Deadhead

38

Doctor Who was back after an eighteen month hiatus and at the start of the year Colin Baker himself was in town to promote the new series of episodes and host the showing of the first four parts. My thoughts of writing for television again returned and I reviewed my list of story ideas to see which ones I might pitch next. At first the only note of concern was the cut in the length of a Doctor Who season, so I knew that my chances to successfully sell a story would be much slimmer. Then, seemingly days after Colin Baker returned to England from his promotional tour, news came out that he was being fired from the show by the BBC Controller. Just as abruptly my thoughts of pitching for the show were put aside once again.

But Doctor Who itself was now being broadcast on-air locally whereas in the past the best we could hope for was to pick up the Denver PBS broadcasts on cable. The local broadcaster had typically gone to the Tom Baker shows as their initial run given their high popularity, but they soon started an on-air campaign that horrified me. Unlike the Denver station that asked for donations to support the showings of Doctor Who, in the Summer of Nineteen Eighty-Seven our local broadcaster was running a 'pay up or else' campaign that came across more as an extortion than a request. The only redeeming bit of their campaign was 'If they didn't get enough funds to continue carrying the show by the end of the Summer, all donations toward the show would be refunded.' Still, I felt the need to let them know of my feelings about the tenor of their campaign and I called up their office. Rather than just say they'd make a note of it, as I expected, they scheduled an appointment with the head of the station so I could let him know in person.

This fed my ego and before going to the meeting later in the week I went to the local comic book, science fiction & fantasy store to collect my next issue of the official Doctor Who magazine. I told them of my coming visit and the owner offered to provide a discount to anyone who pledged toward the continued showings of the series. This was a nice carrot I could take with me and present at the meeting, and for moral support I asked Chet of the Dungeons & Dragons group to come along. He agreed and we were off to the appointment.

It was my first time visiting the studio, heck any television studio, and we were treated very formally as we gave our names at the front desk and then went to the large glass window overlooking the studio bay, then darkened and not it use, as we waited to be taken in. Guided to his office, the head of the station sat us down and asked what brought us here. I told him and he acknowledge that their spot for pledges did seem a bit harsh in retrospect and he'd look into changing it. In the meantime he told us John Nathan-Turner, the producer of the show, would be arriving later that Summer with the 'Doctor Who Road Show' and asked if I'd be willing to be their local liaison for Mr. Nathan-Turner when he arrived... Sure, I agreed as this unexpected news fell into my lap like a God send. Here I was wanting to write for the show and I'd be meeting with the producer in person!?!

I did my best to keep cool about it as the head of the station also asked if I could find and organize volunteers for the official Doctor Who pledge drive night.  I said I would and then mentioned the willingness of the local comic book, science fiction & fantasy store to provide discounts for all who pledged. He thought that was great, but then said he had heard the owner of that store was a dead head. While I didn't know the owner personally, I had met him at the store several times over the years and had some good chats with him, I felt the need to defend him and said that I didn't think that was the case at all as he seemed sharp and on the ball to me.

There was a long quiet pause and then the station manager told me that ''Deadhead'' was the term for a fan of The Grateful Dead band.

I got to practice my straight face to tamp down the welling embarrassment as I quietly returned that I hadn't known.

No matter, all was good and he thanked us for our interest and coming participation. On the drive home I asked Chet if he had heard of the term ''Deadhead'' before and he had not. Once back in town I printed-up flyers and discount coupons at my own expense. The flyers were to request for volunteers at the coming pledge drive for Doctor Who night as well as let people know of the coming Road Show visit and I sought permission to leave them at various haunts of mine in town.

When the 'Doctor Who Road Show' arrived, the BBC had made all of the arrangements for their associated personnel as to places to stay and so Chet's and my jobs were to be John Nathan-Turner's personal assistants at the station and to keep any overly avid fan at bay. The entire event was several hours long as we waited for people to show in drips and drabs, in between we kept him company and talked about the show, the new actor who had just been cast as the new doctor, and great locations in Colorado the show should consider if they ever wished to film here. I spoke at length about possibly writing for the show and he mentioned that he remembered my original interest before the production break and would be willing to look over my next ideas. This time he wanted a sample script to be included as part of the pitch to show that I knew how to format one and I was more than happy to agree and get an updated postal address from him. He did note that, given the reduced episode count, there would be less chance to have my pitches accepted but assured me that any idea he found compelling would be fully considered.

