What a Wonderful Whirl...

This is all part of what was behind the word "whirl" in naming this blog back in 2004. Life to people like me (and the guys back in Logan Circle in D.C. who I lived among) is both global and local, dizzying and bizarrely orderly, ironic and contradictory, clubby and lonely - all at once.

Here's yet another example.

So I am laying in bed in a miserable hotel in Kingston, on a five-day business trip that is truly from hell this time. Stupefying frustrations, very poor infrastructure from the client (i.e. spotty internet, no reliable phone service, no reliable point-to-point transportation arranged, accommodations far from everything), I only had breakfast yesterday and may only eat once again today. I got only 3 hours of sleep from the combination of hunger pains, stress and the roar of the heavy rains from the system that is the wake of Hurricane Noel.

I feel remote, cut off, lonely. Powerless.

And in the depth of this feeling, in this place, I stumble upon this.

Yes - full color coverage of last night's High Heel Race down 17th Street in Dupont Circle...on the website of the #1 TV network in Brazil.

And I just chuckle at my life. My crazy life.

It really is a gift, this life of mine. I realize that I made it happen on my own. I lived the D.C. gay life for 20 years, and I moved to Brazil, and I'm currently in Kingston on business all from the sheer force of my own crazy will. And somehow the three have once again whirled together at a mere moment in my life where desperation collides with the hilarious, the outrageous and the wistful.

And I know I'm not alone. There are millions of you out there who know what I'm talking about. This shit just happens all the time, and every time you find yourself chuckling the same way. Maybe my ability to see the whole scope of this whirl is the real gift. Others might just wallow in the misery, or feel jealous or mournful about the city they left, or the home they miss. I am lucky that I can't linger too long in any of the various colliding lights and shadows of this whirling life we're all in. I'm exhausted, miserable, happy and content. I'm in love, worried, excited and sad. I'm frustrated, grateful, elated and pissed off. I'm all that shit, usually every day. And I can pull it off, because of moments like this.

Maybe it's why some people can handle surviving the Holocaust but can't wait five minutes longer for their meal to arrive without storming out of the restaurant in a fury. Maybe it's why I'm alive, and Jeff is dead. Maybe it's why my parents are in a loveless marriage, but still live together. Maybe it explains a lot of things.

Photo credit: Joe Tresh

Tuesday A/V: The Economic Realities of the Global Finance System, by Archie Bunker

For those who are curious about the basics of how the international finance system operates, particularly for developing countries, I offer you a five-minute instructional video featuring Archie Bunker as a Latin American debtor nation, the Meathead as the IMF, George Jefferson as the Paris Club, Edith Bunker as the U.S. Treasury, Louise Jefferson as the European Central Bank and Gloria Stivic as the Wall Street hedge fund.

This is literally all you need to know. Enjoy.

São Paulo Stands Up a Little Taller

Change on the subject of gay rights doesn't come in giant, dramatic strokes in Latin America. It's always something subtle that accumulates in the air, like the smell of a turkey slowly roasting in the oven all afternoon at Thanksgiving.

Today, yet another small and all-but-ignored advance occurred for gays here in the state and city of São Paulo. Officials from the state and municipal executive branches are joining officials from a key agency set up to defend citizens' rights to sign a cooperative agreement to jointly provide support services (including court support) to those who have suffered from illegal discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The significance of this act, though, is not small. Given that the legal and judicial system in this country -- from the Federal Constitution on down to municipal subdivisions -- is a massive and confusing tangle of jurisdictions, laws and norms, anything that unites different jurisdictions and bureaucracies behind a clear objective like alleviating anti-gay discrimination under the law is a very, very good thing for the average Brazilian.

I've been told often enough about how privileged I am that I could afford the $3,000 cost of hiring a good lawyer here to steer the process of obtaining my common law partnership with Vini and my permanent visa to live here in only seven months. Given the immense importance such a thing would have to anyone in my position (and the average cost of a wedding in the United States), I didn't think it was so huge a price tag to pay. But this is a country where the minimum monthly wage is still less than $200, and the vast majority of people living here don't have that kind of money for almost anything. And if they did, they would always put a legal fight against someone oppressing them way down on their priority list, in favor of a home, a car and other basics. Alas, you can visualize the roots of why homophobia persists in a developing country despite the fact that the laws tend to be fairly progressive.

It heartens me to think that gays here will have greater encouragement to use the progressive laws they have here to their benefit, and with that encouragement will come some tangible resources and support, including psychological counseling as well as legal advocacy. But the dynamics of social conditions on gay life here are the reverse of what they are in the U.S., which makes this development even more important.

