Good Friends

Amicus curiae is Latin for “friend of the court.” Because the Anglo-American legal tradition is based on the adversary system, judges only decide actual controversies between opposing parties. Nevertheless, a court’s legal rulings can also affect the rights of other members of society. Outside parties who are interested in the issues before the court can ask for permission to submit an amicus curiae brief to offer additional perspectives and friendly information.

Some grumpy appellate judges find amici to be time-wasting distractions. Other courts appreciate input from a variety of sources. The United States Supreme Court receives an average of twelve amicus briefs in each of its cases. The 2015 marriage equality case Obergefell v. Hodges holds the current record, with a total of 149 amicus briefs submitted by a wide variety of individuals and organizations. Confusingly named “Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays” appeared as amicus on the opposite side from beloved “Parents and Friends of Lesbians & Gays.”

Like its federal counterpart, the Washington Supreme Court only accepts cases that involve issues of substantial public interest. Our Supreme Court generally welcomes participation from serious amici. The ultimate goal of any effective tribunal is getting it right.

After a century of vigilant advocacy, the American Civil Liberties Union remains an essential bulwark of democracy. Over the years I’ve had the privilege of serving as an ACLU member, volunteer, speaker, board member, staff lawyer, and cooperating attorney. I was even invited to argue before the Washington Supreme Court on behalf of the ACLU as amicus curiae in a prisoner’s rights case.  

Here’s another strange new experience I never expected to see on my bucket list:  the ACLU submitted an amicus brief in a case where I’m the pro se plaintiff. “Pro se” is Latin for representing yourself, rather than having a lawyer. As the cliché goes, any lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client. Like the Court, I could use some good friends.

In 1989, Washington passed the nation’s first law protecting defendants from “SLAPP” lawsuits. “SLAPP” stands for “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.” SLAPP lawsuits are “intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition.” They are typically filed by thin-skinned but well-financed organizations like property developers, agribusiness, the Pacific Legal Foundation, and the Church of Scientology.  

The ACLU has a longstanding interest in anti-SLAPP laws. On the one hand, laws like RCW 4.24.510 are necessary to protect citizens’ First Amendment rights of freely speaking, petitioning the government for redress, and participating equally in public debates. On the other hand, anti-SLAPP laws should not be applied so broadly that they chill other constitutionally protected speech.

The ACLU’s submission is the only amicus brief that will be in front of the Washington Supreme Court as they make their decision in my case. 

When the Court surprised everyone by accepting review of Defendants’ appeal, I reached out to other Washington organizations that regularly submit amicus briefs. Some of these groups, like the lawyers from the LGBT and disability community, might have been interested if the case had remained focused on my original experiences with discrimination, rather than on the interpretation of Washington’s citizen whistleblower protection statute. 

Other amicus frequent flyers, such as the two opposing advocacy groups representing plaintiff’s lawyers and insurance defense lawyers, ordinarily file amicus briefs in cases like this. Both groups participated as amicus the last time the statute was before the Court, in Segaline v. Dept. of Labor & Industries, 169 Wn.2d 467 (2010). However, between the general disruption from the coronavirus, and the fact that most of their legal issues are already well briefed on both sides by the parties, this time around each organization ended up taking a pass.

Some attorneys believe that the Washington Association for Justice (the plaintiff lawyers) and the Washington Defense Trial Lawyers (the insurance defense lawyers) have a secret pact that says neither group will file an amicus brief in a particular case unless the other group also files an opposing amicus. Sorta like the deal between the Demon and the Angel assigned to Earth in Good Omens. I’d like to think that after reading the parties’ briefs in our case, the two appellate lawyers who ordinarily would be responsible for noodling over these policy issues decided to have a Zoom cocktail together, rather than writing a pair of superfluous amicus briefs that would just cancel each other out.

Other than the ACLU team, only one lawyer asked for permission to submit an amicus brief in my case. Solicitor General Noah Purcell, who is the top courtroom lawyer at the Washington Attorney General’s Office, attempted to file an amicus brief on behalf of all State agencies. The Solicitor General’s brief would have endorsed the position taken by my opponents – who happen to be the sleazy lawyer-investigators who were hired to justify my wrongful termination by my former employer, the Washington Attorney General’s Office. 

I objected to the Solicitor General’s proposed amicus submission. I pointed out that not only did the entire Attorney General’s Office have an obvious conflict of interest based on their role in the dispute before the Court, but Mr. Purcell himself had already personally participated in the case when it was still before the Court of Appeals.  