I was over the moon and as the end of the event came we thanked him for his time, he thanked us for our help and Chet and I returned home. Catching a few more broadcasts of Doctor Who on the local station I noticed that they were still running the 'pay-up or else' style notices at the end of the broadcasts, so apparently the station manager hadn't had the chance to review the spots and have them softened in tone...

As the day came for the pledge night, I rounded up the various people who had volunteered, many from the science fiction club, and a few more new faces who had called me based on my flyers. We car pooled to the station and took our places behind the phones. I brought my very own Doctor Who scarf to wear during the time as well as the discount coupons to be included with the pledge thank-you letters that the station would mail. Some local pizza places had donated food and drinks and we had a great time of it. The station ran 'The Talons Of Weng-Chiang' as the pledge night showing, a great choice, and we readied ourselves for the swell of calls between the episodes as we sat in the background on camera as the station personnel spoke about the need for pledges and if we didn't reach our goal and couldn't carry Doctor Who, all our pledges would be refunded. The night was a success and we just reached our goal before the final episode of the show was finished.

Done, we volunteers left our seats, grabbed some last minute snacks at the table as the next shift of call takers took our place. The station manager thanked us for our time & effort and we left thrilled knowing that we had succeeded in getting a continued run of Doctor Who shows for the coming broadcast year.

When September came, Doctor Who was replaced in its time slot with Lawrence Welk repeats. Doctor Who was gone, not even moved to another time slot. No explanation was given, no pledges refunded, none of the coupons I had printed up were mailed out with the thank you letters. We had been completely used and the only thing that salved my pride was my time spent with John Nathan-Turner on the day of the Road Show.

I never supported our local PBS station again and vocally talk-out against them, recommending to my friends that they only support the Denver PBS station on cable. But even they dropped broadcasts of Doctor Who by the next year.

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Holes

37

Why not, I thought in the Summer of Nineteen Eighty-Seven. By the latter half of the eighties, more and more guys were getting their ears pierced, so why not me? Perhaps it was because Rochelle had given me a reputation for 'liking the girls', even though nothing of a sort had happened, that I felt I could get away with piercing my ears and not having people in my life 'suspect' me for it. Or perhaps it was my ever continuing weight loss and other physical issues that lead me to want to defiantly show that I controlled this body, not nature. Whatever had triggered the interest, I decided to pursue it and gave Ilda a call asking if she'd come along for moral support. She was surprised by the idea but was more than willing to echo my ''Why not?'' sentiment.

Off to the mall first thing in the day, it turned out the ear ring place didn't open up until an hour after the mall and Ilda and I shared a food court meal and mall walk as we waited and talked about what sort of ear rings I was thinking of. I debated about getting double piercings in each lobe and then I could have my two favorite colors as over lapping discs in each ear, orange and violet. I could have the orange one over the violet edge on one ear and dub it moon rising and have the violet disc over the edge of the orange disc for the second ear and dub it sun rising. While Ilda admired my enthusiasm, I believed, she may not have been in sync with the thought.

Once the ear ring place opened up, the clerk felt I was too enthusiastic and said we should start with a single piercing and let that heal before I decided on a double piercing for each lobe. Also their piercing technique required the initial set to be studs before looking into other choices. So Ilda and I looked the choice of studs over and settled on a basic gold set. As longer hair styles were still acceptable for guys in the eighties, my hair would cover the studs and thus it wouldn't be a problem at work, I believed, as management and customers wouldn't see them.

The following day the local science fiction club had its summer picnic and I got to show off my new studs to the other members there as a conversation piece. Sure enough work didn't notice, but I felt the need to show off my studs to a couple of my coworkers anyhow so the cat was quickly out of the bag. My mother didn't notice until a week and a half later and when she discovered them she said, ''Oh my God, you're going to get beaten up!'' She then questioned my mental health and so I then questioned hers back, giving examples from my years spent with her. She didn't like that at all, but as I was already on my way out the door to visit Jeff that evening, I didn't much care and didn't get back home until after she had already gone to bed. The subject wasn't brought up again.

