He arrives after morning service, having thanked God for another day in an upright position. He stops at the nurse’s station, not to check in, but rather to greet whomever is on duty by first name, applaud the glorious weather, ask about the family, chuckle over the latest joke and say something as sweet and charming as his tousled white hair and proper bow tie.

He makes his shuffling way through the unit to his loved one’s room, wishing a good day to those he passes. He arranges tidy, fresh flowers in the vase on the bedside stand, saving the day-old blossoms for the aide to give to someone who has been forgotten by family and friends. He pulls the chair closer, takes pale, curled fingers in his hand and tenderly kisses cool, brittle lips, his eyes closed and heart hopeful, remembering the day fifty years ago when they knelt before each other with open hearts, fearless of the future, kissing away each other’s tears.

He begins reading the news, his tremulous voice breaking at the headline that cuts to Social Security and Medicare are on the table, breaking at the ethos of national politics. He touches the still, cool hand for emphasis, editorializing on other issues, the fickle path of redistricting, the unyielding hope for a more considerate era. He poses encouraging questions, filling the silence with cheerful answers. After the paper is read, he rises to stretch and adjusts the blinds. He checks the nursing chart, which never varies, and says another prayer for recovery.

His lunch tray is delivered as he talks of the garden’s status, the latest goings on of the neighbors. He eats intermittently, distracted from the stillness by the rhythm of the respirator, the beeping pumps, the steady tempos that sustain life, their life. He closes his eyes, remembering the summer they danced so closely in the gazebo, swaying to whispered things not yet come to pass.

When the meal is finished and cleared, his voice resumes to fill the poignant voids with talk of moments that make his eyes moist. He asks if there’s anything he can do, and adjusts the pillows, fingers a tendril of gossamer hair.

He selects a book from those neatly stacked on the small shelf, settles into the chair and begins the afternoon reading. This day it is Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese. He reads with the passion of the words on his tongue and strokes the vein on an unmoving arm as only a lover can. He reads until the dinner tray arrives and silence returns, the respirator and pumps carrying the conversation. After dinner, he touches a cheek, a thigh, a belly, absently tapping to the beat of the machines.

At 8:00 p.m., when visiting hours are over, he takes pale, curled fingers in his hand and tenderly kisses cool, brittle lips, his eyes closed and heart hopeful, remembering the chilly day, when they danced by the fireplace, grateful for the enduring joy of each other. Then he departs as he came, saying goodbye to the nurses and wishing them a peaceful night filled with sweet dreams.

And so he has done every day since the stroke, every day since a miracle interrupted death, every day. And so he will continue. He will continue to wait for an awakening, for his loved one to come back to him, to dance with him again, the moonlight glowing in gossamer hair and arms so light around him.

He doesn’t hear the doctors who say there’s little brain function, the chaplain who says it is not a sin to let go, the social worker who tells him to get on with his life. This is his life.

So he thanks God for Medicare, which pays to keep lungs breathing, hearts beating and food pumping through tubes, day after day.

Just as he thanks God for President Obama, whom he prays will have the wisdom to make the nation’s anguished decisions.

Just as he fears what those decisions might be.

Love,
K-B

Note: Previously published in a different form.

Crossposted at the Ocean Beach Rag, Progressive Post and San Diego Gay & Lesbian News.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

What a juxtaposition! As Father’s Day approached last week, the Pew Research Center released a report on fatherhood that indicated mixed grades for the U.S. rendition — or, more aptly, renditions — of the oft neglected, negated, nullified institution of fatherhood. Based on an analysis of the most recent data from the ongoing National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), the Pew folks reported that the presence of fathers in the same home as their children has taken a big dive since 1960 — from 11 percent of children living apart from their fathers then, to 27 percent in 2010. But the data also indicate that fathers who remain are doing more stuff with their kids — eating together, helping with homework, playing together — you know, more actively parenting.

This is interesting because, as I recall, back in the 1960s, 70s and 80s — maybe more recently but less vocally — feminists asked fathers to take a more active parenting role, to share parenting responsibilities equitably, and what has happened? Some fathers did and some fathers ran.

Of course it’s not fair to assume a greater number of men now live apart from their children simply because feminists expressed concern about the division of parenting work, and the report doesn’t address the why of the data. Certainly the increasing divorce rate is partially responsible, that and the persistent social rule that women should take on the majority of parenting responsibility, which places the majority of children of divorce with their mothers. If anything is obviously to blame for fewer men living with their children, it is the white, male, dominant culture that invests its all in keeping women as the primary child caregiver. But whatever the dynamics behind the data, the report is as interesting as it is dismaying, and I highly recommend reading it: “A Tale of Two Fathers.”

