There once was a white woman in Thailand

It was the winter of 1999, and my partner and I had taken a 3-week vacation to Southeast Asia, our first of many trips to the region. We had just spent a week in Hong Kong visiting friends before flying to Bangkok, Thailand. The city was so exotic. An intoxicating and toxic mix of people, pollution, industry, commerce, culture, cuisine and the sex trade. We were walking down Surawong Road near Patpong, the notorious market made famous during the Vietnam War as Thailand's throbbing, degenerate heart of the sex industry---a place where you can buy a knock-off Gucci watch (which I did) as easily as you can traffic a human for intercourse (that's for the memoirs darling).  The weather was hot.  Now I love hot. But Thai hot is hot as hell. Literally, it felt like hell. I never understood how the Thai people remained so aloof from their weather, walking around as they did all crisp and pulled together despite the staggering heat and humidity.

Thailand is a languid country so we walked at our leisure.  Down the street a ways I saw a white couple walking toward us. When you travel to countries where you're a racial minority other non-locals stick out and I assumed they were tourists like us. As we approached each other the woman looked up and spied my partner and me. There was an imperceptible tensing in her neck and her bright smiled hesitated. Her lips curled downward slightly. She quickly moved her handbag from her left hand (the hand closest to us) and moved it to her right shoulder while grabbing her husband's hand tightly. As a black man living in the U.S., I've experienced this on numerous occasions; white women gripping their bags more tightly as I approached, or crossing the street, or locking the car door (before automatic locks kept them safe), or holding their breath in elevators when it's just me and them. It's just another one of those tiny indignities you learn to ignore as an African-American male. But somehow, here, thousands of miles from home immersed in another people's culture, I was still perceived as a threat. A criminal.  As she passed us I blurted out over my left shoulder "Bitch, I did not fly six thousand miles to snatch your purse." Her face blanched. She was robbed of what color she had. Her husband turned back toward us with confusion and, in an instant, I was that black man. You know, the angry-for-no-reason black man.  Even here, on the opposite side of the globe from America, I was cast in the part racism had written for me over the last four centuries. But in that moment I didn't care. They quickly retreated and a few minutes later I was enjoying a Singha beer at a bar on Soi Cowboy.

Fourteen years later, I had another moment not unlike that one in Thailand.  Last week was the 50th Anniversary of The March on Washington---the only march that ever truly mattered to me and the march that changed the world. I was born after The March. I was too young to remember water hoses and viciously trained German Shepherds. I never sat at the back of a bus. I never went to a segregated school. I didn't cry when Dr. Martin Luther King died because I was barely three years old.  I was the first generation to reap the benefits of the work he, Medgar, Dorothy, Martin, Viola, Fannie Lou, Malcolm and others did. I never saw a sign that read "Colored Only." I had white teachers and I had white classmates and white friends. We went to Hanes Mall where we shopped together at The Merry-Go-Round and Thalheimers Department Store. We were supposed to be the generation that received a payout after that bounced check Dr. King famously spoke about was re-deposited. But somehow, as always, human beings get in the way of lofty Aquarian ideals.

This was a tough summer. The conservative Supreme Court of the United States finally fulfilled Judges Roberts' and Thomas' promise to nullify anything that looked like racial justice by dismantling a major part of the Voting Rights Act and further diluting Affirmative Action. Then, my home state of North Carolina enacted the most severe restrictions to access to voting in the last five decades, all under the guise of stopping "voter fraud" that Republican leaders described, oxymoronically, as "both rampant and undetected."  They claimed these restrictions had no sinister intent, but merely contained a law to make you show ID at the polls. That's all.  What they didn't announce was the law planned major cuts to early voting, closing polling stations in left-leaning colleges (a direct assault on the legality of young voters at historically black colleges and other institutions), banning publicly funded voter registration drives, banning same-day registration, and---my personal favorite---allowing for unlimited amounts of monetary contributions to state politicians from anonymous corporate donors. So, essentially, huge businesses like Walmart or the Koch Brothers or Art Pope's Super P.A.C. could secretly donate millions of dollars to politicians willing to work on their behalf without the voters of the Tarheel State having any rights whatsoever to that information.

And then there was the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman verdict. 'Nuff said.

It seemed the exoneration of a grinning George Zimmerman, Jr., who was on trial after he murdered an unarmed teenager, gave the right-wing the green light it needed to commence a blitzkrieg on everything black and male in America.  From Bill O'Reilly's Talking Points, where he laments that the plight of black America is due to deadbeat dads and Lil' Wayne lyrics, to Rush Limbaugh's go-to checklist of black-on-black crime, Al Sharpton and the ever-present Black Welfare Queen. They kept trying to stoke racial animus with their "versions" of Trayvon. White conservatives, swollen with self-rightenousness, bombarded FOX News and Briebart with what they thought was the Gretchenfrage of the moment:  What's Wrong with the Black Community? Tim Wise and Tom Scocca, two white men who are allies in the fight against racism had their say. But it was Joe Walsh's racially charged and detestable bastardization of the I Have a Dream speech that was my personal white-woman-in-Thailand moment.  This ousted Tea-Bagging jackass had the nerve to spew racist fuckery in what he, and the rest of what has become a thinly veiled cabal of right-wing bigots, think was a clever parody of Dr. King's words. So listen up assholes 'cause I'm only gonna say this once:

My parents chose the schools I went to because I lived in a good neighborhood.
I grew up with my father in a loving household.
I have never shot another black man.
I said "no" to gangs and drugs.
I graduated from high school.
I am not a father and if I were it would not be any of your business (didn't your wife accuse you of being behind on your child support in the tune of $117,00?).
My family has never been dependent on the government assistance.
And I am not alone in this. Millions of other black men are just like me.

