Careening into Gay Midlife

By James Daniel

Careening into Gay Midlife is the journey of a man who drags into his adulthood the unfulfilled dreams of his adolescence. Though challenged with limited social skills and a tentative grip on reality, he snakes his way around betrayals and misunderstandings from one side of the United States to the other. Magical and mystical events grab our adventurer by the seat of his pants, dragging him through the tunnels of a mental institute to an AIDS hospice, kicking him into the new century and changing his view of life from dark to light.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098367619

James Daniel

James and Fran Daniel chose to live a life that was from another time and is foreign to modern Americans. James Daniel could have easily lived in the 1850s, ‘60s, and ‘70s – maybe more so than the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s. James and Fran lived liked pioneers. They didn’t have much, but made-do with what they had. They lived off the land and raised and cared for their livestock, James broke and trained cutting horses, and they named every animal that they owned. They had four boys and raised them to love creation, but more than that, the Creator.

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© James Daniel.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN: 978-1-09836-760-2 (printed)

ISBN: 978-1-09836-761-9 (eBook)

for

Ed and Dale Keegan

Chapters

PART ONE - Idiotic Frescoes

CHAPTER 1 - As the Gum Falls

CHAPTER 2 - Gorman

CHAPTER 3 - Not Enough Holes

CHAPTER 4 - Splat

CHAPTER 5 - I Want My Astrology

CHAPTER 6 - Falling Fallow

CHAPTER 7 - Spilling Spirits on the Material

CHAPTER 8 - The Year of Living Metaphysically

CHAPTER 9 - Under the Lip of the Jar

CHAPTER 10 - The Year of Living Viscerally

CHAPTER 11 - Smeared Hindsight

CHAPTER 12 - Sexcrimes

CHAPTER 13 - Royal Treatment

CHAPTER 14 - More Yung for the Buck

CHAPTER 15 - Frankie Say Relax

CHAPTER 16 - One Week in Bangkok

CHAPTER 17 - More Buck for the Bang

CHAPTER 18 - Popping the E String

CHAPTER 19 - The Unheard Beat

CHAPTER 20 - Swings in the Wind

CHAPTER 21 - Holding Back the House

CHAPTER 22 - Contraindications

CHAPTER 23 - The Sole Penguin at the North Pole

CHAPTER 24 - Frisco Revisited

CHAPTER 25 - Swimming in a Milky Way

CHAPTER 26 - Rain that Failed to Fall

CHAPTER 27 - Frozen Bubbles

CHAPTER 28 - Between the Windmills

CHAPTER 29 - Bizarre Triangle

CHAPTER 30 - The Future Works

CHAPTER 31 - Don’t Drop Ashes When the Snow Turns Blue

CHAPTER 32 - Rodeo Fun

CHAPTER 33 - Farewell Blue Sky

CHAPTER 34 - Impermanent Waves

CHAPTER 35 - Reckoning and Beckoning

PART TWO - Straddling the Centuries

CHAPTER ONE -- Resurfacing

CHAPTER TWO -- The In-Between Land

CHAPTER THREE -- Tower Revisited

CHAPTER FOUR -- Reinstatement

CHAPTER FIVE -- The Scythe Swung Twice (Okay, Maybe Thrice)

CHAPTER SIX -- Vroom, Vroom ... Boom! (Life in the Fast Lane Without a Car)

