Fake Identity / Theft Protection

Priming

In 2006, my mom and I both experienced our own form of identity crisis. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. I acknowledged I am gay.

Even though I’ve had five years to sort out how I came to discover my orientation, explaining it to others remains a difficult conversation. I imagine it’s the whole heterosexual marriage part that throws most people off. The Cliff Notes version goes like this: I realized early in life I had some feelings that were different. No one, including myself, seemed to regard these feelings as anything other than bad. I thought it best for everyone if I locked them away in a small box.

Encoding

I used to think Alzheimer’s was a disease of memory loss. It’s so much worse. Victims of Alzheimer’s forget themselves, their mannerisms, their personality, and those characteristics that make them who they are. Over time, I watched as little pieces of Mom slipped away. It first became evident in how she decorated and kept house. Then I noticed she began dressing differently. Whereas previously she was known for her panache for fashion and her ability to put outfits together, the selections she made – while not blatantly mismatched – were noticeably not her. She didn’t fuss over the nuances of her appearance. She stopped painting her nails as regularly. Her makeup coloring wasn’t quite right. Her recipes didn’t taste the same. She wasn’t as feisty or outgoing.

Not long after moving into assisted living, she became unable to attend to the habits so ingrained that they seemed part of her being. There were times when I found myself painting her nails, helping her with makeup (which I knew nothing about), and fixing her hair. The first time I painted her nails she commented what a good job I’d done and that she couldn’t wait to show the workers and other residents. “No, do not say a word about this, Mom!” I said sternly. Either she forgot or ignored me; before I knew it she was out in the hall with an audience showing off my work. “Wow, you’re really good! You should go into business!” the circle of ladies exclaimed. I enthusiastically insisted that I didn’t know about such things. Apparently, I should have centered my words around my absolute lack of desire, because they countered with the comforting news that a lot of men go into the cosmetics industry today and that I shouldn’t be ashamed to do it. I mustered a half-hearted thanks and collected Mom for her doctor’s appointment. As we walked down the hall, my courtesy smile fell away.

It wasn’t the ladies, the compliments, or the suggestion of a career change that made me ill inside; it was how it all came about. Regardless of how “sweet” it was that I’d helped Mom get ready, I only saw the fact that she was unable to do it herself. This was nothing to laugh over. I wanted to bring all the laughing to an abrupt end and make them realize that pieces of my mother were slipping away right in front of me. I wanted them to see her in context of my lifelong memories and understand the absurdity of it all – that my mom needed no one’s help to paint her nails with unrivaled precision. She could do it with her eyes closed.

Without the need of a conscious effort, I began to disassociate my mom from the person being left behind. Though it may sound cold or dispassionate, it was a way of coping that made sense to me. I loved and care for her the same but held harmless my remembrances, locked them away in small box.

Recollection

After I had made peace with myself over my sexual orientation, I felt it important to share with my mom before it was too late for her to understand. She’d moved into assisted living earlier that year and while her short term memory was poor, she was still herself. One would think being her caregiver would have made this process easier, but it did not. I sat on the bed in her room, looked down often, danced around the subject by asking questions, and finally came out with it. She nodded and said, “Okay.” Questioning her comprehension, “Mom, did you understand me?” “Yes, I understand perfectly. I’m glad you told me, and I love you.” We hugged.

The next day we traveled to visit my grandmother. Not a word was exchanged about our previous conversation. I mentioned something about dating and looked for acknowledgement from her. When all I got was a silent nod, I began the process of coming out for the second time, which was a little easier than the first. After I was done, she nodded much like the first time. Then she said, “Okay. But didn’t you tell me this just yesterday?”