Unsurprisingly, the Court denied the Solicitor General’s motion for permission to file an amicus brief “in light of the state’s involvement in the history of the case.” But I’m grateful for Mr. Purcell’s misguided motion, which gave me the opportunity to submit a declaration to the Court attaching various records from the Attorney General’s Office that came to light during the appeal. Otherwise these incriminating documents would not be part of the public court record, where they are available for examination by anyone who’s interested.

The Solicitor General’s tone deaf motion also underscores one of the implausibly Kafka-esque aspects of my experience: not only am I the victim of abusive treatment by various government lawyers, but something about me has the effect of deranging every lawyer who works for the State. Even the smart ones. 

Here’s how one of the few remaining lawyer friends I’m still in contact with described the Solicitor General’s boneheaded amicus motion: “I’m no appellate law lawyer, but even I know that stinks.”

When I was with my parents for Mother’s Day, I spoke on the phone with my youngest brother. He’s the other lawyer in the family. My brother asked about my upcoming oral argument, and asked what kind of moot I was planning. 

A “moot” is rehearsal for court. When I worked in private practice or at the ACLU, before each big appellate argument we would arrange at least one moot with a few colleagues. They would read the briefs, pose as justices asking questions, then provide feedback on the argument. Invariably the lawyers asked much meaner questions than any real judge. 

So much has changed. I no longer have access to a mock courtroom and legal colleagues. While the kids were visiting my ex, I was more isolated than ever. And because of the coronavirus pandemic, this year the Washington Supreme Court is conducting all oral arguments on Zoom. 

Nevertheless, my lawyer brother’s question about how I intended to prepare for oral argument gave me an idea. Did you see the big online celebration for Stephen Sondheim’s 90th birthday last month? Or the last few episodes of Saturday Night Live? With everyone stuck at home, it’s possible to weave pre-taped segments into the live Zoom stream. I thought about doing the same thing with my oral argument. After answering the Court’s question, I’d push a button and play a prepared conclusion filmed in my same Brady Bunch square on Zoom. 

In the TV movie version of my story I’ll be played by Paul Rudd, so imagine him with some grey in his hair as he looks into the camera:

“If the justices have no more questions about the Legislature’s intent when the enacted RCW 4.22.510 or the proper application of Civil Rule 12 to the Complaint in this case, I’d like to close with one more personal disclosure about what it’s been like to experience the legal system from the perspective of a pro se litigant with three kids, two dogs, and PTSD.

In March 2016, my employers at the Attorney General’s Office placed me on an abusive “home assignment,” paid their investigator to attack my character, ignored repeated inquires from the lawyer I hired, then illegally fired me.  

Before moving to Bellingham for what I foolishly thought was my dream job, I practiced law in Seattle for two decades. I worked with countless lawyers as a civil rights advocate, bar leader, and appellate lawyer. In the last four years, not a single Washington attorney reached out to see if there was anything they could do to help me and my family. Meanwhile, no lawyer or tribunal has responded to the mountain of evidence I uncovered documenting official misconduct – even the folks who are responsible for investigating accusations against dishonest attorneys.

But wait, there’s more. While this case was still pending in the Court of Appeals, my parents were worried that my mental health hadn’t improved enough to risk the stress of oral argument. So after all the briefing was complete, they offered to pay another attorney to handle the argument itself. I approached two separate appellate lawyers I’d worked with in the past. Both of them turned me down. Instead I argued on my own behalf in the Court of Appeals, just as I’m arguing before you today.

Here’s another stark contrast with my unprivileged experience with the legal system:  after this Court accepted Ogden Murphy Wallace’s petition for review, it took less than a week for Defendants and their insurer to hire their third set of lawyers, this time a distinguished appellate expert. All the hard work and whistleblowing evidence in the world cannot compete with the privileges of power and money. 

Nothing will change until this Court acts. In the meantime, the Court should affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals.”

Unemployed and home alone during a pandemic, I prepared for oral argument without the benefit of fancy lawyer moots. As usual, the most important part of my preparation was writing “SLOW DOWN” in large caps at the top of my outline. 

During oral argument my Zoom connection froze several times. But I remained calm, despite the challenges of anxiety and PTSD. Hopefully I answered the justices’ questions and told my story.   

In my conclusion I didn’t complain about other lawyers. Instead, I thanked the justices for their hard work. In the Segaline case ten years ago, the Court considered the related question of whether Washington’s anti-SLAPP law protects government agencies. Neither side in Segaline did a good job with their briefing. In her concurring opinion, one of the justices tracked down an important case that neither side had cited, which discussed Massachusetts’ similar anti-SLAPP statute. 

