this.
So away with me to bed. I love you all, old friends
and new.
Keep an eye posted for a big essay about redemption
and reclamation headed your way before long, and as
always, think fond thoughts of me dancing happily
along, as I am wont to do.

The Brat Prince.

=====
"If you didn't know how old you were, how old would you be?"--- Mark
Sanders & Tia Sillers

.

On Redemption.

This had been a long time in coming, but somehow I just haven’t been able to put it all together cohesively until now. Even so, we’ll just have to wait and see where this takes me.
I got called in to work today as a couple of people hadn’t shown up, and the rest of the crew was pretty well “in the weeds” as they say. Things weren’t too terribly backed up, but I suppose it was nice to see the obvious relief show up on everyone’s faces when I walked in the door.
Up until today most of my days have been fairly mundane and without much challenge, but as it happened all of a sudden the summer rush of tourists poured in full swing, and I wasn’t able to pause for more than two seconds until after I had finally locked the doors at 9:00 pm tonight.
It was then that I was able to take a breath and collect myself and take stock of the day, and I realized how completely in tune with the workings of the machine I had been. I mean, most of the days up until now, I haven’t had any problem, and most definitely felt in control of the situation, but then again, I haven’t been faced with any real situations that demanded quick, decisive thinking and actions either. When I first got to the restaurant two weeks ago my main task was to try to knit the crew into a cohesive unit who liked each other, liked their jobs, liked management (me), and most importantly worked together as a team to produce both quality meals and (hopefully) equally professional service.
There have been a few kinks, to be sure—the old head waitress had difficulty letting go of the power she had been wielding like a club over the rest of the staff and we had our share of summer flakes who dropped off in favor of other pursuits and no longer work for me, but today I came to realize and appreciate that I have been successful in my goals. My staff had become a team, with myself as its captain, and subsequently, the restaurant was flourishing, guests were parting happily, and employee morale was high.
All of this got me to thinking back on where I was at a year ago (gosh it seems longer) when I had just come from losing one job (in part because I had taken on responsibilities beyond that which I deserved or for which I was qualified), and shortly thereafter losing another job (mainly because I’d over inflated my own self-importance and worth to my employer.) In both situations I took risks I knew at heart to be wrong, and consequently paid the price with a pink slip, as it were, but at the time I took both firings very harshly, reading into them a deep-seated personal failure.
There are a number of reasons, I suppose, for my issues with failure, number one probably being that little voice (which not surprisingly varies in tone between my father’s and my mother’s depending on the situation) which always surfaced to criticize my every achievement or failure. Even when to the rest of the world I might have done well, that little voice still picked things apart and took me down a notch. Example: In school, even if I got an A-, the little voice would say, “But why wasn’t it an A, or an A+?”
Petty stuff to be sure, but when you’ve grown up with that ringing in your ears for twenty-odd years, it’s enough to drive you to drink…or pop a bunch of pills.
No, I’m not here to say that it’s all my parent’s fault that I tried to commit suicide last summer, but I will quite cheerfully tell you that’s where it started.
Other factors to my depression like a disenchanting marriage, draining off my serotonin with overuse of ecstasy, and accidentally alienating many of my friends all came together to a terrible head while the main focus of my state was this gut-wrenching sense of failure. At the time I looked back on my life with tainted glasses which picked out only the dark moments and regrets, and so I just decided to save the world a nickel and take a terminal nap.
Well, as things turned out, one thing I really did fail at (despite my best efforts) was killing myself, but ironically, rather than taking much of a nap (well, okay, I did for about a week) I gave myself and all my friends and family the biggest wake-up call I could muster.
Those hellish weeks in the hospital after I came out of the coma weren’t fun per se, although we all seemed to laugh a lot after the initial tears had been shed, and some of us still often look back on those twisted times and chuckle at the insanity of it all. And they were certainly not easy, but I did get a chance to do something very few people are ever able to do; and that is to take stock of my life, be reborn, and consciously decide in what direction I wanted to flow.
‘Course I make that all sound so simple right now. And we all know it was anything but. However, looking back now, I can definitely appreciate the pattern that arose; find the beauty in it, even.
I mean, I don’t recommend it for everyone, but how often do you get the opportunity to start from scratch, i.e. Back in diapers, have to learn to walk, read, tell time, shower, shave, and use a knife and fork together?
This sounds silly, but the other day I was making change for a customer, and of course, it all just came naturally without any problem. $1.45? That’s a dollar and a quarter with two dimes, right? But when I first woke up last summer it took me weeks of occupational therapy with a vocally demanding therapist named Janet before I could even distinguish the nickels from the quarters if I was given a handful of coins. Well, for some reason I started consciously thinking about the change-making process in which I was engaged and I laughed a little to myself. (The customer probably thought I was a little kooky for giggling to myself at the register, but what the heck.)
Thus, in one small way I realized that I had reclaimed that which I had lost (or given up for one reason or another), and it was a pretty cool moment, indeed.
There have been a lot of moments like that, of course, over the past year; some huge, others not so noticeable. I can remember way back in December when my friend Scott and I went skiing at Bridger Bowl ski resort in Montana, and the day was perfect: glowing, sparkling powder; cool, but not freezing temperature, and there I was alive and loving life—most especially since barely five months before they had to teach me how to walk again, and here I was skiing!
We are such remarkably intricate, delicately balanced machines, and yet we go about our days with barely a thought to what miracles we achieve by performing the most basic actions (like walking or using a knife and fork), much less much more complex movements like skiing (or typing, for Pete’s sake!) until, of course, those abilities are taken away from us, and you can ask any amputee or person living with a disability how much they wish they had appreciated what they once had and unfortunately lost.
Thankfully, in my case I have been able to reclaim everything I had lost (with the exception of a tich of my hearing, but hey! who’s complaining?) and actually, I have gained a whole bunch more than I’d anticipated, because now I do appreciate all those little things, like making change for example, and I think that’s a pretty neat gift. It certainly makes my day that much brighter and my cup that much fuller.
My recovery has been much more than a process of physical reclamation, however, as my mind has also been busy healing and expanding. The days of hell when it was such a struggle to get my body to work the right way provided a fantastic training ground for my tangled emotions and perspectives, and it has only been recently that I have been able to take stock of my mental health and stability.
That’s been another one of the benefits of this job in that I am forced to deal with a multitude of personalities on a daily basis, some of which are not the most positive, and some of which are down right nasty, and yet, somehow, I am finding myself able to deal with each one earnestly and effectively.
It seems all of a sudden I have become a very patient man who is able to see angles and perspectives that a year ago I would not have, especially if they had conflicted with my own personal wants and beliefs.
Growth, baby, that’s what I’m talking about, and it makes me a much more effective manager as well as making me feel a whole lot better about myself as a person.
Learning to have patience for a multitude of people (nipple-heads, I sometimes affectionately call the not-too-bright crowd) has been one of the best pay-offs for me resulting from last year’s little crisis and come-back. Pre-accident I had been a very impatient person, demanding the same perfection in others I was so desperately striving for in myself. Post-acc (don’tcha just love my lingo?) I have learned that life just ain’t perfect, and neither are any of its players (especially me, despite popular opinion, he-he) and it’s really just a whole lot easier to relax, smile, and go with the flow.
I can’t count the number of headaches and tears this attitude would have saved me if I had learned it earlier, and looking around me nowadays, I am often flabbergasted at the number of people who still haven’t learned. My brother and Anthony are a couple I can think of off-hand, and the resultant behavior and attitude speaks for itself: they are both very angry people. Angry at a world that isn’t in the least bit angry at them. I suppose that kind of anger gives them something to focus on, and maybe even let’s them feel in control in some strange way, whereas, without it, they’d just be drifting along. But I guess what I’m trying to say, is that it’s much nicer and easier to drift, bobbing merrily in the river rather than getting pissed off at every little ripple that shakes your boat. (How’s that for a metaphor!)
On that note, though, I have been trying to sort out those things which do ruffle my feathers and make me angry and why.
I encountered a strange course of events which got me to thinking about the world in which we live and how very often it can be a horrible, awful, no good, very bad place.
It all began a couple of months ago when I saw “the Thirteen Days”, the movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis of the early 1960’s. Apart from being a very well made movie, both in performances and historical accuracy, it really struck a nerve in me deep down leaving me deeply disturbed, almost to the point of tears about the profound absurdity of our species which touts itself as being so highly intelligent and yet seems to have this penchant for self-destruction (or nearly so, which we just missed thanks to the virtue of some brilliant men determined to keep the world from annihilation).
With that thought floating around in the back of my mind, I later traveled to Washington, DC and visited the most intensely affecting place I have ever encountered when one sunny afternoon Tucson and I toured the US Holocaust Museum. For four and a half hours he and I wandered in a daze through the graphic, hideous images of what some undoubtedly brilliant men were able to achieve with hearts less noble. I had never before identified much with any ethnic group or minority until then, but after reeling in the imagery of millions of people slaughtered for the supposed sanctity of the Aryan Race, I vowed to later tattoo memorial triangles on my arm in honor of those with whom I would have died in the gas chambers just for being what I am: Jew by birth, homosexual, and Gypsy.
One image in particular caught me by the guts and almost made me vomit even as I bawled like a little kid; that being a silent film of Gypsy children, no more than ten years old, playing in a circle. The Nazis persecuted the Roma, that is, Gypsies, as ruthlessly as the Jews, and always the first to die were the children.
Dear God, I thought, what bastard could blankly murder little kids? And not just that, but rape, torture, and experiment hideous “medical” procedures on them? And what hope does that leave for humanity if such monsters exist among us?
Shortly after I returned to Boston I managed to catch most of the trial of Adolf Eichman on the Discovery Channel, and the thing that got to me the most over the entire spectacle wasn’t the overwhelming emotions and trauma of the witnesses and crowd of on-lookers, but the lack of emotion, lack of remorse of Eichman, himself. I thought, my word, how can such a person exist who authorized the deaths of more than six million people, and to him they were naught but grains of sand—something to be swept away, but nothing to cry about?
So later that night as I had my little chat with God over sherry and cigars I have to admit I lit into him with a bunch of criticisms to the point that I even had to pause and remember that there probably really is no God, at least not a personal one, not one that meddles in the affairs of Man or allows such atrocities to happen. And all that I can really hold on to is a belief in Possibility and an ingrained sense of ethics that says to treat all things as I would like to be treated myself.
I guess that’s one of the reasons why I love not just gay life, but in particular gay life at Pride celebrations and circuit parties so much. At those events all the walls come down, and everybody just comes out however they want to be, and they are accepted and embraced and loved for who they are. Eve 6 sings, “Here’s to the night we felt alive. Here’s to the tears you knew you’d cry. Here’s to good-bye, tomorrow’s gonna come too soon”. That’s homo ludens philosophy at it’s best. The humans who laugh, indeed.
The other day in San Francisco I pushed my way through a crowd of leathermen and Dykes-on-Bikes and drag queens and little Latino boys in white tank tops and everyone was smiling and holding hands and laughing at the many shapes and sizes and colors humanity came in, and I sighed in relief and thought “Okay, God, maybe there is hope for us after all.”
Whether or not there is a personal God up there looking down on us and judging or laughing or condemning is not really what this essay is about. Redemption is something that is seen in the eyes of humanity before it reaches God’s, but regardless of who sees it, I still think it exists.
I had a difficult time with that belief as I watched the trial of Eichman largely because in the end he really seemed to show no remorse even as he stepped up to the gallows, and so I questioned the righteousness of capital punishment. I mean, what is it for? To appease the need for revenge that lurks within us all? Yes. But, if we are supposed to be so highly evolved, shouldn’t we manage to move past that dark, nasty, little emotion? What then is the proper punishment for grievous crimes? Should we just remove the criminal from society so that he or she can no longer do harm? And is there any need to try to redeem that criminal at least in the eyes of man?
Because my cup is half full, and I have learned to be the eternal optimist, I say yes to those questions. I believe dangerous people need to be removed from people that they might injure, but I also feel that if we can righteously take away a person’s freedom and penalize him or her, then we also have a reasonability to try to rehabilitate that person so that he or she may coexist with the rest of us peacefully and thereby achieve redemption.
I take myself as an example in that I believed my life worth so little and having brought pain to so many that I had no need or right to keep on living. As it turned out (of course) my life is of infinite worth both to myself and to all the people whose lives I touch upon, and it was once I realized this that I began my own journey into redemption. And I guess I reckon if I can do it, so that possibility exists for anyone. And everyone.
So the moral is: to keep trying. Slowly but surely we’re making progress. I watched a little despairingly to the Timothy McVeigh Trial and sentencing; even more despairingly at his execution for while again I agree he had to be taken away from society so as not to hurt it again, to me it just seems like two wrongs trying to make a right by killing a killer. On the other hand, as I said, I wrapped my arms about complete strangers and kissed them for sheer joy last weekend celebrating both our differences as well as our kinship as we sail along on this wacky little planet of ours.
Back up here on the mountain I laugh at my ability to sort change and smile at the little kids drawing with crayons on the back of their menus. It all gives me faith that God or no, somehow we’re going to make it.

Dan Tyler

July 2, 2001 5:19 a.m.

Redemption Song
By Bob Marley

Old Pirates yes they rob us
Sold I to the merchant ships
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit
But my hand was made strong
By the Hand of the Almighty
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly.
Won’t you help to sing?
These songs of freedom
‘Cause all I ever have:
Redemption song
Redemption song

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for Atomic energy
‘Cause none of them can stop the time.
How long shall they kill our prophets,
While we stand aside and look?
Ooh! Some say it’s just a part of it.
We’ve got to fulfill the Book

Won’t you help to sing,
These songs of freedom?
‘Cause all I ever have:
Redemption songs
Redemption songs
Redemption songs

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Wo! Have no fear for Atomic energy
‘Cause none of them-a can-a stop-a the time,
How long shall they kill our prophets?
While we stand aside and look? Ooh!
Yes, some say it’s just a part of it.
We’ve got to fulfill the Book
Won’t you help to sing
Dese songs of freedom?-
‘Cause all I ever had:
Redemption songs;
These songs of freedom,
Songs of freedom

Hi folks, July 14, 2001

Just a little note from little old moi to announce
that on this day a year ago I tried my darndest to end
my life. As things have turned out I'm very glad I
was unsuccessful. That event has been the defining
moment of my life for most of the the past year, but I
think I am pretty well done with talking about it.
Thanks to you all for being there for me; in times of
darkness as well as on my bright days. I hope I've
been able to give back a portion of what you have
given me.