This post is part of a synchronized blogging project called The Creative Collective – a group of artists, bloggers, and writers who post on a particular topic every two weeks. This week’s topic was “Identity Crisis” Read more posts on this topic at http://synchrobloggers.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/identity-crisis/

Falling Star

I don’t care how nice you are, somewhere in the recesses of everyone’s mind, there exists a recollection of someone falling down – one that when conjured will bring forth an irrepressible snicker or chuckle. Admit it, you’re thinking about it right now. Perhaps you’re imagining a pair of arms flailing wildly about, maybe the awkward gyrations of hips attempting to regain balance, or the potent trajectory of a shoe, a purse, a book, or a plate. It’s okay; I’ll give you a moment. Don’t feel bad; you’re human.

I have such recollections, but my favorite story about falling was one I didn’t actually witness. The incident happened to a close friend. We’ll call her, Jaime, since that’s her name. Let’s even go as far as to say she’s my former spouse. This is significant because the snicker and chuckles I get from the story are due to how well I know Jaime, and it’s the aftermath and reaction, not the act of falling, that cracks me up the most.

Jaime has been called shy most of her life, even though she’s not. She is quiet, though it has nothing to do with being shy; Jaime just doesn’t enjoy the coruscations of the social spotlight. When amongst strangers, she pretty much hates it even more. If there were a high school Who’s Who award for Least Likely to Cause A Scene, Jaime would want to win hands down (no pun intended). If you know someone like Jaime, you may agree that falling down in public might rank reasonably high on their list of things to avoid at all costs. However, one of my favorite qualities about Jaime is that in the midst of situations she considers mortifying, she possesses an exceptional ability to find humor in those moments when the universe spits on her neck.

It was just an ordinary trip to the bank, or at least it should have been. Had she just been able to use the drive through, it wouldn’t have happened. She had bought a new shirt recently, and she thought she looked pretty good in it. It’s never been customary for Jaime to give any kudos to her sense of fashion, but on this day, she felt good about the shirt. She would later claim the following events were karma’s way of checking her ego.

In retrospect, all the elements for disaster seemed obvious: the hot asphalt, a smear of motor oil, a pair of flat soled shoes, a curb. As she stepped up on the curb, her oily sole slipped, and suddenly she was on the ground – on the ground directly in front of the bank.

Some might have laughed; some might have cursed aloud; some might have cried. Jaime entered damage control mode. For her it boiled down to a simple question: How many people just saw me do that and is it enough to justify a flight response? She looked up to assess the crowd of potential onlookers and found only herself in the reflection of the bank’s expansive tinted glass. She assessed the parking lot and concluded her performance had likely earned a decent size fan base. Perhaps they didn’t see? She had, after all, fallen as subtly as she could. It crossed her mind to leave, but she bravely decided to persevere and entered the bank.

Whenever Jaime fell, she always followed up with a concise report of the happenings to those closest to her. Later that evening, she gave such an account of the events to her mother who offered the following: “Well, it’s a good thing you decided to go in otherwise it would have looked as if you just went to the bank to fall.”

This post is part of a synchronized blogging project called The Creative Collective – a group of artists, bloggers, and writers who post on a particular topic every two weeks. This week’s topic was “Falling.” Read more posts on this topic at http://synchrobloggers.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/falling.

Giving Up for the Long Haul

I must confess: I’m a quitter.  Seriously, I’m certified.  I’ve always been a quitter, and I’m not sure how to make it stop.  I’ve tried; I’ve made so many good faith attempts to change my behavior, my thinking. Unfortunately this was fairly difficult, so I gave up.

I’ve been this way since I can remember.  Growing up I settled on a new hobby or interest every few months.  This occurred when I’d grown bored with the previous hobby, when it was no longer fresh and exciting, or when I recognized some obstacle I believed I could not overcome.  Sometimes the interest was brand new; other times I recycled one of the previous choices.  The earlier ones included painting, astronomy, fish, the guitar, the organ, and collecting action figures.  Then came photography, the French horn, cars, reading, and creative writing. Still, what I lacked in constancy, I made up for with zeal. If I was “into it” then one had best look out because it was likely that the residual energy radiating off of me was contagious.

