Never Before

I’ve seen a bunch of bad shit in my time. Been through my share, too.

Now, I can’t claim academic creds or knowledge. I got my GED nine years after dropping out of high school on my father’s order. Didn’t even crack a book and passed on my first try. I used to be proud of it. I’d proved my father wrong. I called him right away from Fort Bliss. My wife at the time never forgave me for not calling her first. She never understood why I needed to shove it in his face. In 1978, after my junior year, I had six goddamn credits. I’d have been in school another two years and probably still not have enough to graduate.

That year at Wroxeter-on-Severn school in Arnold, MD, I had dated a girl named Julie. All we ever did on our dates was park and have sex. In the Spring I got a blowjob from her down by the Severn River in the woods. Someone saw us. Well, someone followed us and I never did find out who. But in short order, it became known that the prep school wasn’t “inviting” me back, and that’s when my father informed me that I was so stupid that I may as well drop out and go to work for him full-time.

I’m getting off the track here. Julie broke up with me in early July by way of a postcard from Ocean City, New Jersey. I was plunged into a period of depression and self-loathing that no matter how much she and her parents hated me, it was nothing to how much I hated myself. I would never have, from that time on, a normal relationship. At least I learned from it. I’ve not been in an intimate relationship since before the Twin Towers fell. I’ll die alone.

At least, I tell myself, I did finally learn. And taking the GED almost a decade later, earning it without opening a book, was vindicating. I began to realize that I was no dummy after all. I had passion for learning and I studied several things. The first was history. My teachers had made me bored to hell with their stupid lessons, one asswipe doing nothing more than to read straight from the textbook for a whole period except for examination days. I also knew he was fucking two students who were sophomores but what the fuck did I care, I mean, I thought they were sluts and he was a rapist but I couldn’t prove anything. So fuck em, I thought. He lasted two semesters. I rather suspected that staff had deduced his promiscuous proclivities. Fuck him.

I was bitter. I grew more bitter over time. I dove into a study of the paranormal and ancient mysteries. I’m still studying. It’s a subject you never finish. My experiences with evil and the paranormal made me thirst for understanding.

I also studied The Passion. I believed in God, but I had to know if that belief was good or bad. In the Bible, so many horrors were written that I really didn’t like it very much. Well, that’s not completely true. Some selective reading from the New Testament was okay. I concluded, as have many before me, that some of the book is the inspired-by-God truth. But written by men. And men are imperfect, frail, weak, always tempted toward evil and crime for personal gain; political and religious agendas could well have influenced scribes.

Inconsistencies between the lyrical prose of many parts of the King James version changes many meanings, leading fundamentalists to take nonsense far too seriously. And when I read any version, The Passion made no sense to me. I understood the meaning of the resurrection, but I was missing something. I had to dig for decades before I found it.

I wasn’t stupid after all. But following the revelation that I wasn’t going to finish school, one of my father’s employees, a diesel mechanic, told me that my father had told all of his drivers and mechanics about the blowjob in the woods. God I was embarrassed. My old man was the most evil, hurtful son of a bitch in my life. And for much of my life, through beatings and lectures, I was too much like him. A racist, a workaholic. But racism had been reinforced by experience.

I lived through the Baltimore riots of 1968. It was terrifying. Why my mother had to go into the city, I can’t recall, but she did, and I was with her. Black youths threw a bunch of crates into the street, hoping to hang her up and stop the car. Had she stopped, I can only wonder what would have happened.

That was the beginning of my race-based fear. That story changed my father, too. He got his handgun out, broke it down, cleaned and oiled it. He made a declaration I can’t repeat even in writing.

In junior high a few years later, at a school so overcrowded because of bussing that there were split shifts, a morning and an afternoon split of students, we heard rumors of a race riot. Fortunately the police were there as the morning shift left as the afternoon shift was incoming, and nothing happened. But I was terrified. I was also bullied by one classmate who was black, but he eventually found me funny, and let up. And I determined never to be like my father.

And come to think of it, I remember “White” and “Colored” restrooms. I saw the signs but couldn’t read yet. Somehow on a trip with my father, being very young, I opened the door by myself and went to pee. I was in the wrong restroom. Some men scared me, but an older man in suit and fedora waited for me to finish and stood guard. He yelled at the others and they stopped their teasing. The old man took my hand and led me out and asked me where my daddy was. My father saw me and grabbed me and later, of course, there was a belt whipping because I’d scared him. I can no longer see the old black man’s face, but these many years later, I still hear his gentle but stern voice: “Now you go to your daddy, boy, and don’t you do this again.”

We look at science and medical advancements and think we’re really smart. Instead we are looking at our own foolishness and everything it has wrought.

Miles of garbage floating in the Pacific. Hazardous chemicals in our food. Species going extinct, crops failing, bees vanishing. In 50 years our map will be different because of climate change. Many will die along the way from heat injuries, inaccessible drinking water and food shortages. Homeless children already haunt our cities and no one cares. What we’ve become is something I never imagined I’d see.

CORONAVIRUS

We’re less than a week away from March Madness. The NCAA has said that it may not admit spectators. Or it may, but in limited numbers to give people space. Meanwhile, all the New York-based late night shows have begun to tape without live audiences. The Coronavirus has shown itself to be a major threat if we treat it as Italy and China have done. And we have a nutball president telling people that they can still go to work if they test positive. Only that’s just bullshit and still merely half the problem since even getting tested is unlikely at present.

I’m not going to downplay this. It’s bad and it is spreading. I see people taking precautions, but I see more people not doing so. They don’t give others space in checkout lines. They don’t clean hands when they should. The virus had been previously though not to survive for long periods on surfaces, but now we know different.

Then I see the ones that act hysterical, wearing masks, their eyes wide with fear if you come anywhere near, and it’s chaos. Trump and Pence are not only proving our government incapable of rising to meet a crisis. They’re also proving that they, the two of them, are so inept that I can’t be the only one wondering if they can even wipe their own asses.

Look. I’ve been through a bit of shit. Seen a lot, too. But I’ve never seen anything like this. March Madness without any spectators? The Late Show with no audience?

Never been here before. We have to do better, but we have to demand better. How can an individual self quarantine if they haven’t been tested? The flu season isn’t even over yet. Trees and grasses are beginning to react to warmer weather. Allergies aren’t far off. Symptoms of other things can and will lead to more hysteria, which I’ve seen break out many times. Not like this is causing, though.

Nope. Never before.