Common Tragedies

Lawyers are terrible at statistics.

It’s not just because most attorneys majored in soft subjects like political science and philosophy. I love mathematics, even though I'm a lifelong English Major. (At least I love mathematics in the abstract.) Good math skills are an important part of thinking like a lawyer.

But statistics are seldom useful when it comes to the fundamental purpose of any legal system:  deciding exactly who to blame for everything.

It’s not just lawyers. Every human brain is terrible at making decisions that involve very small probabilities. Especially my children’s brains.

After three days of school closures and social distancing, my kids still lack empathy about the global impact of coronavirus. So I resorted to Ritz cracker analogies:

Suppose I give you a box containing one hundred identical-appearing Ritz crackers. Assume four of the crackers are coated with an invisible poison that’s fatal after just one bite. How many crackers would you eat?

My son’s immediate response was “I’m young, so I’ll be fine.”

I had to acknowledge the four percent fatality rate is based on the general population. So I gave him a more focused analogy:

Suppose I give you a box containing one hundred identical-appearing Ritz crackers. Assume one of the crackers is coated with an invisible poison that’s fatal to healthy children after just one bite. How many crackers would you eat?

After thinking for a few seconds, he responded “Probably one or two. Considering how many dodgeball games I’ve won.”

Next I tried my analogy on one of my daughters. She stared dreamily off into space, then answered, “I dunno, it depends how hungry I feel.”

My other daughter is addicted to Grey’s Anatomy. She quickly answered “None” in response to my initial question.

When I gave her the one percent fatality version, however, she paused. “I’d eat some, but I’d have Buster lick them first.”

Click here for more entries from Roger’s Plague Journal

The Secret Policemen's Other Ball

A couple of months ago, back in an innocent time before international coronavirus quarantines, the dogs and I were trapped at home with my children for a week of “snow days.” For one of their mandatory art projects, the kids painted designs on a stack of old vinyl records we bought at Value Village. 

With the recent improvements in my mental health, I can finally share my deepest, darkest secrets with my family and readers. Here’s a gem, now hidden under my daughter’s pastel flowers and blue paint:

The very first concert I ever attended was at the Marriott Center in Provo, Utah, on September 17, 1981. I’d arrived as a clueless freshman at Brigham Young University three weeks before. 

I saw Barry Manilow live.

During my time at BYU, I was confused about my own sexual orientation. I was also oblivious to the fact that most of my college friends were actually gay, too. And the fact that Barry Manilow is gay. 

Several years later, someone who had been part of BYU’s secret gay underground told me a story about the Barry Manilow concert. Apparently afterwards an unmarked car full of BYU security officers followed Manilow and his posse forty-five mile north to the Sun Tavern, Salt Lake City’s gay bar.

Perhaps it’s just a 1980s urban myth. But based on what I know about Mormons, institutional homophobia, BYU, its Orwellian “Honor Code Office,” and campus police, the story is probably true.

Like too many other Mormon youths, thirty years ago I was the victim of relentless emotional abuse from a pervasively homophobic community. The Mormon Church’s authoritarian message denied the very existence of LGBT people. Those unhealed wounds reopened thirty years later when I again experienced “unrighteous dominion,” this time at the hands of ignorant employers, unethical lawyers, and dishonest bureaucrats.

Ironically, one of the signs that helped my healthcare providers quickly identify the nature of the trauma underlying my PTSD symptoms again involved the Mormon Church. On November 5, 2015, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints confirmed rumors that its Prophet and Apostles had adopted a new policy forbidding children living in same-sex households from being blessed or baptized.

This is what I wrote on Facebook that day:

To my Mormon friends and family – in the last thirty-five years I have endured and observed a horrifying litany of abuse by the LDS Church against LGBT individuals, from electroshock therapy, to suicides, to election fraud, to ecclesiastical abuse. But this step may be the most profoundly evil and unchristian act I can imagine – punishing children for the “sins” of their fathers. 

According to the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus’s disciples blocked some little children from coming to hear him, Jesus said “Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”

As the parent of two ten-year-olds and a seven-year-old, I am shocked to hear that a Christian sect would withhold the purportedly essential ordinance of baptism out of pique. I do not want my name associated in any way with an organization that would rather children go to hell than have gay parents. This is far beyond being sore losers in the legal and culture wars. Indeed, “collective punishment” is considered a war crime under the Geneva Convention. I can no longer defend Mormons from the accusation that they aren't Christians – because I can't imagine anyone who would defy Christ’s actual teachings and perpetrate such evil.

