Unbreakable

Just 2.5 hours of riding the bus, going to the cat dealership and riding the bus back home wore me out, plus it was hot and humid. When I got home made a quick dinner of chicken breast fried in bit of olive oil and herbs, angel hair primavera with parmesan and a sliced beefsteak tomato with a dish of Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia for dessert.

After dinner settled into my papasan chair and watched "Jack The Bear" with Danny DeVito and Gary Sinese, a story about a widowed father struggling with alcoholism while raising 2 young boys. It's a story about monsters, the ones that live inside all of us. Sinese plays a reclusive neighbor who's a neo Nazi. Every time I watch this movie I flash back to when I was 3 to 5 years old and I always get misty eye'd watching it. It was strange but I flashed back to when I was 5, as if it were yesterday holding on to my beloved Maine coon cat, Fluffy and pulling my favorite toy, a beat up yellow plastic toy taxi on a string. I was heartbroken when a passing car ran over my toy car, crushing it and when Fluffy died....Strange, no? It's strange but in the film I always identified with the younger of the 2 sons.

Jack The Bear is one of those sleepers that was never a huge box office hit, both DeVito and Sinese are brilliant in their roles, the first time I had seen Danny DeVito in a truly serious role. I remember an interview with DeVito shortly after the movie was released saying playing the role deeply moved him. I was lucky to find a new copy for $2 in the VHS clearance bin at a local video store a few years ago. If you're into dark but touching movies, check this one out.

I nodded out for a while, then watched "Unbreakable" with Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson. I have all of M. Night Shyamalan's movies on DVD and consider him a brilliant producer and yarn spinner along the lines of Alfred Hitchcock. The Sixth Sense reminds me of "Jacob's Ladder", which is one of my all time favorite movies. "Signs" was one of those subtle alien horror films that kept me awake the first time I watched it and "The Village" was a total break with Shyamalan's previous movies.

In some ways I feel like Bruce Willis's character in Unbreakable. I've been in a dozen situations during my life, where I could or should have been killed, but always was able to walk away with a few minor cuts and scratches, and here I am HIV+ for over 20 years and still hobbling around, where everyone I for to know from HIV support and social groups have all since passed away.

There was a wire and cable plant (I'll leave out the name but it's a Fortune 100 company) at the end of the street where I grew up. They also made electric utility pole and sub station transformers. We used to play in the sand pits behind the plant where they dumped all their toxic refuse. The ground was soaked with PCB's and industrial solvents which they dumped into the sand pits that also made their way into the town wells that supplied out drinking water. Whatever belched from the plant's smokestacks burned the paint off of cars in the neighborhood and ate holes in any laundry that was hung out to dry (we're talking 1950's to mid 1960's here until the plant closed and moved South). Well anyway while I was away in the Navy my parents wrote me letters telling about which neighbor died or was sick. Over half the people in the neighborhood came down with leukemia or lymphoma, but nobody put 2+2 together and whenever they complained to the company about the foul stench and damage, they were told to fuck off and deal with it. Of course the company got off scott free, closed up shop and moved South. So far "knock on a big piece of mahogany" I don't have cancer that I know of. Hell I was a Thalidomide and DES baby who never had any (that I know of) birth defects, like a penis growing out of my chin or ears on my shoulders. Hmmm, but on the plus side, having my ears at shoulder level would give better stereo separation.

There were a few incidents in the Navy where I could have been easily killed and when the Navy docs checked me out, claimed I must have a guardian angel. There were a half dozen other times during my 20's where I was in the wrong place at the wrong time or had just left the wrong place minutes before all hell broke loose. And there was one very bad accident I had during the early 70's where a tire blew out, the car hit a guard rail, went airborne and rolled over twice into a ditch. I was driving a Ford Pinto, and walked away (actually crawled). The police called an ambulance and the only damage to me was a broken thumb and a dozen stitches in my head. I walked away from a Pinto crash and lived to tell about it. The Ford Pinto had a notorious bad habit of being a death trap. As fools rush in, that did I do, went out and bought another Pinto, which lasted me until I traded it in with 200,000 miles on it for the 1980 Mustang. Maybe seat belts do save lives. I know I've always worn mine as long as cars have come equipped with them. I'm the kind of person who walks down the street minding his own business when a rope hoisting a baby grand piano breaks, immediately after I walk under it, missing me by inches.

And then there was the day that will live in infamy, January of 1982, it was a Friday night and I was getting ready to broil a nice juicy steak, trimming the fat away with a carving knife. I nicked my index finger with the knife, ran it under cold water, sprayed some Bactine on it, thinking nothing of it since it barely bled at all. Three days later my left hand was the size of a catchers mit, my forearm began throbbing and I was running a fever of over 104. My roommate and closest friend almost had to drag me to the ER at gunpoint. I kept insisting it was only a scratch and would go away on it's own.

By the time I gave in to going to the ER my fever was close to 106, and as soon as the triage staff saw me, threw me on a table, began running IV's and immersed me in ice water, probably so I wouldn't spontaneously combust. I was delirious but remember a doctor leaning over me saying, "if we can't get the fever down and identify the infectious agent, we're going to have to amputate your arm at the shoulder. Do you understand what I've just said?" Once I told the doc what I cut myself on, they found the right IV antibiotic, plus blood transfusions, and within a few days I was out of the woods, a very close shave that time, and I'm happy to say I got to keep my left arm and learned that the infection had gone systemic and they were also worried about my heart.

Two months later I got very sick and was weak as a kitten, had drenching night sweats for a week and was running a spiky fever that hit 104. As I look back, this was probably when I HIV seroconverted, after the blood transfusions. Of course this happened at the same time I was exiting stage left from a very bad relationship, where I later learned that the ex had moved to the left coast and was very sick with something called ARC. So pick a card, any card, was it the transfusions or the love affair from hell that put me where I am today? Only God knows for sure. He does have a twisted sense of humor though, dangling me by my ankle over the abyss, shaking me and saying, "c'mon say uncle, say it say it!" And to make sure I don't get very far on foot, fate has blessed me with this degenerative spinal and nerve condition.

At times I wonder what God, the great spirit, the creator or whoever's in charge has in store for me. I've left God a million voice mail messages asking what he wants, but he never returns my calls.