The Boys Who Lived

Vancouver Men’s Chorus is busy rehearsing for our June concerts. (Tickets are on sale at the chorus website.) This year’s theme is Totally Awesome ’80s. We will be singing songs by Cyndy Lauper, George Michael, Eurythmics, Madonna, Tina Turner, Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, Whitney Houston, and more. There will be synthesizers, dancing boys, and big hair. 

I spent the 1980s as a clueless high school student in small town Utah; as an earnest Mormon missionary in Korea; as an overachieving student at Brigham Young University; and as a liberated law student at Yale. I’m like an episode of Stranger Things – 80s music is the soundtrack of my youth. 

More than music and mullets, my relationship with the 80s is defined by one essential fact: I came out of the closet in the middle of the AIDS epidemic. 

I recently read a collection of essays with the title Between Certain Death and a Possible Future:  Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis. These writers speak for my generation:

Every queer person lives with the trauma of AIDS, and this plays out intergenerationally. Usually we hear about two generations - the first, coming of age in the era of gay liberation, and then watching entire circles of friends die of a mysterious illness as the government did nothing to intervene. And now we hear about younger people growing up with effective treatment and prevention available, unable to comprehend the magnitude of the loss. But there is another generation between these two, one that came of age in the midst of the epidemic with the belief that desire intrinsically led to death, and internalized this trauma as part of becoming queer.

I arrived too late for the fun. Instead, I threw myself into activism. I joined the ACLU of Illinois as Director of the LGBT Rights/AIDS Project at the height of the AIDS epidemic. The Project’s founder, John Hammell, had recently died. Many other pioneering Baby Boomer gay activists were dead, dying, and/or burnt out. Stalwart lesbians and unprepared young gay men filled their empty shoes. 

Some people see personality types through the prism of birth order. As the first of four brothers, I exhibit many “eldest child” behaviors. But when it comes to my gay tribe, I’m part of very specific cohort:  the traumatized gay boys of Generation X, stumbling through life as perpetual younger brothers to the men of the Stonewall Generation. 

This photo of San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus was taken in 1993, twelve years into the AIDS epidemic. The seven men in white are the original members of the chorus. The 115 men in black represent those who had already died. 

Trauma warps memory. As I learn to live with complex PTSD, I’ve discovered a handful of revealin gaps and glitches in my recollection of past events.   

For example, the quietest moment in our 80s concert occurs during “Eulogy.” Seattle Men’s Chorus commissioned this song in 1985. I have sung and heard “Eulogy” countless times since I joined my first gay chorus three decades ago, including at various memorial services. I’ve repeatedly listened to SMC perform “Eulogy” on their classic Pink Album. 

Nevertheless, I have no memory of the song. All I can tell you is that it repeates the word “Onward.” Every time VMC rehearses “Eulogy,” I feel like I’m sight-reading a shocking new testament of grief. By the end of the song I’m silently weeping.

Many of the boys died.

The theme of VMC’s June 2018 concert was Gays of Our Lives. As we read through “I Shall Miss Loving You” at our first rehearsal, I realized the last time I’d sung the song was eighteen years before, at my friend Jim Palmer’s memorial. We sang together in Windy City Gay Chorus during the 90s. The miraculous new HIV/AIDS medications came along too late to stop the disease’s progress through Jim’s body. Still, he wanted to see the new millennium. He barely made it. 

I was thirty-five years old. Jim was thirty. I weep every time I try to sing these words:

I shall miss loving you.

I shall miss the comfort of your embrace….

I shall miss the joy of your comings,

And pain of your goings, and, 

After a time,

I shall miss loving you.

Boys like Jim died from AIDS, suicide, drugs, and other causes. Somehow, some of us survived to tell the stories. 

In September 1914, soon after Britain suffered the first casualties of the Great War, Lawrence Binyon published “For the Fallen.” The poem’s fourth stanza has become known as the “Ode to Remembrance”:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: 

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

Some of the men lived.

In 1981, a pioneering national tour by San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus inspired gay choruses to form in cities including Chicago, New York, Seattle, and Vancouver. Forty-four years later, our founder Willi Zwozdesky still conducts Vancouver Men’s Chorus. Willi is the senior conductor in the LGBT choral movement.

VMC has never sounded better. We continue to attract talented new singers. At our recent rustic retreat, Millennials and Gen Y gay boys joined in the skits, rehearsals, and comradery. We listened to our elders around the campfire, and serenaded our conductor with his favourite song.  Along with Willi, a handful of other survivors have held the chorus and the community together through five extraordinary decades.

I am growing old. But the men of the Stonewall generation will always be older than me.

SEEKING

We live next door to Washington’s third largest university. Unsurprisingly, on our walks Bear and I frequently encounter nerds.

 

The other day we ran into a young man on campus in obvious need of a dog fix. As he gave Bear a glorious tummy rub, the student exclaimed “He has heterochromia!” That’s an impressive nerd word – Bear was indeed born with two different colored eyes. My kids picked Bear out of the litter because of his soulful blue eye and his earnest brown eye.