Without this good judge’s diligent search for the right answer, I probably wouldn’t have found the Massachusetts court opinion in Kobrin v. Gastfriend. Ten years later, Kobrin answered the exact question that’s before now before the Court:  whether anti-SLAPP statutes grant absolute immunity to government contractors for injuries they cause during their taxpayer-funded assignments. (The correct answer is “No.”) The Massachusetts high court’s opinion provided a clear roadmap for explaining how the legislature intended to protect citizen whistleblowers, not unscrupulous vendors.

These days my mental health is much improved. I get up, make my bed, walk the dogs, hug my children, file legal briefs, then read and write. 

While quarantined at home with the public library closed, both my mother and I have been reading our way through the complete works of our favorite author Jane Duncan. In one of Duncan’s novels, the narrator describes a return to relative normalcy after spending a year caring for her husband when a sudden heart attack exposed his chronic heart and liver disease: 

Ill health is an isolating thing. My husband’s sickness, as well as putting distance between him and me, had put distance between us and all our friends. An illness of limited duration is something that people can stomach and over which their sympathy can stretch. But nothing wears out more quickly than sympathy stretched over a long period of time and humanity’s stomach soon sickens at the sight of permanent ill-health, so that, gradually, most of our acquaintances dropped away.

I was lonely but I did not blame people for not coming to see us, because his rigid health routine seemed outlandish to others and made entertaining difficult. People could not be blamed for leaving us within that routine as in a prison. But although I told myself this, it did nothing to abate my feeling of isolation which was increased by the feeling that I was now not only an exile, but an exile without hope of return, a “displaced person,” one of many such in this twentieth century....

When one is happy, one seeks only the happy, pleasant and amusing things. But when one has passed through the shadow of unhappiness, one learns the nature of shadows and begins to notice them everywhere beyond all ignoring.

Coming out is hard, for both the speaker and the listener.  

In writing frankly about my traumatic and triggering experiences, I don’t mean to whine. I’m certainly not pointing fingers at any particular friend or former colleague. Like Jane Duncan’s narrator, I don’t take my isolation personally. Instead, I’ve reached the point in my recovery where I want everyone to know exactly why I disappeared for a few years. 

As each of us goes about our busy lives, it’s easy to lose touch with folks – particularly when an old friend has kids/gets divorced/exits chorus/moves away/implodes professionally/gets a PTSD diagnosis. No one knows what to say. Then they worry it’s too late to say something, so they keep saying nothing. It’s hard to reach out to friends after such a gap, regardless of whether the particular friend was known long and well, or short and hard, through traumas, triggers, or recoveries. Maybe you last interacted with me three or four years ago, when you would have seen me at my craziest. It’s hard to reach out to someone who you fear has become a stranger. 

Regardless of personal history, it’s always hard to reach out to someone with an off-putting disability, particularly someone living with mental illness or another handicap that interferes with smooth communication. This summer as Bear, Buster, and I briskly walked along Bellingham’s marvelous network of trails, one of the few people who regularly passed us was a young man in a motorized wheelchair. One afternoon as he zipped by I noticed the back of his T shirt:  “Disability Rights are Human Rights.” As the dogs and I reached the dock at the end of the Boardwalk, I saw him parked parked in the shelter. The front of his T shirt celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

Despite my introversion, I decided to reach out with a friendly “I like your T shirt.”

His response was incomprehensible, presumably because the disability that put him in the wheelchair also affected his speech. I stood paralyzed on the Boardwalk – wanting to communicate, but overwhelmed by social anxiety, confusion, covid masks, crowds, and two dogs yanking on their leash. So I fled. And I haven’t seen him since.

Nevertheless, I hope I will find the nerve to keep reaching out, telling my story, and listening to friends and strangers as they tell their stories, too.

When this is all over – and by “this” I mean the covid pandemic, tiresome litigation, and Donald Trump – I intend to take advantage my newfound mental health and freedom. 

I’ll cross the border to sing again with Vancouver Men’s Chorus.

I’ll look for opportunities to socialize with lawyers and other folks. 

I’ll look for jobs and do some marketing. After the next few weeks I’ll finally be in a position to write briefs for clients who don’t have a fool for a lawyer. [Ed note: He means someone should start hiring him to write elegant appellate briefs without “Leishman” in the caption.] 

I’ll never again be the over-anxious do-gooder of yesteryear. I’m balder, greyer, and wearier. But I’m also smarter, nicer, and more mindful.

Plus now I come with cute dogs.

Papa and his best friend

Avoidant

If you insist on searching for a silver lining in the plagues I’ve endured over the last four years, particularly the impact of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (or rather the impact of my former employers’ horrifying treatment that triggered PTSD symptoms), there is one obvious candidate:  my new-found freedom from decades of debilitating writer’s block. I’ve published over 300,000 words on this blog alone, on topics ranging from mental illness to musical theatre.

