Guilt and Fear

Sons of bitches everywhere are stealing my shit, man.  I'll take it as a compliment.  

I was kind of happy for a minute yesterday.  Yea, it is true.  I feel guilty about it.  That is a terrible confession, but confession is good for the soul.  So they say.  

No segue.  Or maybe there is.  I had a text "out of the blue" yesterday from an old colleague I have not been in touch with for years.  He works at a factory in the Middle East now but was back for ten days.  Yesterday was his last day in the states, and he said he'd like to get together.  

"Sure," I said.  "I just need to work around my mother."

"I'll be free after six," he said.  

"That works."

I'm taking care of most of my mother's business now.  I drive her to doctor's appointments, drug stores, banks, etc.  I am handling calls for her therapy appointments.  That is a real pain in the ass.  The hospital recommended home therapy.  It is, by and large, a scam.  She has nurses visit and both physical and occupational therapies.  They do it for the Medicare money.  They do basically nothing.  But I am getting calls all the time now about scheduling and rescheduling.  If you know me, you know I rarely answer my phone.  Now, however. . . .

As I say, it's a pain in the ass.  

Yesterday when I went to see her, her across the street neighbor came over.  He had bought his wife hearing aids from Amazon the day before, and she had already lost one.  He was retracing her steps trying to find it.  He sat with us "for a spell," to chat.  I told him that every time I take my mother to a doctor, they tell her she doesn't look 93.  Blah, blah, blah.  

"I don't think I'll make 94," she said.  This has become her refrain.  Death talk.  She does not feel well.  She is not happy.  She is lonely.  But she does not want to go to assisted living.  

"I feel guilty," I told my dinner companion.  We had decided to eat at the Italian place.  We sat at a sidewalk table.  I got there first.  After I was seated by the young, pretty Russian hostess, I sat without seeing a waiter or waitress ever so long.  My friend was late, and I was thirsty.  Eventually a waitress came.  My knees went weak even though I was seated.  She was new.  She was young.  She was beautiful.  She was Italian.  

I know about love.  I fell in love.  But I can do that like falling down a flight of stairs or falling into a deep hole.  I land hard.  And about such things I am never wrong.  Trust me.  I am not like the others. . . . 

I ordered a glass of Chianti Classico.  I always do.  I am not a true fan of the Chianti, but I always order it at Italian restaurants.  It is easy.  I don't have to think.  But the Chianti here is rough as sandpaper.  Still. . . .

My friend showed up.  He had lost 70 pounds.  He is gay, so I wondered.  He was the first to bring it up.  

"Did you do it on purpose?"

"Yes."

"Well. . . that's good.  Diet or chemical?"

"It was a combination of diet, exercise, and yes. . . chemical."

"Are you on it for a lifetime?"

"I've been off for a year.  Now I'm just trying to maintain through diet and exercise."

His muscles had shriveled.  His skin hung.  He is 59.  I suggested that he might want to "juice again."  TRT.  

"Everybody here is doing that now," I said.  "They get their free testosterone up between 800 and 1,000."

"That's pretty high," he said. "That's at the upper range of normal."

"Yes.  It is the teenage years."

My buddy had trained for the priesthood.  Gone to school. Whatever they do.  He is a Jesuit and went to a Jesuit college, but just before graduation, he asked permission to go to England for his sister's wedding.  They denied him permission.  Some strange rule about the last year of training/education.  My memory is vague on this, but not on the consequences.  He left without graduating.  Still, I've always thought he has the temperament of a priest, at least as I've seen in movies.  We used to lunch together with my gay boss at least three times a week.  My friend is a rascal, and I always referred to him as "Dennis the Menace."  But when people are in trouble, he is a nurturing soul.  So I told him last night just before I showed him a video (link).  

"Forward that to me," he said laughing.  

We'd always had a good relationship.  When he was leaving the country to work in the foreign factory, he had a going away party, then another "after party" with his gay friends.  He asked me to come.  

"C.S. is a friend of the gays," he said to the room when I walked in.  "I tell him things I don't even tell you."

"Ewww!!!"

After leaving "priest college," he trained and worked as a medic for awhile.  He is knowledgeable about medical things to a good degree.  He'd done some TRT when I knew him which is why I'd mentioned it.  

"I've been thinking about it," he said.  "I've lost some muscle."

That is what Ozempic and Wegovy and the like does, of course.  People lose weight but it isn't all fat.  They can't eat and the body becomes a cannibal.  Losing muscle fiber is a consequence.  

We were catching up.  He showed me a big scar on his arm.  

