July 2005 Archives

Well for some reason I got three times my normal amount of visits to the blog yesterday, and this made me feel very good. In fact, I got more visits than the attendance at my 11 a.m church service, and although my readers hardly constitute a "flock" to whom I minister, I take comfort in knowing I (p)reach (to) as many people as the good Reverend Neal Shelton, although I can't say my sermons are quite as brilliant as his. He is really, really impressive.

I do realize that I'd kidding no one when I profess that my desire to make a mark is not expressly tied into my ego wanting validation. However, I do also honestly think that if, for example, I was a writer for Will and Grace, and my funny one-liners were laughed at by millions and I had a big house in the Hollywood Hills, that I would be no less anxious to leave this planet with something more than "He was pretty funny and got paid for it" as my epitaph. I do want a lot of people to know who I am, but I also want to make people think (as well as laugh). And although I often assume this is what everyone wants, I spend time every day with friends or acquaintances who don't seem to hunger for more than anything out of life than a decent job, financial security, and a good relationship. Creative fulfillment is far more important than any of those things are to me, and I continually debate where to place that desire in relation to the other two biggies: a developed spiritual life, and sobriety.

I confess if the choice was between staying sober OR creative accomplishment, I would choose the latter. (I've never been one to think my worst day sober was better than my best day high, I think that is hogwash. Sober is healthier, but it is not morally superior to any other state.) But happily, all three goals seem to go hand in hand. I would even contend that if one is first and foremost “right” with God (or the Gods, or whatever) than the rest—sobriety and creative fulfillment--seem to follow much more easily than if one tries it in the other direction.

Last night I went to the Hollywood Forever Mortuary with my friend Mike and a friend of his and we watched an outdoor movie--Carrie, a favorite--projected against a big granite wall with thousands of other evening picnickers. It was great fun. And tonight, more summer delight: I am going to the Hollywood Bowl with my friend David and two friends of his. This same David is my recently widowed friend I’ve talked about, who I am glad to report has finally received a fairly decent settlement offer from the family of his late lover. It is far less than he would have received if Larry had signed the new will he’d drawn up, but it will allow him to start a new life in San Francisco and then some.

As he clears the house of their mutual possessions, he has parked his ginourmous TV chez moi. As I type this I am watching "Anacondas: Hunt for the Blood Orchid," starring six of Hollywood prettiest B-list actors. It'll be a miracle if I get a job, learn sign language, or become a best-selling writer, as it’ll take every bit of willpower I possess not to watch movies all day. (I am not one of those snobs who sneer at big-screen TV's dominating the living room. My apartment was clearly awaiting this new addition to achieve sartorial perfection.)

My meeting with the editor was postponed until tomorrow.

MCO 2005

My first Saturday night in New York, I had the opportunity to drive into the city for a meeting. Afterwards I wandered through my old neighborhood in the East Village, which has transformed considerably. One of the most striking changes is the profusion of restaurants which spill out onto the sidewalks as European-style cafes. (It’s amazing how wide New York sidewalks are.) It is much like the Upper West side used to be when I lived there 20 years ago.

So I chose an Italian bistro, and ate a delightful outdoor dinner while I surveyed the theater of New York Pedestriana on a Saturday. I admit to wishing I could have ordered a glass or two of wine, at the same time I had to admit that had it been 20 years ago (I drank much more heavily before I started into the meth—one addiction largely supplanted the other) I would have not likely had just two glasses of wine. Or had I, it would have been preceded and followed by several screwdrivers. The liquor would have started out by enhancing my dining experience, but ended up obscuring it. Not unlike filling in a coloring book until the pages were mostly indistinct black and blue blobs.

And if I was eating alone on a Saturday night, it would probably have been because I had been stood up or unable to find a friend to eat with, and I would have probably been angry or morose at my solitude. Or had my nose in a book on whose pages I would have found difficult to concentrate.

Instead, I thoroughly savored each course, patient at the time between them, and enjoyed immensely simply watching the cacophony of mini-dramas unfolding in front and around me. It occurred to me that whether I was drinking or not, the food and the street theater would have been exactly the same. What made the experience a quiet celebration or a wallow in self-pity was entirely dependent on my attitude.

Every since then I have been acutely aware of something I have always known intellectually, but rarely apprehended on a more fundamental level. That we are much less products of our experience, than our experience is a product of us. While certainly it is facile to suggest that we can simply decide on a daily basis to enjoy every experience of our life to the fullest, it is certainly true that we are capable of finding great joy in doing all of things we often trudge through, whether it be work, driving, eating, watching TV, spending time with our kids, ad infinitum.

I remember at Delano, in fact, getting a pass to go on some minor errand right around dusk, and it was a beautiful evening. For 10 precious minutes or so, I was as close to alone as one could get in prison, and it was a little piece of heaven. To boot there were birds nesting in the roof of the fenced catwalk, and I actually saw some fledglings attempting to take flight under their mothers’ watchful eye. I vowed never to take for granted again the precious joy that could be derived from something no more remarkable than a short walk outside. Of course I have failed at fulfilling this goal, but I am a hell of a lot better at slapping myself into awareness rather more often than in the past, consciously shaking myself out of whatever preoccupation is clouding my mind.

If we are lucky enough not to suffer from the effects of war, poverty, hunger or ill health, we are truly capable of putting some gratitude in our attitude at any moment, and making our experience as rich as it can be, rather than waiting for our experience to make us happy. We don’t need to wait for that vacation, that date or that drink to feel that all is right with the world and we are exactly where we should be.

Being so all the time would constitute Nirvana, and I doubt I’ll ever get there. But getting there isn’t really the point, is it? Being here is.

