Goodbye (1993)

It makes me sick today to see gay relationships touted as anything superior in any way. Gay relationships are usually much sicker than straight relationships. (I've witnessed many awful straight relationships. But  the gay relationships I've witnessed were actually worse---the sick role-playing was actually worse.)

Here's a poem that I wrote in 1993 about my first encounter with my first lover, a woman. This was my awful first sexual relationship. I wished it could have been special, and sweet.

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Behind me is my world of impossibles:
new clothes, a round butt, and me twenty-three again,
virgin wiggles and blind lust. 

I was that once, and just once, my dreams of wine and first dates,
talk of why we were gay, sliced in our first night's scissored legs
and grunts, your blank eyes. There was no wine.

Only me with my hair still wet and black T-shirt and your
whiskey and brought ice, some with cubed spiders to bobble
and float as I watched, entranced, my bought wine
corked and chilled in the fridge, still, not right.

For you with your red-velvet spread and leathered walls,
a girl's wet head and wine and sad blacks
echoed blankly or not at all, you soon choosing
what I drank, how I dressed, and once
I found your lap on my own, nestling, no bemoaning
how I sat, I was yours, and your eyes
glazed flat, untroubled my mine. There would be no fight.

I would lie before you and you would lie, and I'd spread
my legs and my mind wide and drink you in and you'd drink
and fuck some other punk, and drunk
we'd lose each dream, settling for broken windows, glass
tight words and ass and things packed until
leaving was the lesson we cut for each other, in
brittle strips and lost mothers and trips not taken, the ache
and the memories not saved...

Late reports have you grinding
downtown and me prepared to leave, each grief unbelieved, even
as I read it, even as I pack my scruffy bags and go alone.

My butt will always be flat, my clothes old,
old as we all grow. Get used to that. 

How can a simple dip in the pool be a chore?!

I've always loved swimming. And I've usually only lived inland, so I could only swim in pools rather than in any massive bodies of water (which always creeped me out---I hate swimming with any creepy creatures).

[Addendum: One childhood memory that remains with me: When I was 8, my family lived on an Air Force Base in Georgia. Our base housing was about a mile away from the base pool. For some reason, neither of my parents wanted to drive me to the pool on this day, so I walked the whole way there by myself. Once I got there, I was informed that I was too young to swim by myself without adult supervision... I must have looked so pitiful and sweaty after the mile-long-walk that the lifeguards let me in.]

I've lived in my current apartment for 8 years now. The pool is a 30-second-walk away. Getting there is easy, but then there's the whole psychological thing---trying to avoid other people and their loud music! Usually, if I get there around 11am, I have the pool to myself for over an hour. Around noon, a few people and their kids show up. Later in the afternoon come the single people with their iPods and music blaring. (Evenings, which I don't know anything about, except when I might go out to check my mail or go to the store, are more families and singles, also cooking out at the same time.)

My goal at this place every year has been to get 12 swims in---One for every week of summer. My only chance to be outdoors and breathe fresh air, and to get some sun, and some mild exercise. (Since COVID in 2020, I've worked only from home---I hardly ever move. I hate the sluggishness.)

Today, I got a swim and sun in. But I was also conscious of how it was kind of a CHORE. As I mentioned above, it's kind of a gamble RE when/if others will show up and ruin the momentary peacefulness. But then there's the aftermath: I'm not just a bald dude taking a dip. I'm a female with hair, etc., and once I finish swimming, I have to shower and re-do the hair, and then also soak the swimsuit in Woolite, and then hang up the towel, etc. I paid attention to the clock today, and all of the after-swim stuff took me a whole other hour with all the washing/rinsing/hanging! (Today, for instance, I'd planned on going to get a pedi after the swim---but I was just mildly tuckered out after all of the cleaning up I had to do after the swim and so just sat/lay on my couch afterwards, not wanting to go out and do another thing all day!)

So, yeah, it's not as simple as just: "Whoo, take a swim!" 

