Maybe Cindy Jacobs Had Something To Do With It

I thankfully did not know this morning, that one of my lousier days awaited me. If I did, I never would gotten out of bed.

It started with a computer glitch – one that wiped out all of my daily spreadsheets in an instant, sent them off into the ether never to return no matter how I begged and cajoled my laptop.

I also screamed.

I then tried to console myself with my beautiful ocean view. It was beautifully clear – almost unnaturally so, and I decided to take a picture of a small white craft heading toward the Golden Gate. It looked so alone yet peaceful.

After turning it on, the camera’s screen went black. The lens and its focus must have joined my spreadsheet in the ether. I panicked, seeing as how I couldn’t afford a new one.

I picked up my morning’s pieces, put them aside and concentrated on my schedule: pick up my overdue paperwork for Project Open Hand from my doctor’s office (I really need to get groceries - no paperwork, no groceries), go to a urologist for the results of some tests, go to Open Hand, then to Best Buy to return a godawful boombox, hopefully to put the return toward a camera on sale, shop at Safeway for a special dinner I was making tomorrow, go to Superstar Video to pick up a movie I had special ordered three months ago, then have coffee (just coffee) with a new internet date – a beautiful man who billed himself as “stallion.”

But of course, the horrendous excuse we have for a transit system, MUNI, decided to make the day worse. Much worse.

I panted as I came into the doctor’s office. The paperwork had not been filled out, I was told. Please wait. “About four minutes,” I said. Ten minutes later, I was handed the paperwork and I raced my next appointment. The crawl of MUNI took it’s toll on me and I frantically phoned the urologist’s office to tell them I’d be 10 minutes late.

I was 25 minutes late.

“OK, just tell me straight, biopsy or no biopsy?”

“Biopsy,” he said. Despite antibiotics, my PSA levels not only staid the same, they actually went up!

“How long for the biopsy appointment?”

“As soon as you want. How about a week?”

I didn’t ask how long the results would take. The possibility of prostate cancer was too  eminent. He told me to discount the 20% possibility and not think of it at all. Right. He couldn’t even understand why I seemed so stressed out. I blurted out  a computer-camera-MUNI-must-get-to-Open-Hand-before-it-closes line before I zoomed out the door.

The urologist’s office was next to St. Mary’s Hospital so, of course, there at the bus stop was an ambulance blocking the MUNI lane.

I got on a belated bus, and sprinted four blocks – and arrived at Open Hand 8 minutes after it had closed. 

I then walked to Best Buy (about 1 mile), proceeded to pick out a great buy on a camera and then was told by the check out clerk that I would have to go to Customer Service to process my return. The line for Customer Service looked like it stretched to China and I knew I couldn’t possible make my date if it stayed.

I put the camera down and walked another mile (no direct MUNI service) to my date.

He really was tall and beautiful, friendly and animated. Then he told me about his Valentine’s Day and revealed a nice silver bracelet.

“My boyfriend gave me this as kind of a lavalier kind of thing and I have to tell you that we’ve decided to try to be monogamous.”

The stallion turned into a nice, pet-able pony.  My caregiver side wished him all the best. I won’t tell you what the rest of me wanted to do.

I went to Safeway, then Best Buy and picked up the video.

I got home at 9:00PM.

I’ve just finished making crème brulee for tomorrow and eating my dinner. It is now midnight.

The Curse Of The Prophetess

I can’t help but think that “propethess” Cindy Jacobs, Cindy, Japan-is-shaped-like-a-dragon Jacobs, had something to do with this day. The video I had picked up was…porn. No, IT wasn’t cursed. I was cursed, because by some weird stretch of the imagination, Jacobs had put a curse on me just for being who I am. Does that make sense? Kinda.

Because when you write about the machinations of the Christian Right (especially the more lunatic fringe), you develop a sense that it will do anything, from voodoo to imprecatory prayers to make your life miserable. It’s not guilt. I’ve done nothing to be guilty about. But the sense that somehow I have upset their machinations, their plans, their “prophecies” creeps up on me once in a while, a I shiver to think of what would happen if they knew my space, where I existed, where I lived and loved.

And somehow, Jacobs found out. Or someone like Jacobs. Maybe Lou Engle. He’s always been railing against gays as “those people who embrace the darkness” (just before, of course, the ubiquitous “but we must love them.”).

OK. Probably my wild imagination.

Oh, I should also tell you that I’m writing this in WORD. For some inexplicable reason, my internet connection has been lost.

To Be Continued. Maybe.