Here are a couple of other Facebook examples of my unfiltered PTSD rage from November 2015.

March 5, 2020 rally in Provo, Utah.
You can see BYU's J. Reuben Clark Law School between the rainbow flags and the Wasatch Mountains

Five years later, Church bureaucrats finally watered down their anti-child policy, and replaced some of the leadership handbook’s most virulently homophobic language with facially neutral statements. Separate bureaucrats at the church-owned Brigham University immediately updated the university’s strict Honor Code to remove its section titled “Homosexual Behavior,” which previously banned students from “all forms of physical intimacy between members of the same sex.”

Some of BYU’s LGBTQ students and alumni rejoiced. Encouraged by the new policy, many current students came out of the closet. However, within days the Church forced BYU to retract its hopeful message.

This clumsy flip flop should come as no surprise. Years before the Mormon Church finally ended its ban on black priests in 1978, students and administrators at BYU already wearied of their role as one of academia’s most notoriously racist punching bags. Similarly, everyone associated with the nation’s largest private college would obviously prefer to avoid well-founded public accusations of anti-LGBT discrimination. Nevertheless, even in 2020, the university community is powerless to escape from ancient prejudices held by the Church’s gerontocratic leadership. 

Gay Mormon filmmaker Kendell Wilcox published a commentary in the  Salt Lake Tribune last week about the Church and university’s “horribly mismanaged rollout of a sanitized-for-public-relations-and-correlation-purposes draconian policy that opened the door for misinterpretation and misplaced hopes”:

[U]ltimately, this whole mess is due to the persistent and erroneous belief that the “Law of Chastity is applied the same way for all Mormons - straight and gay.” Or as President Dallin Oaks put it in April 2019: “Immoral conduct in heterosexual and homosexual relationships will be treated in the same way.” Church and BYU leaders continue to believe that this legalistic and vague wording will afford them the appearance of fairness and placate their critics.

But the Law of Chastity has not been, and may never be, applied the same way to straight and gay members. Straight members are encouraged to pursue marriage by dating (and all the things that dating people do) while gay members are told to deny themselves of all of this. In other words, per Oaks’ statement, in the church’s eyes all “conduct” in a homosexual relationship is considered “immoral conduct.” There is no moral conduct in a homosexual relationship.

Once again, LGBT Mormons and their families are left with “uproar and outrage and heartache.”

The First Amendment protects freedom of religion. As with earlier generations who used the Bible and Book of Mormon to defend slavery and then segregation, Mormon leaders are welcome to worship a God of Hate. Of course, the First Amendment also guarantees the right of other people of faith, and outspoken respecters of human dignity, to call out the current leadership of the Mormon Church for their lack of Christian charity.

In contrast with the purely religious mission of the Mormon Church, however, Brigham Young University claims to be a “real” university. National accrediting organizations currently certify BYU’s education programs as satisfying rigorous academic requirements, notwithstanding the university’s religious affiliation. Graduates of BYU’s law school, management school, and other university divisions remain welcome in polite society.

However, BYU’s recent anti-gay flip flop puts the university at a very visible crossroads. Just as BYU’s prior racism resulted in NCAA boycotts in the 1970s, academic accreditors must carefully examine the university’s values today.

More importantly, BYU and the Mormon Church have an obligation to protect the naïve LGBTQ students who publicly came out in response to BYU’s deceptive welcome. There can be no witch hunts. No retaliation by the Honor Code Office. No electroshock or conversion therapy. No one placed at risk of losing their expensive educational investment. No demands for lists of other “perverts.” No entrapment by campus police. And no searches of the parking lots at Salt Lake's gay bars. 

Instead, each member of the BYU community must ensure the safety of these students while they remain at BYU, and their safe passage to welcoming institutions and communities if they choose. When every member of this newest generation of LGBTQ+ Mormon abuse victims finally escapes from Provo, I hope they – and you – will join me in shunning Brigham Young University. At least until the university becomes worthy of our respect.

Better-ish

As a Gay Sitcom Dad, I’m always in search of typecasting ideas. 

For example, a couple of years ago I wrote in “Tragedy Tomorrow” that most days I saw myself in striped pajamas as the Movie Dad from Life is Beautiful, shielding his son from the horror of the Holocaust. Only “once or twice a year” did I manage to achieve the ultimate parental glow:  on a particularly good day, I’d end a conversation with one of my children “feeling like Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird.”