CHAPTER SEVEN -- The Girl in the Wing

CHAPTER EIGHT -- What Edward Taught Me

CHAPTER NINE -- Roadkill on Ninth Street

CHAPTER TEN -- Barry and Babs and Chris and Jane

CHAPTER ELEVEN -- The Politician in Leather Pants

CHAPTER TWELVE -- In the House of the Epidemic

CHAPTER THIRTEEN -- Night Visitor

CHAPTER FOURTEEN -- The Boy from Baltimore

CHAPTER FIFTEEN -- Day of the Golden Lizard

PART ONE -

Idiotic Frescoes

CHAPTER 1 -

As the Gum Falls

My gums fell off my teeth today...well...not the top teeth, just the bottom ones. I got myself together enough this morning to brush my teeth, only to find in the mirror the awful sight of fallen gums. At first, I thought my imagination was running amok again; for only a few months ago, I was walking on the moon from having a bad reaction to an antipsychotic drug my psychiatrist had prescribed. The songwriter Jimmy Webb certainly composes truth in his lyrics: The moon is a harsh mistress...though she looks as warm as gold...the moon can be so cold...the sky is made of stone. I first heard that tune on a Linda Ronstadt album from the early Eighties, the same album for which she received negative reviews because her vocals were electronically altered to mask some off-key singing. Thanks for the warning, Mr. Webb; I’m going to stay far away from the moon, as best I can, from here on out.

Fortunately, a nurse named Georgia was there for me the night of my scary moonwalking, when I was living in the main house of this mental institute. She held my hand so that I could remain somewhat tethered to Earth. I realized Georgia was an angel when I first encountered her upon my arrival here, near the end of 1990. This non-conformist Northern California mental hospital in the middle of Wine Country has been my home for almost half a year now. God only knows what I would have done if I hadn’t met Georgia my first night here. I wasn’t able to be alone for a minute back then. My world had fallen away in one brief moment and I could no longer cope on my own. Panic attacks, flashbacks, and unbearable psychic pain were near-constant and so all-consuming that even the most basic functions--eating, bathing, changing clothes--were excruciatingly challenging. Georgia slept in a bed next to me that first night. She pushed two twin beds together and held my hand until I fell asleep. Georgia assured me I was going to be all right, but I didn’t believe her. I didn’t remove any of my clothes (refusing even to take off my down jacket) for three whole days.

Georgia left about a month ago. She liked to tell me about her desire to go live alone in the middle of the desert somewhere in New Mexico. The first few weeks I was here, I begged her, Please don’t leave just yet! I suppose she was in her sixties. She was diminutive with blue-grey hair. Georgia’s main goal in life was to retire. Fortunately, by the time of her departure, I had transferred my dependence upon her to a stuffed animal that I found in the big padded room they have at the main house. I was allowed to keep the furry thing for myself. I named him Cal (short for California). He is a black and white cow. I take him almost everywhere with me, even into the bathroom. When Georgia left, she gave me a black-and-white yin-yang earring of hers for Cal to wear. I pierced the lobe of his left ear. He didn’t mind too much. He loves wearing the earring. (Cal believes he looks very hip.)

Thankfully, the ocean of tears that daily roared from my eyes had subsided by the time Georgia made her grand exit. I miss her so much. Her motherly, unconditional love was something I had never before experienced from any woman. I still have crying jags, but they’re not as bad as they were when they first started. Panic attacks are my main concern these days. I’m afraid I won’t be able to function in the real world once I leave this place.

********************

A few days after my arrival, I was introduced to the staff psychiatrist. Interrupting me as I was telling him my history, he labeled me with a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. I said, What? I can’t possibly have post-traumatic stress. I’ve never been to Vietnam.

Ol’ Razor Lips (that’s my secret name for him, my own invention, because his lips are so thin they’re practically nonexistent) said, Believe me, if half the things you told me about the abuse you endured at the hands of your family and peer group are true, then I would be shocked were you to live out your life without eventually falling ill to the travails of post-traumatic stress. (Or at least...that’s what I think he said. I don’t always understand him. Razor Lips’ language gravitates toward the dramatic.)

I banged down my fists on the arms of the chair I was sitting in. I told him, I minored in psychology in college, and the only reference to post-traumatic stress I ever read was connected with war. Why didn’t anyone tell me this could happen? Why wasn’t I warned? How was I supposed to know? If I knew, I could have made different choices. I could have created better safety nets around me. I would have prepared, so I wouldn’t have ended up in a place like this! I was fuming. My diaphragm was twisting into a tight Gordian knot. I bit my lower lip so hard it bled.

