I had a scheduled doctors appointment due to a request to change my Ambien and general check up issues. My doctors office is in a "less than fortunate" part of town, on Park, close to Getwell where the Memphis Gay Chamber of Commerce recently discussed "removing the riff-raff from the area"... HUH? I wanted to extend my hand in the air and say "huh, please repeat"!!!!!! Riff Raff?? That is such a CODE WORD for/from whitey refering to black and other-than white non-owning tenants anywhere around. Riff Raff? Is it 2009 or 1969?
As I ws driving down Park I noticed out of the corner of my eye this middle aged black man walking with a cane and using it in a manner as if he had some eyesight handicaps and didn't think much else about it until...
..."wooosshh, kabam" the front door to the doctors office slung open and there he was slumbering straight ahead into the corner walls in a part of the front office where nothing was, other than paneling and saying "hello everyone, it's a beautiful day ain't it!" I honestly had to put myself in check becasue I almost laughed. This guy had walked straight into the corner where two walls meet but it quickly dawned on me "he's really blind." I arose and said this way sir, took his arm and led him to the receptionist window and I returned to my seat and magazine.
A few minutes later the blind man finished with checking in and turned around and said "where's my new friend?" I replied "here sir" and before I could say anything else he had sat down beside me and asked if I minded if he joined me.
"Ricky's my name, blind man Ricky some call me" and stuck out his hand. We began talking about me seeing him walking on my way to the doctor's office, if the city provided special transportation services, if he was from Memphis, family close by, young "skiddles" as he called young people - "skiddle" meaning stupid kid - how blind he was, his government assistance, etc.
Ricky grew up close by and said he had not been out of the house in the last month because it had been so hot. He told me about trips to the Pink Palace, botanical gardens, the zoo, and described the splendor of the beautiful geese in flight around the ponds, the huge pine trees, and all the flowers. I at this point assumed he was partially blind and asked him about his sight. Blind man Ricky leaned his head back and gently put two fingers in his right eye and removed this thin piece of "something" that looked like an abbreviated eye, that had been "looking" at me a few minutes earlier in his eye socket, and said: "I lost this one in 82'" and then did the same thing to the one on the left and said "and I lost this one in 02'...glaucoma...I have diabetes...that's why I am here today becasue my legs is hurting me bad." He pulled up his pants and had these huge baseball to softball size lumps (two or three) at the bottom of both lages shortly above his ankles. I honestly thought to myself "HEALTHCARE REFORM - 20 YEARS OF LIES and this man will probably lose his legs due to poor healthcare in the next few years". First his eyes then his legs. A whole new approach to ethnic cleansing! I have no right to feel any self-pity!
His walking cane was a golf club with the "head" broken off and I asked him why he didn't use a regular walking cane for sight. He said he'd been through so many in the last year it ws just easier to buy the golf clubs at the goodwill. He was blind, very blind. Said he got $65 on the 13th and another $450 on the 31st of every month, lived in a subsidized apartment, lost too many canes to the "skiddles" who would grab them from his hands while walking, explained how he bought groceries. The truth was that his insurance would not pay for any more canes because of all the ones he'd lost to the cruel little delinquents.
I asked him if he got depressed when he lost his second eye and he said yes. Said he stayed on the couch for almost a year. Said he couldn't stand not seeing the sun, frogs in the road, birds on the wire, "skiddles" chasing the ball, grass, his food, his mama's face...on and on. I almost had to get up. Then my overly maternal doctor Sudha came for me. I told Ricky if he was still there when I got out I would "holler" at him.
Soon after entering the patient-examintaion-room, Ricky was taken to one of the rooms also. The entire time I sat there I could hear his voice across the office carrying on with the nurse, laughing, telling her she was beautiful, talking about how nice the day was, and how sweet the staff were in the office. He never complained...
