BB

I have good friends, but I don’t have close friends. People with whom there is mutual care, even love, but a superficiality of communication. I’ll take credit for that, because I am so gracious. I can’t say I’m in a crisis, because it’s been going on for a decade. My post-traumatic stress disorder. Self-diagnosed, untreated. It unmotivates me, and so there is no hope. I have called out to God, help, but I must not mean it, and he sees my insincerity. Tough love, then. Help yourself.

I have many good ideas. How about underwear for dudes with big packages? I know there are condoms like that -- the idea that one size fits all is not only ridiculous, but uncomfortable. Same deal with athletic cups -- I don’t even wear one anymore, just too dang distressing. I’d rather take the hit once a year or so, than deal with that daily pain. So my terrific idea about underwear, do you think Hanes or Fruit would be interested? I need an agent or a manager, to help me make these contacts. It’s a great marketing idea. Cuz there’s so much concern, apparently, among so many men about the size of their packages. If you have a woman who’s committed to you, then the only reason to think about your unit’s size is, what other guys think about it. Seems a little immature, not to mention gay. But human nature being what it is, I’d exploit that flaw and make a million -- maybe two. Hane’s Magnum! Watermelon of the Loom. Well, not watermelon -- hyperbole is cheap. Grapes and bananas are obvious. Pear? Guys would buy it for the label, like Gucci, regardless of fit. Yeah, that’s right baby, my unit is huge! Something you shouldn’t lie about, though, to a woman you hope to be intimate with. Be honest, or at least circumspect. I know someone who said he was perfectly proportioned. But who’s to say what that is? I think my proportions are right, but I’ve always thought that whatever I have, that’s the right way to be. Blond, blue eyes, tall, American … optimal. With public attributes we can take averages, but yer unit is like yer IQ -- sort of private. Numbers that tell you your worth. Like income. Well, something has to tell you your worth. What a world.

Do you think such trivial talk is inappropriate? -- all this blather about units? You have failed to discern my meaning. It was illustrative, allusive of my previous point. Please, attempt to follow along. If I have no close friends, no intimates, with whom is it safe to have frivolous, vulnerable conversations? You come to these pages to be edified -- I have never disappointed your diligent efforts. I do not know you, you have no idea as to who I really am -- yet I give you so much, on so many levels. Sometimes, when I dare to think of it, I am frightened by the thought that I might be understood, not fully, but sufficiently. Artfulness, and humor, and misdirection, and multiple meanings -- without which there is only direct contact. Intimacy is vulnerability, and what is childhood for, but to teach us terror. What if, in the end, we are measured, and rejected. What if that happened, already. All of life, then, is post-traumatic stress disorder.

I’ve finally noticed that my left hip is actually inflamed, visibly swollen and sharply painful to the touch. And the right glute thing may be linked to the right spinal erector, which is palpably hard and distended, compared to the left. Clues! I’ve spent this particular life alienate from my flesh, so it takes a long time to notice such things. Made it easy to be vegetarian, though. The stretching seems to be managing the issue, can’t say curing, yet, and I’ve been able to roll a little, bjj. I think aspirin is still necessary. Profoundly troubled by my bjj game. I present no threat. It’s all about not getting submitted. In other words, time-wasting. World’s worst brown belt. World’s best blue belt. And I’ve lost ten pounds. Troubling. I have serious mental issues, that leave me exhausted and vitiated, and it’s hard to workout. I need a coach. Too bad my son is so far away. Who will save me from this body of death.

I have friends, good friends.


J

Oh no, I'm still here.  And I'm writing.  Just wrote something now, that I won't post.   Dark.  Again.  It gets tiresome, and I wish not to be a downer.  

So what is there to say.

J

*Poto and Cabengo

YT

Isn't it hard? Isn't it hard, being human? Having a past? Why can't we be recreated with every wakening? Renewed, reformed, regenerated. Resurrected. Why not? Because the past is gravity, and holds the universe together.

Consider, then, Poto and Cabengo. The world would have known them as Gracie and Ginny, if the world knew them at all. But it didn't, until it was, sadly, too late. Two little girls, identical twins, born in 1970, diagnosed early as retarded. Well, not actually diagnosed. The twins had suffered violent convulsions shortly after being born. A neurosurgeon told the father that it might be years before retardation could be ruled out. The father failed apparently to hear the nuances in this communication. "A man of his standing," he said, "knows what he's talking about." And so the girls, defective, were left to the ministrations of a severe Prussian grandmother who spoke no English. Largely ignored. They were not sent to school. They did not learn to speak English, neither German.

Idioglossia. A unique and private language, rarely but usually developed between twins. We would have to assume, twins who are severely neglected by adults. It is not "twin speech," fairly common with very young twins -- a hash of idioms and slurred common words. Idioglossia goes far beyond that; it is a kind of creole, a unique language, complete with grammar and syntax and neologisms.

The language of Poto and Cabengo was a mishmash of English and German, gleaned from the impersonal and other-directed speaking of highly neglectful parents, and the German grandmother. All of whom had given up on the retarded little girls. Who used prepositions as verbs, and had 30 different ways to say potato; "pintu" (pencil), "nieps" (knife), "ho-ahks" (orange), "toolaymeia" (spaghetti -- o sole mio). The girls were listening, you see. They spoke no English. They spoke only to each other. "Poto" (Grace), "Cabengo" (Virginia).

The fact that they were of at least average intelligence is neither here nor there. The early label determined their fate. Back in the late '70s, after the girls had been "discovered" and "treated," a speech pathologist observed, "It was obvious these kids hadn't had much exposure to anything. They wanted attention." No duh. They had never seen anyone climb a tree -- a picture of this rare phenomenon provoked bafflement. With attention, their IQs moved up 30 points, to 80. Still awfully low. But it was still the 1970s.

After many months of intensive intervention, the girls were asked by a visitor if they still remembered their language. "Yes," one answered quickly. "No, you don't!" corrected the dad from the livingroom couch. "I don't know why you are lying about that! You live in a society, you've got to speak the language," he explained helpfully. "They don't want to be associated as dummies now."

The girls were born with normal intelligence. As of 2007, Cabengo worked on a supervised assembly line at a job training center; Poto cleaned tables and floors at a fast-food restaurant.

Yes. The past is gravity. It crushes us if we're over-burdened, and it keeps us from flying.