********************

Right before my breakdown, I thought my struggle of living for thirty-two years was finally paying off. I was living in a one-bedroom apartment with a spectacular view overlooking Lake Union, in the Queen Anne section of Seattle. I had never lived in a more beautiful place. At night, the boats paraded around the lake all lit up like Christmas trees, every night of the week. As a child, back in my hometown on the Jersey Shore, I witnessed such beauty only one night per year. The event in southern Jersey was called Night in Venice. Usually occurring near the end of July, the evening was a big tourist attraction. Boats, lit up with Christmas lights, paraded by the docks of the bay. Candy was thrown from the boats to joyous spectators standing on the wooden planks of the piers. In Seattle, the magical aquatic spectacle (minus the candy) happened every night of every week.

I had a glorious deejay job in Seattle at a humongous bar, Timberline. So great a manifestation of pulchritude was Timberline that the city named it an official landmark. To change the bar in any way was against city ordinance. Timberline looked more like a temple than a bar. The building was formerly a Sons of Norway meeting hall, with vaulted ceilings, ornate interior columns, and a magnificent wall-to-wall wooden dance floor. The country-western dancers were exquisite, of great skill and flair. The sight of men dancing together, arm-in-arm, was pure bliss.

In the mighty Northwest, the indigenous peoples’ artwork--the ruddy wood carvings and colorful totem poles--delighted and inspired me. I was living out my dream of being in the same places that were portrayed in David Lynch’s TV series Twin Peaks. I couldn’t imagine how life could be any better. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Going up to Snoqualmie to breathe in the mist of the waterfall filled up every one of the starving, empty crevices of my psyche. Going down to Puget Sound to feel the wet sting of sea air in my face, I would close my eyes and let the wind transport me beyond time, beyond space, to a nonexistent place with no name, where all my senses were alive beyond measure with ecstatic joy that vitalized my entire being. But then, in one moment, without warning, my heaven of a Seattle turned into a place of hellacious torment. The backlog of emotions I had held back for thirty-two years flooded out of me like an angry, violent tsunami.

Happening on the day of a full moon, while cleaning the living room of my prized apartment, my knees buckled in a split second, for no reason, as what flowed from my eyes covered the floor. I cried never-ending tears as I crawled from one room to another. Even though, just moments before, I was enjoying the rarity of a cloudless Seattle day, everything around me was quickly turning dark, gloomy, threatening, and more and more horrific. I looked out from the glass door of my balcony onto the lake below. What had previously been peaceful and delightful now looked turbulent and dangerous. The water that had been a beautiful blue now looked like wet charcoal. Yet, with not a cloud in sight, the sun was still shining; only now, the light was, inexplicably, shining through a filter of lugubrious darkness, rendering my surroundings a terrifying chiaroscuro.

I had no idea what was happening. I couldn’t find an explanation. What had been real was now unreal. I was more scared than I had ever been. I switched on the television in an attempt to reorient my senses, to shift myself back to some normality. However, the talk show that appeared on the screen provided no relief. I couldn’t focus my eyes. When I closed them, I saw a chaotic, kaleidoscopic vision of purples and indigoes. The cyclone within me wouldn’t stop seizing up inside my guts, past my heart, and through my eyes. I chanted to myself, Whatever it is, it’ll stop eventually. No one cries forever. No one can cry forever. I’ll eventually cry myself out and then I’ll be able to figure out what has happened to me. By nightfall, my tears were still flowing. They soaked my pillow, top to bottom, and flowed into my mattress until I finally fell into unconsciousness.

In the morning, I awoke to the sound of someone banging on my bedroom window--probably my crusty old landlady, once again making known her negative opinion of the makeshift cardboard curtains that I had put up to keep the morning light from invading my bedroom. (Working nights, I didn’t want the sun to wake me up too early.) I was happy that I had stopped crying, but still, under my blanket, I was shaking. I wasn’t shaking because I felt cold. I was shaking because I couldn’t stop shaking. Unfortunately, not much time passed before the rising tide of emotion welled up in me once again. I thought I should call someone. I needed help. I wasn’t accustomed to asking for help. What I was accustomed to was being independent.

