Archive for March, 2006
Thursday, March 23rd, 2006
It was just a cold.
Except it wasn’t just a cold and now his funeral is Saturday.
I never really knew my biological father. I knew the stories about him and the fears of him, but not the man himself. He was gone before I was barely out of diapers, disappeared in the west Texas wind.
Occasionally, the wind would blow some hint of him back toward me. There were stories from my parents’ mutual friends that even as I hit eight, nine, ten years old, he was still flashing a picture of an 18-month old me like it was a new picture.
Sometimes he’d call. Left one message when I was in high school that I should call him. Except the number turned out to be a dry cleaners in Little Havana.
A couple years before that, he called a number of times in just a few weeks. Scared my mother so badly (she thought he was coming for me) that she borrowed a gun from a police officer friend of hers. This woman, who is absolutely, vehemently anti-gun, borrowed a revolver and was fully prepared to lay that hammer down over and over until it clicked on an empty chamber.
That was the first time I realized how scary Clint was. That was the first moment I understood the beatings and the lies, the tyranny.
And in the face of all that, all I wanted to do was meet him. Failing that, I just wanted to know him. I wanted to understand everything about this man who had taken my incredibly strong mother and turned her into a quivering mass of dead scared.
So frightened of him, in fact, that there was a standing order at the Midland Independent School District. No one, Mom ordered, was to ever take me out of class. She and she alone would take me out of class if needed. No one, she further ordered, was to take me out of class based on a phone call or a note.
She was terrified Clint might snatch her up, put a gun to her head, and demand she call the school for his son.
I had no idea of the school order until a few weeks ago. I’m working on another project and as Mom and I talked about that, the school order came up.
In the late ’90’s, I became interested in my connection to the Kelleys. I began to do research in Clint’s family, thinking him to be long dead. Eventually, I discovered he was very much alive, living in Charleston, South Carolina.
That first phone call was the most torturous phone call I’ve ever made. At that point, it had been 30 years for us. We talked for a couple hours and what drives me a little nuts, even six years later, is that the first phone call was exactly like all the stories, all the anecdotes. He was full of himself, constantly telling me what a great man he was, how smart he was, how on top of the world.
Every fucking word outta his mouth was a lie; built on some tiny wisp of truth, then embellished until the truth was crushed beneath the weight of the imaginary.
The picture, for instance, of the tiny baby being carried by the Oklahoma City fireman after the bombing of the Murrah Building was taken by one of my cousins.
Bullshit. Yes, my cousin is a photographer. Yes, the last name of the actual photographer was the same. But it wasn’t my cousin.
Why the lie? My mother believes it was the only way Clint could live with himself. That he knew his life was crap, that his existence had been a disaster front to back. That he filled the many cracks and crevices of his life with the kind of life he wanted rather than the life he had.
And yeah, he was abused and neglected as a child but at some point, don’t you have to take control? At some point, don’t you have to take responsibility?
He had wanted to meet me a million times between August, 2000 and March 19, 2006. He constantly sent me emails asking where we could meet, when we could get together. He had friends in Chicago and made a number of trips to the Windy, always asking to see me.
I never went.
In September, 2005, he made reservations in Chicago for Bouchercon, a mystery convention I attended. I told him not to come. I told him I had to do business, had to meet agents and editors and other writers, told him I had to network my newly published first novel and it would be difficult if he and I were exploring each other.
He stayed home and there is a huge part of me that will forever writhe in guilt over that. It was, though I couldn’t know it, the last time we’d have a chance to see each other.
The last time because a few weeks later he was diagnosed with cancer.
I don’t remember what kind, though he told me. At first I blew it off. He was such a liar, and he told me about his after I told him about mine. It just didn’t feel true. It had the ring of so many of our conversations: yeah, you might have done this, son, but I did it first and better. You might have this affliction, but I do, too, and mine is much worse.
Turns out his was worse. As I got healthier, he got sicker. As I learned to cope with chemo, his tongue swelled and burned from radiation.
As I discovered how to live with my cancer, he understood he was going to die from his.
He died after refusing any more radiation. He got a cold and it slipped into his lungs.
His cancer scares the shit outta me. First and foremost, it scares me. He died from this thing I have, although a different form, and what does that mean for me? It’s selfish and self-involved but that’s where my head is right now.
I find I’m also covered in guilt, like dirt blown against me by that west Texas wind into which he disappeared. I should feel worse about his death. I should feel guilty about always putting him off, about refusing to meet him until I could arrange it on my terms rather than his.
But I don’t. I’m sorry I put him off in Chicago but beyond that, there doesn’t seem to be much guilt or sadness.
Just fear. He had a heart attack. I had a heart attack. He died from cancer. I have cancer with something like a 60 percent chance it’ll come back.