I helped an 85 year old woman and her family celebrate
her birthday at the restaurant today. I was very
touched by the warmth and love I encountered in the
room, and I was almost envious before I took a moment
to take stock of my friends and family.

She ain't got nothing' on me.

Laughing', dancing', and smiling'

The Brat Prince

=====
"I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely
miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite
certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing." - Agatha
Christie

"Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there, with open arms, and open
eyes." -Incubus

Hi folks,

Not much time or energy to write lately, but I have
had some exciting stuff happen recently that I wanted
to shout about for a bit.

I guess number one on my list is that i have met a
really great guy named Joe who lives in San Francisco,
and while it's by far to early to start picking out
curtains (or anything silly like that--I learned my
lesson last year about rushing things) I will be happy
to admit that he makes my heart go pitter-patter in a
way I had almost forgotten it could.
He's 23, an art/architecture student and has bounced
around the States quite a bit as well.
He's about my size, short, blondish hair, and a huge
smile.
We met online, funny enough a couple of weeks ago, and
had been talking quite a bit on the phone, and we
decided to meet in person a couple of days ago as
couple of my friends and I were looking to get off the
mountain and hit the city for a bit of culture, music,
dance, and assorted types of de-stressing and fun.
We all went to a couple of clubs and also took a
leisurely tour of the coastline betwixt SF and Santa
Cruz--beaches, rose arbors, and of course, the
Boardwalk. So all in all a physically exhausting
weekend, but mentally and emotionally invigorating
time all told.

So we'll see how this plays itself out.

Meanwhile, In other news, as I have been making a lot
of money waiting tables in addition to my salary as a
manager, I decided to rejoin the world of potential
yuppiedom, and I bought a car. The beater I bought at
the start of the summer turned out to be a lemon, but
this time I put together a bit more savvy, advice,
and luck along with a limited warranty and bought what
seems like it will be a great car.

Oh yeah, and did I mention it's a convertible? I
spent most of my life living in the arctic where
top-less cars weren't especially advisable, but now
that I have returned to the mild-to-fucking-hot
latitudes I decided I wanted a bit of trendiness so
that all the boys will turn and say "oh, isn't HE
CUTE!? ANd, he has a CONVERTIBLE!

I guess it worked out pretty well so far, though I met
Joe before I bought the car.

So that's pretty much me for just now.

Oh yeah, I went to Cyberfest 2001 in SF a couple of
weeks ago, and I'm sad to report it just wasn't quite
the experience I hoped it would be. The music was
really incredible, granter--DJ Dan in particular
turned out the tracks like he was on fire, but the
space was really too big and detracted from some of the
intimacy you get at a smaller rave or circuit party.

Additionally, I just felt really old there with the
average age of the clubkids being about 17, and
many-to-most of them were practically falling over
themselves at being at their First Big Party. I s'pose
we've all been there--that breathless excitement and
giddy laughter at being a part of a new, somewhat
"darker world"---Listen to them sing, the children of
the night--Bram Stoker, and all that, so I can
understand them, but I just didn't necessarily want
to traipse back down that path again. Also, as they
were new to the scene there were entirely too many
people who simply didn't know how to handle their
drugs--so you saw a lot of people just sprawled out on
the ground or puking and shaking in the bleacher;
M-E-double S-S's which t'ain't too pretty and gives
club-drugs a bad rap.

Still, it was fun to take a road trip with all my
friends and get off the mountain for a bit, so I can't
complain too darn much.

Well, I guess that's me for now.

Ciao, babes

Danny

=====
“I'm happy--feeling glad. I've got sunshine, in a bag...." Gorillaz

In light of the upcoming eagerly awaited release of the motion picture version of the Lord of the Rings this December, and given my many adventures over the past couple of months I am feeling a bit Tolkien-ish, and so at the risk of copyright infringement, I’d like to tip my hat his way and title this next (almost as eagerly anticipated) journal entry in the Life of Dan:

There And Back Again

(Subtitled) A Club Kid’s Holiday

or simply,

Friendship Revisited

I was talking with my mother the other day (yeah, I know, how did that happen? I’ll elaborate eventually here) and somehow the topic came upon about my rather lonely and sad childhood when all I ever really wanted was a group of friends, but somehow luck or fate rarely panned out that way for me. As I’ve mentioned before, I was small and not athletically skilled, and I wore thick glasses, and I was too damn smart (with a correspondingly too damn smart mouth) and I was quite obviously gay from the very beginning, and well....I reckon I don’t have to fill in the blanks from there on out. Especially given my environment: backwater, conservative, rough and tumble mining town in Montana--I was doomed to a solitary childhood from the get go.
For a number of years I really struggled with my unpopularity, often pecking away at the fringes of the In-Crowd, fawning and practically debasing myself on my quest for acceptance, but to little avail except to humiliate myself and provide the popular kids with an easy target for their derision.
Eventually (thankfully) I gave up on that crowd and started to discover what I was really like deep inside, but I still had an enormous chip on my shoulder, and I became bitter, cynical, and depressed. I suppose there’s a place for that in the life of a high schooler ( I mean a whole industry has been built on mournful, annoying music and various styles of clothing in various shades of black and dark, gritty poetry and clove cigarettes and so on) but you gotta admit that it’s hardly original and after a while it even becomes nearly as boring as the In Crowd. But I digress. Anyway, my saving grace came during my senior year when I befriended my manager at the bed & breakfast inn where I worked, and Maria and I became nearly inseparable (how cool was that? she was 23, while I a mere 17!) eventually culminating in a hot, steamy love affair (did I mention she was married?) after I graduated. And while it was cool that she was my First Lover (aww, little Danny got deflowered by a Girl!) what was much cooler is that she was also pretty much my Best Friend, someone to whom I confided all of my darkest secrets and worst fears, but also my lofty goals and giddy dreams. Good stuff, and I will always have a place in my heart etched with her name upon it (we’ll get back to this later) but eventually my need to get away from Butte, Montana overcame my desire to stay with her, and off I went--first to Africa, and later on all over the world, bouncing from London to Chicago to Seattle to Boston and so on, every so often returning to Montana for a while until I would remember why I left, and so it has gone with my life over the past eight years or so.
(A brief pause from the subject at hand to note that one of my sister's short dogs, the Chihuahua just successfully coerced me into boosting her up into my lap. Something rather nice about having a lap dog dozing in your crotch as you type. Don’t believe me? Try it out for yourself!)
Over the years and as time went by, I had maintained some sort of contact with Maria, but in the last couple of years, and especially in light of my “accident” a year ago, I somehow lost touch with her, and our correspondence feel silent.
(It just occurred to me, that the aside about the dog is relevant to the story at hand, I mean the essay is about friendship, isn’t it? And there are few finer things in life than the love of a dog. Anyway, to continue...)
I suppose everyone has a similar story wherein you had a special bond with someone, one which you thought would last forever, and then somehow, some way, that person drifted out of your life, as I am fond of saying, like busboys in a busy restaurant., and then you find yourself musing perhaps late one night, “My god! Whatever happened to Maria (or so-and-so)?” and worse “Why do I even have to wonder? Shouldn’t I just know where my Once Best Friend is, and what she is doing?”
Sometimes, it doesn’t even have to be a long lost best friend. I have come to find that often you might just be sitting around, and the thought occurs to you, “Wow, I wonder what ever became of that fun guy I danced with that weekend. There was something about him that make same wish I had gotten his number....”
But very often (more often than not, I am told) folks just sort of put that thought on the back burner, and before they know it, that person, whether friend or potential friend, really is forgotten, and I think that’s rather sad.
However, in my life as shall be evinced by this tale, I and several others managed to pull the pots off the back burner and bring the friendships to the front over a newly kindled flame, and it has been magical and wonderful to observe the results.
And so, on that note of high drama (hey, it’s ME writing here, remember?) our story begins....

