Indiana Oh Indiana

There is no living person who is not aging (despite the occasional empty compliments we dispense to friends and loved ones). Every breath each of us takes adds seconds and minutes to our lives in journeys that vary greatly in terms of burdens, joys, and hopes. Our connections to other people keep many of us going to discover what life still has in store, despite the inevitable mix of happiness and sorrow that no one can actually predict from moment to moment, or day to day.

I sometimes become more conscious that I’m still breathing and that my life is ticking by like an old clock that still needs and enjoys a rewinding, with hope that golden chimes will continue their lovely and familiar music.

Our awareness in recollections of where we’ve been is as clear as a new windowpane, and we hold onto and appreciate immensely those for whom life’s goodbyes remind us still that we are allotted only so many heartbeats and that whatever lies ahead is part of whatever trek we’ve been making, since playing with rattles in our cribs.

Whatever awaits us after the cessation of those many heartbeats, may they somehow continue after the final winding of our worldly time pieces in a reunion with everyone we have loved.  JB

I’d like to say that I’m aging gracefully, but I’m not entirely sure what that means. The years continue to roll by faster than I recall them spinning by when I was a child. Birthdays seem to come and go now faster than I can blow out the candles from the year before (OK, I’m not THAT old).

I do try to see the comedy in obvious changes to my memory, the glitches of which I wish could be dollar bills in my bank account. Aging is an odd journey for many of us, who are growing older at speeds that seem to be testing rocket fuel for journeys to other galaxies. One of the comforting characteristics of growing older is that we don’t have to age alone. The anchors of sailing into old age give us pauses on the voyage as we contemplate with dear friends where we’ve been and perhaps even where’ we’re going.

I go to bed at night, occasionally imagining that I can feel myself wrinkling as I drop off to sleep, but my heartbeat reminds me that the vehicle I call “life” is still running and that I have friends who, on some level, share my journey.

Florida is a place where the elderly can share the journeys of growing older. That bond is a powerful one, and that sense of experiencing together with friends and acquaintances the passing of time and the inevitable, sometimes harsh, changes in our personal and collective views of the journey, render the passage of time less scary with the feeling that we’re all in this together. Toasting each other occasionally with Champagne or Jack Daniels helps too.  JB

I used to believe that mass hypnosis was an impossibility in the sense that not enough people would be “tuned in” at the same time with the same intensity, but my skepticism has morphed into a kind of terror regarding the enormous number of Americans who have been mesmerized by the angry, fear-inducing rhetoric of the aggressively, terrifyingly threatening former president, Donald Trump, whose principal gift of speech is to turn a huge portion of Americans into maniacs, hell-bent upon avenging the political setbacks of their Svengali-like idol, who has miraculously made them believe that they are victims of Democrats and the current regime in Washington.

Trump’s extraordinary egomania has somehow connected their rage with his own disappointment in not being re-elected, which he connects in some moronic way with God’s will being ignored. Trump’s acidic accusations and playground rhetoric on some miasmic level of unmerited disgust in the brains of his gullible and furious flock is turning many of them into mindless avengers as though through some kind of Svengali hypnosis.

Make no mistake, Trump’s lust for power and absolute dictatorial control are being channeled into the weary, unhappy minds of those who believe (amazingly) that the power of dictatorship is somehow on their side for their rights and comfort. He has made them believe that the democratic channels of voting and hearing all sides of the rhetoric is a trick to steal their voting rights.

It’s time that more Americans open their history books again to understand the serious current echoes of all the dictators and other power mongers of the past and their very possible rebirth in psychotic charlatans like Donald J. Trump. I fear that the future could otherwise ring with the too-late words “If only we had seen the danger of all those lies.”

God bless America.

JB

Politics in The United States is almost tribal in its reluctance, in many cases, to accommodate differing views. The distance between Democrats and Republicans can often be measured only in light years, because each side has its own view of the world that we all inhabit. The illusion that each side can protect its earthly claims to its way of governance and make it shine like a religious beacon is achieved by billions of dollars being spent upon tearing down the opposition through often massively tweaked claims of the other side taking a bigger slice of the pie than it merits.

Those rare instances of both parties joining forces for the good of the populace need to be expanded into a way of seeing all Americans as one huge family with differing needs but with equal rights that provide hope and substance under the same shared flag of a nation admired by many of the oppressed dictatorships in too many nations across the globe.

