AND ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST

I try not to throw anybody away unless there are a great series of bad interactions that seriously impact me and put me in a bad place. 

Yet, I have been thrown away over minor political disagreements, criticizing a comment on facebook, correcting a guy's spelling on facebook, mixed messages that resulted in deleted plans, and even my dopey YouTube page. I even had a seriously dear good friend years ago throw me away after she got married because she was a "wife" and in her mind that gave her elevated status and she no longer wanted "single" friends.

A lot of my friends are gone because they died: Joan, Jack, Rhoda, Phyllis, Susan, Betty, Lou, Jerry, Nick, Carrie, Linda, Rita, David, Annie, Roz, Nell, Gail, Maxine, Marilyn, my cousins Eileen and Ellen, and so many more. ETA: Frances 10/23

I sometimes feel like I am now the cheese that stands alone... waiting for Godot.  

And today, just like that another one took a hike... which just proves how fragile and weak some minds are. They are the "throw away demographic."

And just like that, he blocked me and another one bites the dust! LOL

My friend Nell once told me: you can do 1000 great things for a friend but do one thing he doesn't like and he will throw you away and nothing that went before will be important.

The truth of life is as you age you lose your looks, turn to old shit, and die. So I try to keep people in my life... because they are part of my memories that matter. 

a portrait from 1976

photo credit: Frederick Piccarello

THE CRAWL to the LOOK BACK

How is a life defined? Is it measured by family and analyzed within those relationships? Is it remembered by lovers and that passion and then possible regret over wistful choices? Is a life built upon a meaningful career? Maybe it is all of those things, or perhaps at the end nothing matters as so much falls away.

I have always been able to recall most of my life, very little of my minutes became forgotten or lost. A car will pass on West 19th Street and the sound will remind me of when I lived on Independence Avenue in Brooklyn and I could hear that same sound as cars passed on Bay 8th Street. 

There would be days I would sit with my grandma at the window of this house and count the blue and black cars that passed as we waited for my parents to return from a day trip. That white door is the same door through which I  left to go have my tonsils removed. I can still hear the neighbor Camille telling my father she would leave a banana peel on the step so after he slipped my operation would have to be canceled. I can remember so much of the few short years we lived there. 

"This street is where it all happened, not much now. Why do we always expect home to stay the same? Nothing else does. It's funny how when you're a kid a day can last forever. Now, all these years seem just like a blank." --- Bobby in Hearts in Atlantis

When I was a teacher, I would often hear "Miss Levine is the prettiest teacher ever." I was in Bonwit Teller and a woman told me she was an artist and she had never seen a face as perfect as mine. An administrator at Hunter College told me a woman with a face as beautiful as mine should never have to think about a degree. Now, that all seems so silly. 

Because just like that, I became an old lady... and that face that once was is gone. And what will roll out in my future is a mystery.

DOWN A PARTICULAR RABBIT HOLE

By using deep analysis and becoming very introspective, I was able to determine that from the ages of 9 to about 17 I was born a girl but identified as a boy. I was not a "tom boy." I was a boy. I was a transgender. This was me as a teen boy.

And as a boy, I loved other men. I suppose I was gay. I really at that time was not astute enough to even understand what was going on, to be able to analyze my strong desires which manifested as lucid dreams and woke fantasies and these longings were so strong that I entered into a world of day dreams in high school that took over my thoughts and resulted in me not even being mentally present during classes and I had very poor grades because I was not even paying attention to the teachers' lessons. I was in a world where I was a boy in love with Michael Landon and Paul Newman. 

But somehow when I reached the age of 23, I went back to identifying as a girl with still a preference for men. Is that possible to change and be so fluid? Enquiring minds may want to know... 

I now sit under an umbrella of no mercurial roads. At the end of the day, none of that past really matters. I realize that fixations and obsessions with desire are what Buddhists believe lie at the root of suffering.

THE ROBBERY

When the safe in my father's shop was broken into and the contents stolen, it made the newspapers.

MEMORIES OF THE HIT THAT NEVER HAPPENED

My father owned Columbia Silver Company and his factory was on McDonald Avenue in Brooklyn. He and my mother were always going to Las Vegas and socializing with this guy Ash Resnick and a few times I went also and we stayed at the Stardust Hotel. 

Ash Resnick

My father would always tell us some mysterious stories of his associations with gangster types in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and Brooklyn. But there was one day I remember when I was seriously scared.

The details are vague how we got to this location because this was in about 1972 and I was already an adult living on my own in Manhattan. But somehow we were both in my father's car and parked across from his "shop" at where the arrow is pointing in the second image above. 

I asked what we were doing sitting in the parked car and my father plainly explained that for two days some anonymous guy was calling the "shop" and threatening him in a menacing voice saying he would be there to "get even" on Saturday at 2 PM. 

So there we were on Saturday, parked like sitting ducks at almost 2 PM and waiting for some nameless guy who maybe would show up looking for my father for no good purpose. I was very frightened, knew it was dangerous, and told my father we should get the hell out of there. I had recently seen The Godfather and too many of those scenes were stuck in my head as possibilities. My father replied and said "No, I want to see who this guy is and if he really shows up." We were hiding in plain sight.

Well, no guy ever showed up and as we drove away I told my father he was an idiot. He suggested we go to Nathan's for hot dogs.

Veronica J. Valentini

I met Veronica during my early days of broadcasting when we both did shows at the same internet site and we connected and became fast friends. 

We had many conversations (online and on the phone) about all sorts of things and after a while Veronica stopped her LIVE broadcasts but she continued to watch me and she became a regular viewer and has been very supportive. 

Veronica is an extremely accomplished woman: a producer and screenwriter with a long list of film credits at IMDb.

She even posted reviews of my books!  

the marjorie cartoons

ROAD TRIPS

PENIS ENVY

She is the producer of "The Price of Honor":