Vanguard: A Miscellany

Appalachian Pride

OK so this is one of my favorits shots from last weekend. As GPS and I were leaving the Park grounds with cameras slung over our shoulders, a group of three including the two pictured here (the third was in sort of Goth gear and a mullet) yelled at us, "Take our pitcher. Take our pitcher." Unfortunately, I had my telephoto lens on because it would've been great to get this girl in full regalia which was a Catholic school girl outfit. It was creepy how clumsily the guy in the background tried to flirt with me, telling me where he wanted me to put my big lens. But again, these are just my kind of admirers; par for the course. In any case, it was so gay pride meets Deliverance that it was laughable, but it did end up being one of my favorite of the set of pictures.

Shit

I feel like shit!

Subjective fevers, productive cough, night sweats, lightheadedness, headaches. It sucks. I actually had to call in sick for the last two days, but because of guilt over having been absent for most of last week, I went in to work today. Still with the cough, sore throat and lightheadedness. I even stayed an additional two hours during my half day to return phone calls and review labs and refill pharmacy requests.

So I still feel like shit. Or maybe it's because of the $3000 estimate I got today for my car's engine.

Atlanta Chronicles: Celebration

The thunderclap was everywhere and nowhere at once, and within seconds the heavens opened up and let loose a deluge. No, not during the parade, I thought.

It's not as though the festival hadn't had its share of crises already, what with the main stage collapsing during the opening ceremony and the subsequent cancellation of its featured performers. But despite the dubious start, I was impressed with how everything else had gone off without a hitch from the erection of a makeshift main stage

(by the way his name is Levi Kreis, he's cute, he was a sweetheart. Oh, and he lives in L.A. Stalkee potential!)

to the VIP party which featured official introductions to the Grand and Honorary Marshals. For Atlanta, unlike L.A., these selections actually made sense--Barron Segar, a man who had raised over 66 million dollars for HIV/AIDS research, and Judy Shepherd, Matthew Shepherd's mother. Yes, people who have actually made significant contributions to the GLBT community.

And the sense that permeated all of the festival was one of celebration and jubilation and pride--a party atmosphere that continued to build toward its finale, the parade. It was evident in the moments prior to the parade's start. From our vantage point on the rooftop of Outwrite Books, we could see the throngs of people who had lined the route at least ten bodies deep, and every single one bouncing and dancing to the music that pumped out of the large speakers fastened to the rooftop and onto the street. They were dancing. They were hugging. And even before the first parade participant came down the street, two people began the entertainment by stepping out from the crowd and in unison tumbling down the street in a series of round off back handsprings, bringing the crowd into more of a frenzy.

And then the thunderclap. And then the rain.

I assumed the downpour would kill the momentum, but the DJ blasted a dance remix of the Eurythmics' Here Comes the Rain Again. It drove the crowd wild in the downpour, and for the most part made not a whit of difference. And actually the rain made for more fantastic photos. Enjoy.

In the end, however, Mother Nature won out. At least as far as GPS and I were concerned. The prospect of lightning hitting the rooftop and damaging thousands of dollars of camera equipment? Well we didn't think it was worth it. But the rain never did stop the parade or its onlookers from the celebration. It was without question the best Pride I've ever attended.

Marcellas

You can vote only until tomorrow so go here. Now. Just cause Marcellas asked so nicely.

Atlanta Chronicles: Faking It

I'm still pretty surprised that people respond as well to stories about my life as a physician because frankly, it does become routine. My life, if left to my own devices, is routine. But often, my life is pretty fantastic in the true sense of the word--based on or existing only in fantasy. I have, over the last few years faked it as an A-lister hob-nobbing with Jessica, Sarah Michelle, Giovanni and Rosario at a press release or at a bona fide Hollywood premiere party with Natalie, Jude, and Ewan thanks to the Greek. I've faked it as a cultural VIP at well-attended yet exclusive events at one of the world's foremost museums due to the generosity of Fishering. I've also faked it as an actor/extra on a successful prime time television show thanks to Chad. All of those were pretty easy to bullshit.

"Hey, you! I need a real photographer to get this picture," the man said as he pointed to some of the more prominent movers and shakers of the Atlanta Pride organizing committee.

I did a double take, potentially exposing my ruse, realizing that he was addressing me as the "real photographer." It was so freaking weird. Because this, this was not easy to bullshit. But somehow, GPS had gotten me a gig as one of the five photographers of the Atlanta Pride Festival with no other credentials but the serendipity of owning a decent camera and a few lenses.