I don't know if it was because of the piercings, my stuttering, my mixed race background, or a mixture of it all, but the grocery store decided not to promote me. I didn't even know I was going to have the chance. Once our group of four employees had been cut into the Dairy and the Frozen Food pairings, I got to see my frozen food coworkers much less, typically as we passed in the back room to get more stock for our various display cases. The least experienced of us became the head of the dairy section and, as I was committed to going to College at the time, I was his assistant at fifteen minutes less in weekly hours. When he had gone on vacation for a week I took over ordering for the area and many coworkers were surprised how well things had gone with me in charge, apparently thinking I wouldn't be able to 'stay on top of the ordering process' given my stuttering and thus presumed I.Q.. My department boss was happy too as, when he returned, everything was in shape and I'd even gone ahead and worked out the next order sheet as well for him. Then a few months later he was gone and the frozen food head was working the dairy case when I got into work one day.

I was surprised to see him there but, as we had been direct coworkers during our first two years at the store together, I was happy to have a chance to chat with him as we mutually filled the dairy case from the morning's truckload. But oddly enough, the one thing he didn't want to talk about was why he was there working the dairy cases rather than the frozen food cases he had been exclusively assigned to do when the new owner took over in the previous year. Eventually he explained to me that he had been explicitly told not to explain anything to me and finally said we could talk about it off the main floor when break time came. When it did, we went to the rarely used back office and made sure no one else was around. Our coworker, who had started the same day as us in the Fall of Nineteen Eighty-Four and eventually became my lead in the dairy section, had been found taking kickbacks from the suppliers in return for stocking various items over more popular items in our display cases. This had actually been a routine practice under the original owners who all shared in the gifts it got them. But in the case of the new owners, it was a fireable offense and the head of the dairy department was gone and they had called in the head of the frozen food department to take over, rather than promote me.

Was it the piercings, the stuttering, or the mixed race background? I suspect it was mainly the stuttering with the piercings being an added reason as to why I had been passed over despite my greater years of experience and recently proven ability to handle the department on my own.

So the frozen department head was now my boss, but he was to remain as the frozen department boss as well. I asked if this meant we were once again back to being a unified department but he told me No, he was the boss for both, but I was the dairy-only assistant and his original underling in frozen foods would remain as that department's only helper.

It was just a couple of months later that this coworker friend, and now new boss, was apologizing to me. While I had been away for two consecutive days off, the store management had decided I ''needed to be written up for something'' and they had lead my coworker/boss on a two day end to end check of the dairy department in search of something to be wrong in my work. By the end of the second day, they had found a cup of yogurt that was expiring that day and thus they had written up a report on me and I was to sign it my first day back. ''Really?'' I asked as the only way of avoiding this occurrence would have been for me to start pulling stock from the shelves two days before it went out of date. Was this a new standard? I asked. No, we were still to keep the stock on the shelf until the day it expired I was told. So then I was supposed to have come in after my first day off and checked the stock during my second day off for expiring items on my own time? Yes, was the answer and as I hadn't I was supposed to sign the report stating I had been negligent at my job. I declined.

When my coworker/new boss returned from letting management know I wouldn't sign it, he told me that they had been shocked and didn't know what to do about it, finally deciding to put the report in 'my file' anyhow even though it wasn't signed. He said he would have fought that too but, honestly as he had just been promoted to be the boss of the dairy department, he didn't feel he had the clout to argue. I didn't blame him and just made a mental note that my days at the grocery store were numbered.

In this case, I believe it was the pierced ears that prompted the store management to write me up. As it wasn't against store policy to have pierced ears, I had to 'officially' be written-up for something else. I was actually proud of the fact that they had spent two whole days trying to find something to write me up for and couldn't find anything legitimate...!

The silly thing is, we never checked the dates of the existing stock until the next day's truckload arrived when then we checked the dates before putting the new stock behind the old stock on the shelves. As we didn't have a truck on my first day back, they could have easily waited until the end of that day and 'found the cup of yogurt', then. It would have been outdated on a day I was actually working and I couldn't have denied it, but clearly they wanted to make the whole thing as transparent as possible so even I would understand why I was being written up.

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Writers' Group

36

The writer's group became one of my favorite monthly gatherings. Perhaps that was in part due to the ego fuel it gave me as my 'trashy tale' had been a big hit and I was quickly deemed one of the ones to watch in the group. But ultimately I liked the fact that it ensured I'd get feedback on my stories beyond the one word comment of ''fine'', ''nice'', ''good'', ''readable'' that the majority of people gave me. I think part of the problem, there, is that common fear of hurt feelings and so friends shy away from giving you any detailed thoughts they might have about your work. If you have a writer friend in your life do them a favor and tell them about an area in their story that confused you, or that didn't seem as good as the rest of the text. They'll, eventually, thank you for it as it lets them know you actually read it and cared enough to help them make it better. If you want to lose the friendship, say it was ''fine.''