I asked him once why he left the dry cleaner’s number in Miami. He had no idea, didn’t even remember calling me. And as far as I know, he long ago lost the picture of me at 18-months.
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Sunday, March 19th, 2006
My wife is a very sensual woman. Her touch. Her hair. Her incredible eyes. And those touching words: “You’re looking pretty scrawny.”
Ah…thanks, honey…I feel so much more sexy now.
The weight continues to melt away. Last time I was weighed I was down about 25 pounds. It’s closer to 30 or 35 now and that’s fine, except I have lost — and continue to lose — muscle mass.
That scares me a bit on any number of levels, not the least of which is that sometimes I have to fight with drunks and idiots in my job. Much harder to prevail in a fight if I can’t lift my fist. I guess if the fight comes my way, I’ll have to hand out IOUs: “Come see me in two months for an ass-kicking.”
And obviously the exercising doesn’t go anywhere near as quickly as I would like. I want to work out a couple three or four times and be back where I was. Ain’t happening. Hell, it took months to lose the muscle, it’ll take just as long to get it back.
Part of the problem is the constant fatigue. The chemo, as I’ve said before, keeps me tired. I keep thinking it’ll get better, maybe as I get used to the dosage or whatever. But I’ve been on this dosage now for weeks and the fatigue hasn’t changed.
And I’ve noticed that if I’m already tired or sick when I take a shot, the side effects hit me much harder.
Last week, for instance. It was a tough week at the jail; lots of jailers sick, lots out injured. There were tons of hours that had to be filled and I ended up working better than 70 hours.
I was exhausted and Thursday and Saturday’s shot left me lightheaded, dizzy, and throwing up. Those shots pounded me pretty badly and I can only believe it was because of being so tired.
When I get a good amount of rest, the shots aren’t too bad. It’s like I’ve come to a place where I can tolerate them as long as I don’t think I’m healthy, as long as I don’t think I can do what I used to.
As long as I remember I’m fighting cancer.
Perhaps that level of fatigue, regardless of how I eat or how much I sleep, is where I’ll be for the next nine months, until I’m quit of this shit.
There is something else interesting I’ve noticed, too: growing aggression.
In my jail, I’m the talker. I’m the one trying to solve problems without resorting to violence. I’ve got so much patience even drug counselors would roll their eyes.
But not lately. Lately, I’m ready to throw-down at the slightest reason.
Inmates get mouthy with me on a regular basis, it’s a basic part of the job. Before I started chemo, I’d shrug it off, laugh it off, toss an insult back at them, whatever.
Rarely did anything they said rise to the level of getting physical or even getting physically intimidating.
But now it’s hard to keep myself in check. I found myself yelling at a drunk, ready to go a round with him when he said he knew where I lived and would come find me.
Of course he didn’t know where I lived and even if he had, he didn’t remember the threat two minutes after making it. He was a drunk idiot who was just babbling, yet I wanted to kill him.
Am I more aggressive because of the medicine? Or because I’m so tired all the time?
Probably a little of both.
But I do know I’m irritated sometimes because people are idiots. A few nights ago, a co-worker said I — and my medical problem — was the reason the county’s self insurance would go bankrupt. “Big claims like yours,” she said. “They won’t have the money to pay them.”
You know, when I’m on my way back from the bathroom where I’ve spent ten minutes vomiting, when I’m working my fifth or sixth straight 12 hour shift, when I’m unsure about can I navigate the stairs, maybe telling me I’m going to break the county isn’t the way to go.
Luckily, I have LuAnn. When I have a bad day, I can stand in front of her, strip, and get those sultry words: “You’re looking pretty scrawny.”
I’m sure that’ll pick me right up.
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Saturday, March 18th, 2006
Okay, so last night I was a cop.
I have no idea where, I didn’t recognize the uniform or anything else. Not a jailer cop like I am now, but a road guy, jangling with all the poh-leece gear and a shiny new badge and all the rest.
I was with my supervisor and a pile of other coppers as he told us of our new duties: two shifts per week we had to make pizzas.
It was like being in a Steven Bochco show (hehehe…how many of you get THAT reference?).
Then it was over.
The images that this chemo is dredging up from the depths of whatever depths I might have are just whacked out. It’s all sort of fun, but pretty well whacked out.
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Tuesday, March 14th, 2006
I’m writing right now through the haze…or what I think of as The Haze.
I had a shot a little bit ago and I’m a little lightheaded. So if I pass out while writing this, someone call 911.
Okay, okay, not funny.
The news is good on the chemo front. I’ve begun taking the shots myself at home, usually a couple hours before I hit the sack and it’s been fabulous. I don’t suffer through as many of the side effects — lightheadedness or dehydration or whatever. And when I do have them, they aren’t as bad.
