The Phoney War on Christmas

When I was a kid growing up in the south, I was surrounded by conservative, especially conservative Christians.  I was an impressionable kid and some of it wore off on me, but like Christ himself, when I was a child I spoke and acted like a child.  Now, I'm an adult nd I don't do that so often anymore.  I remember reading the heartbreaking story of the father and son out shopping for Christmas presents and the child seeing the banner and asking his dad what that meant.  His father said that many stores used X instead of Christ because it cut down on the size of the banner and saved some money.  The innocent little boy's response "But why would they take Christ out of Christmas?"  So touching, heartwarming, and even a bit true.  But it's only half the story.

Do You Wanna Dance?

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Once More Unto The Breach

It's time to take up the torch once again. I always fantasized I'd have a blog to rival Joe My God or Towleroad but obviously I'm going to have to feel my way about and figure out just how this is going to work. What form will it take? How do I tell stories on here? Hopefully I can figure out a way to make it something more than a simple recording of the trivialities of my day. Despite the fact that I have a truly individual perspective that should be shared with the world, should I really make people suffer through the banalities that make up my days? So I'll tell a story today. Actually, it's a retelling. But here's the deal. No story I ever tell on this blog should ever be considered factual. The people I write about, figments of my imagination. The events, total fabrications. Any resemblances they might have to events in my past, purely coincidental. I might change a name here and there. I might use a name of someone I once knew. Or maybe this entirely fictional character will simply share a name with some person from the real world. And that, as they say, is that.

 

Weddings and Visitors

Dominic got married this weekend!  Sadly, I have no pictures since my camera broke but I promise to get some and as soon as I do I'll post them.  He was stunning in black tie and tails and his bride Leslie was absolutely lovely.  The standout though was Gabriel.  I can't wait to share the pictures of him in his tux with his way-too-big shoes and his unbelievably cool hat.  The child is a star.  Unfortunately I didn't make it through the reception so I missed his dance to the Gummy Bear Song.  I think I got overheated in the church or something.  Perhaps it's like vampires and crosses and placing myself in the amidst all the eclesiastic paraphanalia was just too much and the Lord above cursed me for my demon ways.  Or maybe it was just the heat.  Either way, by the time I got to the reception I thought I was going to throw up or pass out and didn't want to do either so I waylayed Leo into bringing me home where I crashed out for about 18 hours.

Speaking of Leo, he and Geno are visiting me both for the wedding and to help me finish unpacking and putting things away and cleaning this place up.  They have been wonderful and I will never be able to repay them. Well, I kinda already paid Leo by raising him and putting up with him through his teens which is something few people would have done.  Trust me.  But Geno owes me nothing and has been the most wonderful friend and done so much to make my life better in the last week.  I will owe him forever.

Well, Wasn’t That Depressing?

Lord almighty!  Remind me to never post when I’m overly medicated!  I have to admit that week was kinda gruesome but still!  I’d spent most of that week in my bedroom feeling sorry for myself.  Now I'm focusing on the two adolescent kittens that are running around my house like maniacs.  We're also all trying to become more spiritual.  Last night we went to a past lives workshop.  JJ my little boy cat has informed me that in his most recent past life he was an undercover operative for the CIA and was hot on the trail to Bin Laden’s hiding place when he was assassinated by an enemy agent.  Rainbow was a housewife in Indiana and she’s not sure she approves of all the goings on in this house.  I was the slave to a pair of housecats in upper Egypt until they died and I was buried alive with them in their tomb.  The more things change........

She has two primary issues: JJ’s determination to seek out and destroy all enemies of the United States Constitution and my determination to seek out and ravish a 22 year-old surfer boy. However, JJ's got a lot of growing to do before he returns to Pakistan to renew his search for terrorists and I have less of a chance to bag a 22 year-old surfer boy than JJ has to land Bin Laden.  In the meantime we watch Rachel Maddow and Keith Olberman every afternoon followed by The Daily Show. I'm trying to mold his little kitty brain into becoming a staunch defender of civil rights while giving him a healthy sense of humor at the same time. 

As a result of my newest herniated disk, I’ve been watching a lot of TV while JJ continues to train in order to return to active duty and Rainbow works her little kitty fingers to the bone learning to operate this keyboard so she can get online and find a decent cleaning service.  Occasionally they both get distracted chasing bugs.  If you read my earlier post might remember that there are a lot of bugs for them to chase.  As a result neither one of them has made a whole lot of progress in their missions.  This is great because it means that I will have plenty of time to teach both of them the lyrics to the entire Sondheim songbook.

Labor Day Weekend

Labor Day Weekend

This weekend alternated between wonderful and awful each day. I hate these pain pills almost as much as hate the damn pain. I live in a fog. I can't remember what happened on each day. I know that Gabriel came over to my place on Saturday but I can't remember what we did. I'm getting Saturday and Sunday all mixed up. I know that Monday was a total bust - I didn't see Gabriel at all and didn't get anything done around the house. It's now Tuesday night/Wednesday morning and I'm trying to recount it all but my brain is just not working.

