Click the bird to return to 97 index
(I think this file is incomplete, I'll try and find the complete file and
re-upload it)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
make a go of it. That's what this is all about. Don't be afraid. Or go ahead
and be afraid. We're all afraid. Just don't
get stuck there. When I was a child my Great Uncle Willie had a stroke.
He lived by himself and wasn't discovered until a week after it happened.
He had torn wallpaper from the walls trying to get to his feet. My mother
and I drove up to Michigan to visit him in the hospital. When we were there
I was walking up and down the halls one day because I was bored. I looked
into one of the rooms and there was an old man sitting on the bed with several
younger men around him. The man motioned for me to come into the room. He
was just trying to be friendly but he scared me. He was big and very old.
I tho
ught he would hurt me. I ran down the hall to my mother. Uncle Willie spent
the rest of his life in a nursing home in suburban Ohio. I never wanted to
visit him. I hardly knew him and he didn't have much to say. The nursing home
smelled of windex and piss and brown gravy. My mother would make us visit
him sometimes. My mother has never been afraid of death and dying, near as
I can tell. A strong sense of duty kicks in, mixed with genuine concern and
compassion, and so she can be counted on to visit the sick and the old, and
to take in stray animals. The last time she saw her grandmother they had
a fight, or my mother was
impatient or something. She has regretted it ever since. A few years ago
I decided I wanted to do some volunteer work. I started visiting an elderly
woman named Elizabeth at Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco. It is a welfare
hospital of last resort. The woman I visited had lived in hospitals most
of her life. She ended up in the hospital because her pediatrician had made
a mistake which somehow left her in a wheelchair for life. She was always
smiling and laughing, talking to everyone in the halls as we passed. She gave
her nurses hell if they didn't treat her right. We liked to go outside and
look at the flowers growing in the greenhouse. She was frail and tiny but
had more life in her than I did at the time. I also started helping out a
guy who was doing a theater program for the residents. They would sit in a
small room and read plays. Sometimes I would read a part. It was fun. We'd
drink lots of coffee and have cookies.
I decided to start visiting the AIDS ward at the hospital. The volunteer
coordinator warned me that it would not be easy and that they couldn't afford
to train me or anything like that; it would be sink or swim. Either I could
take it or I couldn't. I tried to talk to some of the people in the ward but
I felt completely useless there. What could I say to make them happier? Did
they resent me for being well? What could I do to ease their pain?
One young man had a good attitude. He was putting up Christmas decorations
and talking about how he would be leaving the hospital soon to live with a
lover. One man was so skinny and weak I had to hold his milk up to his mouth.
One day I sat beside the bed of a man who looked like he was Freddy Mercury
before he got sick. Actually, since Freddy Mercury died of AIDS, it would
be more accurate to say that he looked like Freddy Mercury when Freddy Mercury
was sick. He was in the final stages of the disease and had dementia. There
in the AIDS ward in front of everyone else he asked me to jack him off. I
think he thought I was his lover or a buddy, and that we were on the beach
or in a park or in his bedroom in a former home. I had to say, "no, I can't
do that, we're in a hospital," but he kept saying "why not? Why not?" I couldn't
take all the depression and sorrow the AIDS patients made me feel. I quit
and never went back, not even to say goodbye to Elizabeth, not even to say
goodbye to the people in the theater group. I was ashamed of myself for being
weak and afraid.
Now for the first time in my life, I am in the position of having a condition
which one day could land me in the hospital. It has been instructive to look
at the way people have responded to my seroconversion. One of my friends (who
I'll call Werner) had written a play about his cousin's death from AIDS. I
was in the play, in the part of my friend who was dealing with the pain of
loss. One of the lines I read, when speaking about the cousin's late disclosure
of his HIV status to Werner, was "Why didn't he tell me sooner? Did he think
I would run away? Did he think I wouldn't love him anymore? Did he think I
couldn't take it?"