But there I was, walking around Piedmont Park in a dark blue lead volunteer t-shirt and a lanyard that identified me as "Pride Photographer". I didn't even need that. Apparently having a camera with a substantial 200-500 mm lens was all the identification needed by the vast majority of the festival attendees...and all that was necessary for an incalculable number of people to think themselves original in telling me "Damn, you've got a big one." Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

The amazing thing was that it gave me carte blanche to take pictures of anyone and everyone. And as I became more comfortable with the role, I found more people actually coming up to me asking to be photographed.

We walked through tent city, situated in the meadow of Piedmont Park. Not too many fags, but a ton of lesbians--I think because tent city involved setting up tents. Regardless, people were more than willing to pose. And I began to see the truly diverse nature of this festival; it was multicultural, multi-generational, attended by gay men, lesbians, and transgendered alike.

And yes, I was faking it when I went on assignments--to the mass commitment ceremony, the Pride Prom, the VIP party, the live performances, and of course the parade. But I did notice that as the days went on I had to fake it less and less so that by the end of my stay, sure I was faking it, but I was faking it well.

Atlanta Chronicles: Prelude

These last few days, I was in Atlanta. There are so many stories, some of which I will tell over the next few days and some I plan on keeping to myself. But it was a great trip due, in no small part, to Gilded Palace of Sin who not only provided a place to crash, ensured that I was adequately entertained, was the consummate host, providing evidence of true Southern gentility, but also got me my first photographer gig.

So to GPS, here's a big "Woot Woot!" Props biotch!

Disclaimer: I do not claim and have not ever claimed to be a professional photographer. The photos from the next couple of days are raw since I have no functional knowledge of Photoshop, so be kind.

Hey-ell's Bay-ells

"Hey-ell's Bay-ells!" she exclaimed.

No. No. No. No. No!

It had been less than five seconds that I'd removed the ear buds from of my dead iPod. It was like she had waited for the opportunity and swooped in with her "Hey-ell's Bay-ells!"

"Excuse me?"

"Ee-yets je-ust ay-an exprayshun Ah yewz."

I was on a L.A. bound plane from Atlanta. My stay was five days in duration. I speak Spanish. I can speak un peu de Francais. And I can understand Visayan. So mastering Southern English wasn't all that difficult. The only thing one need know is that it is very similar to regular English except you have to double the number of syllables spoken. So "an" then becomes "ay-an". Oh, and the other thing is that all vowels are fucked. My hint is listen for consonants and fill in the vowel-y parts with actual vowels--sort of like Wheel of Fortune. Buy a vowel!

Truthfully, there were a variety of Southern accents that I encountered during my stay since people who attended Atlanta Pride were from all parts of the South, and some were actually quite melodic.

Hers wasn't. Especially since it had a guttural quality to it that was likely due in no small part to the excess tissue at her throat and the food that she conveyed down her gullet during those brief and precious moments of silence.

"Lahk Ah sey-ed, Hey-ell's Bay-ells! Mah huzzzz-bund ay-and Ah r (this is the only exception, when she says "are" it is easy to tell that she truly thinks it is comprised of a singular letter) sup-poh-zd tah bay gao-ing tao (yes, depending on usage "to" has various pronunciations) Huh-wah-ee, but na-ow, thay tewld uhs thay-at bey-cuz uv thu flaht duh-lay, Ah'm gao-ing tao bey lewzing uh whow-uhl dei uv r vay-cay-shun."

Seriously, it was enough that her thighs, double the size of mine, were spilling over into my seat. But now to be subjected to the endless prattle? It was asking far too much!

"Ley-est yea-ur, mah fah-muh-lee wey-ent ohn uh tree-yep tao Dees-nee, ay-and ey-et wuz sao ex-pey-en-sey-ive! Hay-ad Ah kno-wed they-at they-er wuz a Muc Dow-nuld's ney-ext do-wur, Ah wud hay-ave tay-kun mah kee-yedz they-er thu ey-en-tah-yur tahm."

Wonderful. She's got those kids that are well on their way to solidifying the statistics of obese children in the United States. They're nine and six, if anyone's interested. She and her husband had given up on having kids after ten years of marriage and failed attempts to conceive, that is, until they planned a trip to Hawaii! She miraculously got pregnant. And now on their twentieth anniversary, she sat next to me, considering turning right back around because her meticulously planned vacation had started off less than perfectly.