Text from My Uncle

My uncle Monte is the youngest of four boys born to Fern in East Texas. I think these are the dates (knowing only my dad's birth year exactly and having once been told all the boys were born 2 years apart):
Robert: 1938
Marion Duane: 1940
Randy: 1942
Monte: 1944

Uncle Bob and Uncle Randy died years ago. Uncle Randy first. I heard second-hand that he woke up one morning and looked in the mirror to find one of his eyeballs turned around backward in his head. That's how he learned he had cancer. (I don't know how Uncle Bob died; this was the uncle that I knew the least about.)

A few years ago, Uncle Monte and I found each other on Facebook. I enjoyed talking to him (especially sharing political ideas), and learning about my cousins and family, etc. But when Trump got banned from Facebook, I also quit abruptly in protest, and thus lost contact with Uncle Monte.

Today, he called me. (How did he know my phone number? I guess he got it from my dad.) I didn't recognize the number, and so didn't answer. But the subsequent accompanying long, heartfelt voice-mail text kind of woke me up: My parents might not be kind, but this man is kind. He actually remembers me as a child, and remembers our previous Facebook conversations, and shared his personal life with me, and would like to keep in touch with me. 

What an open, kind soul.

I wish he'd given me an e-mail address. Calling him back and speaking to him directly seems too much. But that's all I have: His phone number that he called me from today.

I am utterly disassociated from any of my roots (not mentally and not intentionally---I think about my parents and their/my roots all the time. But since my parents don't seem to like me very much today (as they didn't when I was a kid)---what am I supposed to do?

But this kind man just contacted me. He reminded me of feeling connected to something. My family.

I need to call him back.

Donald Trump: Iran and Israel 'don't know what the fuck they're doing'

Say it, Trump. The Truth is exhilarating. 

I don't think I've ever heard any politician speak it. 

This guy is a hero. I knew it back in 2016. 

(I actually also knew it, to a lesser extent, when Trump took over the renovation
 of  NYC's Wollman Rink back in the '80s after years of mismanagement---
I was just a kid then, but even then, I admired that small bit of efficiency. 
After all of his media peccadilloes in the '80s/'90s, 
I always remembered him for the Wollman Rink.)

Not to dis my lifetime of various beloved artists, but... 
Sometimes you get sick and tired of "feelings" and "posings" and "malaise"
and just want to see someone strong in action.

George Jones: The Race Is On (Live at Farm Aid 1985)

George Jones: Hopelessly Yours (1986)

I love you, I hate you, forget you, but I'm afraid to
You loved me, or did you, I'll never be sure

But one thing's for certain, in spite of this hurtin'
Forever I'm hopelessly yours...

The Smiths: Ask (1986)

Shyness is nice and shyness can stop you
From doing all the things in life you'd like to
Shyness is nice and shyness can stop you
From doing all the things in life you'd like to

So, if there's something you'd like to try
If there's something you'd like to try
Ask me, I won't say "no"
How could I?

Coyness is nice and coyness can stop you
From saying all the things in life you'd like to

So, if there's something you'd like to try
If there's something you'd like to try
Ask me, I won't say "no"
How could I?

Spending warm summer days indoors
Writing frightening verse
To a buck-toothed girl in Luxembourg

Ask me, ask me, ask me
Ask me, ask me, ask me
Because if it's not love
Then it's the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb that will bring us together

Nature is a language – can't you read?
Nature is a language – can't you read?

So ask me, ask me, ask me
Ask me, ask me, ask me
Because if it's not love
Then it's the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb that will bring us together

The Smiths: Cemetry Gates (1986)

Rap has never been capable of this. 
The boyz haven't read, or thought about, anything to refer to. 
All they can talk about is fucking or making up stories about the police 

that they think their equally dumb frat-boy-wannabes want to hear.



A dreaded sunny day
So I meet you at the cemetery gates
Keats and Yeats are on your side

A dreaded sunny day
So I meet you at the cemetery gates
Keats and Yeats are on your side
While Wilde is on mine

So we go inside and we gravely read the stones
All those people, all those lives
Where are they now?