Tomorrow I'll be driving my father to some health-related appointment he has. I haven't seen him in 14 years. Should I shine my shoes? I've had the notes up for Poto and Cabengo for several months. Every time I turned on the computer, there they were. I wonder why I didn't get to it. There are a few other bits and pieces as well. Something on Prohibition. Something on the Depression.


J
moved from 12 12 09

S

Okay, so let me explain it to you yet again.  There's justice, which is an appropriate response; then there's mercy, which is an inadequate response; then there's grace, which is an inappropriate response. Justice is an equal response -- the scales balance, you get what you deserve.  Mercy is an unequal response -- you don't get the bad thing you deserve.  Grace is a non sequitur -- you get the good thing you don't deserve -- it is unjust.

Nowhere in these formulations is the idea of severity, cruelty, vengeance.  So when the Lefties object to capital punishment, it is because they have not yet clarified in their own minds the fact that there are distinctions in such matters.  They never want justice if it's a punishment, they always want mercy, and often want grace. Never/always, that is, so long as their ideologies are in play: being existentially bad, Conservatives always deserve severity.   In the instance of cold blooded murder, a life sentence is mercy, and cable television is grace.  Death is justice.  To draw such distinctions is discrimination, judgmental -- bad things, to the Left.  They must allow the child molester to babysit their children -- were they to be consistent.  But consistency limits emotion, so that's out.

I got some gossip from my former wife a few days ago.  Not from her directly -- I haven't communicated with her for well over a decade -- rather, second hand.  The world is literally going to end shortly ... but that's not gossip.  She was talking about me.  It seems that while we where married in Australia I was extraordinarily jealous, and couldn't stand her being around other men.  I was physically abusive to her. I was the one who wanted the divorce  and it came as a complete surprise to her. The folks she was staying with in America, after we were separated,  had to tell me not to come to their home to visit, because I was so out of control.  I poisoned my ... our son against her by telling him that she had wanted to abort him -- that's why he doesn't call her as often as she wants.  I completely neglected him for a number of years.  I forced him to join the army, deliberately ruining her plans for him to go to Oxford, which she had arranged.  My son is going to have to do "the work" -- expelling all the demons I put into him ... if he doesn't do it now, he'll have to do it when he's 50. I'm sure there's more, but it is of a piece.

What can I say.  It's all true.  Fortunately I have repented in the ensuing decades and am no longer a monster.  All my venom has turned in upon myself, causing me unspeakable and unrelenting anguish.   Justice, then.

Kidding.  My anguish in no way relates to my conduct or relations with my former wife. There is not the slightest bit of truth in any of what she said.  I was utterly without jealousy; this is a problem in me -- like envy from ambition, jealousy is just an unpleasant exaggeration of a healthy emotion.  I could use more ambition.  She hit me, only once, and  I didn't hit her at all.  Because I was conflicted and dilatory, she literally screamed at me, "Where's my divorce!?!"   I was friendly with the folks she lived with.  She never wanted an abortion, unless it was in her secret heart. My son doesn't call her much because she never stops talking, and what she says is profoundly negative and frankly crazy. She complained in those days that he  spent too much time with me.  It was she who took him to the recruiters and signed him up, without even telling me. My son is an admirable man, well-adjusted insofar as a father can know these things.

It must have been Opposite Day.  I heard of her gossip with detached amusement.  Bemused isn't it, because I know how she is, or was.  Well, amused isn't it either, because of the dysfunction.  She seems to be literally delusional.  This is the woman I chose, and loved, and  with whom I had a son.  The pain of that horrible relationship is gone -- regret, and well-wishing, remain.  We both had execratory judgment, in selecting the other.  I was completely unprepared to be a husband.  She feared and distrusted all men.  I don't know that I've gotten much healthier in the passing years -- I'm more mature, but wiser only through a fear of more suffering.  She has gotten worse.

I don't write much, hardly at all, of her in these pages.  Lots of complaint about my blood family, but I didn't chose them so can count myself as a sort of victim.  With her, I wish her well.  Go in peace.  Be warm and filled.  Don't want to see her, or hear from her, but may she prosper and grow.  Were I to be thrust into her presence again, I would seek to avoid it.  Were that unavoidable, I would attempt to suppress my irritation.  I'm not all that gracious, but I no longer actively look for arguments, I'm right and you're wrong ... see how much smarter I am than you.  That old Jack was a delight, for brief moments.  Hard to be married to, I'm sure.

Our marriage was justice.  We got what we created.  Move on, Sylvia.  A little mercy.  A little grace. That's the work. It's good for the soul.

I've redecided that all my pain is not a disc but a stretching issue.  I find I'm sort of lopsided, without a keen kinesthetic sense; when I think I'm facing forward, I really have my right foot two inches in front of my left.  So I'm stretching.  Some of them feel good.  My downward dog is more of an upright begging puppy, and my runner's stretch is a shuffle, but so it goes.   The Frog is what it sounds like, on yer back, heels close to backside, soles touching, knees out. An inelegant pose, and I have to visually align myself or my feet are off midline.  I sight up the line of my soles, my enormous penis, my sternum and my head, and it falls into place.  And man alive, that generic advil does wonders.  The problem is changing, evolving, not getting better yet but these things take time.  It's a process.

So: stretching isn't about doing splits.  It's about not having crippling pain because postural etc muscles have so forgotten they're supposed to be elastic that they've ceased to move at all.  Seems like there's a life-lesson in there.  I'll wait for excruciating agony to motivate me to learn it.


J

It Bothers Me

when my lip tastes salty, when my shirt has a tag on it, when my hair feels heavy, when I have crippling leg pain, when my sleeve is touching my thumb, when there is no Pope, when the inside of my nose has a smell, when Netflix is slow, because America is being destroyed, because it hurts when I try to hold fire, because Lincoln was assassinated, when my sock is on wrong, because a shoe should fit either foot, because the cat won’t let me touch its eyeball, when I have too much food in my mouth, and because I want more fingers.


 J

Two Percent

Profoundly depressed for a few days.  At least there's been something to be depressed about.  Understand, when I say depressed, I mean the term clinically.  This injury has been crippling.  I've been crippled before, as with that knee thing some years ago, where I needed a cane for a time -- but that was a thing with a cause.  This has been out of nowhere.  Finally deduced that it was a disc issue, and that felt like an unjust judgment from God.  I did not lift anything carelessly.

This evening I was at 98% though.  Felt very good.  I took half an advil 3 hours prior, so that's a confounding factor, but at least there's cause for optimism.  I can feel good.

Now all I need is an attractive woman who wants to have a lot of sex, and I'll finally have no cause for complaint.