 

After the Western student finally tore himself away from his canine cuddle, he asked whether Bear is an Aussiedoodle. Another remarkable nerd display. When I ask how he guessed the correct breed, he said it was because he observed Bear exploring the world. 

Heterochromia is less noticeable with Tina Turner bangs

In her book Animals Make Us Human, autistic animal husbandry expert Temple Grandin reminds us humans are animals too, with brains that evolved over millions of years. Grandin uses the model of brain function described by neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp four decades ago in his research on the neural bases of emotion. Panksepp identified seven primal emotions. Grandin follows Panksepp’s custom of labeling each in allcaps:  CARE, FEAR, LUST, PANIC, PLAY, RAGE, and SEEKING.

 

CARE is the emotion underlying parental love. LUST fuels sex and sexual desire. PANIC (or GRIEF) signals distress to an animal’s “social attachment system,” and “probably evolved from physical pain.” The separate emotion of RAGE evolved from animals’ experience of being captured and held immobile by a predator. According to Grandin, “frustration is a mild form of RAGE that is sparked by mental restraint when you can’t do something you’re trying to do.” 

In contrast with PANIC and RAGE, the core emotion PLAY “produces feelings of joy.” As I wrote in “PLAY On!,” the same neural pathways that inspire Bear and Buster to boisterously frolic at the off-leash park became the foundation for quintessentially human urges like art and music. All seven of Panksepp’s categories represent very human emotions whose effects can also be observed in other animals. 

In Panksepp’s model of animal brain evolution, SEEKING is the core emotion associated with curiosity and novelty. It’s the aspect of Bear’s Australian shepherd heritage that drives him to explore the world.

 

An animal’s SEEKING impulse may be in tension with FEAR, another primal emotion that is necessary for survival in a dangerous and mysterious world. According to Grandin, “at least a portion of the healthy amygdala acts as if it has an anxiety disorder – searching for threat in response to uncertainty…. The single most important factor determining whether a new thing is more interesting than scary is whether the animal has control over whether to approach the subject.”

Grandin suggests FEAR and SEEKING “may operate like different-sized weights put on the opposite ends of a balance scale.” I agree that personality statistics for human or animal populations would probably show an inverse correlation between curiosity and dread. Nevertheless, FEAR and SEEKING represent separate emotional drives. For example, Buster is much too dim-witted for sophisticated FEAR or SEEKING behavior. (Instead, Buster is a bundle of the tics and awkwardness associated with PANIC disorders.) Buster invariably leaps out of the car into traffic, yet seldom strays far from his human monitor.

In contrast, Bear is smart enough to balance both caution and curiosity.

Last year I read several excellent books about how our brains process probabilities, choices, disappointment, and uncertainty. My upcoming blog essay “How Lucky Can You Get?” dives into these topics, including some of the insights from my favourite book of 2021, What are the Chances? Why We Believe in Luck, by neuroscientist and statistician Barbara Blatchley. According to Blatchley,

 

Luck is the way you face the randomness in the world. If we are open to it, accepting, not anxious or afraid, willing to learn from mistakes and to change a losing game, we can benefit from randomness. We can gain a modicum of control over this aspect of life, even if we can't control the universe on a large scale. Randomness will happen no matter what we do—chaos theory rules in our universe. Knowing how to roll with the punches; now that's lucky.

 

Blatchley analyzes four kinds of luck originally identified by Zen Buddhist neurologist James Austin in his 1978 book Chase, Chance, and Creativity: The Lucky Art of Novelty. Dr. Austin’s first type of luck occurs by pure chance. Type I or blind luck is “random and accidental; it occurs through no effort of our own and against all odds.”  

 

In contrast with Type I luck, Dr. Austin’s second type of chance, “luck in motion,” is exemplified by Bear’s SEEKING attitude. According to Dr. Austin, Type II luck “favors those who have a persistent curiosity about many things coupled with an energetic willingness to experiment and explore.”

Last month Sehome High School put on its annual “24-Hour Play Festival.” On Friday night at 7 pm, four teams of writers arrived at the school to create new one-act plays overnight. The playwrights were assigned the same theme – “Keeping a secret” – and the same location – “The Wilds.” At midnight the producers added a random twist:  “All plays must include the word serendipity and a trophy.”

 

The tech crew, directors, and actors arrived Saturday morning and spent all day putting the four plays together before performing them Saturday evening. Eleanor was both a writer and an actor, which meant she stayed up for 46 hours straight. Their play “Crash Landing” presented a Lost-style jungle island mystery.

 

“Serendip” is the ancient Sanskrit name of the island of Sri Lanka. The English word “serendipity” first appeared in a 1754 letter by novelist Horace Walpole, and referred to a Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip. According to Walpole, the three princes were “always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.” They deserved trophies for their discoveries. 

That’s the difference between serendipity and mere fortuity: it is precisely because the Princes of Serendip were on a quest for something that they found something else.

“Bear, you are just like my father. And me.”

 

My Apple Watch transcribes my dialogues with Bear as we walk. That recent quotation came as Bear sniffed his way along the trail from the off-leash park to the beach. Bear enjoys playing catch and frolicking at the park. But soon it’s time to move on.

