MEMOIR
Only A Writer Would Have This List
The consequential and trivial, humorous and tragic, and spiritual and worldly adventures of a 72-year-old, fat fart
(Not a Medium member? Click to read this story, gratis.)
This story responds to the writers’ challenge prompted by CR Mandler MAT.
So, here we are — my life in a list of stuff both consequential and trivial, humorous and tragic, and spiritual and worldly.
That’s what this list is supposed to be, right? An introduction to my life through a list of lifeless stuff:
- I’ve had five cats; four are dead now. Jackson is a hoot.
- The longest time I lived in any one place before I was 58 was 10 years in San Diego.
- The shortest time I lived in any one place before I was 58 was eleven months in Ithaca, N.Y.
- I wasn’t present when my father died; he was 1,500 miles away.
- I wasn’t present when my mother died; she was two miles away.
- …
But is that what you’re really after? What you really want? I think what you desire is a little peek into my soul. That’s what you’re after, isn’t it? My soul. And what good is a list of soulless statistics to that quest?
My job here is to find a way, using some semblance of a list, to give you a gander into the ineffable but ephemeral essence that drives this machine they call my body.
First Fact: My Name Is Phillip Steven Alexander.
In my mid-20s, after I came out, I looked up the meaning. Phillip comes from Phillip of Macedon and means lover of horses. Alexander comes from his son, Alexander the Great, and means protector of men. Steven comes from Saint Steven, the precious one.
I thought, “Now isn’t that appropriate? Little did mom know when she named her baby boy that he would grow up to be her gay-lawyer son, the precious lover of studs and protector of men.”
No one ever calls me Phillip. No one ever did except my mother and grandmother when I was in real trouble. Despite that they have been dead 11 and 25 years now, I hear them still.
Rosie (in her clear, klaxon, angry voice): “Phillip Steven Alexander! You get your butt in here. Right now. Why are there mashed potatoes sticking to my kitchen wall? And on the ceiling!?”
“Jim! Jim, come here. Why did he do that? Why would he do that?”
Jim (in his I-wish-I-was-at-the-bar-playing-pool-and-drinking-beer voice, and little interested), shrugged and said, “It’s a guy thing.” With that, he went to the bar, leaving discipline to mom.
Everyone called me Phil. My little sister called me “Pheeell” in that whiny, nasal, imprecating voice that only four-year-olds can manage. The family thought that was cute. They took up the mantra.
I hated that. I really did, though I never said so. I hated conflict more. I didn’t want to hurt any feelings. But when I started 7th grade at 13, I told the vice principal that my name was Steve. I think he knew better, although I’m sure he didn’t know about Pheeell, but he indulged me. I told mom, I am not Phil anymore. I didn’t mention not being Pheeell.
So, at school and ever since, my name has been Steve. At home, I was still Phil. I took what victory I could get. Defying my mother like that was just about the extent of my teenage rebellion.
I came out in D.C. at 22. I met lots of gay men. Some of them I wanted to remember me. I told them my name was Alex. Much less common than Steve.
“Alex? Alex Alexander?”
That was uniformly the reply. Not one ever got it and asked my Christian name. It was just as well. Like Morse, deflecting everyone who asked because he wanted no one to know his Christian name was Endeavor, I would have had to evade the query. If any of them had persisted, I’d have had either to lie or to tell the truth.
Given my grandmother’s persistent threat to wash out my mouth with soap if ever I lied, I had no appetite for it.
She did once, you know. It was in a little apartment in Denver that she rented the summer my grandfather was in the hospital. I don’t remember what lie I told to bring God’s own judgment down upon me. I do remember the taste of Ivory. I remember the feel of the hot, red flush of my ears. “I love you, grandma. I’ll be good.” I never lied to her again. Ever. Not even when I was 41 and the new hat she put on looked silly.
