Busy week. Noonish now, will soon be packing up for Dottie’s. Bringing her the shrimp boil and cocktail sauce I just made. Cleaning shrimp is more laborious than I remembered, not that I’ve done this that much. (These are medium-sized, fresh and wild-caught, from Wegman’s, which Dottie didn’t think had them but believed Whole Foods did—but then WF didn’t when I went there the other day.) Yesterday morning, Tuesday, I took the BMT down to Dottie’s neighborhood to pick up a bottle of Prosecco I’d pre-ordered at Astor, and the shrimp at Wegman’s, if they truly existed, and they did, in abundance. Then walked up to Bellevue where I was scheduled for a pulmonary test, as part of the WTC program. Tall negro had me hold a big hard white plastic nipple between my teeth and inhale then exhale quickly. I got the idea I wasn’t exhaling enough. That was done inside a booth with a ventilator hose leading up to the nipple dingus. Then I sat outside in a chair and tried to “breathe normally,” which gets harder when you are told to do it. Then back to the seat in the booth, with the suck in and blow routine. All in all, far less complicated than I expected for this appointment. Done in less than a half-hour, and we started early. Downstairs in their vast lobby I spoke to a fellow at a MetroHealth table, selling health insurance. I told him how I can’t seem to get any health insurance, because I don’t have Medicare Part B and don’t want to pay for it. I said my husband had Part B and didn’t pay for it. The fellow said people on Medicaid can get Part B without paying. I said I didn’t think my husband had Medicaid. Then, a long walk up First Ave., across 29th St to Third, long wait for a bus, which was the 103. Didn’t stop at 57th St because no one pushed the button, so I got off at 60th. Back home, where Charlie Papp again wished my Happy New Year, though it was New Year’s Eve, because it was his very last day. My favorite concierge. Says he was there 30 years, which isn’t much more than I’ve been here. Carlos will have his morning shift. Could be a lot worse.
I’d made up my mind to get a little sloshed and not go out again after buying a pint at Shirley’s. Which I did, downing half of it in an hour or two. Also took out the boo box and fiddled with the torch, which wouldn’t light. I thought to test the other one, still in its bubble-wrap (when did Moki get this? around 2011?), and once dosed with butane, it worked like the devil. The old one’s sort of clogged. I sat down in the living room, sipped a drink, and smoked little bowls with no unpleasant tremors or other problems. My hands shake a little this morning, though. I saw that while trying to peel the shrimp. Hungover, then, but not too badly…
….Back now after 6:30, on a night that promises to turn quite cold but wasn’t bad on the trips to the subway. Dottie delighted with the shrimp and my sauce, and so was I. Alas, she prepared an enormous repast, plying me with a huge plate of spinach, cooked radiccio, angel hair, a gorgonzola raviolo, a mysterious ragout made of pepperoni, steak, tomato…a dip of mashed red lentils with chips made of sweet potato skins, baked…all followed by a big hunk of pear cobbler. I could only nibble. Lots of red Argentine wine and my Prosecco.
We watched some Chead videos, all made with the Doug Kirby slant, so that he includes what he thinks are the funniest and most outlandish. I was quite thin and fetching when young, with shiny black collar-length hair. (Dottie liked my current hair, leaving the shock of grey at the part and temple, very mature and sophisto. Didn’t think I should go really dark again; it’s been hovering between light and medium brown the past few years.) Dottie brought an HBO rep to the Westbank once, having whetted the rep’s appetite with some sample clips, but on the night in question the live skits and videos were too cerebral, not as broad as the showreel, so no sale there.
Dottie with her ‘tree’ this evening, New Year’s
We talked about the weather. Dottie was alerted to something called a “polar vortex” coming down from Canada, which will turn much of the nation into an icebox in a few days. Not here, I believe, though perhaps a snowstorm after the weekend. Subzero temperatures in the north-middle parts of the country, and unseasonable cold as far south as Miami. (All I can think about with the weather is how miserable it’s going to be with the next nruns 5k on Sunday. A blessedly short shift; I don’t need to show up at CP till 4am. But the last two, one there and one in PP, were impossibly chill, with my hands feeling frostbitten within a half-hour. It appears Grace is away, and Katie will have the Nissan van. There was a thank you, good year, email from Steve L, mentioning again that an old stalwart who’s been helping to manage the races from the beginning, is saying goodbye. He didn’t give the name before, but this time he says Geoff, which rather limits the choices. I really liked him, one of the knowledgeable linchpins, rather roly-poly now but apparently a serious runner 15 years ago. As so many of us were. He’s actually a year younger than I. My mind wanders off to speculating whether my tiny billet could ever turn into a full-time job soon enough for it to matter. Regardless, I must find more work in the next week. Pull out all stops. Do Iggy strips, push out the begging bowl. Beg for a shit job at Home Depot. Even call Regis, who’s always a job but has the most gawdawful useless temp agency I’ve ever seen.)
