Rabbit Rescue

Every year around Easter, the number of rabbit sales double and triple the closer we get to the holidays, as do the subsequent number of rescued rabbits needing adoption, as each generation of kids learn that keeping a rabbit is not like having a domesticated cat or dog, because those animals have been purposefully bred to live with us as our working companions or household pets. I learned a bit more about taking care of rabbits through an old work acquaintance I bumped into at one of our annual industry parties that used to be called the "Barge Bash", but as the price (and number of careless drunks) went up, we settled into publishing parties at the piers of South Street Seaport.

Jason was my apprentice at one time, though more accurately, we were assistants to the Senior Production Manager, and he was our new trainee. I showed him the ropes, because we had to give new hires at least a week (sometimes two, depending on notice) of overlap between employee shifts; that's how complex the manufacturing of books can be. It was all very civilized, given the politics at the time. I was the first scholar/artist to work in production, because my mentor was gifted enough to know that she needed to steer her ship through hand-done mechanicals to desktop publishing with some serious guidance that my generation of thinkers represented as a group.

We never had clean easy changes as a part of our lives, so becoming adept at "multi-tasking" was just another phrase for "staying alive" to us. We didn't have a say in any of it: not the language(s) we used, or the systems we had to learn just to earn a meager paycheck, nor the kinds of media we made...none of it was ours for the taking, or asking. Jason was really smart and cerebral. He fit in with the hardcore nerds a lot better than I did, and that was part of the problem for him, too. He fit in a little too good for it to be healthy. Within weeks of me leaving the lower floor for the art department upstairs (in continuation of my apprenticeship as a leader, not a follower), I began to hear stirrings in the weekly production meetings, some of them staffed by my friends.

He attached himself to a flamboyantly bisexual "art fag" called Mary Louise at the time, and for a sheltered fragile kid from Brooklyn who lived with his mom, she was a bit too much of an exotic out-of-towner for him, with her bright red lipstick and chain-smoking ennui that seemed feigned to me. She claimed that the violent sexual offender who climbed through her open bedroom window on one warm Southern night turned her to women in response, but given that she loved to lie (ahem "act") in front of a captive audience, it was all up for grabs, including her highly mannered persona that could just be a reflexively fearful response to our overwhelming native city. I didn't really buy into her act, though she was a firm part of our crowd.

He attached to her hard, though, falling in love at work way too quickly at his first real job. He got into some serious trouble at work, so badly that my former work mentor from production had to ask me some pointedly direct questions about his conduct with me (which was strictly professional though friendly, since he was my responsibility as a younger trainee), and for her, that was rare, because she was (and is) that good at reading people, just like me. Mary Louise threatened sexual harassment lawsuits and discrimination, with the gay card thrown in...it was a total mess. Jason landed in rehab, because after accosting her in the hallways and company stairwells, he took his act to the streets, haunting her neighborhood like a love-struck teenager, and that's when it really got scary.

She was deeply rattled by it, because I asked her about his conduct, too. She shakily smoked a few cigs in the middle of the day just talking to me about recent events, and I could plainly see that this was no act; her hand shook lighting each cigarette in quick succession. He took to stalking her at the local cafe she went with her best friend and roommate in the Village, banging on the glass and mouthing "I love you" to her over and over through the window, as they sat inside. It was too much for him and her. Years later, after we met a party, I kept his card out of curiosity. I wanted to know about him, as one of the few trainees I had, and so I sent him an email to renew our acquaintance, which was gladly met.

He did indeed "make it", working as a professional Production Manager for a slick commercial packaging group, and I was satisfied with that. He was disabled after all, so I took care. We met for a dreadful "art fag" movie showing one warm evening downtown that horrified me, because the gay woman who made it was there for a tortuous "question-and-answer" period, and his was the very first hand to shoot up. I slouched a little in my seat, because the movie was terribly pretentious, as he asked inane questions about the sound recording and audio. I suppose he wanted to seem like an aficionado to impress me, which it didn't. Who cares about the background?!

