You Are Going to Die

I'm finishing up the course in Lifespan Development I'm taking at City College of San Francisco. A study of the human lifespan, it chronicles the physical, social and psychological changes we go through at particular stages in life, beginning at birth and ending, inevitably, at death.

In reading the last chapter in the prescribed textbook Understanding Human Development, a rarely-thought of memory was triggered by the following lines:

"Care of the terminally ill has generally become more humane... Those who are terminally ill often are given some measure of autonomy. Having a say in how much pain medication or sedatives they receive, for example, can give patients who are dying a sense that they still control some aspect of their lives."

That a dying person might feel some comfort in still 'being in control' made me think of my grandmother, who died in 1993 (even my typing that year feels foreign and far away) when I was ten. She seemed to surrender herself to my mum and aunt, and she surrendered within herself. I recall reading a diary of hers after she passed. The entry, composed the year before her death, when she was losing weight and lucidity thanks to the morphine was dated '1943'. She had lost herself to memories past. In 1943, she would have been twenty years old.

She lived out her final days during the Australian bushfire season of 1993, when blazing hot fires burned down homes along the eastern seaboard, and you felt their searing heat carried in the midday breeze. It was during those days when it wasn't uncommon for the mercury to hit 110 degrees that we would walk along the main road to her hospice, air-conditioned cars whizzing by on the hot, black asphalt, the sun reminding us it was a distant cousin of the earthly fires that raged near us. During one of those visits, I affectionately patted her on her back causing her to to double over in pain and then vomit. I was confounded and devastated.

While most people in Western nations today die in hospitals, surrounded by medical staff and clear tubes and beeping machines, our matriarch was brought home in the days leading up to her death. We lived in an apartment complex made of cream-colored bricks, the facade filled with brown metal balcony railings. If I picture it now, I can see its position on a main road in suburban Sydney. Mainly occupied by retirees, I lived with my two brothers, mother and her partner Alfred, in a two-bedroom apartment. It's hard to imagine that it still exists, it's such a world away from my current being. 

When she died, I was in my apartment with my brother and Alfred. Though child, basic human conditioning told me she was about to die. My aunt Sue and mum were at her apartment, whose balcony I could see if I went onto ours. The phone rang, and I answered it. Sue told me gently "Your granny's gone." Jai or Alfred asked me who it was, and I told them "It was Aunty Sue, calling to say that Grandma's dead", and I ran into my room feeling the tears come from my stomach up to my chest and about to explode. It was December 31st, 1993.

In mine and my brother Jai's shared room, we had two wardrobes, painted black and made of cheap, compressed sawdust. We didn't have much money, but perhaps black looked sleek and expensive to a little kid. The wardrobes gradually fell apart: First the door hinge came loose, then the front of the drawers came unstuck, and they couldn't be put back onto their railings. I went to a small space between my cheap black wardrobe and the wall, and cried. Even though I wanted to hide my tears, I remember thinking how odd it was that it came easily, because before then I had never thought about death and sadness and grieving. Alfred took me and Jai to her flat, and I remember crying openly and freely, while the hospice-provided nurse made sympathetic faces at me. I don't know what they did with her body then. I vaguely remember the funeral; I wore a handkerchief in my front pocket because "granny would have liked it", I remember telling my mum.  In his essay for the New York Times (in honor of which I have entitled my own blog post), Tim Kreider writes that beneath all his anxiety around his mother's death he harbored an irrational, kid-like fear, centering around the question who's going to take care of me now? Now, as I think about my mother's mother dying, I wonder if she felt like a grown-up? My partner Topher has said that when his parents are dead, he'll have the stark realization that he's an adult, with all the worldly responsibilities you must shoulder alone. 

So as I read on about death and dying, I've been compelled to email my own mother, and ask her about how she dealt with the death of hers. Life has kept my direct experience with death quite low; the next one might appear in painful, protracted stages, giving me time to "prepare"; or suddenly and unexpectedly, its aftermath reeking of life's whimsical chance. Indeed, it may be my own, whereby I shall have at least had the foresight to understand that it's going to happen to me. 

Maine

Maine, to me, had always been a far-flung eastern state, part of that patchwork of rural North America that included the vast and frigid Quebec, wooded and rural New Hampshire, and liberal and lesbian Vermont.

Therefore, when I had the opportunity to not only spend a week there, but spend it in a beautiful home, set on a hundred fairly undeveloped acres on the Atlantic Coast, I needed no convincing. (Bearing in mind that at the time, I was still on vacation in Caribbean Mexico. Planning a vacation while on a current one: Priceless).

After a red eyes and red-eyed, we arrived at the Portland, Maine, international airport, and were subsequently picked up by Jo, his girlfriend Anne, and a car full of organic food from their farm on the outskirts of Providence, for the two-hour drive north to Penobscot County.