One note, however: I found only one reference to same-sex couples in the NSFG (the basis of the Pew report), and that was in a portion of the questionnaire I found online. It read: “For the next several parts of our interview, the questions about marriage and other sexual relationships are limited to those with opposite-sex partners. In the final section of the interview, some questions will ask about sexual experience with same-sex partners.” I couldn’t find the final section of the interview online. I also couldn’t find indication that the NSFG questionnaire includes the same parenting questions for fathers in same-sex couples and those in opposite-sex couples, or a live person at NSFG to answer that question. And it’s a question that warrants pursuing.

In the meantime, after exploring and mourning the Pew report, I received an email message from the White House with the subject “Celebrating Fathers.” The message sent me to linked webpages jam-packed with hopeful and encouraging fatherly stuff. What a relief! There was a little fatherhood pitch from the President (whose father exited the family when Obama was two, so kudos to Obama and those who reared him!), an updated fatherhood.gov website promoting the Strong Fathers, Strong Families campaign; a new DadTalk blog intended to provide helpful fathering information; and my favorite page, which hosts the be-better-fathers propaganda commonly known as PSAs (public service announcements) — and I really enjoyed some of them. In contrast to the mass media in which men of color and many fathers are relegated to the roles of scary criminal, sex object or complete moron, what a refreshing treat to see them being themselves, practicing cheers and cooking dinner and just stoop-sitting with the kids.

However, after being inundated with a spectrum of daddy messages, I found myself wondering why men even become fathers. Are their motivations any different from mine for pursuing motherhood — biology, narcissism, errant rationalization? And what better way to find out than to ask them, which I did, and here’s what some of them had to say. …

This, from a local humorist: Why am I a father? Well, my wife looked so cute that night (she still does), and this reproductive urge just bubbled up. We mated. We reproduced, thrice. Now my kids are doing the same thing. Cute women — I guess that’s why all guys become fathers.

This one got into the meat of the Pew report: Like my father and his father before him and my mother’s father before her, I am a father by biological consequence. I had a collision with the mother of my sons, and fortunately for us, we have continued to have such collisions. But there’s a non-biological reason I’m a father. When things between my wife and I were not good, I decided to stay. Broken homes were pretty common when I was a boy. My wife’s parents divorced, too. So when we had hard times, as I suspect all marriages do, divorce was an option. I would still have been a father but the family would have been divided. I remembered how that felt as a son and decided to stay with my wife, which meant working with her because we could not go on as we were. After my parents’ divorce, my father drifted away. In a sense he resigned from the job. I’m a father because I spend time with my sons, and I can do that because I love their mother, which is how I became a father in the first place.

My friend of rosy hue once again focused on the positive: I am a father because my children fill my days with laughter, joy, and a sense of peace. They are also our most precious gift and best hope for a future filled with possibility.

This one always starts out with a joke, good or bad, just start with a joke: So, a very good question. There are of course some wiseass answers: Didn’t anyone tell you about the birds and the bees — or did you miss that class; couldn’t outrun the shotgun; whatever. But, I think my reasons are mostly self-serving. First, having the boys meant I didn’t have to grow up. Not that I would have anyway. There are so many memories that have filled my life because of them, and their pain has been my pain, their success my pride, their joy my joy. I can’t imagine that life would have been nearly as dear or as fulfilled had I not been a father. And the other reason is to attain immortality. We are all terminal. There’s no getting out of that one. And, for the majority of us, there won’t be a library or building named after us. But the legacy most of us leave behind will be our children. In them we can find the reason for existing.

This guy’s a writer — always has an artful beginning, a middle and an ambiguous end: My fatherhood was unplanned and found me 17 years ago in a moment when I already had more to manage in life than I knew how to do properly. However, I grew into it naturally and it changed me for the better. The bond I have formed with my daughter from infancy has made me stronger and more than once saved me from despair. I am proud of my daughter and what she is becoming. I am sure her achievements will surprise and amaze me in the future and continue to give my life more significance than I have been able to give it, hampered by my own doubts and failings, through my own lifetime of effort. Her future will be surprising and I have no dread or feeling of apprehension with respect to my child with the sole exception that the world she is inheriting upon her graduation last night from Fallbrook High seems precarious and degraded. I wish I could make it all better for her, but it is clear to me that I cannot and that all I can do is try to put a brave face on a dire situation and not discourage her or weaken her in advance of the challenges she will be facing.