"Ah've dun mah ree-surch. Ay-and Ah wa-unt tuh gao tao sum ov thu rey-es-tuh-rawnts, but Ah shode thu mey-un-yew tao mah hus-bund, ay-and he thow-ut we were gao-ing tao stawrve. Thu fewd jes' lewk sao gross! But Ah taw-uld he-yum they-et they-ur wud ay-at ley-est bei a Muc Dawn-nuld's! Hey-ell's Bay-ells!"

I saw her husband. They weren't going to starve. Their bodies could live off of their prodigious bodies for at least one month--three weeks longer than the duration of their trip.

"Yow-re Fuh-luh-pee-noh? Hey'ell's Bay-ells! Na-ow, Ah know thee-yes gurl ey-en D.C., ay-and shey's Fuh-luh-pee-noh! Shay say-es hur fa-muh-lay ey-es frum L.A.? Hur may-den nay-um is G.A.L.A.N.G. Dew yew knoh hur?"

Ooooh! It spells! But no, I didn't know her. But I can imagine what the former Ms. Galang may have thought of this woman. She was obese. Her hair, a proud blonde with a tuft of bangs and on the sides, combed and Hair-Netted to form a halo of hair that extended a good six inches from the contours of her face. Her mascara was applied meticulously to lashes that protruded out normally for less than a millimeter before taking a sharp ninety degree turn straight up. All against a backdrop of glittered, powder blue eye shadow. I imagine the former Ms. Galang may have found her tedious.

"Nay-ow, Ah knoh yew pay-pul frum L.A. must thaink wey-er uh bunch of hee-yuks, but Huntsvee-ul, A-luh-bay-muh ey-es a cos-muh-paw-li-tun tay-own. We hey-ave ow-ur own prob-lums, jest lahk thu be-yeg ci-tays. Lahk, whun Ah gao tao Whal-Mawrt, ay-and Ah'm stayn-din ey-en lahn. Ay-and thurs sum whun wey-eth tuns ov dah-yuh-purs ay-and poe-tay-toe chee-yups, ay-and Ah hay-ave to whach whut Ah bah. Ey-et maykes me sao mey-ad!"

"What does?" I ask.

She presses her outstretched fingers to her lips, as though forming a barrier of silence to those not meant to hear the offensive word.

"Hey-ell's Bay-ells! Thu Mex-uh-cay-ans!" she whispered.

I listened as she offered her interpretation of the economic impact of illegal immigrants on U.S. economy. Apart from the frequent interjection of "Hey-ell's Bay-ells", the argument was interesting in an uninformed, I'm-surprised-you-undestand-"alien"-doesn't-necessarily-refer-to-outer-space kind of way.

She continued with subject after subject, as I all the while thought of my blog, until she came to an epiphany. Just as we were about to disembark our four hour trip.

"Hey-ell's Bay-ells! Ah've ben dew-ing awl thu taw-kin'. Whut were yew dao-een ey-en Ut-lay-an-tuh?"

I took the lanyard that still hung from my neck and pulled out the card that was attached to its end which I then presented to her.

"Oh I was an official photographer of the Atlanta Gay Pride Festival. It was fabulous!"

Hell's Bells, indeed.

Outta Here

No. Seriously, I'm out. I'm going to Atlanta for a couple of days. I've never been there before, so I'm excited. I'll be meeting bloggers and friends of friends as well as taking care of some medical business. So, don't be surprised if this is the newest of posts until next Monday...unless I die in which case you'll have to wait longer.

Ciao!

Night Out

Pillar candles that seemed to occupy every square inch of flat surface cast shadows that danced on the freshly painted beige walls and the numerous wrought iron crosses that hung on them. Razor Burn and I sat in the overstuffed love seat, trying unsuccessfully to get comfortable without disrupting the velvet burgundy throw pillows. They coordinated fabulously with the velvet drapes that billowed in as the warm, Sherman Oaks air rustled into the room. On the full sized overstuffed sofa sat our hosts as they offered the homemade hors d'oeurves which sat atop the heavy, dark stained, Mexican inspired wooden table.

I was in fucking Z Gallerie hell. And not just any Z Gallerie hell, the inner circle of Z Gallerie hell that was consigned to the valley. The VALLEY!