In the last few months I’ve experienced another exponential improvement in my mental health. The timing is particularly fortunate – with the exception of five days’ respite over Winter Break, I've been a full-time single dad ever since my ex moved back to the Midwest in August.

Nowadays I can pull off ultra-sensitive single dad/lawyer Atticus Finch mode whenever I sit down for a soulful conversation with one of my children. But I like to mix things up. Some days I lean more toward Oscar Wilde – the world needs more Witty Gay Sitcom Dad. However, my fallback role is Jeeves. It’s best for everyone if my kids think of me as omniscient and omnicompetent.

Last Wednesday, Jeeves failed me completely. I was discussing the Olympics with my eleven-year-old son. He didn’t believe me when I insisted the Tokyo games will be held a couple of years from now, four years after the last Summer Olympics.

Later that day I had a similar conversation with one of the Baritones from Vancouver Men’s Chorus. We were trying to figure out when we sang “Love Shack” by the B-52s. By my mental calculation it was a couple of June concerts ago. Not four.

I was absolutely convinced it’s been two years since VMC’s “Road Trip” show and the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. Fortunately Jeeves and I didn’t bet anyone a new X-Box.

This strange two-year gap in my internal chronology shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. Here’s what I wrote a couple of years ago in “Woke”:

I am currently living in my own Hallmark Christmas movie.

Last Christmas is a blur. I retained only a couple of memories from last year’s VMC concert. Mostly I hid in dark corners. Indeed, most of 2015 - 2017 is lost in a fog. After increasing frustration with practicing law and raising kids in Seattle, I grasped at the false hope of moving to Bellingham for my dream job. Instead, a tragic confluence of bad choices, bad luck, and bad people destroyed my life. 

This Christmas is different. I can tell I've turned an important corner in the last few months. My mental health is noticeably better – not just the wearying projection of normalcy, but my actual mental health. I get out of bed and do stuff. The kids are thriving in Bellingham. I voraciously read and write again after years of drought. Things make sense for the first time in decades. Although I miss my faraway friends from earlier epochs, I’m putting down roots and making friends again. Not only did I enjoy singing in VMC’s holiday concerts, but I finally overcame my anxiety over socializing with all those nice Canadians just across the border. (They’re mostly harmless.) I even managed to sing a fleeting faux-Jewish solo without melting down.

It’s like I woke up out of a coma just in time for Christmas Eve. A holiday miracle. 

This is the point in the Hallmark Channel movie where everyone hugs and cries. Then I ask, “So what did I miss?”

What feels different this time is the rest of the fog has lifted. The scariest part of living with mental illness is when you know you’re not yourself. Anhedonia smothers you like a blanket, and loved ones describe strangely uncharacteristic behaviors you don't remember.  

Now I feel like myself, even when I feel unwell. The good news is that most of my fuzzy memories have finally snapped into place. The bad news is that my brain concluded the simplest way to adjust my internal clock was to delete two years from the timeline. It’s sorta like switching to Daylight Savings Time. Or like when England converted from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian Calendar, and eleven days were dropped from September 1752.

So how am I doing with some of the other challenges I’ve described on this blog? For one thing, telephone customer service representatives across North America and the Indian subcontinent can rejoice. They don’t push my buttons anymore.

As longtime readers will recognize, this change is a big deal. Numerous early blog essays were devoted to my horrifying experiences dealing with Comcast’s wretched customer service. In contrast, for the last month I’ve been struggling to get my mother’s iPhone connected to the rest of us as part of Apple’s byzantine “Family Sharing” program. So far I’ve had five long telephone conversations with Apple technical support, as well as exchanging numerous emails. 

As my parents can attest, I’ve calmly handled the entire Kafka-esque experience. At one point, someone from Apple sent me an email suggesting that I log out of my own AppleID, and log back in. The next time I spoke with a technician on the telephone, she gasped and said “ooh, that was a bad idea.”

According to Apple, my mother will only have to wait another two weeks to access the family music account. At least she can now check Facebook and Fitbit again. Meanwhile I still can’t get my laptop, iPhone, and computer to synch. But somehow life goes on.

There’s been much less progress with some of my other PTSD-amplified anxiety symptoms. For example, I still struggle with serious bruxism, i.e. teeth-grinding.  

A few months ago, the pain in my jaw was excruciating. For the first time in my life, I scheduled a nonregular dentist appointment. I was convinced that I needed a replacement filling or a root canal. Fortunately, the X-ray didn’t reveal any serious problems. Unfortunately, my teeth grinding is out of control once again. Meanwhile, our dog Buster chewed up my night guard along with several more pairs of socks and underwear. 