But, as a disabled man, he clung to ephemera the way you and I might hold on to bread and water as the staff of life. I could see him at home, rocking back and forth obsessively over some soundtrack. It just fit his whole persona. Besides, he could afford to have such eccentricities, because he still lived with his mom in Brooklyn and he was in his 30s, which told me all I needed to know about his illness. He seemed stable enough, but that could all change at any time with the wrong combination of elements. So, we talked about rabbits waiting on the line to see this art film showing, and that's when he showed me some cute pictures of his pet rabbits.

He was a bit nervous about leaving them alone, sometimes even hiring a pet caregiver when he went away on business trips or the odd concert that kept him away from home for a day or two. He was the ultimate fan. We didn't connect romantically, so he asked me if he could "put me on the back burner", which I knew was language he picked up from his therapist giving him permission to see other women, and I was just fine with that. I liked him like I like all my friends: not like that. We'd see a few local shows around, but that was before I went bust during the last economic recession. He tried to pull me into his weird group of freelancers who worked completely backwards, and I quickly bailed out of their mutual business venture for the insane. No, thanks. I can belt-tighten some more, man, and that was it. Poof! He was gone from my life, after I got a small paycheck from him.

I was happy that he was grounded through his rabbits, and his album collection of odd music, because given the depth of his illnesses, he was doing phenomenally well, and I didn't want to see that disturbed in any way. We took it as far as holding hands, as he tried to comfort me about my "bad luck" in a rigged game I was destined to lose, with his arm companionably around my shoulders in a warmly affectionate gesture. He was off to another hipster show in Brooklyn that I passed on, but not before he gave me a kiss on the cheek full of well-wishes. He couldn't help me out. No, it was never that for me, but we had this: a beautiful sunny day in our beloved Brooklyn, walking around as if we had no cares in the world, because at the time, we didn't.

We had the company of each other, our full lives, pets, romances that came and went, and one of us went in for a voluntary vasectomy when he reached 30, after going through a full psychological screening for readiness. When I asked him why, he told me that he always knew he didn't want kids, and maybe it had something to do with his father dying from cancer when he was just a baby? I enjoyed the deliberately vague response, so I tentatively offered the actual truth as a bait for him to open up: perhaps you're afraid of passing on your DNA and your mental illness to a child you'd be hard-pressed to parent well? Hmm...interesting theory. "Yeah, maybe." I knew right then that he knew I knew without saying it to him, because I knew it a lonnng time ago, Jay. Good luck with those adorable bunny rabbits, tho. You deserve every happiness that there is out there in the real world, kid.

For Jason

http://www.rabbitcare.org/

Mallhead

The First Church of Toronto: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopping_mall

My mom's youngest sister is addicted to shopping and junk food, just like she's always been. My grandparents took care of her all of their lives until their deaths, but even my grandmother's Norman Italian longevity wasn't good enough for her. If she was having a "bad" day (and they're all pretty fucking bad, by her choice), she'd express her magical desire for my grandmother to live forevuh in her horrible-sounding accent, because apparently her giving life wasn't good enough for her youngest brat. My aunt likes magic instead, a perpetual teenage attitude delivered in the most blatantly obnoxious tone possible, guaranteed to start a fight so she can get high off of the juices that flow from anger; an addict right down to her core.

My grandparents struggled all of their hard-working lives with her terrible presence, alternating between disgust and trying to care for their very sick daughter, between fits of living that they managed to squeeze successfully into the margins of other people's disordered lives. After all, we were experts at it. I was healthy and so were they, and that's about it for our small immediate family circle. Not much material to work with, but we managed it as best as we could, thankfully with our sanity and good health intact, much to the gnashing teeth despair of my mom and her ugly sisters. They removed moles like they tried to shed their awful weight, without ever covering up how horrible they are.