I guess I would like to start things off by discussing my summer in California, working for the concessionaire in Kings Canyon National Park as manager of one of their restaurants. I had left restauranteuring a couple of years ago after a rather long on-again, off-again career in the biz to support my travel bug thoroughly convinced that I never wanted to work in hospitality services ever again, but when I moved in with Aunt Jackie and Uncle Richard last June, there weren’t exactly a bunch of options for me in terms of work. And so, after briefly investigating Park Service opportunities and determining that most of those folks are crazy, I took a deep breath and returned to the familiarity of a restaurant.
And as it turned out, it was a pretty good move, I think.
I guess for starters it was a “safe” place to return to after a year of unemployment following my suicide attempt the summer before, especially as Grant Grove Restaurant was the first resort I waited tables at six years ago which sent me off on a long line of Park-hopping. I knew the layout and the menu as well as the clientele. And to some degree I even knew the employees (some of them have been there for ages) or at least what to expect from the “typical” seasonal staff members.
It’s kind of funny, but I had actually almost forgotten about all of these strange little subsections of society. “Closeted”, as it were, in the world of big city Gay Dom back East, I had developed a sort of tunnel vision that mostly excluded overtly straight people from my life. Hence, when I came back to the Mountain, I was rather delighted and amused to re-discover such creatures as Deadheads, and the Youth Ministry, and oddest of all: Mountain Folk (shhh, if you listen carefully you can hear the ghosts of banjos long dead plucking away in the wind...)
Into the midst of this came little old me, and hah! the Powers that Be decided to hire me on as the Authority Figure for the staff of the restaurant. Well, let’s just say that it wasn’t too terribly long before they realized their mistake, but the papers had been signed, so to speak, and they were stuck with me for the duration, and so began several months of butting heads with managers of the other departments as I tried to convince them that money was NOT the bottom line, but rather fostering a work environment which was both fun and profitable for the staff and the guests. I recall during one disturbing session in the Area Manager’s office when my counterpart, Jay, the kitchen manager said contemptfully, “Of course, your staff will do whatever you want, Dan, you’re everybody’s friend!” I was rather taken aback at the way in which he said it and was unsure if I should laugh or offer my sympathies at his cynicism, but it’s something that stuck in my mind. A daily reprimand became a part of my routine as other managers pointed out that there seemed to be far too much laughter coming from the restaurant, and my staff’s numerous positive comment cards were downplayed or tucked into the back of my In-Box. I came close to the breaking point towards the end of the summer when I was written up for leading the staff in whipped creaming departing crew members on their last day of work (Tradition, as far as I’m concerned)
and so once we made it past Labor Day weekend, I put in a short notice and slipped out.
I was refreshed by the summer on a lot of levels, but disgruntled on others. For starters it was a really excellent test of my abilities, both physical and mental, to be back in a legitimate work situation that called upon use of all my facilities--cognition, organizational skills, balance, etc. which I had lost the summer before, and to discover that not only was I capable, but I also excelled at everything, perhaps even better than I had before as I now had infinitely more patience and perspective on my side. It was also great to be in a positive environment, worlds away from the one in which I had lived this past year. Many of my staff members were kids working their way through college--in a few instances, this was their first job---and they were too damn cute, and a far cry from the bitter, cunty queens which had surrounded me in the South End of Boston. Hmmmph! Who knew straight people could be so cool? And, I might add, as one of the few openly gay folks on the Mountain, I think I gave unto them a positive example of how cool gay people could be.
Still, I was constantly annoyed by the relentless attempts by the Powers That Be to crush the spirits of myself and my staff in their drive for ever higher profitability. But I suppose in the end, even that turned out to be a valuable lesson, as I reaffirmed my distaste for corporate America, and hence, when I do finally get back to California, I will have a much better idea of where I want to work and whom I want to work for.
My saving grace towards the end of the summer, though, came in the form of a delightfully eccentric, hysterically irreverent, and altogether mad couple of kids from overseas, the lad, Arneaud, from France, and his girlfriend Fiona who hearkened from Scotland. Alas, if I could only take the time to record the endless antics of this jolly pair, but let it suffice to say, that a fair portion of the laughter so troubling to the other managers came from we three. And such good, healthy laughter too, in that it’s foundation was in our common delight with the absurdity of life and humanity in general. It was seldom mocking, and never malicious as we giggled over the funky, explicit special demands of some guests or the over inflated importance of crispy French fries. So often we laughed at one another’s mishaps and goofs and sense of fashion. And it was grand, never cunty. (Thank God!)
Thus, after a long dry spell in my social life, I connected with good, quality people without the socializing agents of sex or drugs or event the Circuit which is so dear to me.
Furthermore, when I came home from my maddening/hilarious days at work, I returned to a deliciously cozy cabin filled with dogs and cats and the love and friendship of my dear Aunt and Uncle.
A note on them is to say first that Jackie and Richard are not really my Aunt and Uncle, that is, we aren’t related by blood, but honestly blood very often doesn’t amount to much, now does it? But if I were given a free hand to design my own relatives, they would fit the bill quite nicely. Indeed, I met them six years ago during my first stint working in the Park, and we meshed in that special way that the Jews call “b'shert”--or “the fated connection which occurs between two (or more) personalities.”
They had been very supportive to me over the years, most especially whilst I was in the hospital last year, and it is with the deepest sincerity, I think, that they call me Nephew.
Uncle Dick and I swap dirty jokes, and he tells me stories about being a roady for David Bowie back in the 70’s (we both have a common love of glitter). Jackie and I critique each other’s sewing projects and discuss our struggles to publish our books. To put it plainly, we connect on a lot of commonalities, but what’s even cooler is that we have a great deal of respect for the others’ and vicariously share each others’ enjoyment of interests in which we don't have in common. Again, it is laughter which brings us together as we delight in the goofy antics of the animals or the little old couple who live across the way and so on.
Good people. Hell, the Best People!
Shortly after Labor Day my friend Laura finally showed up as well, having managed to move her stuff all the way from North Carolina (her husband John, came out a few weeks earlier to work) and at last, it became clear to me that California is where I belonged on a more permanent basis. Laura is my soul-sister, and again another person I met that first summer at Grant Grove. She is this beautiful Samoan woman with gorgeous, raven-black, long curly hair and an infectious grin. It was she that first bestowed upon me the title of “Brat Prince,” and when we waited tables together we would pretend to be a Puerto Rican couple--she, Lucita, and I, Keekay---and we would call to each other across the dining room, “Hellooo, Bay-bee! I am loving you sooo, mutch! I am blowing you dese kiss!” We used to go swimming daily at Hume Lake down the road where there is a large Christian camp and terrorize the small Christian children, threatening to crush their heads between our buttocks and such, and every now and again, just to break the tension at work, Laura would coerce me into letting out a Mother-Alien-Being-Shot-Into-Space scream To put it this way: if in the next life, Dan was reincarnated as a fabulous Samoan woman, I would come back as Laura, and vice versa.
When I first came out here, I had some sort of feeling that I would be returning to the East Coast. I had left most of my things in storage in Boston, and while I didn’t expect to return there, I figured I would head to DC or maybe even New York. But with the arrival of Laura, I realized that what I had been wanting for a long time over the past few years had finally started to come about, and that is: that I have made many friends all across the world, but the most frustrating thing was to have them spread all over so widely, and wouldn’t it be cool if they were concentrated (sort of ) within a reasonably small area.
Hence, it became apparent to me that my place was here in California--not in the mountains, to be sure, but Somewhere, and as Laura wanted to go visit friends in the Bay Area, I packed a bag, and off we went to explore and experience San Francisco.
Now, I had been to S.F. a couple of times already this summer, first in June to celebrate Gay Pride, and mid-way through to go to the Cyberfest 2001 rave. Towards the end Fiona and Arneaud accompanied me in the new convertible we three purchased together on a weekend getaway partly just to get some city life breathed into our rural lives and partly so I could meet a boy named Joe whom I had met online. That weekend was fabulous with Joe and I hitting it off fairly well, and the excitement of the new car rolling through everybody’s heads, and the sun shining, and the vibrancy of the city refreshing us mind, body, and spirit.
So it was, that I already had several fabulous impressions of San Francisco to go on when Laura and Tucson and I rolled into town for what we planned to be a three day weekend stay.
After dropping me off at Joe’s place, she headed on further to the Russian River up in Sonoma county (you know, the wine country, dahlings) to visit friends up there, and so I found myself left to my own devices for the weekend.
While initially things with Joe were nice enough, the spark sputtered and more or less died about halfway into the weekend mainly because I wanted, no, needed to go out clubbing, and he opted to stay home and smoke pot instead. I have nothing against sitting around smoking every now and then, but I had dance (I love the nightlife, I want to boogie, and all that) so off I went to see how the clubs in SF measured up to those back East. I am happy to report that they more than make the grade. That Saturday I actually ended up at a more or less straight club called 1015 Folsom Street which as it turns out is world famous in the same league as TWILO in New York City, and it was like a fabulous return to my element.
My micro lights came on, the glowsticks were snapped, and off I went twirling around and freaking’ people out as I am wont to do Just like riding a bike, as them say.
I was amused to my very core to find myself at one point in time surrounded by a group of 6’+, Latino frat-boys who, I was later to learn, were rolling for the first time, and were pretty much hypnotized by my light-spell. I simply adore New Rollers, and so I stowed the lights for a moment, and I let loose with all my tricks--passing around a Vick’s inhaler, rubbing Icy Hot on the backs of their necks, dragging my scratchy bath mitts up and down their arms, and (of course) presenting each of them with a painfully sour Blowpop before reaching back into my pockets and digging out the lights so that I could nail them with a sparkling, flashing, swirling light show. When he floated back into reality, this one guy, who reminded one of “Moose” from the Archie comic strips, crushed me in a massive bear hug and shouted in my ear, “Dude, you’re a fuckin’ professional!” which pretty much slew me, and I had to take a moment to compose myself after laughing so hard at that. “Professional” indeed! Well, I s’pose I’ve been called worse.
The music was intense, tweaked out progressive trance--you know, my music, and as I stayed until the end, the DJ later thanked me for feeling his groove so much and gave me a couple of his CD’s. Good stuff, and again, I just had to think about how fucking boring the same old, campy gay-boy House is back in Boston, and one more point was scored in favor of moving to San Francisco.
That was Saturday night, and once again, I couldn’t persuade Joe to out with me on Sunday, so off I went, this time to THE gay club in SF, so called “Universe”. And twas there that I had yet another phenomenal evening twirling around, and surprisingly, I found myself more or less the only kid wielding lights, and once more, I managed to attract a bunch of moths drawn to my flame (bless Micro-lights, bless them, I say!)
Hence, I met Ryan and Todd and Nate and Steve and John and so on, and apart from the physical attraction (we were at a gay club after all) or the mesmerizing effect of the lights or the chemical connection, there was just a nice flow about the guys, a camaraderie about them which I had been seeking fruitlessly for the past year in Boston, and so my place in SF was pretty much cemented by the collective vibe of the folks I had met over the weekend.
I ended up going to an after-hours party with some of them where later that morning I found myself thinking “Mom would be so proud” as I took a hit off a crystal pipe before eventually deciding to shrug off those energies. Then the next six or seven hours whooshed on by as we did drugs and fucked like frenzied bunnies, and it all felt...great
Sometime Monday night I found my way back to Joe’s apartment where I dropped off to sleep within minutes of hitting the pillow, and the next thing I knew it was Tuesday morning and Joe was screaming “Oh my god, they just blew up the World Trade Center!” and then everything became sort of surreal for the next three days.
I watched the planes crashing into WTC1 and WTC2 for about an hour, and then I just couldn’t handle it any more, and so Tucson and I pushed out into an amazingly bright and sunny day. We wandered up through the Haight-Ashbury district until we finally found a Red Cross Blood Donation Center where we were asked to come back next week as the line of donors had already stretched out the door and down the block. (It occurs to me that in any case, the Red Cross was probably looking for meth-free blood, but it’s the thought that counts, right?) So Tuc’s and I wandered around a part of the city famous for its outrageous and funky shops full of second hand jeans and drag-queen wigs and Goth makeup and body piercing jewelry. Everywhere we went the radios and TVs were blaring the latest news, and yet, somehow, none of it really seemed to affect anyone. I mean, the show must go on, I suppose, and thus, people were still trying to find sale priced Sketchers, and platform shoes that matched their halter tops, and cafe’s put up burger-and-shake specials at lunchtime, and drivers cut each other off vying for parking spaces, and even I wondered if I might find some reasonably priced ramie fabric to make new dancing flags, and the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge were shut down temporarily, and most of the downtown financial and shopping district was evacuated, and the airport was closed, and a convenience store clerk wouldn’t let Tucson in, even though he was wearing his service dog harness, and finally I went back to Joe’s where the TV was still displaying the crashes into the World Trade Center, only now, those images were interspersed with scenes of the wreckage at the Pentagon and the plane crash in Pennsylvania.
And so what happened next was a calculated plan of action based on all the evidence I had on hand, and so I gathered up my things and went back to the apartment where the after-hours party had been, and at my suggestion we pooled our drugs and had sex for the rest of the day, through the night, and well into Wednesday, pausing occasionally for water, showers, and replacing condoms.
I recall at the time thinking back on a conversation I had with my friend Cari way back in high school the summer after our Junior year when we were comparing notes on what you would do if you knew the world was going to end, but you had 24 hours before the bombs started dropping, and the general consensus was Do Drugs and Have Sex, and so, nine years later, when Armageddon seemed not too far off (and yet, strangely, I was okay with it) that is what I did.
Laura, it turns out came to much the same conclusion albeit without the sex and remained up in Sonoma, especially as most of the routes into the city were either closed or impossibly congested, so I went all “Castaway” for a few days, but eventually the smoke cleared, so to speak, and we returned to the mountains that Thursday night.
I wanted to record this part of my journey as frankly as I could right now, as I think it sets the stage for my later visit to “Ground Zero” later on, about which I’ll have more to say.
Anywho, I pretty much went into a voluntary coma for the next 24 hours, waking suddenly to find Fiona and Arneaud had returned from their big trip around southern California Friday evening with the convertible and wanting a ride to San Francisco to catch a flight home.
I hadn’t really anticipated such a quick return to SF, but what the hell, nothing in my life has followed the timeline I planned in advance, so that Saturday I drove down to Fresno and had bunch of regular maintenance (oil change, tune-up, etc, as well as having a trailer hitch installed) performed before I cruised back up to the cabin and collected my friends and the dog along with the majority of my clothes and personal effects before plotting a course back down to San Francisco with a final destination of Boston programmed into the ship’s computer, as it were.
It was on a fine, pesticide-blanketed evening that I bid farewell to Fresno and the San Joaquin Valley, and as is my custom, I set the cruise control on Warp Six and ere long we four (myself, Fiona, Arneaud, and Tucson) found ourselves once more in that City by the Bay.
Well, you might think at this point that it might have crossed my mind to settle down a tich, and just head directly over to the airport and get the other kids checked in before giving them a kiss, kiss and fond farewell.
But.
I mean, it was Saturday night, after all!
And as it turned out, Fiona and Arnead’s flight wasn’t until 6:00 a.m. and they didn’t need to check into the airport until 3:00 so without further ado, I called Nate and found out where the big party was that night. As things turned out the music wasn’t all that great at Space 550, nor was there much energy in the crowd, but a couple of the guys I had partied with the previous weekend were there, and I managed (as I somehow do) to meet another pretty cool group of boys, so after I bid Fiona and Arneaud farewell (they took a cab to the airport) I spent some time sobering up, and eventually found myself at another after-hours party.
Again one thing led to another and things turned into a somewhat cracked out, but entirely enjoyable orgy at the end of which I ended up going one on one with this cute boy named Justin, and around noon we went back to his place to continue things on a more intimate level. I guess I won’t spend much time here going into a lot of detail, but I would like to note that: yeah, I have had sex with a LOT of people in my day, most of it has been good, some of it just okay, and on a very few occasions, icky, but there have also been just as few occasions when it has been over-the-charts-mind-blowing-incredible, and I am happy to say, such was the case with Justin. For some reason we just “clicked” in a way I rarely have in my life. And in fact, the only person with whom I had had better sex up until that point in my life had been Anthony, and as I look back on it, the only thing that had made sex with Anthony better was the emotions I had for him. I have had plenty of partners since he and I broke up last November, but no one quite stoked my fire, so to speak, like he did, and so, beyond the incredible feeling of the moment (which, I might add lasted for something like 12 hours) I reveled in the discovery that at last! there were lovers out there who could touch me as well as or better than Anthony. Good stuff.
The next day (and far too late into it) I finally got back on the road to start my almost impossibly long journey back to the East Coast, and my first stop was a thousand miles to the north where I was expected at a long planned reunion with my old friends and coworkers from Mount Rainier.