 

My father turned 82 last month. He regularly golfs, bowls on multiple teams, and plays bridge several times a week. Dad is endlessly curious, and always busy with something. I’ve never understood the attraction of golf, the alleged sport that is often described as “a good walk spoiled.” I don’t need a pretext to be outdoors. I can just go for an unspoiled walk. But like my father and Bear, I have to keep going.

In the Mormon church, the children’s program is called “Primary.” When I was growing up, “Blazers” was the class for the oldest boys, just before turning twelve and graduating to Boy Scouts. You earned a glass medallion for your personal Blazer banner by memorizing and reciting each of the thirteen Articles of Faith, which are like a catechism of Mormons’ most basic beliefs. Obviously I had to earn every one. The most coveted medallion was for memorizing the Thirteenth Article of Faith, which was much longer than the other twelve. 

 

In 1976, I was the only boy in our class who could make it by memory all the way to the end of the Thirteen Article of Faith. I still can. It happens to be what I believe:

 

We believe in being honest, true,
chaste, benevolent, virtuous,
and in doing good to all men;
indeed, we may say that we follow
the admonition of Paul—
We believe all things,
we hope all things,
we have endured many things,
and hope to be able to endure all things.
If there is anything virtuous,
lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy,
we seek after these things.

 

Serendipity is the process of looking for something and finding something else. Nevertheless, what you’re seeking matters.

Calligraphy by 1980s Roger for the family room at his parents' house

Deadlines

I missed a writing deadline last week.

 

Fortunately, my mental health is vastly improved these days. I no longer beat myself up about reasonable delays. And I don’t let anyone else shame me.

Fairhaven Village is Bellingham’s quaint Olde Tyme neighborhood. The dogs enjoy walking to the waterfront through Fairhaven. Along the way we encounter historic markers that reveal tidbits from the community’s frontier past. According to Atlas Obscura, a local historian obtained community grants to fund the project four decades ago. 

 

Some of these markers reflect Fairhaven’s Wild West beginnings:  “Location of Town Pillory.” “Spanish Chalice dated 1640 found here.” “Counterfeiters’ Hide Out, 1905 - $5 and $10 pieces passed in saloons on weekends.” “Office of F.A. Higg, Alaskan Photographer, 1890.” “Huge freight wagon disappeared beneath quicksand, 1889.” “Benton’s Bath Parlor & Tonsorial Palace, 1903.” And my favorite: “Here is where Mathew was cut in two by a streetcar, 1891.”

I used to be an awesome procrastinator. College was one long straight-A all-nighter. Eventually I honed avoidance to the point that I could unconsciously gauge the exact amount of time it would take to finish anything just before the deadline. 

 

Becoming a lawyer was a disaster for my mental health in multiple ways. One of the undiagnosed consequences of traumatic experiences in my youth was a case of increasingly operatic writer’s block. Judges, clients, and law partners got used to reading my first-and-final complete drafts.

 

Eventually I became my law firm’s specialist in Washington appeals. Appellate practice is the most civilized home for a litigator – no messy discovery, jury trials, or frantic emergency hearings. While a case is on appeal, nothing happens for years at a time, other than filing a couple of oxymoronically lengthy briefs. And you can always get another extension of the filing deadline, usually in thirty-day increments. 

I believe writers should take as much time as they need to get it right, particularly judges finishing their opinions. I never complain about anyone else’s procrastination.

 

Practicing before appellate courts teaches you that anything other than the “real” deadline is fake. For years, my colleagues completely failed in their efforts to impose artificial milestones on my writing process. In my defense, procrastination is written into Washington’s Rules on Appeal. According to RAP 1.2(a), “Cases and issues will not be determined on the basis of compliance or noncompliance with these rules except in compelling circumstances where justice demands, subject to the restrictions in rule 18.8(b).” 

RAP 18.8(b) imposes a strict limit on extending certain kinds of deadlines, and requires parties to demonstrate such “extraordinary circumstances” that the requested extension is necessary to “prevent a gross miscarriage of justice.” Fortunately this high standard only applies to two situations:  a notice of appeal or a motion for reconsideration of the court’s final decision. After three decades of legal practice, I finally needed to file my first such request just last month. (I asked for the usual thirty days; the Washington Supreme Court gave me ten.)

Despite numerous remaining challenges, these days I enjoy the best mental health of my life. My unconscious still unerring identifies “real” deadlines, but now I’m able to pace the writing process. I can finish a complete draft and let it percolate. Sometimes I even file things early. My brain finally recognizes that many “fake” deadlines actually provide useful accountability and structure. 

As our Fairhaven walks take us closer to Bellingham’s industrial waterfront, the dogs and I encounter a series of Asian-themed markers:  “Site of Chinese Bunkhouse, 1900 – Chinatown population 600.” “Site of Japanese Bunkhouse No. 5, circa 1903.” And “Chinese foreman traded daughter for a boy, 1908.”