J

Dogs

Lustful thoughts?  Me?  The idea is both ridiculous and offensive.  I am past and beyond all of that, that, well I can't thing of a word to describe how uninterested I am in the entire subject.  Perhaps you think you know otherwise, from the many humorous references I have made in these pages to the copulatory process with its concomitant body parts and fervid emotions.  You have missed, of course, my satirical intent.  God gave us sex that we may know how absurd life is.

That being said, there's a pretty young woman I have a little bit of a crush on.  Not even a fantasy, surely, but it's amusing, how true to form we human males are. But, I mean, the mechanics of it, it's practically impossible to imagine such a thing, not that I would, imagine it.  I'm so much older, and so much bigger than she is.  Like a, uh, Pomeranian

with a Great Dane   

Fyi, my penis is much bigger than the one here depicted, so you begin to apprehend the dilemma.   There are many riveting and engrossing things to be said on the matter, but I will refrain in consideration of our more delicate readers.

I'm too old, frankly, for a young woman, and the older ones are spoken for or, well, they've let themselves go.

The real reason God gave us sex is that we should know how incomplete we are, know the deepest attainable need.  Attainable for some.


J

UJ

Spent the day doing office work.  Moved an office.  Thanks for the help.  Oh, wait.  You didn't help.  How embarrassing for you, the way I accidentally pointed out just now what a let down you are to me.  Fortunately there were a few real men to stand up and give a hand.  Look into it.  It's called "being a stand up guy."

And when I say "moved an office,"  I mean we physically lifted it up and moved it, about 20 feet.  It was nice to have some help.  Went pretty smoothly, all things considered.  I tried to avoid any position of responsibility, but someone has to be in charge.  It would have gone better if I'd used bolts instead of screws, and braced up the open side.  I didn't because of the time factor, and because I didn't really have the tools -- a drill with a dying battery, and I can't find any of the chargers.  I did look.  Used some dollies the roll it along, and had to modify them first.  A bit precarious, but I had anticipated the possible failures and their options.  I'll be fixing and cleaning all day tomorrow.

Met the wife of someone I know today.  I'd known her before, and she came up to me all chatty, and I had this odd moment of having to be friendly with someone I didn't remember and only faintly recognized.  It's not panic, but it's surreal.  Reality is other than we expect it.

I've got a limp, in both legs.  The hip spasms now and again if I step wrong, and the other leg is just weird, and I've got a pretty obnoxious pain in my back in that old place, but it's not the same problem.  Do I seem to complain too much?  Well, I don't really talk about it, so I write it.  Don't think you can make me apologize.  I'm explaining, as a courtesy.

I started the day in a great deal of physical pain, and in a profound depression, both of which wore off. Pretty sociable day.  So here's what I have to say about that.  You just thank your lucky stars, that you're passably normal.  I do have a few friendships, but I have no intimacy, and that is a profound deficit for a human being.

I miss having a family.  I miss the low rumble of kids playing well, with the occasion need for active supervision, arbitration.  I like to be generous, and kind and patient, and I like being firm and patient.  I like being around other people's families -- I'm really not "Uncle Jack" any more, my nephews are all grown up, and this is as close as I'm likely to get ... unless and until my son gets married.  This is what I mean, when I talk about normal.  It seems to be beyond my grasp.


J

My Back

 Sometimes I say things I wish I hadn’t.

The bad news is that I’m certain now the hip problem is a disc.  Compressed, bulged, slipped, herniated, ruptured -- many possibilities, but all in the same place.  L5-S1.  Where the relevant nerve splits off into the legs.  Not so easy to draw all the evidence together, but now that I have an organizing principle, it comes into focus.  Occasionally two numb toes, index and middle, if that’s the terminology. And the foot gets cold.  Only a few times, but icy.  Pain that’s just hard to isolate.  Sharp pain given specific movements, adduction, coughing.  Now I recognize that the instant pain that coughing when lying down causes is not a pulled muscle, it’s a spasm, the nerve contracting the muscle maximally.  I’ve thought of spasms in terms of the throbbing back pain I’ve had at various points in my life -- this is a different kind.  Overall, muscles tighten up and put pressure on an already stressed area, a nerve bundle impinged by a displaced disc.

But this is also the good news.  Now I can do something about it.  Inversion, anti-inflammatories, hyaluronic acid, various stretches and exercises.  Bought a new mattress, after 11 years.  I’ve had just a thin little pad, really.  Fine for me, don’t need luxury, but it’s pressure on the area now, and that doesn’t help the healing.  Memory foam -- feels like decadence.  BJJ is out for a while, and that’s disappointing.  I only get worse.  Maybe I should actually study it, rather than be so random.  In any case I’m out for a while. 

I am very detrained.  So I’m doing tabatas now, intervals of 20 sec work 10 rest, six rounds right now, four movements. I can row, and I’ll try holds, planks, iron cross, L-sit, handstands.  Situps are out.  Can’t really do kipping chin-ups.  But putting together a plan.  Do what you can do.  It’s not ideal, but it’s ideal for what is possible. 

Causation?  It wasn’t any dynamic movement, not big strength training with poor form.  It was, I believe, a combination of generally poor sitting posture, decades of slumping and slouching with a round back, combined with too vigorous running.  The slouching, distortion of the lumbar spine, predisposed the area, and the running over-stressed it.  I could feel the muscle in question, for many months before the onset of the problem, as a twinge of pain -- but as I ran it went away.  Until it didn’t. 

What I should have been doing is stretches, not big splits and toe-touching, although that too -- rather, small and postural muscles along with the prime movers.  It’s not about dramatic flexibility, it’s about general maintenance, and I’ve neglected that.  And I should have been using inversion, boots or table, as a disciplined and regular practice. 

Word to the wise, son.

The chiropractor helped with the back issue.  It’s gone.  It was a different problem, most likely exacerbated by the way I started to hold myself to compensate for the hip.  Man was I tight.  And it’s nice -- expensive, but nice -- to know I don’t have ebola and cholera and leprosy and bubonic plague and any of those other communicable diseases. 

I’ve even been getting massages, two so far.  Student massages, good price.  Can’t speak to the quality, since I’ve got such limited experience.  So far though, not vigorous enough.  I’m not looking to relax, not looking for pleasure.  I’m looking for therapeutic muscular benefit.  Dig in and wring it out.  I’m told there’s some sort of massage where they stretch you and squeeze you until it’s actually painful.  I want me some of that.  Does it sound like I’m against pleasure and for pain?  Oh sweet child, how wrong you are.  I’m just compartmentalized, goal oriented.  This is where I’d normally make some quip about booty calls, but I’m all alone.  If I want to be touched, to cure my poor pain-wracked flesh, I have to pay.