With loves, and hates and passions just like mine
They were born and then they lived and then they died
It seems so unfair, I want to cry

You say, "Ere thrice the sun done salutation to the dawn"
And you claim these words as your own
But I've read well, and I've heard them said

A hundred times maybe less, maybe more
If you must write prose and poems
The words you use should be your own
Don't plagiarize or take on loan

'Cause there's always someone, somewhere
With a big nose, who knows
And who trips you up and laughs when you fall
Who'll trip you up and laugh when you fall

You say, "Long done, do, does, did"
Words which could only be your own
And then produce the text from whence was ripped
Some dizzy whore, eighteen hundred and four

A dreaded sunny day
So let's go where we're happy
And I meet you at the cemetery gates
Oh, Keats and Yeats are on your side

A dreaded sunny day
So let's go where we're wanted
And I meet you at the cemetery gates
Keats and Yeats are on your side

But you lose
'Cause weird lover Wilde is on mine
Sure

The Velvet Underground/Nico: Heroin (filmed by Andy Warhol)

Chubby Checker: The Twist (Dick Clark, 1960)

The Twist: Chubby Checker (post-1960)

One Thing that Warhol and Manson Had In Common

The philosophy of ultimate "Humanism" (taken up by latter-day Satanists like Aleister Crowley): Do what thou wilt. 

BUT: You can't just "do what thou wilt"! That doesn't work out when you live among other humans. I remember thinking this when Luigi Mangione murdered the health-care executive: "This isn't how society works! You don't/can't just go around killing people that you have a beef with!"

The difference between Warhol and Manson, though:

Warhol was just going about his own business, living his creepy internal ideals, thinking his thoughts and channeling them into his art---which garnered followers, and then got great public attention (both positive and negative) AND money.

Whereas Manson, I suppose, had no public outlet. He also was, post-jail, trying to live his creepy internal ideals, thinking his thoughts and trying to channel them into his art. He had his hippie followers who also echoed everything he believed (as did Warhol's Factory Gays), but the big difference: His music never struck a chord, so to speak, with the local LA powers-that-be (though he had his chances).

Warhol was immediately embraced upon his arrival in NYC. His initial trivial magazine artwork garnered much approval; his only future battle was to be accepted by art galleries.
Manson was initially embraced by the LA subculture and given entree to LA music producers. But his own antagonism toward the producers trying to work with him ultimately cast him out.

Both men were from very poor backgrounds.

Warhol (born 1928) had a stable immigrant family life, despite poverty. His artistic talent was recognized as a kid in Pittsburgh, and he was offered classes in art, and then help getting into the Carnegie Institute of Technology (his father, upon his early death, insisted that part of his life insurance money would go to Andy's college education). 

Manson was born (1934) in Kentucky to a teen mother; he had no acknowledged father. After his mother was arrested for robbery, he lived with various relatives and then was placed in juvenile homes beginning at age 13 for petty crimes. Subsequent adult crimes resulted in various federal imprisonments up until 1967.

Warhol was an overt sissy. While he might have been mocked as a kid, he was nonetheless given some semblance of respect as a "talent" in his working-class neighborhood and as one who was college-bound.
Manson, though straight, was very small and treated like a sissy. He was raped as a juvenile by various fellow inmates.

Warhol, who was odd-looking and gay and not normal in his childhood environment, developed a theory of: Nothing Matters. Do what thou wilt.

Manson, who was small and straight and raped in his childhood environment, developed a theory of: Nothing Matters. Do what thou wilt.

Warhol got some grace from the outside world in being recognized for his artwork and allowed a path forward via art classes and college.
Manson got zero grace.

Warhol went on to surround himself with drug-addled sycophants. But in a protected "artistic" environment. (At least until one of the "freaks"---Valerie Solanas---shot him.)
Manson went on to try the same. But on a broke-down ranch where the girls had to forage in city dumpsters for dinner.

All sorts of drugs were available in both camps. As per the "Do what thou wilt" dictum. 

But what Warhol did was encourage his followers to debase themselves sexually/emotionally on film.
What Manson did, after encouraging his followers to debase themselves sexually/emotionally, was specifically tell several followers to go out and kill people.

Same sick philosophy, taken to different degrees.