One of the best summers of my life was the one following my return from Europe, some five years ago during which I waited tables at a small mountainside resort just inside Mount Rainier National Park. It was there that I roomed with a boy named Jason with whom I would later become blood brothers and who is, even now, though many miles separate the two of us, so much a part of my heart, I cannot imagine what my world would be like without him. Caren and I returned to a romantic relationship after
a year apart. And I worked and lived with one of the best crews of Good Folk I have ever encountered in my many travels.
The 12 people who lived in the employee dorm meshed like family, and like family we all went our separate ways in the years following, but somehow we all managed to maintain some sort of loose contact with one another, mainly through myself and a darling girl named Renee Defields.
As I said we all spread out to the far corners of the Earth over the past five years, but somehow (coincidence? I think not!) we all eventually migrated back to the West Coast this past year, and so it came to pass that one fine Spring evening in Boston I was strolling along chatting with Renee on my cell phone, and I said, “You know, wouldn’t it be fun if we all got back together again for a reunion?” (*that’s all the credit I will take for what followed) and the next thing I knew Renee took that idea and ran with it to her heart’s delight.
So, a month later a beautifully crafted, handmade invitation came in the mail to me explaining that there was to be a Reunion the second week after Labor Day at the lakeside resort she was managing, and my presence was cordially demanded. And that was that.
So after years and thousands of miles apart, our little group was rejoined (for the most part; there were a few no-shows, and I was a day late into it, I’ll admit sheepishly) and there were a whole bunch of people from various summers at Mount Rainier in addition to the one I spent there as well as crew members from the host resort, and it was, in a word, fabulous.
We laughed. We joked. We paddled kayaks and a decrepit paddle boat around the lake, and all of a sudden, somehow there were Short People (a.k.a. children) accompanying some of the crew, and Tucson barked at people, and we drank, and smoked, and the sun shone down on a group of very happy, very friendly, very connecting people. In the center of it all glowed Renee, for she was the connecting point of all of these quality people, the Catalyst (this word will be used about me several weeks later, but I digress...) that brought it all together. We could have, perhaps, come together individually by coincidence I suppose for as I like to say, quality people attract one another like magnets, but at that moment, it was Renee who made it all possible. I think we all made that same realization and felt the same gratitude to this remarkable girl who facilitated our congregation.
Alas, but all good things must come to an end, and all that, so after a couple of days we disbanded tearfully. Back to Seattle, back to Eugene and Olympia and Ashland and various other points up and down the coast, but I think we all agreed that, as I would later tell Renee in parting, “Continuity is a Good Thing. My family learned that a year ago when I was in the hospital, and they all came to my side. But it’s a sad thing for someone to have to get really sick or die before we make an excuse to all come together.” So we decided that we definitely weren’t going to wait another five years before coming together like that again, and already plans are in the works for a more or less Annual Reunion.
I wished I had more time to spend with my brother Jason especially as the last time we had together was when he came out to visit me in Boston a month or so after I got out of the hospital. I was still pretty shaky on my feet then and suffering from a lot of problems, the biggest of which was the daily, manic fights with Anthony. On the day Jason had to go to the airport Anthony and I got in a fist fight, and things turned into something of a clusterfuck. It wasn’t pretty, and I cannot imagine what Jason must have been thinking, especially since his flight had to leave in a few hours. But he stood by my side, and held my hand at the emergency room, and he held me as closely as one person can hold another before departing for Seattle, and he's been there for me unfailingly through all of the black times that happened over the rest of the year. Thus, although we had some good laughs over the course of the Reunion, I wish the days had been longer and that we’d had more time to spend together, as I am on a much more even keel nowadays.
But, as he likes to say, “You gotta say goodbye before you can say hello again,” and so we said goodbye, warmly anticipating the next time we can say hello.
Good stuff.
I left that fair lakeside resort revitalized in many ways. On a surface level it was good to begin a detoxifying process (although that didn’t last terribly long, hah!) but moreover, deep down, I felt another part of me come full circle as I have felt several times within the past few months. I have noticed this phenomena again and again pretty much since March when I went to the Black Party, a time, as I had written earlier, when I found myself in New York but sans Anthony. I felt another circle come about in DC’s Cherry 6.0 Party in that: where Cherry 5.0 marked the closing of a period of my life, 6.0 coincided with a new beginning. Of course, I needn’t bother pointing out the significance of my return to the West and the arms of my loved ones; old friends and new in California, and then, there in Washington State I reconnected with many I had almost lost as well as befriended many new people who I suspect will become dear to me as our friendships mature.
Although it was something of a retracing of my steps (you will find this journey is full of those) I slid back down Interstate Five into Oregon for several days to see my brothers and their families outside of Eugene. I didn’t spend a great deal of time talking about matters of much import, but it was simply a nice break to kick back and do very little; watching videos and barbecuing, and taking leisurely strolls about the neighborhood.
However, time as usual was against me, and I had things to do, so I bid them farewell and began the long trek across eastern Oregon, the broad expanse of Idaho, and at last found myself returning to Montana--the place of my birth, and thus The Place Where It All Began, to put it melodramatically.
It’s funny how one’s perceptions change as your get older, and as you put more miles under your belt. There was a time when I thought Montana was the most beautiful of all the States, but then again, that was before I had seen very many other states. Especially after spending so much time in the greenery and heavy forestation of New England, I found Montana rather drab, dull, lifeless, and boring. Sure the mountains are pretty cool, but even they seemed less than the awe-inspiring peaks of my youth.
I laughed to myself when I finally rolled into Butte--a place I could call my hometown, if I were so inclined, because, damn! if that ain’t the ugliest motherfucking hole on the face of the planet, I don’t know what is ! Trust me, I’ve been to some nasty places like Glasgow, Scotland, and Gary, Indiana, and Bakersfield, California, and Butte takes the cake, hands down.
My friend Theresa told me later that the running joke goes “A couple of long range terrorist warplanes were streaking over Montana in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks searching for a target, and when they got to Butte, they figured someone had already beaten them to the punch.”
But somehow, that miserable town has turned out some incredible people (yours truly included, thank you very much) and I wanted to stop over and say howdy-do to at least a few of them. I first traced a path through my old neighborhood and past the house where I grew up. Hearteningly, it’s been repainted, and a rose garden planted in the front yard. Judging by the toys scattered all over the porch, there are at least two little kids growing up there now, and so that horrible, grim place of painful memories seems to have been cleansed, and I drove past slowly, whispering a prayer that this new generation living there finds happiness within those walls.
Later that day I met with one of my teachers from high school who has been a good friend ever since. Georgene is the woman who, possibly more than any other influence in my life, I have to thank for my gift in writing for she was my advisor and editor when I wrote for the school newspaper way back when. I know she took a lot of flak for doing so, but she allowed me the freedom to write my feelings and opinions, no matter how unpopular they were to the status quo. I think she saw that I was struggling with my own identity and that I needed an outlet for that struggle, and so we can all thank her for the support she lent me through those difficult years; without it, I wouldn’t be the man I am today.
I also checked in with a few other teachers from high school and was filled in on the latest gossip about the few friends I had back then. Some have become anchormen, or doctors, or biologists, or teachers themselves, and most are married and have children and mortgages and such And where does Danny fit into all of that? Where does the Golden Boy salutatorian, Honors Roll, Captain of the Debate Team, etc. turned escort and dope user and Circuit Boy fit into the Class picture of 1993, “Then and Now”? The answer is plain: I didn’t then, and I don’t now, and that’s all there is to it. I told Georgene over lunch at Perkins that sometimes, late at night I get the urge to look up my guidance counselor's phone number and call him and say, “Mr. Buckley, you suck. You didn’t prepare me for any of the shit that I’ve gone through since graduation!” but then I think better of myself, because what fun would it be if you knew? The surprises are what keep us going, I reckon. and when they stop coming, that means you’ve gotten old and tired, and you might as well be dead.
You may suspect I was pretty drunk over lunch, but not the case--just pensive.
That night I spent with my friend Theresa, a girl I had dated once upon a time, and again, someone I had lost touch with for several years. However, I happened to track her down on a whim a couple of months ago, and managed to locate her while she was working on a job contract in Cody, Wyoming of all places. But now she was back in Butte, so as the saying goes “Friends and relations are there to be imposed upon,” and she graciously put me and Tuc’s up for the night. Theresa’s another one of those “bus-boy friends” that you lose track of without meaning to and are ever so glad when they come back into your life because you enjoy their company so much when you each have the time and space to enjoy each other’s company.
So, we chatted quite a lot, and the subject came to my friendship with Caren and how my relationship with Anthony came between us, and how much I was hoping to heal some portion of the breach when I got back to Boston (Theresa had met Caren several times and hit it off quite well) and we also talked for some time about Anthony and how much I would like for us to be friends to some extent, if not the closest bosom pals. She had her own notes to compare, and we agreed that it would be sadness indeed to have spent so much of your life devoted to another person that even after a break-up for circumstances to be such that you completely eliminate that person from your life.
It was eerily soon after we got done talking about that subject than who should call my cell phone, but Maria!
She was just around the corner and hadn’t much time to stay and visit, but she wanted to meet up with me, and so, yet another circle fell into completion, and we hugged and kissed and remembered affectionately the times we had shared. She had to meet up with her boyfriend’s family for dinner, but before she left she whispered to me, “You are still one of the best friends I have ever had in my life; you always will be.” And my heart was made glad even as I returned the sentiment.
Later that evening Theresa and I went up to visit with another of my teachers from high school, Jim Driscoll, with whom I had not kept contact after graduation, and we rather surprised him and his wide just as they were getting ready to close up their house for bed. However, they welcomed us in, and we had a really good conversation about politics and art and the effect the terrorist attacks were having on the stock market, and I found myself grinning just at (and I’ll write this at the risk of sounding like a snob, but what the hell) how nice it was to be among intellectuals, and how refreshing it was to converse about topics other than drugs or clubs or sex or restaurants or my dysfunctional family (all topics I felt I had exhausted for at least a week or two). Jim is another one of the early influences of my writing, and as he appreciated the candor and often sarcastic and cynical perspective on high school life I took writing in the school newspaper, he gave me a hardbound copy of Voltaire’s “Candide” for graduation. (Which turned out to be the only gift I received for graduation. I told you I wasn’t very popular.)
Candide’s underlying message that: It’s All for The Best has been a theme that I have clung to over the years and one which got me through the most difficult times in this past year, and even now, when I feel like things are becoming grim, I just force myself to remember that my fortunes are liable to change at the drop of a hat, so I shouldn’t get too caught up in the drama of Right Now.
I am not sure if Jim ever knew the effect he had on me in school, or what effect he would continue to have afterwards, but again, I felt the circle complete itself as I reestablished my friendship with him, and I went to sleep that night feeling very good indeed (what a day!) More good stuff.
The next day Tuc’s and I breakfasted with Theresa in the park, and after kissing her goodbye (I am told you have to say goodbye before you can say hello again) we hopped back into the car and crossed the mountain range between us and our next destination. We weren't in any particular hurry, so we paused at one of our mutually favorite spots along the Jefferson River to take a dip in the icy water and say hello to the canyon walls we like so much, and eventually we rolled in to Bozeman--that other place of my childhood, and which I prefer to call my hometown.
Here we camped out at my friend Scott’s house , and again refreshed the friendship which we’ve maintained over years and miles. I’ve spoken of Scott and why I like him so much elsewhere, but let me add a few things. He is another brother-in-spirit of mine, and I can safely say I’d take a bullet for him (doesn't that sound so butch! eek!) or at least donate a kidney (that sounds better). He shares my enthusiasm for Guy Fawkes Day, and to him I passed the secret of my Tree which grows in Bozeman. I think I have also spoken of that tree before, but while we’re on the subject of friends, I have to bring up that special place, that magnificent old willow in whose arms I grew up as a lad, and to which I still return lovingly year after year. Scott and I (and others) are know to run around naked beneath the gigantic limbs of that tree, and this visit proved an occasion to do so when we introduced Scott’s roommate and girlfriend and another girl to it.
The tree laughed as it does in its tree-ish way, and after Tucson made his greeting we all traipsed off to some ponds not far away to go skinny dipping at night.
Alas, but the clock remained ticking, and although we spent the next day kayaking on an alpine lake, on the third we had to push on, landing in Sheridan, Wyoming that night for a very brief stay at my sister's house.
(*Note: At the time I had some regret that I couldn’t stay longer. Little did I know I would be back sooner than could have imagined, and for much longer than I’d ever have wished.)

