QCon 2026 in West Hollywood this Saturday 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM

 Rainbow Arc of Fire will have our table in the same location as the past four years.  In the immediate right-hand corner of the main hall.

This will be our fifth year at QCon.  (We were there at the inaugural convention.)  

                                                                              

Mike and I

We sat, one behind the other, in Ivan Evans's English class in the 9th grade at South Gate Junior High School in the Spring of 1964.  Mike remembers that our teacher somehow thought that I was from Cuba.  Mike thought that was interesting.  Perhaps it was my Hispanic last name or that I was born in Florida.  However, Mike and I did not become either familiar or friendly in junior high.

When I started high school, I found myself standing outside of the gym building with Richard Meyers, someone I did not previously know.  We chatted even though we both were likely supposed to be inside the gym, attending a mandatory gym class.  Richard was very soon able to enroll in the Corrective Gym class.  That class was designed for those who were not physically gifted, fit or hunky.  In short, geeky guys.  The instructor, Mr. Self, would make his students use free weights and rope climbs and whatever else it would take to build up the muscles and frames of the skinny guys, or take weight off of the fat guys, and make them all look more fit.  Each of his students typically got an "A". 

I was only able to join Corrective Gyn at a later date, having to put up with regular gym class for several months.  

But my encounter with Richard Meyers that morning led me to his small circle of friends which included Mike Mebs and Richard Wright.  They would gather at lunch and talk.  I was soon part of that trio.  We thought many of our fellow students were Neanderthals, that seemed to be one of the major reasons we hung out together.  What many of our fellow students thought of us, if they gave us any thought at all, we did not really care?  Many of them were joiners and participators.  We were not.  

One Saturday, Mike invited me over to his house.  I am not exactly sure what we did that day, but as he lived on Washington St., on the eastern end of South Gate, and I lived over on Cypress, on the western end of town, it was an effort to get back and forth.  I might have walked all of the way--I was quite a walker in those days.  Or I could have taken the bus.

Richard Meyers might have been the leader of our small band, but he was never the kind of friend to invite any of us over to his house in the un-incorporated area of Cudahy, immediately north of South Gate where he, his mother, his grandmother and his dog, Ginger, lived.  (He actually lived much closer to me than Mike did, but it was made clear from early on that the rest of us were never going to be invited over to his house.  So, Mike and I became those kinds of friends.)

We went on our Grad Night to Disneyland together.  Mike took my sister.  I took a friend of hers.  We attended East LA Junior College together, though not always in all of the same classes.  We similarly transferred to Cal State Dominguez Hills, graduating at the same time in December of 1971.  He worked in a sock warehouse in downtown LA for Lily Butler during college.  I worked in a wallpaper warehouse on the edge of LA, off of Santa Fe and under the shadow of the Santa Monica Freeway.

With the money we earned working full time in summers and part time during the school years, we eventually made our car payments, and paid for gas and sometimes food while still living at home, took airline flights out of LAX, primarily to San Diego because it was cheaper, and took a couple of flights to San Francisco where we hiked all over the city, and then across the Golden Gate Bridge and back, finally ending up at the Downtown Airline Terminal for the bus ride back to the airport. 

I was his best man when he married Lida whom we both met at East LA.  He had two kids with Lida.  And then my mom and I visited them in Tucson, AZ, where he was attending college at the U of A.  It had been many months earlier that Mike finally realized that, like me, he was gay.  During one evening of our visit, Mom made some random, fateful, stupid comment to Lida when Mike and I went out one evening to the effect that, "I hope he [me] doesn't make Mike take him to some gay bar."  A light came on in Lida's head when she awakened to the fact that her husband just might be gay.  They would eventually divorce.  We still talk about how clueless Mom was to say something like that.

I met Mike's first partner, Walt, who would eventually die of AIDS in 1995 before the cocktails would become widely available.  I eventually met his current partner, Alex, years ago.  

It's safe to say that we have travelled a long path together as friends.  From our early teen years to old age, our friendship has persevered.   

Now, unfortunately, our frailties and ages are catching up to us.  Mike is one month younger than I, born in October of 1949.  I have a younger sister while he has a younger sister and brother, but we are both now 76, going on 77 soon enough. 

We share diverticulosis and diverticulitis, acid reflux, prostate issues--he now has been told he has prostate cancer.  We've both had hernia surgery, him in college and me double hernia surgery in the late 1990's.

While we both supported Richard Nixon for President in 1968, that ended as soon as we realized he was not going to end the Vietnam War any time soon after he was elected.  His "secret plan" to end the War was Vietnamization, something Lyndon Johnson seemed to be doing toward the end of his doomed presidency.

It was soon that Mike's path and mine diverged because of Nixon's draft lottery.  I got 119; but Mike was 325, way too high to be concerned about the draft.  I eventually went off to the Marine Corps' OCS in 1972, and then the Air Force's OTS in 1973, while he graduated from a Teacher Certification program at the U of A in the 1980's, divorced Lida, met Walt, and I helped the two of them move to Southern California, into an apartment building at the eastern edge of South Gate, not far from his parent's house where he grew up.

We now hope merely to outlive the selfish, egotistical monster in the White House and experience peaceful deaths.  With so many ailments, who knows what will eventually carry us off?  We talk about the past, the '60's, our shared experiences from the past and the present.  (He and Alex once lived in the same desert community in CA that Mark and I moved to, where my sister also lives; but then his daughter and son-in-law talked him into moving to Phoenix to be near them, and we only spent about a year living nearby one another as we had in the 1960's.)   

We yell a lot on the phone and bemoan the state of the nation at least weekly.  Soon after we were born, the Korean War began which neither of us remembers in our separate childhoods.  The Cold War endured for most of our youth, hence the military draft and the Vietnam War.  Then we experienced the Reagan adventures abroad, Bush Sr.'s Gulf War, Bush Jr.'s Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, now this useless Iran War.  We have experienced idealized versions of the 1950's and 1960's in the distant.  Our high school was so peacefully integrated that it seemed almost to go unnoticed.

All of our grandparents died long ago.  Then the parents and uncles and aunts departed the stage.  Waves of our television, music and movie idols have passed on and more continue to do so.  We have no idea how long each of us has.  Which one will outlive the other, or will we go at relatively the same age?  In five years?  Ten?  Longer than that?  His mother died at 94.  My maternal Aunt Jean and Grandpa Sanchez died at 94.  

Both now retired, we live day to day.  

  

Ralph Story's A.M. February 1971, and beyond

I would graduate from Cal State Dominguez Hills in December of 1971.  I was still working at A.U. Morse & Company near downtown L.A.  Even before graduation, I would have to decide what to do with my life.  But at the same time, I had to deal with mandatory military service.  My draft lottery number was 119, and I was only exempt for a short time before I graduated from college.

Before graduation, in the Fall of 1971, I did enlist in the Marine Corps Reserve, to begin with training at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego after graduation.  That would keep me out of service until I left college.  (I would normally have graduated in June of 1971; but two course I took at East L.A. Junior College worth 8 units did not count and I had to take additional classes to get enough units to get my degree.)

I met Mark Lombardo that fall who had returned from Marine OCS in the summer of 1971, to graduate in December and then serve as a Marine officer.  He talked me into switching from the Marine Corps Reserve to OCS in the Spring of 1972.  Marine combat units had been withdrawn from Vietnam in 1971.  By becoming a member of the Marine Corps, I would not have to serve in that costly and, ultimately, futile war.  Those I had met in college such as Daylin Butler,rimarily at East L.A., and Pay Byrne at Dominguez Hills advised that I not serve in Vietnam, both of whom had been in Vietnam with the Marines as enlistedmen.  It would be a waste of my life for no appreciable reason to go to Vietnam. 