Now that you have this information, I would like to ask white conservatives like Joe Walsh a few questions of my own: You love to quote Dr. King and claim you judge people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. Then, why am I constantly followed in stores?--I don't steal and there's no need for me to shoplift.  Why was I pulled over by the police and asked what I was doing "riding around" in my own neighborhood?--I grew up here and have been living here more or less for more than 45 years.  Why did the Winston-Salem/ Forsyth County School Board try to track me into remedial classes (twice) even though I tested in the 95th percentile on most of the state's standardized aptitude tests? Why was I asked to submit to a drug test when I worked at Credit Suisse when the two white male applicants that were hired to work under my supervision were not? Why did that well-meaning white man I met at the bar while out drinking with friends try to give me that ridiculous, stereotypical jive handshake? As if he'd just watched a rerun of Sanford and Son. Why do you always tell me I'm so "well-spoken" as if that's a surprise? Why was I asked if I worked in the mailroom when I was coming out of that meeting in the conference room wearing a $700 Hugo Boss suit? Why did you call me a bum when i saw you drop a five dollar bill when you were exiting the subway and I was just trying to hand it back to you? Why was I directed to unskilled labor jobs when I went to the Winston-Salem's employment services agency after I finished college? (The counselor, and yes she she was white, didn't even bother to look at my resume at first).  And why do white women automatically hide their cellphones, iPads and necklaces (often attempting to be discreet, but failing) when they see me walking toward them?

So why, Joe Walsh, if I've done everything I was supposed to do am I STILL being treated like a criminal? I'll tell you why:  because you live in a world of fear and vitriol. A world filled with deflection. A world where your anger is vindicated not by your own shortcomings but by the idea that you are better than me. You don't want to help poor, black, indigent, underemployed, institutionalized black men. You want to use them as chips in your high stakes game of racial poker.  So you pour your hate on Trayvon Martin and others like him because the black president of the United States said he could have been Trayvon 35 years ago.  But what you're really fearful of is that Trayvon Martin could grow up and be president 35 years from now.  So the real reason you continue to criminalize me is because a forward-thinking, hard-working, smart, politically and socially aware black man is not your greatest dream but your worst nightmare.

North Carolina to pass law prohibiting youngsters from carrying candy without a permit

Raleigh, NC

The Republican controlled General Assembly is poised on passing an unprecedented law. In the second-degree murder trial of the slain teenager, Trayvon Martin, defendant George Zimmerman was found “Not Guilty.” After the facts of that tragic night were revealed in the courtroom, North Carolina is prepared to be the first state to make it a law that you must have a permit to carry packaged candy in your pockets if you're younger than twenty-seven.

Attorneys Mark O'Mara and Don West, defense lawyers for George Zimmerman, proved in open court that a bag of Skittles can become weaponized in the hands of a teenager. The proposed law is not without controversy.  State Representative Simon Le Bon (R-Tobaccoville)--no relation to the lead singer of the 80s band Duran Duran--who introduced the bill assured the public that this was the right thing to do. "I've seen this time and time again. These packaged candies get in the hands of the wrong people and innocent people are murdered. How many will be killed by the rainbow before we do something?" he said in a passionate plea on the legislature floor.

Unlike the Stand Your Ground law that passed in NC in 2011 by a party line vote, the Hide Your Candy law has divided the Tarheel GOP. Christopher Hewitt--no relation to the actor who played Mr. Belvedere in the 80s hit sitcom--V.P. of marketing for the powerful N.C.A (National Candy Association) said in a tersely written email to its members that making people have to get permits to carry candy in their pockets is a slippery slope. "Liberals along with that uncircumcised Hittite Obama want to take our candies away from us. This is unprecedented. What's next? Nabs?...or God forbid they try to stop us from buying multi-candy-packs!" This caused an uproar in the candy carrying community. Many called their state representatives telling them they were law-abiding candy owners. But others in the conservative movement think this is a great way of curtailing crime. Ultraconservatives Alex Jones and Larry Elder both agree that keeping candy out of the hands of "young black thugs" (a euphemistic term coined on the right) is paramount to keeping America safe. Mr. Jones reported on his website that thousands of young black men were stockpiling packaged candies. A commenter affirmed that he could not find a Now And Later anywhere in Duvall County, Florida. Mr. Elder on his daily radio show said that he knew for a fact that the New Black Panther party was giving out free candies to new recruits.