This is from a fellow who fathered many more than he spawned: One of the most important things being a father has taught me is to check the oil. Sorry I’m late. I was coaching baseball with my son, for my father-less grandson. And I love/cherish every moment of it.

And this one drives it home to its core: Why am I a father?

– Because of some primordial drive to procreate.
– Because a man of my generation was expected to marry and have at least one child, preferably          more, (but not “too many”) if he was to be respected in the workplace.
– As I age, because I may need care if I do not have a spouse to do the “job.”

I suppose the why of it might not matter: I am certain what does matter is how we do it, fatherhood and motherhood, and how we do it does not have to be restricted to the binary choices our culture foists on us, choices based on location or sex or sexuality. We could simply choose to do parenthood equitably — for our kids.

Love,
K-B

Crossposted at San Diego Gay & Lesbian News.

Note: Stoop-sitting photo from the Maryland Historical Society.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

I voted for President Barack Obama, and I don’t care what anyone says, I still like him. And you know why?

#1

I still like Obama because he is not any of the other parties’ alternatives who vied for voter approval in 2008. He is not Senator John McCain or former Governor Mike Huckabee or former Governor and perpetually-tanned Mitt Romney or Congressman Ron Paul or former Senator Fred Thompson or former Congressman Duncan Hunter or former Mayor Rudy Giuliani or perpetual candidate Alan Keyes or Senator and Governor-elect Sam Brownback or former Governor Jim Gilmore or former Congressman Tom Tancredo or former Governor Tommy Thompson — or Prohibition Party Candidate Gene Amundson. (Yes, the Prohibition Party is still on the books, but it has really petered out. Kind of like an opened beer you find beside the Naugahyde recliner after a night of debauchery.)

With the exception of Gene Amundson, who died seven months into Obama’s presidency, imagine what any of these candidates would have done to stem the economic greed bleed created under President George W. Bush’s watch: Any one of them would have given obsequious tax breaks to corporations and the wealthiest two percent of folks, tossed two aspirins to the rest of us, and obstructed an unemployment insurance extension in the morning. The hypocrisy of it is not entertaining: Congressional Republicans disdain unemployment extensions “because they increase the deficit,” but they are infatuated with extending Bush-era tax gifts for the rich — even though they increase the deficit. Consequently…

#2

I still like Obama because, contrary to the pundits who have to say pesky things to sell ads and contrary to the congressional Democrats who are now pandering to the progressives they abandoned in the healthcare insurance reform debate, I think President Bill Clinton is correct: President Obama negotiated the best deal possible on the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act. And if the Dems hold it up until January, when the House shifts to a Republican majority, any semblance of a balanced compromise is unlikely.

#3

I still like Obama because some imperfect healthcare insurance reform is better than no healthcare insurance reform — in a life or death sort of way. So far, the reform bill has stopped insurance companies from denying coverage to our kids because they have pre-existing conditions. Insurance companies can no longer impose lifetime caps, which is critically important to those of us with chronic illnesses. Our young adult offspring can now stay on our policies until they turn 26. Standard preventive services are now free for people in new plans. And the list goes on — as long as Congress doesn’t screw it up. Of course, the list would have gone on a lot longer than that, had congressional Democrats stood by their president and voted for the reforms he requested rather than backpedaling in hope of surviving midterm elections, a disloyal tactic that — gosh, what a surprise! — didn’t work out for many of them. Had the Dems accepted their economy-driven fate and voted with some compassion, we could have had an absolutely fabulous reform bill. Nincompoops.

#4

I still like Obama because, true to the historical sequence of suffrage, we had to elect an African American man to the presidency before we could elect a woman. Obama’s presidency means women are up next. Damn time.

#5

I still like Obama because unlike Clinton or George W., Obama will make sure Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) goes away, the military survives, and all those fearful heterosexuals can continue to self-perpetuate. And he’s aligned with a majority of the public, who poll consistently at almost 60 percent in favor of allowing gays to serve openly. (I wonder which polls McCain is reading.) Also, although DADT wasn’t the first thing on Obama’s agenda and he is too conservative on same-sex marriage, unlike the trepidatious men I know, Obama gives full-frontal same-sex hugs. And if that doesn’t do it for you, think about those 2008 candidates. Can you picture any of them posting a video message to gay kids to tell them “It Gets Better”? Nope, not one of them did, but Obama did, and I’d give him a full-frontal hug for that.