It started on Friday; Dominic had a cleaning job and he wanted me to go with him since his car is in the shop and he figured he could go surf for a while then I'd drop him at the cleaning job and go hang out somewhere and then pick him up and we'd go get Gabriel in the afternoon. Since I was feeling ok I figured I should just stay home and try to put some more stuff away so I just let him have the car. My plan to put things away sort of disintegrated - I started out checking Facebook and e-mail which, of course, took a few hours and by the time I'd finished I was feeling woozy and ended up sleeping the rest of the day. I got a little done later and Dom and Gabriel stopped by in the evening to say hello and Gabriel played with the kittens a bit.

I can't remember what happened during the day on Saturday. I think I had Gabriel for a while but I'm really not sure. I might not have. I have been waking up in a lot of pain lately and sometimes I accidently take two pain killers in the morning instead of just one. On some mornings before I officially get up; I'll sort of halfway awaken, use the bathroom, take the pain pill and go back to sleep for a bit. I always figure that this way when I do get up I won't be in so much pain. It rarely works.

I think Saturday was great. I had Gabriel at the house and he played with the kittens and I we watched kid's tv. I have to confess to a guilty pleasure: those little boys on Suite Life of Zack and Cody and Suite Life on Deck are adorable! They make me wish I was 14 again.

After that we went over to Josh's place to swim and just hang out. Gabriel and Asia were there having a blast in the pool. Josh and his wife are friends of Dom and Leslie's from church. They're very sweet with two adorable little girls who get along great with Gabriel and Asia. I hadn't intended to get in the pool but then I figured maybe the whirlpool would be good for me so I emptied by pocket and hopped in. The next morning we were all going to church so they could introduce me to the gay priest.

Unfortunately Sunday morning was awful. I think I over did it on the Jacuzzi jets and woke up in so much pain I thought I'd just die then and there. I didn’t. Of course, I couldn't remember if I had taken the pain pill or not. I knew I'd been up for a minute but couldn't remember if I'd taken the pill and not wanting to take two I waited around a while and when the pain didn't diminish at all I figured I probably hadn't taken it so I took one and after a bit the pain let up. But by then it was way too late to go to church.

I talked to Leslie after church and we ended up with her taking Gabriel shopping with her and then she dropped him off. By that time I was feeling human and Gabriel and I had a great afternoon. We played here for a while with him stacking all my change and trying to count how much money there was in the basket. We got all the quarters and dimes counted. He figured I had over a hundred dollars there. Then we went to the video game arcade where Gabriel is an impassioned gambler. He plays the games where you can win tickets that you turn in for prizes. Of course you, the parent or grandparent, end up paying $25 for an $8 stuffed animal, but the kid has a blast. And that's the point of it all. After that we were joining Leslie and Dominic on the beach for a bonfire. They were going to barbeque so I offered to bring something. Dom wanted me to bring a cake but Gabriel and I decided that smores would be more fun so I got two dozen Hershey bars and four boxes of graham crackers.

Then we went to a bonfire on the beach with some friends of Dominic's and I had a great time. I was getting the smores stuff out when someone asked where the marshmallows were. I realized then that I'd forgotten the key ingredient. What fun it is to live in a haze. I had lots of everything else but no marshmallows to put it all together. Luckily I'd brought wine from the house and a pie at Safeway and everyone was pleased and Gabriel and the other little boy there had a blast anyway.

The main guy at the bonfire was Andre, Dominic's boss on the cleaning jobs, who is simply terrific. He grew up on the island and has a good business going - he has a crew that goes out and cleans vacation rentals as well as the houses of people who live here year-round. He even said he's going to help me find some kind of part time job so I can get some money coming in before I go broke.

I woke up Monday in my usual combination of pain and fog and ended up not seeing Gabriel at all. The day overall was a bust. I did a little unpacking and arranging. The little leopard turtle died. The two sulcatas are doing great even though they rarely come out. Maybe I'm overdoing it with the sunlight and the light coming in from the window is enough.

Then came Tuesday. I got up this morning and was high as a kite. I couldn’t keep my eyes open but I managed to crawl out of bed, feed the cats, the turtles and Topher (the parrot) and pour myself an iced tea. I then climbed back into bed thinking maybe I could read for a bit and wake up. That didn’t work. I kept dozing off, burning myself three times when my hand would fall onto my thigh on next to me with the cigarette’s cherry hitting my body. Luckily I didn’t burn myself up! Finally I realized I had to not smoke until I was sure I could stay awake. However, somehow over the course of the morning I managed to spill five glasses of iced tea in my bedroom and the kitchen. I wish I had a video of me feeding the animals, lurching about the house grabbing onto anything solid to keep myself upright. It wasn’t until about 9:00 that I began to feel sober. I was also hurting like a son-of-a-bitch. So I took another pain pill, hoping that maybe I could stay sober for a couple of hours and read or catch up with e-mail and Facebook. I managed that with my laptop. But to do it, I had to take off my glasses and hold the screen up about 8 inches from my face to read stuff.