Steve ultimately morphed into a hardass, hard-fighting, genuine Philadelphia lawyer. Steve was a word mercenary who’d take you down like a lion might take down a Przewalski’s horse. Alex was the easygoing, loving fellow at an intimate dinner for six gay friends who’d take you faster than did David Bathsheba. Phil was in suspended animation until Thanksgiving when he was trotted out to kiss the cousins and suffer himself to be called that. Pheell was decidedly dead, dead, dead. As for Phillip, he was confined to the passport and IRS — and now to NTSA.
Second Fact: I Am An Old Fat Fart.
I am an old fart, I’ll give you that. I might even add curmudgeonly since it connotes a smattering of endearing quality. But fat? Must we go there?
Gosh. That sounded better in my mind than it reads here. Ought I really to have written it? Oh well. “The moving finger writes …,” and all that.
Some time ago, I was in the bathroom after getting out of the shower. Looking into the mirror, I had an epiphany.
“Christ, Alexander! When did that happen?”
It was sometime after 58. From 17 to 58, I was 6 feet 2–1/2 inches and 175 pounds, always and forever — it seemed. I was long and lean with a runner’s build. That was because, from 20 to 44, I was a runner. I ran cross-country with the university track team. Not on the team, but with it. I wouldn’t join because I wouldn’t have the coach running my life. (See what I did there?) Contrariness is built into my temperament. I think it first manifested in my teenage rebellion. Nonetheless, he let me run cross-country with the team. Which was fine. Sometimes I even set the pace.
But that wasn’t enough. I had to excel. At Cornell, I ran six days a week, six miles a day, six-minute miles. I liked the number of the beast, 666. Besides, it satisfied my need to exhaust myself.
I took up biking, swimming, and handball.
That reveals something. All the sports I loved were solitary endeavors, except for racquetball. But that involved only two and was competitive, not collaborative. I rarely played doubles racquetball. I always dove for the ball even when it was on the other side of the court. I never trusted the other guy. I was competitive, not cooperative.
When I biked, it was around Cayuga Lake to the northern tip where I camped overnight, and back the next day. Later, when in law school in San Francisco, it was around the Bay to Tiburon or, if on a weekend, north to Napa or Sonoma. I might make it back the same day. I might tour the vineyards, sampling the wine, and camp out overnight.
When I swam, it was for an hour doing laps in the Olympic-sized pool.
At the Golden Gate Y, an old man with an arthritic left hip saw me lumbering around the handball court. He volunteered to teach me. In his youth, he had been the reigning U.S. National Handball Champion for several years running. He told me later that, watching me play, he saw potential. He wasn’t willing to spend his time if I wasn’t both willing to put in the effort and determined to succeed. He required a substantial commitment. He made it sound as if I couldn’t do it. The more he challenged me, the more determined I became.
That’s a minor revelation about me. The more someone tells me I must do something, the more I determine not to. The more someone insists I won’t succeed at something, the more determined I become to do so. It’s in my DNA. He sussed that out. Insisting that there had to be some mysteries left to one in life, he never would tell me how.
Accepting his challenge was one of my better decisions. I imposed a serious regimen on myself. I worked hard at school. I trained hard with him. I played hard outside of those two efforts. I lived for and in each moment of each day. Each became precious to me. I thrived under the pressure. I had never worked and played that hard before. I had never had to. It was fun, and I loved it.
At the end of our three years together, he told me I played at an A-minus, professional level. Despite that, I never beat him. He was 66. I was in my late 20s. He limped. I leapt at the ball like a panther. He played barefoot most of the time. I had my $75 Nike court shoes on. He never ran. That’s all I ever did. I never beat him. I came within three points a few times but never bested him. I thought my A-minus wasn’t so damned good after all. Still, I never resented losing to him.
In Fairbanks, after law school, I took up racquetball. No one played handball. I got a second job at the racquetball club. As an employee, I got a free membership and gratis lessons from the pro. At the end of my year there, he told me that I played racquetball at an A-minus professional level. A-minus. A-minus. Damn, again. I wanted an A-plus.