#6

I still like Obama because, after the battering midterm elections and in the throes of a lame duck session, he isn’t hunkered down licking his wounds, trying to stay out of the line of fire, deflecting his frustration to the hostility of Call of Duty: Black Ops or some equally bloody war-making game. No, he is out in the field, trying to get things done despite the opposition, such things as the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which should have been as easy “Yes” for the Senate; he is calling the Republicans and the Democrats on their fruitless behavior; he is leading, not posing for reality television with the sickening satisfaction of a recreational hunter, à la Sarah Palin.

#7

I still like Obama because he understands we are a nation that cares. We don’t always show it, but in a crisis of need you can count on us to give our money, to give our time, to clear out our closets and donate all those treasures we really will never use to those who will, to show we care. That’s why the DREAM Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act) is such a great piece of legislation for us: It addresses a long-term and tortured problem, fraught with border-skulking secret agent-wannabes, prejudice and ignorance, and it offers the nation an opportunity to turn all that compassion inward. The DREAM Act provides for the offspring of illegal immigrants, raised but not born in the United States, to become citizens via successful college or military service. The DREAM Act is one of the few wise responses to the great immigration debate to emerge in far too many moons: It tells these kids we care about them, and they need that. Quelle idée!

#8

I still like President Obama because he is not any of the overly-coiffed egos vying for a Republican nod in 2012. He is not Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour or still-tanned Mitt Romney or South Dakota Senator John Thune or outgoing Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty or Mike Huckabee or former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum or former House Speaker Newt Gingrich or former Sarah Palin, who has become a mockery of herself — and she was a distinctly undistinguished public figure to begin with.

#9

And, I still like President Obama because, well, okay, I admit it! I like President Obama because he is African American — and I am an anti-racist pig. Slave owners five or six generations ago, my family celebrated his success and wept at the terrible and wonderful significance of his election. The African American rental car worker at the airport the next morning celebrated and wept with me. My friends and I celebrated and wept while watching the inauguration. And still I celebrate and weep for my president. This is an unappreciative country he leads. Oh, Obama is not liberal enough for me — no one who can be elected president would be — and I could join the fray and rail endlessly about the things I don’t like, but he is making progress on many of the issues that are important to me. He is making as much progress as Congress, his own party and politics allow. And for that I like him, still.

Love,
K-B

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Crossposted at the OB Rag.

White House White Board

Austan Goolsbee, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, discusses the President Obama’s compromise framework on tax cuts, unemployment insurance and job creation.

When my president distributes links to LGBT resources, I am reminded in a most poignant way why I voted for him.

Love,
K-B

From President Obama:

Click image to watch President Obama's video message

Recently, several young people have taken their own lives after being bullied for being gay – or perceived as being gay – by their peers. Their deaths are shocking and heartbreaking tragedies. No one should have to endure relentless harassment or tormenting. No one should ever feel so alone or desperate that they feel they have nowhere to turn. We each share a responsibility to protect our young people. And we also have an obligation to set an example of respect and kindness, regardless of our differences.

This is personal to me. When I was a young adult, I faced the jokes and taunting that too many of our youth face today, and I considered suicide as a way out.  But I was fortunate.  One of my co-workers recognized that I was hurting, and I soon confided in her.  She cared enough to push me to seek help.  She saved my life.  I will always be grateful for her compassion and support – the same compassion and support that so many kids need today.

In the wake of these terrible tragedies, thousands of Americans have come together to share their stories of hope and encouragement for LGBT youth who are struggling as part of the It Gets Better Project.  Their messages are simple: no matter how difficult or hopeless life may seem when you’re a young person who’s been tormented by your peers or feels like you don’t fit in: life will get better.

President Obama is committed to ending bullying, harassment and discrimination in all its forms in our schools and communities.  That’s why he recorded this message.

Last year, the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services joined forces with four other departments to create a federal task force on bullying.  In August 2010, the task force staged the first-ever National Bullying Summit, bringing together 150 top state, local, civic, and corporate leaders to begin mapping out a national plan to end bullying.   The task force also launched a new website, www.bullyinginfo.org, which brings all the federal resources on bullying together in one place for the first time ever.

If you’re a young person who’s been bullied or harassed by your peers, or you’re a parent or teacher who knows a young person being bullied or harassed, here are a few resources that can help you:

The Trevor Project The Trevor Project is determined to end suicide among LBGTQ youth by providing resources and a nationwide, 24 hour hotline.  If you are considering suicide or need help, call: 866-4-U-TREVOR (866-488-7386).