The estate was under the cover of darkness, which can add to the excitement of waking up- what would my surroundings look like in the morning? I remember the first time this occurred, with one of the world's natural wonders, the (Canadian) Rockies. Arriving by shuttle bus into the small town of Banff, Alberta, the naive 19-year-old that I was wondered what the white solid puffs were in the sky. Passing them off as low clouds (perhaps adding to my wonderment and awe of the following morning), I let my curiosity be for the night. Rising in the morning, I was naively surprised and floored by the distant yet intricate, towering but inviting range of mountains that encircled what was my home for the next three months. These morning revelations can only be afforded in nature; the city's omnipresent luminescence illuminates everything to such an extent that we immediately and gradually know what surrounds us.

Opening my eyes the following morning, I was confronted with the sight of the calm Atlantic- protected by Penobscott Bay, and all its little and large islands; deciduous trees, some bare, some red, some yellow, some still clinging to their leaves, in the last hopes of holding onto their heyday, like the party animal who won't accept that the night's over. On top of that, there was a palpable sense of ease, of relaxation, of the need to do ...nothing. There were no usual social or routine cues to get up and start the day- no bus route starting, no commuters walking by, no one else doing anything else. In short, no FOMO- "fear of missing out". The sense that whatever happened would be something you created, and no one was really doing anything else gave me the emancipation I needed to relax and not push myself to be anywhere else. Was this not the true meaning of a vacation? Moving, entirely and wholly, on one's own schedule? I think Maine helped me truly achieve that, if just for a week: living on our body clocks, rising when we wanted to open our eyes and sleeping when the ether of a full belly and contented heart overcame us, and we walked up the wooden staircase, to the landing with the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and went into one of the doors to pull the quilt over us and sleep until we wanted to, our alarm the lapping of the glassy ocean against the dock.

Things to do in Denver when you're dead [or during the Holidays]

My impressions of Denver may have been unfairly pre-formed from my time spent in Banff in the winter of 2002, as a naive nineteen-year-old. I had unknowingly equated this city with that town of 3,000, set among the snowy, craggy rockies of mid-north Alberta. With one thoroughfare, a burgeoning population of seasonal antipodean workers and countless ski lodges, my residual naivete had led me to believe that all Rocky cities were as such.

On approach into the Denver airport, however, the view was more "Great Plains" and than "Rocky Mountains". In this high desert, a patchwork of farmland occupied all peripheries, and the Rockies were but a distant north-south stretch, not the protective ring in which the city were nestled, as I had imagined- a residual Banff ideal. Never having been to either of the wests (mid or wild wild) or "cowboy country", I was naturally inquisitive, excited and ready to explore this "foreign America"- a world away from the liberal San Franciscan enclave

Roxanne (the friend I was visiting) was meeting me at the airport, and we were heading out to celebrate her father, David's, birthday. Curiosity piqued, I expected something mid-western, provincial, Coloradan- maybe a rodeo, stampede or bucking bull competition. Instead, I'd be going to a drag show (his birthday wish, apparently). It's worth mentioning that I grew up in Sydney, the capital of many a (terrible drag show). Looking at the drag queens there, you'd think that all it takes to be a performer is to throw on a sequinned, thrift-store-bought dress, smear on some clownish make-up and unconvincingly lip sync to "I Will Survive" or any number of campy compositions. This theory proved itself not entirely untrue. The four "Demented Divas" mouthed the lyrics (not even to their own voices) to a set of pre-recorded tracks, reworded to the music of popular Christmas carols. Nonetheless, titles such as "Santa Raped Me and I Liked It" and "Do Some Blow", - were performed with sufficient flourish, costumes were decked out with enough jewels and over-the-top kitsch, and lyrics were peppered with enough bolsteringly bitchy comments, which somewhat deflected from the fact that perhaps they weren't so theatrically inclined.

What made my night, however, was being 'randomly' selected by Iona Trailer, a wigged and heeled towering queen, topping the height chart at about six foot six, to come up on stage. I am never one to shy away from the spotlight, so to speak, so when she was trawling the floor for a volunteer I had to fight the urge to raise my hand. When the spotlight fell on me, I acted sufficiently coy that not one of the audience of middle-aged men or their feather-haired female friends would have suspected that I was rearing to go. I was shepherded onto the stage, minimally ridiculed (but sufficiently witty in return), and asked whether or not I thought I looked "pretty enough" when I left the house to come on down to the Clocktower. In case I was worried about my stage look, I need not worry, said she- the demented ones would look after me. With this, I exited stage right into the trusting arms of the production assistant. The aid gave me my garb- a pair of rubber breasts, with a string of pearls attached from armpit to elbow- so when she spread her wings, she soared. The crowning glory was a white, feathered headpiece with a rather heavy swan adorning the top.