With Rochelle quickly fading out of the group, this became a chance for me and Daina to car pool as we'd go to the meetings, there to join us was the host: Suzi. One of the original founders of the local science fiction club: Elizabeth. My friend from the software start-up days: Pat. And my best friend's, Jeff's, girlfriend: Ilda. We became the early core of the group and the ones we could most count on to be there to review each others' work. As the first Summer for the group came, we had two other people join for a while, one was a poet with a history as a secretly published porn writer, and the other was a channeling writer who received her stories from a spiritual presence. In the case of the poet, he was a fun addition and stayed with us for almost a half year before finding work elsewhere and moving away. In the case of the channeling writer...

Here's the problem, if you receive your text from a spiritual presence and you bring it to the group, you can't really submit it for feedback as, after all, you didn't write it and it would be unfair to critique the work without the spiritual presence's participation. Ultimately, the best the writers group could be for her was a place to have us read the works and say how good they were, regardless. Still the whole idea of channeled writing fascinated me and I asked if I could see her outside of the group to discuss her writing process.

At her home, she told me of the typical work period where she would sit down at her keyboard and wait to be informed. The spiritual presence would stand in the doorway behind her and, when ready, start dictating the next work to be transcribed. The reason this fascinated me so was because when I was writing my own stories, I knew I'd be 'hot' when my thinking of what to type next was replaced by hearing the characters' own voices and I'd just make a transcript of what was happening rather than thinking of what to type. I loved these moments as it made the story go by quickly and I'd just be the spectator who then went back and added some non-dialog detailing once done. In some ways I felt these moments of my writing echoed the channeled writing she did, but during our discussion she was clear that hers came as a complete text and she never had to go back and polish up the results, nor could she as it, ultimately, wasn't her text in her eyes. Our meeting broke up with a trip to a nearby foothills park where we went for a hike and talked for a bit more. Once done, I thanked her for telling me about her writing process and we went our separate ways, with me never seeing or hearing about her since.

Another channeler in the group was Elizabeth, though in a different way. She wasn't confident in her own thoughts when reading other people's work and would instead tell us what other 'professional writers' would have thought of our stories if they had read them and what advice they would have given us. We spent many fruitless hours saying, ''Yes Elizabeth, but what did you think of the story?'' Ultimately we'd never find out and her contribution to the group was as a good person for finding typos and grammatical errors. One of the authors she most channeled for us when critiquing our work was John Updike. Many years later when I heard he was in town for a reading, I called her up and let her know. She was confused as to why I thought she'd be interested and when I noted that she was always telling us what he would have thought of our stories at the writer's group she said that was all well and good but, personally, she had never cared for his work. After the call was over I fumed as she had apparently been spending all that time giving us advice at the writers group that, had we taken it, would have left her liking our stories less.

Suzi was the wife of a postal worker. They had recently moved in from a rural Colorado town where she had focused her creative talents on painting. But now in our little city, she wanted to explore her writing side and had co-founded the writer's group as a way to get going as, it turned out, she had founded a painting group in her previous town to get herself going in that. As a result, she offered her home for our get-togethers and we had our monthly meetings on a regular schedule, whether or not we had something ready. If we didn't, we'd talk about some ideas and generally be a social group talking about life in general. While these things didn't happen on a precise schedule, once the poet left our group, she found a new guy to take his place, Martin. Closer to my age than Suzi's, they hit it off big time and were soon co-writers producing many volumes of, unfortunately, unsold work over the coming years.

Daina's work stemmed from her dreams. She kept a dream journal and when having a particularly compelling dream, would use her writing to explore that moment more fully and flesh it out into a story. Hers were the most fun to read as, being based on an unreal event, they would be surprising with deep emotional contexts and twists that tip-toed the line between being disturbing and ever intriguing at the same time. Often horror stories, you never knew what you were going to be in for, but you also couldn't wait to find out.

Pat's work was much like my own in tone, though I tended to dabble in fan fiction a bit while he remained pure with original tales. His works were focused on the interaction of people as they dealt with a moment, sometimes in a slightly science fictiony future, but just as often not. By the Summer of Nineteen Eighty-Seven I decided I wanted to do a radio play and roped him in to co-write it. I pulled two tales from my stack, one dating back to my high school years, the other a moment from my first conceived and never completed book. He provided a perfect counterpoint for the middle, a short story in a similar vein to the 'Fight Club' book that would come out eight years later by another author. We twice mounted recordings of the audio drama, once as a table read that was unusable given the pervading background noise such an atmosphere invokes, then as isolated track recordings performed in his home's basement. Ultimately nothing came of the effort and the fault was completely my own.