I often wonder what our founding fathers would think if they could visit us today and have access to all that goes on in politics. They would probably be pleased that we as a nation still exist with great importance upon the world stage, but the rancor (which also existed in the 18^th Century) has grown with the population and the greater variety of citizenry and the ways in which we can keep it together as one nation. Every country has its problems in and out of politics, but The United States of America is still growing into new sets of clothing for more groups and more needs than in 1776. Looking at troubled nations in other parts of the world, however, gives me hope that we as a multi-cultural nation will somehow be flexible and concerned enough about human needs of us all to continue with our long- term experiment in caring for one nation and its many people.  JB

The recent attempted assassination of Donald trump by a mentally disturbed young man presents an image of America’s love affair with guns and easy access to them. The tired illusion that guns make us safer is observed by many other nations as a foolish mania worthy of much criticism.

American citizens possess over 400 million guns that create the terrifying image of a country at war with itself or possibly with another planet. Part of the fantasy of imagined safety that guns seem to provide is a particular kind of comfortable illusion that an arsenal, even a small one, of a single weapon, fortifies the household against the physical dangers of sinister thieves intent on defiling, for profit, the sanctity of someone’s home.

It would be impossible to keep weapons from the hands of the lunatic fringe, but we all need to be aware that there is sometimes a self-righteous and frightening aura that can give gun owners the seeming right to shoot someone of whom they are even slightly suspicious of criminal intent.

There have always been criminals whose agendas have included everything from theft to murder. I’m not sure though if gun ownership for the rest of us will obliterate theft, burglary, assault, and murder. I’m not even certain that desperate criminals who need to feed their poor families will ever be without weapons of one kind or another that create the comfy illusion that danger is not really an issue.

The bottom line for me is that guns in private homes are with us to stay, even if just as an illusion that society itself is safer. The real battle is to address the fringe lunatics who own such weapons without realizing the danger if they are not kept out of the hands of children, teens and other family members who don’t realize the peril of loaded guns. JB

Picture, if you can, a condominium community of residents mostly between the ages of fifty and eight-five. Imagine the wafting aromas of garden flowers mixed with that of Ben Gay. Conjure the sounds of The Mamas and the Papas, blended uncomfortably with those of Igor Stravinsky and Elvis and the presence of Gladys Kravitz snooping along the cat walk, like a prostitute applying for unemployment benefits, the residence itself being a Stephen Spielberg film trapped in a tin can of blackmail fodder, which is why names here must be changed to protect the guilty, who make the college dorms of our youth look like seminars.  JB

The years manage to creep by, leaving a trail of memories, some of which are crystal clear (even from childhood) while others, like trying to recall the brief grocery list I neglected to jot down, zoom into outer space. Many incidents from childhood are still vivid in all their exhausting detail, while locating my cellphone can require using the housephone to track it down.

I sometimes imagine my mind to be a large collection of rooms in a massive house, where daily routines are still intact until less important surprises invade my comfort zone with issues that involve remembering where I laid my wristwatch or the glass of wine that I was drinking just minutes before. Friends my age say that these changes in our powers of recollection are quite common and simply require a routine which allows as few details as possible to create surprises.

Such military strictness seems too robotic for me to live like a mouse trying to master a maze. Routine is certainly essential on some level, providing some kind of comfort zone of familiarity, but if there’s a ray of hope in my memory having to face annoying little glitches, it’s that I’m not alone in forgetting some daily details, and that my old friends and I still recall the shared happiest days of our childhood and youth together without the roadmap sometimes needed to find a nailfile or toothbrush.

As usual, old friends who know our gaffes without smirking, are the bulwark of shared times and even hope for the future.  JB

I’m looking now at the dining room table I bought in Chicago fifty-four years ago. It’s made of cherrywood in a style called “Queen Anne,” indicating its oval shape and curved legs ending in carved “feet.” With both leaves, the table can seat ten, even though I have only eight matching chairs so that I use two other armchairs to accommodate a group of ten diners.

It struck me a few days ago that the table, since 1970, has seated dear family and friends for many breakfasts, lunches, teas, and dinners to the sounds of lively discussions and the percussive clicks of silverware against plates and saucers.  Recollections of my grandparents, fellow teachers, and dear friends along with many other guests are still vivid in my memories, so that even the gentle sounds of silverware clicking against the dishes can summon pleasant memories of all those who, over many years, have sat around that table, chatting, eating, and enjoying themselves.