MCO 2005

This is a letter I just received, followed by my response:

Dear Marc,

Thanks for your story Behind Bars in the 2005 SF Pride mag. I am particularly interested in the situation of your friend Mike and your observation that "One of the legacies of the Patriot Act is that zealous prosecutors are dragging this charge out for all manner of crimes completely unrelated to terrorism." I'd really like to know more sources for that statement.

My nephew will be tried Aug 2nd in Minnesota on a felony charge of "terroristic threats" (Minn. statute 609.713) Case # 05013233.

He was seventeen and bummed about his social life when he shortly posted an Instant profile including "If I kill myself people would think I was weak....I haven't shot up the school yet." For this and nothing more (except maybe playing in a band and wearing black clothes??) authorities came to the door and took him and the family computer without warrants. He was expelled from his school permanently, charged with a felony, handcuffed, shackled, and jailed for two nights in spite of a crisis nurse clearing him as a threat. The local press coverage was sensationalist and even gave out his name and address.

It's been very demanding emotionally and financially on he and his family. We'd like to know how it compares to what's happening to other people.

Thanks, Marie

Dear Marie,

Thank you for your writing me and your nephew's story is one of the more harrowing I've heard.

"Making terrorists threats" seems to be the equivalent of the charges of child molesting made against all sorts of innocent people (mostly soon-to-be ex-husbands in bitter divorce proceedings, but the McMartin pre-school case comes to mind) back in the 90s. A crime that was genuinely underreported for so long suddenly becomes overreported, whipped up by a hysterical media.

But specifically, "making terrorist threats" seems to be a tool used by prosecutors whose careers are completely contigent on being able to cite high rates of successful prosecution. It is their key to winning re-elections or appointments to higher office. That is why plea bargaining is so widespread. Innocent people will often agree to plead guilty simply because they are warned if they lose a trial they risk far greater punishment. And prosecutors can cite a case as being successfully prosecuted even if it results in a plea bargain. Anything but a dropped charge or loss in court. They are not really interested in whether the person they are prosecuting is guilty or innocent, just that someone is convicted. This is why we have so many innocent men on death row, ( as the DNA freeing has shown). I would guess up to 20% of inmates overall are in fact, innocent--or convicted of more than they were actually guilty of.

Apart from my friend Mike, in several of the cases recounted to me in prison, it was a man who threatened his wife or a girlfriend in a domestic dispute, and though there was no assault, the man was convicted of "making terrorists threats." Now I have to say that I was only hearing one side of the situation, and inmates are notoriously self-serving and likely to omit details that might shed a different light on their guilt or innocence. At the same time there was an authentic ring to much of their stories, especially when you bear in mind the need for prosecutors to never appear "soft on crime." Some of these guys I just found very hard to believe were even capable of violence--and in prison the non-violent ones stand out.

Certainly, if your nephew had made his remark pre-Columbine, (much less pre-9/11) the reaction would have been a lot saner. Unfortunately, the nightmare of every school official and local police chief is to have ignored "the signs" and find themselves with a high school full of dead students. Still, I don't think the original intent of the "making terrorist threats" charge was to dragoon every utterer of any ill-considered remark into jail. (One inmate swore to me his crime was throwing a ham sandwich and telling his girlfriend to "go f**k herself." According to him, she didn't even file charges. A neighbor called the cops and the D.A. insisted on filing charges. He was serving 4 years. Again, I can't prove he was telling me the truth, but he sure didn't come off as a violent person. More likely the police/D.A. probably suspected him of drug use/selling, and justified "getting him off the streets" anyway they could.)

I wish my opinion, or experience, could provide some help to you but I doubt that it can. All I can suggest is that perhaps you use it to pitch your side of the story to a local reporter who might--if you're lucky--write an article that takes a step back from black and white sensationalist reporting. That's a long shot with much of the current yellow journalism of the typical local corporate-owned McPaper, but perhaps you can contact the closest Public Radio station. There are some decent journalists working in that media who might be able to sell it to their editors.

Mostly, I hope that your nephew and family emerges from this trial intact. I know my crisis eventually brought my family much closer together--not an insubstantial silver lining.

Sincerly,

Marc Olmsted

My horoscope today:

A few days ago, you probably defined new strategies for your career, but now the time has come to go one step beyond this decision, Marc. You will change your behavior and will turn to other people looking for a new collaboration or partnership. You will find the persons you are looking for easily, since you are extremely convincing and enthusiastic at the moment.

What a great horoscope the day I'm turning to an editor about the blog/book.

I need to reach out all over the place. I realized yesterday the degree to which I was operating with much less fear on a daily basis from let's say, 6 months ago. But as I quell my daily anxieties, or at least don't feel hobbled by them--as in go under the covers and crave a Xanax--that there is still one powerful fear that haunts me. That I will leave this world without having made a mark.

When I was 8, I wrote an essay in which I remember distinctly putting forth the ambition to die having been known by 63% of the world's population. What a grandiose little tyke I was. Now I think I would settle for rating an unpaid obituary, having done something that meant my passing was even a minor bit of news.

And this is more than just ego. I am acutely aware of having been inordinately blessed with a loving family, a happy childhood and a definite gift for words. The older I get, the more I realize how lucky I am and how wrong it would be for me not to somehow leave the world even a little bit more enriched than when I came into it.

I will not, as I hoped at 8, eliminate hunger, war and poverty. But I do want to be more than a grain of sand in the great desert of humanity. I want to be at least a pebble, or a small rock, if only in the form of a book or two that gets read in a library by a stranger once every few years.

MCO 2005

Today my Kafkaesque quest to get my car registered in California finally came to fruition. It was almost worth it for the dazzling smile I got from the handsomest man on the planet in the waiting room of the State Tax Equalization Board. I wish I had been brave enough to strike up a conversation. Maybe there's a website I can find serving the same purpose of the ads that used to run in the back in the Village Voice: "Saw you waiting for the 210 bus on E. 13th street Tuesday lunchtime. I was in green t-shirt with blue knapsack. Thought something passed between us."