So for Christmas my parents got me socks and a new night guard.

My daughters were born two weeks apart. Rosalind was adopted three and half year after Eleanor’s birth, and the girls have zero in common biologically, physically, or otherwise. We have an unusual hashtag in our family:  #NotTwins. For example:

Last month, one of my daughters sat me down and said “Papa, you realize you’re supposed to look people in the eyes when you talk to them, don’t you?”

Later that same week, my other daughter hugged me and said “Papa, I’m glad you don’t stammer when you’re home with us.”

I use the catchall phrase “social anxiety” to refer to various overdetermined layers of tics and behaviors. Some of mine relate to codependency, which my insightful Bellingham physician Dr. Heuristic identified four years ago when he diagnosed me with PTSD. Fortunately, I’ve successfully faced codependency after years of Codependents Anonymous and other treatment steps. Even the most relentless narcissists from my prior life finally realize I’m not going to return their texts and give them one more chance.

Other social challenges result from the tyranny of the closet and the lingering effects of trauma. As I wrote in “Avoidant,” 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. As I gradually sift through layers of painfully repressed memories, I’m increasingly able to interact with other people.

Finally, some of my social quirks are just part of my personality. But they’ve always been heightened in predictably stressful contexts, such as miscarriages of justice, or spending time around other gay men. As I wrote last month in “Artificial Emotional Intelligence,” this has been one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced over the last four years: 

PTSD had the effect of moving me several notches further away from “normal” on the autism spectrum, particularly in my interactions with other gay men. I’ve lost much of my already dubious ability to read ordinary social cues. Faces are a blank. Nowadays I can’t tell if someone is hitting on me, or challenging me to a duel.  

Lately I’ve been reading John Elder Robison’s book Be Different: Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian. I can relate to many of his tales and tips about life as a social misfit. On the other hand, the recent improvements in my mental health have included exciting progress in this area. I recognized my biggest breakthrough a couple of weeks ago, when I was treated by 911 medics and sent to the hospital for the first time in my life. (A bunch of fierce Canadian drag queens pushed me down the backstage stairs at the Granville Island Revue Stage. Allegedly. It’s a complicated story. You’ll have to read “Falling Can Be A Drag” for yourself.)

When abusive treatment by my new Bellingham employers first triggered strange new anxiety symptoms, the most visible sign was a dramatic increase in my formerly mild case of trichotillomania – the compulsion to pull out your hair. I began ferociously rubbing my forehead and yanking out what's left of the hair above it. Most of the time I’m unaware it’s happening. By the end of particularly stressful days, my scalp is raw. To mitigate the effect, I learned to fiddle instead with over-sized pipe cleaners – “fuzzy things.”

Ironically, my trichotillomania is worse than ever. I’ve exhausted the supply of fuzzy pipe cleaners at the Michael’s craft store in Bellingham. So I may have to plan a special trip to Seattle this week, just to stock up on fuzzy things and coronavirus supplies. 

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. If nothing else, writing has been essential to each improvement in my mental health.

However, I’m tempted to argue the most important change has been to transform my trauma-inspired “fixed mindset” into a “growth mindset.” Here is psychologist Carol Dweck's definition of each type of mindset:

In a fixed mindset, students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that's that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all the time and never look dumb. In a growth mindset, students understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching and persistence. They don't necessarily think everyone's the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it. 

One image from Dweck’s book Mindset sticks with me. It comes from her description of a child psychology experiment. Researchers can accurately distinguish between students with a fixed mindset and those with a growth mindset by assigning each child a set of challenging brainteasers. In my mind, Dweck’s example of the boy with a fixed mindset sounds just like my son now, or me for three decades – wearily sighing at the prospect of work and failure. In contrast, Dweck’s growth mindset youth rubs his hands together and exclaims “I love puzzles!” 

Being forced to deal with one real disaster after another over the last few years eventually taught me how to bounce back from repeated failure. Life is good and getting better. Still, I hope my PTSD-induced symptoms will go away someday. Maybe I will be magically cured once my villainous abusers finally take responsibility for their actions. Or when the courts order them to take responsibility. I know it’s just a theory, but humor me. 

Nevertheless, if losing two years of my life and pulling out my hair every day forever are the worst things that ever happen to my family, I’ll take it.

Previously in Rock Bottom Stories: “Maximum Leverage.”   Next: “Least Gay Great Day Ever.”

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.