The gays and lesbians in the middle and lower classes in Brazil are far more likely to be out of the closet and brave about living openly. As they have little to lose, they wager it is worth it to live more happily. Wealthy gays, on the other hand, are terrified of losing what they have (usually provided in tandem from their employer, who can replace them in a heartbeat, and their fathers, who can cut them off from their allowances), and are far more likely to live deeply in the closet. So, those who are most exposed to illegal discrimination are the gays who are out, and they happen to be the ones without the means to even possibly defend themselves through the legal system, or even understand how. The gays in the upper classes, however, must gain greater courage before similar solutions to their problems can be fleshed out.

Also, São Paulo state represents the majority of this country's economic activity, and the city is the largest on the continent. So, both are the leaders of most things in Brazil. I'm very proud to be a paulista and a paulistano, a resident of both this state and this city (both of which are currently governed, mind you, by leading figures of the opposition to the ruling PT of President Lula). And this small but very important step forward among many is yet another reason for that pride.

Tuesday A/V: Goodbye

Just before I left D.C. in March, a friend of mine drunkenly warbled a few lyrics to this song to me at a party, and I haughtily cringed inside. But alas, now it's my turn.

Chris and Anderson leave this week for yet another temporary home in their nomadic bi-national couple wanderings, brought on by a mixture of love and hate: the love they have for each other, and the hate that formed the basis of easily the most anti-gay U.S. federal law enacted in our lifetimes.

So rather than wallow in self-pity that São Paulo and I are losing them for the rest of the year, I'd rather just remind them that even clichés about the rainbow in every storm can come in handy sometimes. Never did I think a Spice Girls song would best sum things up for me at a moment like this.

I'll miss you guys. Get back here soon. xo

Prayers Answered

On Sunday morning, Clancy woke up and wanted to get on our bed. This was another major sign that he was really recovering. As the day progressed, he seemed much more sure-footed in every way. The weakness in his hind quarters was gone (as were the accidents), his eyes were sharper and more focused. He was picking up his toys again. And he wanted to play tug-of-war again, for the first time initiating his favorite game since the awful events of Wednesday.

And this morning, he got up on the bed with Vini as I was working in my office. And then he came into the office with a tennis ball in his mouth and looked up at me with his usual look of "OK, it's playtime now."

I wanted to post a video especially for friends back home who have written with their concerns. As any of them can see from this short clip we did this morning with him, Clancy is back. Especially at the end, you can see that first glimpse of that happy face he makes. We haven't seen much of that since Wednesday. I don't have to even say that it's happy faces all around here!

And as any reader can see, the apartment is still quite empty. My stuff arrives into the Port of Santos this week, and should clear customs by December.

Almost Out of the Woods?

An update on Clancy -- the seizures appear to have stopped. Finally.

Yesterday was a crucial day for him. As I said in the last post, he woke up with a little tail-wag for me, even though his eyes were heavy and he looked far away still. But as the day went on, he went in and out of a very heavy sleep. His body and his mind were exhausted from what he'd been through on Wednesday, and he needed to heal, as well as let the huge amount of medication flow out of him. But more than once, I noticed he was dreaming. That was a good sign.

Of course, we aren't sure what we'll find once the tide goes out, and he returns to whatever 'normal' we can expect from now on. It will take a few days or as much as a week for all the drugs to be flushed out of his system. He could also have brain damage from the seizures. We don't know since we really can't afford the tomography, and our vet cautioned that "there aren't too many people here who can really read tomography of a dog and know what they're looking at."

But there were flashes of hope during the periods he was awake and moving. He certainly has his appetite back, although the phenobarbital is probably helping a lot. We also went back to the clinic for a check-up, and I decided we would walk there down Rua Oscar Freire, and we'd take our time because I didn't want to exhaust him. Clancy has always been an avid smeller of neighborhoods. We used to joke that he'd gathered the most comprehensive scent map of Logan Circle in canine history in his little head. He can barely go six inches without a heavy bout of investigation. So, we took our sweet time getting to the clinic, and I wanted to give him as much mental stimulation as I could along the way without wearing him out. What was good was that he very assertively took me to every scent there could be on the route, and he was very adamant about it. But at the same time, he was very wobbly at several points, and he would often have this kind of confused look in his eyes, like he had no idea where he was. And he'd look up at me and his little third eyelid would be covering everything save the bit seeing me, something I never saw in him before. A flash of the old Clancy, and a flash of something very off-putting at the same time.