Sometimes it seems that eons have passed, and at other times, the memories come back in a way to make me feel as though those wonderful times were just yesterday and that somewhere, if there is a heaven, there will be a very long table with many “leaves” and chairs necessary to accommodate, once again, the hundreds whose voices, eloquence, humor and joy can once again be enjoyed in a reunion that is an essential part of my ideas regarding what heaven might be.  JB

I remember as a child wanting so much to be a teenager, like the ones in our neighborhood who sometimes got to drive their parents’ cars and were allowed to stay out until ten in the evening. My J.C. Higgins bicycle made me feel older and wiser than the kids on our street who were still riding tricycles, but that was hardly compensation for me to feel truly independent and free of the constraining label of being a “kid.”

When in my twenties (to which I had looked forward as a teenager), more responsibilities to which I had never given much thought, added to my newly supposed freedom the burden of taxes, rent, insurance for my car (along with the expense of fuel and maintenance for it and my home). The busy, even if “grown-up” conveyor belt taking money from my increasingly starving wallet hummed its way through my forties, fifties, sixties, and seventies so that now I have finally accepted the fact that staying alive and comfortable involves multiple monetary obligations that I have finally accepted as the inevitable and unending entry fee to a life of relative comfort in a world where my not having money would render me far unhappier, even though as an official codger, I claim the right to fuss about things if I need to. I’ve earned it.

If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something. That’s what being an adult is. Also, I have learned that the sooner you fall behind, the more time you’ll have to “catch up.”  JB

I admire my friends, who have had successful marriages, some for over fifty years. The steady effort and patience such relationships require are probably beyond my imagining, but as a gay man, I have experienced three long-term partnerships over the past forty years and have learned to appreciate the patience and acceptance of differences that are parts of all successful relationships.

I know that a clear conscience can often be the sign of a bad memory, but I must, in my own defense, say that I have worked hard to keep my partnerships afloat, at times addressing negative issues, like someone trying to determine when he’s out of invisible ink.

I met my first partner in Arizona. He owned his own home, which he neglected to tell me was in foreclosure, and that he had the savings one would expect of a ten-year-old with a piggy bank filled with nickels and dimes. However, his charm and good looks wowed me into overlooking his wandering eye and miniscule income. After only a few weeks, he sold his furniture and drove his red Thunderbird to Indiana, where he would share my house but not the expenses of maintaining it. I had not yet retired, and my conscience began to hurt, while my other parts felt just too good. After only three months, I discovered that he was seeing other men in amorous ways, startling me into realizing that I was merely a cuckold supporting an ungrateful, nefarious bum. He left with his Thunderbird and joined an encampment of monks somewhere in Michigan. Several years ago, he passed away there.

My second attempt at finding someone with whom to share my life, occurred more than twenty years ago with someone from New England who was recently retired and seeking a “permanent” relationship. One can speak about the speed of light, but I was still too much in the dark to know that when everything seemed to be going too well, I was overlooking something.

Eric was doing nothing but eating too much food and watching porn while I was at work. His body weight ballooned to the point where he was the human embodiment of lethargy and good for nothing except playing Santa Claus in a department store in December.

My plan was to find someone online who would have an interest in hooking up with Eric in a permanent partnership. It took two months before Eric met Mort (residing in Indianapolis) online. I invited Mort to visit us and stayed out of the way, praying there would be sparks of mutual attraction. I even took them to dinner at an expensive restaurant in town. I invited Mort to stay for a few days, and I kept out of the way, going out nightly to visit friends, coming home one night to see that Mort and Eric were sharing the fourposter bed in an upstairs bedroom, Eureka!

The next day the two of them confessed their adoration for one another, and I helped Eric pack his bags. I recall waving goodbye from my front porch before hurting myself in the back yard attempting to do a cartwheel.

It was more than a year later that I finally got it right in meeting my third and present partner Jim. I saw his previously unvisited profile on Match.com and was at first put off by what appeared to be dorky looks and thick eyeglasses. Then I read what he had written in his profile. The humor and intelligence of his words made me realize that I had to meet him. We exchanged phone numbers and over the weeks got to know each other better. His deep, resonant voice was intoxicating, and his wit and wisdom won me over. He has three grown children and had been divorced for several years when I met him. I met his last wife. She and I became friends.

That was it. After two or three visits back and forth, I knew he was the one. His extended family has become mine too, and I love them as though they were my own family. It still feels wonderful that my search for a life-companion is over. The gene pool has no lifeguard, but that is no longer an issue, as my search has been over for more than seventeen years. Jim has new eyeglasses and is devastatingly handsome. What more could one ask?  JB