My dearest love, my absolute dearest love, I am sorry. I am sorry for abandoning you, sorry that these last weeks have been wrought with anger and focused on my selfishness. You are right of course; I am totally being selfish. But you were wrong about my feelings, Alex. You have always been my everything: my lover, my closest friend, the family who would never abandon me. And now I am abandoning you. I am so desperately sorry, darling.

The only thing I am afraid of now is that you will assume I didn’t love you with the depth and passion that I have always felt for you. I am terrified that my leaving now means just that. It hurts me. It literally hurts me, my stomach clenched, my mouth dry. It hurts more than the loss of my parents and brother when they cut me out of their lives. You have cared for me and loved me in ways I never imagined possible, and I have always loved you with every little bit of myself. I am afraid that every bit of me is simply not enough.

I am sure you are thinking that if I really felt this way I would be with you right now, that I wouldn’t have left you alone. I am sorry that I am so weak, my body so broken. I am sorry that I cannot take anymore. I am dying too slowly, poisoned so painfully by these drugs that could keep me alive indefinitely. It is humiliating, no matter your claims that cleaning me up with painstaking care is an honor, when I can’t even move my head to that goddamned bucket.

My darling Alex, I cannot, have never been able to express my frustration to you. I guess I feel too guilty, too selfish. Here you are taking such very good care of me, ignoring your own illness. You don’t even stop when you get sick yourself. But I am frustrated. I can hardly think anymore. I can’t really work anymore. It has taken me nearly three weeks just to write this letter. The other day, when I was thinking about my hateful fucking brother, I was horrified to realize that I couldn’t remember his goddamned name.

My body has betrayed me, my mind has betrayed me, and I am tired, ever so tired. I have tried to accept it, tried to accept your need to care for me no matter how bad it gets. I have tried and failed. It isn’t really the failure of my body. I could deal with the pain for you; I am almost certain I could. But I don’t want to forget any more. My memories are too precious to lose.

I keep thinking about the evening we first met. Poor dear Steven, he knew you two were over the moment he introduced us. He has always been such a wonderful friend, and it was never so evident than that moment, when with his characteristic good nature he smiled at us and told you it was wonderful while it lasted and then walked away. I keep thinking about talking with you until well into the next morning, when we were too exhausted to continue, and waking up in the afternoon to your kisses. That first week, pent up in my house, was so incredible. I almost decided to break a contract for the script I was supposed to be writing, because I never wanted it to end.

I hope that you know that you are the sort of man I used to wished I could be. You are so big and powerful, even as HIV and the HIV drugs ravage your body. I remember the first time you picked me up and carried me to bed, after I fell asleep in front of the television. I woke up to the feeling of being enveloped in your arms, pressed hard against your body as you carried me as though I was merely a child. I was aroused. I remember the tightness of my cock constricted by my pants. But what I remember most clearly was feeling that I was safe. For the first time since my parents and then my brother disowned me, I felt secure and cared for.

I love how you were so tender with me as I started to cry, afraid you had hurt me. You were unbelievably beautiful as I looked into your eyes through my tears. The love reflected in them when I whispered, “I love you” with awe was almost too much. I was overwhelmed by the increasing intensity of my feelings. I felt at first like I could never love more intensely than that, but I did, so much so that it was actually painful. It’s funny, but the pain I feel now is eased a little, as I think about lying there with you. I remember that we tried to make love, our bodies mistaking our emotions for arousal. But just holding you there, completely enveloped by your arms and your body was better than any sex could ever be.

As I sit here eleven years later, I am amazed as I have always been that I love you even more now than I did that night. I shudder to think what it might be like, were we to have another eleven years, or thirty or more. I couldn’t comprehend loving you any more deeply then, and I cannot imagine it now. I am desperately sorry that we will never find out. Yet for all we might have had, given more time, what we have had already was more than I ever imagined possible, more still than my most wondrous dreams.

You were so wonderful to me when my father died. I hated him for abandoning me, for hating me. I hadn’t even spoken to him in more than eighteen years. I was shocked to find myself grieving for this asshole who had promised, promised to love me no matter what and who then proved himself a liar–unable to love or accept a queer son. You were my strength then, as you have been for so much of our time together. You convinced me to see my mother again and were there to support me when we met with her. I think my mother understood then, as you held me while I read the letter my father had left for me, begging me for forgiveness. It wasn’t enough. Her understanding, his letter–they simply weren’t enough. It was too late for forgiveness. And you were there for me, as I finally and truly grieved for the loss of my family.

I thought that I was over it, that I had been over it for years. I didn’t realize until that moment, sitting there with you, my mother and my father’s letter, that eighteen years of rage had blocked my grief. I think that was when I was first able to grieve for my diagnosis, back when AIDS was still a death sentence, for the same reason. You carried me then, like you had carried me to bed that beautiful night, like you had so many times before and have so many times since. I love knowing you will carry me to the end.

I cannot take this, this losing myself. It is like my memories are mostly still there, but everything is jumbled. I could almost tolerate the indignity of losing control of my bodily functions, I could never suffer true humiliation with you. But my memories are getting all mixed up, and I am afraid of what is already being lost in the confusion. I am far more afraid of losing the life we have shared than I am of oblivion. It keeps getting worse. I keep trying to remember what we ate for dinner last night, and I cannot find even a hint. I am also trying to remember what color your tux was when we officiated our relationship, and I can’t fucking remember.

I do remember how I felt though. Knowing that our familial bond was recognized by the state, that our legal rights were protected by law. It wasn’t called marriage, but fuck marriage anyways. What we have is better than most marriages. What mattered most to me, was knowing that if I died before you, you wouldn’t have any problems with the family that abandoned me. You deserve everything I have on the merit of your love for me alone. You also deserve it all because you gave up your career and your other interests to care for me when it started getting bad. You kept claiming that you would eventually have to anyways, but you were infected late enough that the drugs prevented you getting as badly off as me. It isn’t perfect, but you could have continued working indefinitely.

Instead, you gave that all up for me. The least I could do was to make sure that what I have left will care for you for the rest of your life. And it was beautiful, wasn’t it? You and me, Steven and Garry, Kaylee and Mica–all of us standing together, done up like the Beautiful People, while the magistrate took us through the civil commitment. Fuck, why can’t I remember your tux? I remember Mica’s gorgeous dress. I remember Kaylee and Steven’s tuxes. But I can’t remember yours. I do so wish I could let you carry me further, but I cannot live with losing our life.

I remember middle school more clearly than I do portions of our life. How sick is that? I remember being the faggot who got beat up all the time better than I remember much of our time together. I can’t go on like that, knowing that I will forget us before I forget my childhood and those people who abandoned me.

I am sorry you’re so angry with me and I am more sorry that I have been so cruel to you. I keep saying I am not afraid to die. I even think I mean it sometimes. But the truth is that I am a coward, choosing the option that is less terrifying. I don’t want to die, knowing that this is it–that it is most likely that this life is all there is of me. I mean, I will live on in you and my work will probably last even longer. But for me, this is it; this is the end. I am angry that I was so fucking stupid, that you were so fucking stupid. I am angry that we get to have this and only this. I am angry that we won’t grow old together, to discover how much deeper, how much greater this love could grow.

And I am angry that I am losing so much. I will never finish what might have been my best screenplay. I have tried and tried and I just can’t keep it all straight–can’t even keep my goddamned notes straight. I forgot the name of Steven’s current partner. I spent the entire evening they were here last week absolutely mortified and trying to avoid letting on I had forgotten his fucking name. I am angry and terrified of the important things I might have already lost. I am also angry that I can hardly even tell if I need to pee anymore and can barely control it when I am able to notice. I am horrified that I can’t make love to you anymore.

