Alexithymia

The word for the day is Alexithymia.

I don’t know why I have this picture in this post since it’s not me and wasn’t done by me and really has no relationship to what I want to write about. Unless of course looking at the model’s behind I’m reminded of the fact that it will soon be my time for that scope up the ass at the doctor’s office. But since I think I have a few more years before that happens, I’m probably not thinking that at all.

Speaking of medical procedures and stuff, a few years ago I started to have this severe pain that would start at the base of my neck, spread down to the middle of my back and run down right arm as far as the elbow. It got so bad that here were times that I couldn’t jog because I feel as if my upper arm was being slowly ripped away with every slight jolt my body made. I couldn’t sit up straight at work and even lying in bed at night I would have to lie on one side so as not to aggravate the situation. Eventually I decided to see a doctor about what I was going through.

The doctor was a short little woman who asked the usual questions, you know the ones about fevers, drinking smoking and who I was having sex with. Then she gave me a physical where she asked me to stretch out my arm and resist any movement while she pressed down on it. Of course nothing happened and she said that if I was in real pain I wouldn’t have been able to withstand the pressure that she had given me. I thought that he I had not been able to resist the pressure of an elderly woman a foot and half shorter and about 80 pounds lighter than me then it would have been time to see a priest and not her so he could administer the last rites. Anyway, she had me get some x-rays taken and gave me some cortisone shots and made arrangements for me to have some rehab sessions at Jefferson Hospital which was where she was affiliated with.

Long story short, needless to say none of that worked. I would appear to get better during the weekdays while I was doing the rehab but by the time the weekend came around my pain would seem to get even worse. In fact the pain got so bad, it started to migrate to my left heel and I couldn’t walk without a slight limp. I would try to cover up but then my ex asked me, “What’s wrong with you?” I thought it might have been bone cancer by that time, but I didn’t tell him.

He didn’ t think that I was doing the right thing so he suggested acupuncture which I rejected right away. The idea of some guy without a license to practice medicine sticking rusty needles in my spinal cord wasn’t going to happen. Instead, since he was a dancer on Broadway, we agreed that I would see two of the masseurs that he would use when he was in pain. There was an African guy in Brooklyn who would crack my neck each time he got the chance. I always said after leaving his place that I should get my Will done just in case something happened. And then there was the Italian guy who would have me lie on my back while he cupped my naked nuts in his hands and twisted my legs when he wanted to stretch my lower back. That was kind of nice, but I’m still not sure what purpose being that familiar served.

Again nothing worked and as with many other relationships, my relationship with the ex didn’t last as long as I thought it would either. The partnership stopped so I stopped seeing the ex’s masseurs. It wouldn’t have felt right to have the same hands that touched him touch me, plus I didn’t think that it was doing any good anyway. I resigned to myself that this was the kind of pain that I would have to adjust to and live with it because there were other people who were probably going through worse.

About six or eight months later, the ex called up to see how I was. I don’t even have to think about I said since automatically it would have been, “Fine,” my standard response when I don’t really want to respond. He asked me about my back and it was then that I realized I hadn’t been in pain since about two weeks after the split. It had gone away without me noticing it and without me doing anything for it. A great weight had been lifted off of me and I hadn’t even recognized when it was done. But then I thought that that like the movie The Matrix or the TV show Battlestar Galactica, this had all happened before, just not so severely. I remembered that I had been in a relationship before where just before the break up I was also in physical pain. And just as with this relationship, when it was over the pain was over as well.

It wasn’t until years later when I took a class on emotional intelligence that I realized that I was one of those people who can find themselves in a situation where they are so uncomfortable but for one reason or another unable to recognize or express their feelings or emotions and so ignore their predicament. Eventually, as that emotional state builds but is suppressed more and more, the mind will react in such a way that may be harmful to the person, such as making them anti-social, overly aggressive, cold and or aloof. The cold and aloof thing has been said about me for as long as I remember but this time my mind turned my body against me. That condition is called Alexithymia and that’s what I experience. I have the inability to recognize and process certain feelings while I’m going through them to my own detriment.

Fun huh? So that makes Alexithymia the word for the day.

Brush up your Shakespeare

As Hamlet once said,

“What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet…”

And yet I’m sick and I the romance of being a man and being on top of the evolutionary scale doesn’t thrill me at all. My nose is stuffed and my head feels heavy. My throat hurts and my chest rattles each time I cough and I feel like absolute shit. I might soon have to take some sort of medication which I’m always against since medication really doesn’t do anything for a cold except hide the symptoms. And yes, it is a cold and not “swine flu” or anything just as sexy although it might as well have been since I am so miserable.