When I was able, I would watch Ralph Story's A.M. in the mornings before classes at Dominguez Hills.  Host Ralph Story, a TV legend in LA, and his co-host Stephanie Edwards conducted a wide range of features and guests.  Authors with new books to peddle or devices such as the Velobind process of self-publishing or recipes for healthy food choices were offered each morning.  When I was fired from A.U. Morse and got a job as a security guard, I would definitely be able to watch the show in the mornings. 

All of these years later, I watch Morning Joe that offers heavy doses of politics but also other choices such as new books to buy and read.  

In 1971-3, I was making career decisions, impacted heavily by the looming military draft.  Had I not had to worry about the Vietnam War and being drafted by the Army, I might have had the freedom to think of different career directions.  Perhaps I could have remained in college, gotten a Master's Degree, graduated and found a job teaching at a community college.  I never would have attended Marine OCS or Ai Force OTS, been stationed at Minot AFB and the Air Force Academy.  Never would have moved to North Dakota or Colorado.  (After I returned from OCS, I did apply to TWA and Continental Airlines when men could then be hired as flight attendants, but I was rejected by both.)  

Now I am back, living in California after so many years away.  I'm retired, yet attempting to figure out what to do with however many years I have remaining.  I have applied to teach at our local community college but have been rejected both times.

Recurring Dream

I periodically experience a recurring dream, with variations.  I am back inside the former IBM site outside of Boulder, CO, on the Diagonal Highway.  It's time to leavefor the day, but I cannot find my way out.  No matter which direction I walk, I am unable to leave the building. 

This time, I cannot find my wallet or car keys.  After walking down stairs and finding an exit in the basement, I am able to exit the building this time but know that I have no keys (which is odd because, if I did not have them in the first place, how was I able to drive to work at the IBM site).  And, once out of the building, I also cannot find my car in the relatively empty lot.  Obviously, without car keys, how could I start my car if I fdid ind it and drive home?

I believe I may have had similar dreams, years ago, when I was forced to resign from the Air Force.  This is quite similar.  I did not want to go, hence I cannot leave.  Of course, financially this whole situation is troubling because I am poorly off monetarily because I did not have a retirement to deal with my force resignation.  In 1979 (with the Air Force) and 2023 (with IBM).

Q-Con West Hollywood June 20, 2026, 11 AM - 6 PM

                                                                                  

Prism Comics is pleased to announce their 5th Annual Q CON LGBTQIA+ COMIC CONVENTION celebrating LGBTQIA+ comic books, graphic novels and cosplay pride! 

Q CON LGBTQIA+ COMIC CONVENTION

Saturday, June 20, 2026

11 am - 6 pm

Fiesta Hall in Plummer Park

7377 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood

Free admission

Family friendly

We’re thrilled to have a fabulous lineup of over 100 creators, cosplayers and talented performers including Richard Fairgray (Four-Color Heroes), Maia Kobabe (Gender Queer, Opting Out), Lee Knox Ostertag (The Witch Boy, The Deep Dark), Joe Phillips (animator, illustrator), ND Stevenson (Nimona, Scarlet Morning), Jen Wang (The Prince and the Dressmaker, Ash’s Cabin), Nicole Maines (Suicide Squad, Supergirl), Rex Ogle (Fruitcake, Dan of Green Gables), Ed Luce (Wuvable Oaf), Josh Trujillo (Washington’s Gay General), Shannon Watters (Hollow, Lumberjanes), Jim McCann (The Other/Half), Kendra Wells (Real Hero Sh*t), Sonya Saturday (J.K. Rowling and the Ungrateful Fans), Sam Irvin (Captain Samouflage and the Frankensam Scam!), Qweerty Gamers, Jasmine Walls (Brooms) and many more. There will also be a cosplay contest, panel presentations, and portfolio review for aspiring comics creators.

Q Con is free and family friendly for all ages.

Register for free tickets - https://www.eventbrite.com/e/q-con-2026-southern-californias-only-lgbtqia-comic-convention-tickets-1980431535033

Or get free tickets at the door

Prism Comics thanks our sponsors for their generous support – Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, The City of West Hollywood, Modern Fanatic, Oni Press, Los Angeles Film School, IDW Comics & Entertainment and Top Shelf.

WonderCon 2026 March 27-29

 

For no obvious reason, our table was now on the second row back, one section over from where we were placed for the past three years straight.  (We even had a couple people stop by and say that they thought we were not here this year when they did not see us in our usual space.)  We did not get the traffic we previously got, but we actually sold more books than the past few years.

The staff allowed us early arrivers to pull into the hall itself to unload our vehicles and set up our tables (above).  Here is Mark, standing proudly before our new VW ID-4.  It was technically a used vehicle from 2021; however, it had but 53 miles on it when we bought it just a few days before and paid less than half what a new ID-4 cost  This was our first long trip.  We decided on the second day to Valet park it because they would charge it while they kept it.  They might have tried to charge it, but when the Con was over and we loaded it up for the drive back home, iD-4 was only at the same charge as it was when we turned it over to them.  I wanted to get out of town, so we took off without complaining and stopped East of Riverside to recharge at a Wallmart station. 

                                                                               

The ride was smooth both ways, and we fell in love with the vehicle, especially since Trump's Iran war caused the price of gas to skyrocket.  It was a new feeling to not even think about stopping for gas at a gas station.

                                                                                   

Here was one view from behind our table.  But the direct line points to the fellow from Arizona who had the table beside us for the previous three years.  
                                                                                   

We had a fellow and a female friend stop by the table.  They had created a 3D film that was a send up of those from the 1950's called SCORPIAN.  They took our picture, but Mark has a terrible time with flash photos and always closes his eyes.  I thought this was a good photo of me, so I am posting it here.

The following is a much better photo of Mark, on our second day.
                                                                                

The following is a photo of a fellow who I corralled the first day of the Con because he was wearing a FORBIDDEN PLANET uniform.  He took a photo of us which I have yet to find.  But here he is wearing a Captain America WWII uniform.  He bought all of the books in the series except, of course, the two we give away for free.

                                                                                 

Another woman bought three books in the series and also ot the other two free volumes.  Another young fellow showed up with a copy of Volume 6 in the series which he said was given to him by his Grandmother who must have collected the whole series when I was giving the first eight away at the Palm Springs Comic Con years before.  He bought the last two volumes in the series. 

 Hilton had remodeled the main restaurant which we did not enjoy and only had our first breakfast there.  Their Market Place was way over priced.  We were also given a room on the 5th floor, which seemed to be the party floor for drunks.  Never again.  We had no view out the window.  Mark got cornered near the parking garage and almost forced to give the three large men who surrounded him $25.  They tried to steal credit card info to charge even more but Mark was quick to pull his wallet back in time.  He reported his situation to the Heoel staff because he was not the only person so scammed.  

Otherwise, we had an enjoyable Con, meeting new folks and again seeing those we have known from before.  Next will be Q Con in June in West Hollywood.  

Eclipse

Chapter One

We were weakened by all of the hatred, as if like the sun's rays during an eclipse. 

While we tried to fight back, not fully knowing what sort of  threat we faced, not from the stars or other planets but from our own backyards, our abilities were dimmed by degrees.  Soon they were all but gone.

The Gods and Goddesses faded into seclusion, as they have done in the past.

 

Solitaire & Songs from long ago

Mark is sound asleep at the other end of the house.  Our seven rescue cats are scattered about, also sleeping soundly in their comforting places.  

I sit at my failing desk-top computer,.playing Greenfelt solitaire, with Youtube cycling on another tab, remembering the several broken and mended pieces of my distant past, places and people who come to life and reopen an individual space in my memory..

Often but not always I have my relatively new hearing aids in place for greater clarity, revealing notes and tones in each segment of recollection that I had once anticipated before age and loud noises robbed me of certain highs and ranges.  (I am almost certain a specific B-52's concert to the South of Denver was the culprit in giving me this constant ringing that the hearing aids somewhat mask.)