Most theories of human psychology, from Freudian analysis to Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, place great weight on what we avoid. Avoidant thoughts and behaviors indirectly reveal how our mind works, or doesn’t work. However, it’s hard to drill down very far once you realize you’re avoiding something as broad as “Writing.” 

After three years of blogging, however, I now have enough data to analyze which important topics are conspicuously missing. Or what it means when there’s a sudden burst of inspiration. Such as when I took a break last month from writing about kids, brains, and dishonest lawyers, and for the first time wrote about my experience as a gay man coming out into a world dominated by AIDS.  

First Clue:  A hole in the story.

Over the holidays I got a text from a gay friend in Seattle I haven’t seen for a while. He asked whether I was still looking for a job or applying for disability benefits, and wondered “what is your PTSD from?”

I realized I could respond by cutting and pasting the account I’d already written for a draft blog essay about how different kinds of trauma interfere with our brain’s ability to process memories. So I searched my files.  

I discovered I’d started the explanation three times. Each time I reached this graphic – “6 Most Common Causes of PTSD” – then stopped writing.

I’ve never endured physical or sexual abuse, war, or a serious accident. Instead, like too many other sensitive Mormon youths, I was the victim of emotional abuse from a pervasively homophobic and authoritarian message that denied our very existence. Those unhealed wounds reopened thirty years later, when I experienced “unrighteous dominion” at the hands of ignorant employers and dishonest bureaucrats.

But there’s a sixth common cause of PTSD:  “Witnessing/Experiencing a Mass Disaster.” A big gay mass disaster, which resonated with and amplified the horror of the closet. 

Second Clue:  I read a book.

“Anhedonia,” or the inability to feel pleasure, is a common symptom of depression and other mental health disorders. As a lifelong reader, the most obvious warning that something has gone wrong is when I find myself unable to read. Conversely, the earliest hint of wellness comes when I start reading again.

Nowadays I read every day, although I’ll never again rival my mother’s frequent-flyer status at the Bellingham Public Library. I’ve gotten much pickier. There are lots of books I can’t finish, and even more I won’t start.

I own a copy of Randy Shilts’ classic account of the origins of the AIDS epidemic, And the Band Played On, but I’ve never read it. Or watched the HBO adaption of Shilt’s book. Or seen the movie Philadelphia. So last month I was surprised to find myself reading David France’s How to Survive a Plague.

Not just reading France’s 518-page book, but devouring it. France was a young gay journalist in New York who witnessed ACT UP’s heyday in the 1980s and 1990s. How to Survive a Plague is a week-by-week account of life in the trenches in New York. France’s story paralleled my own experiences on the Western and Midwestern fronts. 

I was there. But I’m not Lazarus in the tomb. Instead, I spent the plague years as the guy observing from the edge of the picture.

Third Clue:  A bumpy ride.

In my mind, the story of my relationship with HIV always begins with a picture of the AIDS Memorial Quilt. As I wrote in “OK Boomer,” the first of these five essays about HIV, the quilt is where you can see a ragged tear in the fabric connecting me to my gay Baby Boomer brothers.

When I began writing “OK Boomer” the essay indeed started with the AIDS Quilt. So I was a little surprised by the Facebook comment left by one of the young Second Tenors in Vancouver Men’s Chorus:  “You took me to a wild ride of complex and different feelings. What a roller coaster.”

Going back to the finished essay, I realized that during the writing process the quilt story and pictures had moved to the conclusion. Readers encountered AIDS without warning, after meandering past quips about generational pop culture. 

When you’ve been avoiding something for too long you have to sneak up on it.

Fourth Clue:  War is hell.

The term “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” was coined in 1978, and the diagnosis was added to the DSM-III in 1980. However, we’ve associated trauma with same constellation of symptoms under different names for centuries, from “soldier’s heart” after the Civil War, to “shell shock” in World War I. 

My all-time favorite author is an obscure woman from the Scottish Highlands who used the penname Jane Duncan to write three series of novels. Her central themes include memory and storytelling. Although many aspects of the books parallel Duncan’s life, they are fiction. Through her narrator-surrogate, Duncan repeatedly protests that her gifts do not include true autobiography.

Nevertheless, in Duncan’s penultimate book before her death from cancer in 1976 she removed the authorial mask. The preface to Letter from Reachfar consists of an apologetic letter to her editor:

You suggested that I should record my part in the war against Nazism and Fascism as a photographic interpreter in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force…. I tried to write the book you suggested, but in trying I discovered that the years of the war were some of the most sterile of my life and that there was very little in those years that I wished to record.  

