Consortium of Seven

This is the story of how I became Bryan and the days that followed. How my life shifted never to be the same and no, not necessarily for the better. I was twenty-nine years old and I realized I had formed no lasting relationships outside of my family. My relationship with my family was not close, so I was pretty much on my own with no friends or support system. I decided to do something about it. I looked for and found a gay “rap” group, that would be called a support group today. Not an easy task in a very conservative 1980's, San Bernardino, California., but there it was, a small group of men and women like myself that were looking to connect and share. It was the summer of 1984 and I would turn thirty years old in August. The reality of turning thirty was my motivation to become normal and happy, or at least begin the process.  The group was very welcoming and after a few visits, a guy named Rick started paying attention to me and finally invited me to his house f

California Dreamin ' in Florida began last year about this time and hasn't stopped.  The Oak trees here know to shed their acorns and narrow leaves even though it's not discernably autumn; it's still hitting the mid-nineties at noon, and the leaves on the trees remain greenish. They brown once they fall. Nearby, papaya trees are also ready to drop their fruit. These oaks are hybrids, I’ve read, not true pin oaks, they’ve adapted to the sand and tropical temperatures. A year ago, I’d walk my dog through their crunch, enjoying the sound, oblivious to the knowledge that my mother had mere weeks to live.  What was on my mind? Shock, that apparently, I had moved to Florida. I was here. I had a job. No friends, yet, but busyness, deciphering the machinations of a foreign school district, trying to fit in, and a new way of thinking about my mother who was unable to walk more than a step or two, and whose mind was... more than a few steps away. And in the evening w

Writing’s hard. Coming up with something to write about is hard too.   You see, I had an agenda about writing for this blog this week. An idea, per se. When you begin thinking and writing about stuff, other stuff pops in your head.  I worked and worked on my first blog last week, trying to produce something worthwhile and of tolerable quality.  Still, I kept realizing one thing over and over: All the interesting things for me to write about are all about my diseases and suffering and stuff. What did I have beyond all that? Well, heck. Those are worthwhile subjects, and I have a WHOLE lot of personal stories and history and plain just insight into those dank, dangerous worlds.  But what else? Is that all I am? Thinking about it all week has led me to believe that it might disturbingly be true. Disease, and the dealing with it, may actually BE all that I’m about. Sure, there’s movies, entertainment, music, and books to blog about, but the other writers in this Consortium

  A s some wiser folk have observed, remembered family history often varies from the details others remember. If relating some things eventually brings me some corrective epiphany, so be it, but for the moment these are my memories, and that's good enough for this and now.      My father was largely out of the picture by my 10th birthday.      There had been considerable, simmering tension on the home front for many years, well before I came along, but a blend of wanting to maintain appearances for propriety's sake - both in the eyes of extended family and of my father's superior officers, as he was in the thick of what would become his first career, in the US Navy - my mother's self-cripplingly rigid adherence to elements of her Catholic faith, and the stretches of relative peace at home while he was at sea, on deployment, combined to keep them technically together for far longer than they likely should have. My older sisters, by far, caught the worst

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Matriarch Tales, Part 2 – by Saga In this Wednesday blog series I’ll be posting the stories I remember about my maternal ancestors: my great-grandmother, grandmother, aunts and mother. The stories may or may not be accurate; family stories seldom are. I set them down here to remember and to honor these unsung women. I have only one more story as a legacy from great-grandmother Nancy Alice.   She made beautiful quilts, two of which I’ve seen. I clearly remember being propped up in my parents’ double bed as a child, and because I was sick, my father was reading to me. I was fascinated by the quilt that seemed to flow forever across the expanse of the bed. I remember that my father noticed that I was tracing the patches in the quilt and that he explained how Nancy Alice had made it. The tiny patches, all about 1 x 2 inches, were from worn family clothing, he explained, the everyday cotton stuff, not the fancy clothes in the old photographs. Nancy had placed the scraps just s

By all reports, Charles Dickens had a look. Early in his journaism career, he put together a writerly outfit including vest and scarf/cravat, an ensemble which told the world he was someone special. Many 19th century writers made an effort to establish themselves as skillful or someone who spoke with authority, but Dickens was among the smaller group, would-be celebrities. In the last couple of weeks, I've been reading the two-volume anthology American Fantastic Tales , edited by Peter Straub.  Each volume ends with a detailed biography of the contributors, and whether the authors wrote full-time or as a sideline.  I've felt a great deal of kinship with some of the contributors, especially the authors of the first volume. Many led full lives independent of their writing. As the biographical details emerged, I  a nostalgic pang got me; I yearned for an era in which it mattered more what you wrote, and it mattered less who you were. I read a lot of modern fiction t

I have been willingly tasked with sharing my memories; anything from birth to present by our blog administrator, Garbo. I would like to thank her for her confidence in my ability to do this; a confidence I’m personally working to manifest myself. With such a breadth of material, my first struggle was to wrangle a lifetime of events and locate one that might resonate with an audience. I chose my move to San Francisco in the seventies because Garbo told me her decision to choose me was based on something I wrote on Facebook about my experience in that city. It seemed a good place to start and settled my reeling mind. I am not a professional writer and will do my best to put out something each week that is readable. Please bear with my grammar and other shortcomings. This new experience has opened a desire to polish my skills and I will be working to improve.   That out of the way, here’s my first attempt. Hope you find my crazy life worthy of your attention: I