When the doctor finished with me I asked a nurse (she was Indian as my doctor is and had fraternal twins whose birthday was the same as mine, July 25th but considerably younger - she said "the girl has the devil in her sometimes and the boy is as sweet as Buddha") in the front office if Ricky was still there becasue I had not heard his voice in a while...the office was full, maybe fifteen people. Ricky came slumbering (once again) from around the corner slinging his cane with a tourniquet still on his arm saying "I am here Mr. Steve, where are you?" This time I laughed and then he started doing the same and our overly maternal doctor Sudha grabbed his arm and told him "don't be so stupid and get back in the lab room to get the blood drawn." He laughed more and said "it hurts."
I waited on Ricky and gave him a ride home. He lived on Spottswood in a part of Memphis I never had seen and never really thought I would, around Semmes and South Greer, this is rough Memphis - Hustle And Flow type Memphis - in the heart of what is called Orange Mound. He could tell where we were in the car within 50 feet. Said he can sense everything by memory and was glad "I could see for the first years of my life." Ricky said he still goes to the lake at the botanical gardens, can hear birds chirping, can hear the "skiddles ball when they kick it...but I can't touch my mama's face no more...I see it in my head but it ain't the same." Ricky had guided me into the small complex where he lived, odd setting, kind of like "quad-plexes" or something, brick, pine woods to the north and seemingly quiet. Then I heard the train and realized his $150 a month government subsidized apartment was literally a couple hundred yards south of the freaking Memphis Country Club. Blind man Ricky put his hand out and said he hoped to see me again at the doctors office, laughed, and said "you know what I mean new friend". I told him that tomorrow was my birthday and meeting him was the best brithday present I could have received. As he stepped out of the car he turned toward me and said he wished he had some birthday cake for me and told me to have a nice day and said "welcome to Orange Mound brother."
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Happy 4th Of July - Welcome Back To Fallujah
It was a cold, wintry, dark February day with the ground well covered in snow that I sat in what I then called “cattle rooms” smoking cigarette after cigarette and reading the newspaper in the Cincinnati Airport. The news always seemed to go from grim to desperate… the promising Lebanese politician Rafik Harari was killed by a car bomb in Beirut, North Korea and Iran screamed that they had nuclear weapons, another suicide bomb detonated in Baghdad, gay groups were considering adopting intervention tactics to track men with HIV who engage in risky behavior (read that one again! Talk about Orwellian life), ETA detonated a bomb in Spain, Bush and his military advisors had no exit plan for Fallujah, on and freaking on…
Fallujah was one of Arab histories pearls for many years. It was quiet, peaceful, scholarly, hosted numerous Jewish academies through the centuries, and fared better than many other urban areas through the advent of Islam from the Abbasid and Umayyad dynasties to the modern day “re-conquesting inquisition” led by the neo-cons in Washington and their lavender bitches in London.
I looked up from the paper and in walked this beautiful Marine with my defacto standard: small, baby faced, smooth skin, and a hollow gaze. I would be lying if I denied any immediate carnal ideations but those were quickly quelled when the young Marine sat down next to me and asked if he could “bomb a smoke”. I told him gladly and we introduced ourselves.
Fallujah for years linked the trade route from the Nejd Province in modern day Sa’udi Arabia to the areas of Mosul and Aleppo and was known as the desert highway between Amman and Baghdad; it rested at a crossroads then and is once again at a crossroads as both Sunni and Shia Muslims have joined together to rebuild the 70-90% destruction that the city incurred from the US Military beginning in 03’.
“Names Adam, thanks for the smoke.” Adam was a 19 year old fresh faced kid raised in Chicago, was 100% mid-west, and was on his way home for a few days from Fallujah due to the graces of the US Department of Defense granting him a seven day hardship leave due to “stress and unnatural acts of violence perpetrated against a member of the United States Military” to see his mom and girlfriend. He said he couldn’t wait to put his eyes on Wrigley Field and hoped he somehow could get inside for a brief reprieve…said it would make everything “good to go.”
We talked about why he was in the Corps, my time in, his love-life, mine, our families, baseball, hockey, his plans after the Marine Corps… told him I was gay and thought he was gorgeous; he laughed and said he had a girlfriend back home he would be seeing and appreciated the compliment. He hated the snow and ice and thought the desert was cool but didn’t understand the problems in Fallujah.