The attempt to do what you asked “took off” for me, however, into something completely different, something that I really wanted to say and have wanted to say for a long time to you and my other readers. As you know, quite a number of readers are sufficiently interested in my novels to write to me and the question that is most frequently asked is “Are your books autobiographical?” I thought it might be of interest if I sketched the background of my life and placed the novels against it, in an endeavor to show how fiction arises out of fact by some mysterious process that I cannot explain.

As a “photographic interpreter,” Duncan spent World War II in a stately home in Buckinghamshire as part of a secret intelligence unit poring over aerial photographs of Western Europe. Her job was to tell Allied bombers how to distinguish between an elementary school and a bullet factory. It took avoiding the horror of war for Duncan to finally tackle her memoir.

The last time I wrote about Jane Duncan, I made the connection between my PTSD-amplified trichotillomania and her body’s similar reaction to stressful situations:

Even after reading Jane Duncan’s books numerous times over the decades, I still marvel at our many personal connections. For example, last month I remembered how in times of exceptional stress, her protagonist inevitably develops an itchy skin rash. Then she proceeds to tear off her flesh in long strips. 

On my most recent re-reading of her final novel, I was struck by another thing Jane Duncan's narrator and I have in common: we both know exactly when and how our bodies are going to react, but that knowledge merely makes us angry at ourselves. Which makes the itchiness/hair-pulling worse, and then stokes the anger, in a vicious cycle. 

Jane Duncan avoided but never escaped the trauma of war.

Fifth clue:  I am Pops.

Actually I’m “Papa.” When our daughter Eleanor was born, my ex chose the title “Daddy.” I preferred to be “Papa,” in part to honor my maternal grandfather H. Boyd Phillips, who always went by “Pops.”

Pops was the archetypical representative of the Greatest Generation. He was a civil engineer, with pocket protectors, eternally crew-cut hair, and clunky glasses. He was precise and dryly witty. 

Pops spent World War II in the Pacific with the Army Corps of Engineers. My mother recently showed me a letter my grandmother wrote to a friend on May 8, 1945 – the day Germany surrendered to the Allies. I didn’t realize Gram worked as a typist for the Veterans Administration in Salt Lake City during the war. Each day she would leave my mom and my Aunt Carol at home with family members, and go do her part for the war effort. 

As I detailed last year in “Crazy Mormon Mommy Bloggers,” Gram’s long letter to her friend is filled with numerous lines that resonate with family members seven decades later. But the real reason my mother showed me Gram’s letter was what my grandmother wrote in gossiping about an acquaintance's discharged husband:

He recently returned home, classed as Psychoneurotic. His wife said that that at first just having to decide what he wanted to eat made him violently ill. Also in the VA files there seems to be lots of Anxiety Neurosis. In my unlearned way I had been classifying that as “worry wart” – we learn something every day.

As Gram concluded seventy-five years ago, “when I see in our files just how many fellows are given discharges for various neuroses, I’d like to broadcast to people how no stigma should be attached to it.” 

When Gram wrote her letter, Pops was still serving overseas in some classified location. No one knows what Pops actually did during the war, because he never talked about it. Never.

Pops visiting Vancouver in 1972. I'm on the far right

My daughters have been binge-watching a TV show that featured a plotline involving HIV. I related to the story. I thought I could talk to my kids about anything, in an age-appropriate and sensitive way. But when Rosalind asked me a question about AIDS, I was speechless.

So I’m grateful for whatever dam recently burst enough for me write about my experiences as a gay man in the AIDS era. I still have to approach things obliquely – when it came to the gritty stuff, my recent essays relied on long quotes from David France and Andrew Sullivan. But it’s a start. Unlike Pops or Jane Duncan, I already know enough about how closets work to give me confidence that eventually I’ll find the rest of my voice. 

When I searched my blog essays for previous references to HIV/AIDS, I realized I’d already begun sneaking up on the subject. The hints came in the safest of spaces. I mentioned HIV medications in the same essay where I made the connection between Jane Duncan’s body-focused repetitive symptoms and my own struggle with compulsive hair-pulling. And when the Vancouver Men’s Chorus presented a concert called “Gays of Our Lives,” I was able to reminisce about how reprising familiar songs of grief and rage gave me a glimpse back to the Gay 90s. 

Surrounding yourself with family, friends, chorus, and good books can offer hope to even the most scarred trauma victim. 

Other “AIDS is not a Picnic” essays:

“After the Fall” (2/6/20)

“Set Theory” (1/30/20)

“A Lifelong AIDS Walk and Picnic” (1/29/20)

“OK Boomer” (1/28/20)

Previously:

“Gays of Our Lives” (5/22/19)

“Opportunistic Infections” (5/12/19)

“I Shall Miss Loving Him” (1/19/18)

“I Come from Good People” (1/7/18)

Opportunistic Infections

Several folks requested an update about the painful boil on my chest that I wrote about last month. The doctor at the walk-in clinic who diagnosed my nasty bacterial infection warned me there was a 50/50 chance fluid would collect under the skin, requiring me to come back and have it lanced. Instead, a small crater opened up next to my left nipple, and the boil slowly drained itself. Now it's gone dormant again, and looks like a mostly-healed bullet wound. 