********************

Having been living in Seattle for only a few months, the only person I had talked to at any length was my boss at Timberline. We weren’t on the best terms. He was a perfectionist, and he was a drug user (not the softer, fun kind of drug user, but the hardcore, speed freak kind of drug user). He always looked good at the bar, well put together on the outside: tall, thin, suave, and slick. But, oh, how his outside perfection was betrayed by the mess inside him. I hated when he came into the deejay booth at work to complain about the treble being too bright or the bass not being loud enough. He seemed unable to speak at normal volume. He always screamed when he spoke. My boss certainly wasn’t someone in whom I would confide about my personal problems.

********************

Summoning up my courage, I made a phone call on the second day of my disaster. I phoned one of my previous employers from San Francisco, Tara. When I had said goodbye to Tara as I left San Francisco for Seattle, she had told me to call her if I ran into any trouble. Boy, was I in trouble. My hand was trembling as I picked up the receiver. My first attempt ended up a wrong number, but my second attempt went through. Tara wasn’t home. I left a message asking her to call me back as soon as possible. I was supposed to show up to work at the bar that night. I didn’t know how I was going to be in any condition to deejay.

Tara called me back in the afternoon. She said, You sound like you’re in bad shape. If I were you, I’d seek professional help immediately. I hung up and flipped through the psychiatrist section of the Yellow Pages. I kept calling doctors until I found one who was willing to see me immediately. I had a new Toyota four-wheel-drive truck, black with silver streaks on the sides, but I was in no shape to get behind the wheel. I called a taxi. The driver seemed to be very agitated. He was gruff, unshaven, unkempt, and he drove recklessly, far above the speed limit.

The psychiatrist, Dr. Poote, had an unhealthy-looking pallor. He was obese. A messy array of too many cigarette butts was in the ashtray on his desk. The dirty butts spilled over the ashtray’s edges onto the desk’s blotter. He told me I was just depressed. Poote didn’t seem to be overly concerned about my condition. He gave me some Valium to calm my nerves. I was able to make it to work that night, but my boss was in his usual foul mood. He told me I looked like crap. When he burst into the deejay booth, he told me the timing of my mixing was off. He bellowed, If you’re not on point tomorrow, you’ll be free to look for employment elsewhere.

I wasn’t on point the following night. I cried and shook through the evening. In the morning, I talked to Tara again. She told me to come back to San Francisco, to stay with her for a few days, to sort out what was happening and make a rational plan of action. I was extremely grateful for Tara’s help.

********************

My first meeting with Tara had been when we were taking the same television production course taught at San Francisco Community College. Tara was loud and formidable, with a lion’s mane of red hair. She wasn’t afraid to confront the instructor with opinions that differed widely from his. But to me, Tara was approachable, fun, and friendly. We were mutually drawn to each other. She recruited me to be her assistant for an original play of hers that she was producing at a local Protestant church. After the production’s run, she hired me to work at her herb shop in the Haight section of town. Working there was quite an education for me. I found out a lot about the medicinal uses of herbs. Tara knew a lot about many things, both professional and domiciliary. I was so glad and grateful she figured out a way to be both my boss and my friend.

********************

On the plane from Seattle to San Francisco, I talked to a girl who sat next to me. The darkness that had shrouded me in Seattle disappeared as the plane rose above the clouds. The girl looked like she was in her late teens. Listening to the problems she was having with her father was a distraction I was happy to hear; I was able to forget my own problems for a long hour. What a relief to feel sorry for someone other than myself. She kept wiping back behind her ears the hair that fell on her face. Her voice cracked and her eyes watered, but no tears fell. When the flight landed, I wished her well. As I said farewell, I told her everything was going to be okay as I said farewell.

Tara met me inside San Francisco International. She gave me a hug, which I desperately needed. I must have looked like a homeless person. I hadn’t eaten much and I hadn’t washed or shaved since the day I first broke down in my living room.