I took a look at my checking account and was distressed by the drain.  Such is the cost of slouching.  Sit up straight. 

And tuck your shirt in.  You look like a busboy.  

J

My Health

It’s always been virtually perfect, my health, my physical health. Colds once every five years or so, flu back in the early 80s -- nothing else comes to mind. It’s a lifestyle thing, not an amazing constitution. Feed the immune system and it will do its job. No guarantees, just prudence. Floods come, and wipe away whole towns. Not every flood, however, need do that.

 I’ve had a hard few months though. Something exceptional is wrong. I don’t fret, in fact I can be positively bovine in my placidity, but something is wrong. Pain so sharp that my leg gives out under me. Takes a while to stand, sometimes. A pronounced limp. Comes and goes, but staying more and more. So in January I started going to a specialist chiropractor. Good news is that the midback thing appears to be gone. I can feel a tightness, and it makes odd pops and it wants stretching, but the real issue is not recurring, and that’s nice. The right hip is pretty bad, and a few weeks ago there was another new pain in the thigh of the other leg, which is creeping up into the hip tendon. Sup the hell with that?

 It was so bad Friday, both, that I could hardly walk. Then I recalled that the day before the chiropractor had given me some real pain, pushing with his thumb into muscles and tendons, so Friday was a reaction to that -- like a hard workout. Saturday the thigh was better. Complicated? Point is I think it did some good.

 Meantime, although I am not a hypochondriac, I had to think I actually had a disease. I mean, not only not healing, but spreading and getting worse. Sounds like a disease. Went onto WebMD, but that wasn’t at all helpful. I’m not the most responsible person -- irresponsibly neglectful, in fact -- but I went to an MD, and finally, this week, got a whole bunch of tests done.

 They took A LOT of blood. It’s been a few decades since I gave blood, and, well, I wasn’t faint, but I was sweating so much that the lab tech, a Filipino woman of course, had to laugh merrily. I was funny, in my discomfiture. I don’t care much for blood, or needles, and taken together I get pretty queasy. One of the reasons I’m vegetarian. She had a very very very hard time getting through my vein. It was easy to see, easy to find, but she couldn’t get the needle in. I could feel her jabbing and pushing and tugging. Ironic. A little like being raped. Then all that draining. Well, finally done.

 Tested for the more common communicable diseases. Mostly, sadly, STDs. Well, I know, virtually certain, that I don’t have Hep C. But got tested for it. And the last time I had unprotected sex was with my former wife. That’s also the last time I had sex. Understand, I say for clarity’s sake, there is a clintonian precision in my choice of words -- sex is vaginal intercourse -- sexual behavior contrariwise includes a vast panoply of activities. I reserve the right to remain enigmatic as to sexual conduct. I had to ask what some of the tests were -- weird codes or medical jargon. HIV, I don’t know what all. Not only STDs, as I say. Communicables.

 Truth be told, I’ve been preparing to hear that I have AIDS. I woke up not long ago with a rash. Ah, a weakened immune system. And sometimes at night if I breathe deeply I cough. And malaise, unrefreshing sleep, heaviness. Something is wrong. I’d thought the rash was an allergic reaction to some pretty intensive exposure to rubber cement a day or two prior, but eventually I figured out it was related to, uh, athletes foot. A fungus. I had a fungus. Me. Made me feel a little like a syphilitic whore. Point is, my immune system let me down -- didn’t fight it off.

Over $800 worth of tests. I knew perfectly well that I don’t have Hep C. Very expensive test. Ouch. But what am I going to do? Shop around? Operate on hope? Something is wrong.

 So I got a voice mail a few days ago. Knew intuitively that it was the doctor’s office with the results. My understanding from afterschool specials is that they always call you into the office to discuss the results in person. I put off listening to the message until just now. I was wrong. They just came out with it. All tests positive.  So that's good.  Positive is good, right?  Just kidding.  Negative. Negative is the good one.

Not a surprise, not much of a relief. I can prepare for something that I don’t expect to happen. Where would I get HIV? But where would I get any communicable disease. Bumping heads? Stuck with a stray needle? Spittle flying through the air and landing in my eyeball? But I had to rule it out.

 So the hip thing is something else. What disease. Something myalgia. But myalgia is just muscle soreness, and that’s a symptom, not a disease. Given the clear pinched-nerve pain, and an occasional and previously disregarded numbness in two toes of my right foot, I’d have to say it’s a disc impingement.

 So I’ll give the chiropractor one more session, maybe more. Meantime I’ll use the inversion table, and stretch, and I think I’ll have to hold off on any vigorous athleticism -- let any presumed inflammation subside.

This blows. I haven’t spent this much money in my whole life, for sure, on medical specifics. Of course, last time I went to a doctor was in the mid-90s. Makes me very very uncomfortable, blood and needle uncomfortable, spending so much. It’s obamalike. Except it’s my money.

It has prepared me though to be more understanding toward people with real health problems. My body has never failed me before. It’s like being born rich, or with a sane family -- hard to relate to the less fortunate. If it doesn’t get better, I’m crippled. But I’ve looked into how to cure the AIDS I don’t have, so I have a plan on how to fix a disc. I’ve done it before, in fact. We shall see.


J

Time's Up

These things just suggest themselves, somehow.


J

Twattle

Someone recommended this new internet sensation, Twattle.com.  Said it was made for me, or I for it.  We were made for each other, like government goes with tyranny, or empty carbs with masturbation.  Well let me assure you, I am not unfamiliar with Twattle.  I twatt, as we say, all the time.  Constantly on my Blueberry sledging the slope, as we say.  I am one with-it dude.  There's no meaningless flash-in-the-pan fad that I'm not mounted on like Madonna

on a mechanical bull.

