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.