I mostly type now with one hand, the laft still unrecovered from the break in September that hours of recent therapy have not yet restored.  Just another infirmity that time has added to the acid reflux, the diverticulosos, the treated skin cancer, ED, the hearing loss, the left knee that infrequently reminds of the steep ski slope of the Pike's Peak Resort when Gary and his two buddies left me to make my own way down to the lodge.

We make do with what we have left, as Beethoven continued to compose though he was totally deaf.    

"Help Me" by Joni Mitchell.  1974.

I am in one of the Air Force's old WWII-era barracks at Vandenberg AFB.  I'd spent the previous couple of months at Minot before my missile training slot opened up.  A buddy and I had driven my 1973 Chevy Camero to The Warehouse, a retail location for audio equipment several miles north of the base,  We'd removed the back seat earlier in the day for more room to pack in eight Advent speakers, four for each of us  We did not want to make two trips.

We were going to need to keep the boxes to ship them to our respective missile bases.  He might have been headed to Whiteman AFB.  I had not used my free Air Force household goods.shipment yet.  I had already hauled my cases of books and record albums my mom's rental house in San Pedro to my Bachelor Officer's Quarters (BOQ) room so most of my wordly possessions would ship from Vandenberg to Minot.  The rest would fit into the Camero for the drive to Minot (I had flown to Minot on January 3rd, 1974, leaving the Camero behind with mom.) 

Despite the incredibly tight fit, the two of us had gotten all eight Advent speakers in their boxes into the Camero and back to Vandenberg.  

I don't recall if I had unpaced all four speakers or just two to connect to a used Marantz receiver, to see how they sounded.  I had already bought a recommended turntable, based on a review from THE ABSOLUTE SOUND audio magazine.  As with much else in that era, the offered an alternative impressions to the mainstream publications such as STEREO REVIEW.              
 

I had dug through the boxes of albums to find Mitchell's COURT AND SPARK.  "Help Me" seemed to be a pleasantly sonic challenge to test drive the Advents.  I was not disappointed.    

 "Making Love" by Roberta Flack.  1982.

This was an entirely different time and place.  I had been out of the service for several years. still living in my house in Colorado Springs.  Lindsey Barton "Bart" Keeling was my friend.  We must have seen the film MAKING LOVE at a local theater.  I was at the local INDEPENDENT RECORDS store and bought each of us a copy of the 45rpm theme. 

By the end of the decade, Bart had moved to Palm Springs.  He'd been a good friend whom I missed.  I was able to visit him only once.  A few years later, a mutual friend told me outside the gym on Colorado Blvd. in Denver where I was then living that Bart had decided to stop taking his HIV meds, quickly deteriorated, and died that January of 2003.  

We'd only hooked up once when we first met, rather awkwardly.  We became good friends instead.  The lines have always reminded me of Bart, "And I'll remember you...."  I cannot here the song without being reminded of someone whose frienship helped me to cope with being alone and out of the service.  

"Lotta Love" Nicolette Larson.  1978-9

This song always reminds me of my year and a half at the Air Force Academy.  Bright, breezy, assertive yet poignant.  The most wonderful time in my life until I met Mark.  But unlike then, it collapsed into thr worst time in my life, one when I alost did not want to servive.  When your most beloved career is crushed by betrayal and deceit, you never entirely recover.

"Make It With You" Bread.  1970.

Of all of the driving-to-San-Diego  songs from the Summer of 1970, this is the one that stands out the most.  I cannot help but think of those years when Mike and I were young and in college and not quite on the verge of being drafted.     

"No Night So Long" Dionne Warwick.  1980.

  

WonderCon 2026

Rainbow Arc of Fire returns for a fifth time to WonderCon in 2026. 

Our first year we were situated along a wall, just down from one of the food courts in 2022:

                                     

For the next three years, 2023-2025, we had a commanding location with a huge open space before us.  We could see, and be seen, from many directions a long way off.

                                                                                   

But next year, we will be tucked away instead.  SP-53 is a couple of aisles over to the left and back a few rows.  We won't have anyone next to us, but we won't have the visibility we have had for three years.  However, sales have been poor the last two years, so perhaps a new location might change things up a bit.
                                                                              
We simply enjoy attending and having a presence at WonderCon, no matter what happens.

 

The Past Keeps Rolling Past III

I had another dream of Denver this morning.  This time it was about playing volleyball in Cheesman Park.  Of course, none of the people in the dream were those I knew back then.  However, when I woke up, I remembered so many of them:  Brian Johnson, Tommy Hill, Jack Witt, Bill Smith, Chris, Terry, and dozens whom I remember their many faces but forget their names.    

Not long after Mark and I moved to California, I heard from Brian Johnson that Bill Smith had moved to Texas and had died.  He was the first volleyball buddy whom I remember telling in "Queen Soopers" that I had a boyfriend. 

I had started to play volleyball soon after I moved into the Park Humboldt Apartments on Humboldt Street, one block over from Cheesman.  One of the reasons I started to play was to meet someone since so many gay guys did play on the weekends especially.  From my early 40's until I just after I turned 60, I showed up early each weekend, sat under the tree by the 9th Street entrance and read a book until others showed up. 

I soon cobbled together the nearly $200 to buy the red-bagged volleyball net and ropes and poles.  A local company on the other side of I-25 from downtown sold them.  When I finally gave up playing, I handed my set to Bill Smith whom I knew would use it well. 

In the few years after I gave up playing, and soon met Mark, when I drove through Cheesman Park, I would see the latest generation of players who had taken over from us much older players who had finally moved on.  Tommy Hill, and then Jack Witt, who were a few years older than I, quit playing before I did.  I knew that eventually I would have to make the same decision, an acknowledgement that I was old, too old to endure potential injuries that might not heal quickly.                 

The past keeps rolling past II

College of the Desert had three English Department job openings several weeks ago.  I applied once again and, once again, I was rejected with the neutral phrase, "We cannot offer you an interview at this time."   They once more suggested that I keep checking with their site for additional openings. 

I am not certain anything would change when I suspect that my age is what they really believe bars me from their consideration.  I feel I am wasting my time and efforts to keep applying.  Filling out their many online forms takes so much time.  

While I am slowly recovering from my broken, this latest rejection was just one more disappointment.  

So, I continue to watch M*A*S*H episodes, like cuddling with a favorite and familiar stuffed animal as a child.  Once BJ and Col. Potter so easily settled in, and then Winchester replaced Burns, the series truly soared for me.  Except that Radar did not appear in several episodes without explanation until Season 7 I M*A*S*H actors who are still alive.

In a Christmas episode, at the end, the camera poignantly panned across Stiers, Morgan, Burghoff, Christopher, and Swit, certainly not knowing that in November of 2025, those actors would be gone. 

Of course, their fates remind me of my own mortality.  Especially with my recovering hand and wrist.

I feel broken.  Finding it difficult to see myself back to the person I once was, fully functioning except for the normal frailties of age.  

 Having watched the two-part episode of M*A*S*H when Gart Burghoff's character of Radar left the series, I realized that the final episode (#5 of Season 8), it was broadcast on Monday, October 15, 1979, my first workday that I was no longer in the Air Force.  I forced myself to drive to the unemployment office in Colorado Springs, step inside the front door, and stand inside the noisy lobby until I gathered enough courage to approach one of the clerks to apply for insurance.  (Since the AF was required to give me $10K severance pay, I would not be able to collect any money for a few months.  But I was able to meet with a rep who would try for months to find me a job.)

I clearly must have identified with Radar who stood alone outside while everyone else had rushed to the OR to attend to the wounded.  The Friday before, I had spent the morning taking my possessions to my car.  At one point I was stuck between floors in the main elevator, waiting to be rescued, believing that even the building itself did not want me to go. 

I closed out my account at the Academy Officer's Club and headed home.  I looked at myself in the hall bathroom mirror as I took off mt Air Force uniform for the last time.  My neighbor Gina Martin and her mom took me to Black Angus on Academy Blvd. for dinner that night and then my career was over.  On Monday night Radar's Army career was over.     