I wish so desperately that I could feel your mouth engulfing me, as I take your cock deep in my throat. I wish that just one more time, I could feel myself enter you–your back pressed against my chest, your body arching as I grow harder just before I explode inside you. I wish ever so badly that we could lay blissfully there in our bed, bodies spent, naked and sweaty. Maybe we will try for one last time tonight, our last chance. I am not sure how my body will react or even if my body even can react. I have been very angry that this has been stolen from us and scared that you would start to resent me and the weakness that has made sex so difficult.

I have been so angry, so scared, and I have been taking it out on you. You, in turn, have been angry and scared and have been well within your rights to take it out on me, as my decision has been the entire cause of it. I am most sorry that I didn’t take you to the doctor for my first appointment. I am sorry that I hid it from you, until I asked you to come with me to see the psychologist. I tried, my darling Alex, I truly tried to tell you. I tried to tell you when I had decided it was time. I tried to tell you, to ask you to join me for the first appointments. I even tried to tell you when we were on the way to see the psychologist. I just couldn’t. I knew it would hurt you, and I was afraid of what it would do to us. I think I even knew that not telling you would make it worse, but I just couldn’t get the words to come out.

I wish I could take back the cruel things I have said, every cruel thing I have said to you over the last eleven years. But I especially wish I could take back all of my anger of the last five weeks. It wasn’t you and shouldn’t have been thrown at you. I need you to know that I love you now, more than I have ever loved you. I can barely contain it and wish I could just die of it, if such a thing is even possible. As weak as I have become, I am not so sure it isn’t. I am sorry that I have hurt you so, when I know that my decision alone was cruel enough. Please my love, please don’t remember my anger and fear. Remember the evening we met. Remember the joy you brought into my life and the wonderful times we spent together.

I know that you are still angry and hurt and afraid. I have betrayed you here at the end. I cannot thank you enough for choosing to carry me again, just a few more steps, but what steps they are. I hate myself for putting you through this, but I can’t die alone, and no matter who might be here for me, without you I am alone. It is this need for you that makes me understand how cruel I really am. Yet I will be cruel to the end. I need to feel your arms around me. I need to feel your body as you hold me against you. I need to feel your tears on my cheek. Most of all, I need your face to be the last thing I see, before I slip away forever.

Thank you, my dear, darling Alex,
Nicholas

I was born with allergic reactions to food. It was more than just one food that caused my reaction; there were several foods that would do me in. My reaction to the proteins that confused my immune system raised bright red bumps on my behind and on my legs. Occasional the hives would show on my arms, but only if the reaction was very strong. My mother, herself with many allergic contraindications to eating, needed to write very detailed lists for babysitters, for the parents of friends if I was eating over at their house, for grandparents, for schools, for just about anybody that would be in a position to offer food to me.

I was allergic to wheat gluten so I couldn’t eat anything made from flour unless it was a pure rye flour (most “rye” bread is blended with wheat flour). I could eat no eggs, no citrus except for tangerines, no chocolate and no dairy. I couldn’t drink milk, couldn’t eat cheese, couldn’t eat cake and couldn’t eat ice cream. I occasionally sneaked food that I wanted but wasn’t supposed to eat due to my allergies. I knew that I couldn’t hide my sin for long because my body would give me away in blotches. As a little kid, my “Scarlet A” represented not adultery but allergy. This all led to some funny stories at my expense, such as:

My sister Nancy was a perfectionist when it came to making toast and buttering it. The toast couldn’t be too dark, nor could it be too light. There could be no chunks of un-melted butter so it all needed to be perfectly spread on the bread. She spent more time prepping her buttered toast than actually eating it. One morning while getting ready for school she made her toast. I sat at the table like a cat waiting for her to finish and then turn away to pour herself a glass of milk. As soon as she turned and as soon as I knew that no one else was waiting, I snatched the toast from the counter and scurried into the hallway. I could overhear her panicked voice as she searched for her bread, enlisting both my mother and my other sister’s help.

On a hunch my mother came out into the hallway and found me, faced into a corner and munching away at the remainder of the toast. It was a heavenly meal, forbidden toast. Of course, Mom was angry at first but then burst out laughing at how cute it was for a five-year-old to be hurriedly munching a piece of toast knowing that it was something he wasn’t supposed to do. Toast, forbidden. How absurd.

In another incident, Mom had baked some bread. It was hot, and the flavor steamed out of it after Dad had cut a slice and left the remainder whole. I took a pinch of the warmy goodness from the center when there was no one else in the kitchen. Then another. I kept on taking small pieces until I realized that there was no way that I was not going to get caught at this one. So, I decided that if I was going to get caught anyway, I might as well make the it worth the punishment. I hollowed out the bread crust and turned the cut end to face the wall. I walked non-nonchalantly into the family room and started to watch television, waiting to hear the reaction when someone took a knife to a empty bread crust. I had a hard time suppressing my giggles as I waited.

Then, after a half hour, I heard my brother yell out, “What happened to the bread!” He was startled, I believe, when the bread collapsed under the knife. There were more incidents, but none so entertaining.

When I was ten, my parents took me to an allergy specialist to test what the extent of my allergies was. The doctor did some scratch tests, confirming all the things that I shouldn’t eat. There were no surprises, and the scratch tests had hurt so I really hadn’t seen the purpose of performing them. What I hadn’t known was that she had prescribed them because she was about to do some science. She wanted a baseline of my reactions, because she proposed a series of shots for me over a period of six weeks to try to counter my overactive immune system.

Rashes, hives and other allergic reactions are due to an imperfect immune system. Immunoglobin E (IgE) is what our glands produce to fend off unwelcome invaders, but a slight defect in the genes that determine the types of invaders to which it will respond will generate IgEs inappropriately to protect us, even though it is protecting us from stuff that doesn’t harm us otherwise.

I have not been able to find out what the specific drug she had prescribed turned out to be, and when I asked my parents, neither of them could remember the name of it. I believe it to have been a low-dose desensitization, which was being developed in England and tested in the United States at the time that I would have been that age:

The second kind of immunotherapy for food allergies is low dose immunotherapy. The first treatment of this type was enzyme potentiated desensitization (EPD) which was developed in England over 40 years ago and has been used around the world. It was used in the United States for about 10 years as part of a study conducted under an Investigational Review Board. An EPD shot contains a very minute amount of many allergens plus an enzyme which naturally occurs in the human body, beta-glucuronidase.

When the six-week course of one shot per week was complete, we returned to the specialist and she re-ran the scratch test for reactions. We waited for an hour, and none of the allergens tested positive for a reaction. The negative results were positive.

While I waited in the waiting room for my parents to finish the consultation, I wondered whether it meant I would be able to start eating everything that I wanted. My mother’s joy at the results showed on her face as she came to give me a big hug. “You are cured, Mike!” she told me, and squeezed me. Mom cried pretty easily, and I could feel her tears on my cheek. We sat and she explained to me that we would be introducing the foods into my diet one week at a time just to make sure, but that the doctor was sure that my nightmare was over.

I asked for a chocolate candy bar. A milk chocolate candy bar. Up until that point the only kind of “chocolate” candy I could eat was carob. If you’ve never had chocolate, carob is okay. If you have had chocolate, carob is horrible. While other kids drank chocolate milk, I drank powdered carob mixed in goat’s milk. My choice of drink with supper was water, because I could never get into the pure unaldulterated thrill of drinking powdered carob mixed in goat’s milk. Try it sometime and then call me when you get back from your excursion into Nirvana. Or not.

I ate chocolate, and then had a chocolate malt at a restaurant near to the clinic in Thief River Falls. It turned out to be the best day in my life, far better than the day my brother had gotten into trouble for threatening to “pound me.”

I have not been allergic to anything since then. No hay fever, no cedar fever, no food allergies. My body has learned to properly identify invaders while leaving alone what are allergens to other people. I was thinking of this when I read that allergies have been a problem for Stephanie these last few months, along with everything else that’s been going on. While I felt relief that allergies have not been a problem for me, I could certainly sympathize even though my symptoms were far different than what hers have been. When one has allergic reactions to substances that really have no business causing problems, it’s frustrating to realize that life isn’t fair.