But with Razor Burn and my new acquaintances, the conversation flowed freely, no doubt assisted by the beers and margaritas that flowed just as freely. I just couldn't help but think that someone had swallowed a Meatloaf video and then threw it all up in this apartment. What made it even odder was the fact that in the background, various couples writhed nakedly in the throes of soft core pornographic passion.

And that was the fun part of the evening. For real.

We ended up meeting two more of Razor Burn's friends at a Mexican restaurant down the street. One of them was this boorish, bearish, uber-testosteroned thirty-eight year old. You know the kind, mental development arrested at a time when he was most likely his happiest. So he was as sophisticated as your typical high school football player.

As an example, he used a joke as an ice breaker. No sooner had we been introduced than he offered to tell me a joke: "What do you get when you cross a Samoan with a N***?"

Yes, that's right. He dropped the N bomb. To a perfect stranger, he dropped the N bomb. I just stood there, mouth wide open in complete amazement of the situation in which I'd found myself. And I guess taking my silence as his cue to finish his joke, he continued:

"Samoa N***."

The punchline was followed by a hearty, belly laugh. I just turned around and talked to the person at my side, ignoring him the rest of the night. I was truly in hell.

But it got even worse believe it or not.

Our party of six finished up dinner (N bomb ordered off the menu getting nothing but two grilled chicken breasts, much to my surprise) and made our way to a local bar/restaurant called Firefly. I'd been there before with one of my fag hags. It was all right, I guess, but I'd already had enough for the evening, and I was just looking forward to ending the night and going home.

And when I felt as though things couldn't get any worse, I found myself with Razor Burn, separated from the remainder of our group.

"So what do you think?" he asked.

I wasn't sure what he was talking about. "I thought the two of you would hit it off well." He was talking about one of our hosts from earlier that evening. And I then realized that this was meant to be a set-up. Aww hells to the no!

The night didn't turn out so badly though. He understood that I wasn't interested in the date, even though I guess it wasn't really a bad match--working professional, cute, blonde, great body, decent personality. Yeah, it would have been a great match if I was still into women.

But at least now he knows that the next time he gets it into his head to set me up, he'll keep it in mind that I'm not looking for huge tits as much as I'm looking for a set of testicles.

Esther Lollipop, Pt. 2

My nurses and I, we were still laughing. I mean a sixty-nine year old woman who had deluded herself into believing that she was pregnant with her dead husband's baby which had apparently been gestating for fifteen months! Seriously, that's comedy gold! And after the standard day of dealing with disease and infirmity, I needed to find laughter when and where ever I could. And yes we were still laughing when she knocked on the door to be allowed re-entry.

I composed myself and admonished my staff to do the same. I suppose I had to pretend that I didn't know what she had told her mother--that it was too early in the fifteen month pregnancy to discern the gender of the baby.

But I saw the look on her face as she walked back through the threshold. With that one look I knew that the laughter was ill-deserved.

I'm not a psychiatrist. I don't claim to be. But I deal with basic things like depression and anxiety, and am well equipped to treat it. I understand it--the imbalance of dopamine and serotonin that results in such symptoms as suicidal ideation, anhedonia, feelings of guilt, anergia, insomnia, etc. But delusional disorders and psychoses? I am as confounded as the vast majority.

And she was clearly psychotic. But it was a diagnosis she wholeheartedly rejected. That's what she returned to say.

"I don't want you to think I'm crazy or nothin' like that."

But as she spoke, trying to convince me otherwise, she accomplished nothing more than reaffirming my initial diagnosis. And my heart went out to her, this woman whose life had been one tragedy after another, who wanted nothing more than some tangible evidence of the love she had had with her husband.

She spoke of her short stay at a psychiatric ward, sent by a mother suspicious of her mental illness.

"They didn't find anything wrong with me. The doctors didn't find anything. But they did reversible therapy."

"Regression therapy?"

"Yeah...yeah, that's it."

She had been a victim of sexual abuse before the age of seven. She was married for only five years before her husband's death...after a forty year engagement. Within the last two years, not only had her husband died, but so had her mother, her uncle, her brother and her father. The last breathed his last in her arms.

In this case her mental illness made sense. How could she remain mentally intact after that degree of loss? It wouldn't surprise me, if given the same circumstances, I would be no better off.

Yeah, it's not really a funny story. But it did make me realize that what we see in individuals, when we make our first impressions and invariably judge others negatively it is generally with the most minute of clues, that what we don't see is the series of events that led to why a certain person acts in a certain way, and that had we been subjected to the random events that occur in another person's life, there's no telling if we would necessarily be different.