Rachel Jeantel, who is now the official spokesperson for the New Black Panther Party responded to the questions of the free candy giveaway with the short statement "That's real retarded, SIR." Mr. Elder's accusations have angered many civil rights leaders who said this legislation smacks of racial profiling. But Republicans fired back that its not racial profiling siting the high profile case of Belinda Carlisle--no relation to the lead singer of the 80s girl group The Go-Go’s--who reported being terrorized in her Alamance County home by a black youth. "I was so scared. I could see a pack of Starburst peaking out his pocket. I literally feared for my life."

The Zimmerman defense team put Dr. Anthony Michael Hall--no relation to the actor from the 80s movie The Breakfast Club--on the stand where he proved empirically that black men have an extra set of suppressed DNA that causes them to be able to turn innocuous objects into weapons. Under oath Dr. Hall said that he has seen in experiments he's conducted "Black men viscously injure each other with bags of Paz Easter bunny marshmallows." When asked how the doctor came to these conclusions, he explained that he would randomly kidnap young black men, lock them in cages for several weeks or sometimes years, without food, water or human contact, then at gun point make them fight each other by using any snack food necessary. "They quickly turn violent with just the slightest bit of provocation," he said.

The state is divided on the Hide Your Candy law. But most people are just fearful like Appavoo Parumel--no relation to my college math professor--who works as a cashier at the 7-11 near the Lewisville exit on Highway 52 in Clemmons. He said he's seen a lot of young men buying candy and putting them in their pockets. "They come in here and buy a lot of candies. Mostly M & M Peanuts. That's the scariest to me. They have peanuts on the inside."

African American parents also expressed a higher level of concern for their children, especially boys. Vernice Ledbetter--no relation to my Sunday School teacher--expressed emotionally, after church at the Greater New Jerusalem A.M.E.C.O.P.D. Zion Church of Christ in Christ in Hendersonville on Sunday where they held a prayer vigil, that every time she sends her teenaged son out to the store she's afraid he may not come back. "I tell him. If he's going to buy candy walk slowly and always, always keep the candy out in the open where people can see it. Expect to be followed. I would hate to get a call that my son is dead because somebody felt threatened because he was walking around with candy in his pocket."

The 68 Percent Solution

The turning of the year always makes you think. It does to all of us. As the Swarovski crystal ball descends and the Veuve Cliquot filled flutes raises to our lips we all become a bit introspective. Just a bit reflective. That small moment just after yelling Happy New Year and the kiss and the champagne. That small tiny moment when you look back into your own eyes and wonder what will unfold for you this year. And how your life may be if this happens or that won't happen. You begin to think about what is the meaning of your experiences. Just for that moment. Then it is gone. Fleeting and reductive. A slow-motion tilt toward melancholy then the shouts and confetti return.

I am turning 48 at the end of this month. Shocking isn't it? Well it is to me sometimes. I will fully admit this event has made me a bit mawkish so to cheer myself up I sought out the latest statistics on life expectancy. Definitely wasn't a pick-me-up. The lifespan of an average African American male has actually increased over the years. We still lag behind every other gender and ethnic group. We still suffer more diseases and die earlier than just about everybody in the US but a black male can expect to live 70.2 years.

That's 842.4 months.
That's 25,623 Days
That's 614,952 hours
That's 36,897,120 minutes
That's 2,213,827,200 seconds.

Sounds like that song from Rent. But to me the most important number is 68%. And numbers matter. The number 68 percent represents the amount of time I've lived out of my allotted 70.2 years. Now as morbid as this may seem I am not going to reseed into obscurity; well not any further than I am now. I think this is a great opportunity to reenergize and refocus my life. I remember the funeral scene in the movie Death Becomes Her when the Bruce Willis character is eulogized. The minister talks about how he lived a rich and full life starting at age 50. But is this true? Famously F. Scott Fitzgerald said "There are no second acts in American lives."That sounds a little too final for me so I did what every good scion of the generation that gave the world the term cyberspace would do, I googled "late bloomers."

It takes time to percolate genius I tell people. And hopefully I've perked enough. The fire has been on to varying degrees for all my life, but never hot enough to bring my creativity to a boil. There have always been tepid forays into something special but like a fragile soap bubble it burst right before my eyes. The plays I was in during college, the sketch comedy group, the novels, the false starts. Always poised on the verge of greatness but the summit just slightly above my head, shrouded in clouds. Outside of my reach.

Wikipedia states a late bloomer is a person whose talents or capabilities are not visible to others until later than usual. The term is used metaphorically to describe a child or adolescent who develops more slowly than others in their age group, but eventually catches up and in some cases overtakes their peers, or an adult whose talent or genius in a particular field only appears later in life than is normal – in some cases only in old age.