Something else happened today that got me to thinking about allergies. I was helping my roommate/landlord to bag leaves after his son had spent the morning and early afternoon raking. While compacting a bag so that we could stuff more from the pile into the bag, a bee stung me. I felt a very sharp pain on my finger and looked down to see the insect protecting something from me (and I am not sure what it was, because bees rarely attack me). It hurt. It burned. I brushed the bee away and the pain increased.

It’s been at least twenty years since I was last stung, and I worried that I might have a reaction. I watched for my finger to swell for several minutes, and it didn’t. I found the tiny stinger and plucked it from my skin and then went back to work. I had no reaction other than the pain. I know people who wear Medical Alert tags with lifesaving instructions on what to do immediately after they have been stung, because their reactions are so severe that they will suffocate from a swelled neck and go into shock unless treated.

No, I am fortunate to have been treated by a specialist in Thief River Falls who had subscribed to be a an administering physician in a study to test the effectiveness of an allergy treatment. And I don’t know what the conclusions for the study were, but I wonder if my success had been one of the few that the study found and that is why the treatment was not made available to the general population. The treatment may not have been my cure, and perhaps the change in my immune systems response was a coincidence from which I draw a false correlation.

I feel lucky.

Never Asked

If Carla had ever asked, I’d have told her everything. I’d have told her about feeling invisible, about wishing someone would listen to me. I’d have confessed to resenting her success and how it made me feel even more insignificant.

I’d even have told her how strange it was seeing a married man. On one hand, I liked being part of our two-person conspiracy. It felt cozy, inclusive. I found I enjoyed sneaking around. The longer it went on, the bigger my thrill at keeping it a perfect secret. For once, I’d found an advantage to never being noticed.

On the other hand, I knew it was all illusion. No matter what a tingle I got in my toes (or anywhere else) when he looked in my eyes, there was only so much time for talking. It never seemed to be about me. And if I needed an ear to listen or a shoulder for leaning on while he wasn’t around, I couldn’t exactly call him at home.

I couldn’t call Carla either. For all she was supposed to be my best friend, she wasn’t very good at it. Calling her to talk was like going to the desert for a drink.

“Darling!” she’d always say, “How-are-you-you’ll-never-guess-who-I-saw-yesterday…” And off she’d run, with hardly a pause long enough for me to say, “Yes,” “No,” or “Wow.”

As exciting as Carla’s life was, it would be nice if she–if anyone–had been willing to listen to me talk. It would have been even nicer if anyone ever asked me just one little question about myself.

The detectives who waited on my doorstep the afternoon after Jake’s murder asked lots of questions, even if they were about Carla, and they listened very well. I was nervous at first, but once I got over the shock of seeing them at my door, I was telling them everything.

I told them about growing up with Carla, how she always knew just what she wanted. For the first time, I told someone that I’d thought she was crazy. Poor girls like us don’t get to meet the kind of people she was always talking about, much less become them. I’d never managed to tell her that, but my opinion hadn’t mattered. She’d done it anyway.

She married Jake straight out of junior college. I’d heard all about the dozens of favors she called in to get herself invited to the Wallace’s holiday party, just as she’d told me over and over about everything they said to each other every time they met. I’d heard Jake’s side of the story, too, just once. I shared with the detectives my opinion that she’d worn him out. He’d known she wasn’t going to give up, so he’d given in and married her.

Detective Sanchez, a tall woman who leaned forward to catch every word, laughed out loud. Detective Browning looked up from his notes and let his brown eyes twinkle just for me before asking me to go on. I did. I warmed to my story.

I told them that Carla moved into the society of judges, lawyers and fundraisers with relish. I’d heard about every new “conquest,” every new house that opened to her, but I only shared a few. After the first dozen or so, they’d gotten boring. I expected the detectives wouldn’t be as impressed as I’d been.

They were certainly interested when I talked about Carla’s disappointments. She’d picked Jake for his past, assuming his future would be just as brilliant. But Jake was…well, not lazy, but not ambitious either. Sure, Carla was pushy enough for two, but her getting Jake elected to the U.S. Senate would still have required that he work for the seat. Jake didn’t care enough to do that, or to aim for CEO of Wallace Industries or any other title Carla wanted to be married to. To him, being a Wallace meant he didn’t have to work.

Carla prodded as far and as often as she felt she could, but her position was shaky. She hadn’t been persuasive enough to get out of signing a prenup. If Jake divorced her, she’d have nothing. She’d be just like me again. No one would pay her any attention.

I wanted to see the look in Detective Browning’s eyes when I told them that Carla had thought that Jake was having an affair, but aside from quick glance at me and his partner, he kept his head down. He was scribbling too fast to look up. Detective Sanchez hung on everything I said, though, and kept asking questions.

I might have gone a little far at that point. Telling them that Carla had confided that she was thinking about having Jake followed was one thing. Telling them she’d planned to ask him to meet her at her grandfather’s old farmstead to talk it over wasn’t so bad either. They already knew she’d turned the place into a weekend retreat. But when I told them about the hidden dry well she used to use for storing her little childhood treasures, they were on their feet almost immediately.

Detective Sanchez pumped my hand. She told me I’d done the right thing by telling them. Detective Browning thanked me softly and asked whether I’d be willing to testify to everything. I nodded. Even if my throat hadn’t gone dry with all the unaccustomed talking, I’d have been speechless with him looking down at me like that. Then they left, their tires not quite squealing.

I wasn’t surprised. Jake had been found at the old farmstead, and the gun used to shoot him hadn’t been recovered yet.

They found the gun in the dry well, and Carla was charged and brought to trial. Experts described the scene. They played Carla’s 911 call, in which she’d said she’d found Jake already dead when she arrived. She barely mentioned Jake, talking instead about how horrible it was for her to find a body. I was impressed with the dispatcher. She was the first person I’d ever heard interrupt Carla.

Then it was time for me to repeat everything I’d told the officers. Having them hanging on my words had been heady, but facing a courtroom full of rapt listeners was almost too much. I’d never had so many people look at me at once. I wanted to hide. Only the knowledge the Carla had to listen to me for a change kept me talking.

Of course, she had to interrupt. When I got to the point in my story where Carla had confided that she thought Jake was having an affair, she stood up and shouted, “Liar! Jake wasn’t seeing anyone else. Tell them the truth. He loved me!” On and on she went. The judge tried to shout her down, but shutting Carla up takes work. Finally her attorney yanked hard enough on her arm that she almost fell to the floor. While she was recovering, the judge threatened to have her removed if she interrupted again.

Carla sat quietly but with a mutinous expression through the rest of my testimony. She didn’t challenge any of the next five witnesses, who provided ample evidence to suggest Jake was cheating. She closed her eyes during the testimony on the gun. It had been her grandfather’s, stored at the farmstead.

Once the prosecution rested, everyone turned to Carla. But she didn’t testify. Her mother did, prattling about how well Jake treated Carla and how much they loved each other. A couple of society friends testified that Carla had never mentioned Jake’s affair–and that it was perhaps the only thing she’d never told them about herself. The prosecutor undid the defense’s progress by getting them to admit that they’d been avoiding Carla’s calls for years. Then the defense rested.

There was a break before final arguments, and everyone was abuzz that Carla hadn’t testified. I understood, though. If I’d been her attorney, I wouldn’t have wanted her going on and on about herself on the stand. If her friends couldn’t take it anymore, how could it possibly endear her to the jury?

In the end, it didn’t matter. The jury barely deliberated before returning a guilty verdict. Second-degree murder.

Carla spun to look at me. “Liar!” She was screaming this time. “I didn’t kill him! Tell them! Tell them I didn’t kill him!” She was still screaming as they dragged her away. “Liar!”

Even then, it never occurred to her to ask about me. She never thought to ask why. I’d have told her, I think, if she’d only shown a little curiosity about why I lied. I’d rather have talked about me than about her anyway.

