Greetings from Alabama. Alabama the Beautiful, the license plates say. Dad’s had a triple coronary bypass, and I’m the last of the siblings to make the pilgrimage to Birmingham to help nurse him back to health. He’s been cranky the last few days, contrary to the mood of his post-operation survival euphoria. Yesterday during his checkup, the doctors found that half of one of his lungs was filled with fluid, hence his getting winded so easily, and genetic predisposition for crankiness aside, the root of his recent crankiness. So I’m sitting in the Same-Day Services Waiting Room while he gets checked in for the procedure. They say he’s going to be here for a day or two. Two days just to stick a needle in his lungs? Can’t they just turn him upside down? I’m experiencing the paranoia of an early 30’s heroine told that everything’s going to be fine, and then the next scene the doctor’s turning to his assistant and shaking his head.
S_ picked me up at the airport. Her daughter’s having a rough time, going through the rebel teen years. She’s fallen head over heals for an unexceptional little dude from, as S_ puts it, “an unexceptional family,” unexceptional except for their criminal records–a murderer, an alcoholic, a registered sex-offender. “But the mom’s a Christian,” S_ was quick to add. Little 16 year old C_’s passion seems entirely hormone driven, and given blind forward momentum by her dad’s steadfast refusal to bless her little love. I respond to everything with, “Family counseling, family counseling,” but according to S_, C_ adamantly refuses, failing to understand that a counselor is going to actually listen to her and guide her through living harmoniously with mom and dad and her feelings for the unexceptional little dude. I’m afraid that she’s not going to be able to set aside her willful rebellion and see this guy with any clarity until they’re living in someone’s tool shed with a bun in the oven and a minimum wage job at Wal-Mart. In a way it’s very romantic, or could be, but I’ve seen the movie, and since 1938 the ending has always been tragic.
Someone in the waiting room has a telephone with a series of warbly histrionic country love song ring tones. Turned up full blast. The phone’s owner has temporarily disappeared, but left his bag behind with his clueless but you can tell tender-hearted beer-bellied baseball-hatted totally-my-type friends, so every like two minutes there’s a new tear-jerking tune jolting me and the blue-haired ladies out of our seats as the buddies shift nervously.
Tyra’s on the TV here in the waiting room. It’s a show about straight girls who like to make out with women, with some lesbian wanna-be’s and a panel of expert lesbians. The guys in the waiting room are all totally turned on, and the women look occasionally at the TV and let out exasperated huffs. I watched Fassbinder’s Fox and His Friends the other night. It’s like Fassbinder never happened in this country. A thing that I love about his films is that most of them are really structured like standard Hollywood melodramas, but with an unapologetic gay disposition transposed on the directorship and narrative. He’s my total hero of the moment. When I get back, I’ll screen his BRD Trilogy, so let me know if you want to join me at the Coco-Plex.
The Lesbians are riding horses on Tyra now.
Look who just walked in. Omigod. He’s like 7 feet tall, teetering on cowboy boots, with a 10-gallon hat, horseshoe mustache, and a tiny little girlfriend who fits at his side like a polyp. He mumbles an incomprehensible southern scramble of words to her occasionally as his eyes shift from under his hat towards me. I blush and squirm under his intense but sweet honey gaze and focus on my laptop. His little belly wobbles as he fills out his admission form.
There don’t seem to be any single men around, just a lot of married men looking for “friends.” And what is it with those half-naked married guys who are just “looking for friends?” I’m ready to start perusing the Convicted Sex Offender list.