In fact if I had a few night sweats and some chills and aching bones I would be able to justify the way that I feel, but I don’t. All I can say is, or at least ask about is what happened to those days when I was young and I could go about with snot flying about like a leaky and disgusting faucet, not giving a damn about anything and secretly hoping that mother wouldn’t make a bad situation worse by slapping on the Vicks Vapor Rub on my chest as if she anointing me so I could meet the maker. But those days are gone, now everything seems to hurt just a little bit more than it used to. I really must learn to look after myself and get more than 6 hours of sleep at night and control the eating and the drinking and the smoking thing. I think it was Bette Davis who said old age ain't for sissies. How right she was.

This was the point where I was going to put a video from Kiss Me Kate. About brushing up your Shakespeare and link it to the beginning somehow, but my mind is wandering and all I can think about is or are my school days. So if you don’t mind I'll keep the title and ask you not worry about the wrong gender thing that's coming because it has nothing to do with what you just read, but and here’s my man Sidney being sung about at the Victoria & Albert in London I think.

Moments

I think that sometimes I don't really have a lot to say and then I think that I have too much to say and it will all come out wrong, so I don't say anything. This has been one of those latter moments where there is so much going on and yet nothing more than usual and I keep spinning around and still go no where.

Life, crazy huh?



Moments by Will Hoffman. This film is a celebration of life that was inspired by David Eagleman's book, Sum.

The 1st Philly Naked Bike Ride

I guess I have to set this up for a lot of people to understand this, but there used to be this British actress with the name of Googie Withers. She may have been big around the 40's or 50's, I'm not sure, but I came to know her in the 70's when she did a TV show called Prisoners of Cell Block H or something like that. You know, the type of show that was popular around that time. A show about life in a woman's prison where they show all the dirt and the power struggles and the latent lesbianism of those who have turned to the other side of the law.

Anyway, there were two comedians who were telling a joke and one of them said, something something, blah blah blah, Googie Withers. I remember the second one asked, "Who's Googie Withers?" The first comedian, turned and looked at him and replied, "Mine does when there's a cold wind." I bring that up because this Labor Day weekend was Philadelphia's first Naked Bike Ride.

Apparently the World Naked Bike Ride is an organization that has set up bike rides in many cities around the world in an effort to bring awareness to safety issues concerning the bike riding community and also the over indulgence in fossil fuel consumption and the environmental damages caused by it and by the use the combustion engine. And as everyone knows, sex sells, so what better way is there to make a point than by doing it nude? But since I'm really not that much of an exhibitionist, I only get nude when everyone else is nude, and since it is September with a slight chill in the air, I didn't want to see my googie wither. So here are some pictures of about a thousand braver souls than me.

Benny and the Jets

Saturday was my birthday and I spent it with sound of Benny and the Jets going on and on in my head. I think I’ve said it before that my birthday was the same as Michael Jackson’s and now it's the anniversary of when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. It’s funny how when I was much younger, I would so long for that day. That is until I realized how many people would celebrate their birthday with hundreds of other kids and I would, because it was at the end of summer, would have fun with just 5 or 6 children that were my closest friends or who just lived really close to me. As I grew older I stopped celebrating my birthday or even the need to bring it up in polite conversation. So it’s kind of strange to bring it up now, but it’s been a kind of strange summer this year anyway.

Although when I think about it, this year has probably been no different from any other year. Another Kennedy has died, two in fact, back to back. We’ve seen authors and singers go who you would never have thought would go so young. And then there were people that surprised you that they had died only because you thought they were dead already. The weather has been, not crazy, but really weird. It’s been something that you couldn’t depend on if you wanted to do something outdoors. Each time that I wanted to go somewhere or do something, it would be chilly or it rained.

Last week I had wanted to go to Sandy Hook the nudist beach with my friend Curtis. There is no better feeling you could have than walking along a beach with the sun on your back and your dick swaying left and right as you take each step, makes you feel…feel like a man. Unless of course you’re a woman, but I’m sure with a nice set of puppies the feeling is just the same. I recommend it to everyone. Anyway, that was canceled when the beach was closed because of the storm surge from Tropical Storm Bill or George or somebody; screwed again. I was left to think about how it was the last time and maybe it will be like in the future.

