Normally I like Fall.

This time of year is usually one of my favorites.

It’s a time of changing leaves, cool temperatures, and relative peace.

Not this year.

This year, it’s me against nature. It also signals that soon I’ll be trapped into being here another 5 months. Even though I have no immediate plans to get the hell out of California, it’s a psychological barrier. One simply doesn’t change homes in the snow. I did it once a long time ago and learned my lesson.

We’re having a cold snap that is impairing my ability to finish painting the trim of the house. I started this project and then injured my knee. I’d started the project in the narrow window between the completion of the repairs from the water damage and now.

I thought at the time, “it will be tight but I’ll have time to finish before Winter.” Then I hurt my knee and spent 3 weeks hobbling around like an old man barely able to stand up.

You know that you’re hurt bad when the dog keeps licking your foot and leg, and doesn’t even react when you head to the door. It’s like the dog is saying, “Dude, you can walk yourself, you sure as hell can’t walk me!”

The licking can be bothersome but it’s sweet in its way. The pup is just trying to make you feel better as he would another dog. I take it as a sign that he’s decided we’re a pack.

The knee is getting better daily. I’ve been able to do much of the project by chipping away at it. I’ll work until my knee says, “That’s enough,” I’ve made good progress but I’m worried that I won’t be able to complete the project before it’s too cold to finish painting. Did you know that paint wont set up correctly below certain temperatures? I didn’t, until I moved here.

The other winterizing project that I have yet to do, is cleaning out the gutters. That, like painting requires that I be on a ladder. The more time I spend on a ladder, the less time I have to actually do the project before the knee starts “Bidening” (Calling a lid on the day). That’s a project that has got to get done, because otherwise water backs up in the gutters and then freezes, causing problems throughout the entire Winter.

The last project for Winter, is annoying but can be done regardless of the temperature. Unfortunately, it also means that I have to be on a ladder and climbing around in the attic. (There’s that ladder thing again!)

I’ve got to get in the attic crawlspace and retape the ductwork. We had some work done last year up in the attic and I think one or more of the ducts got pushed around, perhaps creating leaks between the ductwork and the registers. It happens, I didn’t notice the problem until months after the workmen had left because their work was done in the time between needing to run either the A/C or the heat.

You can do ductwork stuff in the Summer with the roof broiling in the sun and the attic is 120°F or you can do it in the fall when attic temps are more reasonable. I’ve chosen the latter.

Thinking about it, I should also clean out the dryer vent. That may be a “today” kind of project because it’s 35°F outside and windy. (So, no painting today!) As a bonus, there’s no ladder required.

All of this is to say,

Welcome to Fall!

It also serves as an explanation of why I’ve not been blogging as much as usual.

I’ve scanned the news recently. Nothing much has changed.

I could sum up the news like this, “We’re all gonna die, the government is out of money, one group or another is pissed off about something, and everything is going to hell in a hand basket.”

There, now you don’t have to watch the evening news. Instead, turn off the TV, shut down the computer, put the phone aside, and go read a good book.

Until next time… I hope you’re having a nice Fall season.

OH Fauci… Shut the Fuck up!

In a recent trailer for a National Geographic documentary, St Fauci of the Mask said that he had PTSD from the AIDS crisis.

OH REALLY!?!?!

I was blindsided on some website by this trailer. After I finished throwing up, I thought, “What the fuck do you think people like me have, you bastard son of a bitch?”

St. Fauci of the Mask

With one exception, EVERYONE I knew or cared about died, horribly.

I didn’t have time to even grieve. Between funerals and having to be in the closet at work, (yes children, there was a time when being out at work was a fireable offense,) how deep do you think my personal PTSD goes?

How deep do you think the PTSD of other people in my age group is?

We lived in terror that we were next, for YEARS. While you Fauci, and your ilk, had people afraid to use the toilet, or touch door knobs. You had people wearing masks then too, for all the good it did.

You’re one of the sons of bitches that blocked various treatments to those suffering.