I told Werner that I was HIV-positive quite soon after I found out. In fact
he was one of the first people I told. We were in a play together and I found
out I was HIV-positive in the first week of the run. The show was about the
Holocaust. I waited until the show closed, at the cast party, to tell him.
He was initially very supportive. He said, "if there's anything I can do,
if you need anything, just let me know." I haven't seen him in months. I ran
into a mutual friend and he said that my friend had had a lot of bad things
happening, all of his dreams falling apart around him, people leaving the
city, the theater group dissolving into chaos. He said Werner was really freaked
out about my seroconversion, he felt as if he had been abandoned by his best
friend. I called and left a message on Werner's machine, "Hey, I ran into
Arron last night, he said you guys talked about me. I'm fine, all is well,
my health is good. Give me a call sometime. Love ya!" He never called me
back.
I wrote to my old boss (who I'll call Bitsy) back in Cincinnati, a friend,
and told her of my seroconversion. She never wrote me back, never mentioned
it to me, never spoke to me again. Recently a woman we used to work with contacted
me via the internet and told me that Bitsy had told her that I was HIV-positive.
In the last LSD Tabloid I wrote about some of my fears, laid them out in
fiction, but in the style of journal entries from the future. I was clear
at the opening of the Tabloid that my life is going well, my health and my
spirits are good and that I have a positive attitude about life, but that
I do have fears sometimes, and I feel it's good to share them. Despite that
and all the "positive" stuff I usually write, I was surprised at some of the
criticism I received: "You're being too negative. Focus on the good stuff."
I don't think expressing fears is positive or negative. It's being real, it's
being honest. Sometimes I honestly feel happy and breezy, other times I don't.
I never promised that the LSD Tabloid would be fluffy and happy happy joy
joy all of the time. If I wanted to write bullshit like that, I would work
for television and make millions of dollars a year.
I only wrote the above about those who disappointed me to say that I understand,
it's not easy. We all have fears. I thank my friends and family members who
have been supportive. Many friendships have deepened, some family ties have
been strengthened, and I have learned to be a more trusting and open person.
My life is sweeter than it was. Still, people say that it is hard to believe
that someone in my position could be so happy. Let me put it this way. You
don't fully appreciate life until it seems you may you lose it. Then every
moment becomes precious. If I can encourage just one of you to live your life
to the fullest, to follow your dreams, and to be the real, deep, beautiful
person you were meant to be (in spite of your fears), then I'm a success.
Road trip to Portland (part one because we had so much fun)
My friend Eric, who lives in Long Beach, is a very cool guy. He says, "dude,"
and "whoa," has long hair and drives a 1964 Rambler called Blackie. We met
last summer solstice down at Zuni Mountain Sanctuary. He drove me to Los Angeles
with him so I could take a bus from there to San Francisco. We had so much
fun road tripping together that we decided to do it again. We had even more
fun on this adventure up to Portland, Oregon.
Our road trip philosophy is, "don't make any hard and fast plans, be totally
open to whatever beauty or kookiness strikes your fancy and then roll with
it." We are both Libras, in fact our birthdays are only two days apart. And
we are both textbook examples of Libras, sometimes annoyingly so. Libras always
like to be peacemakers and like to have things be fair, so all along the
trip we kept on trying to accommodate the other to a ludicrous degree. By
the end of the trip we were calling each other Chip and Dale after the old
cartoon characters of the two (Libran) chipmunks who keep on trying to out-polite
one another: "After you." "No no, I insist, after you!" It was fun traveling
with someone so flexible, polite, friendly and kind-hearted.
Our first kooky stop was in Redding, CA, which is rural. There are a lot
of loggers and rough-edged people in Redding. We met some real nice ones at
The Tropics, on highway 273 which is a stretch of kitschy forties neon signage
we referred to as the "forgotten highway," though it was pretty well-travelled.