It’s funny the kind of things that make you think of your past. Music for me is one of those things that will take me back in an instant to a specific time or place, take Benny and the Jets by Elton John. That song will always take me back to going to a fair that would come into town every year. On one of the rides they would always play that song and whenever I hear that song I’m always taken back to a September evening just before dark trying to figure out if I had enough money to get on the ride. And then I would hear Benny and the Jets in my head whenever Melvin at work, who undoubtedly is the most popular person in the company was on the phone with a worker named Benny who was complaining about his paycheck and his child support and whatever else he had found wrong with it. Melvin would say, “Benny…Benny…Benny,” and I would go back to when I was nine or ten and hear Elton John in my head.

On Saturday people started calling me early in the morning. On the first call I couldn’t figure out how to answer the phone. No matter which button I pressed and said hello, the phone would continue to ring. The other calls I ignored and cursed silently to myself wondering why these bitches couldn’t leave me alone, didn’t they know I didn’t observe my birthday. It wasn’t until after midday that I got out of bed and decided to see who had called me. On the phone there was a text message from Wanda, “call me Melvin was hit by a car last night and he’s dead”.

Saturday was my birthday and all I could hear in my head was “buh buh buh Benny and the Jets” and it's been a strange summer.

Barney Frank

I love it when politicians say what they really think and not just what they think will keep them in office. I think if I lived in Massachusetts and even though I don't like him sometimes, I would vote for Barney Frank just because politics without him would be deadly dull.

Fun at the Town Hall Meeting

I think that if you are looking for drama, suspense and maybe even a little action, you can’t go wrong by heading to your local town hall meeting where a congressman or senator will be discussing the virtues and or evils, depending on your political persuasion, of health care reform this summer.


Now I’m not talking about the type of telephone town hall meeting that Bob Andrews, congressman for the district I live in is having where everyone is picked in advance and the questions are screened and the answers are formulated well in advance of the entire thing. I'm talking about the kind of town meeting that Arlen Specter, senior senator for PA does. The ones where old white people come orchestrated with their white paper in hand and their carefully scripted questions ready to shout and scream that there will be a special place in Hell for the President and all the socialist, elite, Kenyan lackeys that follow him.

Of course Sen. Specter’s meetings might not be a good example since I think he may be experiencing a backlash for changing his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat and, in the eyes of some, may be seen as a traitor to their cause. But there are other politicians that have experienced that same kind of virulent outburst that will bring a member of the House almost to tears as they try to explain that the government has no intention of creating a single payer health care system. They will shake at the knees and look peevishly at security as they tell their constituents that the government will not create death panels in order to kill off old people and save money. Naturally this kind of town hall meeting doesn’t happen when the President is having one himself. I would think that the secret service would put an end to that kind of behavior even before they took the offenders outside and beat them to a pulp.

However, I’m starting to wonder if these protest meetings are really about stopping health care reform or more about having President Obama, as that one congressman said, face his Waterloo. When people are showing up at meetings with posters ridiculing a man who has been in office less than a year and comparing him to Hitler or the Joker, I have to wonder if the disruptions are really about saving the welfare of the nation and its citizens, or about correcting a perceived mistake that was done at the last election? Is this the meaning of what being post-racial is all about?

Regardless, last year I thought that it was the most thrilling political year that I had ever experienced. This year, tops last year in spades and it’s just August. I wonder what will happen next year. Will the revolution be televised this time?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The Manchurian Candidate

I wasn't going to comment on this story because I thought it was a dead issue. In fact I thought it was dead a long time ago even before the election was run, but apparently this horse won't die.



Hmmm, now that I think about it I really have nothing to say other I'm not sure who I'm scared of most, the people who have determined and set this heinous sleeper plan in motion over 40 years ago for a puppet to become President and take over the country, or the numb skulls at this meeting who actually believe it.

You know the real sad thing is, is that these fuckers vote. Sometimes I wonder if getting rid of that intelligence test at voter registration time was such a good idea.

Death & The Obituary page

Larry called and said that E. Lynn Harris had died. I knew of course already because it had been all over the net. In fact the first time I read it was on someone’s Facebook page.

I was never a big fan of Mr. Harris, I remember reading his first book when he published it himself, Invisible Life, and thinking how much potential he had. Then he went to a big publishing house and I read the second one and thought that it was trite. There may have been a third book of his that I read but I can’t recall. I felt that he had sold out and I had long lost interest in his work by that time which listening to his last interview on NPR this year, he knew already.