Wouldn't it be brilliant if this Waiting Room Stud was one of my blog readers? And single? And rich? That's about as likely as no foam tiles coming off the Space Shuttle during launch. I did hear him give his last name to the receptionist though: “Emmanueli.” Maybe he’ll google himself and find me. Wouldn’t that be the coolest way imaginable to meet Mr. Right?

Happily, a few Mr. Right Now’s have presented themselves since my plaint of a few days ago that I was rather overdue to get horizontal with someone. I even got an all-night cuddle out of one (before I drove him to rehab!) I figure it’s my duty to make sure soldiers going off to war have a good memory to sustain them…

I am interviewing an editor tomorrow who I might hire to put the final draft of the blog/book together. I just need an outside professional eye, and he had all the desired reactions after a first read. He feels it is definitely a potentially hot commercial property. I also have a commitment from a friend to provide doggie day care for Gaza during the week. If I delegate these two tasks, I can get a job unencumbered. Because if I don’t get a job, it’s fairly clear to me that I will continue to find myself struggling with motivating myself to produce the way I should produce. Unfortunately, I need outside stimulation, discipline and deadlines. And I need to make an income that does not require family generosity to maintain a minimal standard of living. Luckily that very generosity (my Mom shared some of the profits of the sale of her house with all of her children) means I can take my time finding something decent that suits me.

Another outcome of the visit to my Mom was that I discovered I can manage just fine without an afternoon nap. My fatigue seems indeed to be psychological-though it has returned since I got back.

And I finally got a desk of mine back from a friend where it was in storage, as well as some art that was hanging elsewhere. Though no showplace, the apartment now lacks nothing, and it looks like me. Eclectic and defying easy categorization, to say the least. (But just nice enough not to be termed, in the memorable words of my old buddy Cheri, “early ugly.”)

MCO 2005

Dear Mark,

Just received your article from a fellow inmate, and I just wanted to let you know it was an EXCELLENT description of what was going on.

I have just been released (07/15/2005) after an 8-month stint it San Francisco’s County Jail. Your descriptions are so succinct that if people are to ask me about it, I simply give them a copy of your article and have that do the talking for me.

Thanks a million for getting that/our story out there!

D.L.

I forgot. I got this letter from a reader of my Pride Guide article. I share it with you, along with my response to her, bolded.

Mr. Olmsted.

I read your article in the Pride05 magazine and it is pretty interesting.

I work for a federal detention center and at one time worked for the Department of Corrections in Missouri. I am not too pleased with the way you portrayed corrections officers. I try to treat all inmates the same, if there is something I can do for that inmate that is within the rules I will and if I can not I will find someone who can. Granted I am human and when and inmate is a jerk to me I might not be as helpful. I actually made very few references to the guards, except at the gay dorms at County. Believe me, some of the guards there were openly hostile to the gays. As for the rest of the guards, I met some great ones, and some not so great ones, and described many of them in specific blog entries, but my article was not long enough to delve into that. By far I suffered the most grief from the other inmates and their homophobia and that was clearly described in the article. But the system is set up in such a way that it is very difficult to expect help from many guards--and that is not their fault. They are understaffed and undersupported and not equipped to do the social work needed. Don't forget I was describing California, where, uniquely in the U.S., the system is largely run by the inmate, by race. Divide and conquer is the system--everyone suffers. I doubt that was your case in Missouri.

I don't know about where you were at but the facility I work at we do not know if someone is HIV-positive unless the inmate tells me. And for gay inmates I treat them the same as anyone else male or female. I believe you, but you have to recognize that is not the case with many of your former colleagues. I mean, how many gay guards feel safe even to be open about it?

The prison system is not perfect but I did not see anything in your article that suggested to how to change it. What I suggested is that we build schools instead of prisons, and train people like you to be teachers instead of guards. Kids given a good education rarely end up in prison (I being an exception that proves the rule). And I think drugs should be legalized, and taxed heavily, the proceeds going for treatment. (I said some of that but not all, but again, but that wasn't the subject of the article). Dealers are almost always addicts who should get treatment. Now, only users do.

I did not see you admit that you committed a crime. You were dealing crystal - meth and got caught. I refer to my friend Earl "also in for selling meth" and then near the end "regardless of the reality that we had both broken the law." I didn't think I had to spell out my guilty any more than that, as if I was innocent, you can be damn sure I would have proclaimed it loudly.

I am curious what do you think should have happened to you after your arrest instead of spending 16 months incarcerated? Again, I would never have been dealing if drugs had been legal, as I wouldn't have had to guarantee a supply to support my habit. And I wouldn't have been breaking the law, obviously, if I had sold them anyway. But given that they were illegal, I think I should have been sentenced to a treatment facility, not prison, as all addicts should be-even the dealers-- unless they've commited violent crimes or stolen property. (There isn't enough money for all the treatment beds needed because the money is going to incarcerate them). Selling drugs is an exchange between two consenting adults. And while I don't think drugs are a harmless thing, (as I stated I am now sober and committed to it) I don't think they do any more harm than cigarettes or alcohol, both of which are legal and kill hundreds of thousands a year.

I apologize if I sound harsh or uncaring but that is the way I see it. You are certainly entitled to your opinion and I thank you for sharing it. But I do think you are taking the one reference I made to homophobic guards at one place a bit personally. I met many kind and helpful guards, as well as rude assholes, just like in any workplace. I bear them no hostility, they were just doing their jobs--and a difficult job it is.

Michelle M.

Last night I had dinner with a friend, including Thai Iced Tea, and I think that's what kept me up way past my bedtime. Hence I overslept, and now am scrambling, as I have to work today, babysitting the ex-wife at the law firm, and must get out of the house and on my way shortly.