In fact, I’ve had enough energy to get back to exercising, which, in turn, gives me more energy. And with more energy, I’ve finally gotten back to writing some fiction. Yeah yeah yeah, I can hear the moans of ‘delight’ from all my fans out there.
Another big plus? The itching isn’t as bad.
So all in all, things are going well right now. Finally. I hate having to stab myself twice for each treatment, but I’ll do it if it means avoiding the other problems.
But my dreams are still strange. Hehehe…that’s not really a problem. Call it more of an interesting exercise in gonzo film making or experimental theater.
Usually, for the first hour or so after I wake up, I’m a little off-balance. Maybe it’s because during the worst of the side effects, I’m asleep and not eating or taking fluids. It’s not bad, just a little disconcerting. I haven’t fallen or stumbled down the stairs or anything.
Overall, I still get tired. In fact, at the jail last week I worked about 70 hours and then spent most of yesterday sick. Are those two things related? I’ve no idea but I suspect so. Today I feel pretty good.
Except now I’m in The Haze. I had to take today’s shot early because it looks like I’ll have to go in tonight to cover a shift.
As I think about it, this seems like an especially boring dispatch from the cancer world. That’s both good and bad. Good because it means I’m doing much better. Bad because it means I have nothing interesting to write about as concerns the Chronicles. No sitting in the road, no passing out in the jail, no time spent in the treatment room.
Wow, it seems I might actually survive all this after all.
That’s good, I guess, though I suspect most of my family wouldn’t have been particularly bummed out. I mean, I’ve got pretty good life insurance coverage.
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Tuesday, March 14th, 2006
Okay, so you know Law and Order: Criminal Intent?
In this whacked-out dream, Vincent Donofrio (who I love to watch, especially in the Homicide episode “The Subway,” even though I have no idea how his last name is spelled) and I are standing in a narrow doorway between some kind of kitchen and some kind of living area. I’ve no idea where we are, never seen the place before.
Ol’ Vince is putting some kind of food into a pet dish. Who knows if it’s dog food or cat food.
While he’s doing that, I ask him: “When you’re playing Detective John Goren, are you more Goren or Donofrio? And, when you’re being Donofrio, are you more Goren or Donofrio?”
Then the thing was over. He never gave me an answer and I’m sure that was because the question exists on a plane so rarefied, so intellectually advanced, that he simply couldn’t frame an answer.
Yeah, that must be it.
Man, the drug dream are interesting.
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Saturday, March 11th, 2006
Rule #2, Rule #2, Rule #2
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Tuesday, March 7th, 2006
A few days ago, I wrote about the odd dreams I’ve had since this cancer bullshit started. They’ve been extremely odd, just random images and feelings that generally seem to have no connection to anything.
Sad thing is, with a couple of exceptions, I never wrote any of them down. Pretty stupid for a writer type who constantly mines his own life for material.
So after last night’s duo of dreams, I thought I’d start giving at least a taste of what my subconscious is doing.
First dream had to do with little green apples. I don’t remember what was going on, or where I was, or what I was doing. But I do remember that almost everything was covered in that particular shade of green you find in those terrible apples (for me, if it’s not Gala or Red Delicious, I’m not interested).
All that was bad enough, green everywhere I looked, but the worst was le shoes.
Green. Absolutely green. Green apple green. Hideously, horribly green.
What the hell? I’m wearing green shoes? And not like green sneaks you might see a young kid wear. They were more like Florshiem shoes that someone had dyed apple green. I can even remember tiny black spots and specks. Do green apples have those specks? Or were these green apples, and the accompanying shoes, riddled with filth and disease? With Dengue Fever and Ebola and maybe even Avian Flu? Or maybe –
Okay, getting a little carried away.
That’s it, then. The entire, short dream. I walked around in these green shoes and then it was over. Care to analyze that one, anyone?
Last night’s second feature was a bit more obvious, though still outta left field.
Back when I was at Lee High School, I was one of those kids who did nothing but band. Marching band, honor band, orchestra, jazz band, choral pop group, sole and ensemble, etc. etc. All I did was music. Kind of figured everything else was a waste of time.
The band went on more than a few trips, including to Washington, D.C. to perform as George Bush, Sr.’s official band. (This was in 1984, the first ‘once in a lifetime trip’ the band got to experience. There was a second ‘once in a lifetime’ experience four years later when Bush was elected president. Hell, for all I know, there might have been a third ‘once in a lifetime experience’ when W. was elected in 2000. Obviously, Midland and the Bushes are very close.)
