As Luck Would Have It (38 page)

I had not seriously considered the idea of proposing to anyone since Sherri Chadwick, her un
pleasant
rejection souring me for the longest time as far as any matrimonial yearnings went.  Maybe the time had finally come, considering my miraculous survival and the strange metamorphosis that shadowed it, not to mention the mysteriously timely abandonment of my lengthy streak of luck. 
Despite what I considered more than
credible arguments, Michelle's refusal nonetheless came as surely as Sherri's, though with rather different results.  She was kind-hearted in her rejection, firm in her decision, but warm and caring as usual.  She did not want to break up at all; she just wanted to remain single.  We would stay together, maybe even move in at some point, but marriage was more likely to harm our relationship than strengthen it she felt.  Maybe it was her years as a litigator that made it seem like she was delivering
a
closing argument to
the
jury, she so passionately laid out the facts of her case and then left the final verdict to me.  Of course I had to agree with her; she was both convinced and convincing.  So now you know that I never got married.  But you probably knew that already if you were reading carefully, as I'm fairly certain I mentioned that little fact early on when I first began telling
my story
; a story of luck,
tragedy,
redemption, and even better luck.

Though Michelle and I were fine accepting the fact that we would never be married, Joseph and his boyfriend were not.  We could get married but didn't want to; they wanted to get married but could not.  This contradiction struck me as both inexorable and profound; the arguments against same-sex marriage flourishing, none of them sustainable through any logical process.  But long before 2021, logic was no longer in vogue; reason, intellect and scientific scrutiny now largely supplanted by faith, emotion and ignorance.

The marriage issue tended to come up when the four of us would go out; Michelle siding with Joseph regarding the inequities from a legal perspective, while I took up with his boyfriend when he suggested that there were now more serious civil rights issues facing them
.
No one could strenuously disagree with that observation; violence, particularly directed towards gay men had been increasing at a shocking rate for nearly a decade now.  Hard fought victories were being reversed by increasingly hostile and conservative courts.  If our generation had watched the pendulum swing both back and forth, younger gays and lesbians would be the ones more likely to suffer as it rebounded; that is to say for
much
of my life I was able to witness the progress of the gay rights movement, as it seemed an almost unstoppable force.  But someone born
let’s say
when Joseph and I w
ent out to celebrate
our 40
th
birthdays at
our
favorite wine bar would have experienced something quite the opposite as they grew into adulthood.  They would not be able to see real progress from any first ha
n
d experience, but could only view the harsh reality of homophobia's backlash.

We had seen these changes appear gradually, with virtually no protest or resistance by anyone in the United States, other than from those directly affected.  But their voices seemed largely unheard due to either the impatient mood or perhaps the indifference of many Americans who had grown accustomed to the economic
realities
and the hardships
they
imposed on the less fortunate or easily marginalized among them.  These factors had over time become ingrained into our cultural landscape, effectively politicized to the point where were readily accepted.

If this was concerning to me; it was very frightening to Joseph.  He’s the one who actually faced the possibility of
harassment
,
or something much worse like a baseball bat swinging not as it was intended at a high curve ball, but quite possibly at his head.  Anti-gay assaults were now commonplace in many middle schools and high schools across the country, particularly bad for those unfortunate homosexual students in the more rural areas, where school superintendants, principals, teachers and even parents in
some
cases, God forbid, would turn the other way and let the fairies and dykes fend for themselves.

Irrational fears of all sorts were now manifested in a variety of ways.  Airplane travel, which had actually been somewhat enjoyable prior to the attack on the World Trade Towers two decades earlier, had morphed into a Stalin-like exercise in control over the masses; be sure not to joke while waiting in the seemingly endless throngs at the security checkpoint lest you be yanked right out of line and subjected to a full body search or worse, arrest right on the spot.  Now, no baggage of any sort was allowed on the plane, save for a small purse or attaché case weighing no more than
four
kilograms maximum, or
8.8
pounds if you prefer, just enough for one’s medications, tampons, or some other absolute necessity that even the FAA could not prevent you from carrying on your person without threatening the very survival of the travel industry, let alone our Constitution.  Everything else had to be checked to the passenger’s final destination, which meant long waits at the baggage carousel.  Even food and beverages were prohibited, unless necessitated by a medical condition, say a Milky Way brought onboard by a diabetic passenger, in which case a special medical card was required and had to be displayed with picture identification to the security officer.  Want a Coke
or a snack before boarding the plane?
  No problem, you could purchase almost anything, at an inflated price, once you were cleared to go to your gate where food and beverage vendors proliferated.

I remember once flying to a conference in San Francisco and had been lucky enough to get a seat in one of the emergency exit rows along with eleven of my co-passengers.  The only seats outside of first class with even a few inches of spare room required of course, that the fortunate customers not only concur with the requirements that such an honor bestowed, but also acknowledge verbally, individually no less, that they understood and were able to comply with them.  The chorus of yeses on this particular flight was met with a prominent silence from the woman sitting near me, who was Asian and apparently did not understand the questions posed by the impatient flight attendant, who clearly had more important business to attend to, mainly selling snacks, sodas, beer, wine and other assorted beverages, even decent Scotch at about $15 for one of th
ose
cute mini-bottles, not to mention an array of personal items that might be needed on a long flight, a virtual 7-Eleven of sundry items on a large cart that
was wheeled down the aisle
both before takeoff and again once a comfortable cruising altitude was achieved.  Use of any portable electronic devices, including phones, laptops, music players, tablets,
N
etbooks
,
n
otebooks, DVD players, CD players, anything with a battery and headphones, large or small, rechargeable or not,
was
now
prohibited.