The Experiment

Let me put Jesus onto the Earth and see what will happen to him.
Kind of mean of God, huh? I feel bad for Jesus. 
And when Jesus cried out at the end: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" --- He knew he'd been forsaken and abandoned by an "Evil Scientist." 
When you're at peace with your own death, you don't go out accusing anyone---but Jesus did. He screamed, in pain, the ultimate accusation. He wasn't screaming at the civic Romans or at his fellow Jews, but, rather, at his own supposed God.

What to make of that? A whole denomination (Catholicism) has been founded on Father/Son/Holy Ghost. But what if the religion had been founded, instead, on the denial of the Evil Scientist Father? Didn't the followers witness what had just happened? Jesus didn't say "Whoops, I didn't mean it" at the end. He MEANT, and went out with: "Why hast thou forsaken me?" I think his anger and pain should have been, and should be, taken quite seriously.

Donald Trump Edit: Eye of the Tiger

I think I might have already posted this before, but... what the hell---
I've hated this cheesy song since I was a kid, but in this context... 
LOVE YA TRUMP!! So much WINNING!  :)
(I wish his father had been alive to see him as President.
I think he had utter faith in his son, but I don't think he---or anyone else!---

knew he'd get THIS far!)

Sally Go Round the Roses (The Jaynetts; 1963)

In his early years, this was cited as one of the songs Warhol would have playing
in his apartment on repeat. Until, he said, he could understand what it meant.

Randy Travis: Diggin' Up Bones (1986)

Randy Travis: Forever and Ever, Amen (1987)

The Lord's Prayer

Before I look this up online, let me see if I can recite it by memory:

Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done 
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.

I always remember the above part, but there's more!

And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, The power, and the glory, For ever and ever. Amen.

Read more at: https://www.lords-prayer-words.com/lord_traditional_king_james.html?vm=r

And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, The power, and the glory, For ever and ever. Amen.

Read more at: https://www.lords-prayer-words.com/lord_traditional_king_james.html?vm=r

And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory,
forever and ever.

Amen.

So What

I woke up to 2025 thinking this was going to be a good year. A "good year" that quickly devolved in February, after my mother asked me in an e-mail: "Did you really love Sandra?" I responded: "What a weird question!" Then explained how Sandra had been my very second love (after Ginny in high school), how Sandra had been my last love, how Sandra and I had talked almost every day from 2008 thru 2015, and then been only sporadically in touch after 2015; and then her 2018 stroke, and the guilt when I found out she'd died in 2024... Did I really love Sandra----what a STUPID question. Not a "weird" question. I couched that.
Mom hasn't been back in touch with me since.
And after Sandra's daughter never answered my e-mail (the daughter had asked publicly for contact with me via her mom's online Legacy.com death site).
These two things have caused an unnecessarily cruddy feeling for me so far this year. That is, until I've been re-reading some Andy Warhol bios. Now, normally, Warhol is not an inspiration for how to live your life (ha!), but in this one case, he might be on to something:

Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, "So what."
"My mother didn't love me." So what.
"My husband won't ball me." So what.
"I'm a success but I'm still alone." So what.
I don't know how I made it through all the years before I learned how to do that trick. It took a long time for me to learn it, but once you do, you never forget. 

― Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

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Interestingly, Sandra seemed to have a rather Warhol-esque philosophy about her own paintings: Various angry lovers put cigarettes out on, or slashed, her paintings. She left those marks in. At the end, when she had no place to live and she'd stored her paintings at an elderly rich former lover's house: The man got sick and died, and his family got rid of her paintings. On the surface, she wasn't bothered. (Me, on the other hand: WHERE ARE YOUR PAINTINGS? SANDRA! MY GOD! FIND THEM! Sandra's paintings were brilliant and important. But she pretended not to care---since fate had apparently determined that they were lost.)

After her death, I asked her daughter about her mother's paintings: She didn't know where they were.
 

Below: Warhol shot by Yousuf Karsh, 1979

Poor Nutrition

Back in the '90s, in the days when I was chasing after my first girlfriend after she'd broken up with me in 1991: I was lost, and going out constantly to gay clubs. Trying to re-create my first meeting in 1989 with my first girlfriend, hoping for something similar.

What I got instead was a bunch of weirdos:
One time, while waiting in line for the restroom at a gay club, one butch starting chortling about girls having purses.
At various other times, I got males wanting to take me home, couples wanting to take me home, etc. 