BullyingInfo.org BullyingInfo.org is a project of the Interagency Working Group on Youth Programs (IWGYP) focused on providing tools and resources for youth, parents, teachers and mental health providers to prevent and address bullying.

It Gets Better Project President Obama’s video is just one of thousands of videos submitted by people across the country to inspire and encourage LGBT youth who are struggling.  You can watch more videos at ItGetsBetterProject.com.

For even more information and resources visit:

Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN)

Matthew Shepard Foundation

Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG)

A transcript of the President’s video is here.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Heat roils across my hill as I step into the dog days of summer, plunge into the pool and surface into a shimmer of my youth. The hours barely passed then, as we sought the morning’s flickering shade, splayed under the swaying arms of weeping willows. The grass cooled and tickled, and when the breeze stilled, when dew abandoned the ground and bedecked our brows, when boredom prevailed, we scooted on elbow, heel and ass to peek up just past the edge of the willow, to spy pictures in the sky, to find fancy piled upon fancy in shades of white and blue and wonder. Drifty, dreamy images fluttered by on tendrils of hot air and moisture, visions of summers to come. Now, they are visions of summers past. Vague recollections entice others, memories evoke memories, and I succumb to the warm wave of reminiscence. …

At Tydings-on-the-Bay, the family seeks respite from Baltimore’s stinking markets and steamy Southern Baptist socials. The season’s heaven is as hot as hell, so my father’s mother swims in the early morning sun, the rising light, the silence of sleeping progeny. Her ears fill with the water of two hundred fifty years of fishermen’s traps, floating battles of wits and finance, sunken souls. Framed by dusty lace and handprints, she returns from the edge of land, ankle-deep in the pine needles of last season’s hopes and sighs. She pulls back moth-wing coverlets to wake us for breakfast and draws us from bed with the scent of frying scrapple, grits and green tomatoes. We pray for her watermelon rind pickle as she repositions the tortoiseshell combs that hold her endless hair in place and her world together. …

Harmony buzzes — a chorus of lawn mowers, insects and low flying planes. The grass is yet moist with tears of another day’s passing, another day closer to replacing steamed crabs and corn on the cob with brown bag lunches at the big kids’ school. But for now, summer flowers play pub to bees and lipstick to girls who yearn to be women. We dress in fairy gowns of weeping willow and woven clover, with tomato breasts and berry-stained nails, and we smoke cornhusks when no one watches from the kitchen window. We hide along a stream’s bank, escaping plebeian Cheerios, taunting big brothers, demands to be something other than our dreams. We imagine gossamer barges and honeyed rosebuds, the grace and wisdom that will one day be ours. …

Inner tubes with six-pack anchors voyage across a watering hole. Once boys and girls, now barely adults, we plot the world’s salvation: Love and revolution are the answer — or is it revolutionary love? This is our wholesome debate as cows bellow to the music of a generation wading through sparkling ripples of change. We feast on homemade cheese, the sprouts of provocative vision, the final summer of our youth. We dive to the murky bottom one last time and surface with the muck from which our species first emerged. It oozes between our fingers and we know the very world is in our hands. …

Wafts of ocean breath curl round limbs entwined in sweltry sand. We draw long strokes of air and each other, tremble at the touch of fingertips, the sun, the lees of a million million waves, the ebb and flow of unanimity. Tears mingle and meander the joy and sorrow between us. Romance has blown in before a ferry of tourists, binoculars perched on the ship’s rail searching for secrets, cameras poised to frame history — but will we have one? Passion crosses over them like an angel over blood-marked doors and alights dangerously in our lovers’ arms as we crest with the waves. And by summer’s end, all evidence, save the love, of a couple walking hand-in-hand is shifted by the tides to someone else’s strand. …

We watch the glue of an inflamed mob bubbling beneath the sky-high images of Hitler and Obama and Lenin. The three are falsely strung together by practiced loathing, the vitriol of glib puppets who toss the masses bonbons of fear like cheap Mardi Gras beads — in hope of bare-breasted adulation. The mob feasts on the ephemera their idols spew with such self-serving vengeance — dark accusations that evaporate in the sun but linger in unquestioning minds, calls to arms amputated by ignorance, dried tea leaves that swirl out of reach on the hot air of hate. …

And I look back to earth. The quest for grace, the harmony of hopeful discourse, the rhythmic balance of unsullied tides, the common embrace of responsibility for our future — are they such arcane notions? I finger the ancient tortoiseshell combs and wonder if in this time they can hold the world together.

