Resist, by Pat Gourley

In one of my recent meanderings through Facebook, which sadly has become something I do multiple times a day, I happened on the following little ditty posted and credited to a web site named sun-gazing.com:

“I’m too old for this shit

I’m too tired for this shit

I’m too sober for this shit

I don’t have time for this shit”

sun-gazing.com

My initial reaction was that this was a funny and perhaps poignant statement from someone on the current state of America and the seemingly endless political nightmare we find ourselves in. Something though slowly began to bother me, especially the last line: “I don’t have time for this shit”.  I decided to check the web site and clicked on their “About Us” page, where right at the top was the following sentence:  “The Sun Gazing Community was born out of a growing awareness that suffering is an optional state of being”.

Let me go on record calling “bullshit” on this unexamined bromide and suggest that perhaps the authors have gazed at the sun a bit too long or have way to much privilege coming out of their ass. There is no way I can distort the image of this little boy’s suffering into an “optional” choice on his part or even perhaps more perverted “God’s will”

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/22/world/middleeast/syria-omran-photo-children.html?_r=0

The above statement that suffering is something that is optional to me smacks of smug privilege. In looking at my own attempts to ‘resist’ the Trump regime I need to carefully “resist” personally falling into the trap of complacence. I have my Social Security and Medicare and enjoy many of the benefits that seem to effortlessly fall on many white males in America even many of us queer ones.

Can I just sit this out for four years of Trump with the perhaps sad realization that my life may not change much at all? Is it enough to assuage my conscience, as last Saturday night’s Louis C.K. SNL skit pointed out, by sitting on the couch and posting and sharing anti-Trump memes on Facebook or adding Black Lives Matter to my profile? The obvious answer in this great piece of satire is that it certainly doesn’t cover one’s sad attempt at ‘resisting’.

One of the things you sometimes hear these days is “we survived Nixon and Reagan and we will survive Trump too”. I have a couple observations on that statement. It may not apply to the 55,000 Americans that died in Vietnam to say nothing of the millions of S.E Asian lives lost during the Nixon presidency. And it behooves us to remember how gay men fared during the Reagan years. This is poignantly brought home in this photo of the small handful of members of the San Francisco Gay men’s Chorus who survived the worst years of the AIDS epidemic in that City.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10154952908052457&set=a.480735837456.252618.518017456&type=3&theater

Even if I personally may get by the next four years relatively unscathed many will not. My personal call to resist needs action to go with it or it is just self-indulgent masturbation. This was brought home to me very directly with a sign I saw at the Women’s March in San Francisco this last January, it was being carried by a frail and very elderly women and read: “I can’t believe I still have to protest this shit”. A much different sentiment than “I don’t have time for this shit” don’t you think.

© 10 Apr 2017 

About the Author 

I was born in La Porte Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

Pain, Wisdom Teeth, and Westchmerz, by Louis

The two parts to my essay are (a) physical pain and (b) Welstschmerz.

(a)            Back in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, I was having trouble with my four wisdom teeth. The wisdom tooth pressing up against its neighboring tooth caused extreme pain. The first wisdom tooth extraction (Upper right) went rather well. A dentist got it out. The second wisdom tooth (lower right) was more complicated so I had to go to Flushing Hospital.

The wisdom tooth resisted being extracted by the dental surgeon’s first attempt, and he used a reasonably sized pliers. But as the wisdom tooth resisted, the pain increased dramatically, and the dental surgeon kept choosing larger and larger pliers. The last pair of pliers was quite enormous and resembled a medieval torture instrument. For about a week after that, I just stayed drunk, and I rinsed my mouth with whisky which is not only a good antiseptic, it helped deaden the pain.

A month or two after that, my two left wisdom teeth were pressing up against their neighboring teeth. The pain was excruciating. So I chose an oral surgeon or rather an oral surgery team.

I lay down on a gurney, they gave me phenobarbital, and I went into a semi-dream state, but I was still awake, and I was aware of the surgeon and the three or four nurses assisting him who were hovering over me. They extracted both wisdom teeth with surgery rather than yanking them out with pliers. Everything went smoothly, I felt no pain, and the subsequent recuperation period had some pain but it was minimal.

So, if you need to have more than one tooth extracted at a time, choose oral surgery. Phenobarbital was wonderful. You get anesthetized, but your body does not feel threatened as with ether or other anesthesias. And you are still actually awake.

(b)            The other type of pain I have experienced is Weltschmerz or “World pain,” defined in Webster’s Dictionary as “sentimental pessimism or melancholy over the state of the world”:

(1)            JFK got assassinated. That trauma was painful, but we discussed that already.