This continued into high school, though at that point it was less about hobbies and more about my eventual vocation. I expended an extraordinary amount of energy trying to answer the question of what I was going to do with the rest of my life; to not know troubled me greatly. My senior year, I could often be found sitting at an Apple computer in my guidance counselor’s office searching a database of job descriptions. Once home, I read over my dot-matrix printouts, describing the nature of work of psychologist, high school teachers, podiatrists, airline pilots, automotive engineers, ophthalmologists, optometrists, novelists, pediatricians, and entrepreneurs. It wasn’t enough to simply know about the profession; I wanted to be saturated in it, consider all the pros and cons, ponder the amount of education required, envision what daily life would be like, think about the lifestyle I could afford.  There were many discussions with teachers as I garnered information.

Similarly, the college years brought about many major changes and exploration. When I first began, I chose music because among the undulations of interests, music came up pretty often.  The discipline necessary greatly surpassed my own, so I gave up.  High school English teacher followed and stayed around a while until a clinical experience at a middle school classroom full of unruly, hormonal teenagers. Psychology was next, and with my college years coming to an end, I committed myself to it, unsure of my post-grad plans.

Although these transitions may sound as if they were made easily, each one was quite distressing, but more distressing was that I couldn’t seem to find something that held my interest.  I couldn’t hold on to that initial zeal.  Where it once held excitement, approaching my parents with yet another career direction became an onerous experience.  None of my other friends appeared to have this problem. Sure they might have changed their minds a time or two, but by comparison, I seemed all over the map.  I envied those who knew ever so lucidly their inherent talents and abilities and was baffled by stories of those who had carried those interests from childhood forward with diligence.  I did many things reasonably well yet mastered none.

The first three years of adulthood levied me with an adult-version of the same song, with the adult version carrying somewhat more weight than completing a change of major form. Those years were spent either trying to “fit” myself into jobs I’d obtained or earnestly seeking an alternative that would make me happy.

∞

A distressed face looks back at me from the other side of my desk.  It’s a look with which I’m familiar. I inquire about his major, and he goes blank, looks down, shakes his head, and with some embarrassment, replies something like, “I have no idea.”  He appears skeptical about discussing it, as though to do so would be a waste of time, but I engage him in conversation anyway, asking my line of questions, pushing past the initial superficial responses.  It’s obvious he’s not accustom to talking about himself this way or thinking about some of these questions, but we begin making some progress. We talk for a little over thirty minutes.  I give him some recommendations and direct him to relevant research sources.  Shaking my hand, he thanks me, “Wow, you’re really good at this!” I smile back, “I’ve had a little practice.”

This post is part of a synchronized blogging project called The Creative Collective – a group of artists, bloggers, and writers who post on a particular topic every two weeks.  This week’s topic was “Giving Up for the Long Haul.”  Read more posts on this topic at http://synchrobloggers.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/giving-up-for-the-long-haul/

Financial Projections

If asked to list those things that act as “centers of gravity” in our personal lives,  I imagine spouses, children, parents, siblings, and the conception of “home” would likely waft to the top of most lists. Typically, these are constants that possess influences of which we are often unaware, whether that be good or bad.  When I first began pondering this, I found myself beginning with these same identities, and while these seemed the most pertinent, it was all a little too easy, too simple, and too convenient that I should choose those people to whom I’d had the most exposure and knew best.  Perhaps by discarding the readily available choices of constancy and affinity, we’d be less likely to overlook other, more minor though still potent, systems of influence.

With that in mind, I’m thankful for the influence of my parents, my former spouse, my teachers, my friends, a few former partners, and Lou Gene Kilgore.  Of those, I know Lou Gene the least well; our interaction was relatively brief, and I got the impression she didn’t want to be friends when she threw her bank statements at me and threatened to sue the branch where I worked.