Desperate to escape the confines of their children's miserable homes, me and my cousins sometimes tacked on excursions with our young aunt out of sheer desperation, which my grandparents understood. They can barely drive around, but small distances are fine. If I needed clothes for school, Aunt B. could manage that, with lots of compromises for her girlish brain to accept our passage with her. Given my mom's sugar addiction, I grew up in a house plagued with migraines that only abated until I was well into college and young adulthood. It could have been genetic (I have lots of overweight diabetics on both sides of the fence), but it was certainly never helped by my family. They forgo real food to eat dessert first, which pretty much guarantees I'll get sick if I eat like they do, so I avoid it like the plague. It is the exact opposite of our traditions about breaking bread.

Nonetheless, stuff is stuff, and where better to cadge a ride than from a junkie who goes directly to the source to mainline it? She's never practiced religion, preferring instead to excel in cheap gaudy plastic shit that she can torture us with by using them as "ugly bombs". Her best friend died an untreated hoarder, with my aunt claiming ignorance of it after her death, which fooled none of us. You see, each and every one of the grandchildren in my family have become violently ill on these shopping sojourns with our aunt; every single one of us. At first, my mother and her sisters used cleverly hidden techniques to cover up the fact that they made us sick.

First, it was my supposed "hypoglycemia" that caused me to return home from shopping trips pale and nauseous. Oh, no problem: just feed her food! My mom treated me like I was a pet her sister didn't know how to feed and water. After that, it was on; I had to gulp down these sugar-free foods so she could continue her worship at store windows. "Stuff something down her throat", was an oft-repeated phrase in my mother's house, to keep people from guessing the source of my sickness. Same thing with my other cousins: Bill had a strange gluten intolerance that made him dizzy, Elizabeth ("that poor thing") grew up without a real mutha (not true), therefore she's a sickly orphan...on and on it went for years, until the Nanuet Mall fell into disrepair, in which case, Auntie simply needed a venue change.

Same thing with the "new" mall in West Nyack. We all strangely felt sick just walking through the multi-level building with her, which she quickly devised cover stories for, aided and assisted by our mysterious "symptoms", "Oh, yeah? You don't feel good?", with a quick panicked look to her sidelong glance at us. Uh, no. I feel overly hot and sick to my stomach. Unfortunately for her, I outgrew all of my bad health and habits through hard work. "Weird...I call it 'Mallhead'. Billy gets it, too", and so it went for a few more years, until each one of my cousins confessed to me that every one of them got sick shopping with her, with the exact same set of physical responses.

I let it slide while my grandmother slowly declined in her advanced old age, but not by much; my aunt loved using her as a deferred payment plan to big family discussions that would "out" her true agenda. I let my cousin and his long-time girlfriend buy her a huge flat-screen t.v. one Christmas, with the excuse that my grandmother's cataracts were the reason she needed a new one. They were gone for hours, hours that I comfortably spent in happy companionship with my grandmother and mother. My cousin returned from the excruciating trip red-faced and ashamed: another sucker punch by that crazy incompetent bitch. He was kind enough to install the set for her, just like we all enabled that hateful little dwarf: in honor of our parents' parents, those G-dly people who gave rise to us.

I finally put my foot down during a weekend stay with my mom. I offered to go with my girl cousin (that poor unfortunate "orphan") and my aunt to the mall, but we were barely down the street when something odd happened. Elizabeth suddenly took ill in the car, which forced our aunt to stop at a junk food convenient store chain. She used the same old line about my cousin just being hungry, as she tried to hide her delight at this unexpected pit stop for her preferred type of junk food. For once, she sprang sprightly out of the idling parked car to grab something quick in the store. She was all smiles as she watched my cousin (who was going to nursing school at the time, hence her new-found knowledge about healthy foods and exercise), gulp down rotten food so we could all go shopping for her.