The city always had an air of independence: the Imams refused to eulogize Saddam Hussein during his reign and suffered horrible persecution, the British saw it as a “hotbed” of instability in the early 20th Century and suffered through a battle because of it that left several thousand Iraqis and a couple thousand Brits dead, the Wahhibi Sect of Islam practiced in Sa’udi Arabia took root in Fallujah years ago and is still practiced to this day, a couple hundred citizens died in the city in the first Gulf War when a crowded market was “accidentally” bombed, a couple hundred citizens died in 03’ when they were protesting the US Military setting up an operating unit in an old Baath Party Office building across the street from a school and troops opened fire on the people. Still the city of almost 500,000 remained peaceful, quiet and cooperative until…
“…we don’t know what the fuck we are shooting at most of the time dude. The other day we took fire from a corner store and we unloaded on those mother fuckers. When we got to the store there was this little boy lying in the doorway and a lady behind him on the floor. It was weird, they both had multiple gunshot holes and there was some busted milk spreading out on the floor around her and the kid…looked kind of like a piece of peppermint candy because the blood had kind of swirled in to the milk. We never knew who fired on us.”
This was the city where those four renegade Blackwater gaurds were drug from their vehicles, beaten, burned, and then hanged from the girders’ of a bridge crossing the Euphrates. The assault on Fallujah began in earnest in November 2004 primarily as an attempt to regain control of it from the estimated 600-6,000 insurgents in preparation of the January 2005 national elections. The only person at the time who was viewed as a serious candidate for the office of presidency was Nouri Al-Maliki, a Shia Muslim who had for the past 20 years slept with Hezbollah, Iranian politicians, and various Shiite thugs while living in Syria and travelling back and forth to Iran… FALLUJAH IS SUNNI AND WAHHABI and many of the citizens had fled by this time. Did the US Government wish to ensure a sweeping victory in the city for al-Maliki? The insurgents weren’t even 1% of the population. Nation-state building is too nice; this was coup de tat orchestrating.
Adam said he wasn’t sure what to say to his mom…or his girlfriend. I asked him what he meant and he said “I don’t know what to fucking say man…how can I talk to them.” Adam obviously was a perfect example of how the DOD takes care of many PTSD combat troops – ship them home for a while and hope that it all goes away. The Marine said he might not make it to see his mom and girl and may instead take a quick flight from Chicago to Detroit to see a friend and just stay drunk for five days. By this time he was teary-eyed, shaken, and all I could think was that our land of the free and home of the brave were bringing home an entire generation of KIDS that were going to be perfectly fucked up.
My flight number was called and I stood up, threw my smokes to my new friend, told him to keep his head down and said “Semper Fi”; he stood up hugged me and responded with the same. As I walked back into the airport I couldn’t help but wonder if he would make it back home another time because his movement orders (paperwork a soldier will carry validating their dress or leave of absence) returned him directly to Fallujah in seven days.
The fighting in Fallujah ended for the most part in June of 2007 but today the citizens are being practically starved and living off of handouts from Marine units close by and the citizens blame that Iranian kisich Maliki, the Shi’ite Hezbollah-loving bitch. Prior to the cessation of conflict in the city US forces had given out Christian coins to the children at many of the cities crossroads.
Happy 4th of July Amerika.
Fallujah was one of Arab histories pearls for many years. It was quiet, peaceful, scholarly, hosted numerous Jewish academies through the centuries, and fared better than many other urban areas through the advent of Islam from the Abbasid and Umayyad dynasties to the modern day “re-conquesting inquisition” led by the neo-cons in Washington and their lavender bitches in London.
I looked up from the paper and in walked this beautiful Marine with my defacto standard: small, baby faced, smooth skin, and a hollow gaze. I would be lying if I denied any immediate carnal ideations but those were quickly quelled when the young Marine sat down next to me and asked if he could “bomb a smoke”. I told him gladly and we introduced ourselves.
Fallujah for years linked the trade route from the Nejd Province in modern day Sa’udi Arabia to the areas of Mosul and Aleppo and was known as the desert highway between Amman and Baghdad; it rested at a crossroads then and is once again at a crossroads as both Sunni and Shia Muslims have joined together to rebuild the 70-90% destruction that the city incurred from the US Military beginning in 03’.