This month a deranged Christian killed eight people in Atlanta, including six Asian-American woman. He shot them with a handgun he purchased that same morning. As Slate reported last week, Georgia law requires women seeking abortions to wait 24 hours to ponder their decision. In contrast, “lawmakers in Georgia trust that people who buy deadly weapons are responsible enough to decide to buy a gun and receive that gun on the very same day.”

 

My writing coach last year was an Asian-American woman who grew up in the Seattle suburbs. In the days since the Atlanta shootings, Rebecca filled her Facebook page with anguished memes and a painful examination of what Asian and female identity in America suddenly meant to her.

 

Rebecca’s visceral reaction took me back twenty-two years, to October 1998. I was in Pittsburgh for “Creating Change,” the annual conference of LGBT grassroots activists. I was attending Creating Change that year as Co-Chair of the Equality Federation, the national coalition of statewide LGBT advocacy organizations. During one of our meetings we heard the news about Matthew Shepherd – the gay University of Wyoming student who had been found beaten, tortured, and left to die in a field outside Laramie. 

 

As Matthew Shepard clung to life in a Colorado hospital, the National Lesbian & Gay Task Force organized a candlelight vigil in Pittsburgh. The folks from the Federation’s Wyoming affiliate identified a lesbian activist at the conference who knew Matthew and could speak about being queer in Cowboy Country. Every LGBT advocate at Creating Change had already spent a lifetime combatting the tyranny of the closet – always feeling somehow different, and never escaping the effects of heteronormative privilege. But we didn’t really “know” about homophobia before Matthew Shepard. Events like Laramie, Wyoming in 1998 and Atlanta, Georgia in 2021 expose the unspeakable amount of hate in the world.

The current meaning of the word “deadline” – “a date or time before which something must be done” – was unknown before the early 20th century. In the 1800s, the word meant something even more unpleasant: “a line drawn within or around a prison that a prisoner passes at the risk of being shot.” The word came into common usage during the Civil War, when newspapers began reporting on conditions at the notorious Confederate prison in Andersonville, Georgia.

 

In August 1864, a group of Union officers sent a petition to President Lincoln describing the plight of the prisoners of war held at Andersonville:

 

They are fast losing hope and becoming utterly reckless of life. Numbers, crazed by their sufferings, wander about in a state of idiocy. Others deliberately cross the ‘Dead Line’ and are remorselessly shot down.

There’s a reason all the historic markers referring to Asian residents are located several blocks away from Fairhaven’s traditional business district. As you follow the path from town to the shipyards and train depot, you’ll encounter a more recent plaque with two messages:

 

CHINESE DEADLINE

NO CHINESE ALLOWED BEYOND THIS POINT

1898-1903

 

Followed by:

 

MAYOR APOLOGIZES TO

CHINESE COMMUNITY

2011

 

Eventually, history reveals a society’s values.

Bonus Pictures of Fairhaven Village historic markers:

Original blood stain?

Oliver Picks Asparagus

Pandemic living reveals the diversity of personality types. For example, when it comes to taking long walks around Bellingham, Buster is the weakest link. However, most voters would also pick Buster as the happiest camper in the family. 

In contrast, although Bear is the ideal walking companion, my new Best Friend is generally recognized as the biggest whiner in the house. (I am third.) Fortunately I’m still #1 on the “Showtunes” list, followed by my daughter Eleanor. Across town, Grandma and my nephew are battling it out for #3. 

Ordinarily Eleanor and my father are the only ones in the running for the family’s TV-watching championship. However, coronavirus’ abrupt cancelation of all live sporting events devastated Grandpa’s statistics. Similarly, my other daughter is a distant second to my son in the video game standings. 

When my kids say “Papa, you’re just like Grandma,” they’re usually referring to reading or to house cleaning. I take either as a compliment, even though my children intend both as insults.

On Sunday we had dinner with my parents and watched the Stephen Sondheim 90th birthday live-stream together. While waiting for the roast to cook and for YouTube to fix the technical glitches, my three adopted children and I played “Sorry” on the family room floor. 

It took me right back to my childhood with three younger brothers. Then or now, every Leishman board game involves four poor losers with interchangeable tantrums. Unlike most personality traits, bad sportsmanship apparently is a matter of nurture, not nature.

I told my mother if coronavirus had arrived forty years earlier, she would have had a relatively easy time holding her quarantined household together. Dorothy Parker once described Katherine Hepburn’s acting in a long-forgotten Broadway play as “running the gamut of emotions from A to B.” That basically describes the Leishman brothers.

In contrast with my own monochromatic youth, my children are growing up in a home that is thoroughly diverse, and utterly lacking in genetic connections. Even our two Aussiedoodles seem unrelated – Bear is all Australian shepherd, while Bear is a big fluffy ball of poodle. Perhaps most significantly, this whole hormonal adolescent girl phenomenon is a completely new experience for everyone in the house. 

Parenthood necessarily teaches me how to deal with multiple personality types. Every message or activity must be tailored to a variety of audiences. For example, none of the kids has ever been terribly fussy eater. But collectively they’re a menu-planning nightmare.

