The Eternal Return

I have been reading poetry and writing poetry and dreaming poetry. Falling asleep with iambic pentameter fragments swirling around in my brain... There is an outside possibility that I am a poet.

But only an outside possibility. Nothing is certain.

I am being urged by my workshop leader to go the POD (Publish on Demand) route as a way of getting launched as an honest-to-God for-realsies author. Imagine that! Thrills me! Scares me to death!

Scares me to death, kiddies. Really does.

The temptation to say Ah, Who are you kidding?, plant myself on the sofa and lose myself in the syndicated adventures of Rob and Laura and George and Ouisie is tremendous. I've waited too long, I worry, I've nothing that noteworthy to say anyway, I brood. Who'd read me? Who'd buy me? Who'd care if I ever published or didn't? And anyway there's this great Bette Davis movie coming on and it's becoming a favorite; it's strange and atmospheric and I think I like it even better than The Letter. I've just blanked on the title but in it she plays a wretch of a witch named Stanley whose reckless willfulness ruins the lives of just about everyone in her orbit.

Stanley. Love that. And Bette makes it work.

So I could just sit back and watch that again. Or wait about ten minutes and catch The Dick Van Dyke Show.

What is it Bette was famed for saying? If you know your Bette Davis you know where I'm going with this, I'm sure.

"No guts, no glory".

Pretty sure it was Bette...

My Name Was Barbra, Too

Poor things; December since last we visited. Did you think I'd forgotten, abandoned you?

As I write I am listening to selections from Barbra Streisand's My Name Is Barbra, Two...Too? album, the sublime sequel, if that's the correct description, to her wonderful My Name Is Barbra album, which was, I think, the companion lp to the first of her storied sixties television specials--

Or actually, no, I may have the sequence slightly wrong. The black and white television special My Name Is Barbra may have been launched by the success of Streisand's record album of the same name, with the lp My Name Is Barbra Two...Too? the immediate follow-up to the TV special since it featured some of its tunes. (The Second Hand Rose medley in Bergdorf Goodmans department store.)

I was only 8 at the time of all this, understand, and the only television program I remember from that year was the Rogers and Hammerstein musical special, Cinderella, the color version starring the wide-eyed and winsome Lesley Ann Warren in the title role. If I squint I can see my skinny 8 year old self in summer culottes wandering my Aunt Mary and Uncle Larry's sprawling Blackstone Street apartment singing "A Lovely Night", channeling Lesley Ann swooning from that magical meeting with His Royal Highness, Stuart Damon.

But in just a few years it would be Streisand's "Where Is The Wonder" and "Second Hand Rose" I would be singing around the house, mine and everyone else's and I never really looked back. I loved the yearning and brass of that big, big voice.

More later. Not too much later. I promise.

Brava Meredith Baxter!! (Your Membership Kit Should Arrive Shortly)

Just watched the online Today show interview clip in which Meredith Baxter, best known as Elyse Keaton, the mom on the popular '80s sitcom Family Ties, came out to Matt Lauer. It was terrific. Watching her, and watching Lauer draw her out with such sensitivity and skill, was a genuine treat; I smiled all the way through it.

It was twice the treat, in fact, because as I was hurriedly putting myself together for work this morning I slowed to watch the shot of Lauer, standing outside the studio with Meredith Viera and Al Roker, giving the teaser for the upcoming interview with Baxter in which he hinted at her decision to share a "secret".

"Gay!" I thought immediately, then laughed at my presumption. Ah, Lorraine, you think everybody's gay. I grabbed the remote, clicked off the set, grabbed up my coat and bag, and went out the door and into my day, not giving it another thought.

Then I came home, turned on my pc, opened up my browser and--gasp!-- there was the "coming out" story on my homepage with Baxter's picture beside it!