Outside of clubs, I once ran into a pasty-faced girl that I knew coming out of a 7-11: She had two packs of cinnamon rolls and a Big Gulp. I said "Hi" and she told me that this was her dinner.

Gay or not: NO. I had a basic upbringing: A vegetable with every meal. Non-negotiable for future reference. A vegetable just IS.

And then I guess since I was hanging around lesbian clubs so much (while looking so straight), one girl offered me a joint: I smoked it with her in her car, thinking she was just being friendly. It was a very weird high, and when I went back in the club, the girl who'd offered me the joint ignored me the whole time----Which is unusual once you've gotten high with someone! Usually, anyone sharing a joint is friendly afterwards... I guess now, decades later, that maybe she thought I was a narc or something and just invited me to smoke a joint to test me?? (I certainly never looked stereotypically lesbian.)

Another creepy experience from my former gay life. 

Fort Hood Is Coming Back!!

 https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5343098-trump-restores-old-base-names/

President Trump on Tuesday announced the Pentagon will restore the names of the seven remaining military installations formerly named after Confederate generals after two others had been reverted back earlier this year.

“For a little breaking news, we are also going to be restoring the names to Fort Picket, Fort Hood, Fort Gordon, Fort Rutger, Fort Poke and Fort AP Hill and Fort Robert E. Lee,” Trump told attendees at a Fort Bragg, N.C. celebration marking the Army’s 250th anniversary.

The bases are currently known as Fort Barfoot in Virginia, Fort Cavazos in Texas, Fort Eisenhower in Georgia, Fort Novosel in Alabama, Fort Johnson in Louisiana, Fort Walker in Virginia, and Fort Gregg-Adams, also in Virginia, respectively. 

The promise fulfills a campaign pledge by Trump, who vowed to revert bases back to their original names after a Congressionally mandated commission recommended new titles for nine military bases in 2022. 

GO TRUMP! A return to sanity! 

--------------------

What's next: The Washington Redskins are back?! (OK, I see more of an argument against "Redskins"---Although, as I once pointed out to my Marxist educator sister-in-law: Football teams are named after GOOD, tough, forceful entities. It's not a slur.)

Why do I like to post photos of my full fridge?

I've posted stocked-fridge photos several times in the past decade. Why is that? 

I wasn't ever hungry as a child. 

In high school, before I turned 16 and got a part-time job, my mother did only give me $2 per week allowance (early '80s, mind you, not the Depression era)---so I would often skip school lunch to keep the lunch money she gave me. To buy records, or makeup, or birthday/Christmas gifts for my mother.

(My friends at the time started to mock my "Are you going to finish those fries?" Said because I hadn't bought a lunch and was just sitting there eating their leftovers! What a weirdo I was!)
In my early college years, I was actually very poor: 
One favorite treat for myself was two bean/cheese burritoes + a chicken egg-roll from the UT-Austin Chinese food stands: Total of $1.65! With a big lemonade for 50 cents more if I felt like splurging. 
(But of the 4 Chinese stands around campus: 2 had tasty burritoes/eggrolls, but the other two were awful! So I had to remember which company had the good ones!)
Another treat for myself was the value menu at Taco Bell: 1 Taco Supreme, 1 regular taco, 1 bean/cheese burrito---all for maybe $2.15. (For old time's sake, I just last week went to my nearby Taco Bell and ordered the same trio, to see if it tasted as good as it did back then: Not at $9, it didn't!) :)
Years later: Once I got back from NYC in 2010 and didn't have a car, it was always a major effort to go to the grocery store. I had money to buy groceries, but it was just a pain to carry them all home on the bus! Very time-consuming, so I'd wait for a couple of weeks---but then I was out of most supplies so I had to buy a bunch of stuff, and the bags were HEAVY! It was quite a chore lugging them home. (Especially in the summer: I'd be sopping wet with sweat by the time I got home---my apt was quite a few blocks away from the bus stop.)
Today, in 2025: Though I've told myself to go to the grocery store every 3 or 4 weeks, I usually wait 5 weeks or so. By that time, my larder is pretty barren, and I'm not eating fresh fruits/veggies for the latter 2 weeks, usually just my remaining frozen dins and fruit cups. Why don't I just go more often, like every 2 weeks? I dunno. It's kind of a hassle. For one thing, I only have time to shop on weekends. And if I don't wake up pre-9am on Saturday or Sunday, then the HEB store is a writhing mass of humanity. Not just regular shoppers, but the big-ass HEB carts sitting in the middle of every aisle while HEB employees do personal shopping for those too lazy to go to the store themselves. Pre-10am, it's OK, but after that, it's pretty obnoxious being there. (Not to mention: EVERY SINGLE TIME I go there, the baggers don't know how to bag groceries: They'll throw avocados and bananas and bread at the bottom of a bag, and then throw canned goods on top of them. Even if the store has failed to train them, you'd think they might use a bit of common sense...)
So, yeah, going to my local HEB is kind of a pain. But it feels GREAT once I've gotten it accomplished and everything is stocked up for the next few weeks! So I have fresh chicken or fish, etc., to eat, instead of frozen dins. Avocados and strawberries and blueberries instead of fruit cups! Romaine lettuce/radishes to make salads! Those delicious Turkey/Rice soups! And some tres leches cake for a real treat (instead of candy)! A bit of a sense of accomplishment. 
Plus I think, as a collage, fridge photos look interesting. And tell you a lot about the person! And I feel happy when my fridge is full: I have choices.

