May 2008 Archives

It's 9:45 AM on Saturday. I have been up for about half an hour. Am sitting on my futon, sipping Irish Breakfast tea and eating some dry breakfast cereal, despite neither being thirsty nor hungry. A fella has to fortify himself. This is the LAST weekend of the Renaissance Faire, and I am bound –slash-determined to go, coughing or not, sick or not. Time and festivals wait for no man. Or hobbit. Whatever.

My friend Richard is coming over to drive me. I have about an hour and a half to get totally awake (switching from hot tea to Red Bull) and getting dressed for the Faire. I'm supposed to meet an online friend at the Faire, who sells some sort of jewelry and who also runs some sort of live-action role playing Vampire game, to which I have a standing invitation as soon as I feel better.

It should be fun, or at least entertaining, to see people running around in the dark with vampire fangs on, But first things first, taking fistfuls of pills for various AIDSy things, sinusy things, fevery things, and one thing that was either a Flintstones' chewable or someone's birth control.

Thus armed for bear, I am sitting here, typing while waiting for the second cup of tea to steep. I know today will wear me the hell out. But I don't care. Been house-bound for weeks, and am looking forward to having some serious fun. Several online Dungeons and Dragons friends should be there as well, so it will be a reunion of sorts.

It's been a long time since I have had outdoor fun, and I am looking forward to spending time with one of my best friends in town, drinking mead from a wooden cup, staying irritatingly in character, and probably either climbing/falling out of a tree and/or taking a nap at a picnic table at some point.

And did I mention jousting? They have jousting. And jugglers. My only regret is that I can't bring the ferrets in a pouch on my back, like the Beastmaster did in those terrible movies from the eighties.

My mom and my doctor both advised against going this year, by the way. Said I should wait until I was much better. But you know something? Opportunities don't shake down like that. Windows open, full of sweet spring air, and then close again. And who knows where any of us will be this time next year? Or WHO we will be?

I have plenty of time to be sick. I know, I've been taking it. But today, I will be a wanderer from the Shire, drinking too much mead, gnawing on badly cooked meat on a stick, kissing wenches, and dancing to wandering minstrels. Tomorrow I might not even be able to get out of bed.

Today, though, I am Dimli Miniwine, halfling, young, happy, whole, and hale.

I just got back from my ID doctor. I made her laugh. Giggle, really. Which, according to my late father, is important in dealing with those who have power over you. Make yourself memorable, make them like you, and they will go the extra mile.

But it appears that the extra mile necessary here is my own. And though she likes me (seriously, who doesn't?) she cannot save me. I am being treated for a MAC infection (which version, she does not know... nor really care) along with a host of other odd things that happens when you are either eighty years old or have AIDS with no discernible T-Cell count. Okay.

So we made a deal. I would take the Reyataz/Norvir/Truvada combo for a month. Deal with the side effects. Treat the MAC with nasty antibiotics. Deal, again, with the side effects. And in return, she will refer me to an orthapedic for my bum shoulder, and work more aggressively about my sexual issues ( no drive, not a lot of function, sort of like having a BetaMax machine in my stereo cabinet).

Thing is, I know this is a good deal. And I intend to honor my part. Don't ask me to promise something.. because I will do my damnedest to follow through. And I did, and I will.

If, in a month, the side effects still suck, she will promote me to a better class of drugs. But as she so eloquently put it, if I screw THOSE up, I am up shit creek. And coming from a people who worship and bathe at the Ganges River, she is uniquely qualified to asertain "shit creek."

At first, I was thrilled at the loss of sexual desire and function. Finally, I thought, freed from the tyranny of lust, I could concentrate on my art, my writing, my creative energy. Sadly, it took me a year and change to realize that all my creative writing, all my real appreciation for and contribution for art, was BASED on that tyranny. Not just lust, but love, primal desire, the attribution and denial of the same.

That's where the muse is, the same fuse that sputters towards the dynamite of destruction is also the ONLY thing that keeps me relevant, in soem tangential way, to the now, the present. So sorry, Ghandi. I need my lust. I need my terrible distraction. I need my cock to work, and my heart to pound. I need my heart to break.

Or else I have nothing to give, nothing to create, nothing to offer. I will NOT write rhapsodic about the past, as though I were some grizzled and greyed poet talking in half-dementia about times long abaandoned. Fuck that.

If this is what it takes to step towards a real life again, I am up for it. Tyranny of lust? That's what we fucking live for. Our hearts, our souls, our fragile gonads. We live to be explosive, contributive, vital members of this planet. And I am too young to abandon that. Not even for an asthetic which has proven false.

Not even for an asthetic that makes doctors comfortable.

I willdo what it takes. And maybe, this year, fall in sick and twisted lust with someone who is as freaky as I know I am.

Maybe this year, I will have the energy to pursue that crazy again. Even knowing the clownshit crazy that most people offer. Even knowing that people, on the vast whole. suck. I am not ready to be dead. Not yet. Not now.

The first step is a single pill. Which, as I type, I take.

Fuck it?

I certainly hope so.