Sweeeet!! :0)

I thought Baxter was very classy, didn't you?--forthright about her anxieties over such a public disclosure of her private life (Um, yeeeah, do celebrities really have those anymore? Did they ever?) and candid about her reasons for doing so (A looming tabloid disclosure *sigh*). She was also warmly funny relating how she'd earlier come out to her five grown kids--her eldest "smart-aleck" son cheekily told her he already knew--and her step-dad, Emmy-winning writer-producer Alan Manings ("Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In", "One Day At A Time", "Good Times", et al) who in reply to her nervous announcement that she was dating women said something along the lines of "Really? So am I!"

Baxter told Lauer that she'd also come out to her Family Ties family, Michael Gross who played husband, Steven, and the "kids", Justine Bateman, Tina Yothers and of course Michael J. Fox. (Oh yeah, and I suppose I should include Brian Bonsall, who played the adorable 1986 edition to the Keaton household, Andrew). Happily, according to Baxter, both her real and fictional families, as well as her friends, have been supportive and loving. I'm delighted for her, and for all of them.

But especially for her.

Some LGBT people may take issue with the awkward timing of Meredith Baxter's announcement--it is unfortunate that it took the threat of a tabloid "outing" to convince Baxter to acknowledge her queerness, and personally I hate the idea of anyone, famous or not, coming out under duress--but good on her for deciding to tell her life story her own way rather than leaving it to a supermarket gossip rag to do the deed.

Though I have nothing but admiration for LGBT people who come out young, especially those with public profiles--more of that, please-- in some ways I most admire late-in-life gays who finally stand up and step forward. I speak from painful experience when I say here that the longer you avoid telling what you know to be The Truth, the more convinced you can become that speaking out will be the cataclysmic end of everything, and the harder it can get ever to find the words and the courage to do it.

All that said, watching Baxter's coming out today is for me a bittersweet thing; I so wish the profile of African-American LGBTs was higher, by which I mean, existent. How much longer will we all have to wait to have the pleasure of watching similar Big Reveals from the likes of... oh, pick anybody. Seriously, go ahead--pick anyone. If we're really expected to believe, as we approach the second decade of the 21st Century, that all of today's black entertainers and persons of note--be they tv stars, movie stars, R&B, hip-hop and pop stars, athletes, journalists, politicos, reality-show divas or various and sundry other media movers and shakers--are all heterosexual, why not assume they're all gay as well? Holds about the same amount of logic.

Wait, you're saying, what about--? Yeah, I know... I know about African-American LGBT luminaries such as singer Johnny Mathis, dancer-choreographer Bill T. Jones and writers Alice Walker and Jewelle Gomez, to name a few... but more importantly I wonder how many other Americans, black or white, can say the same? Because that I'm aware, I've never known any of them to sit with a Matt Lauer, a Barbara Walters or an Oprah Winfrey on national television and talk plainly about the experience of being lesbian or gay or bisexual. (If I've missed something, speak up--I'd like nothing better than to be contradicted on this point!) And it needs to be said that far too often when the celebrated likes of James Baldwin or Bessie Smith or Lorraine Hansberry or Malcolm X are profiled for Black History Month, their non-heterosexuality is either downplayed to a footnote or airbrushed entirely out of the bio.

Which leaves me feeling... less than celebratory.

Bleh (Sunday Morning Pages)

Sunday. Sinday. Sin day.
(Sin-Day? What in heaven's name made me think of that?)

Restless today and vaguely... bleh. Went for a pleasant walk this morning--absolutely beautiful autumn day, perfect for strolling--but feel like I didn't get as much out of it as I should have somehow. Would I still be out and about if this were Hyde Park rather than Bronzeville? Possibly. All those evocative, familiar streets and beckoning bookstores and cafes, the lakefront, the parks. I miss the walkabouts of my younger days--so much restless energy. Wish I'd begun writing back then, too. Didn't know then I had it in me, I guess. Nobody knows anything when they're young. Nothing.

I should return Michael's call. He left a message requesting assistance from his "computer expert", meaning of course me, but I am not an expert at all, just a bit more comfortable with modern electronics than he, hopeless Luddite that he is. Mike reminds me of my mother in the way he just assumes I can rescue him whenever he's confronted with something he doesn't understand. It never dawns on either of them that I might be as baffled as they and not exactly eager to demonstrate that.