The Red Party, Columbus

I stayed for just a day at my sister’s place in Wyoming before I headed back on the road, now in store for a horribly dull and dreary trip across the barren expanse of South Dakota before dipping down into Iowa (not much of an improvement) and then on through Illinois and Indiana.
I had not intended to go to the Red Party at first. After a couple of weeks playing in San Francisco, and with the Black & Blue in Montreal coming up the following weekend, it seemed just a tad on the side of overkill to squeeze the Red Party in as well. Besides, I didn’t expect a whole lot out of anything Ohio had to offer, even though the Red Party is supposedly the oldest event on the Circuit. Even so, my friend Oz is from Columbus, and a couple I know from Cleveland were going, and so I thought “What the hell, it is on the way, after all,” and so I fired up the Warp Engines and fairly streaked across the Midwest, arriving at last around 9:00 pm, Saturday night.
A couple of funny things happened along the way that I want to mention for a second, if I may.
First of all, despite spending the summer in California, I really didn’t get that much sun, and especially after a long two weeks of clubbing and after-hours parties, during which I tucked myself away into the shadows 90% of the time, I was looking pretty much like an “Ode to Death Warmed Up” and as George Hamilton will tell you, that just isn’t pretty, so I decided to fake-bake at a couple of place en route so that I’d have a nice healthy glow to show off to any potential Prince Charmings I might encounter in Columbus. Well, as it turned out, the last place I stopped to tan, Mitchell, South Dakota of all places (proud home of the World Famous Corn Palace, don't you know!) I paid for the “Ultra Tan,” and bless my face, but if I didn’t come out with a burn! The hell you say! But twas true, despite my Mediterranean lineage, I came out looking like a boiled lobster, and while I realized with a chuckle that I was going to the Red Party, I expect that motif was geared more towards one’s costume rather than dermal pigmentation.
The really funny thing about it was later on at the actual Party with everyone rolling their tits off, I found myself surrounded by a thousand groping hands, reaching out to touch someone, and then discovering that someone was me, they began slathering their sweaty paws up and down my sizzling body. Under ordinary circumstances, I would have loved all the massages, but as it was, it felt like everyone was trying to rip my skin off with sandpaper! So, that’s the rueful tale of my tanning fiasco.
The other phenomena which I encountered along the way, happened after I pulled over for a few hours of sleep at a rest area outside Des Moines, Iowa and awoke early Saturday morning to a crowd of supercharged fans on their way to some Homecoming football game. What a sight to behold! and I recalled my friend Mark’s description of a circuit party: “It’s just like any other night of clubbing, but with a larger propensity of dousing yourself in glitter and wearing a big, silly hat.”
These fans were doing just that--donning enormous, goofy hats, and painting their bodies in their school colors, and wearing absurd clothes and running around laughing and shouting, as wild as any flock of queens, maybe more so, and I thought, “My god, it’s a Straight People version of a circuit party!” and I laughed, and I took a moment to climb up to God’s level, and we looked down upon the imminent festivals to commence that day, one gay, the other straight, and we laughed together at the similarities, and sighed together at how so few could see them as well.
Therefore, I assured God I would point this perspective out to as many people as I could, and here you go.
Anyway, fast forward: the Red Party.
I had thought that I might catch a power nap before heading out for the evening, but that was merely wishful thinking. Oz and I were simply too excited to see one another, and besides we had to go pick up some party supplies (of course) and before we knew it we had pulled up to the arena, and then we were inside.
I don’t think I have it in me to fully describe the Red Party, but let me just say from the stance of a Professional Circuit Boy: it sucked. I suppose I could try to mince my words, but let’s just leave it at that. The music was tired and ancient (when was the last time you heard “Unspeakable Joy”, 1998? ‘99?) the crowd was sketchy. And the space itself felt like a high school gym dressed up (badly) for prom night.
Oz and I have both taken to flagging, but the only space suitable for doing so was crammed way into the back, on a sort of stepped tier, but even that area became too choked with messy, sprawling boys to really have adequate space to flag.
The one saving grace of the evening for me, however, is that I did meet a special someone with whom I connected as we flagged over and around the bodies of the brain-deaths on the floor, and much to my surprise, it turned out to be Warren Gluck, Circuit DJ Extraordinaire himself!
Now let me tell you a story about my relationship with Warren, and again, you will come to see how inside of me yet another circle clicked as it came round into completion.
The first time I had ever hear Warren spin was at the Cherry Five Party in D.C. two years ago coinciding with the “March on Washington.” My friend Shawn and I arrived at the Old Post Office Pavilion to find the space completely jam-packed, and since he and I both like a lot of room to dance, I spied a more open space up on one of the balconies overlooking the crowd. It turned to be the VIP lounge and platform for the DJ’s booth, and neither of us had passes, but I convinced the entrance guard to let me strut my stuff for Warren, claiming, “He’ll let us in. I’m the best dancer in here,” and so off I went twirling my lights around in front of him, and he laughed and gave us both passes. That night turned out to be one of the best in my Circuit experience as it was there that I met Oz, and connected with another guy, Tom Hubbard (who now lives in San Francisco) both of whom became strong supporters while I was in the hospital and remain good friends of mine to this day.
It was also, however, one of the last parties in my pre-suicide circuit life, and it sort of benchmarked my departure from the scene for the next six months.
Imagine than, if you will, the torturous days of my recovery upon awakening from my coma as I struggled to learn how to walk again, and later the months after I went home during which I suffered the most horrible anxieties and panic attacks upon contact with any solitary strangers, much less crowds. Yet, in the back of my mind as I recovered dangled that wonderful memory of that Last Weekend, so to speak, alongside the desperate fear I had of never being able to regain enough balance or coordination to ever dance again. But beneath it rose a strength and determination within me to overcome all and strut back out there in the midst of the crowds which I had come to love in what seemed like another life, long, long ago.
Andrew Holleran, author of “Dancer from the Dance” writes as his Truman Capote-esque Sutherland, “What, we may well ask, is there left to live for? Why get out of bed? For this dreary round of amusing insincerity? No, we may still choose to live like gods, like poets. Which brings us down to dancing. Yes, that is all that’s left when love has gone. Dancing.”
And so, as I’ve been repeating over and over despite the kitschy cliche’ of it all: the Circuit saved my life. It gave me the hope, strength, and inspiration to get out of that miserable bed and find my feet again and live and love, and most importantly, dance.
All this and more I tried to tell Warren when we broke away from our flagging and stumbled outside to find a bottle of water. I don’t suppose he heard much in that whirlwind of music and chatter and gossip, not to mention the fact that my own words came out blurred by the ketamine rushing through my system, but all the same he smiled at me. Two dancers, struggling to find our “centers” in an atmosphere of crap music and blah energy, and so we clung to each other for the rest of the night, and by the end, I had found that happy space, and so did he, and we embraced and kissed and laughed at the way the night had played itself out.
Even though I had from the very beginning missed Tom Hellenthal, who of course, remained in Boston, I discovered with Warren that there might be another Circuit Friend out there with whom I could connect and dance without the entanglement of sex. Again to quote Holleran, “The friends you danced with, when you had no lover, were the most important people in your life,” and so it was with Warren; a couple of dancers, a couple of friends, and it felt right.
So the night ended on a positive note after all.
Actually there were some pretty funny moments as I look back on them. For example, I thought I dropped a bumper full of K, and managed to gather a helpful search team to assist me in combing through the carpet armed with microlights and glowsticks for illumination, only later to discover I had it all the time in one of my less obvious pockets (damn those cargo pants!) Speaking of micro lights, I had been so excited to finally use one of my new multi-colored mini-strobing lights, but the batteries faded out ere long with a pathetic, wheezing scream (I’m not making this up) and the sad little thing sputtered and blinked and dulled thereby smacking me out of my roll (vexing to the extreme!) but I wouldn’t let it go without a fight, and so the next half an hour or so found myself and three others huddled over this tiny flashlight performing micro-surgery with an array of tiny screwdrivers and needles and safety pins before finally admitting the fucker was dead
And of course, let us not forget the Queen of Queens presiding over the affair, in whose pancake makeup were etched the lines of a faith pitifully gone awry, this great and tacky and sparkling Queen, whose appearance was as carefully kept a secret as the Manhattan Project, startling many of us to our very cores: yes, could it be true, that here, draped in magnificent velvet and sequins and taffeta was the Fabulous Tammy Faye Baker? (gasp!) (eek!) and finally (applause!) Fuck Victor! Fuck Madonna! Fuck Whitney! Fuck Junior! Fuck Deborah Cox! Fuck Warren Gluck! (sorry, Warren) and Fuck, Fucking, Mother-fucked Kristine W! We here at the Red Party (that’s Red Party, Columbus, you twats! Never to be confused with those cheap imitations up in Montreal and Chicago!) were honored by the grace of the most outrageous, most over-the-top, most garishly painted celebrity to ever bend her nose to a mirror. Tammy Faye! Oh the glamour! Oh the panache! Oh the hair!
Oh the horror, the horror of it all!
*( A photo is attached courtesy of my friends Colin and Tom)
So at long last (and trust me dears, it was loooong!) Oz and I and some others stumbled out into the freedom of the misty morning where finally I was overcome by the entire horribly hilarious spectacle of it all, and I crumpled to the gravel of the parking lot, rolling around on my back, laughing helplessly for before me as evenly matched as two battleships rising out of the fog emerged an impeccably classy, pristinely white stretch limousine and a deliciously hideous charter bus--and not a standard coach, which though tacky, might have been excusable to some degree, but a bright banana-yellow school bus rented by some enterprising district way out in the heartland to a bunch of corn-pone queers, high on the prospect of shaking their tits with the Big City boys! Oh, can you repeat after me: “Same planet, different worlds?”
To put it mildly, I fell apart, and even now, I can barely type; what with the shaking of my fingers as I struggle to overcome my mirth. I think I must take a moment to compose myself.....!

Okay, I’m better now, and on with the story.
It doesn’t take much, but as them say, “A little crystal goes a long way,” so despite the lack of groove felt during the party, I was still far too wired to even think about sleep, so Oz and I dropped the other boys off at the apartment, and after refreshing ourselves with a Powerbar-n-Shower we plodded through the burning sunlight of the early morn to the after-hours held at a club unimaginatively named “Millennium” (again, I was reduced to helpless giggles to find it parked neatly between a World Food outlet and a Target--that’s “Tar-jay, pet,” in what I concluded must be Columbus’ “Red light” district, ha, ha!)
So, with that in mind, we descended into...what turned out to be a fantastic morning party!
In much the way that the main event of San Francisco’s Gay Pride turned out to be a “bust” (in-joke, sorry--had to be there) whereas the following Regeneration Party turned my kittybox inside out, so played out the Morning Party after the miserable Red.
The space was small and jam-packed and smoky, but the music was a thousand percent better, and the energy in the room was overpowering. These were the hard-core circuit boys! And having packed the corn-pone crowd safely back onto their bus, my people at last let loose with the searing, truly RED energy of the Dance. Not a face swam out of the shadows without a grin, not a hand groped without meeting a receptive handle of some fashion, and every naked chest glistened under a composite layer of sweat, saliva, glitter, and for the lucky (or at least the over-eager) cum.
I had replaced the batteries in my microlights with fresh ones, and I cracked open new glowsticks, and into this seething, grinding pit, I let spill the virginal light of Olympus onto the Bacchanal; a lithe, golden Apollo, if you will, a wing-footed Mercury, darting among the arms and legs of the wicked, springing Satyrs, each one reinterpreting Isadora Duncan in his glazed-yet-simultaneously-vibrant eyes and swaying limbs.
I chanced across a couple from DC with whom I had spent an afternoon of passion earlier that spring, and we met and kissed and caressed and laughed before the Winds of K tore me from their arms and spun me back into the maelstrom. I bounced from the arms of boys hailing from New York and L.A. into those of such far off, exotic realms as Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Athens, Georgia. I had also recharged my pockets back at the apartment, and thus what a laugh must have been shared by the Cherubim to look down upon a crowd of ecstatic faces, each one impaled upon a murderously sweet Blowpop that I handed out like an alter boy doling Communion wafers.
We stayed until the very end, or as near to it as we could manage, before regretfully Oz and I plunged back into the demonic sunlight (smoke rising from our cringing bodies, no doubt) and bid the Red Party farewell.

So that’s pretty much the story of the Red Party, but if you want to hang out with me for a while longer, I shall briefly disclose some of the details of the rather blurry next few days.
Even though I thought I was thoroughly exhausted by the time we got back to the apartment, after another shower and a shave, I found I still had a certain, ah, charge, in my battery, and upon receipt of directions, I left Oz to slumber and found my way to the bath house conveniently situated just a half mile away.
Now I want to take a moment for the sake of my Clean and Sober Readers to describe the effects of two dreadful-no-good-wicked-very-bad drugs called GHB and Crystal Meth. Ah, such an evil pair of sisters are they! Black, foul-hearted witches to the core. To imbibe them is to drink Juliet’s poison, and their telltale marks scored a rancid tattoo across and within my body: open lesions on the tongue and inner cheeks, exacerbated by the chomping and grinding of the jaw. The gums pull back from the teeth in a horrid rictus, and the mucous membrane of the nostrils burns away, leaving a smooth, bloody blindness to scent. “Tina craters” pock the skin, and putrescence oozes and seeps from the pores as ones body wretchedly squeezes itself attempting purification. The bowels and kidneys evacuate, leaving a dry, compressed cadaver, and even one’s liver might spill in a chemical hepatitis, saturating the skin with a sallow, jaundiced tone.
But.
To quote Irvine Welsh in Trainspotting (although he was writing about heroin, rather): “People think it’s all about misery and desperation and death and all that shite--which is not to be ignored, but what they forget is the pleasure of it. Take the most intense orgasm you ever had and multiply it by a thousand, and you’re still nowhere even close. Otherwise we wouldn’t do it. After all, we’re not fucking stupid.”
In and of themselves, I cannot really see the allure of taking G or crystal if you were just going to sit around by yourself, getting high. I can’t even really use either one as a “club drug” although I know they are categorized as such; my metabolism is different than most, and many things affect me differently. Crystal makes me edgy and feverish, and G makes me nauseous if I try to move around too much, like when I’m dancing. But what I do like to use either one of them while doing (read: LOVE to use either of them alone as an enhancer; whereas together?...mercy!) is fucking. That’s it, plain and simple. I won’t try to paint a flowery veil across the words by saying “sleeping together” or “making love” or “hooking up” or whatever else you might call it. No, when the G is screaming through my cock and deep within my ass, and the crystal rocket fires each heartbeat and every breath with a manic intensity, there is only one thing I want to do, and that is: fuck like mad, crazy wildcats, clawing and biting and sucking and bucking and clinging to a hard, slippery body (or two or three, or four, or five...) and molding our conjoined entity into one blazing, railroading, endless, searing rush of maddening ecstasy.
And oh god, how it can last and last and last! Hours. Days! If not for the earthly needs of the body--for food, for sleep--given enough G and Tina, I imagine one could continue fucking until the skin shredded off the taut muscles beneath, which would in turn collapse in twisted ropes encircling the weary bones crumbling from the strain. That’s a pretty thought, I know, but honestly, even the pain would take on an ethereal pleasure beyond the scope of what a stone cold sober person could even begin to imagine.
So yeah, I would attempt to the best of my ability to dissuade anyone from using either of these drugs, and vehemently underscore the risks and the dangers of treading their black paths, and I would denounce them as evil, abominations in the eyes of Man, and yet, if you asked me if I enjoyed them, would I try them again? I would reply bluntly, yes. Oh, yes.
*But I will stress: not for a good looooong, while--I need at least several months of purity in my system before I’ll go that route again, but I digress....
I encountered many bodies over the next two days I spent at the bath house, and most of the faces I can even remember, which given my description above may seem surprising, but the most surprising thing of all is that there, within that seething, grinding den of iniquities, I experienced two things, linked to one another, and yet distinctly different. As you may suppose, I had phenomenal-fantastic-really-good sex, but that was to be expected, and given the weeks of entwined passion I had spent earlier in San Francisco I guess my pump was primed, to coin a rather vulgar term. However, I was still surprised in a way (a fucking great way at that!) to push past the limits of physical pleasure I believed I had set earlier with Justin to a crescendo which I envisioned approached something you might call holy. (experiencing the numinous--in a bath house?! The hell you say!) (I do say, ha!)
And that was wonderful, don’t get me wrong, but what really came as a surprise is that very close to the same time, but for entirely different reasons, I fell in love.

New York, and quick trip through hell.

