How Much Pride Do You People Need, Anyway?

Let's talk for a minute about the spaces that separate people. Not the big hatreds and active animosities, but the smaller gaps in communication that exist.




Sometimes they're obvious, as when you're sitting in an airport idly listening to the chatter all around and vaguely aware that people nearby are speaking a language you don't understand. Oh, maybe you can get an inkling of what they're talking about by tone of voice or the fact that that little boy over there has just upended the carryon minutes before boarding and the woman you take to be Mom is just a little bit frayed around the edges by now. But basically you're aware that any systematic communication between you and Mom is out of the question. Simple matter really in this case and not one I think you'd worry about since from the get-go you knew you literally didn't speak each other's language.



Other times the gaps are hidden in plain sight. Stuck in the middle of what seems like normal social intercourse. You think you're actually on the same page when somebody makes a comment that absolutely crystallizes for you just how utterly uncomprehending at least one of you is.



Case in point:



I'm out at work. I don't jump up and down with a flashing sign on my neck but I do talk about my life outside of work without any more censorship than might be considered ordinary for a middle-aged man in early 21st century San Diego. As a result, my co-workers are all aware that they're working alongside (and apparently enjoying and respecting) a gay man. I sometimes wonder if they'd like to ask questions. They don't, but I wonder if they'd like to. Outside of the occasional "do you think he's gay - or just metrosexual?" I don't get asked much. But on the other hand I don't ask them a lot of questions about their lives either so I guess fair is fair.



Anyway, one day in April, the subject rolled around to vacation time and who was taking extra time off over the Memorial Day Weekend. (There was a little more urgency about it this particular year since we were expecting the FDA to visit just about that time and people were naturally concerned that even though they might have time off approved that it would be rescinded. Do ya make those nonrefundable plane reservations or not? You know the sort of thing.) So we're chirping away about who's going where and somebody says to me, "You're going to Chicago, aren't you?" I affirmed that that was indeed the current plan and the normal follow up question of "What are you going to do there?" came up. "Museums and the like", I say, "and it happens to be at the same time as Bear Pride but I probably won't have time for that."



Suddenly my cube farm neighbor pipes up, "Just how much pride do you people NEED, anyway?" My reply? "When you're living in a world that constantly devalues you, you need as much pride as you can get."



Now, this woman is actually quite loving. She is friendly, intelligent, a good solid liberal soul, and somebody I've worked around for months at this company and for even longer at another Biopharm up the road. She has a gay brother fer gawds sake. And yet.....she is so thoroughly a part of the majoritarian heterosexual world that it seems odd to her that I, and people like me, might actually need to seek out affirmation. Of course I had my own blinders on, too. The fact that I was actually somewhat startled by the question made me stop and think about some of my assumptions. Namely, that acceptance - for she truly is accepting of me - necessarily comes with understanding. It doesn't. That's not good or bad it just is.



But it bears remembering that making assumptions about what people do and don't understand can lead to stumbles. In this case it was something minor. But what other assumptions am I making that might cause REAL trouble another day?

Too Stoned To Strip

i'm enough of a coward that there are certain challenges i'm perfectly happy to have ducked - even if only by accident. Child-rearing comes to mind.



i'm also not going to lie to you and tell you that i didn't have a perfectly good time taking drugs when i was younger, because frankly i did have a perfectly good time. As far as i can tell it did me no particular harm, left me with some great memories, opened my eyes to many possibilities and provided me with hours and hours of wild tales to tell. All in all, not a bad deal. but not something i would particularly advocate now that i'm older and little more aware.



So, having admitted that i spent a time in thrall to one chemical or another and further having admitted that not only did i enjoy said experiences but that they seemed to be harmless - what in heaven's name would i ever say to a child of mine on the subject? Please ask me on a case by case basis? Give her a little list of approved and unapproved illicit substances? And at what age? No, i'm glad to be ducking the whole thing.

But you know....as crazy as we were back then there were still rules - even for freaks like us. There were some things that just weren't cool. At least in my circle anything involving speed or needles was not cool and that seemed to serve to keep us out of the worst sorts of trouble. You always hear that stuff like heroin is bad news, that it will lead to no good end, but you don't necessarily get a first hand story about what it can actually do.

i have one for you.

During the year or so that i lived in Miami, a dear friend back home in San Diego went through the breakup of his marriage and he was really really REALLY not taking the breakup well.

In a search for replacement, or compensatory, female companionship, he somehow made the aquaintance of a certain young lady. She was in need of some rescuing and my friend, who would adopt every stray cat in southern California if he didn't have cooler heads in his life to tell him to put the kitten down and back slowly away, decided that rescuing her was just the ticket.

Now, one might perhaps attempt to rescue a heroin addict.

One might even perhaps attempt to rescue someone who was seriously mentally ill.

It is sheer folly for the untrained to attempt to rescue someone who presents both in one neat package, and yet that's what he set out to do.

To his good credit, he realized, even as befuddled as he was at the time, that to come home from work and find that said young lady, who by this time was encamped in his home, was watching "Natural Born Killers" several times a day was not at all a good sign. When she also requested that he buy her a handgun and made an off-hand remark that only death would separate them (or words to that effect), he knew the jig was up and managed to disentangle himself from her at the cost of new locks and a changed phone number.

Now, all of this is horrifying enough, but it's all in the past and he's survived with some lessons learned by the time i hear about it, so, although my eyes are bugged out all the way through the story, my brain still hasn't quite overloaded. No, not quite yet.

Somehow or other i asked about her employment history - apart from her jail time that is. (Did you know, by the way, that you can visit the San Diego Sheriff's website and actually find out who's in jail? It's a handy thing when you're being stalked by a crazy addict who's just been locked out of your home.) And this is where my brain finally shorted out for good on this one. i'm told that she was "a dancer". "What kind of "dancer"?, say i" "An exotic dancer," says he. "Ah," say i, "a stripper. And why did she stop stripping?" "Well," says he, "in her own words, 'eventually the drugs started to interfere with [her] career.'"

"Dude," say i, "are you actually saying she was too stoned to STRIP?"

i ask you, at precisely what age is a child's moral development sufficiently mature to understand a story like this? Damned if i know. i'm just glad i can duck the issue.