So I sit on the first day of 2013 and wonder; Am I that late bloomer? I sure hope so. I think for all the Oprah Winfreys and Mark Zuckerburgs, who have a laser focus or just really good luck there are the Chris Langans of the world. A man whose IQ eclipses Alfred Einstein but because of life's little idiosyncrasies most of us have no idea who he is. Despite coming from a broken home and an abusive step-father he managed a perfect score on his SATs even though he fell asleep and took a nap in the middle of the test. But instead of finishing college he dropped out. And over the next 30 years he worked at everything from a ranch-hand to a forest service firefighter to his longest lasting profession: a bouncer. Not until 1999 right before he turned 48 did his true genius became publicly known.  After an article in Esquire was published Mr. Langan's Cognitive Theoretical Model of the Universe (CTMU) became know as the "Theory of Everything". His work is said to rival Stephen Hawking or John Archibald Wheeler. He was the subject of Malcolm Gladwell in the book Outliers which I discussed here. Because he never finished college he had no academic cred. So therefore people who laud you as a genius never knew or respected him because he never published a paper and never worked within the confines of an academic setting. He wasn't allowed to build his genius upward. Life just kinda got in the way.

How can I spend the remaining 32% of my life and somehow find a way out of the bureaucratic mess that it has become? I read a blog about the 9 worst things about turning 50. The blog really didn't make me feel better. I know it may be that time but I'm just not ready to have that end-of-life conversation with my family and friends. Maybe I'll do that around the 85% mark. So how do I change my future? Do I look for wealthy benefactors? Do I throw caution and bills to the wind and "just do it!"? Being the sole caregiver of my mother who has dementia those options aren't really options at all. Sometimes I feel even more constrained than ever. Conscripted to a post I was unprepared for and to be honest not very willing to do. So on that first day of 2013 as I looked at that clock tick, tick, tick I realized that I didn't want to burn through anymore of the precious 32% of my life that I had left. That sometimes bold action is called for. So as time flowed from slow-motion introspection into real time decision-making I realized I had arrived at my answer. That I would be fearless or at least a little less hesitant. So I quit my job. I sent an email to my boss and resigned.

And then it was gone. The fear. Like the fleeting tick of that New Year's clock, that tiny moment that left me spent and renewed. The fear was gone. The fear of being forgotten, the fear of my mother's disease, the fear of not having a purpose. The fear that I would be an outlier forever. I had finally found my audacity and autonomy. It had arrived without warning and fanfare. No garish lights no trumps booming on high. It just became a part of me. Even though I may be closer to the end than the beginning its not the position you finish in when you cross the line, but that your life had some meaning between those two points. In my short story Satan by Starlight the narrator is cleaning out his dead uncle's house when he comes across a set of old encyclopedias from 1972. This made him think about life's ponderous meaning.

Like the pretty picture of Kelly, Grace Patricia, Princess of Monica looking up at me with (1929- ) beside her name. Enclosed in those parentheses she was still alive when this book was printed. Now that equation was complete. It would read (1929-1988). And the sum of who she was would forever rest in between those curved marks. ...Looking at the now dead Princess Grace and seeing the word keloid so close to her name seemed fitting. This book captured a moment in time and then it was frozen there like a keloid, which is a harmless swelling that usually occurs at the site of a cut. This book is like a keloid. As soon as it was printed it was obsolete. Even before the ink was dry and the pages were bound it was obsolete. Grace Kelly and her eventual death made that happen. And she would be placed away inside those parentheses and forgotten. Death being the ultimate balance of that math. Death is life’s completion.

It is ultimately left up to ourselves to determine what goes between those dates. What determines the magnificent and grace of that dash in the middle. We can fill it with misery and pain or we can change it into exception and fulfillment. So as I sit here on the first day of 2013 and I am going to embrace the future. To make that dash as grand as I know it can be. To live the life that I have now not some life of a distance longing or regret. To be there for my mother and my friends and those in need of a smile, a warm embrace. A thank you. To tell the stories I am destined to tell; be they mine or some one else's. That the remaining 32 percent will be ten times better than the first 68. That life truly can begin at 50! Or 48 in my case.

Assassin's Screed

I'm a gamer. Ever since my cousins introduced me to the magnificence of that heart-pounding game known as Pong in 1974, I've been hooked. We'd sit for hours watching that slow-moving white dot float methodically from one side to the other across that black screen. Too young for pinball, I grew up as part of the Arcade Generation---those noisy hangouts with coin operated masterpieces that transported millions of us into the world of killer space insects while playing Galaga, or bouncing on cubes escaping coiled snakes in Q*bert. And then came Ms. Pac-Man---the baddest bitch in the room. She was the original cash money ho', what with all the currency she took from me and all the angry faces when my crew and I would walk into that arcade in the mall and run my hands on the top of the machine to find that sweet-spot:  the reset button. (I often popped that lever and watched the other boys' faces melt as the game went dark only to power it back on with their high scores completely obliterated. Such fun).  But my favorite game, however, was Gyruss.  I discovered Gyruss in the back of the Busy Bee convenience store across the street from my alma mater, Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, NC.  My friend Terence and I would play that game for days on end.  It had a left-handed dial joystick and you had to battle your way through spaceships and space mines in order to reach the different planets in our solar system.  Starting with Neptune, you blasted invaders to the beat of a suped-up version of Bach's Toccata und Fuge in D Minor, a sure precursor to the techno mixes of 20 years later. Many players of Gyruss, then and now, suspect it is impossible to actually reach Earth. Yet it is possible, and occurs at level 25.  My high score of 979,250 remained unbeaten until a kid with a fifty-cent Tropical Fantasy fruit punch hit the reset button; it erased my high score forever.