You’re one of the motherfuckers that made sure so many thousands of gay men died alone, isolated, in fear. You’re one of the bastards that profited on their misery and as an aside, made damn sure that if they had insurance, it didn’t pay for treatments so thousands died destitute because “experimental” drugs were so expensive.

You and people like you have no concept of what it’s like to find friends and former lovers time and again with their brains spattered across a wall of their home.

I shouldn’t know how to clean blood & brain off walls.

The first thing I thought then shouldn’t have been, “Oh he kept his porn stash there, there, and there.“I should have been thinking, “God please make this stop, I can’ loose anyone else,” I should have been able to be young, vulnerable, and human.

I wasn’t able to be, because it was my task or the task of his friends to “sanitize” the home prior to the upstanding Religious family showing up.

You know, the same family that was all too willing to take anything and everything of value, years after they’d disowned the deceased. The good righteous family that would instantly throw the deceased’s sick partner out onto the street so the house could be sold. Yeah THOSE wonderful people! At least Westboro Baptist Church was upfront about being bastards.

At the time St. Fauci of the Mask, you were a Roman Catholic and it was obvious that you hated both the “sin” and the “sinner”.

Don’t talk to me about PTSD!

Sick fucks like you don’t have any concept of being “The guy‘ people come to for advice about killing themselves. It wasn’t that I was qualified to provide advice, it was that I would speak of death honestly and openly, without platitudes or falsehoods.

I was often the last person someone dying of AIDS talked to. Because simply put, when folks reached the end, they needed a sounding board who wasn’t going to judge them.

At the time, psychoanalysts of various stripes either wouldn’t or couldn’t speak of these matters. They were bound by law to report that someone was a danger to themselves. Those reports would lead to hospitalization and a long drawn out agonizing death.

At 23, I felt like the Angel of Death. I shouldn’t have been that familiar with death unless I was in an active war zone. I wasn’t… I was in sunny California.

Not that I was taking lives, but it was as if somehow I was the Angel’s harbinger.

Believe me fucker… that leaves a mark on your soul.

I was the last being on Earth many of these people had a cup of tea, a conversation, a cocktail, or watched a movie with. Then they were gone, and I was standing graveside at another closed casket ceremony. Tears streaming down my face under the baleful eyes of the deceased’s relatives. Feeling guilty because somewhere deep in the back of my mind I was asking, “when am I gonna be the guy in the box?”

I and my rapidly dwindling friends became the object of those families hatred not for what we’d done, or how we lived, but because they couldn’t face their own shame and guilt over not being there for their sons, brothers, uncles, or nephews, at the time when Family would have meant everything.

Fuck you Anthony Fauci, and fuck your claim of PTSD too!

Guess what fucker? You need to Man up and stop your whining. Just like all of us had to do.

You’ll get no sympathy from me. You could be coughing up your lungs, flesh falling off your carcass screaming in agony, bleeding from every orifice, but not dying, and I’d call it long overdue justice. In fact, I’d be asking the Angel of Death to let you linger just a while more.

How DARE you try to play the PTSD card?

It’s not yours to play, I claim it.

I claim It for all those who, like me, survived. It’s our card, our history, our scars. We own it and we ain’t sharing.

I claim it in the names of all those who didn’t survive.

The only thing you can lay claim to Fauci, is the blood of thousands on your greedy, inept, hands.

Oh and by the way, you’ve learned nothing in 40 years. You’ve handled COVID exactly the same way you handled AIDS, you’ve just done it on a grander scale.

I’m sure Hell has a special place for you.

You know why this pissed me off so much?

It’s because now I have a hard time remembering all my friends faces as they were.

In the latter stages of AIDS, as they withered away, they all looked the same, like animated skeletons with eyes full of pain.

That St. Fauci of the Mask is why I dislike you so very much, and resent you whining about PTSD over the AIDS Crisis.

You always had your professional distance, you didn’t have to know anything about the sick and dying. They were just another faggot who was going to die, and they all looked alike to you. You didn’t give a shit about them.

I on the other hand knew them, and now feel like somehow I’ve betrayed them because I can’t clearly remember their faces anymore. There are simply too many.