When I picked up the powerful antibiotic the doctor prescribed, I recognized its brand name: Bactrim. As Sir Alec Guiness would say, “That’s a name I haven’t heard for a long, long time.”

I became an advocate for people affected by HIV/AIDS during the early 1990s. We were barely a decade into the epidemic. Doctors had isolated the virus and developed tests for the presence of HIV, but we were still years away from lifesaving anti-retroviral combination therapy. The only available anti-HIV medication at the time, AZT, had toxic side effects, and merely slowed rather than stopped the progress of the virus.

HIV is insidious. It doesn’t attack organs directly. Instead, the virus hides in the body for years, silently targeting the immune system itself. As patients eventually lose their ability to ward off attacks, they become vulnerable to a wide variety of “opportunistic infections” that a healthy immune system would easily deflect. 

Public health officials first became aware something bad was happening when a handful of urban young gay men were diagnosed with Karposi’s Sarcoma – rare skin lesions that previously appeared only on elderly Mediterranean men. Doctors treating HIV patients encountered other exotic diseases, such as avian flu, pneumocystis pneumonia, and cytomegalovirus. During the 1990s, Bactrim was the go-to antibiotic for many of these opportunistic infections.

I wasn't surprised by my recent bacterial chest infection. I expected it, or at least something like it. Last month the Court of Appeals held oral argument in my pending lawsuit. As with other major crossroads over the years, I could feel the huge wave of stress building in the weeks before the big day. I was tired and run down, and I knew my body was preparing to act out. This has happened before. In fact, the chest boil was only the third grossest of my anxiety symptoms last month. (Don’t ask.)

Just as predictably, most of my bodily complaints settled down immediately after the big deadline passed, with or without medication. Still, I was glad to have extra material for my annual physical exam this week. I’ve been making a list of new quiz questions for my insightful Bellingham physician, Dr. Heuristic.

For example, when the doctor at the walk-in clinic was examining the boil on my chest, she suggested I have someone look at the ominously dark mole a few inches away. I explained that last year Dr. Heuristic said it was merely a “barnacle” from ordinary aging. She gave me a look I recognized from the faces of fellow lawyers: “If someone else wants to commit malpractice that’s his own business.” I’m sure my friend Dr. Ken can point me to the appropriate emoji. 

My all-time favorite author is an obscure woman from the Scottish Highlands who used the penname Jane Duncan. She had an extraordinary story-telling gift, evoking memorable characters while subtly tackling profound themes, with an authorial voice that connects directly to each reader.

As I’ve written before, even after reading Jane Duncan’s books numerous times over the decades, I still marvel at our many personal connections. For example, last month as I was washing blood out of my shirts from my leaking boil, I remembered how in times of exceptional stress, her protagonist inevitably develops an itchy skin rash. Then she proceeds to tear off her flesh in long strips. (I told you these things are gross.)

On my most recent re-reading of My Friends George and Tom, I was struck by another thing Jane Duncan's narrator and I have in common: we both know exactly when and how our bodies are going to react, but that knowledge merely makes us angry at ourselves. Which makes the itchiness/hairpulling worse, and then stokes the anger, in a vicious cycle. 

Years ago a therapist recommended I try mindfulness meditation. Even as a casual practitioner, mindfulness was a helpful tool for coping with the pressures of legal practice and parenthood. Then when PTSD and its aftermath upended my life, I committed to daily meditation. I also began to seriously research the relationship between mindfulness and brain function.

Numerous apps and gurus offer tools under the "mindfulness" label. Most of these approaches are based on ancient Buddhist practices, but with a thoroughly secular bent. Mindfulness cultivates a focused awareness on the present moment – closely examining our sensations, thoughts, and feelings. The key is not to judge or to seek change, but rather to dispassionately observe and accept things as they are. Along the way we learn to treat ourselves and others with a mindset of loving kindness. One paradox of mindfulness is that meditation will improve your life, but change is not supposed to occur right this minute. Nevertheless, mindfulness techniques can help calm some of our overreaction to specific events.

Humans’ powerful fight-or-flight instinct evolved over millions of years. What we experience as “stress” is a potentially healthy response to the various serious stressors we encounter. But stress leaves us vulnerable to opportunistic assaults. For people like Jane Duncan and me, looming life crises are the modern equivalent of a mastodon charging. You can’t blame your body for overreacting. Or your mind. Instead, you have to navigate through stressful situations with a practical mix of medicine, meditation, fuzzy things, and walks with the dogs. And lots of patience and humour.

