now.  I don't stay here enough, in now.  These entries get more philosophical (away from now) as I get closer to core emotions (the absolute now).  I'm going to make some spaghetti, and I am getting uncomfortably close to the origins of my lifetime issues.

Last night, Joan brought me to her house to install some software, and then took me out to eat.  An interesting thing occurs when I am in a social setting; I cease to exist.  This occurs more when I am among a group of friends but still happens even when I am half of a party of two, like last night.  I was deliberately making the things I wanted unimportant. 

Joan:  "Do you want a cold drink?"

Me:  "No, thanks." 

Joan:  "Are you sure you don't want a nice Pepsi, or something?"

Me:  "Thanks, but no, I'm fine."  Joan is such a sweetheart, she evaluates my needs better than I do myself.  We had this exchange at least twice, with the same outcome, even though the coffee the waitress brought was old and barely drinkable, and I was thirsty besides. 

And the clams.  I was expecting dozens of little whole clams, the kind I loved from fried clam fests of the past down on the Cape and in Boston.  Instead, they presented me with about ten enormous clams, each about the size of a yo-yo.  I said, "Oh, they're perfect."  I lied.  My point is this:  When I am in public, I choose to keep concealed my true reactions as if I don't matter. 

Then there was the busboy.  He was about 17, wearing a T-shirt with the restaurants logo, a big smiling fish.  Joan had been asking me about the shirt I was wearing which depicted sealions frolicking underwater, and just then the busboy came nearby to clean the table next to ours.  Joan made a comment to him about the fish on his shirt, and he responded in a friendly way, adding sheepishly, "They make me wear it while I'm at work."  I really wanted to chat with him.  I didn't want to have sex with him, I just wanted us to talk a bit because he's a boy—a vulnerable boy—and that's a life I was never allowed to live.  I went directly from being five years old, to being Superman. 

 so, you see, it's easier (I think) to stay non-existent, to not acknowledge how you really feel, because it's only going to hurt if you do. 

 now.  It is dusk, the sky is a dark-bright blue, fading from almost starry-dark in the East, to a bright pastel against the horizon in the West, which somehow reminds me of the ocean.

I read an article today which very articulately states my predicament; it expresses with spooky precision the emotional state I have found myself in since I chose to stop the cocktail.  Unmasking HIV says a hell of a lot, so much in fact that I will have to reread it several times before I hear everything it says.  I have made it my brower's homepage. 

"Clinging to a surrogate parent, six-month old Kongo arrived at Mpassa scarred by machete wounds and infested with mites.  He bit caretakers and shied from other gorillas.  But, like most of the orphans... Kongo has regained his health and discovered his position in the gorilla social order." 

And I don't know if this picture fits in right here, but looking at it right now makes me cry, maybe because it represents a place I have been—a place we all have been—small and scared.  The picture appeared in a National Geographic article on orphan gorillas. 

If his story didn't have a happy ending, I don't think I would have allowed my heart to be moved by the image of this terrified baby.  It would have been too much.  It is me.

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