But, for some strange reason, her evil alchemy didn't work this time. Liz didn't feel better as we drove down the same street we were on before the "pit-stop". "I'm not actually hungry", Liz tried to explain to our sick aunt, as she sat in the passenger seat, mulling over a nasty selection of salty junk food over sweets, neither of which is designed to cure anyone on the planet. "I still don't feel good", Liza said weakly, grown pale as I watched her open her jacket for air and crack the window at the same time, the very same actions we all took over those long hard years, as my aunt rehashed her old lines about carsickness and the car's heating system. "I don't think I can go shopping", she muttered, and if there was a heart that was gladder than mine at that moment, you'd have been hard-pressed to find it. I was already in recline just being in the backseat, hearing the same old bullshit in my head about my ill health again and again.

And just like that, we were back at my mother's apartment, with Liz resting on my mom's couch, like I had also done for years and years, recovering from another awful bus trip from the city. It was over....it was finally over. The curse had been lifted! I wished Liz was healthier so I could hug her, but my girl was all grown up, aided and assisted in my mastery of invisible motherhood by no one but myself, just as she had also suffered with her own disordered parents. The curse had been lifted forever. After that, we began to openly speak about "Mallhead" to each other at family gatherings in quiet companionship, whenever that little bitch was out of earshot. Nothing beats an evil witch like the greater good. We had finally won in adulthood. We won.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stregheria

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strega 

Genetics

Pamphlets and prayer, time and money, love and loss, pain and hope.

For years I've thought about oft-touted "stigmatized" diseases, (like alcoholism and drug addiction), as genetic conditions like mental illness, often incurring in the patient at the same time they struggle with substance abuse. It's a phenomenon I've seen up close and personal for most of my life. Mental illness, like cancer, does not discriminate, and so it goes with addictive disorders, which lead me to ask myself, this: if these various conditions and afflictions are so common among humanity, why haven't we properly addressed them?

I know all the usual arguments: "Oh, you don't know how bad it is when I reveal my illness to someone, the prejudice and the bias, blah, blah, blah", words typically spoken by a generic human to me, someone of the most rarest ethnic minority on the planet! I know true marginalization, and watching some random headcase get drunk is certainly not a new or atypical experience for me. Does it sound something like that? Yeah, well folks look at me like I have three heads most days of the week. I'm not exactly "run-of-the-mill" in human.

Most reluctance regarding addictions are due to the person alone, something so well known, it forms the basis of every type of self-help plan, and there are so many of them: AA for alcohol, NA for drugs, sex addiction counseling, Weight Watchers for food junkies, Gamblers Anonymous, it goes on and on and on. Whatever weird "jones" you got, someone else has it, and that's part of it, too. I interacted with some guy online who swore to me that he has a real fetish for frumpy down coats, when he saw a picture of me wearing one in a head-to-toe winter outfit that's common around here, which I then linked back to mental illness and the penchant the disturbed have for unique weirdness, often adopting S&M practices for their shock value. Shockingly, he did not reply and has (surprise, surprise) since stopped following me online.

On any given day. The Dr.Phil show is filled with kooks of varying degrees who have honed their lurid recovery tales over the years, auditioning for a spot on t.v., and finally landing that big audition by appearing on the show with their beleaguered, exhausted families, broke and in tears, in serious need of a vacation and expensive healthcare. Two of the more serious bipolar cases I have met in recent years admitted to their love of hammy bad acting, using their disorders for entertainment value by carefully honing their lies in front of a live (and trapped) studio audience that is the group therapy session.

Instead of feeling the "shame" they so often speak of publicly, it is, in fact, often the exact opposite dynamic in effect: they desperately want our attention, and the more beautiful the human, the more lengths said kook goes to invent a tale of disease and horror. Trust me, I know, though in truth, they never really succeed with me, versed as I am since childhood in the works of Edgar Allen Poe and Stephen King. Yeah, nice try, kid. Maybe next time!