Love,
K-B

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Billboard photo courtesy of Bob Fisher, KRIB.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

“You don’t mind if I sit here, do you,” he said. After his briefcase hit the empty seat.

I looked up from my book and was not surprised by what I found: older white male, expensive suit, assumptive bearing, and a physique to match the sonorous voice — he was too large even for the exit row. But upon a second, sneaky glance, while he stowed his luggage and adjusted himself into his seat, I noticed the faint hand tremor, the thinning hair approaching white, the hint of a stoop revealing his seventy, maybe seventy-five years.

I let a sigh slip. It was the damn tremor that swayed me, forcing me to close my book — Sue Townsend’s cruelly hilarious spoof of the British royals — and exercise the social graces Mother taught me. Besides, if he’d offered a question rather than a declarative before tossing his briefcase, I wouldn’t have thought twice about his claiming the seat. So I turned to him and said, “Of course not — please join me.”

He looked down at me without making eye contact and nodded a suitable smile in my direction as he unfurled his Financial Times, and I thought I caught disappointment flit across his visage. If only he had boarded a little faster, he might have landed next to the babe who’d sashayed down the aisle before me. She had a caboose even I noticed — as did the hungry hunter who snagged the seat next to her, licking his chops in anticipation of getting a mouthful of those sweet cheeks. So the poor old fellow was stuck with me — baggy jeans and sweatshirt (Father always said I dressed like an old boot) and a befuckled mood (I’d lost the joy of flying when the airlines stopped providing those cool little salt and pepper shakers in coach).

A flight attendant distracted our minimalist encounter when she requested verbal affirmatives from those of us in the exit row, thereby committing us to assisting in the event of an emergency. With the threat of terrorists misbehaving on planes, I took this responsibility quite seriously, but checking out my fellow prospective heroes, I had to question the legitimacy of the airline’s process.

There was one brooding skateboarder, who, upon declaring “Yes” that he was ready and willing to assist, reinserted his iPod earbuds, despite having obediently turned off the contraption, and pulled his baseball cap over his eyes, assuring neither social interaction nor emergency readiness. He was probably dreaming about the sashaying caboose.

Next to him was a gal who appeared to be on her first solo flight post aerophobia treatment. With clenched knees and jaws, her wild-eyed stare boring into the seatback in front of her and barf bag in her lap, she clutched the armrests as beads of sweat grew on her blanched face and nervous snot flicked from her nose.

Clearly neither she nor the kid could be counted on, which lent a new appreciation for my presumptuous seatmate. He looked as though he might still be strong enough to help me hoist the 70-pound door and I, having worked in social services, had proved my crisis-management abilities manyfold. In fact, the aerophobic’s nose reminded me of one such incident at the program I once directed for multi-handicapped blind adults.

I’d received a frantic call to my office from the nurse’s station one sunny California afternoon. “Conrad bit Nadine!” the shift supervisor shrieked.

“Is she OK? Did you isolate Conrad?”

“He bit her! He bit her!”

“Yes, I got that. Take a breath. Is Nadine OK?”

“He bit her! He bit her nose! In her room! There’s blood everywhere!”

“Bring bandages and an icepack to her room.” I ran from my office and met the supervisor at Nadine’s door, where Nadine stood silent and still, hands covering her face and blood drenching her blouse.

“Conrad bit my nose,” she said, dropping her hands to reveal a bloody void where her nose once was.

“Shit. Where’s the nose?” I asked the supervisor. “Did he swallow it?”

She was busy tossing her lunch in Nadine’s trashcan, so I had Nadine press a bandage to her new facial concavity, and I dropped to the floor. There I was, in my tidy little business suit and pumps, crawling across the institutional carpet in pursuit of a nose — which I found under the bed, right where Conrad had spit it.

Later, when I asked him why he did it, he said, “She was rude to me, so I felt for her nose and I bit it.”

So, yep, pushing people down the inflatable slide seemed manageable, as long as the old fellow could indeed help me lift the door out of the way. This thought shifted my predisposition from dislike to acceptance of the man.

Except then he blew it. After folding his newspaper and tucking it in the seat pocket, he settled his elbow on our shared armrest. Now, this alone is an annoying but common maneuver on a plane. Men do it to women without a thought, although bold women preempt it by getting there first. But it was the subsequent pressure of his upper arm against mine that set me off. I shifted every body part that I could toward the empty space between my seat and the emergency exit door, but it was not enough. Still his arm pressed to mine. It was surely an intrusion, and it was unbelievable that he couldn’t feel it.