Like other folks who are trapped at home by pandemic, we’ve been cooking more lately. Not the elegant cuisine on display in the Facebook photos posted by my fabulously kid-free gay friends. At our house we’re focused on comfort foods:  spaghetti, mashed potatoes, fruit salads, stir fry, soft tacos, chocolate chip cookies…. 

Nevertheless, occasionally I try to push the envelope. This month I served my children both steamed and sautéed asparagus. 

Any stable social structure allows for a few veto situations. Even though my son insists it would be his best hope for a scholarship to the University of Washington, I’ve already used one of my precious parental vetos to rule out what Oliver refers to as “tackle football.” Someday his brain will thank me.

Like parents, children also need the opportunity to select a few veto-worthy items, such as nonnegotiable food loathings. My brothers and I each chose brussels sprouts. Eventually. When my mother finally acquired a new china cabinet a few years ago, she discovered my middle brother’s ancient stash of petrified brussels sprouts hidden behind the old china cabinet. (Perhaps they were my father’s.) 

My kids have grown up without the horrors of brussels sprouts. Instead, Eleanor despises avocado, including guacamole. So she doesn’t have to eat any. It’s her loss, but not a huge personal or familial inconvenience.

Rosalind hates tomatoes, even though they’re one of the glories of nature. For years I’ve tried to convince her to pick a less essential fruit/vegetable, to no avail. Fortunately her tomato aversion does not extend to pasta sauces.

So far, Oliver had been hoarding his food veto – mostly by feeding undesirable items to the dogs when Papa wasn’t looking. However, while trapped alone at the table last week, Oliver picked asparagus.

Before Oliver was required to make his fateful decision, we had a family discussion about the social implications of our food vetoes. 

Rosalind asked what I do when I’m invited to dinner at someone else’s house where they serve brussels sprouts. I told her I figure out a way to be polite. Besides, like Oliver I’m pretty confident in my ability to avoid an unpleasant meal without getting caught. 

Eleanor pushed the issue – what I would do if I’m dating a nice guy who likes to cook, and he surprises me with brussels sprouts? As usual, the other two kids chortled at the implausible prospect of Papa being invited on a date, which allowed me to duck Eleanor’s veto over-riding question.

Until now. It’s purely hypothetical, but the answer probably involves butter, bacon, and hot sex.

Dr. Khush Mark on Brussel sprouts

Click here for more entries from Roger’s Plague Journal

Peak Mount Baker

Each night of this new plague, as I lay me down to sleep, here’s what I hope to ask while kneeling with the dogs beside my bed:

“How did we all survive both the continuing school closure and the border closure today?”   

Today was Bellingham’s first gorgeous sunny Friday of spring. Depending on your degree of introversion, you could leave home without a jacket or shirt. But you’re welcome to wear ether, or both. As always, in Bellingham certain wardrobe mainstays like fleece, shorts, flannel, nudity, and/or Birkenstocks are somehow de rigeur yet optional. And in each instance an absolutely individual choice. 

Here at Chez Leishman, exactly one other member of the family has been outdoors today, counting Bear and Buster. The other two children are vampires.

It’s been four weeks since Papa last crossed the border for Vancouver Men’s Chorus, or for anything else. That’s the longest hiatus at the Peace Arch since they began keeping records. 

Papa can tell. His parents can tell. His writing can tell. The dogs can tell. Even the children can tell. They’re the ones who pointed out the previous No Canada record was barely twelve days. The kids are getting worried about having to explain something to Child Protective Services.

Here’s my best “lemonade” plague insight so far. It came to me this afternoon, during the fourth of my walks with our happy but exhausted dogs.

We quant types secretly love pandemics. There’s always more interesting data to pore over. For example, last week Bellingham was listed as the fourth most dangerous city in the world, based on the number of coronavirus deaths per 100,000 population. We had one of the country’s first tragic nursing home moments. 

Fortunately, like the rest of Washington we promptly followed Governor Inslee. In fact, here in Bellingham we may have achieved the most effective social distancing in America. 

During our walk, Bear, Buster and I were discussing another one of those Rabbi-Kushner-bad-things-to-good-people moral dilemmas. Here’s what I asked the dogs:

“On this lovely sunny Good-ish Friday, where can Bellingham find the silver lining in what is a merely metaphorically dark cloud today?”

If I can’t personally take all the credit for yet another poorly targeted biblical plague, I’d prefer to blame some interesting statistical anomaly. A hypothesis that’s capable of explaining why a classically just God would smite poor charming Bellingham of all places with an extra dose of coronavirus. 

And then the answer came to me. All three answers: 

First, Bellingham is not only home to the nation’s highest proportion of introverts, but the combined introvert-extrovert population of Bellingham also contains the highest percentage of hippie health nuts anywhere outside Berkley, California. That means a freakishly huge number of human beings of all ages are outside exercising, right now.      

Second, Bellingham has a marvelous public park system, with an amazing network of trails. Miles of these trails are sufficiently long and wide to maintain perfect social distancing for everyone at all times, regardless of your unique medical or introversion needs. If you happen to be stuck in an extra infectious community, you want to be where the highest percentage of the population can get exactly as much exercise as they need. This keeps everyone from climbing the walls beyond their capacity.

