AMAZING GRACE

I heard newborn babies wailin'
Like a Mournin' Dove
And old men with broken teeth stranded without Love
Do I understand your question, Man
Is it Hopeless and Forlorn
"Come in" she said "I'll give ya Shelter from the Storm"
bob dylan



Part 5
1986
On December 1st, my Mother died at home. She had battled Emphysema and Cancer for several years. On her birthday in 1982 she had had a Major stroke; after months in the hospital, she recovered enough to go home and from there her capabilities improved to where she could drive and be fairly independent.
She had tried to take care of my father in the year or two that he was in the beginning stages, she had tried to be able to keep him at home, but the effects of Alzheimers demand much more care than what she could provide. Putting her Husband into a VA hospital just must have been gut wrenching for her.
I remember a Christmas where she had gone down and brought him home. It must have been about 1980 or so. When I came over the next day, she had already taken him back. I got the feeling that she wasn't able to handle him being there emotionally and she had already taken him back to the VA Hospital, 100 miles from home. She never tried that again.
Gut wrenching stuff.
In 1984 I married and the girl I married was an Angel. you have already read how she and Dad had gotten along and I want you to now that she probably added a year and much happiness to my mothers life as well. The Xmrs B'holes spent a lot of time with my Mother.
The only wish or hope that my Mother really had, except for the hope that she would live to see some little Bulletholes, was that she die before Dad. If she had had to bury Dad, that just would have been too much.
We spent Thanksgiving '86 and the following weekend with Mom. She had begun to take Morphine to help ease the pain she was in from the Cancer, but we had a good Weekend.
On Monday she started to fare badly, and that evening the Lungs just gave out. I had to call the Police and Fire Departments, the Funeral Home and then began the task of calling family and friends.
Finally I had to call work and it was my friend Jeff that answered the phone. Thats when I lost it. I could barely speak.
I can't begin to tell you what a blessing it was that Mom should go first.

March, 1987
We brought my grandmother home from a Nursing Home, hired a Nurse, set her up in the guest bedroom and hung Family Pictures all over the Walls. She had been in the Nursing home so long that she was like Dad, maybe worse. But after a few weeks, she began to come back; there were moments that she seemed to recognise us, and had become quite fond it seemed of certain pictures on the walls that we moved closer to her. Mostly it was the Pictures of my Grandfather, her husband. After about 3 months, she died. You can't imagine how good it felt to have brought her home to spend her last days with us.

A few months in the future, the VA Administration would move Dad from the VA hospital into a Private Nursing Home, setting the stage for the last part of this story.

A CHANGE OF HEART/ IF WE POSTULATE

(Continued from yesterday)
""my best friend and assistant, Jeff looked on in horror" as I carreened about the waiters station."

In the years before the incident I described in yesterdays post, my only experience with Gays had been through Drama Club in High School, where it had been whispered that certain members of the Department were "queer", and a few waiters I had worked around being a Chef. There was a big part of me that still didn’t believe someone could be truly gay and that the only reason they behaved in that manner was that they were lonely and just wanted to be touched and did not have the charisma to attract the opposite sex. I still didn’t quite believe they did what they did. There must be a mistake. They were Gay by some kind of default.
I figured that probably they just lacked the courage and confidence to get a woman. I figured it was just a cop out, a way to be unreal, that the people and the relationships they were in were invalid.
In 1982 there was only a whisper of a disease running through gay communities in larger cities. It was called AIDS, and over the next few years would affect the lives of a great many people, including myself. Not that I had AIDS, mind you, but 'Free Love" was about to be a pretty risky investment.

In 1982 I was Saute Chef for the Crystal Cactus, the gourmet restaurant at the Fort Worth Hyatt. The broiler man was Jeff, and he and I had a lot in common. In just a few months we had acheived a familiarity that allowed us to be a very good team as cooks, and also best friends, that with just a word or a glance we could be on the same page on just about anything. We were both pretty well read and could launch into scenes from ‘Moby Dick’, “Hamlet” "Lord of the Rings".
Our favorite was from "Guildenstern and Rosencrantz are Dead". Its a spinoff from "Hamlet" in which the two guards of Hamlets fathers tomb toss a coin that comes up heads 99 times in a row.

They contemplate the odds...
"If we postulate " says one.
"And we just have" replies the other.....
"Ninety-Nine Times!", both in unison.