Also talked about the St. James Monkey Sanctuary, which I visited on a very bitter and sunny Sunday one January in 1982. Dottie kept demanding to know where on Long Island this was. No, nowhere near Montauk, not the Hamptons, but way out there in Suffolk, toward the north shore of the Island. I didn’t explain to her the whole weird personal story of the Kwartas, but did say that I drove out there with Boylan and a photographer whose name I have forgotten. Somehow the subject of monkeys segued into Sea Monkeys, and I told her the Harold von Braunhut story, what I knew of it. All news to her. I read her the Wiki article and sent her the NYT obit. She never had Sea Monkeys, but did have one of his other fabulous notions, the X-Ray Spex. Another revelation to her was the origin of amyl nitrate, which she was introduced to at a club by some Florida gay guys some 40 years ago. They’d dampen a handkerchief and sniff it. She couldn’t remember the name of the potion. I suggested amyl, and she said that was it. Poppers, I explained, prescribed for heart trouble. They were ampules you broke and sniffed when heart spasms were coming on. But the male gay world took them up back in the day and soon they didn’t need the poppers per se, they got the breathable fluid and put it into little canisters or inhaland pendants. Only it’s illegal for normal sale for many years, so what you had (I said) was probably butyl nitrate, like the little bottles of RUSH, which she remembered seeing around head shops. The background of poppers was all news to her. Googling some medical papers, we found the stuff was invented about 1850, and became popular in the gay club world around 1970, when it was thought to enhance the intensity of orgasm, particularly in receptive anal intercourse. A few medical papers from the 80s, drawing a possible connection between amyl and Kaposi’s sarcoma cases (a paper from ’82), or HIV infection (later papers). I told her I first had amyl from an inhaler in 1971, and it always made me cough. Of course I couldn’t tell her the details of this. She was amazed not only that it had been around so long, but that already common more than 10 years before she tried it, or tried a substitute at least.
I’m looking at the Barry Landau book, big and red, no DJ, on the storage trunk in front of me in the nook. Grimm brought it by a few nights ago…was it Sunday? Gift-wrapped. It’s really superbly done. I’d only briefly thumbed through it before, probably at Borders or some such. I fear this will end up at the Strand or the Jap place. Another Christmas gift he brought me, not entirely new, was this strange glass device, a sort of vaporizer with a sealed glycerin filter you’re supposed to freeze so your smokables will be tasty and cool. I can’t test it out because it needs a USB-C Mini cable, such as supposedly came in the box but got lost when G unpacked it. This is the second time he’s come by. He was here before Christmas. (Calendar check: a week before; it was December 18th.) We worked out the purchase of some boo, 3 balls evenly divided, my share of which I am smoking again as I sit here. It must be weak stuff, doesn’t fire me up to mania or take me to the brink of anxious paranoia (which would probably really indicate poisonous adulterants; I’ve seen this, many years past, with bad coke). G now living way out in Brooklyn, Brownsville, approximately, with a negroid partner. Speaking of which, he tells me that Tony, Tony with the funny hats, is long gone with HIV.
G seems stable and sane, and I believe his story that it was Moki who was the aggressor on the night of the knives, February 2013. He was quite overbearing. Out of loyalty to Moki, and anger at G for having cut him up so badly, I hadn’t seen him since 2013, certainly would not have invited him over here within the first year of Moki’s death.
For a little while there, after G’s first visit, I was smoking boo every day. Maybe three days straight. And I was beginning to hallucinate. Moki Mouse was moving, breathing. Creatures under the bedclothes. Voices at the door. Someone in the bathroom. I was actually lying in bed for much of this, hitting a few bowls a day though I knew it was very bad for me, and kept me from working. The stuff focuses your mind on nothingness. I had some really good insights on Orwell, NEF included, back in 2019 when Moki had a ball from Jeffrey Brando. But writing was almost impossible because I had to redo every sentence 46 times.
Next day after this last G visit, I had to go to Coliseum. I worried a bit about boo residue showing up on my teeth. I had another cleaning, but not a deep cleaning, which I am told I need (new hygienist). And the dentist in attendance, a friendly Chinaman, went on to tell me that I’d need extractions, basically upper back, both sides. My own thought is that the left side can probably wait five years. I was upset at the front desk to discover that Delta is again trying to deny coverage of some trifle, so that I owe another $30 or $50 copay. Back in 2013 I was outraged when they didn’t pay for any of the $4500 periodontal work, because the claim went in during the blank period between my Amex coverage and my continuation policy (was that COBRA or separate?). I did get them to cover half eventually, but felt I’d been sold a bill of goods by Irene, Lupavici the periodontist, their front desk, and Delta.
Jimmy Carter died yesterday. So sweet and sanctimonous, one does not want to be churlish about his failures and his gullibility and vindictiveness when passing judgment on Reagan and most especially Trump. He more or less believed the Russia collusion hoax, because that was the consensus word among the pols he had been talking to. Granted, he was about 95 when he said this in an interview, but absent dementia, I can’t absolve that sort of foolishness. Imagine Herbert Hoover affirming his belief in the Warren Commission Report in 1964.
Trump on the other hand irritates these days because he’s plumping for the H1B visa thing to give support to Elon. Elon misspoke last week and said he was definitely going to use H1B to recruit geniuses from around the world. But mainly H1B is used to bring in grifting mediocrities from India. His comments showed he did not have a ground’s-eye picture of what this explosive issue is all about. Perhaps he knows now, after millions of negative reactions to him and his friend Vivek, and seems to have mellowed his style.