Now, my Southern upbringing precluded my saying what I was thinking — that he move his fucking arm — so out of desperate discomfort, I leaned forward and buried my face in my book, determined to disregard him the rest of the flight.

But he had other plans. Having consumed his Financial Times, he proceeded to interpret it for the rest of us. “Obama Bin Laden,” he chuckled, “he is doing everything he possibly can to slow down our financial recovery.” My hackles began to rise, and I pretended to continue reading.

“People of wealth will never vote for him again,” he continued, “and the young derelicts who did in 08 might actually acquire the discernment to think twice in 2012, particularly the trust fund kids. I have one client whose offspring have probably voted away their inheritance.”

My pretense shattered and I turned to him, preparing to challenge him for likening the President to Osama Bin Laden.

But he prattled on: “Thankfully, it doesn’t much affect me. I’ve made a lot of money in my lifetime — of course, I am bragging — but, yes, I’ve made a lot of money in my lifetime. It’s long gone, now.” And then he paused, looked at me directly, and laughed a melancholy little laugh. “Most of my colleagues invested in commercial properties, things like that, but I didn’t. I saw the world instead.”

This time, it was that little laugh that swayed me. If nothing else, he deserved some consideration for his regrets, whatever they were. And there was that pesky Southern thing again. So I listened to his stories and nodded, oohed and ahhed in all the right places, and learned that as a young man he’d ridden his motorcycle across Europe; he was divorced years ago and never remarried; he didn’t usually reveal that he was an attorney, but he was; the district attorney and he barely tolerated each other, but he was friendly with a lot of the judges; he had no children he owned up to; he smoked fine Cuban cigars, but of course, he said, he was bragging again.

I patted his arm. “You’re entitled, Honey.” And he regaled me with his stories for the rest of the flight, while the skateboarder snored under his baseball cap and the aerophobic came to her senses and demanded to be moved from the exit row.

•     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •

The lawyer was on my mind as I drove home from the airport. When I arrived, I Googled his particulars and found his name in an attorney directory, where he mugged with one of his spiffy cigars. I searched for more and found an article. “Sweetie,” I called to my husband. “Look at this. I chatted with this fellow on the plane. In the 80s, he got into a wee-wee contest with a judge over wearing a turban in court.”

“Was he packing explosives in his underwear?”

“I think that’s probably racist, Sweetie. Besides, you joke like that and I’ll have to frisk you.”

“OK, then I’m packing explosives in my underwear.”

“Funny boy.” I kissed him. “Seriously. He refused to explain why he wore the turban, and the judge insisted that he couldn’t wear it without stating a ‘legitimate’ reason. He prevailed eventually.”

“Was he wearing it when you met him?”

“No. I suppose he’d made his point when he won.”

“Hmmm. So, what’s your point?”

“Oh, I’m not sure. It’s just interesting. Nothing, I suppose.” I went back to reading the case, amused by his eccentricities and disappointed I hadn’t been a little nicer. But I don’t know, maybe it was just that Southern thing again.

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

*Oh the times! Oh the customs! – Cicero, 63 BC

(NOTE: Photograph by Nathan Rupert via a Creative Commons license.)

Writers

Want to submit your work to Excuse Me, I’m Writing for the sheer joy of having an audience? Email your original fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry — 2,500 words maximum — in an MS Word document or in RTF to kb@kbgressitt.com. If we publish your work, you keep all rights, including bragging.

Questionable things said in Fallbrook this week

Some men like big thighs.
I hope my husband is one of them.
You should have married an African-American.
Hmmm, is that racist?

I always say to Obama haters, you should only half hate him — he’s only half black.

I could have danced all night.
That’s what the pregnant ballerina said.

Sarah Palin has more power than anyone: She got Oprah to give up her show.

Fallbrook is dying. We’re moving to Oceanside.

Read more Fallbrookisms…

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

That socialist, Marxist, communist, illegal-alien President Barack Obama gave a speech to the pure and vulnerable innocents of our nation Tuesday.

Now, put your head on your knees and take slow, deep breaths. It is really important that you are able to read on. …

This liberal invader broke and entered the sanctity of our dear ones’ apolitical and parents’-rights-respecting K-through-12 classrooms via television to misspend our tax dollars on spreading his socialist ideology to our impressionable babes.

This is a bad thing, a bad, bad thing. I know this because all the experts on Obama’s true despicable character say it is so. But just to make sure, I reviewed his speech and oh dear sweet Baby Jesus! It is a thing of evil — cosmic, pernicious evil! And to help out those of you who don’t understand just how malevolent the Antichrist Obama is, I’ve taken the liberty of extracting the essence of his speech and analyzing it for you.