The arrival of the PlayStation brought home gaming RPGs (role playing games) to the masses.  I played Final Fantasy VII until the timer stopped after 99 hours.  I think my ex still wakes up with cold sweats from the constant, jarring, and unchanging fight music plunging like an ice pick through his brain. I was so emotionally connected to that game that when Sephiroth killed my beloved Aerith I actually mourned her death. I still remember the shock I felt watching him impale her. Now that I'm a grandpa of video gaming I choose games for substance and complexity rather than loud volume.  I like to play RPGs that carry some meaning for me. I choose them like a sommelier looks for a fine wine. Infamous 1 & 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City, Mass Effect 1-3 and Assassin's Creed.

So, allow me to draw an allegorical point between real life and video games.  Amidst killing the baddies and puzzle-solving in the game Assassin's Creed, you have the opportunity to climb to the top of large towers during different points in the game. Climbing these towers gives you a tactical advantage as you can see across massive swaths of digital landscape. It also gives you an opportunity to blindly jump into what the game calls a "Leap of Faith"; from improbable heights onto impossibly small haystacks. Recently, a close cousin (who is like a sister to me) came to me with great concern. She deeply hated her job and wanted to change her career. I told her sometimes in life you have to take a leap of faith. Sometimes you just have to walk up to your fear. Climb to the very peak of it. And jump. 

As human beings we are conditioned to stay in our comfort zone, even if that zone is filled with dissatisfaction and dysfunction.  From childhood we're programmed to soldier on with stiff upper lips and our heads held high even though unhappiness and petulance tend to abound in this oasis of such misery. It's the enemy we know. Why strike out in the feral darkness of the unknown when you can hang out in the light of shame, guilt and anger that you experience everyday. At least in the light, you know the hurt you're going to get. You'd say, "I can anticipate the anger at working a dead end job. I can anticipate the fussy lover, the bitter mother, the adolescent acting father, the stupid boss." All of these things culminate to assault us with wretched intentions. Since we've surrendered so long ago we often allow the foot soldiers of despair march over us. With their familiar boots and recognizable gazes we allow these feelings of fatalism to stomp our souls as if this doom is part of our nature. Why change? If you transition out of this zone, who's to say it won't be worse?  You probably sit there and enumerate everything that is wrong with your present life and how each step of the way could be worse than the last. Murphy's Law is your mantra. Repeated with deference like a prayer each day of your life. But what if your salvation is through a thicket filled with something that scares you? What if the fear you fear the most is the fear you need to move forward? What if you accept the fact that life will be hard. That there will be grief and pain. And that it isn't fair. That the truth is ugly and grim and--once faced head on--far less powerful and penetrating than we thought it would be. What if we climb that tower and just jump?  Down into the depths of it...Our unrelenting fear. 

So when my cousin came to me with her fears I told her that sometimes you have to take a leap of faith. A leap off that tower of pain and just hope that something, anything will be there to provide you a soft landing. Oftentimes facing that fear is the leap of faith. As soon as my cousin put in her notice within an hour another opportunity came her way:  a phone call offering her the start of the career she wanted with a salary twice as much as she was making.  Now, sometimes things don't come so quickly. But through it all you must remember that feeling of unrequited joy and fearlessness of your childhood gamer and jump. 

My cousin jumped. And she is doing something she loves.  That, in and of itself, is the most valuable high score.

Jason is Tresha's father and Ferren is Tresha's daughter

I stared at the child-like scrawling handwritten note on the upstairs credenza. I don't think she tried to hide it from me. After all it was just there beside the door to her room. A note detailing how far my mother's condition had travelled. A simple bit of information detailing intimate knowledge of her life that she could no longer hold in her brain. The Jason of the note is my brother. Her oldest son. Tresha is his daughter. And Ferren is his granddauther. Straightforward you would think. My mother only had two sons and two grands and four great grands. Surely eight names and relationships should not prove to be so ponderous that she would have to document them. But here it was in front of my eyes.

I tell people that my vision of Alzheimer's is like magic. Not the fun legerdemain of rabbits in top hats or sawing pretty assistants in half. No, this magic is menacing. It is trickery. It is illusion. Imagine yourself sitting in a chair. Watching television talking to your son. The sun is out and your dog is sitting by your feet. Then you blink your eyes and suddenly its night. And there's a person sitting in front of you asking you questions you are at odds to answer. Then another blink and the dog is back by your feet and your long dead mother is sitting in front of you and its 1967 all over again. Blink. You're back sitting in your recliner watching television and your son is telling you things he's said you've said but you have no idea what he's talking about.

Blink.