Why am I so irritable? It's the first of a nice little 3 day vacation (almost forgot I put down Tuesday as a vacation day, though I still have Tuesday night's workshop to attend) but I can't work up much enthusiasm about it. Maybe that's why I'm dragging my feet about calling Mike back. I don't feel like talking, and I don't feel like talking about why I don't feel like talking. Even a non-conversation with Michael, where we begin by acknowledging we need to keep it short, can run on for a solid two hours before someone's phone dies and we finally hang it up.

The writing is going... (pause)... okay. It could be better. I want it to be better. I want to write every day something good, something wonderful, not this doodling crap where I can go for pages not really saying anything. What forces combine to create a Baldwin? a (Toni) Morrison? a Dickens? an Oates? Why can't I be as prolific as any of them?

Because they're special that's why. Gifted. Touched by the Divine. I am neither special, nor gifted (though I might be touched). I am just okay. And only that when I work at it.

Okay. Pity party is over. Time to get back to working at it.

Lizzie

Lizzie has now been consigned to memory. I miss her terribly.

This morning Mom and I took her to Hyde Park Animal Clinic where Tom Wake--a good guy who manages to combine kindness and sensitivity with brisk efficiency--performed the euthanasia services.

Did she know this moment was coming? It sure seemed that way; getting her out of the house was really rough. The clever scenario I’d envisioned for tricking her into her carrier—placing it outside the front door the night before with the expectation of maneuvering her inside the thing this morning after she followed me into the hallway—quickly fell apart when she went into hiding instead. The diabetes meant she was always ravenously hungry and thirsty, yet this time she refused to budge at either the sound of kibble being poured into her silver dish or the sight of a little 2% milk in her orange saucer, as though she sensed something sinister was afoot. I wound up having to corner her under my mother’s desk and muscle her into her carrier, she snarling and spitting every step of the way.

Me feeling like a traitor.

At the clinic Dr. Wake‘s assistant carefully held her on a towel-covered examining table while Tom gently but surely injected her leg with a clear solution that made her unconscious then stopped her heart. At Tom’s urging I stroked her head and spoke softly to her, hoping my loving voice and touch were the last things she experienced as she faded. It was all over so quickly—she didn’t pant or struggle or moan—and I could swear I saw the light go out of her beautiful marble eyes. Her pink tongue protruded a little. Then she was gone.

One especially heartbreaking little moment: as Tom was administering the injection my mother tried to gently rub Lizzie’s extended paw and with her remaining strength Lizzie pulled away from her. I cringed inwardly at this; even seconds from death she would not allow Mom to befriend her. Mom didn’t comment or react, but it must have hurt. She’d tried so hard these last five years to win Lizzie over but Lizzie would have none of it. For a fleeting moment I was actually angry at the cat.

I am going to miss her so. I know I sound like one of those pathetic cat ladies everyone rolls their eyes about, but she was my baby and almost human in her irrepressible playfulness, compelling need for attention and affection, inquisitive nature, epic silliness, and occasions of hissing, paw-swatting cantankerousness. From the moment I first met her, a live-wiry 11 month-old calico in my neighbor's living room, she was truly a character, interrupting her wrestling match with a Kermit toy to bound over and leap into my lap, paws pressed against my chest, performing a whisker-tickling examination of my chin, lips, hands and knuckles, before deciding I was hers. I brought her home that very day (My neighbor had to move and couldn't take her with him) and watched her take over the place, as I knew she would.

I will miss her chirping, burbling greetings, her soft mewlings for her breakfast and supper, her sudden mischievous grabs at my passing feet, and the trick she developed (until finally she became too sick to balance herself safely) of sitting up on her haunches and begging like a dog, knowing I would melt at the sight and give her whatever she was after—usually a saucer of milk, her favorite treat.

Where she learned that gesture I will never know, but then, she was an amazingly smart animal. Whoever said cats can’t be trained has been seriously misinformed; I was always teaching Lizzie new things, often without my realizing I was doing it.