So I leave you with this most pedestrian of entries. Mercury is, after all, in retrograde.

MCO 2005

Here are some paradoxes that have been on my mind.

When you pray, the question and answer is the same. (The answer to your prayer comes in the asking of it).

To get, you have to give. (Though you can’t give in order to get.)

You can’t experience joy unless you know grief. (This one I thought about especially when I read that cats have no gene for tasting sweet things. Imagine if human beings had no gene for grief, or sadness? Could we really understand joy?)

The power of faith is independent from whether or not God actually exists. (I don’t know whether this is really a paradox, but it’s a deep thought, isn’t it?)

MCO 2005

And Happy Birthday to my sister Sandra. She is a year and 1/2 old than me, so she's inching up on something like 30.

But I'm not the Math Professor, she is.

MCO 2005

My day is being consumed by helping out two newly sober friends. One I took to pick up meds and then to a rehab in Pasadena, the other I'm helping out with a living situation.

I have always been of the mind that social service organizations would be much less necessary if friends and family provided the safety net they should. I certainly have been the beneficiary (in a gigantic way) of such help, so try to pass it along when I am able to. Which is one of the reasons I am so ambivalent about formal volunteer work. Ideally, one should be providing that on a daily, informal basis where needed. That said, the reality is that this is obviously an ideal that cannot always be met, but it certainly explains how we got along without social services for millions of years, and how so much of the world continues to do so--although admittedly, the result is/was much misery, poverty and death from those who fell through the cracks. If it wasn't, there would have been no need for the social services that arose.

You have to keep it to give it away, goes the saying. I have been thinking alot about other seeming paradoxes as well.But more about that later. I need to be of assistance right now.

One quick note: Gaza has finally discovered his purpose in life. Terrorizing squirrels in Griffith Park.

MCO 2005

MCO 2005

This is a poem that I wrote inside and that I arted once, but I have rearted with a small painting I brought back from New York. I may have even posted it on the blog, but I suspect I have a few new readers since then.

This lovely sunset was painted by a Congolese (I think) student who spent some time at our house in Rockville. Every so often, on a Sunday, after church, we would go to a house where International Students lived in Washington. D.C. Myfather would disappear inside and come out with a student who he literally picked up in the lobby. He would offer them an afternoon and a delicious dinner with an American family, and that way us kids were exposed to young men from all over the world who were studying in the states. Some of them visited many times, and my brothers and sisters and I have vivid memories of them. (I bet a few of them had secret crushes on my Mom, too). One, Ali Koroma, from Sierra Leone, we stayed friends with for several years--through marriage, several children and his return to Sierra Leone. (He eventually came back to the States and teaches in Maryland.)

Anyway, my Mom might remember the name of the painter of the above, but maybe not. She does remember him painting it deftly in less than 20 minutes, as he had no doubt done for tourists back home to make some quick cash. When I found out my Mother had left it unpacked in Mount Vernon, I retrieved it and threw it in my briefcase. It is one of those images I grew up with, and always thought very beautiful. It is now on my wall, and with this poem, on my website.

I'm starting off the week with a bang, committed to being extremely productive and working down my to-do list. And dammit, I'm gonna get laid by this weekend, or at least make out with someone. I'm over this drought. (Yes, I know Mercury is in retrograde. Which means I won't sign important documents, but I think heavy petting is allowed.)

MCO 2005

Last night I went to a sober birthday party given by an ex-nightclub owner who really knows how to throw a bash. At one point, 2 guys sang “The Way We Were” to a hilarious slideshow of images evoking all the places gone to in less sane days, and the 200 or so really fun, mostly good-looking and grateful attendees roared with identification. (The biggest challenge at the party for me was not bumming a cigarette.)

I hung out with a wonderful guy who, unfortunately, I don’t respond to quite the same way he responds to me (in a sexual attraction kind of way) and I ended up having to tell him that in so many words by evening’s end. He was very cool about it. What can you do? For me, and I daresay for almost all men, if there is no initial sexual attraction, one will rarely if ever develop even if a psychological or intellectual attraction burgeons. There’s not much you can do about it, and I have been on the other side of that many times as well, more and more as I get older.

Right before this exchange, a third party attendee asked me for a “couch commitment.” In early sobriety, very often those in their first 90 days are homeless, waiting to get into sober livings or rehabs. They often go from couch to couch of those who have the resources to help them until they get on their feet. This request was a tough one for me, because when I was “out there” I not only let drug addicts (technically homeless, but not in the unshowered stereotypical sense) sleep on my couch, but stay with me for months at a time. It became impossible to get rid of them, in fact.

But of course they were not sober, or trying to get there even—duh, as I was a drug dealer and that’s precisely why my couch was chosen. So, although I was not crazy about having a stranger in my small apartment, I could not manage to lie and say I did not have a couch available. It was midnight, I imagined the poor guy on the street, or on the couch of the hosts of the party. That didn’t seem fair, they had just thrown the social event of the recovery season and had done enough “for the cause” for one night.

So I took “M.” home, listening to his story on the way, and let him have the couch instead of Gaza, who slept on my bed (he usually transfers to the sofa in the middle of the night). And “M.”was up and out of here at 7:15. (Yes, I made sure he had enough cash for at least two meals).

I wish I didn’t feel this way, but I hope I don’t get asked again. Saying yes didn’t even make me feel particularly good, just less bad than if I had said no. But a lot of requests in life are that way, aren’t they?

MCO 2005

Well, I’ve almost been back 24 hours and this is the first chance I’ve gotten to blog. If you ever think you aren’t busy enough, just leave your life for 9 days and confront the to-do list that greets you when you get back.