Now it’s 3:15 in the morning on Wednesday. I’m groggy and feel a bit out of it but managing to write this on the computer without spilling anything or falling down. Obviously I need to go a step down on the pain killers – these are too strong for me. I’m going to try to get a lower dosage of oxycontin along with a prescription for 10 mg oxycodone for the times that the pain is too much for the 30 mg oxycontin. I’m worried because I’m stage managing a show this weekend. On Thursday we’re supposed to have a run through and then the performance is on Saturday. I can’t do it in the state. I don’t want to back out of this – it would be a great way to meet some people and show them what I can do. But I don’t want to show up like this. I could still do the show but people would think I was a junkie and I know I wouldn’t be thinking fast enough to do a great job. I’m going to call the doctor when I get up today and see if I can get the script changed in time. We’ll see how it works out.

Hawaii - Love it/Hate it

A curious thing has happened since I moved to Hawaii last March:  I am falling back into my southern accent far more often than I did in Los Angeles.  I think this is because I feel so comfortable here.  The people are just nice.  "Nice" is truly a wuss word, but seriously, I have never been anywhere outside of the south where people are so friendly and open.  On the road, drivers are polite, they let others into the flow of traffic as if it were the most natural thing to do in the world.  You might think that it was part of the driver's test, that you couldn't pass if you didn't let two or three people into traffic in front of you every 30 minutes or you didn't pass.  It amazes me.  And I love it.  I'm now doing it myself as often as I can.  Occasionally I find myself rushing up in order to keep someone from getting onto the road in front of me and I have to pull back and say, "Hamp, you're not in L.A. anymore; this is not important."  And then I just relax and suddenly I'm the version of myself that grew up in Hazlehurst and Lake Charles.  And my accent just flows forth like Bowie Creek as it sang and danced its way beneath that old wooden bridge on the way to Big Mama's house. 

They ruined it when the blacktopped the road, the bridge disappeared, the creek went underground and that little stretch of road that was once so magical and mysterious was banished forever.  It happened right about the time I hit puberty and I used to wonder if I had just imagined that place.  Was Bowie Creek as insubstantial as my dreams of emerging from my chubby little prepubescent boy body into something far more beautiful, talented, exotic and desirable?  The butterfly, not the moth?  Maybe.

But back to life here.  There is so much to love; it's beautiful, the air is so clean, the people so friendly, the tranquility, the simplicity.  But then there's the bugs.  I mean it.  There are so many bugs here.  The damn things are everywhere.  Roaches the size of which I hadn't seen since the monsters that would come crawling out from beneath our boathouse on the Calcasieu River.  Last night I found one in bed with me.  I almost had to check into a hotel.

Now I am unafraid of almost all of the creatures God put on this planet.  Spiders, snakes, 50 lb alligator snapping turtles don't phase me.  But roaches send me into paroxyms comprised of equal parts disgust and terror.  Lately I've seen white ones, little albino dregs of disgusting matter that I know are plotting with those giant winged monstrosities that are trying to drive me from my bed.  Roaches are probably the only living beings whose extinction I would celebrate.

Then there these nasty little gnats that appear out of nowhere.  And I keep discovering these weird little slow-moving oddities with large pointed probiscuses (probisci?) and big eyes that just appear on my ceiling.  I use the vacuum cleaner to scoop the little bastards up, or down as the case may be, into the bag where hopefully they suffocate.  I hope they die in there.  I'd hate to think the damn things were breeding inside my vacuum cleaner waiting for me to change the bag when they'll burst forth by the thousands and suck the flesh, muscle and fat from my bones.  I should leave my anti-cholesterol pill bottles open since they'll definitely need them once they've finished me off.

But on the plus side there are all these beautiful mirthful little birds that sing from almost every branch on the island.  They come in all colors and sizes and varieties and there are no crows.  The roosters are rather annoying.  If you've ever been to Kauai you'll know what I mean.  There are chickens everywhere.  They're worse than the pigeons in Trafalger Square.  The chicks are adorable, of course.  Just like baby everythings.  But then like the adorable toddler who grows up to mug you in an alley these cute little baby chicks become loud and obnoxious and should be driven into the ocean and fed to lamprey eels and squid and such.

The only thing I truly miss about Los Angeles is the art.  Looking back, I hate myself for all the things I missed because I was too tired or lazy or depressed or whatever.  Oh, I long to see some ridiculous existential post post modern contemporary installation that is absolutely incomprehensible and will make me feel stupid because I just don't get it.  But that's a whole post in and of itself. 

So here we are.  I love it here.  I feel at home and relaxed and welcome.  I could use a job so that I'm not perpetually on the verge of starving but other than that I could be happy here for eternity.  But this is the place.  And truthfully, the love of my life is here.  Little Mr. Gabriel Hart Simmons is here.  The litte boy for whom I would crawl over broken glass, wade through liquid fire and stomp over billions of roaches both great and small is here on this island and for that reason alone I will stay here until it's time to move on.