Tara drove me to her apartment and threw me into her bathtub. At first, the water in the tub felt soothing. The next thing I knew, I was punching the surface of the water with my fists, screaming out loud, It’s too hot, it’s too hot! I was having a flashback. I didn’t understand what was happening at the time. Though I was alone in the bathroom, I was reliving an oft-repeated abuse from the past when my hysterically irate mother would call me filthy and force me into a bath of scalding hot water. (My father never came to my rescue. He preferred getting drunk and passing out on the couch.) In Tara’s tub, I was no longer in present time; I was back in my mother’s scalding hot water.

Tara’s big, brawny husband, Shawn, busted into the bathroom and pulled me out of the tub. I curled up in a fetal position, naked on the cold, bare, white-tiled floor. My ocean broke through again in a torrent of tears. The next thing I knew, Tara gave me some alcohol to drink--some kind of whiskey I guess. Choking it down, I didn’t care that I was destroying ten years of sobriety. She wrapped me in a blanket and took me to her brown, soft-leather sofa. I dropped onto the worn leather and quickly fell unconscious, drifting off into oblivion. The following day, Shawn drove me to Gutter Ranch Institute, where I am now. Tara knew someone who used to work here. Shawn told me not to worry, and that, if need be, he would go up to Seattle to retrieve my truck.

Being here at Gutter Ranch has been a rough ride. I’ve been the psychiatrist’s guinea pig; from anti-depressant medication to anti-anxiety medication, to anti-psychotic medication that had me walking on the moon, nothing helped much. Ultimately, the psychiatrist tried Lithium on me. He said he didn’t think I was bipolar, but he had run out of drugs to try on me. Lithium has helped me stabilize better than anything else Ol’ Razor Lips has thrown at me. The flashbacks and panic attacks aren’t as extreme as they were before the Lithium. I can now ride out the panic attacks without thinking that something immediately must be done to prevent some new catastrophe from striking me down.

They’ve moved me into a cabin on the edge of the ranch in this strange little town called Geyserville. Geyserville! If only! I haven’t seen any geysers around here. There isn’t much water anywhere to be found among all the dust, dried-out weeds, and rattlesnakes. Only a few days ago, I finally found the stream of water Georgia had told me about, the stream full of little crawdaddies. I hope she has found the desert life in New Mexico that she was seeking, and that living there is all she thought it would be. If there was one person I met here who was worthy of my trust, that one person was Georgia. Finding the stream filled with what looked like little lobsters gave me hope that when Georgia said she knew I was going to be all right, perhaps she really knew what she was talking about. Perhaps now I can safely believe her prediction.

Living in this cabin on the edge of the institute’s property gives me a lot more freedom to roam along the outskirts of the grounds. Ol’ Razor Lips thought that living in a cabin would be a good way for me to transition from the institute to the outside world. In a few weeks, I’ll be living in a halfway house in San Francisco. The halfway house is affiliated with Gutter Ranch in some way. (At least that’s what I’ve been told.) Other than seeing my psychiatrist, the only contact I have with anyone else here happens when I go to breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the dining hall down the embankment from the main house. If I regress too much at any time, I’m allowed to go back to the main house. But that hasn’t happened yet, and I don’t plan on it happening. I want to get out of here.

The temperature falls fast after sundown in the cabin, but I much prefer the cold to the heat of the greenhouse effect in the many-windowed main building. The blazing, unforgiving sun that makes the grapes grow here in Sonoma County just makes me want to shrivel up. My cabin has neither a television nor a radio. Luckily, I have a project to work on to keep myself focused during my few remaining weeks here. Ol’ Razor Lips became so sick of hearing my complaints about guilt over having a breakdown up in Seattle that he told me to review my personal history, to become more conscious of the life choices made that I now regret. That way (if nothing else), I’ll be less likely to repeat the same mistakes in the future. I’ve been putting off the task, but seeing my lower teeth without gums has given me the incentive to put my nose to the grindstone. I’ve got to get out of here so I can see my dentist.