∞

At the end of a long day – the type of day whereby at the end you’re fairly certain that humans, as a species, are in fact regressing – I was finishing up with a customer when I hurried past a short, bird-like woman who muttered “I wanna talk to you!” in a voice as cuddly as a piece of steel wool.  I didn’t recognize that this was Lou Gene Kilgore, for whom I had opened a checking account approximately a month prior. At some point, Lou Gene had become convinced I had conned her out of the $2000 she used to fund the account, and she had come filled to the brim with all the tenacity she could muster in order to set things right.

Not being one who enjoys confrontation, I nervously thumbed through my records, trying to recall exactly what had transpired and where the funds might have gone.  Lou Gene was correct; the money was gone, but this was as far as cooperation would carry us.  In terms of her problem-solving aptitude, Lou Gene was persistent, though I questioned her methodology – namely her repeated exclamation:  “You stole my money! I want my money now!”  After about the fifth declaration, I kept thinking how much I wish I could punch the bastard who coined the phrase, “The customer is always right” or at least introduce him to Lou Gene.  When I explained the bank would likely frown on me just handing over $2000 but that I’d be happy to research the account to figure out what had happened, she stood up and threw her bank statements at me.  While they were settling all around me, she yelled into my manager’s office that I didn’t know what I was doing before snatching up her statements, warning me that I would be hearing from her lawyer, and leaving the branch.

∞

About a year and a half before Lou Gene and I crossed paths, I’d been contemplating graduate school.  I had gone so far as to apply and had been accepted. Although on the surface, this served  as an excellent defense mechanism to the all too apparent reality that most days, I simply tolerated my job, I truly wanted to return to school.  However, I was afraid.  I was married, my wife and I had secured a nice lifestyle, I’d just recently dropped a chunk of money for my first degree, so the idea of quitting my job, regardless of my feelings about it, seemed counterintuitive.  I worried what my family would think.  I worried about the risks involved.

When I arrived home that evening, I had a message from the University of Alabama.  Some money had become available for a graduate assistantship, and they were curious if I was still interested.  Without hesitation, I looked at my wife and said, “I’m taking it!”  There was no looking back after that.  I was officially off the fence.  A few months later, I was a full-time graduate student, having finally jumped down on the side of the fence I’d been so afraid of and bid farewell to the realm of the financial workforce.  Ten years later, I still hold a reverence for this seemingly minute point in time, this serendipitous collision that altered my course in ways that neither Lou Gene, myself, or her lawyer would have imagined.

This post is part of a synchronized blogging project called The Creative Collective – a group of artists, bloggers, and writers who post on a particular topic every two weeks.  This week’s topic was “The Earth around the Sun, or the Sun around the Earth: Centers of Gravity”  Read more posts on this topic at http://synchrobloggers.wordpress.com/2011/08/09/centers-of-gravity.

Walking in circles, standing in lines

By now, my tattoo would have fully healed. I’d be sporting it on my right shoulder blade next week at the beach – a circle of latin text, about the diameter of a tennis ball. The text would read “Nosce te ipsum, Naturam sequere tuam.” which can be translated as “Know thyself, be thyself.” Despite the fact that I wouldn’t be able to see it, I’d be perpetually aware of it, especially once I decided to shed my shirt. I’d have a little smile inside knowing it was there.

The idea of getting inked first occurred to me about three years ago. The decision to do so came from what I’d refer to as a paradigm shift in my life – where various inevitable life events inspired changes in my notions of religion, politics, sexuality, and the order (or lack thereof) of life. This was a considerable decision since I grew up believing that tattooing was a strange and taboo practice affiliated with scary and a somewhat “tacky” kind of people. I let the idea coagulate, knowing that I wanted it to “mean something” and such a decision was not to be made precipitously, but rather deserved the time to culminate from a lengthy period of experience and introspection. I resigned that the right time would present itself, that it would be distinctive.

Last March, I believed that time had arrived. Within the vicissitude of my self-confidence it was a period in which I was flying high. I had lost weight and therefore felt good about my body. I was running and felt energized by it. I found myself in the nascent stages of what I perceived to be a promising relationship. My job performance had improved. I knew who I was and made no apologies for it. I perceived to be in a good, stable place. I felt as though I had in fact arrived at a place, hit a benchmark in my life. Insert needle, please.