Click here for more information about Trichotillomania 

and other Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviours

Indoor Plumbing

Writing has been gushing out lately. Not just the stuff that shows up in my blog posts. Or even in my various book manuscripts and legal filings. Nowadays, every text or Facebook status has the potential to become a glittering bon mot.

Last week I wrote on this blog about my experiences crossing the border into Canada. Later that day, I sent a separate post to the Vancouver Men’s Chorus listserv describing a subsequent encounter with Canada Customs. It began with this elegantly carved sentence:

Yesterday I drove up together with Kyle, our cute college student usher who volunteered last night so Tyler and Matthew would know what it feels like to look old.

Everyone in the chorus knew exactly who I was talking about. Kyle’s fellow ushers Tyler and Matthew are charming and handsome on-leave Second Tenors. They joined VMC at the same time as me, so we’ve been part of the same loving cohort for three years now. They’re both 30something, but they look ageless, dahling. I’m the old one. 

Nevertheless, I recognize the shiniest gems have sharp edges. I heard the “gasp” emojis. It’s time to dial things back a notch. As I’ve warned my daughter Eleanor about both gymnastics and humor, you shouldn’t limit your routine solely to high or low difficulty moves. And you definitely want to nail all the really dangerous combinations.

On the other hand, I was touched by the response of one chorus friend who writes for a living. He gave that particular sentence its own heart emoji and a “savage lmao,” whatever that is. A writer knows a gem when he sees it.

Before anyone else starts ’shipping me with my occasional carpool buddy Kyle, let me tell you how he and I met. It was last winter, at Pumpjack, a gay bar in Vancouver’s Davie Village. Our mutual friend Basil introduced us. Basil is a baritone who knows absolutely everyone. He’s the only uber-extrovert I know who attempts to compete with Yogi. (Yogi is a First Tenor, so it’s not really a fair competition.)

Basil met Kyle at Whistler Gay Ski Week. I’m an introvert, so I don’t go to Gay Ski Week. Or Gay Anything Week, other than chorus festivals. Kyle is an introvert who can’t sing, but he works out and knows how to ski. 

Later that month, Basil invited Kyle to visit Vancouver. At Pumpjack after rehearsal, Basil introduced him to the Men of Vancouver Men’s Chorus. In our brief conversation at the bar, I discovered Kyle is from the Seattle area, but he goes to college in Bellingham. It turns out Kyle lives on the same street as me. On the next block.

Obviously, however, Kyle and I never run into each other in Bellingham. I’m a Townie.

Besides, as my parents are quick to point out, Kyle is too young for me. 

Here’s an actual social media conversation this week with another gay Millennial. As usual, witty banter is wasted on the youth:

Horny Stressed College Student:   Sup

Roger:        Shouldn’t you be studying for finals?

HSCS:         Yeah, but I don’t wanna.

Roger:        It’s not just you. The Internets are hopping.

HSCS:         Lol true. 

Roger:        Horny stressed college students.

HSCS:         That’s me

Roger:        I’ve given them up for Lent. And Advent. Year-round, actually.

HSCS:         Oh really now

Roger:        It turns out they’re too stressed for good sex. Er, I’ve heard.

HSCS:         I don’t think that’s true lol

Roger:        How do you know?

HSCS:         Based on me lol

Roger:        Exactly. Other than yourself, and masturbation shouldn’t count, how many horny stressed college students have you had sex with during finals week?

HSCS:         Zero lol

Roger:       Let’s just say I have access to more data. But nothing recent. I learned my lesson long ago.

Mental health has numerous unexpected benefits. 

For example, it can make you more resilient in the face of disaster. A couple of weeks ago, Yogi posted some bad news to Facebook:  XY, the Vancouver gay club that hosts a weekly sing-along piano bar on Wednesday nights after chorus rehearsal, is losing its lease at the end of the month. Don’t get me wrong, this is terrible news. But I’m handling it surprisingly well.

On Wednesday after the Vancouver Men’s Chorus concert, a raucous crowd walked down the street to sing showtunes on our penultimate evening together at XY. It was a bittersweet occasion. Yes, we’ll miss our little community. But it was good to see old friends. And everyone was in particularly fine voice (except the piano, which was inconveniently missing the C two octaves below middle C). 

Despite this handicap, the two pianists were on fire, each competitively working the crowd like a Wurlitzer. Frankly the balance was a little heavy on male voices, which made for a rich Russian chorus sound. At times it seemed like our favorite soprano Trish was belting out duets with forty attractive but unavailable men.