********************

I’m not going to review my entire life, as the first two-thirds of my life seemed very much out of my control. I was running on instinct and intuition. I was too busy surviving to have the luxury of making conscious decisions of my own. Only in the last decade was I unencumbered enough to make choices from a variety of options. In the Eighties, I became heady with my newfound sense of freedom. I made choices aplenty--too many, too quickly, not giving myself time for reflection. Having too much of an adventure, skiing too fast downhill, past the trees to the right and left of me, I didn’t notice signs of danger until I hit the huge, invisible-to-me, redwood tree right in front of me. Now there will be no more skiing anytime soon.

********************

My inventory of regrets will begin with my first big choice of moving three states away from my first lover near the end of 1980, right before the election that brought in more than a decade of Republican presidents. I had kissed the Seventies goodbye while singing along to the Village People song Ready For the Eighties. I believed in the jubilant lyrics I’m ready for the Eighties...ready for the time of my life. When my remorse set in during the winter months of 1981, I was singing the desperate refrain of The Clash’s song Lose This Skin. My heart ached for my ex-lover, even though I was the one who left him (because I had no idea how to deal with his escalating drug problem). I’ve got to lose this skin I’m imprisoned in became my mantra. Hey, maybe my gums falling off my teeth is the manifestation of those very words. If so, I don’t think that song was one of my better choices for my personal jukebox. What’s it like to be so free...so free it looks like lost to me? Good Lord, what else was I listening to and singing about back then? Now my receding gum condition is just another issue for me to address. I hope my old dentist is still in practice. Actually, dealing with a physical problem will be a welcome relief from dealing with my emotional problems.

My highest desire for a new life after I leave this place is to go down to the ocean whenever I can, to build sandcastles on the beach, and then to return home and send postcards to everyone I left behind on the East Coast--the ones I left behind in my haste, the very ones I now so dearly miss. On every postcard, I’ll be sure to include, Wish I were there. I miss the Atlantic Ocean so much. I’m sorry Pacific Ocean, you just don’t compare. The Atlantic is wild and seething with energy, while the Pacific of Northern California, in comparison, is much more like a calm lake. The Atlantic is a feral animal; the Pacific is a domesticated one.

Well, that’s enough...too much actually. I’m starting to panic. I’m stopping now to breathe and feel my feet on the ground. Tomorrow I’ll pick up my fallen heart and dig a little deeper, to pull out the roots of what I’ve left behind. Hopefully, writing down the events of the last decade will help me paste together the scattered pieces of my shattered being, so that I’ll be capable of living as a whole person for the first time in my life.

CHAPTER 2 -

Gorman

I had a mild surprise today at breakfast. Gorman asked to sit next to me. A bit reluctantly, I nodded my head and shrugged my shoulders. Expecting him to relate another one of his stories about how well he knew the members of the band R.E.M. (which he loved to tell anyone who would listen), I braced myself for another boring story. However, what came out of his mouth was nothing less than an apology.

Gorman is a Bioenergetic therapist, having been schooled in the ways of Alexander Lowen. We had done experiential work together in the padded room. I had funneled my anger into beating pillows and mattresses in the padded room until my knuckles bled. After Gorman would signal that our session was over, I would follow him back to the main house where he would bandage my fingers. This routine was repeated every Tuesday, week after week. Gorman was okay, just not very warm.

When Gorman told me at breakfast that he was sorry he allowed his homophobia to get in the way of being a more effective therapist, I choked a little on the scrambled eggs I was eating. I swallowed down a bit of water and said, Gorman, you don’t need to apologize to me. You are a good therapist, well qualified to work with anyone. I never felt any type of animosity from.... I stopped talking because it looked to me as if Gorman’s eyes were starting to water.

What I’ve never told Gorman is that when I first noticed him, he reminded me of my first lover, the same lover I left ten years plus a few months ago. Leaving Griff may have been my first big