Even if she’d asked me on the stand, I’d have told her about Jake, about thinking I’d finally found someone who was interested in me. I’d have told her how it felt to discover I was wrong. Jake was happy to sleep with me, but he didn’t want to hear about my life. He only wanted me to listen, just like Carla.

The final straw came when he started complaining to me about Carla. With everything I knew about their lives, the rest–killing Jake, framing Carla–was easy. All I had to do was talk. And for once, everyone wanted to listen.

Except Carla. She never asked.

I’m not saying I wasn’t irrationally scared of something, although I dispute the irrational part.  To me it’s rational, knowing that when I was four, observing in innocent curiosity the little black spider crawling towards me on the stick I held, it really did bite me on the webbing between my fingers, and I had the mark of it for a long time after.  So my fear of spiders was from experience, not a phobia, and didn’t fall into the same league as a genuine phobia, at least to me.  After all, when my kids were growing up, I conquered it long enough to “show them” that spiders were mere nuisances in the house, nothing to be afraid of as THEY squished one or captured it to be released outside.  That way, you see, I didn’t have to go get close to one again.  The kids did.  It worked perfectly.

Not the same thing at all.

But my daughter had the family phobia, on her dad’s side: acrophobia or agoraphobia; there were long discussions as to just which it was by the family members who had it.  It was definitely a fear of heights, compounded by the wide open spaces that revealed just how high the height in question was.  Low, flat open spaces? No problem.  Being high up in an enclosed space that hid the actual height? No problem.

It wasn’t my phobia, and I had trouble giving credence to it when my husband demonstrated his problem while hiking a clear, level path on the side of a low hill, or being near a high window.  I knew these places were perfectly safe, and I’m afraid my empathy got somewhat replaced by silent snickering.  Then I became pregnant, and the family brought me into the problem: what if the baby had the same phobia?  Can one raise a child not to “get” the phobia by not talking about it and never acknowledging it?  They thought it was the best way to go, as if it were contagious and no exposure, no problem.  Being ignorant, I went along.  I certainly couldn’t expose a child to fear of heights, since I gloried in them–as long as there was something to hold on to.

My first indication that this lovely theory was just so much wishful thinking came when she was two, and we were on a field trip to the state capitol building.  We were climbing this beautiful marble staircase, which had a lovely marble railing supported by marble columns with–uh-oh–spaces in between where a child could look out and down and see just how much farther away the floor was getting with each step. Her steps slowed, then stopped.  I tried the ignore-it bit, urging her to come along like she was just an ordinary dawdling child.  We did finally get her to the top of the staircase by switching her over to the center railing where the view was mostly other steps and people’s legs.

We took the elevator back down.

The next opportunity this phobia had to display itself was a trip over the Blue Ridge Parkway when she was around eight.  It’s a beautiful place, low, rolling mountains, bluer with the haze of distance.  The highway is cut on the edge of the slopes, so land rises above you on one side and drops off on the other.  I was entranced, pulling off at nearly every opportunity to park and gaze, soaking up the experience without driving right off the road.  My daughter, on the other hand, was soon riding curled up down on the floor in front of her seat, despite the ironclad family seat-belt rule,  so she didn’t have to look out the window and see so much “down” extending all around her.  I wanted the drive to last forever.  She just wanted it over.

The fact that she preferred to sacrifice this vision of timeless beauty for the opportunity to see nothing farther away than she could reach with her hand finally helped it soak in.  My daughter had a real, genuine phobia.  While I couldn’t achieve the full empathy of understanding how it felt, I did finally get that it was real and powerful.

During the next couple years, it was easy to forget it existed, as few things in her usual environment triggered it.  In fact, she willingly climbed up the rope ladder into the tree house we put up in the back yard and showed no discomfort on our high backyard deck.

She was about ten when the family trip took us to Itasca State Park.  My family had lived nearby while my brother and I grew up, and it was a regular destination for us.  This was my kids’ first visit.  One of the mandatory stops was the forestry tower, open to the public for the long climb up flights of stairs, to squeeze through a hole in the floor and emerge in the observation room, windows on all sides to view lakes and trees and, if you were a real forestry employee, watch for and report fires.

The boys were up it in a flash, loudly proclaiming their enjoyment of every step and every viewpoint.  Somewhere in the 2nd flight of stairs I paused, realizing my daughter was not keeping up.  Not only that, she was curled up in a ball on the landing below me and crying.

All my kids had grown up on my stories of climbing the windmill tower and how glorious it was.  They’d also been prompted during the planning stages of this vacation that this forestry tower would be their closest chance–and safest–to live that kind of experience.   She so badly wanted to know what this would be like, but her two bouncy, active brothers sent vibrations all through the tower structure and her phobia kicked in, overwhelming her.

She couldn’t go up.  Nor, just one story above the ground, could she go down.

I sat next to her and talked to her, trying to find out what she really wanted and to figure out how, or even whether, I could help.  What she wanted was to go up to the top.  She needed support and encouragement and always the safety of the choice to change her mind.  Most of all, she needed her brothers off of the tower, and staying off for however long it took.  Not only did they make it wobble, but they would laugh at her, and under the circumstances, that was intolerable.

We talked it over, putting together a plan while the boys had their fill of the tower.  Once down, they were soundly enjoined not to set foot on the tower until my daughter and I got back down.  They were also not to wander anywhere they couldn’t see the bottom of the tower.  Knowing them, I figured that had half a chance of working, at best, but right then, my daughter needed my full, undivided attention.

It worked like this:  she would hold the railing with one hand going up and hang on to me with the other.  She could close her eyes any time she needed and still feel her way up.  At each landing I’d ask if she wanted to continue, and it would be her choice.  She could sit down and rest at any time.  If she needed to, she could bury her face in me, and I promised to make sure she got down safely even if I needed to carry her.

We started up. And she doggedly, determinedly, kept heading up.  We paused occasionally, while she gathered herself and her resources for the next step, the next flight. Finally, a somewhat shaky but triumphant daughter stood in the top of that tower, looking out over the trees, pointing out lakes and matching them to the information inside the walls for identification, seeing how rolling hills made for rolling treetops, and spying birds and clouds above it all, everything she’d heard about from me.  She stayed long enough to really savor the experience.

Then, together, we made it back down.

We even found the boys again, after about five minutes of looking and calling.  It seems their definition of staying in sight of the bottom of the tower was, well, about what I’d thought it would be.

A lot of years have passed, and she’s done a lot of things to make me proud, make me wonder at the person and the package of skills and talents.  But nothing ever matched this.

Until the day it did.

I think it started when I stood at the base of it and looked up its length and saw that it kept going up through the oaks that surrounded it.  What was up there?

We had an old A-frame swing set which, when I was five, was still a challenge to me physically.  No, not the swinging part, the “treat the frame as a set of monkey-bars, grab the side bar and somersault around to hang by your knees, pull up and stand” part.  My older brother could do it, and it was something to ridicule me for that I struggled with it.

These braces, all triangular construction for stability, even at their largest near the ground, were closer together and nowhere near so intimidating to my shorter limbs. Plus, it looked like they got smaller and closer as they got higher.  I should be able to do this.   All I had to do was put this hand here, then this foot, then that hand, then that foot, and back through the cycle, moving just one at a time, in order.  Only one.  The other three stayed put until the fourth was solidly secure in its new position.  At five, I was smart enough to know that.

It wasn’t scary. A few steps up led to a few more, then more, each ease of success breeding more.  Finally I was nearing branches, and looked back down at how far the ground was below me.  I had never been this high before and the world started to look different.  This was great!

Moving up through the trees, my world narrowed to the bars and braces and the branches and leaves of the trees.  It was like my own secret world up here.  Suddenly I had the power of knowledge of a place nobody else had ever been.  Well, certainly nobody else in my family, and at five, that’s pretty much the world, except for the customers of the resort.  I knew THEY had never been up here!