I kept all that up over the years, running, biking, swimming, and racquetball. But a funny thing happened. As I got older and older and older still, they dropped off one by one. Part of it was the pressure of time as I became more and more involved in my law career or as I felt the need to be with whomever was then my long-term partner. Part of it was the torn right rotator cuff that healed but left a pesky, non-pliant scar, or the right knee ligaments torn when a passing car knocked me off my bike on Market Street. Or the later-developing arthritic left ankle and right hip.
Older and older. One by one. Until, at 58, I had to drop the last of them, racquetball. Sometime after 58, the 6-foot, 2–1/2 inches became 6 feet. The 175 pounds became 185, then 200, then ….
I thought getting old would take longer. I had no idea it would hurt this much.
See what revealing things you know about me from just two little facts.
I could go on in that vein, telling you about:
● the time my partner Michael R. (32) and I (23) foiled an attempted suicide in a Boston hotel while the adults all stood around trying to decide how best not to get involved; we — neither of us — could not not get involved, or
● the time in midwinter, 30 miles north of Fairbanks at 2 a.m., that I found spirituality when I stood in the -60 degree weather stamping my feet against the cold, bewitched by the Aurora Borealis, and an opalescent tendril came dancing straight down at me and, in a choreographed move, crossed my left shoulder and touched my soul, or
● the time at Cornell that I was at a successful suicide when the body shattered on the rocks just in front of me. Helplessly I cradled the poor freshman’s head while he gurgled his way to death — along with the A’s he got in all his other classes, he got a D in poly sci and could not face telling his parents, or
● the times in Philadelphia when I sued (1) the NFL in antitrust (lost), (2) the sitting mayor for libel during a campaign speech (won), and (3) the Philadelphia Inquirer for tortuous breach of contract, a notoriously difficult theory to prevail under (prevailed), or
● the time in San Francisco when, at 3 a.m., running naked from my flat during an earthquake, I bumped into the fellow from the third-floor flat also naked (and, of course, what happened when the ground stopped shaking but our hearts still raced), or
● the time in D.C. when I and my two first lovers, Michael R. and Tommy, climbed the steps to the Lincoln Memorial, stood at the base of his massive statue, stared up at the words carved in titanic letters on the white marble wall, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up and tears filled my eyes, or
● the time in November 1963 when I was fifteen and my mother and I stood sheltering together in the cold wind at curbside on Pennsylvania Avenue while the flag-draped caisson and riderless, black horse with boots, polished to a sheen and standing backward in the stirrups, passed slowly by — I shuddered and cried rivers when the trumpeter played taps at just that moment, or
● the time when I was 30 and walking across an intersection in Seattle, and an absolutely stunning man of 20, sitting in a cherry red convertible at the light, called out, “You need a lift?,” and I answered, “No — I’m just going across the street here to mail some letters,” and he replied, “There’s a mailbox near my house,” and then the light dawned, or
● the time in 1992 when a massive clinical depression felled me for 12 years, and I was diagnosed as Bipolar II NOS with chronic, severe, depressive episodes, refractory (that last word means non-responsive to meds), or
● the time in San Francisco that I found spirituality in sex and cocaine with Michael T., or
● the time in Istanbul that I was touring Hagia Sophia and met a hunk of a gay Turk who came to my hotel room that night and each night after that — he wanted desperately to be bottom, and I satisfied his desire only to find my fulfillment in his, or
● the nine deaths I’ve been involved in during my life, not counting the myriad others of friends and lovers who died of AIDS during the 15 years from 1982 to 1997 — inured, I stopped counting at 17, or
● the peace and contentment that I’ve found in my old age.
Yes, I could proceed to tell you all those facts and more in the vein I did with the first two, but the tale would stretch to a fortnight, and I would either bore or tire you to death.
Besides, there has to be some mystery left, hasn’t there? Otherwise, on what adventures would we go from here, you and I?