The past just keeps rolling past

Nearly three weeks ago, I broke my wrist.  I've never broken any bones previously, so this is an entirely new experience for me.  Everyone wants to know how it happened since I am now 76 years old and I suspect they wonder if it was age-related (as I am now forced to type with one hand).

We have 3 or more outdoor stray cats we feed.  Two black cats that Mark named Buster and Benny.  And a white and gray cat we were told long ago is named Max.  (He's been around the neighborhood for years, having once lived near the golf course but then migrated toward our corner of the community.  Another woman also has fed and cared for him, too.  But she stopped by a few days ago to see about Max and explained that she has not seen Max for some time now.  I assured her that he was fine, but he figured prominently in my wounded situation as I held up my second, smaller and lighter cast.)

Max had showed on our front porch in the afternoon, Tuesday September 30th, looking for food.  I had just put up our porch Halloween decorations for the holiday.  
                                                                                 

I went inside to get him some dry food.  When I returned, he was gone.  I figured he'd gone around to the front of the house, so I headed to the driveway.  There, I still did not see him.  But I started to hear what sounded like the low yowling of an imminent cat fight between Max and, likely, this newly stray gray cat with a long, puffy tail and white paws on the other side of the tall hedge that divides the front of our house from that of our neighbor.  As I moved closer to the hedge, I yelled for the two cats to stop.

I was worried about Max and was distracted.  I failed to look down at the large, sharp-edged, metal cactus planter that a departed neighbor had given to Mark many months ago.  Still looking straight ahead, I was shocked to feel myself suddenly pitching forward in an unexpected and uncontrolled fall.  Only in the slow descent to the ground did I suspect what was happening and why I was falling,

I reactively reached out my left arm to break my sudden plunge forward.  I could feel my arm getting submerged into the hedge.  As my body finally came to wrest on solid ground, with no more forward momentum, I pulled my arm out of the lowest branches, only to discover that my hand and wrist were distorted.  I knew instantly that something important was broken.

One look at the results of the fall caused me to start loudly shrieking.  I awkwardly rose to my feet, holding my left arm up like a useless stump.  I started shrieking because I knew I needed help.  But we live on a quiet street of empty rentals.

I got into the house.  Found my cell flip phone.  With difficulty, I dialed Mark at work.  All I could yell when he answered was, "I broke my wrist!  I BROKE MY WRIST!!  Call Ann to take me to the emergency room!"

I know now I was in shock.  My left leg had two bloody gashes in the front and another scrape on the top of my left foot.  In the Emergency room, Ann filled out the paperwork for me as the staff tried to take my vitals.  My blood pressure, what they could get of it, was incredibly low.

They took X-rays.  Nurses came and went.  Ann took pictures to send to a distraught Mark.  A doctor explained what they were going to do to fix my wrist.  The one positive was that no bones were protruding through skin, so no surgery was needed. 

I was put into a twilight zone by drugs, though my entire right arm was burning when it should have just been the injection site.  That was agony until it stopped.

While I was under, I could still see the ceiling and hear vague voices.  But my perception began to get weird.  I believed I was in some sort of Matrix.  I was being attended to by aliens.  Reality was not real.  When I heard my sister's voice, I knew that she was a part of this vast conspiracy against me.  I was in some cosmic operating room of the damned.  Of course, I also reasoned that I was nobody.  Why was this happening to me?  Who were these aliens and why was I their test subject?

Faces zoomed in on my face and asked me questions.  What was my name?  What year was it?  With lips and brain that barely seemed to function, I mumbled my feeble replies. 

For two weeks I wore the large, heavy, fore-arm cast.  This past Monday the orthopedic doctor at Eisenhower Medical Center had the staff replace it with one less restrictive and lighter.     

Just before the fall, I was already taking antibiotics for a UTI.  And I had an appointment for a biopsy of a splotch on the back of my neck.  I was not in the best of shape to begin with.

I have reverted to my childhood where I cannot tie my own shoelaces.  Cannot type except with one hand.  Have a really tough, or impossible, time opening up cans, jars, packaging.     

In the days immediately after, I kept thinking how unreal it all was.  How, had Max not shown up or not walked away, I would still be fine.  Or had I not allowed myself to be distracted, remembered the planter and looked down for just a moment, it would not have happened.  Sort of like taking out single events that, when combined, lead to the Titanic sinking.

I experienced days of taking antibiotics when Immediate Care contacted me to say that my UTI was drug resistant.  I would soon hear from the dermatologist that the skin issue on my neck was cancerous and needed to be treated. 

In addition to these physical blows to my wellbeing, I got yet another teaching rejection from College of the Desert, even when they had three impending openings in the English Department. 

I have been watching one of my favorite classic TV series on DVD, M*A*S*H (it's not available on hi def Blu-ray discs and streaming costs $19.99 per season, for each of the 11 seasons--too much).  So, I dragged out the DVD discs and started with Season One several weeks ago.       

I am up to Season 5.  While I could appreciate the first 3 seasons, I actually preferred from Season 4 onward when Harry Morgan was introduced as Col. Sherman Potter to replace McLean Stevenson's Henry Blake, and Mike Ferrel as BJ Hunnicut was added to replace Wayne Rogers' Trapper John.    

While I have watched the DVD set several years ago, once I hit Season 4 a week or so ago, I was transported back to my Air Force career and my stationing at Minot AFB when I first saw each episode in the original broadcast.  I was back in my BOQ room, watching M*A*S*H on my RCA 19-inch TV.

The second episode of Season 5 featured a personal favorite, "Fallen Idol", in which Hawkeye feels guilty about Radar being wounded on his way to Seoul.  He gets drunk.  Shows up hungover to operate.  Gets chewed out by Col. Potter.  Gets into a tiff with Radar.  Gets chewed out again by Potter and several others at the 4077th.  As he sits by himself outside post op, newly added Major Winchester sarcastically observes, "Sitting with all your friends, I see."

I had a similar experience near the end of my 742nd tour at Minot.  A deputy of mine and I got into a tiff on alert.  I politely asked him to do something, and he exploded at me.  We yelled at one another for a few brief moments.  In the crew vehicle on the ride back to base, I am not sure which of us brought it up; but I told him he could ask for a crew transfer.  Well, he did.  But who knows what BS he told our new Squadron Commander?  When I was called into the new commander's office, he laid into me.  Even said that if the Air Force Academy knew what I was really like, they would not hire me.  I was appalled.  I had no idea what my former deputy told him.  I was too perplexed to even ask what lies were said about me.  He never even asked to hear my side of the confrontation.     

From that point on, I was a crew commander without a permanent deputy.  I went out with a different one on each alert.  And then my assignment at Minot came to an end after 235 alerts.  Yet I always identified with Hawkeye in that M*A*S*H episode.  You do a great job in a very tough assignment for over four years but when someone spreads BS about you, you finish your tour under a cloud with no idea what had been said about you.

IBM

On wistful nights
every now and then
I dream of IBM.

I am at the Boulder campus
Closed in recent years
but still alive in these dreams.

Often I am attempting to leave
To get back home
wherever that may be.

I intend to reach my car
But the several buildings conspire
to keep me there.

Hallways and walls 
corners and corridors
Become like a shifting maze.

People I meet  
or interact with
are total strangers to me now.

Even then I never knew them.
Workers pass me dutifully
not retired as I often am.

In the latest iteration
the empty halls and cubicles
were a pale and dull green.

The site was being sold
Employees were buying
chunks and pieces as investments.

Against a certain future
where they can sell at a profit.  
I was, however, unconvinced.