∞

Growing up, there is a panoply of evidence suggesting that the very act of growing up, developing, maturing is a linear progression. We learn at an early age that height, grade level, scores, and time are important measures that help us determine our place as well as how far we have progressed. Adults engage small kids in conversation by asking: How old are you? What grade are you in? How tall are you? How many siblings do you have? Are you the oldest, youngest, or somewhere in between? When we’re about five, we start kindergarten; when we turn fifteen, we begin learning to drive; when we turn eighteen, we can vote; when we turn twenty-one, we can drink alcohol. As we get older, we acquire additional privileges up until this point, but after twenty-one we’re left hanging; there’s nothing else to work for, but fortunately, we have alcohol to help us deal with the ambiguity. Yep, after twenty-one it’s just a series of years that you manage to stay alive until you hit retirement at age 65…67…76…depends on when you’re reading this, I suppose.

In my recollections of childhood, I see how much I bought into this concept of knowing my place in line. With my glow-in-the-dark roller skates strapped to my feet, I shimmied orbits around the rink at Skate Odyssey, when another little boy gave me a shove from the side. Surprised and a little hurt, I sat there staring with my glowing skates straight out in front of me. I scampered up and launched myself in pursuit. Normally, I would have let it go and avoided any confrontation, but I thought I could take this kid – he did appear shorter than me after all. When I finally caught up with him, I intended to make him understand the error of his ways:

“Hey! You knocked me down!” I protested.

“Yeah, I know!” he replied.

I stood there for a moment with the realization that my grounding was in fact intentional and not a mistake as I had hoped. I looked at him and then looked deep within myself:

“How old are you anyway?”

“Eight!” he barked back. I leaned into him.

“Well, I’m eight and a half!”

At this point I picture myself beginning to back away slowly, feeling that everyone was clear on the situation now and there was no further need for anything else to be said. My cool expression surely exclaimed that this rookie of the eighth year better step off fast – back to the rink boys and girls…nothing to see here…just a little chronological misunderstanding.

I miss such pinpoint clarity. Apparently, I’ve had a difficult time of letting go of it and accepting that there are no such benchmarks for adulthood. There are no straight lines symbolic of my learning, my maturity, or the amount of wisdom I possess; at best, there is a frenetic collection of precariously overlapping orbits, leading me to points that I feel like I’ve been before.

∞

Approximately three weeks after I was ready to allow a stranger to tattoo “Know thyself” on my back, I found myself rather disoriented about who I was. The confidence, the relationship, the self-esteem had all disintegrated right out from under me, leaving my ass firmly planted on the ground and my skates out in front of me. As I attempted to understand the course of events responsible, there was no one to blame for pushing me down. Instead, there was only me and my own lack of self-awareness.

To those who would suggest the greatest challenges in life are found in the course of getting what you want, I’d demur that they lie in determining what you want and whether or not you are willing to accept certain variations of it when they come along. In my case, I fault myself for settling for variations of what I wanted and doing so for the sake of being capable of saying that I had arrived at a point – an adult benchmark, if you will.

Understandably, since my recent grounding I’ve swiped my brow a few times with the thought, “Well thank goodness I didn’t get the tattoo!” However, I don’t take any comfort in that now. In the process of getting up, I believe I’ve managed to brush off some of my faith in the straight road ahead. Perhaps I’m learning to be ok with the seemingly orbital nature of my adult life, free from degree, criterion, and measurement.

At present, I have not yet gotten my tattoo. I remain inkless, the original hardcopy, but nonetheless edited.

This post is part of a synchronized blogging project called The Creative Collective – a group of artists, bloggers, and writers who post on a particular topic every two weeks. This week’s topic was “What we might become if…” Read more posts on this topic at http://synchrobloggers.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/what-we-might-become-if.