Stagehand Rick gave me my choreography: when he said go, I was to gracefully walk out to a certain point on the stage, where the divas would rally around me, making revering and worshiping gestures. After this was an eight-kick dancing girl-type scenario. All very simple, with the main piece of advice being this: Don't stand still and have fun! I certainly took this and ran with it. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. Being part of the finale certainly allayed any of the mediocrity that I had felt about the performance- somewhat narcissistically, it was the most impressive drag performance I had ever witnessed! Roxanne later said to me that she wondered what they had taught me when I was backstage all of those five minutes, because I appeared to genuinely be part of the routine. All I can say is that I must somehow have an innate gift for performing in mid-western holiday-themed lip-synced drag shows.

They ended by getting me back out on stage, make me twirl (which I did with my own flourished curtsy) and giving me an honorary drag name: Betty Swallows. This stuck in the heads of audience members, because waiting in line after the show at the coat check, I got cries of "Is that Betty?" "Hey, Betty!". There was even an autograph request from one devoted fan. Alas- with the drawing of the curtain, the dimming of the lights and disrobing of the divas, Betty's fifteen minutes of fame fizzled, and she went back to plain old Ben. One element of Betty remains within: Ben swallows too.

Black Friday for free

As a coincidental but nontheless satisfying slap in the face to consumerism, my partner in exploration Topher and I decided to choose the day the United States hoped would regenerate its faltering economy- Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year- to explore San Francisco's privately-owned, public (yet little publicized) open spaces.

Those of you to whom that sounds like alliterated jargon, these spaces (otherwise known as POPOS) are in abundance throughout San Francisco. Mostly located downtown, they find themselves at the base or peak of a modern office buildings, malls and banks. City code deems that developers must provide a public access space, thus creating these urban atriums, greenhouses and plazas, many of which are hidden and best explored we found, on the weekend, when the office workers are in the suburbs, food courts empty and the spaces all the more secret.

A copy of the map, some fancy beer from Rainbow Grocery and some chunky-cut cheese and bread, we were on our bikes down heading east on Folsom Street, with our first stop in sight: Crocker Galleria, a high-end shopping mall with an alluring 'obscure staircase' the only access point, the guide said, which would lead us to a sun terrace: the first stop to sip on one of three beers (one for each of our planned stops).
While we thought the weekend would work in our favor, offering us the city's best views with the least crowd, we hadn't counted on the spaces being closed. Due to their locations in buildings primarily serving the nine-to-fivers, a skeleton security staff was on hand to deny us access outside of the regular opening hours. After being refused by an at-first-helpful-but-impatient when-pressed weekend guard , we didn't let our non-discovery of the obscure staircase discourage us. Half a block's wandering led us to a well-signed but completely empty terrace. A place whose refuge from the humdrum of office work would be welcomed, it was complete with lattice, creeping ivy, lovers' seats and, in an earlier hour, sun. The shade made the space chilly but you could see how it could draw you into its warm clutches on a mild San Francisco winter afternoon.
We soldiered on, tourists in our own city. We were determined to find that secret place- the unstumbled across, the place that had the perfect view, so unsigned and seemingly clandestine that it would feel like we weren't supposed to be there, only it was a POPO, so we knew that we could!

Rejection

Having bypassed the "arrive in a city, stay in a hostel, search for an apartment" that so many of us travellers dread yet thrive on at the same time, I considered myself to be blessed. Not only did I not have to trawl Craigslist (CL), trying to gauge distances, safe neighborhoods and good deals, but I landed a neat little one-bedroom in a comfortable, leafy neighborhood perched high up on the City's third-steepest hill, and all this in a place I could never afford had I not been blessed with the good fortune of meeting Mike and Rich. From my balcony (or tower, as I like to think of it- see photo above), I could regard the minions in their fruitless apartment searches, non-response after non-response, being shown dump after overpriced dump, and rejection after rejection.

Which is why it was a shock to me when I became one such lemming. I was one of (as I was soon to find out) the thousands of twentysomethings looking for a reasonably priced apartment in the City of San Francisco.

Thrust into the depths of CL, I scrolled through page after basic-formatted page of apartments. From the cheap ($500 a month for a one-bedroom apartment in the Haight-Ashbury district, unheard of and obviously a scam from someone related to Nigerian royalty) to the completely unattainable ($1500 and more in Duboce Triangle- not surprisingly, the neighborhood I desired most).