Beware, though, what follows is not for the young, the weak hearted, those whose faith is infirm. In fact, you might want to say a prayer to God right now — drop to your knees and ask God to just lay down His protective filter between the Obamanable words and your blessed eyes, lest the Evil One insinuate his sinister propaganda into your God-loving heart. Then fetch your Holy Bible and hold it tightly while you read. Or maybe balance it on your head?

And just one more thing before we begin: I want to ask that you join me in thanking God’s great warriors who risk their souls for us, day in and day out, against the liberal hordes, who shine God’s understanding and insightful light on the messages that the Obama Beast would have us believe are only words of wise encouragement, when they are, in fact, a sign of Hitler’s struggle reborn. Yes, God, please heap Your blessings upon our heroic defenders. Among them, the following:

Brannon Howse, of Worldview Times

La Mesa-Spring Valley, California, School Board Trustee Rick Winett

Jim Greer, chairman of the Florida Republican Party

VisionRevisted.com’s Mel Sanger

David S. Turndick at ResistNet.com

Oklahoma State Senator Steve Russell

The good folks at Today’s Obamanation

The anonymous author of the well-researched Christian Coalition blog post

And there are countless others — God knows who these saints are. Our prayers and blessings are with them all. Say amen!

Now, let me tell you, the Chairman Mao-bama reveals his beastly underbelly not more than three paragraphs into his speech, when he blatantly acknowledges his foreign education in a godless country:

When I was young, my family lived overseas. I lived in Indonesia for a few years. And my mother, she didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school.

Dear God, protect us from the mere imagining of what despicable anti-American filth filled the young boy’s heart and soul, turning him into the Arab terrorist-lover he is today. We don’t have to read the particulars; it’s enough that we know it is so — and it only gets worse from here. The white man-hating racist tries to usurp our authority over our precious offspring:

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and you get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with the Xbox.

Right there, now that’s a direct assault on our constitutional right to parent our God-given children as we see fit. We don’t need any foreign-born globalist to tell us how our natural-born kids should be spending their time. And Gamepraise.com has plenty of Bible-teaching games for Xbox, anyway. But we’ll need more than the Bible to vanquish the insidious clutches of his evildoer smut. He actually tries to urge our young ones into the radical lifestyle of the leftwing media liars and liberal elite:

Maybe you could be a great writer — maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper…

Yes, the Obamanation’s intentions are as clear as Christ’s suffering for us on the cross: He wants to indoctrinate our children into one world order of think-alike, anti-morality, God-hating, homo-loving, humanist soldiers for Satan:

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical-thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

And to top it off, he wants our own children to become part of his healthcare reform death squads for seniors:

We need every single one of you to develop your talents and your skills and your intellect so you can help us old folks solve our most difficult problems.

Oh, yes, we know what problem he’s spewing about, with his evil bile. It’s that little problem of the true patriots who are in his way, giving their lives to fight against the one world order he and the Devil’s imps are devising with all the Jews and the Muslims and the atheists and the pinko revolutionaries and the demon technocrats who steal our personal information every time we swipe a credit card or use an ATM. The Obaminator wants our own children to overthrow us:

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best. It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and they founded this nation. Young people. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google and Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

And if this doesn’t convince you, just take a look at his conclusion:

Thank you very much, everybody. God bless you. God bless America. Thank you.

I pray to God you just play the audio of this final sentence backward — it’s not what you think. He’s actually chanting, “God is dead, 666, God is dead, 666, God is dead, 666!”

So beware, true believer, the end times are near — see for yourself!

Love,
K-B

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

20 August 2009

From Café des Artistes

An insult attributed to John Bright: He is a self-made man and worships his creator.
Michael: That sounds like one of our regulars.

Customer 1: Hey, I saved this letter to the editor for you. It’ll make you angry.
Customer 2: Thanks? … Hmmm. … He writes, ”I don’t think for a minute that our law-abiding, tax-paying, home-owning population is responsible for the trash on the roads, shopping carts left all over our community, yard sales along Main Street or laundry drying on fences along Fallbrook Street. … I am not a bigot, but…” I guess he doesn’t know what that means.

Phone banking for healthcare insurance reform

Volunteer: Are you familiar with President Obama’s three core principles for reforming healthcare?
Fallbrook voter: What’s a core principle?

Read more Fallbrookisms…