Dementia is like a reducing math problem. You start out as a child with a massive black board. It is empty. Pristine. You're given a piece of chalk. And told to write. So you set forth and start your math. You start out with the number One. That singular number that is your life. To that equation you add friends, husbands, children, education, careers, houses, bills, dramas, churches, artistic expressions, travels, illnesses, beauty and death. As you near the other end of the board you look over the totality of your life and you see this mesmerizing array of  calculus. Sprawling across the ether. Your life rich and dense. A massive equation that started way down there and through lush experiences has delivered you to this point in your elderly life. But then something goes wrong. A mechanism that's out of sync. A leaky pipe you can't find. Soon parts of those equations start disappearing. Not enough at first to mess up the math but just enough to make you look at it differently. A repeated question, a lost item, a missed bill payment. That's all the signals you or your loved ones get. Not that a blaring tornado siren would stop the onslaught of what is to come. And then the reduction starts in earnest. You stand-by helplessly as the numbers disappear as if its been written for a scene from a thriller. A montage of images from the hero's life slowly erasing from his mind. Then as the up-tempo music builds the random numbers on the blackboard start blinking out in rapid succession. Reducing and reducing counting down to the hero's doom. The evil villain off to the side handwringing and laughing maniacally.

Soon there are only a few scraps from which your loved one can pull their life together. So that's what she does. It doesn't matter if those memories are discordant with reality. Sometimes my mother thinks I'm her mother; which I guess is a complement to me. At least its somebody she feels safe around. Sometimes she thinks I'm my step-father and sometimes still she questions me as if we've never met. What many people don't know about Alzheimer's and other neurological diseases that cause dementia is that the sufferer's brain literally is eaten away. As much like science fiction as that may sound to witness it or worse to live through it is a daunting maze of sublime heartache. Haunting nostalgia and the bittersweet realization that the little bit your loved one was holding onto today may not be there tomorrow. You both are dangling from an ever shrinking ledge. Down below you see the swirling morass of obsession and delusion. The brain is like a battery and dementia is like corrossion. It simply decomposes the mind. Once the connections are gone they will never return. It renders even the most mundane chores insurmountable. To watch my mother, a well-educated former entrepreneur who ran several successful businesses over the course of her life, struggle through a monthly bank statement or a recipe or instructions presses me to find the beauty in caregiving. The constant barrage of the same questions fired rapidly always within minutes of each other and often during times when I am trying to do something else would try the most saintly of patience. This fierce woman becoming more childlike and fragile by the day. But unlike a child who learns that fire is bad once my mother forgets, that lesson will never return. Ever. She will never know that again. So the vigil becomes more dire as her behavior is framed by this memory reduction. I can't blink because if I do all the household trashcans may be laid-out in a straight line on the front walk. Blink and the phone is ringing and she's trying to answer the TV remote.

Blink.

But I have to say that so far it doesn't feel like a burden. Stressful but not a burden. Through pain and hardship I have been driven, bullwhipped I would even say into this inclement harbor. Docked to my mother at the end of her life. But somehow I think this is where I'm suppose to be. This seems right. This is the hour of the most important time of my life. To taste and touch every moment of this. To be here now in this place. More for her than me but it feels like I'm getting more out of the experience that she is. Savoring it no matter how painful. Because just around the corner there maybe a wonderful horizon. To float on those stories of her youth; like the time she snuck away from home at fourteen to go to a party and ended up talking to a boy at a local beer hall. Or the one where she married her first husband a second time (after a tumultuous divorce) when he swept into town and took her to Brooklyn where he promptly locked her in his apartment for three days while he went on a drinking binge. I can see her now escaping that apartment in her 1954 black and white Ford Skyliner driving all the way from New York to North Carolina non-stop. And how about the time when she was six and her mother became the first black person to have a play produced at the Carolina Theater in downtown Winston-Salem. In Wake Up Chillin' there was a scene in a cemetery. The children were to talk to their ancestors. Because of budget restraints none of the child actors which included my mother practiced in costume. Opening night the children were onstage ready for the emotional climax of the play when the adults came out covered in white sheets. Of course this sent her and all of her young cast mates screaming up the aisles in fright! They thought real ghosts were after them. These are the bright spots of the day when the steely grasp of the disease releases her. And I'm here to tell that story. We often ask God "Why me?" I know I have. But I think I've been given my answer. Why me? Who else but me. Because Gwen is my mother and I am her son.

The power of fright compels you

As a child, my overactive imagination led me to believe that every horror movie made in the seventies somehow resembled my parent's house.  Looking into the backyard out of our kitchen window at night (it always had to be after dark), I saw the gentle rustle of the red and gold leaves of autumn as sinister precursors to zombies or hockey-masked madmen lumbering from the woods all set to chase me.  The awkward upbeat synthesizer heard during the movie Halloween strummed my ears as the leaves blew.  Coming back from my cousin's house across the field seemed like the longest and scariest fifty yards ever.  My mother would turn on the side porch lights and dining room lamp for me. Like a lonely pilgrim, I would sojourn through the trees following that single porch light as if it were an all-seeing unblinking eye of a cyclops and the illuminated floor-to-ceiling windows of the dining room was like the maw of Satan ready to suck me down to Tarturus.  108 Ocean Avenue---The house portrayed in The Amityville Horror---had nothing on my house. For many years, well into mid-adolescence, I just knew I was going to be possessed by a demon. For, you see, the interior of that infamous Georgetown townhouse where two priests fought the devil over a little girl's soul looked identical to our upstairs. To get to my room you had to run up a curved flight of stairs, take a hard right and down a hallway. I envisioned my bed bobbing and thumping while I writhed in fear and pain; my mother rushing to my aide only to have the door slam in her face leaving a huge crack streaking down the middle.