Third, the little extra oomph that makes optimal community outdoor time possible here is that Bellinghamsters have a unique ability to maintain exactly the perfect CDC-mandated social distance at all times, even on a forest trail crowded with runners, hikers, bikers, skateboarders, stoners, and strollers. 

It takes an inner Pacific Northwest gyroscrope. We all have it. As Pulitzer-prize winning cartoonist David Horsey recently observed, “Suddenly, the notorious ‘Seattle Freeze’ seems quite prudent….”

Click here for more entries from Roger’s Plague Journal

Falling Can Be A Drag

Drag queens are fierce. You may not realize this, but Canadian drag queens are particularly fierce. Delightfully polite, yes, but fierce. 

So you’d think I would remember how a bunch of fierce Canadian drag queens put me in the hospital last week.

But I’m getting ahead of the story.

I’ve never done drag myself. To the contrary, I haven’t worn a dress since I was in the Grade 4 class play. If I were to put on a pair of heels I'd immediately fall off and break both ankles.

I confess I didn’t used to be much of a drag connoisseur, either. The only times I’ve ever seen episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race were when I was visiting gay bars in Seattle and Dallas, and Drag Race happened to be on all the screens. Seeing live performances by Dame Edna and Jinx Monsoon terrified me. Not because they’re drag queens – but because they’re all flaming extroverts.

Other introverts will back me up on this. It’s not just drag queens, it’s extroverts in general. Of course I love them to death. I could never inch out of my personal rut without some extrovert’s kind encouragement/nagging. But spending a whole afternoon alone with Yogi, Basil, or Rory would put me in a coma. Even my beloved Drama Queen daughter knows if she doesn't pay attention to my imaginary volume control clicker, I’m going to run away from our conversation and lock myself in my room.

The Drag Queens of Vancouver Men’s Chorus have changed my life. In so many ways.

For the last ten years, VMC’s biggest annual fundraiser event has been a musical revue entitled “Singing Can Be A Drag.” Each spring the queens and their vast retinue put on two shows a night at intimate theatres in Vancouver and New Westminster, wowing sold-out audiences of donors and other liquored fans. The key rule: No Lip Synching! Instead, the most talented individual soloists from VMC put on stunning performances of their favourite songs, live and in full voice, backed up by a band and scantily-clad dancing boys, all in fabulous outfits and stiletto heels. 

During my first couple of years with VMC, I was still too shell-shocked by PTSD to face such an over-stimulating environment. Then a couple of years ago I was brave enough to buy a ticket to the Vancouver performance. It was a revelation. 

Not just my introduction to the bevy of fabulous and talented drag performers. Ever since my PTSD diagnosis, I’d been completely overwhelmed by crowds in noisy low-ceilinged rooms. For example, after chorus rehearsals on Wednesday nights, I could barely dart into the pub to say hi to one or two friends before fleeing to safety outside. 

Sure enough, as I sat in my seat at the Granville Island Revue Stage, the raucous pre-show crowd blew all my fuses. But that was the night I made an important discovery – with the help of a couple of drinks and a drag on someone’s joint, plus some mindful meditation techniques, I was able to induce a deep trance. The throbbing music and the terrifying crowd of gay guys became part of my blissful cosmic awareness. 

Since then I’ve regularly benefited from this self-soothing technique. When appropriate – unfortunately I can’t rely on cosmic trances in numerous other overstimulating environments, such as professional conferences, regular chorus rehearsals, or VMC concerts. That much bliss would interfere with important tasks like sight-reading new music and pretending to be Jewish.

Last year I got up the nerve to volunteer at the Vancouver performances of Singing Can Be A Drag. I hoped to find a suitably introverted task like folding programs or tidying backstage. Instead, I was assigned to sell raffle tickets.

As my family will attest, this was about as preposterous an assignment as filling in for one of the drag queens. In my entire life, as a child, student, adult, parent, and member of Seattle Men’s Chorus, I’d never sold a raffle ticket to anyone other than my mother. Everyone knows I would hide my supply of compulsory candybars/magazines/raffle tickets, and just write a check at the end of any fund drive.

Fortunately, on my maiden drag raffle voyage VMC management paired me with one of the chorus' extroverted Brazilians, who dragged me into the fun. Cold sober, in the cacophonous and harshly lit lobby. If a patron bought enough raffle tickets, Marciello would guarantee victory by performing a lavish voodoo dance/blessing. Meanwhile, I accosted friends and strangers with endless witty patter. Did you know that in a Portuguese accent, “winner” sounds just like “wiener”? Some jokes never get old. Together Marciello and I sold hundreds of dollars worth of raffle tickets.

Until this week, I’d also managed to avoid hospitals for fifty-five years. In particular, as long as I retain any voluntary muscle function, I believed I would never be sick enough to take myself to an emergency room. 