The vet said I should expect some "mental confusion" in him for some time, but to keep up the mental stimulation even while keeping the physical activity below the usual. Clancy is an athletic dog, and loves to play fetch and tug-of-war, or just race around the house in a sort of "tag-you're-it" explosion of running with anyone willing to play. At one point, he picked up a tattered, half-chewed up old Glow Ball and chewed it a little more, and I tugged on it gently until I got him to growl a little bit. But he tired quickly and I didn't push it. And there were several times yesterday while he was awake that he'd just stand in the middle of a room and clearly have no idea what he was about to do. He has "places" in every room where he will sit or stand as part of his routine. Yesterday, he was in very odd places in some of the rooms, and with no apparent grasp on his old routine. I didn't know what to make of it, or to even make anything of it. The whole thing is exhausting to contemplate.

He turned in early last night. Around 8pm he just gave me a vague look and ambled down the long hallway to the bedroom and went to sleep in his bed. He got up when Vini came home from class around 11pm, but was back in bed soon enough after a snack. He slept through the night and woke up this morning with my alarm. He's a bit brighter this morning, and wanted breakfast right away, but there was no bounding down the hall like usual and he want straight back to bed after eating, rather than his usual goading me with a toy as he almost always wakes up full of energy.

So, we still have some ways to go before we know how he'll end up. I cannot tell you how grateful I am to God that we are far from where we were on Wednesday night. And I am very, very grateful to all of you who wrote to me and kept Clancy in your thoughts. If the power of prayer works, then you have made a gigantic contribution to him getting this far. Let's hope he gets all the way back to us.

Stay tuned.

Clancy

I'd had all sorts of grand plans to wipe the blog-sleep from my eyes and return to regular posting with a clever Tuesday A/V when yet another hardship was visited on our house. And I was tempted to not blog about it because it's so upsetting, but since it has totally occupied the last twenty-four hours of my life, and forced me to face agony and death in the face again, I have no choice. In fact, yesterday was probably the most desperate day of my life that I can remember.

Clancy Paulo Ivers has literally been my best friend since he arrived in my life in September 2000. (Yes, that gorgeous creature in the picture is him.) He was a six-month-old pound rescue dog. I went to the D.C. animal shelter with Dena, looking for a female boxer puppy when I found him. Or shall I say, he found me. I stepped into his pen and the first thing he did was untie my shoelaces with his teeth, and look up at me with this highly pleased look on his face, like: "See what I did???" That was all I needed.

Clancy had also been injured by the owner he was rescued from - his starter collar had become embedded in his throat and had to be surgically removed. He was also, according to the pound staff, a victim of a dog attack. For three years after, he would cry out in fear if anyone tugged at his jowls, the pain memory of that collar still so present. And he still is afraid of other dogs when he is on his leash (but very social and playful when he's not).

But an 8-week training course we took in Franklin Square when I still lived in Dupont Circle did the trick -- he went from a nutty, out-of-control puppy to being a brilliant, highly obedient dog whose loyalty has been unbending, and whose love and devotion for his chosen pack is literally to the death. He is also the star of every day care place he goes to. The staff at his day care places here and in Washington always talk lovingly of him, and he often leaves me in the dust when we reach the front door of the place.

Clancy came into my life when I had given up on being in love. I decided to follow the old Truman admonition about life in Washington - if you want a real friend, get a dog. Alas, I was wrong to be so cynical. But I did get a real friend in the deal.

When he was about two years old, he had what I later found out was a limbic seizure. I couldn't figure out what it was at the time. The next year, when it came back, I took him to a neurologist and he was diagnosed with a form of epilepsy. He was put on potassium bromide, which did a fair job of limiting these seizures to once a year or so. Once he went for 18 months without one. The seizures are called limbic because they involve an involuntary movement -- in his case, he begins to salivate profusely and lick the air (or the floor, or the wall, or anything in sight). A typical one would last about 30 to 45 minutes.

Lately we have seen evidence that he has had seizure activity while we were out of the house, usually a wet, torn-up piece of blanket or bedding in the room where he stays when he's alone at home. Last Friday, as I was heading home from D.C., he had another seizure in front of Vini, but this time it lasted for hours and didn't respond to the usual dosage of diazepam prescribed by the American doctor we had in D.C. Double the dose, and some food, arrested the seizure on Friday.

Yesterday morning around 9am, he began seizing again. Again, it took a higher dose of diazepam to arrest them, but when he woke up about two hours later, the seizures returned with a severity I've never seen. His entire head and throat were involved, and he was swallowing large amounts of air and beginning to bloat, and it went on without end for an hour. I was running out of medication, and was worried about overdosing him. I also worried that he could get a fatal bloating situation, which can quickly kill a dog.