Saturday Morning, August 30, 2025

 

Our friend Jane died over the weekend.  When we bought our house in the Spring of 2016, we found a lovely HOME SWEET HOME doormat at our doorstep when we arrived.  Jane had purchased it for us.  It's there still.  The photo above was when she and her husband attended our wedding on our patio.  She was 80 when she died and had been battling cancer for the last few years until her doctor and she determined that there was nothing more that could be done that would prolong her life.

My sister Ann and Jane were in the same class at Western Airlines in the mid 1970's.  That was when they met and have been friends ever since.  When Jane and Tony, her husband, bought a home in this gated community in Indio, Ann would soon buy a home here, as well.  When Mark and I would decide to live here, as well, we already knew Jane and Tony.

Jane's sister officiated at our wedding in 2019, before the Pandemic.  The three daughters and one son were children of an English mother and a U.S. G.I. during WWII.  When the war was over, Jane and her siblings sailed on the Queen Mary to America with their mother, to reunite with their American father.

On the morning that Jane died, we had already scheduled another annual visit to our Step Sister Pam in San Pedro, to take Pam to lunch.  Ann needed the distraction, so we went anyway.  I always drive. 

Pam is about a month older than I.  She has gained considerable weight in the last few decades, and now it's easier for her to get around in a wheelchair rather than use the walker she had been using on our previous visits.

Lorri, our half sister, does use a walker and has for the past year and more.  So Mark and I have to load up her walker when we pick her up elsewhere in Indio.  And then we had to load the heavy wheelchair into the back of the Tiguan after we all used the bathroom in Pam's apartment after the nearly 3-hour drive. 

Pam lives in the same apartment building where Mom used to live from about 1977 until earlier the year she died in 2002.  Pam lives in apartment 610 whereas Mom lived in 1010.  Same side of the building, essentially the same view, though a bit lower.  Mom could see the Southern tip of Catalina Island on a clear day, gazing West from her balcony.  She could also see the cruise ships sailing down the harbor, out to see or in to port, and most especially watch the Christmas boat parade, with all of the vessels of various sizes decorated for the holiday. 

You cannot see the channel anymore from Pam's balcony.  I doubt if you could see it from Mom's old balcony were she still alive and living four flights up.  Mid and high rise buildings now block almost all of the view.  A restaurant on the corner of Harbor Blvd and 5th Street called The Grinder is long gone, replaced by a six-story mid rise with shops on the first floor and condos above.  Ports O' Call Village where Mom would bike to for breakfast in the first several years when she moved to San Pedro after I left for the Air Force in 1973, and was still ambulator is also gone, completely torn down.  (In her last years, Mom also used either a cane or a walker after a bike rider hit and knocked her down, breaking her hip on a sidewalk in Long Beach.)

Mom had a friend who worked at a Chinese-American-owned shop at Ports O' Call called Wings.  Mom was always sad that her friend seemed always to have to work there, even on holidays such as Christmas and only made minimum wage.  Her friend has likely passed on. 

Whenever I visited Southern California while Mom was alive, I usually stayed with her.  We would often go to breakfast at a little restaurant on 5th Street, half a block from Mesa St. that you could see from Mom's balcony.  We would occasionally go to The Grinder for lunch or dinner.  Once in awhile, we might drive to The Acapulco, a Mexican restaurant in Ports O' Call Village.  But, that, and a seafood restaurant, also disappeared when the Village was torn down.

Pam's small, one-bedroom unit has the same floorplan as Mom's former unit.  It's always nostalgic to see Pam's place and be reminded of Mom's apartment.  I spent several 4th of July holidays (Mom's birthday) and Christmas and New Year's staying with her, sleeping on the convertible sofa. 

One year I arrived on Christmas Eve and had to have a pathetic little breakfast in the morning at Jack In the Box because we had not stopped to get anything at a market, not realizing that nothing would be open on Christmas morning.

This time the drive was exhausting as we headed up and down the Harbor Freeway to an Olive Garden in Carson, CA, where Pam wanted to go for lunch.  Ann would later say to me that if Pam is still with us next year, she might just take Lorri, buy some food, and eat at Pam's apartment instead of trying to go out to eat.  I did not give that much thought, for that will be next year, and we have many months to live in between.  

    

Late August

I feel the first caress of Autumn
in the early dark of August days

Late in the month 
before the surety of September

Tentative breezes powder my face
and tap my thinning hair, whitened with age

The desert sun by afternoon may leach
what passes for moisture in the air

But the spring and summer of my arc
have long passed in all but memory 

The approaching ages when my parents died
are as drum beats in a relentless band

And so I do a recital of laundry and dishes
as if in ritual for the very last time

My working husband sincerely thanks me
neither knowing the day I will be missed

What will I do the rest of my life?

I never imagined that I would feel a certain discomfort with retirement.  While I was working, I squirreled away any number of books, movie and TV disks, and music CDs to last at least a couple of retirements.  But then, for mostly economic reasons, I kept working long past the time most Americans stopped toiling and smelled the roses.  My only reason for no longer working for IBM was because they decided, for mostly economic reasons, to terminate the two of us on the Global Sales Manual team and the ten on the Announcement Letter team with whom we often worked.  So it was that at 73, I was retired.  I eventually was able to collect a few months of unemployment insurance.  I even applied for a part-time community college teaching job which I would have gladly taken and enjoyed.   

But I was not even given an interview.  Was that because they could tell from my extensive resume that I was highly qualified, perhaps too qualified, and excessively experienced, possibly far more qualified and experienced than any of the full-time instructors they had on staff? 

One thing regarding educators.  Many have very fragile egos.  Others have wildly inflated opinions of themselves.  No matter the reason, they don't like competition.  I have also had experience in the military and the private sector, as well as over a decade of teaching at the college level, in addition to having graduated from a secondary teaching certification program.  In addition, I had published the ten RAoF novels.  On paper, and likely in the minds of those who would make the selection, I must have looked fairly formidable, perhaps too formidable for them.  So, it was likely way too easy to simply state in the rejection email, "We cannot offer you an interview at this time."  No explanation required.  Was it my advanced age?  Was it my too-overt life experiences and abilities?  Was it because I am a military veteran?  Was it because they might have realized I was gay? 

Had they even thought about what I might have brought to the students I would have taught, my diverse background might have been invaluable to those very students?     

I have had to face it.  This society does not value the elderly.  And, in some cases, for good reasons:  Alzheimer's disease, dementia, moribund beliefs and prejudices, veneration of a past by those who are older, a past that was nowhere near perfect, in addition to the inevitable physical decline along with the mental decline.    

IBM had no problem with my age or the ages of any of the others on the Sales Manual and Announcement Letter teams.  They had a problem with our collective incomes.  They did not want to pay us any longer, no matter how good we were at our jobs since I, and a few of the others, had worked for IBM for over three decades each.  We enjoyed our jobs and were very good at them.  That was not enough.

I have had to accept the fact that unless I want to be a greeter at Wal-Mart or some other job that would tax me way too severely, my working days are done.  

So what next?  

How long do I likely have to live?

My mother died at 80, a couple of weeks before her 81st birthday.  She had had Rheumatic fever as a teenager, damaging her heart.  She later had two separate open heart surgeries, one in her 50's and one in her 70's, to replace heart valves.  Had she not been sick way back when she was a teenager, who knows how many more years she might have lived instead of dying of congestive heart failure?  Another surgery might have given her a longer life, but she likely would not have survived the operation.  Her mother had died at 86 of a heart attack.  Her father at 55 of a heart attack.  Her brother Robert died of a heart attack.  Her sister Doris died of a massive heart attack.  Whose genes did I get?  (Mom's sister Jean, two years younger, lived to be 94.)  

My father died at 81, a few months shy of his 82nd birthday.  Other than being a bombardier in WWII, bailing out of their crippled B-24 Liberator and becoming a POW of the Germans for many months, he really had had no significant illnesses in his life.  But several months into his 81st year, his body began to break down.  The doctor I spoke with said that from the tips of his toes to the top of his head, everything about him was failing.  When I saw him in the emergency room, I did not recognize him.  You could see through his skin.  His body was shrunken and depleted.  He looked like a survivor of a Nazi death camp.  His genes had turned on him.  His mother had died at 77, her body simply betraying her.  His father had lived to be 94, but his kidneys especially were failing him.  His body simply gave out.  Whose genes did I get?