Gazing raptly through the maze of zigzagging oak branches, I could imagine myself as a squirrel in the most marvelous playground ever, running, jumping, hiding, finding all the secret places available to something of that size.  It was one of my favorite imagination games, telling myself if I were tiny, I could….

It got lighter as branches grew sparser, and suddenly I was above the tops of the trees!  What a view!  And what a surprise!  The tree tops, in my imagination, would be spread out flat around me, but here they were in rolling hills and valleys, occasional tall ones poking above the rest.  Oh, of course, the ground was hilly, especially around all the lakes, and the trees just followed the land.  I got it.  And there was our lake, what little I could see of it, since I wasn’t that far above the trees.  The tower’s braces were significantly smaller at this point, and it was less comfortable finding hand and foot holds to climb higher.  Not that there was much “higher” left on this tower.

Let’s see, over there, that lake must be Palmer Lake, where my dad would go fishing when he could get away from the resort.  Almost nobody fished Palmer, and the crappies and bluegills were enormous compared to what came out of Second Crow Wing, with three active resorts surrounding it.  I was nowhere near tired of the view, when….

“Heather.”

It was my mom, missing me.  Oops. Maybe if I didn’t answer, she’d stop calling?  Not a chance!

“HEATHER!  WHERE ARE YOU?”

Oh-oh.  Somehow, I knew that even though  nobody had ever told me not to climb the tower,  I’d be in trouble if they knew I had.  Maybe I could wait until they went away so they wouldn’t know where I’d been?  But I’d be in so much worse trouble if I ignored that call.  Mom was a champion worrier, and every minute that passed was fuel to another disaster scenario, me drowning in the lake, lost in the woods, eaten by bears, run over by a car…. Realistic or not, the longer she got to worry, the more I’d get to pay for it. The problem just wasn’t going away, because now my Dad had joined in.

“I’m here.”

“Where’s ‘here’?”

“I’m up here.”  I was climbing down, even as I spoke.  Still safely, one foot, one hand, other foot, other hand.

As you might imagine, once they located me, they freaked out.  Of course, nobody’d ever heard that expression yet, but it really fits.  The more they insisted I come down immediately–I already was, wasn’t I?–they more they also got scared I’d fall, and told me so.  What’s the big deal?  I figured out how to get up, I can figure out how to get down.  Can’t they see that?  How stupid do you have to be to fall off one of these things with all these  great places to hold on to, anyway?

Well, while there apparently are people that stupid, since those kind of falls happen, I wasn’t, and arrived in one piece on the ground to face my punishment.  I didn’t complain too much over it, figuring I must have earned it even though I wasn’t really breaking the rules.  It was much like when I wasn’t really breaking the rules–except for wasting things–when I lifted a box of strike matches to see how they–and the oak leaves next to the house–would burn, in ones, and twos, and head-to-head…  Nobody had thought then to tell me not to play with matches, either. And by they time they did, I’d learned that fire isn’t as easy to control as you’d think.

But that’s another story.

I never did either again.  I also never forgot the glory of climbing that tower.  Even as a parent when I told my kids the story and told them that they must never ever do what I did as a kid, I never conceded for one minute that I had ever been unsafe up on that tower.

I still haven’t.

In 1980, the legal age to drink in Minnesota was 19, and I was 19.  My friend–we’ll call him Mark to avoid confusion–was 17.  He and I had been very good friends together in high school, even though he went to a different school, we knew each other through our involvement in a Christian youth group.

Mark always looked older than he was.  He had long hair and a beard even when he was 14.  He looked like a damn hippie, according to my dad, which filled Mark with a bit of pride since that was the “look” he was going for.  We really did quite a few things together, but being observant and good Christian kids, we never did anything illegal or immoral, and that is the story I am sticking with regarding any activities in which we may have engaged prior to me achieving the age of majority.

I left Hallock High School when I was 18 to go to school at Mount Saint Benedict’s Academy in Crookston.  (MSB was the school with a Nature Trail.)  I lost touch with Mark and didn’t see him for most of my senior year, but during the summer, I was back at home in Hallock and working for the Kittson County Highway Department on the signs crew.  Mark and his family had moved to a different farm. Although not much further away, it was far enough that he wasn’t on my daily radar.  We had grown a bit apart during the year, and both he and I had started moving away from the good behavior phases of our Christian Walk.  What I mean is that he and I had both become “partiers.”

One Friday in July, he called me up after we hadn’t talked for more than a month and asked if I would like to go to Newfolden and a street dance/town fair.  He had a new girlfriend, and he wanted me to meet her. We could party with her and her friends.  I thought it sounded like a good idea.  Newfolden is only about 40 miles from Hallock, but I had never met anybody from there and I thought it would be a good opportunity to make new friends (and possibly get laid).

On that Friday, I drove over to Mark’s new place and sat down to have a beer with him and his mom.  We caught up a bit, smoked a couple of cigarettes, had a beer and just enjoyed ourselves on a beautiful summer evening in northern Minnesota.  Then we made our plans for the evening.  The first stop would be to Lake Bronson, where I was to buy a case of cheap beer, then a drive down to Newfolden.  Then, while waiting for Mark’s girlfriend to finish up some family thing she was doing (apparently an event Mark was not invited to), we would drive around Newfolden to get the word about where the after-dance party would be.

At the Lake Bronson Municipal Liquor Store, I bought the beer, proud to show my license to the clerk and prove to her that I was old enough. I set the license down on the counter and paid for the beer.  I left the store and put the beer in the back seat.  It occurred to me that the beer wasn’t going to stay cold and that I should have bought a cooler, but then assumed that wherever the party was there was likely to be a cooler and some ice.  It was gonna be okay.

When we arrived in Newfolden, there were a bunch of people milling around, kids our age but nobody that Mark really knew, so we weren’t gong to ask them where the party was going to be.  We both realized that after the beer that we had drunk at his mother’s place, we needed to go to the bathroom, so we looked for an open restaurant or gas station or someplace that would have a privy for visitors to their fine city.

Apparently, by nine-o’clock at night, all of the gas stations and restaurants in Newfolden were closed.  This was weird, and also weird that in planning for a street dance, the organizers had not considered that people might actually have to go the bathroom.  I wonder now whether they had decided that in such a small town, people would just go to their houses to pee if they needed to.  It was completely unprofessional, in my opinion.

We didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.  We just knew two things:

1. Since Mark was still under age, it probably wasn’t a good idea to be cruising Newfolden with beer in the back seat.  The cops didn’t know me or my car, and they would probably try to find some reason to stop us.  I didn’t need a ticket for “Contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”
2. We both really needed to go to the bathroom.

In rural parts of the world, using the great outdoors for the bathroom is not strange, nor is it even looked down on.  It’s common practice out in the country if not right in town.  So, we did what we had always done and what our parents, cousins, uncles, family, friends and bosses had always done.  We drove outside of town for a mile and found a country road to drive down until we found a small stand of woods with some trees we could hide behind while we pee.  I don’t interpret this as public urination, and I don’t think my Grampa would have either.  We seriously doubted that a small town cop would even look askance at it.

We also needed to take care of item 1 on our list.  I really didn’t want to have a local cop or deputy pull us over and find the beer in the back seat.  I had no interest in having to call Dad to tell him I was in jail in Warren.  So we moved the beer from the back seat to the trunk, got back in the car and drove back to town.

There was a new problem to deal with. Waiting at the end of the farm road, blocking our access to the highway, was a police car.  The lights weren’t on, so we weren’t sure if he was waiting for us or not. We were not going to be able to avoid scrutiny.  As we approached the road he hit his siren button and his lights button and so I knew we were going to be “interviewed.”  I stopped the car and politely waited for him to approach us.  In the meantime I was reaching for my wallet to show him my driver’s license.  I looked over at Mark and mouthed the words “Fourth Amendment.”   He knew what this meant.  Don’t say anything incriminatory.