While it started out to be purely extemporaneous, we both knew the material so well and had become such good friends that we could be quite entertaining at the drop of a hat. Well, we thought we were anyway. We would be in attendance at after work parties that went on 2-3 nights a week and lasted till well past dawn. The greatest thing about working in foodservice? Waitresses!
But Jeff never partook of waitresses and any time I suggested we go to here or there to chase women, Jeff always seemed to have something else to do. Still we managed to do something together at least 4 night a week. If it wasnt a party, then it was a game of “Risk” or all night Frisbee. Jeff was as good as I with a Frisbee and we would throw together for hours at a well lit park around the corner from my mothers house where I lived. Jeff was a deep and Philosophical person and as we threw we talked. He became one of the best friends I have ever had.
My mother had had a stroke which was part of the reason I lived with her. My father was in a V.A. Hospital with Alzheimers. He had been for years. Over the course of a year Mom met Jeff several times.
Ever since her stroke my mother’s speech had changed in the typical stroke victim fashion. She now talked like a little girl with a bit of a lisp and sing-song cadence.
Getting ready for work one afternoon, I mentioned that Jeff was on vacation to New York and I had a new guy to train.
My mother gets an odd look on her face and asks what he is doing in New York
“He says he is going to see as many plays as he can in 4 days” I tell her.
“ Did he go by himself?’ she asks.
‘No, he went with a couple of the waiters from the Restaurant”
Mom looks at me over the top of her glasses.
“Steve, is Jeff gay?
“NO, Mom, why do you ask?”
And in that sing-song voice she says “Well, he...just seems... like he might... be gay.”
Now in 1982 my Mom was 65 years old and had been a housewife all her adult life. I doubt she had ever met a gay person. I was surprised that she knew the word.
I thought about it all night and finally determined that she was probably right. My best friend in the whole world, with looks and energy and charisma to burn; the guy that I hung out with 4-5 nights a week and could leap at least 4’in the air covering 10-12 feet and catch a Frisbee behind his back or between his legs; that I found myself on the same page with, completely in sync, time after time after time; my best friend that I was so proud to know....was Gay!

It was a real awakening; these were real people in real relationships and there wasn’t anything wrong with them. Whatever I had been thinking about Gay people was incompetent, immaterial and irrevelant.
Jeff left the Hyatt in 1986.
I found myself behind him in a checkout line in 1988. He had not seen me.
"If we Postulate..." I said very loudly.
He flinched but didn't need to turn around.
"...And we just have..." came the reply.
In unison as he turns around;
"...NINETY NINE TIMES!" and we embrace.

I never saw Jeff again.
I got word that Jeff had died from AIDS in 1993.
I can scarcely think of him without weeping.

I would like to dedicate this one to Barbara, http://www.blogger.com/profile/5665351
who is lucky enough to have a lot of friends, many Gay; and a fellow that used to Blog named "Broken" who told me he had never really had a Gay friend and in doing so inspired me to write this many months ago.

PUT THE FLAME TO THE HEAT

Grizzbabe http://grizzbabesden.blogspot.com/ has insinuated that I have teased you badly concerning an incident where I almost ended up unemployed. She is right, it should follow the story about Chef Felenczak, as he certainly was one of the players.

I had been at the FW Hyatt for about 30 days when I got my first promotion. I was to be the Lead cook for the Gourmet restaurant for the evening shift. The Restaurant was named ‘The Crystal Cactus” but I affectionately called it “The Crystal Crotchless” and every waiter in the place was Gay. Now back then, in my world at least, gays were a bit of an exception. I had worked in restaurants where there were no Gays, but here at the Hotel, the Crystal Cactus and Room Service were filled with Gays. To me there was something a little unreal about them as though they might be Gays by Default...(to be continued)
After work, walking to my car in downtown Fort Worth, many was the night that several carloads of these gays would beckon to me to come and join them. The smell of Marijuana wafting from their car windows, my usual response was to moon them. Man, did that ever fire them up as I pulled my pants down and flashed my milky white ass cheeks- they would hoot-n-holler and get out of their car and I would hitch up my pants and run for my life.
I called them the “Boys”.
I let it be known as often as I could that I had no respect for them whatsoever.
AIDS was still relatively unknown.

So on New Years Eve 25 years ago as the night wound down, the “Boys” started to bring me Kamikazes... I don’t know exactly what that is but its either Vodka or Gin and after about the 3rd or 4th I began to feel the effects.
It was about this time that one of the boys, his name was Frank and he looked just like Peter Lorre, only weirder, approached me and asked me a question;
“Steve, why don’t you like us Boys”
As I searched my alcohol racked brain for a proper answer, I spied a Fire extinguisher hanging on the wall.
I had my answer.
I reached over, grabbed the extinguisher. I hung the handle from my apron, holding the 2 foot long nozzle in my right hand. The big red tank hung swinging from my apron, between my legs.
I started to laugh, but it wasn’t funny yet.
I pulled the pin.
I looked Frank dead in the eye and said;
“Why, Frank, I like you boys just fine” and let him have it. A thick stream of white reatardant came very forcefully from the nozzle, leaving Frank looking like something out of a 3 Stooges bit.
"In fact, I like you Boys a lot".
Then I began careening through the Waiters station, that big tank swingin down between my knees and long thick nozzle (in both hands now) hosing down every waiter I came across. Laughing all the way. My best friend and assistant Chef, Jeff, looked on in horror.
It was about the time that I ran out of foam that Security had me and escorted me to the nearest exit.

I don’t remember filling out an incident report. I don’t think they needed my contribution.
I was off for the next three days and worried that I would lose my job.
When i came back, they did not stop me at security. A good sign.
When I got to the main kitchen there was not a representative there from Personnel to escort me away. Another good sign.
But neither was Chef Felenczak there to inflict whatever discipline on me that I most certainly had coming. It would be two long hours before he got to the Kitchen. That's how long it took him to save my ass.
I was slicing meats when he appeared at the door of the Chefs office. He looked across the Kitchen and our eyes locked. He pointed at the floor next to him with his finger. I went.
I don’t know how badly he put himself in hock for me, but I came away with a 3 Day suspension when by all rights I should have been fired.
After that, Chef always called me his "little Troublemaker".

Thanks Chef.