It's probably a safe theory that Amazon Prime Music was designed with late-stage baby boomers in mind. A bit too young for the Beatles wave, we got full on smacked with Joni Mitchell's Jazz Period, Carly Simon and Linda Ronstadt--and now we stream them, recapturing or remembering where we were and who we were doing as Carly warbled "Coming Around Again." That song takes me to my best friend's lake house, a joint, and the dark walls and low lighting of his delightful home.
It's good, too, for those of us who advanced into college practicing serious Smiths worship, and loving Joy Division, even if we didn't have that hair.
Among my cohort, I've read that oral cancer is on the rise, as it is throughout the population. This has been mentioned to me with the hopeful comment that more and more money is being spent on research and treatment development to handle the high tide. This does not make me feel good, but I try to take it for the bully comment it was meant to be. If more money is being spent now, doesn't that mean it might pan out to new treatment in, say, five years? I can't imagine where I'll be with this shit next month, Slick, but nice try.
One reason for the oral cancer tsunami is the implication of HPV in its development; there are a high number of patients who can pair that virus with their cancer, having no other genesis, no especial history of smoking, and no apparent genetic propensity such as runs in my family. Given that a high proportion of sexually active adults have HPV in their systems, these cancers are no kind of accident.
Somehow, amazingly, I appear to not have HPV. I know, it's amazing. I'm a first class slut and I'd be the first to admit it. I've had a significant number of partners in a significant percentage of the kama sutra for boys, and I enjoyed the hell out of myself. Given the dodge on those odds, I should always buy a lottery ticket.
I've wondered, of course, many times and in many conversations as to why I'm such an easy lay. Some people have simply written off that behavior as part of being gay, a man, a gay man, double jeopardy, doubly slutty. Of course that's a total cop out, a way to excuse away one's whorish proclivities. I'm no more slutty for being gay than a blonde is dumb by nature, and no less of a man for being gay: I'm just a horndog.
I say that without self rancor. I've known plenty of gay men who weren't, apparently, quite as dickmatized as me (sorry, but I love that word). They may have been serially involved, but they tended to one partner at a time, for several years. I had my period of that sort of life, but for me it was just a cover for the fact that I was screwing my brains out while no one was looking.
I used to live in moral terror that I'd be called out for my behavior, decidedly un-Price, according to my parents, decidedly downmarket from the strictly monogamous, married, life they extolled. I excused myself by referencing my inability to commit under the seal of legal approval--another example of high level bullshit. Had I been married at, say, 30, I'd be an adulterer instead of a slut. I at least dodged that bullet; sex will bring you together, but love will tear you apart--even Joy Division knew the truth of that.
Jerry, the lake house owner and I, under the influence of Carly Simon's best on the stereo and a few fatty joints between the tunes, have had serious discussions of these points--whether the oppression of homophobia which kept our compatriots in the closet drove us to meeting older men who were looking to meet younger guys--or not meet them so much as have sex with them. An institutionalized pedophilia that manifested in gay kids who had to find gay life on the streets meeting up with the bridge trolls who monitored access to those magical streets. Did I start my adult life as a big 'ole slut or was that how I paid the cover charge? Was it the fact that we're talking mid-Seventies, height of the Sexual Revolution that spread me like I can't believe those legs aren't butter?
Honestly, who gives a fuck? Sure, it's good to know why you are the way you are, how you got there, by what route--but sometimes you're talking as the car moves along, you miss the landmarks, you can't remember the sequence of turns. Ultimately, it ends up as it ends up: Me, minus a tongue and a bunch of tissue from here and there. Those cigarettes never helped matters for me, sure, but even without them, my sister had a scary match to my cancer, or I have the carbon copy of hers, a situation that screams genes to my doctors, who look no further.
On Amazon Prime, if you type in Joy Division in the search box, the big hit comes up first--and if you listen to satellite radio, the alternative channel will feature it too. We are, some of us, surrounded by memories--so much so that we don't have to venture into the world as it is today. We can listen to the 80's, dance to it in specialty clubs, indulge in the 90's as it pleases us. Only when the present day obtrudes upon us do we have to consult the calendar. The mouth pain, the diagnosis, the doctor's appointments--if only love was the only thing tearing us apart.
No comments:
Post a Comment