The cop approached the window as I was opening my wallet.  Sure enough, he asked for my license and everything would have been smooth had I not left the fucking license at the Municipal store in Lake Bronson.  I had laid it on the counter, but I had not picked it up and put it back in my wallet as I left the store.  I had a sinking feeling that this was not going to go well.

One thing in my favor was that if they smelled beer on my breath and asked me to blow into a breathalyzer, it had been more than an hour since my last beer and I would blow less than a “.01.”  It’s the old rule of thumb that it takes the body ab0ut an hour to clear an ounce of alcohol from the blood.  Mark would have also had sufficient time.  We had no empty beer cans in the car.  That was another plus.  Mark was underage, though, and there was beer in the trunk.  Even though they would not have had any proof that I was going to share my beer with Mark, I think they could have made a case for “probable cause” if they wanted to raise a stink about it.

I couldn’t produce my license for the cop and told him I thought I might have left the license at the gas station where I’d bought cigarettes.  He asked me to step out of my car and into his so he could call the dispatcher and check to make sure that I had a valid license.  I had memorized the number and so I told him what it was, to make his job a little easier.  So, I followed him to his car and he got on his radio and called the Marshall County Sheriff dispatcher so she could run the number to get verification.

He asked me what we were doing back there and I told him that we had gone back there to go to the bathroom.  He knew there was more to the story, and he was fishing to get me to tell him more.  But I wasn’t going to be stupid that night in a strange town.  If it was my own town, it would have been a simple matter of the cop confiscating the beer and telling me to take Mark home.  In a strange town, I didn’t know what they were likely to do.  I didn’t want to take the chance that they would haul me to Warren and the Marshall County jail so that they could find something to charge me with.  I wasn’t about to enable them if that’s what they wanted.

He got all friendly with me and we talked about Hallock, and he told me how he used to party there every once in a while when he was in high school.  He was trying to get my guard down, playing “good cop.”  Every once in a while he would ask me what was in the trunk, and I told him that I had some tools, a jack and a spare.  I didn’t see any reason to tell him about the beer.  He asked if he could search it, and I said, “No.”   I said, “No,” every time he asked.

He then tried a different tactic, trying to intimidate me into letting him look in the trunk.  “I know the guy that owns this land.  He would probably file a trespassing charge if I called him and let him know you were on his property.”  It didn’t work. I just smiled at him and said, “No, I am not going to open the trunk unless you get a warrant.”

The dispatcher radioed back that my license was valid, and she confirmed my birth date.

In the meantime, another cop had come along and was interviewing Mark while Mark was sitting in my car.  Mark told them the truth, that he was underage and that he had had a little bit of his mom’s beer at her house before we came down to Newfolden.  And that is all that he told the other cop.

The one who had been interviewing me got out of his car while telling me to wait in the front seat.  The two cops consulted with each other and decided that pushing us to open the trunk would be a waste of time, so they decided to let us go.  When I got back to my car, I asked Mark how it had gone and he told me that the other cop had tried to push him on the contents of the trunk, too, and had tried the “trespassing” gambit.  It didn’t work on him, either.

We pretty much decided to get out of Newfolden, because we didn’t want to get caught at a party by the local cops that same night.  They already suspected us, and it wouldn’t take much for them to decide to put us in our place if we were drinking with minors.  I also wanted to get back to Lake Bronson and pick up my license from the liquor store.

Since both Mark and I are white, and since the cops were white, this went down much easier than it might have.  We respectfully held our ground on our Fourth Amendment rights, and the cops respected those rights and decided that they had other things to do.  I wondered how it would have worked if either one of us had been Indians, or even black.  In northwestern Minnesota, racial profiling works a bit differently than it does in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  Since the region is close to homogeneously white, meaning there are few blacks, there is little opportunity for the cops to bring their authority unnecessarily to bear on black kids.  So, race being less of an issue, they had to profile somebody and out-of-towners were sufficiently “other” to be targets for interviews.  After talking to me for a bit, the cop decided that I wasn’t “other” enough to hassle further.

Mark and I were able to laugh off the incident and after I dropped himself off at his Mom’s house I headed home and watched TV.  I saved the beer in my trunk for another day.  I had held my ground on the Fourth Amendment right to be secure in my person and I had won, and I am thankful for the Bill of Rights.  You see, we don’t have the right to break the law, but we do have the right to deny authorities too much intrusion.

Even if there had been nothing in the trunk, I wouldn’t have consented to a search without a warrant.  I would have still asked the cop to get a warrant before opening my trunk, even if I had “nothing to hide.”  It’s a reminder to cops that even though their badges give them some authority, it doesn’t give them all authority.  I recognize that, being white, I have a little extra leeway in asserting my rights.

Henry Louis Gates isn’t given the same leeway by the Cambridge Police Department. I tell my story in response to one of the comments at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. (Ed Brayton is DuWayne’s brother, and DuWayne is one of our valued Quiche Moraine commenters.)  Here is the comment that disturbed me, and reveals the mindset that allows the government to get away with intrusions on our privacy as initiated by the Cheney Administration.  Dismayingly enough, Obama has been slow to dismantle what Cheney put into place.  Here’s the comment:

It is all about time and place. Would you stop a firetruck on the way to a fire because you don’t like how they are driving? If your in court and you think the judge isn’t following the law do you interrupt him and cuss him out? In either case do you claim that their objection to your interference is a violation of your right to free speech? How stupid are people going to be?

When dealing with police you save you objections and observations until the situation is under control. Once under control you may voice your complaints as long as the way you do so doesn’t cross the line in language used into assault or in volume into disturbing the peace.

Failure to follow these guidelines tends to get you arrested and held until you cool down. Get over it. This is part of being a citizen and an adult. There are times and places for protest and rants.

In Gates’ case, there was no probable cause for the cop to follow him into the house.  Gates’ hadn’t consented and was rightly upset at this intrusion.  From this point on, the cop was guilty of violating Gates’ rights to be secure in his person.  How he handled it is immaterial to Crowley carrying out his duties.  Gates had reason to distrust a cop in Cambridge because there is some history there, as Dr. Laden has pointed out.

I am of the strong opinion that the police need to obey the Constitution when carrying out their duties.  The Fourth Amendment is a shield that we need to wear, even when we have done nothing wrong.  If cops have trouble complying with it, they need better training, not knee-jerk defenses from their union.  Crowley acted stupidly, and President Obama was correct in his assessment.  He didn’t say that Crowley was stupid, he said that Crowley acted stupidly.  Anyone who has trouble with this distinction is either purposely twisting this for political reasons, or has difficulty in discerning the difference between attacking an action and attacking a person.

If I, in my position as a person of privilege because of my race, hold to the Fourth Amendment when the issue comes up, then people who don’t have my advantage because of their race will benefit. It takes away one defense for bad cops.  Remember the Fourth Amendment.  The cops have enough authority at their disposal to fight crime.  We don’t need to give them all authority.

The bike was heading south at a reasonable clip, but he had stopped pedaling about 100 feet back. The car was slowing and had a left signal on, indicating that she would turn into the driveway of the bank just north of Kinko’s. That would be across the path of the oncoming bike, if she continued. But she was stopped.

It was obvious that the bike rider assumed that the car would stay stopped and let him continue before she made her turn. Therefore, he did not slow down much. But, just as the two vehicles were about 20 feet apart, the car made a small jerking motion, as if the driver was adjusting her foot on the brake. At no point, however, did she move forward. I do note, however, that her front tires were turning left as this was all happening. Depending on what the bike rider saw, he may have reasonably interpreted the signs and signals to mean that this car was about to pull in front of him. I’m pretty sure, however, that this was not going to happen.

The bike rider slammed on his brakes, but it seems that the front brake stuck more firmly than the back brake. The bike stopped instantly and the rear tire started to swing around to the right. But that was irrelevant now, because the bike rider, who was already leaning forward on the handle bars as per normal, was in the air.