A lot of things happened over the course of just a few days following the Red Party, but the events most striking in my memory came from two separate worlds and while the intensity of the first indirectly led to the conclusions of the second, I struggled for weeks afterward to make sense of either.
As I have already spelled out melodramatically, in the midst of two days of sex and drugs at a bath house in Columbus (of all places!) I found myself in the arms of a beautiful man with whom I had phenomenal sex, but also with whom I talked and laughed and told stories during our frequent breaks to shower and sit in the hot tub and re-hydrate. I know, it’s not quite “From Here to Eternity” or “Casablanca” or “Sleepless in Seattle” or anything so pure and sanitized, but I felt that long forgotten rush, that spark of fairytale romance add a charge to my heartbeat that superseded the synthetic, drug-induced arousal, and as I held onto him and gazed into the liquid pools of his dilated pupils, I glimpsed my reflection and the wonder that I should be holding such an angel mirrored back a thousand times in the rapt expression of his face, and I fell in love, seizing the moment, and we stretched it out for the next six or seven hours, and I broke free of him only at the behest of the others in the room, who wanted, perhaps, a share of that ethereal passion.
So then we rejoined the fray and took turns topping and bottoming and stroking and jerking, and snorting and dosing, and doing all those things for which we wacky gay boys are infamous. But then things went past anything sober inhibitions would have prevented us from doing, and condoms were shoved onto the back burner in everyone's’ frantic rush to fuck and/or get fucked, and well..... 
It took a couple of days, but later, when I came down and I found myself staring blearily at myself in the mirror, it all came crashing in on me, and needless to say, I freaked. I cried for a good hour on the side of the road once Tucson and I were back on our way, and I cried some more at a truck stop somewhere in Pennsylvania, which is to say, that as I look back on things I probably reacted normally to what on the surface felt like a pretty grim situation, although what really fucked me up was not so much the current drama, but just the fact that there was drama. I mean, I just felt like I was backsliding and spiraling back down into the pit from the summer before when I just seemed to be living from crisis to crisis, maybe even thriving on them in some twisted way, and that above all made me feel truly miserable, and perhaps even a bit hopeless.
However, then something else happened, and I was yanked out of my own personal pit of angst and self loathing and whatnot, and I came face to face with reality and the world, which as it turns out is much bigger than me and my drama and sags under the weight of problems far beyond any of my petty crap.
It had not been my intention to pass through New York City when I left San Francisco weeks before, but since the trail I had been making rather meandered as it was, and since I was adherent to no particular schedule, I discovered that it was probably just as easy to cut across I-80 and take in the foliage of Pennsylvania rather than heading back up to I-90 and taking it across New York State (a route I had taken several times before).
Thus, as fate would have it, I was coming up on Williamsport, PA when my friend Kent from called on the cell phone and invited me to continue heading directly east and meet him and his friend Michael in New York City for dinner after which Tuc’s and I were welcome to spend the night at his house across the river in New Jersey. It had already been a long day of driving, but I gratefully accepted the offer and after a few more hours I found my way down to Greenwich Village.
The first thing I noticed about New York in the aftermath of the attack was the smell. A heavy, dusty odor of brimstone and sulfur and smoke permeates the city even weeks after the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers and the stench extends far out across the Hudson where eventually it blends indiscernibly with the aerial waste emitted by the factories and power plants in Newark.
I guess you come to expect a certain amount of pollution from a big city, and lord knows, having just spent the summer choking on the pesticides and exhaust fumes that cover the San Joaquin Valley like a nasty blanket, you’d think I would be used to breathing foul air, but once I got into New York, and especially as I drew closer to Ground Zero, I found myself gagging and wheezing like some old grandfather who’d chain-smoked three packs a day for 40 years. Good God, it was awful! It was something of a debate when we got to a restaurant as to whether or not eating outside where at least there was a breeze would be preferable to dining indoors where the air conditioners might at least filter out a portion of the haze.
We chose to eat out on the patio, and afterwards we drove up as close as we could before the streets were blocked off, and upon finding a parking place just to the northwest of Chinatown, we got out and strolled down to take in the blast site.
Over the course of the past month or so, I have listened to National Public Radio quite a bit and the commentary of a number of witnesses; journalists and novelists, poets and artists on the wasteland which had once been New York’s tallest skyscrapers. I hesitate to begin to tackle the immensity of adding to their descriptions of the scene, so let me just say that it was not anything the mind could take in and process or fathom in any way that might later be described accurately to an audience who had not been there themselves. I have studied a fair amount of physics and chemistry and geology, and yet there was no way my brain could sort out the awesome forces that came together that morning and left such a complete ruin of so large an area. I was told later that nearly all of the concrete and plaster and drywall in the buildings just vaporized (hence the persistent clouds of dust even then) and without that support material, most of what came tumbling down was the wiry metal skeleton of the building: girders, “I” bars, rebar, wire mesh and pipes,. hoses, and cables, and mile after mile of circuitry, and the only thing that I could think of looking upon the twisted mountain of metal and plastic was that it looked as if a giant had emptied out the waste bin under the world’s largest paper shredder. I guess you expect rubble and bricks and broken glass and such, but this twisted, knotted, mass of man-made vines dumbfounded me, plain and simple.
The streets around the excavation area ring out with the clatter of gigantic cranes and steam shovels and bulldozers and dump trucks, and the entire site is illuminated by massive banks of flaring white lights, and yet, there is a silence that stretches for blocks and blocks away, a somberness that shushes petty conversation. Despite the thousands of lights, also there too is a darkness that hangs over the devastation--a miasma of sorrow and soot and pain and dust that baffles and muffles the area against the intrusions of light and sound. There is no music.
I felt Tucson push his nose into my hand, and he leaned against me somberly, and when I looked down at him, I noticed a huge cockroach attached to Kent’s jeans, but after he brushed it off, it just lay stunned on the ground and made no move to skitter away before he stepped on it. I think that’s when it really hit me, because you always hear about how resilient roaches are supposed to be, that they are the ultimate survivors in Earth’s history, and how even after nuclear war, they would somehow carry on in the aftermath. Not so, this one; it just gave up hope and lay there, resigned to whatever fate befell it next. Yeah, I know that sounds fucked up--to get disturbed by a roach that didn't run, but I think that’s the point: it just seemed so unnatural, so out of place. You’d think he and his 50,000 kids would be in hog heaven, scurrying about, feeding and breeding like there was no tomorrow. But instead it just lay still, waiting to be crushed, perhaps believing that there was no What, so what’s the point of running today?
My mind scrambled across a thousand thoughts over the next few minutes, and I contemplated my own fatalistic approach at life over the past few weeks since the attack. I did feed and breed, so to speak, and yet now there was a Tomorrow, and I had perhaps given it away in exchange for a day of raw passion, and for a moment, my little drama came back to me, but then I lifted my chin and took in the scene once again, and thinking about the thousands of people who had unknowingly gone to their doom that Tuesday morning, I realized I had no regrets. Because should the world in fact end Tomorrow, then I would have spent my last hours doing something I loved.
Additionally, I began to put it all in perspective, imagining what it would have been like to be trapped within the wreckage, hoping, praying that someone would come to help, even as the minutes ticked away into hours which turned into days eventually blurring into weeks...What of the orphans and the widows and friends of those lost in those terrifying moments? What of the search teams and firefighters and ambulance crews and triage nurses clawing and tearing passages to and from the ruins, striving to save live, and if not, then recover bodies? Also, what of the politicians and the police and the soldiers and the decisions that would have to be made by a select few which would affect millions both here in New York, but also throughout the rest of the world? I wondered if any of the terrorists involved had any idea of the enormity of their actions or the consequences which would arise from them.
I contemplated all of these things and more within a span of minutes, though I could ponder each for millennia, and I shuddered, chilled and sobered, feeling for a long, dreadful moment the loss of hope, and the despair and bitterness that perhaps that cockroach had felt and what thousands, nay, millions of people must be sharing on the Eve of Armageddon, and a final, solitary thought came to me, and that was: “What hope have we for peace and safety and understanding and tolerance in this world if I cannot even get along with my own mother?” For let’s be honest, no matter how awful I remembered my childhood, or how aggravating I once found our relationship, she was still my mother, and I, her son, and if that didn’t count for something, well then maybe there was no hope in the world after all, for if we, who had a lifetime of commonalities and emotional bonds could not get past our differences as civilized adults, what hope was there for such diametrically opposed groups like the Israelis and the Palestinians or the Hutus and the Tutsis to ever cease their petty wars and retributions?
I felt very small in a vast, vast world, and I wondered vaguely if one small boy such as I could make any sort of difference in this horrible, tragic mess, and again, I felt for a moment a weary hopelessness as I considered this idea. But then Tucson nudged my hand again, and I looked down at him and smiled and thought about the effect that brief touch of affection had on me, and how I have passed that affection on to so many others, and I remembered with a cool sense of relief, that I--we--Tuc’s and I could indeed change the world, little by little, and bit by bit, each of us doing our part, as patiently and as cheerily as we could manage. So, I called my mother then on my cell phone at that late hour, and fighting the static I let spill all the thoughts that had been running through my head, and finished by telling her that I forgave her, and I didn’t harbor any more yucky feelings for her, and that deep down I loved her, and when I returned to the West I wanted to sit and talk with her and try to be friends. And she was very quiet through it all, and remained silent for a while after I quit talking, and then she agreed with me and wanted to do that as well. And things were better.

So Tuc’s and the boys and I left the remains of the World Trade Center, and drove through the Holland Tunnel eventually winding up quite late at Kent’s home in Gillette, New Jersey. I was a jumble of emotions that evening, and I was exhausted from the 500 miles I had driven that day, but when at last I had showered and sunk into bed, I felt.....Clean and Good. Perhaps even Sanctified. Thus, I am in full agreement with all who contend that Ground Zero is a holy site, though how it should be revered, I cannot say, and I fell asleep full of hope that around the city, around the world, people are also drawing positive lessons and messages from the incredible loss of September 11th.

Black & Blue 2001, Origin

Kent’s butler (he doesn’t care for that term, but that’s what it amounts to) Joe graciously insisted that Tucson remain with him at the country house in New Jersey rather than being kenneled (Tuc’s, not the butler, you silly kids) that next week in Montreal, so I rather unexpectedly found myself traveling alone the next morning into Boston. I knew deep down that Tucson would undoubtedly have a much better time running around in the woods and playing in the pond with Joe instead of languishing in a cold, boring Canadian kennel, but still, I missed him achingly until we were rejoined a week later.
Thus, without his head in my lap I marked yet another circle closing as I returned to Boston, recalling my first cross-country, Eastward exodus I had made without Tucson or Caren three years ago, just after my last semester of school; fleeing the drab, sedentary specter of a suburban lifestyle.
I had only one reason, really, to return to Boston on that day--I could just have easily remained in New Jersey with Kent and traveled with him to Montreal the day later, but in spite of my perspectives and reflections gained in New York, I still knew I had a “Big Issue” to deal with in terms of my own bodily health, and so I had to get in to see my doctor as soon as possible.
I will admit, then, that I did sort of forget all about Ground Zero for a time, and shortly after having half a dozen vials of blood drawn accompanied by a couple of prescriptions for some heavy-duty anti-virals, I started to freak out just a bit. This feeling was no doubt intensified by the fact that I had returned to an environment which for the most part had been almost exclusively negative for me over the past year, and I didn’t even have Tucson the Wonder Dog to rub his nose in my hand while I was shaking.
So I felt pretty damn yucky.
I tried to call Caren--not to tell her about my most recent crisis--but just to say, “Hey, I’m in town, and since I’m moving for good all the way to the other side of the country, and who knows when we’ll have the chance to see each other again, why don’t we go to a movie?” but perhaps she sensed the tension in my voice, and she refused me and said she didn’t want to see me ever again.
Having decided I hadn’t had enough rejection that day, I wandered by Anthony’s salon where I was coldly told “I don’t have any time to chat with you right now,” and close to despair I poked my head in on my old friend Tom Hellenthal in one final effort to find a smidgen of warmth in that otherwise bitterly cold city I had come to hate.
Although Tom had once been my best friend and certainly had been one of the best Circuit Friends anyone could have known, our relationship was thrown a giant hurtle when he inadvertently fell in love with me (or perhaps I should say, when I inadvertently forgot to fall in love with him?) and things had been strained ever since we returned from Cherry 6.0 in May. I had tried to surmount the obstacles between us from afar via emails and telephone, but it seemed is if he hadn’t come around just yet, and there remained a chill in the air when I dropped by for a terribly brief visit.
As you can imagine then, I kicked out of Boston like a bat out of hell the next morning, pissed off and mentally giving the whole damn town the finger as I viciously sped towards Montreal and the friendly faces I knew would greet me there.
I met back up with Kent in Albany, New York where we had previously agreed to rendezvous with his two friends, an ineffably adorable couple from New York City, Tom and Will. (*Note, there get to be a number of Tom’s in this story--I hope it doesn’t get too confusing.) I transferred my club gear and other necessities to their car, and the four of us had a more or less pleasant trip up to the border. More, I should clarify, in that we were all so eager for the upcoming weekend (it was to be Tom’s first circuit party) and less, in that the anti-virals were kicking in and wrenching my stomach to bits. We stashed what questionable objects we had in our possession in a variety of undetectable safe-spots (I highly recommend inside bars of deodorant--the odor throws the dogs) well before we got to the border, but once we got there, we were waived on through without much ado (although we were forced to wait in line for almost two hours).
At the hotel that evening we connected with some of my Montreal friends, Peter and Robert and their friend from Toronto, Rudd as well as some of Tom’s friends from Boston, and so began a weekend of Great Connections, many of which were facilitated by Yours Truly, much in the same way Renee brought quality personalities together two weeks before at the Mount Rainier Reunion. Hence, I was blessed with the position of watching these personalities connect and react to one another and come away changed for the better recalling that Jung once said, “a meeting of two personalities is like the meeting of two chemicals; if there is any reaction, both are changed,” and to my delight, feel as if I had been a part of that meeting in some small way. Robert’s cousin Geoff would later in the weekend dub me the “Catalyst” of so many meetings, and I have rarely been named anything so complimentary.
Friday night was the Leather Ball, and my readers may find it amusing to visualize little Danny, Club-Kid Extraordinaire decked out in a black rubber harness, a leather arm band, and tight, faded Levis attempting to fit in with all the giant, sweaty muscle boys in similar attire (one noticeable difference--it looked good on them). We headed to the pre-Leather Party at a club called “Parking” where I had never been, and while the music there was great, it was wall-to-wall leather boys (have I mentioned already how ridiculous I looked?) in the crowd of which I became inextricably crushed. Well, okay that’s a bit of an exaggeration, because I was eventually able to pull myself free, but once liberated I quickly found Kent and expressed my deepest desire to go elsewhere.
Thus, we told the rest of the gang we’d meet up with them later, and three or four blocks later, we arrived at the actual Leather Ball held at club “Medley. “ Not to sound too picky, but if the space was considerably less crowded than at “Parking,” the music was correspondingly diminished. I’m not a big fan of Medley, largely because whenever the floor gets wet, it’s like an ice skating rink, which may be tolerable if you are just a part of the sway-and-grind crowd, but for those of us who like to bounce around and do high kicks and twirls and such, you’re lucky not to slip and fall on your ass every other minute. I managed to carve out a relatively dry space up off the main dance floor near a speaker, and that’s where I met a fabulous club-girl named Sophie with whom I developed a great rapport over the rest of the weekend, and to whom I had the honor of introducing many of my friends and thereby watching that connection blossom again. Additionally, in the midst of the meaty, sweaty, harnessed and chained boys, I ran into Grace, DJ Ritchie-Rich’s sister from Boston, and so began a tenuous redemption of Boston, starting with Grace, and eventually ending with Tom Hellenthal a week later (but I’m jumping ahead of myself). Grace is simply one of those girls straight from the scripts of “Absolutely Fabulous” that you cannot help but listen to in dreadful, amused fascination--”Honey! IjustdidabumpofsomeTHING; Idon’tknowwhatitwas, butitwas FABulous!” and then off she bounces, shouldering her ubiquitous, quintessential Gucci bag. You know the type.
However, despite the comfort of my space, despite the fabulosity of Sophie, and despite the grace, of, uh, well, Grace, the music developed into this discordant racket like the DJ thought the theme of the music should be equally as hard and deviant and twisted as the garb, and it eventually drove me away from the Leather Ball and at last into the waiting arms of “Stereo“.
Let me take a moment right now to sing the praises of Club Stereo where I have enjoyed more consistently wonderful nights than any other club in the world. For the virgins out there, Stereo is to Montreal what TWILO is (or was before it closed) to New York: a magnificent club in its own right on the occasional evening when it opened before 1 a.m., but more so an after-hours to end all other after-hours in the city (hell, the continent, as far as I am concerned). If you get right down to it, there’s nothing all that fancy about the layout--it is, with the exception of a small upstairs lounge, just an open space surrounded by speakers. But oh, what speakers! It didn’t get the name “Stereo” for nothing, and their sound system couples with the acoustics of the room to give it the best sounding, most incredibly pounding music I have ever come across anywhere on or off the Circuit. And quite fortunately, Resident DJ and part owner, Mark Anthony, permits nothing but the best mixes to come through those speakers--a lesson which Boston’s Avalon with their benchmark-setting sound system ought to mimic, but for some reason fails to achieve with their crappy, drearily boring DJ’s.
Anyway, you can already tell that I dislike most of Boston's beats, but it just makes the sounds coming from Stereo so much more enjoyable to experience. If they have a failing, it is their somewhat unreasonable ban on personal lights, which regardless of the nature--be it glow stick, microlight, or laser--I have always been asked to turn off by security. I’m not sure why that ban exists, except to hypothesize that it may draw attention from Stereo’s own light show, which given the right operator, can be pretty spectacular. The light show, as I recall that night, pretty much fit the bill, with much of the crowd shrouded in darkness and with just enough intermittent strobe flashes to shine off the various buckles, latex straps, glistening pecs, and cock rings. DJ James Anderson graced the turntables that night, and as any regular at the “Roxy” in New York will attest, he turned out the tracks like a pro. So finally, like Goldilocks, having tasted the offerings at two other place-settings earlier that evening, I deemed this final meal to be “just right”, and even devoid of my lights, I still glowed in the vibrancy of the glorious music James spun out through the wee hours of the morn.
I suspect it is a sign of my growing maturity (and NOT, mind you, my advancing age, ha, ha) that I have learned to pace myself better and better with each Circuit Party, and so given the cracked-out-ness of the last weekend in Columbus, I decided to throw in the towel around six in the morning, and I headed back to the hotel to clean up and catch a few Z’s before brunch at noon.
*A note, then, on my drug use over the weekend, especially as compared to Red the weekend before. I sat down with my pharmacist in Boston after I got my prescription filled for the anti-virals, and he explained that while no, he wasn’t naive enough to warn me not to do club drugs at all over the weekend, he cautioned that the protease inhibitors would also retard my system from filtering out the drugs normally, and thus I should only take a fraction of the doses I would normally use and then wait fifteen minutes or so before re-dosing, if I even needed to then. Effectively what that amounted to is that drugs were going to hit me harder, faster, and longer than what I was used to, and so I needed to be careful. Therefore, having already been given enough of a jolt earlier that week, and extremely wary of letting things get out of control (even though the Black & Blue ended up being the least sexual party in my experience) I really learned to pace myself, and I took things very, very slowly.
Not surprisingly, then, I reached a completely different space within my drug use over the weekend--one which I doubt I’ll ever manage to come back to. It’s hard to explain, but somehow I reached two separate mind states, one: the traditionally cloudy, euphoric high, and the other: a lucid, sober sense of clarity, and somehow I was able to bounce myself from one to the other at will. It was, I’ll freely admit, pretty cool, and not once over those four days did I ever feel sketchy or messy or dopey, and that was a good thing, but all the same, I don't recommend having a high-risk HIV exposure which necessitates a prescription for anti-virals which, I’m certain, facilitated this state.
So, Stereo offered all that I had been seeking--all I ever really AM seeking in a night out: incredible boys, scintillating lights, and phenomenal music each enhanced by a variety of illicit chemicals, and I stepped into the morning sun with a giant, weary grin, fulfilled, if need be for the weekend, yet realizing with excitement that I had three more nights and opportunities to do it all over again.
I don’t think I need to write a play by play of each of the following nights as I have just done with that Friday, but in the absence of any photos (my camera was confiscated Sunday by security outside the main party, dammit) I’d like to flash through a few scenes that weekend which made me smile.