Someday soon, AI will likely be able to tell us each how long we can expect to live, unless some unpredictable and deadly weather phenomenon, earthquake or accident carries us off first.  But at the moment, I have no way of knowing.

What Have I Been Doing?

I finished two biographies of The Beatles, an autobiography of Barbra Streisand, and volume one of Cher's autobiography.  I finished re-reading all ten of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series.  I finished a thick picture book on the 100 years of Warner Brothers pictures.  I have started a five-volume biography of FDR.   

Many days I either listen to music from several eras (I have nearly 5K CDs in my collection), or I watch new television series from streaming services.  (With Spectrum adding Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock and Paramount +, I have plenty to watch, not counting the many Blu-ray and 4K disks I bought, most before I retired.  I also watch Rams, Dodgers or Lakers games from Spectrum.  So I do have a lot of stuff to take up my time each day, not counting household chores when Mark is at work.   

Survivor's Guilt?

So many cultural or political icons have died in recent years, certainly family and even friends and acquaintances.  I wonder what it is that keeps me hanging around?  Is each one of us here to fulfill a mission, to complete a significant task?  

I managed to survive childbirth and childhood diseases such as polio from 1949 onward.  The Cold War.  The Vietnam War.  AIDS.  COVID.  Car and plane accidents.  It's way too easy in the modern era to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, on the wrong road or highway, in the wrong aircraft, in the wrong building.  Others go off the rails so frequently, armed and out of control, and the jeopardize those around them.     

Am I just hanging on for little reason?  Like those with one-time talent who make no more TV shows or movies, sing no more songs, write no more articles or books?  They die at such an advanced age that fewer and fewer even remember who they were.  I wrote years of journals, the three volumes of poetry, my unpublished autobiography, then several abortive novels, the RAoF series whom few have ever read, especially all of the way through, and finally this blog.    

Those are just accomplishments, no matter how minor or profound.  

Relationships?  The family is, as I have said, mostly gone.  The friends and acquaintances over the years are mostly gone.  We grew apart, lost touch, broke up, moved away, they died:  Dave Moore, Daylin Butler, Patrick Byrne, Bart Keeling, Barbara Kinslow, Chuck Gover, Ramsey Hammond, Gary Kinateder, Dick Tuttle, Dan Stratford, Dino Gagliasso, Rob McDonald, Willy Benitez, Kent Thomas, Steve Schurr, Chris Keener, Roger Benninger.     

The Hearing Test

I've been immersed in the final three TALES OF THE CITY titles lately.  These were the ones I bought in hardback and only read once when they first appeared:  MICHAEL TOLIVER LIVES (2007, which I just finished yesterday), MARY ANNE IN AUTUMN (2010 which I just started yesterday and am savoring), and THE DAYS OF ANNA MADRIGAL (2014).  Obviously, MONA OF THE MANOR I finished several weeks ago and may reread some time in the future.

I am reading these formerly last three in the TALES OF THE CITY series in the third of three oversized paperback books, collecting the first three novels (28 BARBARY LANE), the second three novels (BACK TO BARBARY LANE), and now the third three novels (GOODBYE BARBARY LANE).

                                                                             

                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                              

 

I bought these three paperback books in June of 2020 so as to preserve the first editions of each of the novels I acquired when they were published, both individual paperback and hardback novels.

Since I only read the final three novels, respectively, in 2007, 2010, and 2014, when they were first published while I was living at 1355 Franklin St. #5, and have not revisited them until now (unlike the earlier books which I have reread more than once over the several years since they each appeared), much of these additional adventures of the major characters seems almost fresh, with only small bits and pieces lodged in my recollection from the initial reading of each way back when.

I do recall that the change to a first-person narration in MICHAEL TOLIVER LIVES was quite jarring to me back in 2007, though far, far less so now.  But Maupin's continuing recounting of both the tiny and humongous impacts of AIDS on San Francisco from BABYCAKES onward brings back the saddening experiences of my own.  From my first HIV test while I still lived in Colorado Springs in 1987, to my many tests in many different places when I lived in Denver (the second-story of an historic building on Colfax, the mobile testing RV in Cheesman Park, the Hey Denver! bungalow on a side street off of 17th where I volunteered for two years, answering the phone and keeping those who arrived to be tested in proper order for the tester who was there each afternoon.. 

We Baby Boomers may not have endured the Great Depression or WWII or even the Korean War (though our parents did) because we had either not been born yet or were far too young to be aware of those significant events, we did experience the tail end of the polio epidemic, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, AIDS, and COVID.  We had not been spared any of that.  Rereading about the AIDS era in TALES, continuing to this day, I felt weighed down.  While I have been lucky not to have been infected, as had the character of Michael Toliver, nor been intimate with anyone who had died of AIDS such as Jon Fielding, I know guys who did die and attended their funerals.  I know guys who were infected and have been on meds of one kind or another for years now.

Just as we cannot recall the 1950's or 1960's without recalling the racism and Civil Rights challenges, the demonstrations and the riots and the government crackdowns over Civil Rights and the Vietnam War, we cannot fondly recall the 1980's and 1990's, especially, and not be burdened by the memories of those who struggled and died of AIDS, starting with the magazine articles in TIME and NEWSWEEK, to the numbers of those who died growing ever larger each year, to the films and TV specials about that era, to the early, and often ineffective, meds, to the preventative HIV meds today.  We've grown up and now grown old under the specter of AIDS.  Just as I grew up and matured under the specter of the Vietnam War and the draft.  There was little of no escape from either.    

The first and only time I recall having a hearing test was in the late Spring of 1973 for the Air Force.  I drove to March AFB in Southern California in Riverside.  (I might have had a hearing test during my draft and Marine OCS physicals, but that was before the Air Force physical.)  Regardless, I sat in a soundproof booth with those old-style headphones pressing against my ears, waiting to hear those tones so as to press the button.  Only my breathing or heartbeat were present back then.  I was only 24 years old.

I am now 75.  For years I have suffered from tinnitus (that ringing in my ears, persistent and increasingly louder).  But I have also been experiencing gradual hearing loss.  For several years now, when I watch movies or TV shows, I turn on closed captioning.  But more and more, I either have to ask my husband or others to repeat what they just said to me, especially if they turn away from me when they speak or I was not intently focusing upon what they were saying, or if music or a TV was also on to distract me.  If I am on the phone and talking, and the other person says something while I was talking, I know they said something but I often do not know what they said.

So I finally acknowledged the problem at my yearly physical, and the doctor's assistant gave me a card with the number to call to set up an appointment for another hearing test after all of these years.  The location for my appointment was in the Eisenhower Medical Center.  Mark road with me.

We found the tiny waiting room on the second floor.  Mark wandered off to find a cup of coffee while I struggled to fill out the paperwork (I always forget to bring my reading glasses because I never imagine that I will be required to read very small print and fill out forms.  I mean, this time it was a hearing test, right?)

The door to the waiting space soon opened and a heavy-set Latino young man called out my name.  I stood up.  He seemed to look at me in a rather perturbed way.  I get this now and then.  The Coachella Valley has a large Latino population.  When someone sees the name Sanchez, they are not often wrong to assume the one who answers will be darker skinned, certainly not white.  But since I am half Irish and equally as much German and (Spain) Spanish from which my last name comes, I am white.  He was civil but not particularly friendly.  (One can understand that these days when some folks are stopped and questioned just for having darker skin.)  He explained the procedure, but I had to ask again if I needed hold the button down until the tone fades away or just press and release when I first here a tone?  He seemed perplexed by my question but confirmed that I just had to press and release as soon as I heard a tone of any kind.