In fact, since I've returned home, me and my friends and neighbors openly discuss our habits, tightly linked as a community as we are, because we share a lot of connectors in our shared genetic history. An upstairs neighbor and I talked one warm summer night when I was on the porch trying to catch a breeze about his many years sober, as I revealed my family's struggle with the disease, no tension or static between us; only understanding and empathy. Heck, I knew kids in Rockland County who bottomed out, left home, went abroad for awhile, and then came back from rehab to graduate, all before our junior year in high school.

Same with my mailman, in a chance meeting one morning at my front door: his many years sober, the hearing disability I inherited from my father, and the link between genetics and populations with food allergies, like Asians may have with dairy products and/or flush from alcohol, Native Americans and their inherent toxicity from alcohol due to a lack of the proper enzyme for breaking down our country's mostly European types of fermented drinks, and my stepmothers' serious case of Celiac's disease, born of her upstate Dutch/German family's rural farm diet of meat and potatoes for many, many years, in relative isolation from the rest of the world, including "The City" and it's highly varied cuisine. Uh, yeah you can't break down wheat gluten! That tends to happen over long periods of time and a lack of proper exposure to different types of food groups.

After me and my mailman conquered that huge intellectual hurdle of inherited human diseases in under five minutes flat, (it was a chill, brisk day and he had a full route to attend to), we moved on easily to other topics like his wife's training diet and athleticism, because I also follow a strict diet when I train in MMA. We pondered why such a thing as genetic disorders are still so taboo, leaving off the conversation for some other time. Perhaps today is a good day to end it.

And so it went that a week or two later, I spotted two lost souls "pamphleteering" outside our grocery store. One man had the wide, red-eye stare of a crazy ex-con, and upon closer examination of the brochure, I was right yet again! Turns out his father started the program in desperation of his son's constant incarcerations from drug and alcohol offenses, as is so often the case. Addicts do not belong in jail. It's like sending someone who hoards to a garage sale with $100 burning a hole in her pocket. Bad news will come from it! Same with the rather stern-looking and stiff young man standing next to him, who briefly chatted with me while not moving, breathing, or blinking his eyes once, because he was heavily medicated: their addictions are one just part of a much larger equation, one that includes mental illness and secret family dysfunctions, and that is the real reason why people don't talk openly about their problems: they know we know.

My ex-husband (soon to be annulled in connection to me, because of his inability to have an adult, mature marriage with his amount of disabilities): it isn't just the alcohol or drugs, or his Native American heritage, or his supposed "stupidity" that comes out whenever it is convenient for him to get out of trouble. It's his mental illness that he refuses to treat, because his psychotic behavior is the lone "power" he feels he can wield against healthy people the most, that he is so prejudiced against, much like his refusal to disclose. He feels that this is his one big "win" against me, by refusing to speak the words any person who cares about their health and those of their loved ones would say out loud or in written form: "Hi. My name is David, and I'm an alcoholic." ("Hi, David" , from the group in response. He goes on to speak some more.). "I'm also a drug addict and mentally ill. I suffer from manic depression that I refuse to treat, because I can use it to hurt my friends and family."

That's what all his time-wasting bullshit of a life comes down to, really; that one small disclosure above in bold, as I typed it out above. Those are the words he chooses to keep deep down inside, get sick from, and eventually die from. It's how he wastes his entire life. Instead of withholding these "magic" words from me, words that were supposed to make me afflicted, he stuffs them back down, choking on their toxic power, making himself ever sicker by it. But, not me. Not ever me. Never me. He has been in and out of rehab and jail many times over.

And so, on this day in Januray: Amen to you who are afflicted and seek solace in The Lord. May you find the peace and help that you need as we humans do, who all have afflictions to tend to in this life that is imperfect while on this planet. May you find solace and soothing in the arms of Our Blessed Lord. Amen to you who have the courage to live. Break the cycle of abuse, my friends. Rise above it! I want you to win and be strong, to become like I have, through the constant care, tending, work, and patience that has made me who I am. I await you on the other side with open arms, too.