(2)            The twin towers came down on 9/11/2001. But of course we already discussed that trauma as well.

(3)            President Nixon ordered the invasion of Cambodia on May 8, 1970. I remember the protests in this country were swift and enormous. I tried to go to a protest demonstration in Washington, D. C., but there were just too many protesters. Our bus had to stop somewhere in the outskirts of Washington, D. C., so we just sat there; some of the passengers had guitars so we made the best of it by singing peace songs and Beatles’ songs. It was fun. But the invasion itself was traumatic and caused a lot of people Weltschmerz.

(4)               January 30, 1968 was the date of the Tet Offensive. That was when we realized that, actually the Communists whooped us. On April 30, 1975, the U. S. withdrew from Vietnam. Pictures of the “fall” of Saigon were quite traumatic. I felt more Weltschmerz.

(5)            The death of our two friends, Steve and Randy.

On a less serious note, the French language has two interesting tongue twisters, that is le vire-langue (rarely used):

(a)            Ton thé, t’ôte-t-il ta toux? Does your tea get rid of your cough?

(b)         La reine Didon dîna, dit-on, d’un dos dodu d’un dodu dindon. The Queen of Carthage dined, they say, on the fat back of a fat turkey.

Of course, Dido (Didon) was not actually a queen, she was a princess, though she did run ancient Carthage.

© 14 Sep 2017  

About the Author  

 I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City, Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA's. I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.

                                       

Where I Was in the 60's by Louis

If you ask young people today what they know about the 1960’s, some say the Beatles. Most are not aware what a traumatic decade that was. As the war in Vietnam raged on and on and on, pacifism and isolationism became more and more popular. The main problem with the 60’s was the American people went left while the government went right. There was a sort of  blow-up. The 1960’s saw the blacks standing up and demanding their rights, and then there were the riots. And then there were our riots that went on 3 days, the Stonewall riots, that started on June 28, 1969. We must not forget either the assassination of President Kennedy. (You were John Kennedy Jr.’s neighbor).

The only other traumatic event that compares with the assassination of President Kennedy was the blowing up of the Twin Towers. In both events, I think it is safe to say we all felt personally threatened. I was an eye-witness to the blowing up of the twin towers. I was on my way to work. I had to take a bus to get to the Long Island Railroad stop that I took to get to work. On the bus route is a swampy area with very low buildings that would enable the bus passenger to get a good view of the twin towers. I saw smoke billowing out of the towers, and I wondered what that was all about. When I got to the Long Island Railroad stop in Flushing, I was told there was no service into Manhattan. Later I would know why. So I tried the subway. I went a few stops to 61^st Street. The train stopped and the conductor said the train was not going any further since the train was not permitted to enter Manhattan.

Where were you when President John F. Kennedy was shot? I remember I was on my way to swimming class in the Queens College gym. I never got as far as the gym. A fellow student told me the President had been shot. Next to the Queens College gym, that resembled an airplane hangar, was a parking lot. The students with the cars turned on their car radios and let passers-by listen. I listened and was horrified. Jack Kennedy was handsome, well-educated, intelligent, well-spoken. Jacqueline Kennedy was beautiful, soft-spoken, pretty much a perfect first lady. Remember how she remodeled the White House? The whole world was dazzled. I was dazzled, and John Kennedy convinced me that the USA would lead the world into a better place, that human progress was going to continue. Our nasty right-wing neighbors in Dallas, Texas had other ideas. Then Nixon got elected, and hope died, and it has been downhill ever since, let’s face it.  

My visit to the draft-board in lower Manhattan, on Whitehall Street: I had to go for my physical. When the army doctor examined me, I told him I was a homosexual, and I was pretty sure the U. S. military, for their reasons, did not want homosexual men, I guess. So I asked to be excused on that basis though I requested they do not write that down in my record. Whether they wrote that down or not, I do not know. I did not show up in a gown, and I did not paint my fingernails red, nothing like that. I got a 1-Y classification because I wore glasses. My brother went through a long drawn-out rigmarole application process as a conscientious objector. They ultimately denied his application for status as a conscientious objector but they gave him a 1-Y classification. Much has been made of student deferments in those days. Both I and my wannabe conscientious objector brother were attending college, but we never received a student deferment. Go figure. 1-Y meant we would not be drafted unless there was a national emergency. I guess the Vietnam War was not considered a national emergency for some unfathomable reason. Two of my other brothers got 1-Y classifications. My oldest brother was in the Air Force, a major or something; he got out when the Vietnam War was getting a little too hot.

© 19 May 2014

About the Author  

I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City, Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA's. I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.