Brunch at Mike’s Diner where I sat wearily with the rest of the boys, and then my little Beth, a club girl from Edmonton I had met last year at Stereo who has since become one of my best friends, came up behind me and threw her arms around me and held me tight....

A whole lot of us, half naked, sweat drenched, and glitter encrusted, wearing the collective guise of “Sketch-Balls R Us” staggering out of the Main Event at the Olympic Stadium down to Club Sandwich for Monday brunch where we were hastily ushered into a corner as far away from the rest of the lunch crowd as possible by a titillated waitress....

And at that same brunch, Peter, sitting next to his lover of six years, Robert, reaching under the table to hold Robert’s hand and smiling a knowing smile, an unspoken thought passing between them....

Tom and Will laying spread out on the fold-out couch at Terra’s house with Terra and Beth, smoking pot and drinking wine all afternoon and laughing with the girls like old friends, even though I had introduced them only days before....

Achingly beautiful Terra meeting my gaze, and together we nod and share a secret smile...

Quiet time at Peter and Robert’s apartment, and Peter is holding Marcus (who has broken up from his lover of five years last month) and the sun shines down on the both of them as they sway on the patio....

Geoff and I laughing....

Robert and Winslow holding each other....

Phil and Kent kissing....

Rudd telling horrible jokes....

I, having lost my own flags at Red, connecting with other flaggers who generously loan me spare pairs of theirs....
At the Military Ball, I lead a group in taking over the performance stage to the delight of all, except, perhaps, security.....
At the main event, Tom, Will, Beth, and Sophie lie in a row on the floor like sardines in a tin, giggling and rolling as I flag gently over their faces....
And most fun of all, discovering tiny, tiny Jo-Jo, the fifty-something disco queen back at Stereo who was just as enamored of my flags now--ducking and twirling between them like King Herod beneath Salome’s veils--as she had been at Montreal’s Red Party where we had first met way back in February.... (Another circle!)

Sophie trading a bump of K with me for a stick of Juicy Fruit....

A straight kid named Billy, high out of his mind, and grinning ear to ear dragging a massive duffle bag loaded with treats to hand out to all the gay boys Tuesday morning, for this is his 25th birthday....

Telling Tom and Will about the time last year when I had been tweaked out of my mind on a huge line o’K when a cute, little fat black girl with club-kid purple pigtails zapped me with a nuclear powered vibrator and proceeded to drag her hands--gloved in scratchy bath mitts--all over my helplessly twitching body, and not ten minutes after finishing the story, SHE appears out of the crowd (as I ought to have expected), completing yet another circle, and presenting me with the opportunity to return her favors with my own toys and learn that her name is Virginia....

Finally, bittersweet, harsh, and tender at the same time, the realization that I was removing myself from the Circuit for an indefinite period of time and moving to the other side of the continent, and that all I had ever wanted in life was to have all the people most important to me, the friends with whom I danced together in one great, loving, caring, dancing circle and here they were...
And wanting it to last forever....
And close to tears, because as Sophie cried, “It’s just like camp--you spend the summer getting close to each other, but then it’s over and everyone has to leave!”...
And then looking on each of these faces, friends whom I had known for years, and friends whom I had just met; some who have read the story of my life, my dance, and others with whom I would share it, and in the end, coming across that spot in the basement of Metropolis where Tom had wept in my arms after running into his ex and his ex’s current boyfriend last year...

Later, when the lights came up, and the music ended, I found myself alone in the shower, scrubbing away the sweat and smoke and grime of the night, the weekend, my life, and the realization that Tom wasn’t there, hadn’t been there, hadn’t been seen, touched, or held throughout the entire weekend came crashing in on me. Tom alone knew what dancing meant to me, what circuit parties meant to me. He had been there when I had lain in a coma for a week, a lump of flesh almost dead , and later, upon my awakening, he had patiently swayed and staggered with me, supporting me as I learned how to walk again. He witnessed the horror of my panic attacks and tried to help me break free of the silent world in which I had been locked for so many months by my stutter and deafness. He alone knew what it as for me to live and dance and shine once again.
So the final, sweet scene to make me smile as I hope it does you, is of Kent holding me cradled, wet and dripping in his arms as at last the tears came and I bawled helplessly, sorely missing my best friend.

I had intended when I began this email/journal/essay to make it a more “technically accurate” review of the Black & Blue as I have other circuit parties in the past. I might have critiqued the individual DJ’s and performers as well as the professional dancers, drag queens, and musicians. I could have talked about the decor and the production crews and the lighting technicians and the sound. But I decided not to largely because to do so would diminish this Black & Blue into a number of deconstructed parts, none of which alone could convey to the Reader what ultimately this circuit party had been about, and that was, as is this essay: Friendship and Origins.
Other events have been about Standing Proud in Gaydom or have been so charged with sex or drugs you could cum just brushing up against the dancer next to you. Other parties have billed larger performances by circuit divas, and the stages elsewhere have been more elaborate and much more lavish. But nothing, at least in my considerable experience, can compare with the music and resultant energy at any of the venues over the course of this weekend. Unlike some gay boy House, which can get angry and in-your-face and cunty, the music was consistently upbeat and positive and joyous, and well, friendly.
I have learned a lot over the years, and while (as I like to say) I am hardly a Jedi yet, I do feel confident in one piece of wisdom, and that is: you are nothing without friends. That can be a scary and difficult premise to deal with, but the fact remains that humans are social creatures; we cannot live alone, moreover we should not, for that would be a waste of the infinite talents God (or whomever) has given us to share with other humans. Our social proclivity is linked into the very fiber of our beings, and as we advance from homo sapiens into homo ludens we can see it is within ourselves and each other that we progress from the “humans who know,” and into the “humans who enjoy” by sharing ourselves, our knowledge and experiences with other humans that we each might enjoy life and discover fulfillment that much more readily.
From the beginning of my journey, I came across the richest people on Earth, like my aunt and uncle, wrapped securely within the arms of each other’s love, and I encountered miserably poor people such as my colleagues at the Company--wealthy, perhaps, monetarily, but wretched and lonely. Along the way I reconnected with old friends I’d almost forgotten, and I met new friends, whom I hope I’ll always remember. I have suffered the darkest fears, yet chanced upon the deepest love, and even as I gazed down into the pit of destruction, I saw people hand in hand rebuilding; brighter, newer, stronger.
As I’ve said over and over, I have felt the arcs of many circles come into completion, reminding me of my Origins, and I shall come to an end this morning with one last circle coming full bore. When I was 18 years old I spent three months in Kenya, hiking, camping, drawing, and writing, and in the final days of my journey I reflected on my travels even as I am doing now. I suppose I thought I knew everything when I was 18 (who doesn’t at that age?) but I was genuinely surprised at the congruity of feeling I have now for my final thoughts back then:

“I have come through this day having truly learned what poverty can mean...wretched children somehow surviving on the offal of the streets...elsewhere witnessing men eking out an existence somehow, yet poisoning their lives as soon as they can on booze....I have also seen men considered wealthy by their society, reveling in their acquisition of Western goods, but pitiful in the meaninglessness of the rest of their lives...And then I have seen, sometimes, the richest people I have ever know--mostly poor men, poor by Western standards, yet rich in the quality of their lives through the love of their family and friends. What petty joy of purchasing a new car can match the sense of accomplishment when one feeds his hungry children for the day? What money can buy the luxury of the trust extended by a friend welcoming another into his home?”

And so I, who had once been focused on achieving as many material riches as possible before I turned 25, came to understand the value of human relationships. My material fortunes have ebbed and flowed with the tides over the years, and I’ve gone from dirt poor to more or less stinking rich within the span of a few months and back again, more than once, and I’ve come to appreciate how transitory money really is, but with each circuit party, with each dance, with each mile I skip along, I am blessed with more and more friends, and I know I’ve become rich beyond the wildest dreams of most folk. I’m not sure how all that happened. After all, I was once, a lonely, unpopular little boy, but whatever the reason, I’m glad it did.
Perhaps, as Thorin says on his deathbed to Bilbo after the “Battle of the Five Armies” in the last chapter of The Hobbit. (paraphrasing) “Bless you little Child of the kindly West. If more people valued cheer, friendship, and a good meal, the World would be a happier place.”
I guess I try to make the world happier.

One last bit of commentary on the Black and Blue I would like to add is in regards to the art house film “Circuit” which I attended with Beth and Peter Saturday night before the Military Ball. For those of you who haven’t seen it, I will vehemently urge you not to bother, and just in case, I’ll ruin the story by giving a brief synopsis: A small-town cop, struggling in the closet, moves to L.A. where he becomes a bouncer at a number of clubs and circuit parties, and of course, he gets sucked into the scene, and the next thing you know he’s addicted to K, and strung out, he takes it out on his friends, and he falls in love with a hustler who ultimately mixes his drugs and dies after a malicious trick. Blah, blah, blah.
Okay, I hated it. From a technical angle, the acting was horrible, the direction--non-existent, and the script could not have been any more trite. The only positive thing I could mention was the cinematography, which for a pseudo-documentary was tolerable at least. However, it was the whole pseudo-documentary style that set my teeth on edge the entire time I sat there. “Circuit” has the same credibility as Showtime’s equally crappy version of “Queer as Folk,” and I found it equally as revolting, with the same dangerous potential for reinforcing negative stereotypes about gay men. I left the theater frustrated and even angry because I hated the potential harm this movie will do to our own people. I’m not worried that my mother is going to rent it some night, and scream, “Oh, my baby-boy! He goes to those parties, and they are wicked, wicked things!” and then dial 911 and try to get me into rehab. She probably already thinks those things, but she’s safely removed from my everyday life.
No, what aggravates me and saddens me is to think that some poor, tortured 19 year old kid on the ranch down the road from her, struggling with his own identity in a dreadfully homophobic community is going to watch that movie and horrified at what he might become will entrench himself just that much deeper in the closet, “secure” in a space that might take years of therapy (if ever) for him to overcome.
Yeah, like I said after the Red Party, it can be all about vomiting, and over doses, and high risk sex, and pain, and misery, all that shite. And I’ve had any number of people before and since tell me about the dangers of the Circuit, and how they’ve seen it swallow people up and never spit them back out again. But you know what, that’s life, baby--you can either embrace it, knowing the risks are there, and enjoy yourself, or you can “safely” sit on your ass, getting fatter and fatter, enviously watching videos of people living and loving and (yes) dying.
I recall that kitschy ad campaign for Braveheart five years ago: “All men die. How many men ever really Live?” I was once mired in that sedentary good old, horrible American Dream: I was in school, had the job, the car, the nice apartment, and I came to hate it, without even really knowing why. Then I discovered the Circuit. Friends took me to the Black & Blue three years ago (how fitting that this year should be themed “Origin”) and I’ve never been the same ever since. I learned to live my own life and not subsist vicariously through actors on the boob tube. When I am not at an Event, I still carry that feeling with me, and life itself has become an Event--exactly as it should be, I think. But I didn’t know any of this until I met the Circuit, and while I am sure there are other ways to come about this epiphany, for gay boys far and wide, this seems like the most accessible.
I am certain one of my nephews is gay (he’s 10, so it may not come out fully for a few years), and my sister agrees, but she says she is sad for him and all the pain and trouble he is going to go through because of it. I told her that’s a load of bullshit, and she should consider him blessed, because when he does make it through all the struggles and the worries and the pain, he will find himself in the company of the best people on earth and hopefully, he will be receptive to the greatest joys imaginable.
I know. I’ve been there, and that, sadly, is what that crap film “Circuit” failed to depict, but hopefully, Gentle Readers, I have painted a more balanced and accurate picture of what it means to be a Circuit Boy.