“Names Adam, thanks for the smoke.” Adam was a 19 year old fresh faced kid raised in Chicago, was 100% mid-west, and was on his way home for a few days from Fallujah due to the graces of the US Department of Defense granting him a seven day hardship leave due to “stress and unnatural acts of violence perpetrated against a member of the United States Military” to see his mom and girlfriend. He said he couldn’t wait to put his eyes on Wrigley Field and hoped he somehow could get inside for a brief reprieve…said it would make everything “good to go.”
We talked about why he was in the Corps, my time in, his love-life, mine, our families, baseball, hockey, his plans after the Marine Corps… told him I was gay and thought he was gorgeous; he laughed and said he had a girlfriend back home he would be seeing and appreciated the compliment. He hated the snow and ice and thought the desert was cool but didn’t understand the problems in Fallujah.
The city always had an air of independence: the Imams refused to eulogize Saddam Hussein during his reign and suffered horrible persecution, the British saw it as a “hotbed” of instability in the early 20th Century and suffered through a battle because of it that left several thousand Iraqis and a couple thousand Brits dead, the Wahhibi Sect of Islam practiced in Sa’udi Arabia took root in Fallujah years ago and is still practiced to this day, a couple hundred citizens died in the city in the first Gulf War when a crowded market was “accidentally” bombed, a couple hundred citizens died in 03’ when they were protesting the US Military setting up an operating unit in an old Baath Party Office building across the street from a school and troops opened fire on the people. Still the city of almost 500,000 remained peaceful, quiet and cooperative until…
“…we don’t know what the fuck we are shooting at most of the time dude. The other day we took fire from a corner store and we unloaded on those mother fuckers. When we got to the store there was this little boy lying in the doorway and a lady behind him on the floor. It was weird, they both had multiple gunshot holes and there was some busted milk spreading out on the floor around her and the kid…looked kind of like a piece of peppermint candy because the blood had kind of swirled in to the milk. We never knew who fired on us.”
This was the city where those four renegade Blackwater gaurds were drug from their vehicles, beaten, burned, and then hanged from the girders’ of a bridge crossing the Euphrates. The assault on Fallujah began in earnest in November 2004 primarily as an attempt to regain control of it from the estimated 600-6,000 insurgents in preparation of the January 2005 national elections. The only person at the time who was viewed as a serious candidate for the office of presidency was Nouri Al-Maliki, a Shia Muslim who had for the past 20 years slept with Hezbollah, Iranian politicians, and various Shiite thugs while living in Syria and travelling back and forth to Iran… FALLUJAH IS SUNNI AND WAHHABI and many of the citizens had fled by this time. Did the US Government wish to ensure a sweeping victory in the city for al-Maliki? The insurgents weren’t even 1% of the population. Nation-state building is too nice; this was coup de tat orchestrating.
Adam said he wasn’t sure what to say to his mom…or his girlfriend. I asked him what he meant and he said “I don’t know what to fucking say man…how can I talk to them.” Adam obviously was a perfect example of how the DOD takes care of many PTSD combat troops – ship them home for a while and hope that it all goes away. The Marine said he might not make it to see his mom and girl and may instead take a quick flight from Chicago to Detroit to see a friend and just stay drunk for five days. By this time he was teary-eyed, shaken, and all I could think was that our land of the free and home of the brave were bringing home an entire generation of KIDS that were going to be perfectly fucked up.
My flight number was called and I stood up, threw my smokes to my new friend, told him to keep his head down and said “Semper Fi”; he stood up hugged me and responded with the same. As I walked back into the airport I couldn’t help but wonder if he would make it back home another time because his movement orders (paperwork a soldier will carry validating their dress or leave of absence) returned him directly to Fallujah in seven days.
The fighting in Fallujah ended for the most part in June of 2007 but today the citizens are being practically starved and living off of handouts from Marine units close by and the citizens blame that Iranian kisich Maliki, the Shi’ite Hezbollah-loving bitch. Prior to the cessation of conflict in the city US forces had given out Christian coins to the children at many of the cities crossroads.
Happy 4th of July Amerika.
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