The Tropics caught our kitsch-queen radar scanners because it is a cinder
block, rust-colored tavern with a rounded corner in front and old neon above
that had a palm tree and a "draw poker" sign. It was dark inside and there
were about seven extremely straight men sitting at the bar. We had been hoping
for a tiki lounge experience but there wasn't much of that in evidence. They
had a good rock-n-roll jukebox. I always like to put music on jukeboxes, it
tends to warm up a house. I played the Doors, Janis Joplin, Aerosmith, Van
Halen, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Aeroplane, music that still rocks after all
these years no matter how many times you hear it.
One of the good things about travelling with Eric (who calls himself Desert---of
course the faeries in Portland immediately called him "Dessert" instead) is
that he's friendlier than I am. It's just that I tend to be shy and more of
an observer-type than a "glad to meet you" type. Dessert started talking to
a late-thirties, early forties guy sitting at the bar next to us. He had lived
in the Bay Area for a long time but moved to Redding four years earlier to
run away from his old lady. His current girlfriend has a mysterious heart
condition called WRW which causes the heart to beat wildly. She has been waiting
for technology to improve before getting it fixed and just hit the jackpot:
now they can use radio waves to treat the problem. He told us that his brother-in-law
is a fancy furniture delivery man to the stars. He has an autographed picture
of Farrah Fawcett-Majors on his wall and partied with Jerry Garcia (who was
"generous with his dope").
That night we roasted turkey franks and buns on the manifold of Desert's
car as we drove to Mount Shasta. It's easy: you just wrap the food in tin-foil
and put it on the manifold (be careful; if you've been driving it'll be HOT)
and then you drive for about thirty minutes and the food will be ready to
eat. We pulled over to the side of the road and watched the mountain turn
gold-red with sunset. Then we crashed under the stars after talking about
crickets, UFOs, nature-spirits, Budweiser beer, hot dogs and the meaning of
life. The next morning when we woke up my watch was about an hour behind.
I won't venture to guess what this means, if anything.
The next day we went for a hike at Panther Meadow on Mount Shasta. When
we pulled into the parking lot, a man with a long gray beard came up and
started talking with us. Turns out he was Rainbow Jack, one of the guys who
put together the very first Rainbow Family gatherings and is still very much
involved. We talked about what a beautiful day it was, about rainbow gatherings
we had attended, and it turns out he knows Philipe Chavez, who was one of
the people who initiated the Global Peace Walk I participated in in 1995.
Philipe had helped me through some tough times following the vision experience
I had in the sweat lodge on the first night of the walk, as well as when
I had to deal with some homophobia from a drunk brother who had briefly hooked
up with us and created chaos in Flagstaff. Philipe is a Yacqui Sundancer and
an excellent fellow. I asked Rainbow Jack to tell him I said thanks for all
the help on the Peace Walk. Also in the parking lot were Thunderbird and
his friend Lori. They lived in a small trailer hitched up to the back of
a truck and were travelling around the country. Such open, trusting, generous
people. Lowest on the social ladder but I'd trust them with my life sooner
than I would Newt Gingrich or Jesse Helms or any of that high-class scum in
power these days.
Panther Meadow is a silent, peaceful place with little springs running through
it. The mountain towers off to one side and trees are all about. There are
wildflowers and singing birds and it feels powerful there. The shitter near
Panther Meadow has unique graffiti: "Love is never lost. If you feel lost,
change your identity to love." Also, "Freedom is a Dreamsong," and "Keep an
eye out for spaceships." Somebody wrote, "Jesus Saves" and I added, "we all
do." Next we went to Crater Lake in Oregon, which is a nearly two-thousand
feet deep lake in a collapsed volcano. The water there becomes an amazing
blue I've never seen in a lake.