Starting my search, I didn't heed the comments or warnings or advice of those who had been through the rental ringer. Ron, a veteran of shifting in San Francisco (eight times in as many years), had advice which I perhaps didn't listen to closely enough- "the best way is to get it through a friend". I should know this. I did share housing in Sydney. I also did it in London, cold-calling, walking in a complete stranger. This was in 2004. The transatlantic rental market seven years ago was nowhere near as cutthroat as today's- back then, an email on gumtree got you an appointment, only one housemate had to be home to certify you weren't crazy, and often the fact that you were antipodean was enough to get the go-ahead to move your Kathmandu backpack in the next day. Of course, you ended up living with cheap drug-loving, hard-partying backpackers and the omnipresent couch dosser, but we all loved it. We didn't care. I remember when I had to go about finding a replacement for my room in Clapham Junction, I placed an ad on gumtree, London's version of Craigslist in the early noughties. After interviewing one person, I asked the remaining housemates (all antipodes) if they wanted to meet him, to which the Kiwi, Bettina, replied "Nah, long as he's not psycho. Just get your bond off 'im and 'e can move in", and went back to showing pictures on her phone of the seven grams of cocaine they'd consumed on Christmas day to disbelieving Australian visitors.

Present day California is all about second interviews, call backs, open houses, "hanging out", "spending time", all so that they let the right one in.
One of the open houses I was cordially invited back to (all that was missing was the gilt-edged posted invitation) took place on a Monday night at 9pm. First, Monday at 9pm isn't my finest hour. In fact, it's usually the time at which I'm in my PJs, ready to light that joint and gaze at the city skyline before settling in to watch a non-committal thirty minutes of "Family Guy" before going to bed.
Instead, I found myself cycling down 14th Street to the Mission, to socialize with some strangers in order to show them that I was the one they wanted to let live in their, 8 x 8 ft, no direct sunlight, soon-to-be-vacant room. All this in a supposedly 'natural' social environment, yet we all knew who was being judged. Luckily for me, I have no trouble being me, and most of the time it works a charm.

When I got there, however, I found two other potential housemates at the dinner table. I immediately felt like I was in an audition for "Big Brother", where the least outgoing would be told that "it's been a really hard decision, and we'd love to choose you all , but..." Not least because one girl, desperate to outshine everyone else (I think her hoop earrings and make-up caked face did that) was agreeing with everything any of the housemates said, from the banal ("OH MY GOD- I love my bathtub too!) to the absurd ("I just want to carve out this pumpkin and stick my head in it and wear it to work too!") I was decidedly apathetic about my approach to the conversation, because I thought "I wouldn't participate in this as a housemate, so why pretend to care at the interview if I won't caress their egos outside of this artificial social gathering?" Plus, the girl was making my skin crawl. (When I told her I was from Sydney, her response, with a slow bobbing of the head, "I'm down.") Being pitted against someone (the likes of her) was not something I cared to subscribe to
So despite my best efforts to convince these people I was their one and only, I received an email from them at midnight saying that it was a "tough decision" (very reality show judge of them) and though they thought I'd be a "great fit" (I'm hearing echoes of "Australian Idol" here), they ended up choosing another candidate. Following this, they extended an offer to "hang out soon".

Excuse me while I vomit into this bowl of nail clippings I'm going to send you.

I am baffled- if they chose the obnoxious Big Brother wannabe over me, does that mean that I should don hoop earrings and a circa-2000 era Jennifer Lopez cap? Because that's apparently what it takes to get a room in this city.

No, no- give me an overpriced, undersized room in London with a bunch of two-pound-a-pill-loving Aussies and Kiwis any day. At least when they say "I love you", you'll know they mean it. Until the morning.

Little Gems

Craigslist is full of them. From "Guy wearing no underwear in Starbucks- I enjoyed watching your dick flop around" to "Seeking naked housemate for reduced rent", they provide hours of entertainment and you feel like you're missing out by not being able to see all these things happen live. Looking through the apartment listing, I came across this gem:

I am looking for a chill open-minded guy to share a studio with. It's a small space. No privacy. I am willing share the space with two guys if necessary. Basically, just wanting someone short term who wants to save money. I have a one eyed cat. Please be cool with nudity and I often wear a Godzilla mask and shove random objects up my ass. You'll have to be okay with that.

And below, there was a picture of someone wearing a dinosaur mask that looked like it had been made for a child's school project.

I actually emailed the ad. Here is the copied email:

So, I'm wondering what kind of objects you are talking about? I'm okay
with anything up to the same girth as a baseball bat. But anything
wider than that might make me a little uncomfortable. Okay, maybe I
could budge and say no wider than an average-sized head. Then things
start to get weird.

Unfortunately I received an email back from the "mailer daemon" (does anyone ever wonder why they don't just spell it "demon"?) saying the listing was no longer active. I really would like to meet the strange individual who posted it.

Songs to fuck to

Put simply, a slutty porn track with what was at its time, a break-all-the-rules music video, "Justify My Love" serves as a track that can make even the most sexually shackled Stepford wife morph into Jenna Jameson. Hearing the synthesizer's alluringly floating tones brings me back to my childhood, when I knew I wanted to have sex with men but didn't know if it was allowed. Thanks to 90s Madonna, millions of little boys were taught it was okay to flaunt your sexuality.