Our vet here is in Pinheiros, way too far from Jardins to walk. I have no car of my own, and Vini works in Berrini. So I called Claudia, who has cats and is a longtime Jardins veteran, and she recommended a 24-hour vet clinic here in the neighborhood. I raced over there with Clancy on foot, and he was seizing as we arrived. (This was now about 5pm in the afternoon -- he'd been seizing for hours.)

The vet injected Clancy with heavier medication to take him down to a nearly unconscious state. Clancy couldn't sit up or move his back legs. He also medicated the bloat and Clancy's belly went back down. The doctor thinks that the epilepsy is probably caused by a brain lesion, and that over time the lesion has now gotten larger.

All of the heavy medication he got didn't arrest the seizures. About an hour after we got home, about 7:30pm, they started up again as severe as from the afternoon. Only this time, Clancy was very weak and disoriented, and clearly under enormous stress. His heart was racing and he was exhausted. He was gulping more air than before, and the excess saliva was choking him. He had a very far away look in his eye, and there was little of his personality present. As I held him in my lap, and he lay there convulsing and limp, I imagined for the first time what it would be like if Clancy died.

We took him back to the clinic, and he stopped seizing when we arrived. He was semi-conscious but was fighting the sedatives and trying to stay awake and sit up, still confused about where he was and what was happening. The doctor said to give him two doses of 25mg of phenobarbitol, and if that still didn't arrest the seizures, then he'd have to be brought back, admitted to the clinic, and put into a drug-induced coma for up to 72 hours. He said that Clancy's heart could not withstand the seizures for much longer.

The first dose went in. He settled down. But the seizures came back. I gave him the second dose. Vini gave him a little food with it, which he said seemed to do the trick on Friday night. Clancy was weak, but clearly hungry. He ate a full dinner, and I held him up so he could drink some water and rehydrate himself. Then, he fell asleep. Finally. We stayed awake in bed talking, listening for any sound of a return of the seizures. It was quiet. He was breathing softly and was clearly out.

At about 3am, I woke to hear Clancy seizing again. His bed was wet - he'd been salivating and licking the bedding for at least 15 minutes before I woke up. I called the vet clinic. The younger doctor there, who'd seen him on our last, panicked visit, said to give him another 25mg of phenobarbitol, because the coma option "would be much worse." Basically, this was the last shot at avoiding that horrifying step. All I could think was carrying this limp, lifeless dog into that clinic to be put into a coma, and then never seeing him again.

So I gave him the third dose, and I did something I didn't think I'd ever do. I started to pray. I was literally begging God to save him. And I imagined myself going to my desk in the office next to our room, and begging all of you who read this blog to pray as well. There was nothing else I could possibly do anymore. This was it. I thought about our usual mornings when he bounds out of bed and races off to the kitchen for his breakfast, or comes to my office with a ball in his mouth and lays at my feet. Or his growling at the yappy dogs down on the street, which I heartily encourage from time to time as they, too, annoy me. I thought about everything we'd been through together, and how this dog has been the only constant of my life for the past seven years, and how much I emotionally depended on him more than I knew. And I realized that I just might never see that Clancy again. He might never regain his personality from all the drugs he might have to take now, or he might even die.

My alarm went off about an hour and half ago. Clancy was still asleep on a dry bed, with a warm, dry nose, and a normal belly. He was breathing steadily. When I got up, one of his eyes opened a little bit, and he wagged his tail. He wagged his tail!! I started to sob at seeing it, because it was the first sign of the real Clancy I've seen since this whole crisis erupted. But his eyes were very heavy, and he was clearly not going to be moving any time soon. I left him on his bed to come to my desk and write this. Vini is in there playing snooze-hockey with his alarm clock. I'm sure he'd call out to me if he heard anything happening, like he did yesterday morning when this all started.

So, maybe Clancy is through the worst. I don't know. If he has another seizure now, at least we know the phenobarbitol can arrest it for a few hours. But he can't be a drugged up zombie for the rest of his life. The doctor seems to think that the critical period is 12 hours. If we can get the seizures under control with a 25mg dose every 12 hours, then we're stable and out of danger. I just don't know what he'll be like in such a scenario, whether he'll be Clancy anymore.

So I just don't know yet what's going to happen. I have to admit that I'm still a little panicked. And I still could use your prayers.

If for no other reason, I will be blogging with updates on Clancy. It's kind of off-putting, I know. All this negativity and agony. But I can't help it. For once, I really need you out there, whoever you are. I need you for my sanity's sake. I'm not ready to lose this friend, not this one. It can't happen this way. So, I need you, if for no other reason than to just listen. And if you're into it, to pray.

