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Monday, Apr. 21, 2003 / 6:44 p.m. ~Just Getting It In Print~ I was just re-reading what I wrote yesterday, and I noticed that in the list of those who've died I somehow omitted my father. I'm not going to read anything into that, I guess I just forgot. Temporarily, of course. I almost forgot to add the 'numerous dogs and cats', because it seemed sort of a 'given'. And I always figured N and G would be next, or by some odd chance, my brother, and I wondered if I'd know when he died. But since he recently sent me email, we can surmise his aliveness. Today at work was so slow, it was dangerously slow, it was hazardously slow, it was soul-sucking slow, more than usual in the suckingness (aliveness, suckingness, these are my words). I sat. Sometimes I just stared, sometimes I picked up my EW and read a page or two, and early in the morning I sat and wrote in my notebook, and then I read what I've written in my notebook, and I thought about the things I've written in my notebook. Then I thought about yesterday, about my Uncle, and I called the Post Office to find out how long it takes to renew a passport. I can get it 'expedited', 5 to 7 days, a 'rush', and I have no idea what that costs. I asked for time off, the end of May. I already had that Tuesday, as Monday is a National Holiday, but now I have the rest of the week. And I wanted to tell people why, I wanted to tell my Supervisor, I wanted to tell the women at work, but then I wanted it to be my secret, I didn't want them inside my life. And I kept thinking the word 'grandfather', not 'Uncle', but I haven't had a grandfather for years. I wrote to my mother's father after she died, we wrote letters for years, and then his Thai daughters wrote to tell me he'd died, they sent a photo of the memorial. How strange, I thought, but it's Thailand, they do things differently there. And for years after I sent them Christmas cards, the widow, the daughters, the relatives I'd never meet, but liked to think I might, one day, travel to exotic Bangkok and have a place to stay... And my father's father, in my 20s I met him, I learned he was alive, he had a name, and a face, and was a little, shrunken man. I took him to the Museum, and he tired easily. We ate lunch, sandwiches, and he told me over and over how pretty I am. He went back to the land of old Jewish Americans, Florida, and we wrote, little letters, his were typed, triple spaced on different color papers. And then he died. No more letters... Except to my Uncle. I don't know, I still don't know. I feel stupid for wanting to go, like his family won't want anything to do with me, like they'll think I'm out for some inheritance, which is what we thought my Uncle wanted when he swooped in while my grandmother, his mother, was hospitalized with her cancer. Gee, everbyody gets his/her own cancer in my family, I wonder when I'll get mine and what kind I'll get. I'm thinking colon, although I used to be convinced it was cervical. I'm 'predisposed' to that one. With my latest bizarre and inexplicable (or is it unexplainable?) injury, my groin thing, the leg that will no longer bed out without excruciating pain, I'm now convinced it's bone cancer, and I'll need an amputation, like Christina what's her name in that '70s movie, "Sunshine". Really, I have nothing good to say. But see how I'm not using the word 'fuck', and I'm not talking antiwar crap, or politics at all? Funny how that is. I alternated most of the day between thinking of logistics, how I might swing this Italy deathbed visit to my Uncle, and thinking of 'Crush Boy', as named by Caroline. My thoughts of him go like this: He'd never like me, he was just being friendly, he's a friendly guy, it's not like he has any sort of attraction to me, Jesus, what is my problem?, and now I've gone and dropped him a little email note, I'll never hear anything back from him, this is just like Carlos, back in September of '01, he must've freaked out when I told him I was really attracted to him, via email of course. But then he was not like Crush Boy, a very different character completely that one. And I haven't told Crush Boy I'm attracted, I think I learned that lesson, I just told him I'm up for his meditation group, that I'm into Buddhism, I have a mantra tattooed on my ankle, I am open, here's my number, give a call if you don't want to write, hope to see you soon. Real noncommittal. And then I remembered the younger men I've loved, and had as lovers, and there have been quite a few, some a good bit younger, like 14 years, or 9 years, and then I thought of John Travolta and that woman he loved when he was 19 or 20, that actress, I forget her name, but she died of cancer and he was devastated. She must have been in her 40s at the time. So, where am I going with this? If Crush Boy were interested, the age thing would be something that wouldn't matter, in the short run, and with my history, there would be no long run. I sound depressed. On the way home from work I was thinking about the chickens they put in the crates that go atop the tractor trailers that go to the abattoir near where I work, and how they're put in those crates like vegetables, not like birds, not like animals, and how disgusting it is that I eat animals, and that we treat animals like 'product' in this country and that I abhor the whole concept of factory farming, yet I was hungry and wondering what I'd eat for dinner, and I haven't been shopping for real food in some time, so there's nothing here but canned tuna and condiments, and bread and ham for sandwiches, but I already had a ham sandwich for lunch. And, of course, I thought of Mark's last email to me before he decided he would not only comply with my desire for him to cease wanting me, but he would stop talking to me, writing to me, communicating with me on any level whatsoever, and how he wrote that I dramatize everything. Wait, here is how he put it: "You have very dramatic reactions to very large things and very small things. You can be as passionate about world wide injustice as by someone looking at you the wrong way. Not that there is anything wrong with that." But he must've thought there is something very wrong with that. And, in the midst of so much thinking, as I said it was a dangerously slow day, I received an email note from Hermione asking me to dinner next Monday. She will be in town, from Out West and wants to see me. Of course, yes, yes, of course. I wish I had real friends, the kind you see on television and in movies, the kind that are close, that like to go out and do things, go to restaurants, movies, camping, and just sit and talk, and lend you money or a shoulder to cry on, and they see you cry and that's okay. Like Reg. He was my best friend for a time, and I could cry in front of him, or tell him anything, we talked for hours, always..... I'm fine. I really am. I just had a lot of time to think today. I still don't know that I'm going to renew my passport, buy a ticket to Italy, I haven't even heard back from my cousin yet. She says she checks my Uncle's email 'often', and I should feel free to write to him at that address, but how often is 'often'? And why didn't her mother, my first cousin, write to me? Where is she? Where is her brother? Is he there too? How long does my Uncle have to live? Metastasized cancer is vicious, it doesn't take long to wipe someone out. What if I buy a ticket and he dies before I get there? Is the end of May too far away? Yeah, I don't have any idea. And since Crush Boy and I were just talking about Italian, and how I took two quarters in college, and he is Sicilian, I want to tell him I'm going, I want to ask him to accompany me as translator, but how fucked up is that? He's a kid I met at a march, he was just being friendly. He's just a kid. I do like writing as an outlet for all this swirling around in my head. It usually helps just to get it down, to see it in print. To let it out, as catharsis. If nothing else, I have a whole week off in a month or so. Cost of the War in Iraq
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