No photo now, or photos. Not of November's election's "Dancing in the Streets": one of my favorites by Martha & the Vandellas, to which we lifted our swaying arms when wracked and strafed Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were finally left to themselves by our wretched and vicious government, like government now. I danced to this in my 20s with another mobile Martha, an already furious artist, and with Melvyn, a burning writer who wooed me to join him in his trade, my dear, persistent friend. It was 1970s San Diego. The only big gay bar was … [Read more...]
No Picture This Time, at the New Year
No picture this time because food was so bad. The kitchen, which prepared the takeaway in front of me, tried hard and worked like crazy, getting it hot and out. I was excited, in my narrow, private way, because it was New Year's Day, and I was solo. Waiters in Italy strew salt on platters as if they were trying to melt ice on streets. Invisible sugar fairies did the same on my chopped pork ribs, green beans in garlic sauce, wet-mop sesame noodles. Only the egg roll, a silly schoolboy crush, rose to its hot, greasy promise. Not a … [Read more...]
“Dirt Always Wins” — A Story, Part Two
Sterile Technique There’s a curiously moving photo in a 1930s medical handbook put out by Dr. Elliott P. Joslin, who started a clinic in Boston that still specializes in treating diabetics. It shows a sweet Shirley Temple clone, almost 3 years old, the caption says, sitting on a wooden table and injecting her doll-like thigh with a needle and syringe that contains a dose of insulin. (A darling voice muffles an “ouch!”) She’s just a baby, yet she’s her own life-saving nurse. I became diabetic at 7 and almost died because the family doctor … [Read more...]