...And back again.

The boys dropped me off in Albany with many kisses and hugs farewell and my assurance to see them in another couple of days to collect Tucson from Kent’s place after I picked up my stuff in Boston first.
Unfortunately, those couple of days extended into four as the ill side-effects of the anti-virals I had been prescribed 6 days before finally surfaced and more or less knocked me on my ass. In addition to a bone-crushing weariness, I experienced the most intensely realistic nightmares of my life; dreams that blurred the line between reality and the twilight zone, and so I crawled at a snail’s pace those impossibly long 100 miles into Boston, pulling over at truck stops every 20 miles, and sleeping fitfully for several hours before pushing on. It sucked.
First order of business when I finally arrived, was to go get the results of the HIV tests from my doctor, and I was relieved to be greeted with the news I was negative...so far. Of course, given the proximity to the risky exposure two weeks prior in Columbus, anything I might have contracted then would not have shown up on the tests, but for at least a few weeks, I could rest easier. I was given an extended prescription for the same anti-virals I had already been taking as well as some drugs to counteract the icky side-effects, and I was counseled to get another test in three or four weeks. And that was that.
Packing up the U-haul trailer by myself was no mean feat, but I’m kind of an old hand at the moving game, so I managed to get most of the stuff loaded without too much trouble. As I’d expected, not everything would fit, so I ended up dumping a few boxes by the wayside. Nothing irreplaceable, and I guess there is that old Buddhist axiom about not being owned by the things you own....(sigh.)
So, with the trailer loaded and latched securely to the back of the car, there remained one last item on the docket before I kissed Boston goodbye: Tom.
I suspect Tom knew what was going on in my head by the tremor in my voice when I called him, thus, when I arrived at his apartment that evening, he had already picked up a salad and a bottle of wine on his way home, and a pizza arrived shortly thereafter.
It took me a moment to collect everything I wanted to say to him, there in is kitchen, while he set the table and took out a couple of goblets from his cupboard, and it came first in a spill of tears flooding down my cheeks before I could even manage a word, but then he was holding me tight as it all came pouring out--the joy of the weekend, the dancing and flagging and twirling, the friendship and camaraderie, but most of all how much I had missed him, and my tears positively gushed down my face as I told him how much he meant to me, and how such a large part of me felt like it was missing since the Spring.
He held me, and I held him, and finally the tears dried up, and we sat down and ate and talked.
I stayed with him for a couple of hours, and although I wanted to spend the night (God, I was sooooo tired!) I knew that the sexual tension of his feelings for me--feelings that still, for some reason I did not return, as much as I might have wanted to--would have made for a decidedly uncomfortable night for us both, so I embraced him one last time--for a long time, and then I said Good Bye.

The next day I felt worse than ever physically (although mentally I was in a much better space than I ever would have expected when we left Montreal) and it took most of the day to drive from Boston to Kent’s place in New Jersey. By the time I got there, I must have looked like one of the living dead, and it was all I could do to numbly eat a few bites of the lovely dinner Joe had prepared for me.
Although it was delicious going down, I was later to discover that it was certainly less so on the way back up, and I dealt with this unpleasant reality for the next two days as the contents of my bowels found new and interesting ways of returning to the light of the world. I have been really sick at various times in my life: I contracted a nasty case of malaria eight years ago in Kenya, and it’s recurred several times since. I got the chickenpox when I was nineteen, and it can be deadly at that age; and of course, lest we forget, I nearly destroyed my body a year ago with a massive overdose of painkillers. What I’m getting at, though, is while I’ve been at death’s door more than my share of times, most of the time I haven’t necessarily felt all that crappy--a little groggy and achy, perhaps, but all in all not all that laid out. Of course, I wasn’t at death’s door for those horrible two days, not even decently close, but boy! let me tell you, if I’d had the presence of mind to do so, I probably would have called in a priest to give my last rites, because I felt so fucking awful, death would have been a heartily welcomed relief.
I cannot express my gratitude to Kent and Joe and Mike enough for giving me a nice quiet place to hole up in over those dreadful 48 hours, and I cannot apologize enough to those three for suffering through the horrid noises emitted from the upstairs bathroom. I won’t waste anymore time describing my misery, but as surely as it descended, all of a sudden, that Saturday afternoon it was over, and I felt infinitely better. So much better, in fact, that when Kent invited me to join him at a cocktail party in Queens I readily agreed. Nice to get a breath of moderately fresh air (by New York standards at least).
So off we went, and although I didn’t eat much, we had a lovely evening, joined by Tom and Will, and as a strange coincidence, I ran into a guy I had danced with at the Red Party. Small world, some would say, but by now it seemed quite the natural course of things. As I say, quality people have a way of attracting one another, and orbiting one another ever after.
Kent and I declined an offer to go out dancing after dinner and in picking our way back to the commuter rail station, I found my steps (quite by accident I’d like to think, but then we know better, don’t we?) retracing a path led once upon a time two summers ago, just prior to my suicide attempt when Anthony and I had exchanged marriage vows atop the Empire State Building at New York Gay Pride. I looked out across the Pier where we had celebrated our union with thousands of others under a sky filled with stars and fireworks. Kent and I drifted past the restaurant where Anthony and I had been called “the most beautiful couple” she’d ever seen by a gorgeous, Somali model, and further on, past the tattoo parlor where we had identical Calla lilies tattooed on our hips in a gesture of love that we believed would last forever.
As we got onto the train back to Hoboken, I felt my hip and recalled that even as recently as the Red Party, I had told some curious boys the meaning behind all my tattoos, and at the time I rather bitterly stated that alas! I had this endless reminder on my hip of a failed relationship. I thought back on that as I slid my finger along the curve of those delicate white flowers and reflected on the past month, the past week, and that strange evening just then, and I rescinded on that bitter remark. The pain fell away, and I became glad for the reminder on my hip--not of a failed love, but of a love--which when you get right down to it, is never a failure, whatever the outcome.
My last glimpse of New York was with tear-filled eyes, but not because of ill-tainted memories of Anthony. Rather they were shed for the gaping hole in the midnight skyline left in the aftermath of the terrorist attack in September. But New York would heal. I had.

I took myself off the anti-virals while I was on the road for the next week. I just couldn’t handle the weariness, much less the nausea , and the next two thousand miles I had to make very quickly.
I didn’t reckon on the necessity of following a rigid itinerary or schedule on the way back to California and figured I could take my time, but events elsewhere in the world turned ugly, and my presence was required rather hastily.
As I struggled with a variety of disabilities and yucky circumstances in the wake of my suicide attempt, I often wondered if I was being tested (or punished) by God for some unfathomable reason. Unfathomable to me at the time, that is, but as I fought my way through it, and especially as I recorded the dreary trip, omitting not even the most distasteful events, I learned that I was not only a student of innumerable lessons, but through my writing, I became a teacher as well, and so many of You, my Dear Readers reaped the benefits of those difficult times also. I learned to appreciate and love life, and many of those on my email list would later call me or write to say that I had been an inspiration to them to hang on as well.
That has made it all worth while, along with my own sense of self-satisfaction and general enjoyment of life nowadays, so I have been able to look back on those icky days as a training ground of sorts.
I reckon I passed all my tests in regards for myself, but it seems God now has a new challenge for me, and after passing through New Jersey and Pennsylvania, I was given the opportunity to put everything I had leaned to use for the salvation of my Best Friend of All Time--my sister.
I don’t think I need to go into all the details of her breakdown, but I knew when I spoke to her on the phone that the “Terminal Edge” dominated her shaking voice, and I took immediate action to have her escorted to the hospital to await my arrival as soon as I could get there.
I called my mother for help (thank God for cell phones), and she drove down from Montana to help with Autumn’s kids until I arrived on scene 50 hours later.
If you want the short version, that was that.
I am here, now, in Sheridan, Wyoming (of all the god-forsaken places...sigh) and here I shall remain until Aut is better and able to return to her life with a positive outlook and hope in her heart.
The training ground of my own crisis has proven itself invaluable time and again as I recalled the mistakes and oversights and blind assumptions made by my care team at the hospital as well as by the social workers and therapists (or lack thereof) and even my family and friends when I got out. I remember thinking back then, “Fuck this sucks!” and that “No one should have to go through this alone. What happens if they didn’t have the strength?” My sister didn’t have the strength, and so I took charge and did for her everything I had wished someone had done for me. I suppose I could have shrugged and said, “Well, I got through it okay; I’m sure she can too....” but then again, she also has three kids to worry about as well, and even without them, she has an entirely different set of problems than those which I suffered, and basically, I just wasn’t willing to chance losing her by saying she needed to get through this on her own. I couldn’t. Can’t. Won’t.
So here I am, kickin’ it with the kids and the dogs and the Hicks-in-the-Sticks.
Slowly, she is getting better, but I think it will likely be a couple of weeks before I head back onto the road. And I’m sure you can all feel with me this last mighty circle snapping into place.
Life sure has a lot of unexpected little twists in store for you. Some call them Surprises, some call ‘em Accidents. I reckon it’s all dependent on your point of view.
I’m finding that as Obi-Wan said to Luke, “There are many truths that depend on your point of view,” or something like that. It’s something I am trying to puzzle out every day as I have quite surprisingly (accidentally?) found myself in the role of a parent to three very different children. For example, how am I to prevent them from consuming too much sugar or fat without feeling like a complete hypocrite given the amount of toxic substances I have taken into my body over the past two months? Or speaking along those lines, how should I (or should I?), convince my 13 year old niece not to do drugs, or at the very least wait until she’s out of the house? On a more mundane level, how can I persuade my nephew to pay attention in class and do his homework, when I, myself, am finding the school work inane and pointless. And collectively, all of their teachers and schools are steering them towards a so-called “American Dream” of life in the suburbs, working in an unfulfilling job, knocking out babies, watching sit-coms, and getting fat--a goal which I find hardly laudable or worth aspiring to. And yet, the truant officer expects me to punish my nephew if he skips class and decides instead to go catch frogs down by the river--a much nobler occupation, by far, to my way of thinking.
I guess all this reinforces my commitment not to breed even if I could, although I daresay, I might make a significantly beneficial addition to the current gene pool. (ha, ha!)
Anyway, I’m coming to the end of this great, impossibly long ramble. My friend Peter once advised me to sample a taste of everything I was offered on the Great Buffet Line of Life, and I managed to pack quite a lot onto my plate these past couple of months. Carpe diem, and all that, indeed.
I have but one last experience to talk about: falling in love in Columbus, but that story deserves an essay and examination to itself, and right now I have grown very tired.
I hope you have enjoyed some of this. Heavens knows I did.

The Brat Prince

9:58 p.m.
Tuesday, November 6, 2001

Several nights ago, I was reading from Dancer from the Dance in which Malone is questioning his identity--all the boys in Gaydom’s identity. Who were they? What did they stand for? Did any of them care? Could anyone make a difference? And it got me to wondering the same.
Tucson has led me to the answer as both my constant companion and friend as well as my canine reflection. Sometimes, the sun warms the grass in a field, and he turns a somersault and writhes about on the ground, kicking his feet in the air, just enjoying the hell out of himself, covered in leaves and dust and butterflies, and feeling deliciously absurd. I cannot imagine any passersby who could look on him without grinning involuntarily, whatever else might be on their minds previously. I reckon that’s me when I dance--I’m Tucson kicking my feet up in the air, delighting in a patch of light and making folk smile.
Or so I am told.
I do not often venture into poetry, I haven’t the knack, but for some reason, these words came to me in a rush last night in that medium. Here it is. I wonder if any of you agree.

Who am I?

I am the embodiment of Life
I am all things positive, and yet I am tempered by their opposites.
I have felt pain and known death and swam in the waters of sorrow and grief,
and yet, I have come through the trials of fire and darkness and blood and tasted the fresh light of day and rejoiced to feel the sun shining upon my face.
God created Man and gave him Free Will allowing us to choose between two paths; one of light and the other of dark, but neither is fixed, and anyone may step from one path to the other and back again, for nothing is eternal.
Except my vow to remain on the light path.
And though it may become overshadowed and gray, I know there is a purity beneath that veil, and when I step back into the sun, the light will seem just that much brighter.
And I am one whose gift it is to point the way to the brighter path for others who may be walking in shadow or conversely, I remind those walking in the light of the wonder and joy of their choice
I am good.
I am alive.
I am Dance.
Won‘t you join me?

Sharing the Joke

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Fall begins with Autumn

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Tucson has passed

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Sharing the Joke: 3 years of pain, laughter, and dancing

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