I will miss our hallway hockey games, whapping and sliding back and forth to each other aluminum foil balls, plastic milk jug rings and anything else that would roll or bounce or skip. I will miss hide and seek around the living room furniture, and her snooping shopping bag inspections of incoming groceries. I will miss her frantic little “hurry up!” meows whenever she’d hear my key in the door and her affectionate nuzzles and winds around my legs when I came in and knelt down to tickle her ears and properly say hello.

I have gotten through the rest of this day and this evening by pretending Lizzie is lazily snoozing somewhere in the house out of sight, a contented, fuzzy, tri-colored ball—it’s just too painful right now to admit that she's gone and I will never see her again. I will miss her every day, for a very long time. The house will feel this way for a very long while, strange and still and unnaturally quiet.

For Barbara; And Especially For Lynn

I am going to do three things very soon, as soon as I am able: I am going to purchase two books--Barbara Sher's It's Not Too Late If You Start Right Now and E. Lynn Harris's What Becomes of the Brokenhearted.

I loved these books--I don't think it's just the mood I'm in. I have just this week finished library copies of each and have decided both should be in my home, near my desk, somewhere close by. Even if they mostly only sit on a shelf, I'd feel better if they were always within easy reach for those times when I'm down, discouraged and unsure of myself and the validity of my dreams. Both in their way are inspiring reads, though I ended Lynn Harris's beautiful, deeply moving memoir with the sad awareness that, due to his sudden death last month (heart disease?), I'll never have the chance to meet or correspond with this wonderful man. I know he's gone and still I want to write to him right now, just to tell him how much his willingness to share his struggles as a black gay man trying to make his way in the world means to me.

Barbara Sher however is alive and presumably kicking at this writing, and at the close of It's Not Too Late included contact information and encouraged her readers to let her know if her words were helpful and in what ways. I have forever missed my opportunity with the generous and life-affirming Mr. Harris; I will try not to with the witty and wise Ms. Sher. Even if she is unable to reply, I would want to let her know that her book made me completely reconsider what I thought I understood about middle age and second life dreams.

The third thing is I am going to join that Neighborhood Writing Alliance group I've spent three years watching wistfully from a distance. It's free, my work hours have changed so there are at present no scheduling conflicts, they meet within walking distance of home, and the new workshop begins next month. Looks like I'm all out of excuses.

If I get to choose my first writing assignment, I know exactly what it will be. Maybe I'll call it Letter To Lynn.

If not... I'll write it anyway.

My Cat Is Sick And I'm Not Feeling Too Good Either

24 August 2009
Monday Mid-Morning

I’m doing it again.

Waiting for someone to give me permission to do what I know needs to be done without anyone having to tell me.

Specifically, it’s about my cat. It’s time to have her euthanized. I know it even if my mother doesn’t (and really, she might). Lizzie is diabetic and her disease is being exhibited in all kinds of heartbreaking and exasperating ways, from the constant thirst that has her harassing me for milk nearly every time I walk into the kitchen let alone open the refrigerator door, to her opting to lie down in front of her water dish, her chin propped on the edge of her bowl, as she drinks and pauses, drinks and pauses, drinks and pauses. She’s always hungry as well, though it doesn’t seem to matter how often or how much I feed her; her appetite is never sated. She wakes me as early as 3:30am, pleading for the first in a series of feedings, though so far I’m able to hold off until at least 4 or 4:30am.

Then there are her deteriorating elimination habits.

For months now she’s been having trouble keeping both urine and fecal matter insider her litter box, the urine leaking or spraying out of the box chiefly because of the way she angles her body when she steps inside it to pee, flooding the floors and sometimes soaking the wall, bathroom rug and anything else nearby. She’s also pooping outside her box. Regularly. Sometimes on the bathroom rugs but most often on the living room carpeting, usually—though, to our horror, not always—in the early morning hours while we’re still asleep. This even though I have stepped up the care and cleaning of her cat box—which means I’m cleaning the damn thing religiously and still having to clean up after her elsewhere.