So I'm not going to give my name du femme, as we say in French, because that account has my face and full body shot as wallpaper, along with my professional contact info -- I'm a part-time celebrity spokesmodel for something French, and also I have a new reality television program all about my daily adventures, like who it is who's eating the leftovers out of my refrigerator, and I solve the mystery by installing a nannycam behind a strategic hole placed in a full body shot pic of myself in the kitchen.  And then I'm at Starbucks and I use some chick's wifi to remotely view the culprit, and it turns out to be Victoria Principal,

 

my old squeeze from the late '70s.  And then I burst in and confront her, and I'm all, "Dude, what's up with this, you eating my egg salad like that?"  And she's like, "You left me, Jack, you left me holding the bag, for that skanky slut Heather Locklear,

 

and I never forgave you!"  "No! No! It was you! You cheated on me with that preening peacock Lorenzo Lamas

and ain't no way I'm gonna play in his sloppy seconds!" "You bastard! He meant nothing to me, nothing! I was totally coked up at Studio 54

and it just happened!  No man could ever compare to you! You awesome stud with your sexy big organs that turn me on so much!"  "That's right babe, you know it!" I purred sexily, "now put down that tupperware and get your hot bod over here!  Oh, and here's Justin Timberlake

... all the merrier!"  It just gets better from there, so tune in every fourth Monday at 2:55 AM on LogoTV.com, sponsored by MySpace.  Blow your mind, baby.

But re Twattle that whole 144 character thing is a bit constricting, which I don't mind in underwear but my brain must roam free like the wild antelope bounding cross the expansive American plains of the Old West.  Nevertheless, I'll share a few of my deep twatts with you:

• Ever wonder why hot dogs come in packs of 8 but buns come in packs of 10?
• Man, ever notice how bad airplane food is? 
• Did you ever notice that dog is God spelled backwards?  
• Ever notice how people are always on their laptops at Starbucks?

Well, that's all I have so far, it's harder than you'd think, coming up with these brief bone motts as we say in French completely out of my own head and still staying fresh and happening.  But if anyone can, it's me...


J

Odd

I'm still feeling sorry for you, about how you missed that terrific true story about my heroism and saintliness.  Man you're dumb.  In one of the scenes I ride in on a golden Arabian charger and rescue a little girl and a puppy.  It was so awesome.  But you missed it, because I posted it and then took it down because it was too exciting for normal people to be able to handle.  And in another scene I dive a thousand feet to the ocean floor and gather up an unrolled roll of secret film tangled in the sinuous testicles of a giant squid about aliens that will change history and mankind's understanding of himself and his place in the universe.  Sweet.  And I tell it with such power and poise, like an epic poem from the Ancient Classics only in modern and very accessible language, but lofty, it would make you thrill and weep, your heart would leap in your bosom, and you'd finally come to understand a little bit about my noble character and what a total hero and man I am.  And I finally reveal the true nature of evil, and how I and I alone have combated against its invidious effects in our age, but I was overcome in my human frailty but nothing could daunt my mighty spirit, I just had to retreat as even great warriors sometimes must to recover from the unbearable treachery of the cowardly stab in my broad muscular back metaphorically speaking but literal too, the muscular part, not the stab, because I wasn't actually stabbed with a knife, but the psychological effect was even more devastating and would have annihilated a lesser man but nothing can ultimately turn me away from the path of righteous victory.  And that's what you missed, because you were too busy eating empty carbs and masturbating to facebook pictures of your high school crush that you were too much of a wimp to even talk to.

So now that's settled.

It occurred to me that I'd like to see the Super Bowl game, see what the fuss is about, but as my son pointed out, it's a social event, a party thing, and I'm not the sort who invites invitations.  My son observed wryly that he didn't even know the names of the teams. I no longer remember the names of the positions.  This was last year.  Since then, he's decided that there is merit in the sociability of it all, and I have to agree.  My boy is wise.  Some years ago he noticed that I had saved the old bunk beds he'd had as a kid.  He asked why I was keeping them, and I said maybe I'll want to use one.  He smiled and gently observed, "Well, that's not really very adult."  And I had to pause and realize the truth in the statement.  "You're right, it isn't."  I don't seem to be wired quite right.  The other day someone was observing that bjj schools attract some very odd characters.  I wasn't quite privy to the details of the particular story, just caught some tidbits about an odd man out.  But I did peripherally catch that someone nodded in my direction in agreement, about odd characters.  It was a benevolent observation, nothing malign.  Well, yes, I'm odd.  But is it that obvious?  I mean I flay myself to the bone, here, so you may have cause to think I'm strange.  But publicly don't I fake it at least passably?  No.

Now I've decided the hip is not a pinched nerve.  It's too muscular for that -- if I tighten my phenomenal abs it gets activated.  But the back issue has been very good for a couple of days now, and that's pleasing.  I've never had any concerns about my health before.  Unsettling.


J

Jan

The good news is that I believe I've figured out the hip thing.  A disc is impinging on a nerve.  I've been going to a chiropractor slash ART guy -- "active release therapy" -- pushes with his thumb really hard into a muscle while someone moves my limb.  Breaks up the muscle facia.  Well, it's a theory, and I've been at my wits' end. This is truly dispiriting.  The ART hasn't done much -- know a guy who says it cured his running issue, so it was a possibility   Different issue, though, I think.  Not sure about my back, the thing between the shoulder blades, but at least it's not stopping me anymore.  Something new and weird on my other thigh, though, like someone punched me, only no one did.  Thought it was just a bjj thing, but it's been two weeks.

You see my dilemma.  This is no ordinary situation.  I seriously lack energy, and rest is unrefreshing, and I have strange new persistent pains.  I'm not a hypochondriac, but one's imagination does finally get to working.   But I think the hip is a disc thing, cause and effect, wear and tear from starting running again.  So I'll decompress it and see what happens.  It's important to feel that there's something one can do.

Rolling with some talented white belts.  Man I suck.  I need to train regularly or I regress, fall back on instinct.  Had  a guy in a triangle and just couldn't think it through.  World's worst brown belt.  Embarrassing.  I can fake it with novices, but I don't want to fake it.  If I rolled with someone my size and belt, I'd get killed.  Train train train, and I just can't, much of the time now.

I've had some time now to get some perspective, re my former boys.  Sort of tore open old wounds, finding them, online, the way I did.  Well, the whole story is out now.  Oh, you missed it? Well, I posted it,  the denouement, the Hamlet-like pseudo-climax -- my exciting adventure about Jason's final betrayal and what happened afterwards.  So sad, you missing it like that.  You should be a more faithful reader of these pages.  Now you'll never know.  I use my anguish to amuse you, and you repay my vulnerability with indifference.

Obama?  Nothing to say.  He is my, dare I say it, whipping boy.  It's either that, or think about God, and futility, and loneliness.  Allow me my indulgences.  It means nothing.