Before he put the headphones on me, I told him about my tinnitus.  He dismissed my concern and told me to ignore my heartbeat and the ringing and my breathing.  But after he did put the headphones on me and handed me the button, closing the door to the soundproof booth, I just sat there, not quite alone.  I was overtly accompanied by that loud ringing in my head, trying hard to focus upon any tones that might compete with the noises my body now makes that it never used to make in 1973.  I could hear the tones, but not as well as I would have liked because they were in competition with the tinnitus.  And when the ordeal was finally over, and it had felt like an ordeal, especially at the end of each ear's turn, I had heard no tones toward the end of each ear's turn.  And that showed up on the sheet of paper he handed me after making a copy with the grid pattern of where I heard something and where I did not.  Whatever tones were at the end that I was supposed to hear, I heard nothing except the nagging tinnitus.

He also gave me another card for an office on the third floor, presumably to see a hearing specialist.  Once there I made an appointment for next week to see the hearing specialist.  I presume this appointment is to see what sort of hearing aid I will require. 

I have no problem wearing a hearing aid of any kind, whether subtle or obvious.  Problem is that I will still be plagued with tinnitus.  I might be able to hear better, but the ringing seems even louder than it was before the hearing test.  According to the physician's assistant during my annual physical, there is no cure for tinnitus because they still do not know what causes it.  My best friend Michael says there is a clinic in Phoenix that claims they can treat tinnitus.  So, when I have my next appointment, I will ask if my tinnitus can be treated or am I stuck with it 'til death us do part?     

What triggered the tinnitus in the first place?  I wasn't much of a concert goer.  There was a loud performance in Bismarck, ND, when the Guess Who and a Kansas band called Echo Flint played before a relatively small crowd.  However, Steve and Elaine Schurr and I sat as far away from the source of the noise as possible back in the mid 70's.  Steve Keil and I went to a B-52's concert South of Denver in the mid 2000's, and it was extremely loud and we were sitting way too close to the stage.  That might have started this unfortunate journey.  When I was at Minot AFB in missiles, and the drone of the launch capsule way down deep underground was persistent, I would wear ear plugs and noise dampening head phones at the same time.  And I don't recall tinnitus after that.  I occasionally have worn headphones since, but I only rarely crank up the volume of a stereo when I am listening to music.  I am resigned to the fact that I don't really know when, where or how the tinnitus began or what I could have done to prevent it.  I just hope there is some sort of treatment that can eliminate it or suppress it, going forward.         

    

TALES OF THE CITY once again

Last year, Armistead Maupin released the tenth volume in his TALES OF THE CITY series, MONA OF THE MANOR.  This completed the four subsequent volumes after the original six in the series:  TALES OF THE CITY (1978), MORE TALES OF THE CITY (1980), FURTHER TALES OF THE CITY (1982), BABYCAKES (1984), SIGNIFICANT OTHERS (1987), and SURE OF YOU (1989).  

Each of these four subsequent volumes was titled for one of his four major characters, MICHAEL TOLIVER LIVES (2007), MARY ANN IN AUTUMN (2010), THE DAYS OF ANNA MADRIGAL (2014),  and, most recently, MONA OF THE MANOR (2024).    

I was at the original CATEGORY SIX BOOKS store on Capitol Hill in Denver sometime in the mid 1980's with a former friend, Jon O'Neil.  He knew a big guy who worked there now and then (he may not have been paid by the much older owner and just enjoyed being at the store and selling gay books).  The fellow might also have been a flight attendant for United--if memory serves--and simply volunteered on his days off, to work behind the counter of the popular store on E. 10th Street, on the east side, between N. Downing St. and N. Corona St.  The building had been an old house at one time, with steps leading up to the front door of the store.  The owner of CATEGORY SIX BOOKS and his partner lived upstairs from the store level itself.  In the center of the store were wooden steps leading up to the residence.  The staircase divided the store into two, almost equal halves once a patron entered the front door.

Jon and I were just browsing at first, having driven up from Colorado Springs where we lived to Denver that sunny afternoon, probably in Spring.  This was the first time I had ever been in a gay book store, at least one that was not primarily selling porn magazines like the one my friend Bart Keeling worked at in Colorado Springs off of N. Platte Blvd. 

Eventually, perhaps Jon was making his purchase and I was simply standing beside him as his buddy behind the cash register rang up the total price of his books.  Somehow, I must have been asked if I had read TALES OF THE CITY, a series I had never even heard of since this was the mid 1980's and Maupin had not yet published the fifth volume, his breakout novel in the series, SIGNIFICANT OTHERS.  When I must have acknowledged that I had not even heard of TALES, Jon's buddy grabbed the four paperback volumes then in existence and handed them to me, confidently saying, "Do yourself a favor and buy these." 

This could have been in either late 1984 or 1985 since BABYCAKES was published in 1984.

I cannot imagine that I was anything but startled.  I almost never read novels, except in college.  And, of course, there were very few "gay" novels back then, at least none that would be included in a college class at Cal State Dominguez Hills circa 1970.  I reluctantly accepted the stack though I cannot now recall how I paid for the four books, whether in cash or, more likely, by credit card.  (I had an American Express card in the beginning of the decade, which was only the first company to issue me a card of any kind after my resignation from the Air Force in October of 1979.  One had to build up credit, then as now, to get credit cards.)         

These four volumes were first editions; and none of them, published by Harper & Row, were ever in hardback when they first appeared.
                                                                          

                                                                                  

                                                                                 

                                                                                 

I was, of course, working at Kaman Corporation (later Instrumentation) on Garden of the Gods Road in Colorado Springs full time since 1980 while I worked part time, weekday evenings and sometimes Saturdays, for Pikes Peak Community College at Fort Carson and, less often, Peterson Air Force Base, teaching English, Literature, U.S. History, Western Civilization, Communications, and Humanities.  When was I going to read them when I did work full time during the day and two or four evenings during the week and sometimes Friday evening and all day Saturday (for the Communications seminars)?  I had joined the History Book Club and was reading many history, as well as art and architectural, books so that I could get a stronger grip on U.S. and European history, in addition to art and architecture, when I was teaching history or humanities classes.   

At some point at Kaman, I had been transferred from the small Displacement Measuring Devices team (Rich Hostak, Shirley Overholser, Greg Smith, and our older supervisor, the inventor of the DM devices that Kaman sold, who kindly hired me in 1980 but whose name I no longer remember) to the larger Radiation Monitoring Division of Kaman.  My coworker and fellow technical writer at the RMS division was later let go, and then my job would also entail becoming the division's supply officer.  I was given a solitary office off of the main manufacturing floor.  No one else occupied that area of at least three separate offices. 

For anyone to find me, they had to enter double doors, take a couple of steps, turn right, take a few more steps, and then turn right again to enter my office, the single door of which I would often close for privacy.  I knew someone was coming well before they got to me.  

I started to read the novels then and there when I had nothing to do for work.  It took me three days to finish off TALES because it was something quite different than what I was used to reading, a day each for MORE and FURTHER, and a two or three more days because I knew it was the last one and I really wanted to savor it, BABYCAKES.  To say I devoured the series would be accurate.  I was totally hooked.

As the decade progressed, I would reread the series a couple more times, probably as SIGNIFICANT OTHERS and then SURE OF YOU were published.  (I specifically remember once when I was feeling unwell, had to stay home from work, and lay on the couch in the living room and read the books.)