"Melanoma," he said, and told me a scary tale of one doctor dismissing it, then another doctor finding it and cutting it out.  He didn't get it all. It was my friend's reading of his lab report that caught it. He had to inform the surgeon rather than vice-versa.  There were still cancer cells, "in the margin."  He went in for a second surgery.  It was a long process.

It was my turn.  I told him of my rotten fucking 2025 and more.  I told him of my non-life.  

"I haven't even left town for five years," I said.  

"You need to take care of your mother, I understand, but you need to take care of yourself, too."

Yada, yada, yada.  It is what everybody says.  

"I'm fine."

That's what I always respond.  Should I mention my packet of narcotics in the bedside table?  Just that afternoon when I was driving back from my mother's house, I heard what I took to be Sarah Silverman on NPR talking about her mother's death and how it changed the way she is living.  She took her mother to her house in Hawaii and cared for her.  

Hawaii.  I was guessing it was Silverman.  I didn't catch the beginning of the interview, but it was someone who had a house in Hawaii and sounded like Sarah Silverman.  

She talked about how, in the end, once her mother realized she was never going to get better and be as she once was, she began saying that old people were a burden, that she should die.  Etc.  Then, just before she died--"And I'll never forget this," said the voice on the radio--her mother took her hand and said, "It goes so quickly."

"What goes so quickly?"

"Life."

Mic drop.  

Duh.  

Life was happening all around us there on a balmy summer evening at a sidewalk table in an upscale part of town amid the clinking of glasses and the soft laughter wafting from nearby tables.  A group of beautiful young girls walked by in crop tops and miniskirts.  I looked at my friend.  He laughed.  

"I love this shit," I said.  "All of it.  Eating, drinking. . . that.  I want more."

I asked him about his love life.  He had a boyfriend in Germany, he said, a Bulgarian.  He went through how it happened, he thinking it was just a hook up, but then. . . it was still developing, but. . . .  His boyfriend, he said, was 32.

"Twenty-seven years," I said.  "I'm very familiar."

Then he quoted me back to myself.  

"Everybody loves a puppy." 

I was flattered.  But yea, it's a good line.  Mine.  I made it up.  I own it.  

He had to be back to his sister's house by eight, he said.  It was past eight then, so we called for the check.  

"Do you want me to split you in the middle," quarried the waitress.  

Oh, fuck. . . I became pudding.  She was so lovely, and her awkward use of English. . . .

"I love her," I said to my friend.  "I do.  I can't stand it."

I walked him to his car and we hugged goodbye.  Who knows if or when we'd meet again.  Such is life.  

I was home before sunset.  The light was fading.  I poured a scotch and went to the deck.  I called my mother.  

"How are you doing," I asked.  

"I'm just doing some laundry," she said.  

"Oh. . . I'm glad you said that.  I put my towels wash cloths in the washer before I went to dinner.  I need to get them in the dryer.  What are you going to do tonight?"

We laugh at that each night, she watching her tv, I mine.  There is no overlap there.  None.  

But when I hung up, I felt the pang of guilt.  I'd been out.  I'd had fun.  I'd fallen in love.  All while my mother sat at home alone.  

"I understand," my friend had said to me.  "I didn't have to go through all that.  Both my mother and father died at a fairly early age and I had my sister.  But when my mother was dying of pancreatic cancer, I remember one night in particular.  I'd seen her earlier in the day and I had been with her the three previous nights, but it was Friday and I was going to go out with my boyfriend.  My mother called me and asked what I was doing.  I could tell she was lonely, but I had plans and went out.  It wasn't really a big deal.  I saw her the next day and she was fine, but I still think about that and feel guilty that I didn't cancel my plans and go over to sit with her."

That's how that goes if you are any sort of empath.  Me?  I am motivated by two things--guilt and fear.    

Mosquitos drove me inside.  That and the need to refresh my glass.  Quarter 'til nine.  I'd watch some t.v.  I'd drink more scotch.  I'd be in bed by ten.  

It is morning now.  I slept fine, I think, but I am unsure of the day.  It is Friday.  I can see that on my computer, but somehow it doesn't feel like it.  There are things I need to take care of before the weekend, but I don't want to.  It is cloudy but I want to lie in the sun and drink margaritas with a group of friends, but none of them live here.  Some of them no longer live at all.  Later, I will go over and drink half a light beer with my mother.  She will not be feeling well.  I will ask her the same questions I've asked many times before.  I should weed and feed the lawn.  There is a chance of rain.  I should get back to work on creating a website.  Where was I on that?  So much interference.

I should have taken that picture above.