But I’m also a good parent. I wouldn’t wait for one of my children to be unconscious before seeking medical attention. Happily, our insurance now includes a "walk-in" clinic that’s open seven days a week. It's brought a sane equilibrium to healthcare in our family. The Bellingham clinic is inconvenient enough to deter casual visits, even by notorious hypochondriacs like my daughter – no one wants to sit for a couple of hours in a waiting room surrounded by sniffling children. It’s ideal for those of us whose medical problems don’t involve gunshots or heart attacks, but still can’t wait till we can get an appointment with our regular physician. 

Obviously my hypochondriac daughter is one of the clinic’s frequent flyers. But last year we also visited the resourceful “Dr. Practical” for several of my now routine stress-induced plagues – a golfball-sized boil on my chest, sinus-inflamed tinnitus, and an outbreak of MRSA-infected underarm boils.

Several weeks ago, I began exhibiting sinus infection symptoms. I experienced the familiar yellow snot and nasal congestion. But this time I also woke up each morning with a drooping right eyelid, and battled headaches during the day.

So I refused to go the clinic. The symptoms seemed to be improving by themselves. More importantly, I’ve all of Woody Allen's early movies. I knew I was due for a brain tumour.

As I’ve written in various blog essays, my mental health has significantly improved over the last few months. Meanwhile, my legal work is progressing, and my other writing is going well. I even had enough social confidence to begin taking classes and join local writer groups.

When I started blogging three years ago, I was working on a related book project – a memoir titled “Running With Chainsaws.” Even though I’ve finished a lot of other writing, including starting on a couple of other books, work on the memoir stalled. I’d been so busy doing the living that I wasn't ready for the writing.

Last week I checked in with one of our local writing coaches. She asked my how my memoir was coming along, and reminded me of story-telling arc they use in The Narrative Project. I’d finally identified the key asterisked “scene” on the uphill slope that encapsulates my youthful traumas. Meanwhile, over the last few months I’ve observed the huge progress in my corresponding recovery, most obviously in my newfound freedom to write about subjects I’d avoided for decades. But I couldn’t point to a particular recent “scene” in my story where those themes all came together.

Then I remembered I’d volunteered for this year’s drag fundraiser in Vancouver. I wondered how the Leap Day scene would unfold.

Last Saturday I drove up to Vancouver for Singing Can Be A Drag. It was my first weekend trip to Canada in 2020, and the first hint of spring. I stopped in Davie Village for a small nibble from my favourite local pot edible – the Jelly Bomb equivalent of one glass of red wine at lunch – then parked near Granville Island. I grabbed some orange juice and a toasted beet sandwich at my regular island coffee shop. Those were the last substances I consumed all day.

As I ate my sandwich, I continued writing on my laptop. In addition to automatically raising my spirits, Vancouver also is my perfect muse. Saturday's journal topic was “things that tend to make me a cheap date.” At last count, the bliss-amplifying list included being in Canada, sunshine, VMC, reading, music, well-tended children, coffee, hot sex, and writing.

Last week in “Artificial Emotional Intelligence,” I described how the intersection of social anxiety and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder resulted in a strange Asperger-y phenomenon over the last few months:  in my memory, the images of most gay guys are saved as something like cartoon Muppets. For example, the piano player at Showtunes Night looks like a non-green Kermit the Frog.

As I subsequently confessed in “Do Gay Androids Dream of Electric Brunch,” the Muppet-memory phenomenon mostly applies to gay guys I already know, such as the men of Vancouver Men’s Chorus and the other regulars at Showtunes Night. They give my subconscious something to work with in order to generate each image. In contrast, most gay strangers and straight people don’t look like cartoon Muppets in my memory. They’re human. But they all tend to look the same.

On Saturday I realized it was going to be a bumpy night when I wandered into one of the gender-neutral washrooms at the performance venue. I ran into two drag queens from the chorus and a couple of straight women wearing too much make up. I couldn't recognize any of them. This immediately fried my circuits. For the rest of the night, I couldn’t tell any faces apart.

All my mental Muppets and gay cartoons disappeared. Instead, everyone at the Granville Island Revue Stage last Saturday, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, looked like a character from a Tomie dePaola children’s book. Cheerful and pastel-coloured. But with blank faces. 

Before I could get used to my brain’s bewildering new phenomenon, I was drafted for my volunteer assignment:  standing at the crowded lobby entrance, where I took tickets and handed out programs to the gathering throng.

I don’t know why Lenny grabbed me for the maître d’ role. I was probably the only nearby volunteer who wasn’t already busy pouring drinks. As with selling raffle tickets the previous year, most observers wouldn’t expect the task of greeting increasingly intoxicated concert patrons to be a good fit for my skill set. For example, dealing programs and ripping ticket stubs both call for someone with fully opposable thumbs and working reading glasses. Likewise, most concierges do not suffer from social anxiety, face blindness, and mild amnesia. On the other hand, VMC audience members frequently admire my beaming smile. Everyone knows I’m more helpful than a Boy Scout. I enjoyed my fascinating evening chatting with apparent strangers. 

Meanwhile, I repeatedly failed in my attempts to identify any singers from VMC, with or without drag.

Eventually the big gay throng wore me out. I sat down in the lobby to relax, feeling a little light-headed from low blood sugar and sinus congestion. 