J

Unnogurination Day for The Occupant of the Benighted State of Newmerica

No, not Elephants on Parade. Rather, The Teddy Bears Have Their Picnic.  Give them their day.  Like Satanists and Nazis and child molesters and traitors, they think they're right.  And, like Darth Vader, from their point of view they are.  America is just another country, but bad because it has misused power. Did I mischaracterize anything there?

Really, one of the worst, most eyebrow raising speeches I've ever heard.  What a hack.  Incredible cynicism.  Did you catch it?  Did you hear? He was actually, literally  barefacedly imitating the actual speech patterns of MLK.  That's all I have to say about that.

With the confirmation of Obamaism, I have lost faith with America.  It has lost faith with me.  America, by which is meant the voting majority, is a whore.  So many whores in my life.  This is to say nothing at all.  Every country is a whore.  The difference is that, of all countries, harsh reality aside, it is America that has had, up until this time, the best mythology.  We had the best aspirations, the most noble creation myth, the highest benevolence and idealism.  Doesn't matter whether or not we were right.  No one is good.  We tried to be good -- not as a government, but as a people.  Now, by rejecting our myth, we've made it into a lie.  Just another country, with citizens, or occupiers, migrants, exercising the tyranny of the majority, confiscating the wealth of the wealthy and of the future.  Not just like any other country, then.  Worse.

Gun control is the most current distraction from the real issue of incorrigible spending and debt.  Look, stupid, something shiny!  The Second Amendment is there to protect the First. It’s not about hunting, sport, or crime. It’s a check and balance against the Government. The Second Amendment is military. Of course the Founders didn’t anticipate fully automatic assault rifles, not for citizens and not for soldiers. They didn’t anticipate a permanent standing army, either.  What they knew was that whatever soldiers have access to, so with civilians -- citizen soldiers. If the government neglects to regulate a militia, that does not remove the right of citizens to arm themselves. Such is my thinking on the matter. Not mainstream, but accurate.

 If an oppressive government takes over -- or continues to grow -- and armed agents under color of law are sent to destroy liberty (read, The Constitution) ... do citizens have the right to fight back?  If self-defense is not an absolute right, there is no such thing.  It’s not a matter of law -- rules that entrenched apparatchiks decide they want -- but of Natural Law, which is the very authority that allowed the Colonies to seize independence from the Crown. Which rebellion was unlawful, under British law. But not unlawful. Simple. It may very well be that the Confederate states had a right to secede. They did not have the power. The Second Amendment takes at least a faltering step in the direction of throwing off a Despotic Federal Regime -- you know, one that seeks to rule by Executive Order.

 Ah well. Theory about how things should be can make you crazy. My theory is that voting should be tied to owning property -- as has been the case throughout history.  Voters need to be citizens, who are vested in the best long-term general welfare.  Words like comity and commonweal and probity come to mind.  My reasoning is that, if the indigent and idle poor can vote, they will vote higher taxes that go to themselves.  Killing the Golden Goose. Under other circumstances this would be called charity, but, per the dominant Leftist ethos, charity steals dignity. I don’t think anyone under age 25 should vote ... isn’t that the case in Switzerland? – or used to be?  Immature opinions do not improve in quality just because they constitute a significant power block. I could defend these theories much more rigorously, but couldn’t be bothered. Just write me off as a reactionary crank.

 Here’s what I thought when I was listening to the radio news, about French protests re gay marriage. The spin is that gays want equal rights. The obvious answer is that they have equal rights – they can marry any legally consenting oppsex adult. (Yet another new word from Your Humble Author.) What I realized is that gamarriagists want not equal but extra rights. They want to be able to marry twice as many people as otherwise. One might say hetero won’t marry same sex and homo won’t marry opposite, so it evens out. But that’s the case now. No one can marry just anyone they want -- can’t marry your closest blood relatives, or the currently-married, or the underaged or those who cannot give consent, or animals or corpses. The matter is clear. It’s impolite to point it out, but the moral clarity is questionable of people who think the anus is a sexual organ.

Charles Krauthammer, brilliant in his brevity, answers those who think a Republican House can impose its will: "The country chose Obama.  He gets four years."  Four more years.  This is the reality.  We, the collective, the Collective we of Post-America,  Neo-America, The Collective State of Newmerica, Wemerica, somebody stop me, have spoken with the voice of Democracy.

Now we can see, finally, why there have been so few democracies in history.  Churchill was wrong -- this is not the worst form of government, except for all the others.  It's as bad as any other.  It's the people that make a country great, and we have changed.  We call back to Ancient Greece, the democracy of Athens, and its decent into tyranny.  They abandoned old principles, myths, for short-term answers and pragmatism.  Sweet child, haven't you been listening?  We're like a craftily plotted novel -- echoing both Ancient and Modern Greece.  At least decadent Rome had the excuse of barbarian invasion.  Took them 400 years.  We're doing it in 50.


J

Regret

I realize now that God does not carefully guard those for whom he hears no prayer.  We hand them over to God and trust they will or may grow into honorable men.  They won't.  I think that God is blind, I think he simply cannot see those upon whom prayer does not shed light.  He sees only those who are foreordained, and those others who are blessed by the blessings we ourselves give them.  If God could look upon the damned, and do nothing, would he be good?  Hell is where the damned cannot see God, and he cannot see them.  But they never saw each other during life, either.  It's just a thought.  A possibility -- God after all is not all-powerful.  He can do only what is possible.

I prayed.  But inadequately.  Insufficient fervor.  Not hysterical enough.  God heard but did not understand.  My faith was not that of a small child -- not moronic enough.

I hadn't realized, hadn't stopped to think about how much time has passed.  I saw Joey only in memory, the young boy he had been, and I understood he had grown into a man, but I could not see it.  A failure of imagination, but practical -- I should not torment myself with the unknowable.  The unsettling fact is that he has not changed at all.  The child is father to the man.  Then it was squandering every discretionary penny on pokemon and pogs.  Now it is hookups for threesomes with lesbians.  Just having fun.

Of course I was never meant to see that, such a truthful expression of sexual interests.  Then again, I can have no real expectation that I am even remembered, or that my disappointment could act as an inhibitor of dishonorable behavior.  Just some guy who was in charge for a while, making kids do extra homework.

Well, I'm a little screwed up sexually anyway. Here I am, with an aggressive sexual appetite,  almost completely suppressed.  I manage it at the cost of near-total disassociation from my body.  No perversions or fetishes, but I'm delicate and not getting more open, more trusting as the years pass. It may be morally correct, but it's not healthy.  A life charted for still waters.  So when I get intimations of those I care about acting in a sexually profligate manner, it distresses me.  There's a right way of conducting oneself.  I seem to be almost alone in thinking this.