We had a hard time trying to find Cougar Hot Springs for some reason. On
the map it looks like the turnoff to the north is right in the heart of Oakridge,
but it's actually a bit west of town. Oakridge has a church on nearly every
corner but it's not a friendly town, which tells you something about the churches
there, maybe. We had to ask people for directions. We came across an upscale-type
woman "power-walking" or dork walking, whichever you prefer. We asked her
if she knew of Cougar Hot Springs and she said she didn't, but we suspect
that she was just afraid by our unshaven road-tripping demeanor although
we were quite friendly and are virtually harmless by nature. Next we came
upon a group of raggedy youths like ourselves hanging outside of a store
around a car. We asked them for directions and they gave them to us right
off. They didn't seem like churchgoing-types. They were friendly and helpful
and weren't afraid of strangers. Makes you stop and think.
Up the road a ways we pulled over to eat dinner, cold hot dogs and swiss
cheese. A car pulled over and a young guy got out. He was also lost, traveling
around the country trying to hook up with friends near Oakridge in a log cabin.
He said he used to work on Mackinac Island, Michigan (probably selling fudge)
but he quit that job in May and was going to just travel around. I told him
I was quitting my job after Christmas so I could spend my time writing, traveling
and making jewelry and he said, "More power to you!" My point exactly.
That night we slept at the foot of a giant redwood tree in the Willamette
National Forest. We did Cougar Hot Springs the next day, at the south end
of the Cougar Reservoir. These are lithium hot springs and if you take a little
sip you will feel relaxed (as if the hot waters weren't enough). The springs
issue forth from a cave that is big enough to crawl inside, but not much
deeper than that. I went inside to "be with the mother" but also to simply
confront my claustrophobia. It worked. The water flows from the cave down
into five pools of lessening heat. The forest there is lush and mossy, deep
green. We kept expecting a dinosaur to jump out at us.
There were about thirteen people in the springs, carrying on lively debate
about politics and intestinal parasites (two subjects which have always been
closely linked in my mind). One of the guys there was your classic paranoid
hippy, raving about bad air in office buildings and encouraging us to get
negative ionizers or something like that to get rid of our internal bugs and
viruses. He said somebody has come up with a portable microwave-beaming thingamajig
which is supposed to be weak enough not to hurt you but strong enough to
destroy viruses, bugs, and other such stuff in your system, even HIV. I don't
know, I looked healthier than he did. Right after he went off on the evils
of big corporations and conservative politics he got up and lit himself a
cigarette. Hippies and Rainbows smoke so much tobacco, it's hilarious. They
are so clean-living they won't eat a Dorito but then they go off and chain-smoke
Marlboros. One of the great human idiosyncracies.
We went next to find a kooky diner but had to pull a u-turn (we did a lot
of these) to check out a place called "Christmas Treasures" on Highway 128.
As you may know, I like Christmas kitsch because Christmas has always been
my favorite holiday (despite the consumerism). I was all geared up for an
experience similar to Bronner's Christmas Superstore in Frankenmuth, Michigan
(only tinier) but instead ended up being insulted by the shopkeeper in a way
which is kind-of funny in retrospect. I was trying to be friendly so I said
to him, "have you ever heard of Bronner's, the Christmas superstore in Frankenmuth,
Michigan?" And he said, without a trace of friendliness, "No." So I went
about my business, thinking that perhaps a house had just fallen on his sister,
which would explain his grumpy puss. He walked up behind me and flatly said,
"Whatever one of you guys is wearing is about to make me gag." I had just
put on a wee bit of patchoulli to hide the smell of lithium. If I had had
a drink in my hand I would have thrown it in his face but all I could do
was say, "Thanks!" and scoot my huffy butt out of there. I guess it was a
little strong. I was about to spend $300 in there (not), but decided to spend
my money at the Vida Cafe up the road a ways on a McKenzie Monster Burger.
The Vida Cafe is a cute little country diner on highway 128 in Vida, Oregon.