I recall reading that SIGNIFICANT OTHERS did become Maupin's breakout book, extensively widening his fanbase and significantly increasing his book sales.  This would also be the last volume to appear only in paperback as the first edition.  While the edition was the same height and depth of the four earlier volumes, it was a much thicker book, definitely longer than each of the first four.  And, again if I am remembering correctly, this was the first book that no longer relied upon newspaper columns that first appeared in San Francisco newsprint before being gathered in book form. 
                                                                         

SURE OF YOU was, finally, the first volume to initially appear as a hardback book.  I not only bought it that way at CATEGORY SIX BOOKS, I learned that Maupin was going to appear at the store on Capitol Hill for a signing.  My other former friend at the time, Dino, and I headed over to the store on 10th street to discover that Maupin was, indeed, exceedingly popular, given that the signing line extended out the back door of the building and into a backyard that we had not known existed.  At least a couple dozen fans were ahead of us.  Once inside the main floor, we could hear a straight woman at the table set-up near the front door, while standing in front of Maupin, weeping when Maupin indicated that SURE OF YOU was likely the last volume in the series ever.  Maupin's partner at the time, the late Terry Anderson, was standing regally, almost protectively, behind Maupin sitting at the table.  He was chuckling at the obvious grief being expressed by this female fan while Maupin tried to soothe her disappointment that he had no more stories to tell about his beloved characters. 

His characters had strongly taken a hold of his now far-more-numerous fans.  We had actually come to love them as if they were real.  And Barbary Lane was as real to us as if it really existed in San Francisco.  When Dino and I finally arrived in front of the signing table and Armistead looked up at me expectantly, we asked, "Does Barbary Lane really exist?"  Maupin explained that he had based the location upon Macondray Lane, a real pedestrian lane.  (Dino and I would later visit the location, climb the wooden steps and walk the Lane, figuring where 28 Barbary Lane would be were it there and not just a soundstage in Los Angeles when the first film was shot.)  Maupin signed my hardback book and Dino and I moved off, pleased that we had gotten to speak with him even if briefly.
                                                                           

Here is a photo of Macondray Lane's steps:
                                                                                 

With TALES OF THE CITY apparently at an end in 1989, and my searching for the right kind of novel for me to create, I wrote a few single novels that I knew were not worthy to publish.  I was soon finally forced to move to Denver when the IBM job appeared.  I had already dipped my toes into the Denver stream after I was unable to get hired for a middle school or high school teaching job in Colorado Springs after I finished with my Secondary Education certificate program at UCCS in 1989. 

In early 1990, Dino was exiting a building in downtown Denver as a former, fellow tenet of a converted house on Capitol Hill was entering that same building.  In chatting Don Nolan up that afternoon, Dino discovered that Don was working as a technical writer on a project for Capital Federal Savings in the Tech Center of Denver.  The project needed a few more writers, so Dino was excited to offer my name for consideration.  Don was happy to hear that because, as a contractor, if he got another person hired, he would get a $1,000.00 check from Ciber, Inc., his contract company.  I would drive that Spring to the Tech Center each day from Colorado Springs after I got hired.  Sometimes I would spend Friday night at Dino's place and drive back to Colorado Springs in the morning.

Another Cap Fed contractor was Nancy Dille, and she got a tech writer job from IBM after the Cap Fed job ended in June.  Because they needed more writers on that project, she offered my name for consideration.  I was hired and she got a check.  That job in 1991 forced me to move to Dino and his partner's house in Thornton, CO, north of Denver for a few months.  Since the project kept going, and then I got transferred to another IBM project and, eventually, got the Sales Manual job that would last for 31 years eventually, I had to get an apartment and leave my part time teaching for Pikes Peak Community College behind.  I now had time to write something I truly believed in.  By 1993, I began writing what would become my own series, RAINBOW ARC OF FIRE.     

I believe that it was around 1998, after I had moved into my condo on Franklin St., that Maupin was on another book tour.  I bought a copy of that hardback 20th Edition of TALES OF THE CITY.  Maupin was at the new Denver library for a signing.  By then I had published the first six volumes of my own series that had been entirely inspired by Maupin's series.  While I created a super-hero series, I did use short, cliff-hanger chapters as he had.  And my series was based in Denver while his was set in San Francisco.  I decided in homage to present him with a set of my series, as well as having him sign my hardback copy of TALES OF THE CITY.  A handler at the library thought he would certainly accept my unusual gift, so he ushered me in front of Maupin at the signing table, I briefly told the now very popular what I was giving him and how he had inspired me to write it.  A bit puzzled, he accepted the colorful stack of books, though he seemed quite surprised.  He also signed my hardback copy of his book.   
                                                                                  

These are the covers of his subsequent four volumes, each named for a major character:
                                                                                

                                                                                  

                                                                                 

                                                                                   

When I learned that MONA OF THE MANOR was going to be published, I preordered it.  Then I decided to reread the series once again, ordering the three paperback omnibuses, each containing three of the previous volumes in the series.  These are what they look like:
                                                                               

                                                                                

                                                                                 

I did not want to potentially damage all of my first editions in case something untoward might happen during my rereading.  These omnibuses seemed a good bet.  I read the first Omnibus last year.  But when I started on the second Omnibus that begins with BABYCAKES, I stopped after reading only a few pages. Why?

I was a bit burned out.  The first three books, combined, made for a lot of reading.  Also, each was made into a series on PBS (TALES OF THE CITY) or Showtime (MORE and FURTHER) after an intolerant, priggish jerk overseeing PBS in the first Bush Administration had halted the possibility of any further TALES OF THE CITY books being made into video series for PBS even though the first was the highest rated PBS show of all time when it aired.  He thought it was obscene and not for general public consumption even though some PBS stations pixilated any slight nudity such as Mona's breasts when she was getting dressed in front of Mary Ann and a nude girlie poster on Brian Hawkins's fridge. 

Sadly, too, BABYCAKES begins with the reader being made aware that handsome Dr. Jon Fielding, Michael's previous love interest, has died of AIDS and his ashes buried under patio pavers at 28 Barbary Lane.  With the book being published in 1984, in major cities such as SF, LA, NY and even Denver, we had seen our share of dying gay men.  I had read the TIME and NEWSWEEK articles in the Kaman library about this mysterious new, and fatal, disease that seemed to be primarily targeting gay men. The articles began around 1981, again if I am remembering right.  Until the cocktails became widely available after 1995, gay men were still dying.  I had my first HIV test in Colorado Springs, but then I regularly got tested at a few sites in Denver after I moved there, once in a mobile testing RV parked at Cheesman for an annual Pride Parade.

Of those of us who had known one another at the Air Force Academy in 1979, George Gordy and Dan Stratford's partner, Dick Tuttle, would be dead in 1989.  Dan would hang on until 1995.  This was a decade and a half of funerals and notices in the paper and word of mouth gossip as to who had just died.  Trying to reread BABYCAKES before MONA OF THE MANOR brought it all back much too clearly.  And, of course, some of the survivors guilt also came flooding back.  Those of us who are still negative after decades sometimes feels as if we are survivors of the TITANIC.  We hadn't always played safe, we had not always been smart, so perhaps we were just preeminently lucky as we escaped in the life rafts and left others at sea to drown. 

Also, those who died back then have now been dead for years, and even for decades.  Many of them are now almost forgotten.  Even the United flight attendant who volunteered at CATEGORY SIX BOOKS and handed me those first four TALES books in 19984 or 1985 died in the 1990's.  I saw him shuffling out of a St. Joseph's hospital room in the 1990's after he had visited a guy whom I had briefly dated, who would die not long after the flight attendant died.  He was, physically, on his last legs that day with obvious sores clearly visible.   

Too many casualties and too many painful memories.

I had already shelved MONA OF THE MANOR for several months before picking it up to read a week ago, finishing it yesterday.  Now a period piece about that terrible era before the cocktails and the meds and PrEP, it brought back memories of those terrible years.              

Someday, we survivors of AIDS, like those survivors who were there for that night to remember aboard the TITANIC, will be gone.  If they read about our generation, they may learn that we survived Polio, The Cold War, the Vietnam War, AIDS, rampant intolerance and COVID.  We weren't The Greatest Generation.  We were their offspring, and the world we were handed to endure made us survivors of too many perils.  But many of us did survive, if just barely.