He's employed, and has stated- if not pursued-goals, and finished high school and went to college.  But he seems not, from my web gleanings, to be the man I would have wished him to be.  I find no pride here, after my however-many years of hands-on training.  What real good, lasting, did I do.  God may be pleased by our futile strivings to do right, but we need more than rewards in heaven.  Maybe it's a delayed gratification thing?  Work motivated by only a promised blessing.  Who needs motivation, when you have faith.

I called him Joe.  He wrote his name as Joseph.  But he chose I see to be Joey again, the silly, sweet, undisciplined pleasure-seeker, a true child of his earliest upbringing, the product of utterly incompetent and passively malevolent adults, mother such as it was -- I have no words hateful enough to describe her -- grandparents who tolerated/practiced incest.

As for Jason, I might have loved him most.  He certainly needed it. But it is as should be expected.  I cannot imagine this assault would be his first criminal offense.   He came back into my home, aimed like a poisoned dart, to destroy it, and he did.  "At least I got Joey away from you."  Why would the man be different than the boy?  Please, be logical.

These are people I have loved.  I wish I never did.  But I did.  And being me, unteachable for all my acumen, I will say, with words, that I love them still. Knowing me, as the complete fool that I am, it's true.  I feel alone, I feel abandoned, but what am I to expect.  I isolate myself, and accept no comfort.  These boys ... well, men, likewise have rejected a right course.  It is an error shared between us, differing only in quality, not quantity.

Uncertainty allowed hope.  Of course there's hope still, hope in miracles, but it's the kind that disregards present reality. This is very hard on me.  Very hard.  Harder than a prolonged and silent death.  All things considered, it would be better if I had not looked.


J

Wake

We watch our sons grow, and hope and work for the best, but it’s like the weather -- you make plans, and then it’s out of your control. I watched my son grow and mature, and when he was very little I was secretly a bit disquieted by how unexceptional he was. Bright and healthy, and a joy to me, honest, kind, but just the vocabulary of a regular kid. I’d use words he didn’t understand, and I’d think, why doesn’t he understand that? -- this is how I talk. But I didn’t press him. We want our sons to be taller than we are, and stronger, and smarter. Well, I did, and you do -- not the case with my own father, but that’s a different story.  Most, however, we want them to be useful and honorable men.  To find what is worthy of respect is a duty, and privileged, and pleasure.

 I went online and searched my boys’ names, my lost boys. I've done this every few years.  Now maybe I found one of them in Fresno -- right age, right name, went to a high school that’s a most likely possibility.  Brown hair, blue eyes, six-three -- check, check, and makes sense.  Inferentially, the right zodiacal sign.  Dim memory confirms the name of a younger brother, now a "stoner".  Involved in video game design, reportedly, which could work -- my boy wanted to design robots.  Went to a state college. Says he's an artist and writer -- ungrammatical, sadly. Says he's the most truthful person you'd ever meet -- ask him anything.

Several pictures, on various sites.  It might be him. This was the boy who -- when he was nine, and just come to me, out of the vast orphanage group home -- lay in a crumple and cried at night because he could not remember his mother’s face. The one who tried to kill him by taking him onto a freeway -- I mean, walking and pushing. The crack whore, seven kids by six different men, who abandoned him to the institution when he was four. And here I am, not sure that I recognize his face. Well, I'm not good with faces, and it’s been half his lifetime since last I saw him, pubescent. It might be him.

Has a son, but doesn't want to talk about it on facebook.  Works in a game store, smokes a lot. "Buddhist." Sometimes silly, sometimes shy.  Just wants "to have fun".  Entered on several sex hookup sites under a user name.  He's looking for "some fun" with two lesbians. Fetishes: tattoos and role play; likes "doggy style" and group sex ("Orgy and/or Gang Bang"). The internet forgives nothing.

But yes, it's him. Growing conviction re the picture.  And I just found the birthday.  I have no plans on initiating a facebook contact -- "poke"?

And I definitely found the other one. Full tripartite name, date of birth. Charged with a felony in another county -- assault with a deadly weapon, other than firearm, with great bodily injury ... carries up to a four year prison term.  Well, he pulled a knife on me once.  He's grown an inch and gained 50 pounds -- heavier than me now. I have to expect that it’s fat. No mug shot. He’ll be 30 in August.

I don’t know what I feel. It’s too buried. All I have available is platitudes, with which to soothe myself? I expect I saved their lives, somehow. I taught the one to read, and brought him up 5 math levels in three months. Seems like necessary preparation for designing video games, or robots.  At least he finished high school, and perhaps college.  The other one, I just don’t know.  At least he's still alive, or was in May of 2012.  But I was steady, and calm, and unflagging in my dedication. I loved them and they knew it. Love is not enough, of course. It’s like weather -- sometimes it brings catastrophe.

I have written in sand.

Getting some painting done, and some cleaning, etc.  Gonna work through the night.  I think of many interesting things.  I should write them down.

Ah.  Here it comes.


J

Boom

I've been in intermittent and semi-debilitating pain since October.  Finally made a chiropractor apt, but it was for two weeks away, which ends tomorrow.  See if he can crack my spine into place.  I frankly expect to feel good, for a little bit, and then it goes back to what it knows.  So that would not be a solution.  Don't want to be negative though.

Got some building inspector issues going on, which is disquieting and fretsome.  It's not so much worry.  I've had real catastrophes, so I've learned some equilibrium.  But life has not increased my innate optimism.  Barely even supporting it. Neither can I sustain a belief in Americanism, the American spirit, American exceptionalism.  That has been voted out of office.  Yet another cause for mourning.

My observation is that it takes a certain, call it European mindset, to want to work for the government, as a bureaucrat.  Not an entirely fair statement, but understandable when we consider the alternative to government work, which would be private business.  The latter, well, that's American ... old-school American.  Authentic American, like some jive talking gangstah is authentically black.  Was that gratuitous?  Some less confrontational example might have been adduced?  Call in an artifact of my new-found enlightenment.

There never was an America, of course.  It's always been a myth, the way Aryanism was a Nazi mythic identity.  Only ours was for good.  Ah well.  When the god Pan died, all the Classical pagan world fell to grieving.  Oh, you don't know that story?  It's in Plutarch.  A divine voice announced it over the waters.  So, weep for Pan for he is dead.