One of my favourite musical numbers has always been “Suddenly, Seymour,” from Little Shop of Horrors. I used to identify with nebbishy Seymour, played by my Canadian doppelganger Rick Moranis. Then three years ago my insightful physician Dr. Heuristic diagnosed me as suffering from serious codependency. 

I now recognized the many ways codependency infected my personal and professional relationships over the years. As Audrey sings to Seymour, 

Nobody ever treated me kindly
Daddy left early, Mama was poor
I'd meet a man and I'd follow him blindly
He'd snap his fingers, and me I'd say, "Sure." [Ed. Note: The word is pronounced “Shuah.”]

Among other things, mental health means learning to ignore men of all ages when they snap their fingers.

Last summer, when the Muse took a few weeks off, I observed that my favorite author Jane Duncan used a planting-and-harvesting metaphor for the writing process. 

Agricultural models don't work for me. Maybe it’s the fact that after four billion years of evolution, I’m the first Leishman not born on a farm. Instead, I’ve settled on hydraulic flow as my primary metaphor for how writing works.

Lately my mental health has improved so much that for the first time in my life I’m approaching something like “writing on tap.” (I’m knocking on wood as I type those words.)

The flow of writing still is not completely under control, of course.

For example, I know some of my essays are running a little long, including this one. I’ll try to post a few more cute kid pictures and brief anecdotes on Facebook, for all of you with attention-deficit disorder.

Nevertheless, I like the rhythm and structure of posting two blog essays each week. It’s a pace that leaves time and creativity for the rest of life, particularly when the kids are in my hair, or if Vancouver Men’s Chorus is performing. I may be an unemployed disabled single dad, but I feel like a New York Times op-ed writer.  

However, this week I opened the sluice and quietly flooded the market with some extra blog posts. It turns out I can’t leave essays in the final pre-publish vat for too long. I can’t resist obsessively tinkering. And eventually they begin to ferment.

The other reason I like hydraulic metaphors for the writing process is they resonate with the psychological concept of flow.

In the 1970s, psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi became fascinated as he observed artists who got lost in their work. He coined the term “flow,” which refers to a mental state of “complete immersion in an activity.” Csíkszentmihályi and his colleagues have identified ten indications you are in a flow state. One in particular leapt out at me:  

Timelessness; a distorted sense of time; feeling so focused on the present that you lose track of time passing.

According to Nobel-winning psychologist Daniel Kahnemen, the intensely productive flow state is possible because “Flow neatly separates two forms of attention: concentration on the task and the deliberate control of attention.” Our brain doesn't need to waste any of its precious fuel on keeping itself on task:

Riding a motorcycle at 150 miles an hour and playing a competitive game of chess are certainly very effortful. In a state of flow, however, maintaining focused attention on these very absorbing activities requires no exertion of self-control, thereby freeing resources to be directed to the task at hand.

As I wrote this fall, reading takes virtually all your brain capacity. But when you’re lost in a good book, you quickly achieve a pleasurable flow state. You lose track of time. And of everything else – like everyone in my extended family, while reading I’ve been known to conduct entire conversations that I have no recollection of afterwards.

I’ve reached a similar point with my writing. It’s not just the familiar “all-nighter” coping mechanism that kicks in whenever I absolutely must finish a particular project before the final deadline. Instead, now flow is happening at every stage of my writing, from brainstorming to copy editing. I can even bounce from project to project without losing momentum.

It’s like the arrival of indoor plumbing.

The problem with “flow” is that it messes with your sense of time.

Yes, I’ve been amazingly productive. For example, I wrote the entire 1,500 word essay “Backing Up” from scratch in the four hours between my final Geek Squad house call to my parents and my kids’ arrival home from school.  

On the other hand, I keep smugly thinking I’ve had an efficient little early morning writing session, only to realize that it’s already 3 pm and I still haven’t eaten or showered yet. 

The other day I tried an experiment. After emerging from flow, I estimated I’d written 2,500 words. According to Microsoft Word, the actual count was 4,735. I also guessed it had been three hours, but the clock said it was more like seven. Is that good or bad?  

I can’t tell. Math is hard. Much harder than writing these days.

Earlier this evening I wrote the following in my notebook:

Too much flow?  Keep burning my Trader Joe’s flatbread, feel like the timer goes off early.

Somewhere between 5 and 25 minutes later, the kitchen timer went off on my Brie en Croûte. I remember being vaguely aware of the buzzer. However, I so was busy tweaking the paragraph about Little Shop of Horrors, I can’t tell you exactly how long ago it was. 

Now I’m staring at the box and peeking in the oven as I try to figure out what the words “golden brown” really mean. Fortunately, I’m a writer. I’ve got this.