First among urgent tasks was to get an air conditioner, which now blows sweetly as I type this. As much for poor Gaza as for me, though I dare say we both got rather spoiled in the past 9 days, as both of us were blessedly cooled at our respective digs during parallel heat waves. Well that’s not entirely true, for the first 2 days I was in the old house in Mount Vernon, the day before and the day of the move. And I spent a fair amount of time in an unair-conditioned car, most memorably stuck on the Triborough Bridge when it was 88 degrees and the humidity was about 88%. After an hour or so of that torture, I peeled off into the Bronx, located a bridge to Manhattan and took surface streets to the Major Deegan until I crossed over the Williamsburg bridge to deliver a carpet to my nephew in his new Brooklyn digs.

This was, as expected, somewhat of a working vacation. The move itself was a daunting task, the family homestead of 35 years had to be emptied, and winnowed down into what could comfortably fit in a one-bedroom apartment. Happily, my mother’s cleaning lady is a Brazilian immigrant with a wide circle of friends in need, and she took the lion’s share of what my mother couldn’t take with her or didn’t want to. Some items that I couldn’t bear seeing leave the family, I was able to give to my nephew, or send here to me.

This was all very, very difficult for my Mom, even though all of this was completely her decision, and the assisted living community she chose is wonderful. It’s on the Hudson River, brand new, beautiful, very high end. I met a lot of the people she will be living amongst, mostly widows, some couples and a smattering of widowers. All smart, educated, and (mostly) healthy, all wanting to make sure they will not be a burden to their children if older age is not kind to them.

Despite the considerable tasks undertaken, I was very, very happy to be able to be there for my Mom and make the transition as grief-free as possible for her. I just put one foot in front of the other and dealt with each problem as it arose, leaving my Mom fairly familiar with the premises, how to get things done, and with the beginnings of new routines and new friendships. But I fear the resiliency that has long been her hallmark as grown brittle. Certainly what I put her through last year must have sped up that process. My help this past week only begins—if anything can--to make amends for that.

Being near my Mom is one—but only one—of the reasons I am open to the idea of moving back to New York when I am off parole. Another is that I absolutely fell in love with the city again. It was delightful to be in a place that was at once so familiar to me and yet fresh and foreign again. On meth, I had grown completely afraid of the prospect of going into the city when I had traveled back to last visit my Mom eighteen months ago, just before my arrest. Back then, I didn’t go into the city once, ostensibly because of the cold, but really because I had become somewhat agoraphobic (even if not obviously high to those who saw me—my mom hadn’t a clue).

I also reconnected with my best friend during my 10 years living in New York, Michael, who took the above photo during his visit here in February. We spent a day at his country house in upstate New York, and after a lovely hike to the local water fall, he put a paintbrush in my hand in his studio. I mailed myself the resulting oeuvre, which I will definitely post here when it arrives. It's an expressionist portrait of a figure somewhat resembling Virginia Woold, all quite accidental, but frankly, rather striking. It kind of blew me away, but when I tried to do a second, abstract, work, the result was awful. I suspect it’s a case of the exception proving the rule. Any drawing-type talent I may possess is strictly of the lucky accident variety.

Lastly, I am completely confused as to why my visits per day to the blog remained fairly steady in my absence. Maybe most of you have programs that check the blog automatically, even if it isn’t updated? Or maybe I only have 10 loyal readers, and the rest of are one-time visitors that Google coughs up from the vast Internet sea on a daily basis. It’s a mystery to me, but welcome (back) one and all. You’re just in time to celebrate the one year anniversary of this blog: the first entry was July 23rd, 2004.

MCO 2005

I'm leaving for New York for 9 days early tomorrow morning, to help my dearest mommy move from the house I grew up in to an assisted living retirement community on the Hudson River. I am very happy to be able to ease her through this way-stressful passage, and to be able to catch up with a friend or two back there as well

Blogging will be hit or miss until then. I'm not under the delusion that any of my audience will go into some sort of withdrawal, (Cold Markey?) but I do fear what all bloggers fear, that I will be completely forgotten and lose all my readers. Well, there is nothing to do about that but get over it. (We've tried to get my Mom on line for years, nothing doing).

All my laundry and filing is done, so I am going to pack and clean tonight, and take Gaza this afternoon to where he shall be enjoying an air conditioned vacation for the duration. Well-timed, due to the heat wave that seems to be upon us. I hope he doesn't forget me either, he's staying with his Uncle Mike, who is pretty damn cute. In fact, I may be going to see Fantastic Four with him this afternoon. Not my usual kind of flic, but the human torch is even cuter than Mike.

I'm suffering a bit less from the sense of the freefloating anxiety that seems to have been my cross to bear of late. Since it's seems I'm bereft of any excellent wise tidbit for this fin d'avant-vacances entry, I will share a "Just For Today" that I got this morning that was very helpful to me:

We were trapped by our need for the instant gratification that drugs gave us."

Basic Text, pp.24-25

"I want what I want, and I want it now!" That's about as patient as most of us ever got in our active addiction. The obsession and compulsion of our disease gave us a "one-track" way of thinking; when we wanted something, that's all we thought about. And the drugs we took taught us that instant gratification was never more than a dose away. It's no wonder that most of us came to Narcotics Anonymous with next to no patience.

The problem is, we can't always get what we want whenever we want it. Some of our wishes are pure fantasy; if we think about it, we'll realize we have no reason to believe those wishes will be fulfilled in our lifetimes. We probably can't even fulfill all our realistic desires; we certainly can't fulfill them all at once. In order to acquire or achieve some things, we will have to sacrifice others.

In our addiction we sought instant gratification, squandering our resources. In recovery we must learn to prioritize, sometimes denying the gratification of some desires in order to fulfill more important long-term goals. To do so requires patience. To find that patience, we practice our program of recovery, seeking the kind of full-bodied spiritual awakening that will allow us to live and enjoy life on life's terms.