When I was young my grandmother would scan the obituaries page in the news paper to see who had gone to glory before she had. She would see a name and recognize the person as Mrs. So & So’s hairdresser’s cousin who had lived 4 blocks up from where she did as a child and who had gone away for a few months when she was 16 and had come back with a new baby sister. Or she would see listed Mr. Such & Such who lived at the end of the street who was a drunk, or a fancy man, or both and used to make her laugh with his antics when she was young. Now granny doesn’t do that anymore. Partly because being almost 90, most of the people that she knew have passed on already and partly because even if she did know them, I’m not sure she’d recognize them. Come to think of it, I’m not sure she’d recognize me and I’m her only grandson.

Instead, I seem to have taken her place when it comes to looking for news of the dead. Of course I don’t actually do the Obits page in the news paper. In fact I don’t think I’ve read a newspaper in about 5 or 6 years now. I mean I do read the Metro that you get at the train station for free, but everybody knows that’s just a glorified excuse for advertising pamphlet. By the time you’ve read headline for each story, you’ve already read a third of whatever it is that they’ve written. What I do is search for names on the web.

This means of course that if you are a nobody like me, you’re probably still alive as far as I’m concerned since there will probably be very little news about you. But if you are a celebrity, a someone worthy of mention on CNN or *choke* Fox then I’ve got you. I‘ll be able to tell small stories about how I almost met you or how someone I knew almost met the next door neighbor of yours. I will be able to say this, that and the other about how my life was changed and how I became a better person or how I found Jesus.

From Maude to Malden, from Richardson to Jackson and from Harris to…I don’t know Cronkite, I will be able to find something to reflect on, and I guess that’s okay with me. At least then I won’t have to mourn for someone I know. I won’t have to grieve over a family member that lifted me up when I was down, or miss a friend that listened to me when no one else would. I can pretend that death happens to other people and not to those I know and love.

And that's the way it is.

How Things Change

Does anyone not remember the Obama slogan of “change you can believe in” when the junior senator from Illinois was running for President? The things that he had to do and will have to do to make that true must be astounding.

If I were ever to run for high office, Lamont would be the first person that I would have to have knocked off. He knows more about me and the dirt that I used to get into more than anyone else in the world, including lovers and family members. There are things that we love about each other and things that we hate. That’s why we can go around not speaking to each other for months if not years and pick up right up at the same spot that we were arguing about and not miss a beat. It’s like time doesn’t pass for us. One of the things that we will fight over is how I like to go to Fire Island in New York and he’d rather lose a foot than go.

Lamont thinks that as a black man I should be ashamed to go to such a place that doesn’t seem to welcome people of color and that he for one wouldn’t spend a red cent or a minute trying to get there. Whereas I have always believed that if you want people to accept you, you have to make yourself visible and let them know that you exist. That’s why I have never been afraid to go anywhere to make my little non-political, political statement.


The last video that I did was on Fire Island and I must have shot about an hour’s worth of stuff, much of which was edited out because I wanted to hit the 10 minute maximum that they have on YouTube. The clip above was part of the video that I left out and although things said were done in jest, they still kind of bother me and I’m not quite sure why.

The “black man, black man,” reference from Designing Women is a line that I have used myself on people. The “black boys are delicious….” Line from Hair is something I’ve heard before from other black people, well from one other black person and he used to wear t-shirts with The Brady Bunch or That Girl on them. Does that count? I’ve never seen That Girl so I don’t know. Anyway, maybe it was the “people of color on the dock,” that disturbs me. Funny how when I was growing up and a little before that, we used to be called colored people and Negroes. Then it was black people and Jesse Jackson got people to use the term African Americans. Now it’s people of color. Oh how things change.

That brings me to the incident at the Valley Swim Club a private swim club that advertised open membership in the suburbs of Philadelphia. 65 children from the Creative Steps Day Camp, which consists mainly of black and Latino kids, showed up at the swim club late last month after their dues had been accepted and were turned away after hearing some perhaps racist remarks. Their money was refunded with the original explanation of, "There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club," from the management. This was later changed to there being a safety issue and the club was unable to accommodate such a large number of people.



Now, after that story was taped and with the hue and cry of racism in the air and that faint whiff of litigation, the Valley Swim Club has invited the children back. Apparently the safety issue is no longer a concern to the club when compared to pending law suits and condemnation from the govenor and senior senator for Pennsylvania; two fellow gym members may I say.

My, how things change.