As is my wont, I've given some thought to Hell.  I think it's just a place, as it were, a state of being, entirely outside the presence of God.  A place of complete futility and utter meaninglessness.  Not a place of active torment.  A place to spend eternity, alone with your thoughts. The Outer Darkness.  Hell.  The Lake of Fire is clearly a more dynamic image.  I take it as applying solely to the fallen, the damned angels. A different fate for a different order of being. I haven't done a study of this -- just working from memory.  Gehenna, where the worm does not die nor the fire go out -- this is the fate of most humans, but it's not literal.  ;Hell as Gehenna is the Valley of Hinnom, the city dump outside of Jerusalem.  You know, where garbage went, some burned, some wormed, but the point is just to get rid of it.  That's human damnation. Out of my sight.  Once out of sight, God gives no more thought to it, for punishment, any more than he gives thought to the sins of those who are forgiven.  Heaven is fulfilling work.  Hell is eternal futility.

Pretty good, eh?  Thought of it myself.

For reasons of my own, I've been dipping far back into these pages again.  I don't remember most of what I've written here. But man, I'm good.  There must have been a few years there where I was literally inspired.  What a waste.

So it turns out that God would rather have America come to an end, than have a Mormon President.  Better the hypocritical lipservice of a false and nominal Christian (not a secret Moslem), than a good man who denies and changes the nature of Jesus Christ (as the Mormons do -- spirit brother of Lucifer).  For all that Jesus rebuked the hypocrites, it is they who make the world go round just as much as the spiritually just.  Good works, after all, are good works.

Jonah preached repentance in the avenues of Nineveh, and that vile empire was granted another 40 years.  We need a 4th Great Awakening.  Or we need 2nd 9-11.  Here's my sad, grim, almost traitorous prediction:  Washington DC will be nuked with a dirty bomb.  Silly-time needs to be over, and no small rebuke will do.  If God cares for America, he will punish it.  I don't want it.  I don't know if I even expect it.  But the Prodigal is comfortable with his pigs, no self-loathing at all, no repenting of himself.  If the Father loves him, no more time will be spent waiting at the gate, gazing forlornly down the road, a tear in his heart.  America, stupid lazy corrupt betraying America, needs a father who comes marching with angry strides down the road, braiding together leather cords into a whip.  Boom.

Thank you, Allah and your disciples, for recalling to our minds that America loves God.


J

Cremati

If we don't savor and cherish the joyful moments of our lives, we have no justification in mourning for our loses.  Oh sure, this is good, but something bad will happen later.  Might as well say, Yes this is sad, but I'll be happy later.  It's not a zero sum game.  It's not about keeping score. There is no logic to it.  Life is greater than the sum of its moments.  The meaning of life is the meaning we bring to it.  A morbid and melancholy temperament will draw an utterly opposite meaning from the same event as would a brighter soul.

There is much that will remain unsaid.  Some truths I would write only under the guise of fiction.  But there was a question as to whether or not Monty will have a memorial service.  There will be one, even if I'm the only one there.  We are a strange tribe, but there is common decency, and it is simply not civilized to allow a life to evaporate with hardly any notice at all.  Some people die softly, but this does not mean their lives have been invisible.

I have no authority to speak to the disposition of Monty's remains.  I would cremate, but his body has been donated to science.  My mother has provided that the same should be done with her body.  This is a wish that will not be honored.  Med students have enough bodies to dissect, and if they don't, that's not my lookout -- I consider that my duty lies elsewhere.  I'm not sentimental, but the thought of my loved ones' bloating cold corpses spread casually on some stainless steel tabletop while prodding grad students chitchat about this and that -- I'm not going to have it.  My expectation is that she made such plans to avoid fuss.  I, barely equipped to handle the bother of daily life, will yet summon the fortitude to telephone a funeral director and end up with at least the monument of an urn. Ashes are for scattering to the wind.  Ashes, not lives.


J

Dec 27

So much death in the world, and so much of it by choice. It’s like people don’t know how serious it is. They haven’t apprehended the meaning of life, have a wrong theory about what it’s about, and waste it, their opportunities, and those of others, forever. It would all be easier -- not better, but easier -- if there were no God. How nice that would be, aside from the unchecked barbarism. In that magical universe, where things happen for no reason, created by itself out of nothing, self-organizing, just simply magical, there would be no ultimate accountability. Every life would end in nothingness, the candle out and no more light, ever, from it. Only the universe, somehow, would go on, self-sustaining, magical. How nice, to get away with every assertion of willfulness, every undiscovered crime, with everyone getting the same reward slash punishment in the end. I really do think that would be preferable. Life, you see, for all of its value, is unjoyful to me, like a miser’s gold.

Much of what I write in these pages is nonsense. I’m not really like this. Here is where I vent and blow and indulge opinion that I would rarely share, and then only either as a lack of self-control, or to a good friend. But artificial though this be, it is necessary to me -- not the internet broadcasting, that’s just a self-indulgence, but the formulation of feeling via words into thought. So.

I’d known my stepfather since I was a teenager, over 35 years now. But the past tense comes easily, given his long decline over these past few years. He died today. Can’t say it was unexpected. A great unexpressed sadness, but I’m stuck right now, and not feeling it. I have tears, but they do not flow. That is not a metaphor. I write this with long pauses, upwellings of some emotion too inconsistent to be grief. Yet. Forgive me my isolation.

 As much as we can know of anyone else, I think he was saved, as we Christians say. I’m always a bit skeptical, but it’s not my business. There are three options: oblivion, hell, or paradise. Reincarnation is absurd. I don’t believe in oblivion, and hell is unthinkable. What am I to trust in, here? Not in God’s goodness. That is what it is. I have to believe that my stepfather believed, sufficiently. Because I am a skeptical man, I find little comfort here. So I won’t think about it.

Heart attack, apparently, bedridden and sudden. Seventy-two years old, and old before his time. He was a very simple man, hard working, could hardly read and never did. A small town Illinois way of speaking. He stamped his feet when he laughed. It endeared him to me. Here’s the thing that sums up his life, and my love for him. He was born with a deformity, so his left arm was permanently stuck raised up over his head. A surgery corrected it when he was seven. His mother hated him, literally. I won’t go into the abuse. Not a good woman.

 He was my very good friend, and kind and generous to me when my various calamities fell. I lived in his house for over a year when I got back from Australia -- finishing my BA and preparing for manhood. I am pleased to believe that he knew I loved him. I think he was a better man than I am.

 His name was Monty.


 J