 

 

Do you have a new love, or a new hemorrhoid?

Pre-40, the question is the former. Post-40----my god, how stupid and depressing. It's either your hemorrhoids or your awful kids! I'm not quite like that: I recently read a poll: What do you live for? The options were: Friends, Family, Knowledge, God.

I've been living on pure Knowledge for years now. I'd abandoned "God" years ago. But after watching the EWTN Catholic cable station recently... This station actually has intellectual discussions about God. Like I used to have with myself back when I was 15 years old and first thinking for myself. I was completely adrift as a teen, had no spiritual guidance whatsoever... 

Initially, "media" guided me: What celebrity did I relate to most? Once I stayed up all night and watched "Song of Bernadette" and "Wild in the Streets" (what were the other couple of films?). I had a 12-inch black-and-white TV, I was supposed to be asleep. I stuffed a towel underneath my bedroom door so my mother wouldn't see the light from the TV. After "Bernadette," the sun was coming up. And I had a minor revelation: The Night is not so mysterious: I just lived through it!

Who do you listen to?

If I listened to my mother, I should shut up and not speak about anything. I should have gotten married and had kids. (We're not speaking today, but in years past: If I had something to say to her, she wouldn't look at me. I remember wanting to punch the newspaper in front of her face.)

In very recent years: My mother still would not allow me to speak. And she often literally looked away from me while I was speaking to her.

Strangely, given her disdain for this blog and her desire for me to never mention her on this blog: My mother has often said to me: "Why didn't you ever write books? You had the talent." Dear Mom and Dad: Given that you provided me with my early emotional background, and given how deficient that was: If you don't like my mentions of you in my blog, then you certainly would not have enjoyed the more-complete explorations in any novels! :)

Unresolved Emotional Issues

I think I have said issues with only three people:
Ginny (died 1988)
Sandra (died 2024)
My mother (still alive today at age 84)

I have so much guilt involved with all. BUT.... Here's the thing. I never left any of them.

I'll just use Ginny as an example:

We were very close in the Spring and Summer of '83, right before I went to college. That summer, she invited me to travel with her and her parents to Georgia, which I did. My one week with her then, and the subsequent times we spent together that summer, were the most important emotional times in my life. Ginny was the first person I was ever in love with.

Once I went to college at UT Austin that fall, we wrote letters for about 1 month. In October, she ran away from home, taking a bus to Austin to be with me. She stayed with me in my dorm room over the weekend, then called her father to come get her. (I don't think she understood that I was living in a dorm room---not a personal apartment! She could not stay there!)
 
After that, I saw her at Christmas 1983---she had a new "best friend" (Cindy) who was there at her house when I came over.