Her coat is another area of concern. It badly needs detangling—again—and she probably could benefit from another bath. She will not allow me to comb out even the smallest of tangles, though she does like my “’grooming” her with wadded up soft plastic newspaper sleeves and petting her in the evenings after “we’ve” emptied the trash (she always follows me into the hallway and sits patiently, waiting for my return from the garbage chute). In these bonding moments I have detected what feel suspiciously like tumors here and there on her body; some time ago I began to notice her apparent discomfort whenever she’d try to roll over on her side.
Lizzie also hides a lot now, crawling under my bed even when I’m home and in the room with her. That’s worrisome because I’ve learned that hiding is something many animals do to protect themselves when they’re scared, ill or in pain. She also vomits more often than I’m sure is normal.

Somehow none of this registers with my mother, or barely does. She seems especially unaware of how frequently the cat is peeing and pooping elsewhere probably because I am almost always the one cleaning up the mess, often before she’s seen any evidence of it. Mom is unaware of the tumors, if that’s what they are, because Lizzie resists all my mother’s efforts at physical affection, and she doesn’t notice the hiding behavior because it happens in my bedroom rather than hers and because she’s become accustomed to the cat’s disappearances when I’m not at home and its preference for my company when I am. We’ve talked about the diabetes and she has seen the ramping up of appetite and thirst, but she has (apparently) acclimated herself to that reality such that its larger meaning—the animal is seriously ill and will not get better—doesn’t fully register with her anymore, if it ever did. I don't think she really wants to know.

As before, with another beloved pet some 14 years earlier, it’s becoming clear to me that the burden of deciding the time to end things will fall to me; Mom cannot and will not say goodbye on her own. Her inability to do that comes from heartfelt affection for Lizzie, yes, but also because the animal has come to represent something else to Mom, something more than just a pet. It’s almost like she and I are a couple in a faltering marriage—I know how bizarre that reads but that’s how it feels—and the cat is the child that has been keeping us together. I don’t want to trivialize or ignore my mother’s feelings, but neither do I want to be ruled by them. Dealing with this animal’s problems is becoming stressful; this is a quality of life issue for me, too. I can’t leave the decision to her—she doesn’t want to know.

All that said, what do I do and when do I do it?

My mother says we shouldn’t have Lizzie euthanized until we’re sure she’s in pain, but the problem with that logic is at least twofold: first, when would someone as generally unobservant as my mother notice when that particular threshold had been reached, especially given the cat’s tendency to hide? And second, how much silent suffering should the cat have to endure before finally Mom could bring herself to agree that she should not be allowed to suffer anymore?

The last vet visit was back in March of this year. That was when Dr. W. laid it all out for me, after Lizzie’s blood and urine lab tests came back. He suggested daily insulin shots would likely help Lizzie’s symptoms and buy her more time, but the realities of the treatment and ongoing costs make that an unworkable solution. Euthanasia was all that was left and though I felt terrible for even thinking it, I was tempted right then and there to say to Tom, “Let’s just do this and get it over with.” Had I still been living alone, I probably would have.

But I’m not, and this living arrangement with my mother has complicated things. I know she wants to believe this is “our” cat and thus “our” decision to make though in her heart she must know the cat is really mine. This is as true now as it was 11 years ago when, after making it brutally clear to my mother that there would be no more pets, period, I did a guilt stricken about-face and brought Lizzie home to the Hyde Park apartment we shared. Though Mom became quite fond of Lizzie, she was content to let me be the pet mother, the one who actually tended to its needs, from keeping the icky litter box clean to ferrying it back and forth for check-ups, grooming and yearly shots; Mom loved the pleasure of the animal's company but not, particularly, the nitty-gritty of its care. Not surprising, it was with me the cat most strongly bonded and when, after another few years, my mother and I parted company and I decided to take Lizzie with me, Mom gave no argument.

But a few years later my financial fortunes changed for the worse and we all moved in together again (Lizzie surprising us both with her steadfast refusal to accept my mother’s determined attempts at getting reacquainted), and… here we are, faced with this, or rather me faced with this.

Faced with doing what I know needs to be done without anyone having to tell me to do it.