Just for today: Higher Power, help me discover what's most important in my life. Help me learn patience, so that I can devote my resources to the important things.

Lastly, my friend Rik died in hospice in Maryland yesterday. Say a little prayer for his soul.

MCO 2005

I’ve been trying to figure out why a mere 90-minute hike with the dog can send me into a 3 ½ hour nap. Perhaps 45 minutes of that nap can be attributed to genuine fatigue, but I’m quite certain the rest is a form of escape. The question is: what the hell am I trying to escape from? I lead the very life I only dared dream about just a year ago, a life in which I can pretty much spend my time as I wish. Supposedly, that means writing as much as I want, spending time with friends, my dog, and occasionally (admittedly, too occasionally) a member of the same sex.

Why do I have such a helluva time getting and staying motivated? Truth be told, I think it’s going to take some time to accept—not just intellectually, but in my bones—that I can no longer avail myself of any dopamine-inducing artificial help in life. The past few years (pre-incarceration) were not unlike surfing everyday. Ultimately unsustainable, but I got used to the unrelenting exhilaration. This sobriety thing is like a marathon swim. You get a lot farther than you do on a surfboard, but it doesn’t feel that way, because the adrenalin is doled out in a slow drip.

In prison, I compared myself to my fellow inmates. It was not hard to feel relatively accomplished, if not morally superior, given where we both were. Out here, I compare myself to, say, Oprah. Grandiose, I know, but frankly, I had a lot more advantages than she ever did growing up, yet she makes my yearly income in about 8 minutes, not to mention reaches half the hemisphere.

I don’t know where this comes from, but a powerfully self-critical voice whispers to me daily that the real reason I’m where I’m at instead of where’s she’s at has nothing to do with a history of AIDS and addiction. It tells me that it's because I’m just plain shiftless and lazy.

I think that’s the voice I sleep to escape.

MCO 2005

I’ve noticed that I haven’t written one poem since I got out of prison. And yet the poems I wrote while using, and those written in prison, seem to me to stand up quite well. In fact, the ones I wrote on drugs are the best I’ve ever written. I don’t know what this means, if it means anything at all. I do wonder about the link between intoxication and creativity. I wonder if any studies have been done on the comparative output of artists pre- and post- sobriety. This anonymity business has some serious drawbacks.

I had iced tea with a potential mentor yesterday, and decided after I return from New York, I am going to volunteer at KCRW, one of the local Public Radio stations. He told me they often hire from volunteers who have proved their competence, and I’ve always done quite well in office situations. I would love to work in radio, in either a producing and/or performing capacity (eventually), and I certainly think many of my pieces would work very well in that medium.

Meanwhile I have nights where I dream dreams that literally ache with possibility. I feel so on the verge of big things. I must stay focused, disciplined and flexible. And keep turning fear into faith.

MCO 2005

No, I was not offered $1000 for my artwork.

No, I was not attacked by coyotes and interviewed by Katie Couric.

No, I did not get high off of a Diet Coke.

No, I was not wooed by an ex-boyfriend.

Yes, I did unknowingly leave the house with boots from two separate pairs on my feet.

MCO 2005

In contrast to my flights of fancy, something real and weird did happen while I was at the computer. An artwork of mine which I had professionally framed a few years ago just slid right off the wall and onto the couch below it. Thankfully, I was not sitting there, though I doubt it would have hurt me. Even more importantly, Gaza was on the bed, not on the couch where he often lays. It could have easily hurt him, at the very least, scared him off the couch forever.

Why do freak accidents happen to some people, and not to others? Is it karma? Or is it all completely arbitrary? Why does the universe or God or whatever seem to genuinely miraculously intervene sometimes, and other times let so many fervent, deserving prayers go unanswered? I know these questions are as old as the planet, and I'm not asking anything new, but I've been bugged about it ever since this Congolese woman on Oprah spoke of praying to God that the mass rape would stop, and instead the soldiers forced her son to do unspeakable things to her and then shot him.

Where the hell was God then?

MCO 2005

Guess Which One of this These Stories is True

Something interesting always happens when I walk the dog. Like last week I'm returning to the apartment with Gaza, and a man asks me if I live here. When I'm reluctant to answer, he tells me he‘s a location scout, looking for just the right apartment in this neighborhood to film in. So I take a chance and show him mine, and he says it’s too small, but he loves one of my artworks, and can he rent it for the set? I say sure and he hands me $1000.

Then a few nights later, I spy a stray dog across the street, but with a suspiciously fluffy tail, moving very fast toward me and Gaza. I suddenly realize he is not alone, and is being followed by others who look just like him. They are coyotes, and they are on the attack. Gaza and I have no time to flee. We fight bravely, before I pass out from the loss of blood. When I wake up in the hospital, Katie Couric wants to interview me, but all I can do is ask whether my dog is okay. Gaza asks the same about me. Katie loves it.

Then three days later, I pass a house where a party is going on. One of the guests is outside in the yard, smoking a cigarette, and asks about the bandages on my dog. I tell him the story of the coyotes and he motions us inside the gate and into the house. “You gotta hear this!” he calls out to everybody, handing me a Diet Coke. I tell the coyote story, and they are rapt. I drink the soda, and it inexplicably warms me and gets me high, but there is no alcohol in it. I am very funny and tell more stories, and when I finally leave, I am completely sober.

Then the day before yesterday, a man I used to be in love with sees me from his car and pulls over. He tells me he can’t believe he’s run into me, because he’s been thinking about me all day. He doesn’t understand why it’s taken him so long, but he’s finally realized he wants to be with me. I tell him he only wants me now because I’ve fallen out of love with him, and he wants what he can’t have. I tell him if we got together, he would lose interest very soon. Dejected, he returns to his car. We both go home and cry, him because he knows I am telling the truth about his feelings, and me because I know I am lying about mine.