He flew up into the air and over the front of the bike, and as he did so, his body rotated 90 degrees and his legs rotated 180 degrees. So, there was a moment in time when this large framed man looked like this:

This is a stick figure like a cartoon, but it is not meant to be funny. It is decidedly not funny. The point of this figure is to illustrate so there is no ambiguity this statement: The second to last experience this man had was being perfectly upside down, with his entire body up in the air and no contact with anything but the air around him.

The last experience he had was his head being pounded into the pavement with the full weight of his body.

He collapsed to the ground and convulsed. I said to Martha “Go into Kinko’s and call 911,” which she did. The nearest rescue facility with an ambulance was almost in sight a couple of blocks up the street, so they would be there in a moment.

I ran over to the man and made myself look big so that cars coming down the street would notice us and not run us over. He was now on his side convulsing heavily and continuously. His convulsing was causing his head and neck to whip around, so I got down and held his body in place so he would damage himself less.

The woman who was driving the car got out and was staring. Two people who had walked out of a local store and did not see the accident came over and yelled at me.

“Leave him alone!” one of them screamed at me.

“He’s an epileptic! He’s just having an epileptic fit! Don’t treat him like he was sick or something.”

The woman who had been driving the car was distraught. She said “I didn’t hit him! I don’t know how this happened! I was waiting for him to go by!”

He continued to convulse. Martha came out of Kinko’s and was standing nearby helping to keep traffic from either hitting us or causing a jam that would make it hard for the ambulance to come down the street. The ambulance was there in moments, and just as the EMTs came rushing over, the man with the bike stopped convulsing. He stopped moving. Eyes that were rolled back in his head became a blank stare.

I lied to Martha. I said I thought he’d probably be OK. It seemed to me that he was dead. To this day, I do not actually know. Perhaps he simply lived the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

Oh, did I mention? He was not wearing a helmet.

Then, the writer totally surprised me by noting (I paraphrase) that “unlike the Pygmies, who live in these forests and are of perfectly proportioned shape and appearance, these subhuman creatures were rather grotesque.”

The traveler was a college-educated westerner with a late-Victorian attitude about Africans. The idea that all Africans are at least a little subhuman would have been a starting point for him. Throwing in a tribe here and there with especially cannibalistic or otherwise uncouth tendencies would be typical. Running into a group of individuals that looked to him almost like a separate species would be notable, and he did in fact make note of it, but this would be something he would take in stride.

Reading this made me wonder about two totally different and to some extent opposed lines of thought. On one hand, I thought, “How can people think such things are real…this guy was obviously seeing something he expected to see. Why? How does that work?” On the other hand, I thought, “What if his observations were essentially accurate, aside from the racial judgments he made. What if he really did encounter a bunch of people with bow legs and funny-looking bodies?”

Then, in the next paragraph of this monologue, a possible answer came. Shortly after the above mentioned description, the traveler mentions that one of these strange heathens, with the bow legs and the disproportioned body, traveled with him as a servant for a while. Then, at the end of that leg of the trip, after serving quite well for being such a subhuman and all, the traveler wanted to leave this misshapen wretch with some sort of extra payment for services. A tip. But the wretch had withdrawn to the forest never to be seen again (by the traveller), apparently uninterested in recompense.

Bingo.

Or at least, maybe bingo. I have an experience that may in fact match that of this ca. 1900-vintage traveler. Actually, a few such experiences. But as a post- (way post!) Victorian anthropologist, I have a slightly different take on the situation.

When I lived in the Ituri Forest, I often lived with the Pygmies for stretches of time. There were two modalities of living with them. In one mode, I would throw myself on their mercy and more or less live exactly as they lived, staying in the same kind of hut they lived in and doing whatever they did, or at least watching them do whatever they were doing, and trying to stay out of the way at the same time as observing and learning things about their lifeway. In the other modality, I stayed in a small dome tent (a cloth version of their hut) and was a bit more involved with the logistics of camp life, because during at least some of that time (several weeks over the course of many many months), it was more like they were living with me. I would hire a small number of Pygmy men, and maybe have one villager with us as well, and another anthropologist, and we’d be doing something like digging an archaeological site, measuring trees, counting monkeys, or whatever.

During some of these forays, especially in the first modality when it was only me (no other anthropologist) travelling with them, and I was living in their lifeway, more or less, I was assigned a wife. Sort of. This happened a couple of times, with different groups, and different individuals. In each case the person whom I eventually came to understand was serving the role of Mrs. Gregoiri (one of my Efe names was Gregoiri, which I admit is not too original) was a man with pretty severe polio.

These were men who could not carry out many of the activities in which the men normally engaged with respect to hunting and other forest activities. Even moving from camp to camp might be a challenge to someone whose legs were very shortened and deformed and who had, essentially, a kind of polio-induced dwarfism. For the most part, these men had outstanding manual skills. They could shoot an arrow as well as any (or better) and were outstanding at making things that the other men also made, but that the polio-afflicted men would make with utmost skill. What they lacked was stamina in the field.

Their condition meant that they would be unlikely to marry. It meant that they would be in camp with the women anywhere from now and then to almost always as the men went off to hunt. It meant that their social and economic gender was unique. And it meant that when someone had to be assigned to keep the big pasty white guy who was always tripping on tree roots and poking himself with sticks from harming himself, well, this person was the obvious choice.

I remembered, rather poignantly in fact, on reading the aforementioned traveler’s notice that the strange deformed subhuman left without any special recompense, that this is what happened to me as well. It was a bit of a privilege to hang out with the visitor, as would be the case in most cultures, and the visitor seemed to overlook the person’s affliction, which is something that many visitors may not have done.

The polio that came through the Ituri Forest of Zaire must have come through at roughly the same time because all the men who had it were about the same age…my age, actually. This population of forest dwelling people must have been very susceptible to it. And the Pygmies were notable for either refusing or just being bad at accepting long-term treatment or hospital stays, so even if there was some help available for them in those days, it may have ended up rather ineffective. Many must have died.

I need not mention that I never saw a subhuman deformed race. I did see some men who were being very good to me, keeping me from getting killed by the snakes, the elements, by getting poked to death or falling off a cliff into quicksand, or whatever one may think of as the dangers of the African Jungle. And they didn’t want any special pay for it.

Those marriages were short lived. But they were good marriages.

My best friend as a kid lived down the block from our house.  When I say “best friend,” I sincerely mean it, as oppposed to the sorts of best friends that kids have for a day or two before shifting loyalties.  Greggy was my best friend for a good four years.  He was two years younger than I was and a grade behind me in school, but even so, we spent as many of the waking non-school hours together as we could.

We did sleepovers, played family games and cards, ate at each other’s house for dinner, teased each other about girls, played hide-and-seek and kick-the-can and backyard baseball.  We fed off of each other’s imaginations, and when Greggy came up with a new idea for a fantasy or a game, he started his explanation with the phrase “One if…”

“One if we were soldiers caught behind Nazi lines?”  “One if our airplane was shot down over the ocean and we were trapped on a desert island?” “One if we made some guitars out of cardboard and rubber bands?”  “One if we snuck over behind Tranbergs’ house and climbed their tree?”  “One if we stole one of my sister’s Barbies and hung her from a noose?”

We got into a lot of trouble, but it was always kids’ stuff and never caused any real damage.  We apologized quite often and learned our lessons.

Greggy’s family wasn’t rich.  His dad was a highway patrolman and his mom was a nurse.  With five kids, they often had to make do with what money they could spare, and Greggy didn’t have spending money very often.  I was okay with sharing with him from my allowance whenever we went to the store to buy candy, because he was a good friend.  So it was a surprise to me one summer afternoon when he told me that his mom had given him $20 to cut the grass.  The most I had ever earned from cutting the grass was $5, and our backyard was much larger.