Halloween has always been a special time for me, maybe because I was so frightened of it.  Through years of attending church I was taught to fiercely avoid the dark side (or maybe I just have a stunning propensity to believe in just about any evil). Now, unlike my mother who was terrified of slasher movies---her rationale was that a maniac could actually stab you or impale you whereas the supernatural was kind of silly---I was completely transfixed by the otherworldly.  Bumps in the night heard after my parents were sound asleep kept me awake even as late in life as....oh what the hell, I'll admit it---last week.  I think I was attracted to the mere theatricality of evil.  Satan knew how to put on a real show (at least in the movies and on TV).  Knives and axes were so banal; crucifixes and talismans were my thing.  I believed in augurs and omens. Voices in the dark, demon seeds, daughters of Satan and Burnt Offerings. Oh how I wanted telekinetic powers.

Yet, on the other hand, I should have been a preacher instead. When I was five-years-old I insisted that being a minster was my calling. I wasn't so much interested in the administrative pastoring of running a church, but more of the fire and brimstone church-as-performance-art.  I would pull up a folding chair and have my parents dress in their Sunday best and have them sit on the living room sofa and shout at the top of my lungs. I remember my mother wearing her emerald green maxi-dress and her white T-Bar heels sitting beside my father in his suit and tie-clip. I would wag my finger and threaten all the depths of hell on them if they did not repent.  I was very concerned with saving souls in those days.  Growing up Baptist, when you were baptized the minister would make you hold your nose and submerge your entire body. We had a metal tub that sat in our backyard that had over a few days of autumn rain had filled with water. Well, I decided one day to save the soul of our sinful cat. My mother watched in horror as she washed dishes me taking our cat in my arms. Raising him high above my head I would shout, "In the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, I baptize you!"  SPLASH!  I pounded the cat down into the water. I don't know who my mother thought she was saving, me or the cat, but by the time she pried the terrified creature from my grip I was scratched and bloodied. Nonetheless, I was satisfied our little tabby was now going to heaven upon its death.

But like most who are called to preach, I too was not without flaw.  My sin to confess was based in selfishness.  My mother had set out a tray of goodies for the trick-or-treaters on the cool fall night in 1970; a night that held such promise for the children of the neighborhood who had been dreaming of candy and cookie booty since the beginning of the school year. I had persuaded my mother to let me give out the candies. So we sat in the front room eagerly anticipating the first ghoul or Snoopy.  Now, I don't remember this event, but it has been told to me many times:  The doorbell rang and she said I jumped up and ran down the hallway. She heard me open the front door, then the children's lithe voices, a hissing sound and then the door slam loudly shut. She thought nothing of it until the next set of tricksters appeared. The doorbell chimed. I again jumped up, ran down the hallway. She heard me open the front door then children's lithe voices, a hissing sound, and then the door slam loudly shut.  After a few more instances of this behavior my mother decided to investigate. She said to my father that the next time kids come to the door she would shadow me to see what was going on.

DING DONG.

I jumped up and ran down the hallway. She stealthily followed me and pressed her body up against the door jamb leading into the foyer. There, she observed me running from the kitchen with a can of bug spray. I rushed the door, threw it open and when the children screamed Trick-or-Treat! I sprayed them generously before slamming the door in their faces.  I then ran back to the kitchen to hide my child-repellent for the next group and returned and pocketed their allotment of candy. What can I say?  As an only child, I never liked to share, neither candy nor the spotlight.  Maybe that explains the cause of my nighttime fear.  Or maybe one of those kids put a curse on me. It was the south and haints and roots were boutiful. That's malarky, of course. I'm older now and way more intelligent. There's no such thing as demons.

THUMP! THUMP!

What was that? Did...did you hear that? ...Mother?

Mitt Romney will never be captain of the Enterprise

As an author, I rarely take a stand publicly for or against any particular topic. To all my personal and facebook/twitter friends, however, I am quite vocal with my viewpoints. So with great reticence I will forge into the U.S. presidential election of 2012 here.  After watching the second presidential debate I made a realization:  Mitt Romney will never captain a starship.  To explain, let's probe into an area of which I am very comfortable: science fiction.

Oftentimes in reading and writing science fiction we see two vastly different futures for humankind. One is Utopian; that paradise where Big Bird has succeeded in educating the masses and where gender, ethnicity, creed and sexuality have no meaning; a place of civil discourse, natural fabrics and food replicators; and where all ideas are new and all materials are recycled. Here, there will be no need for "binders" filled with "suitable" female candidates because, in Utopian society, women would rule entire galaxies. In this future, science has conquered global warming and diplomacy has brought peace to the Middle East. It is a place where class warfare and monetary greed have fallen into disuse and ill-repute. Religion is less about dogma and demagoguery than the meaningful coexistence of different doctrines. Finally, this future, like Star Trek, sees the ability of humanity to unite and rejoice in the peaceful exploration of space.