Then this very morning I am walking up Harvard to Franklin, and I happen to look at my footwear. I don't know if it was because I was watching The View while I was pulling out a pair to wear and putting them on, but I actually managed to put on a right and a left boot from two different pairs without noticing. They are both hiking boots, but distinct in style and shades of light and dark brown by any measure.

I burst out laughing, tempted to share my literal faux pas with a passerby, but I figure I look stupid enough gasping and giggling to myself on the sidewalk for no apparent reason as it is, much less pointing out my developmentally challenged new fashion to a complete stranger.

MCO 2005

Today, like everybody else, I am horrified by the bombings in London, and worried about some good family friends we have there.

It seems that the poem I posted yesterday is as a propos as ever. I feel like such a wide-eyed innocent child asking this, but why oh why are people so cruel to each other?

In a way, the presence of evil is proof of the existence of God. Because if evil is the absence of God, than good would mean God’s presence, and we know there is good, don’t we?

If God exists, does it matter if we believe in him or not? More to the point, if we believe in God, is it our faith that creates the good? If he doesn’t exist but we still believe that he does, does it matter whether or not he actually exists? Since we can’t really prove that he does, should we just believe because our lives seem to work better when we do?

I think I’m moving close to that paradox of choosing to believe in God, even though, objectively, I don’t really believe he’s there. I think the act of having faith may be well independent of having faith IN something.

MCO 2004

That last entry is kind of a downer, so I added this for comic relief.

Sometimes I think that I am destined to return to a core belief (or disbelief) that I arrived at at age nine. That was when I discovered a set of books my father had in the basement, “A Pictorial History of World War II.” There was a photo for every day of the war, and I worked my way with fascination through each of the six volumes, being the child whose ears had pricked up since the first time I had understood that my mother lived through the war in France.

I was five when I determined that Santa Claus could not be real because there were no chimneys in Africa. I was 7 or 8 when I rejected the story of Genesis and the entire Bible, as I could not get an adult to satisfactorily explain how if Adam and Eve had Cain and Abel, Cain and Abel had children. So you can well imagine that I already had my doubts about the existence of God when I came to the pages in the Pictorial History that dealt with the concentration camps. In my already Cartesian mind, I could only draw a few logical conclusions from which to choose. Either 1) God existed, and was powerful, but unimaginably cruel, i.e., not worthy of “worship,” 2) God existed, but was irrelevant, because he could not prevent unimaginable cruelty 3) God did not exist.

I chose option #3.

No matter how close I seem to come to an experience of faith with my experience of the 12 steps, I have to be honest that I don’t know whether that conclusion arrived at so many years ago has substantially changed. At least by dint of mathematical logic alone, I can say that many individuals are more powerful than one individual, hence, for the purposes of sobriety, I can depend on the collective “higher power” of the many individuals in the rooms of A.A.

So I’m going through this crisis of faith, and turn on Oprah, who’s doing a chilling episode on the hell that is the Congo. Four million estimated dead in the past decade, and the mass use of rape as torture on an unimaginable scale. Sort of reinforced my angst-filled skepticism, to put it mildly. If there is a God, where the hell is he?

I asked the same question when I wrote “April in Bethlehem,” (below) at the time that the Palestinians and Israelis were engaged in a prolonged shootout there several years ago. I think, at heart, the closest I may ever get to an expression of the Divine is the creation of art. So I write. And so I don’t feel completely lame, I’m going to contribute some money to save women in the Congo at Oprah.Com.

MCO 2005

The pool party yesterday was amazing. I swear, some of the best-looking, best-built men in LA are sober. But for some reason, none of them have realized yet that they are madly in love with me. What’s up with that?

Today I was supposed to work in the law office, but the gig was cancelled. I was relieved for Gaza, because I really didn’t want to leave him alone all day, but I was disappointed for me, as I could use the bucks and the sense of purpose.

Three skilled editor-type friends are now reading the draft of the blog/book. When they have finished I will try to incorporate their changes and suggestions. Meanwhile, I find it extraordinarily hard to get committed to any new project, and I’m not even sure if I should get distracted by one. So I’m slowly going through a box of stuff I got back from my brother, and may post some of that old work.

If I’d stayed in AA back in 1985, when I first tried it, I would have 20 years sober today. On the one hand, I don’t regret anything. On the other hand, I can’t help wondering if I had taken that route, whether I wouldn’t be an accomplished author with several published books or plays under my belt by now. Oh well, there is no proof anything could have happened any differently than the way it did.

Often, though, I do feel like I’ve switched places with an evil twin who stolen my “real” life. He now lives in New York in my gorgeous apartment with my wealthy, successful lover of several years duration. They throw great dinner parties when he’s not rehearsing my latest production, or an a book tour—in Paris. Of course since this evil twin has taken over my life, he’s starting to wreck it—fighting with the boyfriend, delivering bad rewrites, and drinking too much. By the time I get my life back, he’ll probably have ruined it. I guess my best bet is to continue redeeming his.

I may have just mapped out my next screenplay.

MCO 2005

For the 2 or 3 of you who have not spent hours slavishly reading every poem on my website, I thought I'd bring one of the more appropriate entries, given the date, to you.

Nothing dramatic to report on this end. I saw "Revenge of the Sith" yesterday. It was pretty much all amazing art direction, production design and special effects. There is nothing that can be imagined that cannot be put on the screen now.

I also saw a TV show on PBS, "Between the Lines" that is basically a book discussion. The host was interviewing Alison Armstrong about her book "Keys to the Kingdom," which I had heard nothing about, but which is a discussion of the passages in a man's life.