Not Dead Yet...Just Resting

It's inevitable that a blog has gaps. It's that occasional sudden reminder that a blog should not be mistaken for a life. It's just a portal for a particular kind of expression, the kind you want to share with the whole world. Often, those expressions just don't surface for days at a time. And sometimes more, you go through a patch of life where you pull in your oars all together.

The last couple of weeks have been...well, I guess the best word is 'heavy'. The work load has been intense, perhaps the heaviest since I moved to Brazil. It was very consuming of me, with little at the end of the day for video selections or wry takes on life in Sampa, etc. I also went through a tough time in my personal life, and I made a decision from the start that my relationship is off-bounds for blogging. So, for these reasons mostly, the weight of life was upon me, and the lightness I often require for writing was nowhere to be found.

Strangely enough, I am writing from Lulu's apartment in Georgetown, on the opening of my latest trip back to Washington. It's been a very interesting, weighty experience coming back here this time around. So many different angles, channels and views of the world I left behind six months ago -- I honestly don't know where to begin. But I can report that since I posted on armored cars, we did indeed buy one. And since that posting, I suddenly found myself more able to handle life in Brazil. Who knows if the two are related. I felt a sense of security not only in the blindagem of the 2003 Chevy Vectra now sitting in our garage, but also in the knowledge that my belongings from Washington - sitting in storage since March 28th - are confirmed for steamer passage to the Port of Santos, departing on October 9. My stuff is finally on its way.

I had no idea how much I valued the flotsam of my life up until now, sitting in those boxes at the Port of Philadelphia, how much security it gave me. To be able to run my fingers over my books, my old keepsakes, my leather furniture or my cherished kitchenware -- the feeling is hard to describe. Some people have the heather of the shires, or the sunset over the Pacific. The aroma of onion grass, or the sound of the loons. But in this period of creative destruction in my life, I have only the All-Clad, the DVDs and the matching ottomans to bring that sense of absolute peace and security to my days. And they've been kept far from me all this time.

But you have a husband, many might say. What about your husband?

Well, I can also report that I love my husband. And he loves me. There has never been any doubt about that. But after more intimate, passionate relationships than I dare confess to, and a good forty years or so on this planet, I can report that the so-called dream romance that annihilates every one of your lingering self-doubts and insecurities is just that - a dream. I am lucky enough, no doubt in my mind about it, to have a man who loves me more than any other man has ever loved me in my life. That is reality, and that is what I've always wanted. But no man, no person, can provide everything you emotionally need at every moment you need it - not in this life, baby. Certainly not in the kind of life many of us live today, with its merciless and exhausting pace, its immense globe-trotting scale and its somewhat cold and morally neutral rectitude. For us to expect as much is more than just tilting at windmills. It's a kind of temptation to madness that can destroy a person from the inside out.

I have no doubt that I'm passing into some stage of life that is only written about in the more ponderous, difficult books -- the ones I never could get through in my teens or twenties. I'm becoming more emotionally literate than I ever thought possible, while at the same time realizing that everyone around me with about 10 years on me or more is far more so than I am. Suddenly, I'm no longer the smart kid, or the precocious one. I must put myself gently into the hands of life and trust it. And oh, how wretchedly difficult that is to do.

So, as the agonies and occasional hopelessness of the past six months swirled around my line of sight and reminded me of the truly gigantic, momentous change that I'm fully in right now, I followed a humble, antiquated little path to the Correios office on Rua Estados Unidos. I had to mail a package of documents to the company handling the arrival of my things into Brazil. When I stepped inside I realized I'd been there before. It was 1984, mostly likely around the same time of year -- September, October. It was one of the three post offices I used to mail my letters to America during my year as a Rotary exchange student back in the city I now call home. I remember how sad and afraid I was back in those particular days. I didn't speak the language, I had few friends, and wasn't sure how I was going to overcome my nerves, my sense of incompetence, and all the remnants of a very sheltered life back on Long Island.

I remembered the letters I wrote back then as being very hopeful, but a bit wistful for a 16 year-old kid. And at night I would listen to short-wave radio broadcasts from Voice of America, and imagine the track that my letters would follow back home (by ship). It gave me a sense of peace, and filled me with hope for something I could neither visualize or even quite imagine. It was whatever lay ahead for me.

So when I walked out of the post office on Thursday afternoon before I headed off to the airport, I found myself imagining those ships once again. Only this time, the treasures and fortunes of what did lay ahead for that boy in 1984 are sailing southward. And he can rest assured that they will bring that succor he has earned from his extraordinary adventures, and be the mere foundations for what lies ahead for the man he has become.