Once again, the flight attendant asked the woman, who I don’t think had even a rudimentary command of English, if she understood and felt she could comply, meaning essentially, can you at least get out of the way in the event of an emergency so the guy next to you, me I guess, could open the exit door strategically placed over the wing, so that I would no doubt be the first down the slide and out of harm’s way.  Several of us pointed to the door and the posted placard in the seat back in front of her, with the clear-as-day diagrams depicting the most basic operation of the emergency equipment; but she either would not, or more likely could not respond verbally as required.  This meant that her being seated in the emergency exit row violated airline and government regulations and that she was going to have to move to another seat.

By now everyone had found their own seats, a much more orderly process now that there
were
so few bags to be crammed into the narrow overhead compartments; but who was going to explain to the woman that she could not stay in her more comfortable seat, which no doubt came at a less comfortable price?  Soon there were two flight attendants gesturing to her and trying to figure out what to do, and as was usually the case, the flight was quite full and there were no unoccupied seats anywhere, so a volunteer would have to be found now as well, which ordinarily might not be a problem, given the additional leg room as an incentive, except in this case the woman was in a middle seat and next to a rather obese gentleman who did not appear overly concerned with his personal hygiene.  Cramped legs and all, let's just stay where
we
are, I'm sure is what the other passengers must have been thinking.

And so a standoff of sorts ensued; the woman would not budge, even when one of the flight attendants took her arm to encourage her to come along.  But rules are rules, regulations are regulations, forget the fact that there were eleven other passengers who verbally consented, and only two emergency exit doors mind you, so why not just leave it to one of them in the event of an emergency landing, since the Asian woman did not speak a word of English and would not be of much help in that situation anyway, and even if an extra pair of hands would have come in handy, she obviously
would have answered in the affirmative if she both understood the questions being asked and knew the word for yes in English.

While this nonse
n
se
ensued in row 16, another problem developed just a few rows back.  A middle aged gentleman had taken off his shoes, no doubt in an attempt to get a bit more comfortable, given that it was nearly impossible for even an average size person to move about even a little bit in a center seat in coach.  Recent regulations prohibited the taking off of one's shoes onboard because a few weeks earlier,
a
foreign substance
, which turned out to be some sort of foot powder,
was discovered in a passenger's shoes in Pittsburgh when he refused to take them off and put them on the screening belt, as required by Homeland Security regulations.  As we have seen, rules are rules, so now everyone had to both take off their shoes and leave them on; depending where in the as
sembly line they happened to be
so to speak.  The shoe infraction was taken very seriously for some reason that I never understood; it must be our obsession with feet, our fear that we might have left home with a hole in our sock or stocking, or maybe it was our propensity for things like shoe fetishes.  Whatever the reason, another passenger, no doubt trying to be a Good Samaritan and protect the others from possible harm from the shoe violator, called out to complain to the flight attendants who were about at their wits end with the lady in the emergency exit row.  A fracas broke out between the shoe violator and the other passenger until finally a security officer and the pilot arrived to arrest both the man without his shoes and the woman without a seat.

Still, we were not ready to take off, and you ask me why I hate flying.  Is it the airsickness, the long lines, the rudeness, the turbulence, the luggage hassles, the delays, or the endless excuses for all of the above?  No, it is the stupidity of the regulations that make me want to blow up the plane myself; not some terrorist with a radical ideological agenda mind you; but me, the average passenger waiting more or less patiently without even my IPod to listen to, just wanting to get to San Francisco for the conference and nothing more, but trapped instead in this
packed and
overheated
airplane
with nothing to do but speculate incredulously about the origin of the ridiculous regulations that do nothing to promote safety or serve any purpose other than to instill a constant level of fear in anyone who even thinks about flying. And why aren't we taking off now?  Because the man without the shoes is without them because he left them right there on the floor, and due to security or some other regulation, no one was allowed to touch them and the plane had to be totally evacuated and searched for explosives before we were allowed to board again.

****

By
this time
fear was ubiquitous, though there had not been even one significant terrorist attack in the United States since 9/11.  People were routinely searched and screened wherever they went; be it the shopping mall, the football stadium, the opera house or the movie theater.  Schools were virtual lockdowns during class time, much like in my own days in middle school, but this time with metal detectors and security guards as well.  People had quite a lot to be afraid of besides terrorism;
crime,
taxes, education, declining morality, and perhaps most frightening of all, the homosexual agenda.  What this agenda actually looked like or consisted of, or why it should be feared so much, nobody seemed quite able to articulate.  In difficult times such as these, where fear manifested in every stranger on the street, no explanations were deemed necessary.  Rational discourse, logical thought, and discerning judgments were now quite rare; fear and hatred of the gays were now quite commonplace.

Yes, now Joseph and his boyfriend could stop thinking about getting married and start concentrating on staying alive instead.  These were the subjects we considered often when the four of us would go
on
our Saturday night
outings
.  But you know the old saying, the more things change; that was true for us in many respects.  We still went to the
same
gay and straight bars whenever we felt like it, even if Chicago and other cities had become less than enlightened.  With the resilience of Castro Street of the 60s, Halstead Street remained very much alive, gays and lesbians
frequently
providing both the life blood as well as the security if need be.  For they would take to the streets themselves
and provide a type of home-grown safety patrol in their neighborhoods, where the trendy bars and restaurants that we loved still flourished.  Gays had remembered the lessons learned from years past; the police could not be counted on to provide for their safety, and the only real way to be protected from a homophobe with a baseball bat was to be ready to take a swing with one yourself.  The serious discussions concerning same-sex marriage of a decade or so earlier were now considered academic; it was never to be, not in my lifetime anyway.