The second is Dystopian. This is a vision of the future where greed and avarice have crushed humanity creating a hot house-affected earth filled with the rich few lording over the hungry masses.  Places where privatized for-profit RoboCop police forces vent drugs onto the street so they can charge cash-strapped cities ever more money to clean them up; a future where mankind has destroyed itself and eradicated thousands of years of intelligent discourse by telling its citizens that women's bodies can flush away rape sperm if the attack was "legitimate," or that dinosaurs and Jesus existed at the same time; adulterers and fornicators who hate gay marriage willingly forfeit domain over our planet to some damn dirty apes.  In this Dystopian society, domed cities emerge and are inhabited by beautiful and spoiled children who play without guilt until they reach the age of 30 while being forced into the worst retirement plan ever. Ultimately, they are killed.  And just like Romney's reinvention of Medicare, the citizens of Logan's Run will take their chances on health premiums of the "Carousel" and all will die a spectacular death.--- And you thought his voucherization plan was bad. This is the future Governor Romney is peddling.  A world where the wealthy succeed at the expense of the masses.  A world where 47% of the population work like Troglytes in the zenite mines of Ardana, suffering without healthcare and succumbing to the poisonous gas emanating from the very caves they work because regulatory safeguards and unions no longer exist.  Here, Mitt and his fellow elites float ethereally in the cloud city of Stratos, remarkably oblivious to the hardships of their fellow Ardanans below. In the overheated and exhausted future of the city in Soylent Green, bulldozers scrape up hundreds of people, cart them off and ground them into food---an operation wholly-owned and operated by Bain Capital (apparently without the knowledge of its absentee CEO, Mitt Romney). Only people with offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands and dancing horses (because all other pets will be eaten) can afford red meat, or soap, or air conditioning, or even water. That small wavering voice you hear is that of Michael Jones, the black man in the audience at the second 2012 presidential debate who expressed his disappointment with the president.  There, Mr. Jones indicated that he wasn't optimistic about voting for Mr. Obama again. But now he is screaming and reaching out to you as he's being lifted into the meat grinder.

"It's the middle class! Romney's 5-point plan is made out of the middle class!! He turning us into food! Tell everybody! Romney's 5-point plan is....PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS!"

Now, there's a reason you don't see conservatives in the utopian version of the future:  It is because humanity has grown so wise in 300 years that we no longer need to fear each other. There are no guns and Trayvon Martin would still be alive. People, for the most part, work for the good of the universe. Thus, business is left in the hands of the sexist Ferengi who survive on greed and profit and are reviled by most species in the Star Trek universe. There's no sexism. If you thought James T. Kirk was a badass you need to meet Captain Kathryn Janeway, the ass kicking Hillary Clinton of the Delta Quadrant. There's no homophobia because, in many races, there's no gender. Here, love is love. Outward appearances often have nothing to do with the person (or symbiotic host) that you've fallen in love with. There's no racism.  Lieutenant Uhura was not only a beautiful black woman and an awesome communications officer, but she was actually fourth—YES—FOURTH in command of the USS Enterprise. Similarly, immigration reform is unnecessary. Mr. Spock proved you don't need a green card (but green blood helps) to be a valued member of the ship's crew. He was a bi-racial illegal alien (actually bi-special) who left home and crossed that cultural border from Vulcan to Earth.  He received a free education at Starfleet Academy and went on to become the most beloved character in the Star Trek mythology. Luckily, for him, Sheriff Arpaio never patrolled the Neutral Zone. So, here, in our utopian vision, there are no Tea Party candidates claiming they have some special knowledge over constitutional rights that they know nothing about because there will only be one law:  The Prime Directive. This directive states that we should never interfere with anybody else's world. In other words, stay the eff out of folks' bedrooms and away from their wombs.

In the future, Mitt Romney will be like the alien that held Captain Kirk and his crew hostage by claiming to be the Greek God Apollo; a lonely bitter relic yearning for the days when he was a titan of industry and lusting for those times when he was important because of all the non-humanitarian wealth he amassed. He will be bitter and angry because his profit-over-people ideals will have been swept away for a greater purpose. He will violently hold onto the notion that only the gods (or rich people—which is synonymous in Mr. Romney's mind) can provide bounty to the lowly worshipers of his materialistic edicts. And when the future finally shatters his temple of greed and profit he will be a broken-hearted god bereft of money and followers begging us to pay attention to he and his clan of One-Percenters. That's when our future selves will wonder in amusement how one---so tiny in perspective and resignation---got to be so powerful. Then they will remember that odd little thing that separated us so many years ago. Capitalism. What an archaic system that was.

As the episode ends we see standing in the corner quietly waiting his turn to repeat his lines, for he ultimately is a false player on life's stage:  Mitt Romney. And he's wearing a red shirt. Not a good sign for a prosperous future.