It would seem that I am in the tunnel from Prince to King--I think. (All men go through the stages of Page, Knight, Prince and King--at least those that make it though that last tunnel.) Interesting stuff, particularly for frustrated wives trying to understand their husbands.

MCO 2005

“War of the Worlds” was indeed impressive. Tom Cruise wasn’t terribly believable as a dockworker ex-husband to a Boston old money type, but all that was so peripheral to the main story that it was a very minor annoyance. The daughter, Dakota Fanning, is a complete natural, a new Drew Barrymore is born. But those aliens and their tripods really steal the show, as well as the special effects. Phenomenal. But edgy and dark and apocalyptic. No wise-cracking Will Smith-style antics, just terror and survival.

Afterwards I came home to the second in a series of exchanges I am having with a very nice guy facing 90 days in County Jail (he’ll probably do 9 days) who needs some reassurance that he’ll get through the experience and how to do that. Of course I’m trying to do just that as best I can. I’m actually glad to know that at times the blog can serve as more than just so much self-indulgence on my part.

I also had time to walk the dog, eat something, and head back out to go dancing again. The time, but not the oomph. I stayed put. To be honest, it seems completely bizarre to me that millions of “normies” approach such an evening every Saturday night without having to have a cocktail or a bump (or two) to “get in the mood,” and completely logical that millions of people do exactly just that before they go out, as part of their preparation to go out.

Of course that is no longer an option for me. And I’m glad to say that once I’m actually in a social occasion, be it a bar, a party, or a date, that I function pretty comfortably sober. It’s the getting in the mood part I find so difficult, engaging in that dressing, driving, and parking process. It’s so much more of a chore.

But to play the tape through, I always woke up with a hangover after a evening that started out with “just a few” cocktails or bumps. Now I just wake up. Can’t say I’m bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, singing “oh, joy!” but at least I’m not dry-mouthed and throb-headed, trying to remember exactly what I said to whom and whether I had a good time. One shouldn’t have to struggle to remember such things.

On a completely different note, can you imagine the vetting process anyone nominated to replace Sandra (“The Day After”) O’Connor will have to go through? The Repubs can’t risk for there to be the slightest speck of dirt on him or her for the Dems to dig up. They’ll be interviewing the cleaning ladies’ cleaning ladies!

MCO 2005

Last night I was treated to a last minute ticket for “I Am My Own Wife,” a Pulitzer-Prize winning one-man show that was the one show on my gotta-see-can’t-afford list. Thank you Andrea and Hunter. It was marvelous, fascinating and utterly artisically inspiring. It inched me closer to starting work on my own one-man show, a sort of “Je Suis Ma Propre Mere” (“I Am My Own Mother”) starring me because I’m the only one who can imitate my mother flawlessly. (Although it might prove an excellent vehicle for Jefferson Mays, the actor I saw last night. He was extraordinary, inhabiting the personas of the main character and a dozen others flawlessly).

I am wrestling with the usual (for me) existential angst over issues like what constitutes happiness and how one should best spend one’s time. For the moment I’m about to take Gaza to Griffith Park, then perhaps drop by at a friend’s, followed by an inevitable nap, rounded off with going to see “War of the Worlds” at Grauman’s Chinese Theater, which is as ground zero as it gets for this kind of thing and normally something I don’t do ever (at least not since I saw “Titanic” there on opening night some time late in the last century, when I was young). But hell, it’s Fourth of July, and I do live close by, why not jouer le touriste once in a while?

Afterward, a dance club having an HIV+ party may see my butt. I need to flirt and dance, dammit. Plus, Church is tomorrow, shouldn’t I do something to request absolution for tonight? (Actually, with this Church, I’m quite sure I have their blessing in advance to do almost anything, as long as I don’t drink or drug, which I won’t.)

MCO 2005

I found out an ex-client of mine was killed in a confrontation with police last night, right up the street from where I used to live. He went after a deputy with a knife, and was shot.

There are users who never get psychotic or paranoid, and users who always do. I was one of the former types, Bruce was one of the latter. In fact, I had cut him off because he clearly couldn't handle the effects of his consumption. When I finally got sober, I was glad to run into him in the anonymous rooms, but he clearly was having trouble getting some sober time together. I found out this had been going on for years, and accounted for why I would not see him for stretches of time both back when I was dealing, and then when I got sober, though opposite causes explained his absences in each case.

His death reminded me once again how serious is the disease of addiction, whether to alcohol or drugs or both. Sometimes it is the substance itself which kills, as with cirrhosis or overdoses, sometimes it is what occurs peripherally because of the effects of frequent intoxication. For example, I also found out today that two other acquaintances who I knew quite well through my ex-roommate are increasingly ill with AIDS. One is in a hospice, close to death. Both were notorious for being non-compliant with their drug regimens because of their crystal use. Both I firmly believe would not be dying if they'd gotten sober. (Both myself and my ex-roommate tried to gently encourage it. We met brick walls of resistance to the idea.)

I can't tell you how much I resist taking a pro-temperance stance. One of the symptoms of my own disease is to still think of sobriety as uncool, symptomatic of a life half-lived, the choice of boring people afraid of passion and intensity. Part of me is still very attracted to all sort of scenarios: wine-soaked dinner parties, meth-fueled orgies, writing while sipping a stiff vodka. I'm actually grateful to have done it all, and view my trajectory as fairly inevitable. If I'd tried to avoid it in the first place I'm quite sure I would have felt absolutely compelled to break away and experiment. Woe be to the parent noticing budding alcoholism in a son or daughter. There isn't much to do, frankly, except wait until they hit bottom and hope the ride there isn't too destructive.

I don't know where this impulse to excess in some comes from, but it is quite real, and quite powerful. And it's no joke. As poor Bruce attests, it can be deadly serious.

MCO 2005