The next summer (1984): Funnily, as my mother was driving me home from Austin and we were just entering Azle, we happened to be driving alongside Ginny in her car (with Cindy in the passenger side)---Ginny and I waved and grinned madly at each other! But when I tried to contact her later that summer, she was cold. And she spoke with a "weird diction" that she and Cindy had apparently invented for themselves. When I invited Ginny to do anything that summer, she also invited Cindy. We three went to see "The Wall" together. Ginny got upset at the violence and ran out of the theater. Cindy ran after her. I rolled my eyes at them and stayed 'til the end of the movie. (Sorry, but I don't regret staying for the end of "The Wall"! Come on.)

On a night when she still lived with her parents that summer: I went to see a play at the high school that Cindy was appearing in ("Man in the Moon Marigolds"). Yes, only in the hopes of seeing Ginny. She only reluctantly invited me over to her house afterward.

Ginny and I went on (with Cindy) for the next couple of years. I think it was 1986 that Ginny was working at a Fort Worth record store and stole a bunch of tapes from the store, and thought it would be a good idea to come to sell them in Austin (!). So she and Cindy drove to Austin and asked me where to sell them... There was a used record store on the Drag (Guadalupe), so I told them they could try that... The store subsequently reported them to the police and Ginny got busted back in Fort Worth! (Her dad bailed her out.)

Last time I heard directly from her was in the Spring of 1987: Since I'd entered college in 1983, she'd assumed that I was about to graduate after 4 years, in 1987. She was sick, and Cindy was tending to her own sick mother back home in Azle, so Ginny was alone in Georgia and wanted someone to be with her... But I would not be the second choice. And I didn't know that she was actually DYING and not just "sick."
In November 1988, after I'd moved from Austin to Fort Worth to be with some other friends, I was upset with my situation one night and called Ginny's number: Her father informed me that she'd died in March of that year: "I thought we'd told all of the Azle people." (What a horrible call! Stupid me asking for Ginny, and her father having to tell me she was dead. And learning that I was just one of the "Azle people" who had not been told anything.)

My new-found LACK of guilt as of 2025: Ginny was awful to me post-1984! I'd thought she loved me, but she did not. Boo-hoo. (But then at the end, she wanted me to come visit her in Georgia... I think I was right in figuring out that she just contacted me because Cindy was not available at the time... I liked and loved her so much... but she only contacted me because she was sick and lonely and Cindy wasn't available. Post-script: Cindy went on to marry a large black woman. Me, I'm still single and thinking about Ginny.)

So that's #1 checked off RE "no more guilt"! Two more to come!

Trust Issues

Do I really have a 20% chance of having a heart attack or stroke in the next year, or is my doctor trying to get me on various expensive pharmaceuticals (covered by my workplace)?

Since Covid in 2020, I've been working from home. Hardly moving at all. Hardly getting any sun. Hardly breathing any fresh air. I KNOW that I'm not healthy. I'm eating OK (have lost 20 lbs after leaving my last in-house workplace and its cafeteria), but I'm also drinking too much, and smoking too much. (For instance, back when I travelled to a job every day, I'd smoke a cig in the morning before work, another cig at lunch, maybe one during a break in the afternoon. While working from home, I'm constantly smoking, maybe 8 cigs by the end of the work-day. And then, of course, many more afterwards.)

My doctor seems perfectly nice and professional, but I don't really trust that she's not blandly in cahoots with Big Pharma and trying to get me on statins!

I guess I'll find out when/if I have a heart attack or stroke! What I can do in the meantime: WALK and get some SUN every day! I know I've been completely lethargic...

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p.s. RE Death: My only concern is for my 5 cats. Mama and Sasha like each other best. Peter and Cinco are best friends. My Mini gets along with everyone, but she's my Familiar. No one's going to know all this when I die. Even if I leave a ton of money to Austin's "Pets Alive!" they won't understand the dynamics between the cats, they'll just cart them away separately and store them in separate cages. I look at each of them, and it breaks my heart to think of them stuck in a cage. At least the past 6 years have been good, kittens! (From top to bottom: Pete, Sasha, Mini: Spring 2019. What's funny: In every year since then, Pete has always looked directly at/posed for the camera! He's a very glamorous, good-looking cat! At first, I thought he was a girl!)