He wanted to buy something special for me at the dime store with his money.  I questioned for moment whether or not I should take him up on it, then realized that he was repaying my past generosity.  I said, “Sure!”  We went to the Ben Franklin Store, and in the toy section, I looked at some of the $1 or $2 puzzles and games.  I considered a yo-yo.  He said, “No!  I want to buy you something really cool!”

The present he had in mind for me was a set of toy golf clubs, including a polystyrene “bag,” a driver, an “iron” and a putter.  It also included a pair of balls.  The set was $7.99, which was two weeks allowance for me, and I never had saved that much money for a toy.  It was a real thrill for him to buy this for me, and he still had money left over to buy one for himself.  On the way home from uptown Hallock, we stopped at the schoolyard to play with our new clubs until the 6 o’clock siren signaled it was time for us to get home for supper.

I walked through the door, and Mom was waiting for me.  She looked at me and then at the clubs and asked where I had gotten them, and so I explained that Greggy had bought them for me to repay me for all of the times I had bought candy for him.  I thought it was a good deal, myself, and a nice present from a friend.  Mom, well, not so much.  She was suspicious that Greggy all of a sudden had $20 and thought that perhaps he might have taken the money from his mother.

I ended up having to give the golf clubs back, and Greggy was in a heap of trouble from his mom for stealing.  I got a long lecture about using common sense if someone I knew who was poor all of a sudden had a lot of money to spend.  It was a hard concept for an eight-year-old to grasp, but it is something I still remember, and it colors my sense of trust when people want to give me something out of proportion to what I think they can afford or should do.

I mentioned that his dad was a highway patrolman and, because of this, was someone in whom I placed a lot of trust, especially when it came to safety.  For me, cops of any kind were always about teaching and practicing safety in all areas of life.  (I was eight years old; remember?)  When he suggested that we light and play with firecrackers, I felt assured that this would be a safe thing to do under adult supervision.

Greggy’s dad had picked up a pack of Black Cats in North Dakota, because they were and still are illegal in Minnesota.  Lighting explosive fireworks, or firecrackers, is something that only licensed people can do.  While I never heard of anyone getting arrested for lighting firecrackers,  I was always careful never to let an adult know or catch me with firecrackers in case they would report me to the police and send me to jail.  I was too young for jail, you know?

But if a cop was supervising, it had to be okay.  And so, rather than calling my mom to ask if it would be okay, as I should have done, I said, “Yeah, let’s!”   So we went outside to Greggy’s porch with his dad.  His dad lit a cigarette to use as a “punk” and gave us each about five firecrackers.

Instead of having us set down the firecrackers on the ground and lighting the fuses, we held them in our hands while we lit them.  The plan was that as soon as the fuse was lit, we were supposed to throw the firecrackers and watch them blow up.  “Boom!” and then light another one, until they were gone.  It worked great for the first few firecrackers. It all went the way it was supposed to, and we were having fun doing something that we normally shouldn’t do (but being supervised by a cop, it was okay.)

Then things went awry.  I had a Black Cat in my hand, and his dad lit the fuse.  It sparkled, and I lost track of the purpose of what we were doing.  I was mesmerized by the fuse and the way that the powder was burning ever closer to the body of the firecracker.  I wasn’t thinking.  I was watching and my mind was blank, until it was too late.  I could vaguely hear Greggy and his dad yelling at me to drop it, but for some reason the command wasn’ t registering for me.

The firecracker blew up in my hand and the sudden pain shook me out of the brain lapse that had taken hold of me.  I screamed and saw both the burn on my hand and the pieces of skin that had peeled away.  His dad rushed me inside and put my hand under cold running water, asking me over and over why I hadn’t dropped the firecracker.  I was crying and I couldn’t explain it to him.  He wrapped my hand in ice with a towel and sent me home.

Mom was more angry with Greggy’s dad than she was with me, and she had a long phone conversation with him.  She didn’t yell, but she dressed him down, because as a cop he should know better than to let kids play with firecrackers that way.

The damage to my hand healed quickly and I learned a couple of things from the incident:

1. Don’t automatically trust someone just because he is a cop.
2. Never hold onto a firecracker when lighting it.  Always set it down first.

Last night, there were firecrackers being set off in our neighborhood.  People like explosions, even tiny ones.  One if one of those firecrackers being lit last night was being lit by a kid who was holding it in his hand instead of setting it on the ground?  I didn’t hear any crying nor screaming, so I assume that everything was all right.

The reason that hanging out with a bunch of temporarily insane Viet Nam vets fresh back from combat was a new phase in my own musical experience, aside from the fact that I’m obviously using music as a ragged thread to tie together utterly unrelated themes, is the importance of music to some of those vets, and to the era that was just winding down in the early 1970s.

Music was part of the Revolution, the anti-war protests, the hippie movement, all of it. One of my coworkers, the assistant director of the place I did archaeology, was a Rolling Stones fan. This big, scary guy all tough and shot up from the war, this thuggish guy from a tough neighborhood in New York where being Jewish meant you had to learn to fight, this guy who had the swagger walk down cold and carried a crowbar in the front seat of his car and knew how to use it, once told me that he “cried and screamed like a girl” when he saw The Stones at the ball park in New York.

“You saw The Rolling Stones live?”

“I cried like a girl, no kidding.” He was getting teary-eyed again as he sat behind the desk in his office, his head covered in most spots with randomly placed and pointy tufts of flaming red hair, and his smuggish face pointing nose first at the object held above the desk in his hand. He had used the intercom to call me into his office a moment earlier and was showing me an album he had just acquired…a Rolling Stones album…and was telling me about the concert and the album at the same time. I did not fully understand why we were having this conversation.

“So take this and fill it out,” he suddenly said, thrusting a small square of paper in my general direction, a piece of paper that looked like a postcard on one side and a form to be filled in on the other. “As soon as you can. Do it right now.”

So my boss had just forced me to join the Columbia House Record Club so he could get a free album by getting someone else to join. I had to pick five albums from this list of mostly totally stupid stuff. The bottom end of the picks I chose to give to my mother as a birthday present, and it was an album by Jim Neighbors, the enigmatic actor/singer. The other, at the top end of the picks, remains today as one of my favorite albums of all time, Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen.

So, now that I had albums coming, I had to get…a record player. So I consulted with Carl, and we managed to dig up a tuner and a record player and set it up in my room. I scavenged my parents’ old speakers from The First Stereo. I dug deep into the pockets and searched for change in the couches and got enough to buy a new needle (that’s the device that reads data off the album on the record player). And the records came and it was good.

The other benefit of the stereo was the built-in radio. Not very many months later, I moved from my parents’ house into my own place. My girlfriend at the time, Leslie, just recently told me (yes, we’ve “reconnected”) that she thought it was SO cool that her boyfriend had his own place. Now that I think about it, that would have been pretty cool for a couple of 16-year-olds. She reminded me that we would get together and tune in the radio to listen to The Fourth Tower of Inverness…indeed, we did. Now that I think about it, holding hands with Leslie and listening to The Fourth Tower of Inverness was even better than Mad Dogs and Englishmen.

Which brings me right up to the present. Since I mention my first girlfriend, I will also mention my last girlfriend, Amanda. There are a number of things that I’ve always liked but no one that I was “with” (as it were) also liked, or at least, such things were not important to them. For instance, I’ve always wanted to own a Subaru. No one I was “with” ever wanted a Subaru, so that never happened. Amanda strongly prefers Subarus. So now we have a couple of them. How cool is that?

As I say, there are a number of things like that with Amanda and me. And it turns out that even though she did not really know Joe Cocker when we first met, one of her favorite songs is “Feeling Alright”…the version done by Joe Cocker.

Amanda was somewhat ensaddened to learn that the song is not about feeling all right. It’s about how, “You are feeling all right because you’re a thoughtless bitch, and I’m distinctly not feeling all right at all. In fact, I feel trapped and I’m having nightmares and I dread the day you dump me for some guy with a different name, a different face” (I paraphrase).

But who cares what the song says. It’s how it makes you feel that counts.