Anyway, I was high school aged in this dream and the band was at some hotel, trying to get everything together to go march. But not like during the actual trips, when we’d leave the hotel and our gear would be at the site. This was us getting out gear in the hotel lobby, and getting ready to perform.
I couldn’t find my damn drum.
I’m wandering around in my band uniform looking for that drum, and I can’t find anything.
And those people around me aren’t helping at all. Of course, it turns out those people around me aren’t band kids I went to school with, they’re writers I’ve gotten to know over the last ten years at various writers’ conventions.
The dream was a very odd mix of band trips and writers’ conventions. I guess it was lucky I was drinking like I do at those conventions, seeing as how I had on a school uniform and was…you know…17 years old; not that I ever let age stop me from sipping a round or two…hehehehe…. And luckily, I started losing my hair in the 11th grade so I always looked older than I was, which was good because getting a fake ID would have been a crime!
So that’s it. I have no idea what either of those dreams — or the tons I’ve not written about — have to do with anything. But all the strangeness started when I started chemo so I assume that’s the connection. Ah, I can see the marketing campaign now. “Chemotherapy, the launch pad of your dreams.”
You know what? Now that I think about it, there was an ad on TV the other day that might have triggered the apples. It was one of those stupid Ethan Allan ads and the first room the ad showed us was decorated and trimmed in the green of my dreams.
There was also a yellow room, a burgandy room, and maybe a purple one. God knows what that’s going to do to my dreams. Tonight, I’ll probably be wearing purple underwear with a yellow fedora…and those damned green shoes.
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Saturday, March 4th, 2006
It’s always so much better when you use your own hand and you’re alone.
Hehehehe…that boy is so nasty.
Today was the first day of giving myself the shots. I’ve been looking forward to doing that for a while now, but it took a few weeks to get all the paperwork through.
Last Thursday, I get a delivery and suddenly my refridgerator is full of drugs and syringes. This morning I went to the hospital, they taught me how to give the shots and off I went.
This will be much better. I’ll give the shot before I go to sleep so the lightheadedness and weakness and all the rest will happen while I’m sleeping. Hopefully, this will make me more functional during the day.
But one thing I hadn’t thougth about is disposal of the syringes. Technically, once they’re used,they’re medical waste. Can’t just toss them in the garbage. So I got an empty gallon milk jug and I’ll throw them in there, then take them to the hospital or somewhere for disposal.
Giving the shot wasn’t so tough, not as tough as I thought it would. Generally, I’m a wuss; hate pain. The thought of giving myself the pain, whether or not I could stab myself, had left me with some trepidation. But I told myself to quit whining and just get it done. I swabbed myself down with alcohol wipes, pinched up some fat, and jammed the needle in.
A pinch of pain and a little sting as the Interferon went in, but other than that, it was no problem at all.
So now I could be a certified heroin junkie.
The shots will go until December, then I’ll be finished with everything assuming the cancer doesn’t come back this year…and if it does come back, I’m getting my money back ’cause obviously the treatments didn’t work.
*****
My dreams are still strange. Three or four dreams a night that are absolutely non-sequiters, have no context to anything going on in my life right now. For instance, the only one from last night that I can remember was me standing in my shower, unable to stand up because those little rubber mats stuck to the bottom of the shower were gone. I kept slipping and falling.
WTF?
I should have been keeping a journal of just the nightly odd dreams ’cause they’re all kinds strange.
*****
The Treatment Room. One of the nurses and I were talking about it the other day. I told her how depressing I thought the room was. She told me that until a couple of years ago, there had been no pictures at all. But a prominent Princeton resident (in other words, someone with a healthy ego and bank account to match) had complained and demanded some art work.
One of the first pictures — the beginning of the beach theme, I guess — had two extremely obese women wearing bikinis. That picture evidently offended everyone so they got rid of it and got the pictures that are there now.
I’d just as soon have had the fat chicks picture. At least that would have been funny…like the poster that came with Queen’s “Bicycle Race,” hundreds of big women on bikes. Except if I remember correctly, the Queen poster was naked chicks.
*****
On the good news front, the doctor told me I didn’t have to come back any time soon. He’d been seeing me every two or three weeks. At mMy last appointment, he said everything looked “extremely good.” He said I don’t have to go see him for two months.
As far as I’m concerned, that’s huge. Maybe I’ll get out of this alive after all.
*****
That’s about it for now. In fact, unless something interesting happens — passing out while driving, passing out while fighting a drunk in the jail, finding a lump the size of Montana on the backside of my head — there won’t be anymore Chronicles on anything approaching a regular basis.
Except maybe I’ll start keeping a listing of the odd dreams. Who knows, maybe now I’ll dream about fat chicks in bikinis.
Whooo-hooo!
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