Up ahead .........

Almost six months since my Mother has died. I have begun to just let the sorrow have its course and try not to hold it back. I call those days ,Mom days when it just hurts thinking she is gone. If you have read most of my early blogs you know I was not the best of sons. I live with so much memories of how I used to punish my Mother because I felt she loved my Sister and despised me for being gay. I was a teenager who hated myself so much I took it out on my Mother and my Sister who showed nothing but love for me when I was a child. I was out of control and took out my inner pain on those around me. I now live with the memory of those burst of rage and try to think it was forgotten.


  I am keeping my promise to my Mother that I would not let my Father be alone. I sometimes wonder if I am doing the right thing and I think how I fear being alone. I go to sleep each night with that knot in my stomach that my Father may pass in the night. I have that fear each night and it is reasonable one because he is almost 80. I held my Mothers hand and looked into her eyes and told her I would not leave him and she did want me to promise not to forget myself also. The night she passed I remember her after dinner having a good laugh and she looked at me with such a magical smile and without any cause she winked at me and just a few hours later our family was at her side listening to the rattle within her begin.

  I have tried to sit down and write and have found myself thinking why bother. I have been told by so many to write and tell my story and have had the chance to go see someone in New York back about 4 years ago and I froze at the chance and self sabotage won again.  I took a chance recently and asked some friends to help with putting these blogs together and working it into a performance piece. I think at what I bore witness to these past decades from my molestation and exploitation from my pre-teen years in Philadelphia to the exploited teen in Appleton ,Wisconsin to the cruising of seedy Milwaukee hustler bars to the musky tea rooms of Port Authority; and, the neon smoke filled clubs of 80's Manhattan to the support of NYC Gay Youth and its pioneers to the crank filled nights of a seedy Atlantic City up until now a jaded gay man who has climbed in and out of Philadelphia's worst drug hang outs.

I have been described as resilient and a survivor and I tend to shy away from those titles. I am struggling with this dam disease and its every three week IVIG treatment . I am trying to fight for my county to implement some type of help for the GLBT community in the mental health issues the community seems to ignore. I have promised so many close to me I would get back into the world from my former case workers Kelly and Christine to my nurse Diana to my Italian beauties Francesca in London and Valeria in Italy. I was so full of life before I decided to self abuse and sabotage myself.

I am at the half way point in my life ;and, I want to do things I have always wanted to do but was so goddamn afraid of life's shadow that I stayed under the coppery scented haze of a crack pipe. I have always been told you can not do this or that. I have come to find out I will never know of other lands if I don't swim away from the shore. I am the only one who can catch my dreams and I have to pursue those dreams with a vigor that would impress friends and silence the critics. I may not be everyone's cup of tea and that is something I must understand. I love the quote by Marlon Brando "If I should walk into a room of 20 men and one does not like me I will leave the room " it is this train of thought that has kept me from reaching for that brass ring in life.

 I never knew what life was all about until the night of January 17th at five forty-five pm when I watched as my Mother Kathleen took her last breath. Every Mother has dreams for their children.I want those dreams to become reality for me as I move on ahead with life .With my Mothers hand on my shoulder squeezing me when making the wrong choice and pushing me ahead when fear grips me at the moment that brass ring is in site. I want to get out back among the living and make my Mother proud .....even though she may not be around I will always see that magical smile and the wink that let me know it was okay....she will be with me always making sure I will take care of myself and too live life to its fullest and not be afraid of life's shadow.