The place was packed with regulars; good, sturdy folks that made this country
great or whatever. There was a picture on the wall of Bill Bixby, the star
of "Courtship of Eddie's Father" and "The Incredible Hulk." The autographed
picture showed Bill Bixby with the Incredible Hulk (Lou Ferrigno, meow) standing
behind him hulking it up. Under the photo was a blurb which stated that Bill
Bixby was the nephew of somebody named Ellen Hayes, who may have been one
of the owners of the Vida Cafe. Bill loved to visit the McKenzie river and
his favorite spot was the Vida Cafe. Bill really liked to eat great, big hamburgers.
Elaine Johnson, owner of the Vida Cafe at the time when Bill started shooting
The Incredible Hulk, was a big fan and so she named a 1/2 lb hamburger with
fries after him. Even though I'm 95% vegetarian I had to order a McKenzie
Monster Burger in the interest of journalistic integrity. Good hamburger
if you're into eating traumatized deceased cow's flesh. Cute dishwasher in
the back.
While at the restaurant I got to read some about the death of Princess Diana.
I had seen the headline the day before in front of the Hi-Lo Cafe in Weed,
CA. and was shocked and saddened by it, although I've never been a big Princess
Di queen. I didn't really follow her life and her exploits but she always
seemed very human to me, vulnerable and real and a little trapped in a role
in which she didn't feel comfortable, and I related to that. Her death has
made me start thinking about all of the charitable work she did and how it
would be nice to do some sort of volunteer work. I think sometimes we all
get so wrapped up in our own lives and our problems we don't realize how good
we have it and how shitty others have it and how easy it would be to give
them a little hope.
Next we pulled another u-turn to go to the St. Benedict's Church at McKenzie
Bridge garage sale. There were all kinds of trashy things for sale thrown
out on the front yard of a small reddish house. Up by the front door sat a
woman on a tall stool wearing Jackie Onassis sunglasses and a broad-rimmed
straw hat with fringe. I told her I liked her hat and she said, "Oh, my friends
think it looks crazy but I like it." She was listening for weather on the
radio but all they kept talking about was Princess Diana and she was already
tired of it. I bought two cassettes for $1 each: Rush's "2112" and Molly Hatchet's
"Beatin' the odds." These were two of my favorite groups when I was a freshman
in high school, very formative music for me and it still rocks. I also bought
two identical figurines of a little golden fairy/angel with wings holding
a bow of blue, lavender and white berries and wearing a blue stocking cap.
The lady said they would bring good luck. The total came to $4. I gave her
a five and said for her to keep the change. She said, "Praise the Lord!"
I liked her.
The people we met throughout Oregon have a refreshing down-to-earth quality
about them. I guess because they literally are "down to earth." There's so
much natural beauty all around that nobody can bear to stay inside (especially
since it rains eight months of the year). I thought I might run into some
homophobia but all we found was a mild dislike of patchoulli. So much happened
in Portland and on the way back driving down the Oregon coast and into the
redwoods that it will have to be continued in the next installment of LSD
Tabloid.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Plugs for upcoming shows and stuff you might like to do
* Benefit for BUILD, Friday September 19th, 7:30 PM. An
evening of cabaret performance featuring the music of Storm, Madigan, Tamar,
and spoken word by Julia Query. MC'd by Fairy Butch. BUILD is located at 483
Guerrero btw 16th and 17th. Tickets $5-15 sliding scale. BUILD is an artists'-run,
women-run collective committed to collaborative artistic inspiration and
influence. BUILD is a creative, affordable venue for emerging artists who
would otherwise not be heard. Contact BUILD at 415-863-3041.
* Art opening: SPLICE, a group show of nearly seventy
artists dealing with the question of what is "safe" sex, what is "safe,"
period, at the end of twentieth century. Sept. 20-Nov. 15, 1997. Reception
Saturday. Sept. 20, 6-9 PM. Side Street Projects, 1629 18th st #2, Santa
Monica, CA 90404 (310) 829-0779.
* LSD Tabloid reviews: send me your 'zines and tapes for
review. Blue, 634 Edna st, SF CA 94127