Nevertheless, my mind was racing with exciting ideas. For the first time in my life, I can talk and write about my most traumatic experiences, as well as other buried memories and repressed stories. As I sat in the theatre lobby, I overheard a bunch of extroverted chorus folks making plans to go out dancing at PumpJack afterwards. All I wanted to do was to hurry home to my kids, and to get back to my writing. Life is good.

The drive south and the border crossing went smoothly. Checking my computer back in Bellingham, I returned a text message from one of the drag show producers:  

Yogi:        Hey I just want to make sure you got home alright 😀 can you please let me know that you made it home?

Roger:      Thanks, yes I just got home, kids are still up. I feel fine, just a little bit of a headache so I took Tylenol. Dizziness is gone.

Yogi:        Ok great. I’ll check in with you tomorrow 😀 Have a great sleep!

Roger:      You too, enjoy some rest.

On Sunday morning, my pre-pre-med daughter and I removed the mysterious bandaid I’d found on my finger the night before. We discovered a mark from a needle prick. In addition, we located a large bruise on my right hip. I resumed my text conversation with Yogi:

Roger:   My daughter and I are trying to figure out why I came home with a bandaid on my finger. Did a hot EMT prick my finger? Did I fall down? I don't remember anything other than sitting in the lobby.

Yogi:      Oh wow! Yeah you fell down backstage and you fainted. We called 911 and had the first responders and medic came and checked you. Eventually you got cleared medically by them and you sat in the lobby for about 1.5 hours before you decided to go home.

Roger:    Thanks, that makes sense. I’m sure it was a blood sugar thing, or an allergic reaction/sinus thing. I felt light headed all night, even though I hadn’t had any alcohol. I’ll check with my doctor.

Even with Yogi’s nudging, I still couldn’t remember anything from a two-hour period between tasting a couple of sandwiches in the lobby (too much horseradish, ick), and later sitting in the lobby waiting for some pushy woman to let me go home. So I went across town to be checked at the urgent care clinic. 

Everyone at the Bellingham medical complex was battened down with coronavirus hysteria. As soon as I mentioned “losing consciousness” the night before, the bubble-wrapped triage nurse banished me from her clinic. She said I needed to go next door to the hospital Emergency Room so I could get a CT scan. 

My immediate reaction was to get back in the minivan and start driving home. I wasn’t about to pop my ER cherry just because a bunch of Canadian drag queens pushed me down some stairs. Allegedly.

Then two things changed my mind. First, I wanted someone to finally peer into my ears and nostrils and prescribe antibiotics for my sinus infection. Second, no one ever offered me a CT scan before. With all the plagues I’ve gone through in the last couple of years, I jumped at a chance to cross “brain tumour” off the worry list.

So I crossed the hospital parking lot and checked into the Emergency Room at PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center. I explained what I remembered from my Drag Queen experience the night before, and showed them Yogi’s text about me losing consciousness and falling down the backstage stairwell.  

The hospital nurses and doctors thoroughly checked me out. My right hip is bruised from falling down the stairs. Because I’ve never fainted before in my life, they checked all the usual warning signs for a fifty-five-year old man. My vision and vital signs were normal. I got a EKG, a chest X-ray, and miscellaneous blood work. And a CT scan. 

Back at home, I put myself in bed and told the kids they could run wild for another day. But first I texted Yogi:

Roger:    I went to the clinic this morning and got a bunch of tests, I’m fine. No brain tumor, just spring allergies and sinus congestion. A strange experience.

Yogi:       Oh good! I’m glad you’re okay! 😀 I got a date with one of the Firefighters lol so thank you!

Roger:    Ha Trish said they were hot.

Yogi:       They were yeah lol

Roger:    If anyone asked me out on a date let me know.

Yogi:       Hahaha absolutely!

I wrote this blog essay during the day on Wednesday, before returning to Vancouver that evening for chorus rehearsal and Showtunes Night. 

I still don’t remember what happened during my two-hour gap last Saturday. I probably never will. So I’m not crossing “911 emergency” or “hot fireman” off my bucket list – items don’t count if you can’t remember anything. 

Nevertheless, I recognize my 2020 “Leap Day” experience was another important part of the recent major improvements in my mental health. When I saw my Vancouver Men’s Chorus and showtune friends again on Wednesday night, I realized the gay cartoon Muppet effect in my PTSD-addled brain has already started fading. I can almost tell the various bear-ish Baritones apart. And in a heroic performance, bearded VMC nurse/bass/drag chanteuse Rory triggered my last generic gay lumberjack memory ever with his professional multi-tasking Saturday night.

Meanwhile, many of my ordinary memories from the last few years are finally snapping into focus. The new title for my book is Anyone Can Whistle: a Memoir of Showtunes, Religion, and Mental Illness. After four years in Vancouver Men’s Chorus, I’m more grateful than ever for my chorus lifeline. 

Two more performances of "Singing Can Be A Drag 2020," 

in New Westminster on Saturday, March 14, 2020.
I'll be in the audience for the 9 pm show. Safely bubble-wrapped.

  Go to www.vancouvermenschorus.ca to buy tickets.