Pat moved to Denver the following year but still came to our group for a time, making the commute each month, before leaving it behind after another year had passed. His seat was taken by, Ivan. A retired Air Force military man with a thoughtful side, his work was always a good read, though never really grabbed me.

Ilda was the replacement frenemy in my life. Her writing interests were solidly based in fan fiction, though with the group she was trying to stem out into original fiction. Her work was good, but very rare to see and she was with us mostly for the social aspect, I believe. One time at the writer's group I excused myself to use the restroom and when I returned she was telling the rest of the group how much she didn't like my work as I was such a misogynist... This was news to me and I reflected on the comment for a few weeks but could find no basis for it as my stories had an equal mix of male or female protagonists and they equally went through peril, sometimes surviving and sometimes not. If anything, I had written more stories with male characters in tough situations. I ended up disregarding her comment, though was left wondering what other negative things she'd been telling about me to other people when I wasn't around.

Yet, it didn't impact our friendly-enough relationship and, in fact, she was the first person I thought of when I decided to get my ears pierced...

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Thumbs Up!

35

I was leaving Jeff's house at the end of Spring. As my passenger continued to my car, Jeff called softly to me and I turned to see if I'd forgotten anything. Instead he was beaming at me and gave me a big thumbs-up. I think it was the only time in all the years I'd known him that he'd done that...

When we started the writers' group, about three quarters were people from the local science fiction club and the rest were new faces. Those from the science fiction club included the two new girls in town Daina and Rochelle. In the first couple of meetings, we'd quickly resolved who the people with the writing bug were and who the people who liked the idea of being thought of as a writer were. In the initial gatherings we'd be asked to bring a short story of our own and read it to the rest of the group, of those that did, there were the quarter of new people and a third of the science fiction group people, the remaining half of the group soon didn't return to the meetings and we settled down to the routine of reading each others work during the off weeks and giving feedback about it once a month to each other. Rochelle was amazed by the opening sentence of a trashy tale I had started writing the previous Fall. After reading what I had to the group she was one of the first to avidly want more of it... Though she herself was soon out of the group, her friend Daina became one of the mainstays.

After hearing of the Great Sand Dunes in Colorado, I asked if Wayne, Chet and Karl of the Dungeons & Dragons group wanted to come along on a road trip to see them with me. Karl passed on the idea, but Wayne and Chet were up for it. When mentioning the plans to Rochelle she asked if she could come along. As we had the spare seat, I didn't see why not. On the morning of the trip, Wayne and Chet bowed out, perhaps they had both had long nights or something and so I called Rochelle to see if she wanted to cancel, but she decided she'd still like to do the trip, just herself and me.

Along the many hour drive she told me much about herself, her childhood in California, the many boyfriends she'd had and the fact that she'd moved out to Colorado with a boyfriend, but they had quickly split once here and she found herself on her own but stayed as she already had the teaching job confirmed. When she started at her school she soon found Daina as another newcomer to town and they quickly joined-up to discover the sights and surroundings.

Once Rochelle and I reached the Sand Dunes, we parked in the little lot and took our shoes off to cross a small stream and get to the dunes, proper. They were stunningly taller than I had imagined and we ultimately only got about two thirds of the way up one of the dunes before we decided to sit down and take a breather. While there, Rochelle told me that she knew my 'trashy tale' had been about her when I read it at the writers' group. This was news to me as I had conceived of the story two months before I'd met her and wrote it the following month, still before I met her. But rather than dissuade her, I took this as a compliment: People hearing my story could see it being about themselves.

Another male member of the writers' group would later tell me that, based on reading my 'trashy tale', I really knew what it was like to be a man and how men thought. Again, given my 'situation' this was news to me, but I again took it as a compliment rather than argue otherwise.

Rochelle soon became a regular tag-along with Wayne and myself and we invited her on a trip to our local metaphysical store to look over the books, clothing and many other trinkets & novelties. On the drive back, I was playing Berlin's 1982 Pleasure Victim album in the car and Rochelle remarked that it was an example of why she didn't like ''New Wave'' groups as they only ever did one album and disappeared, never having a follow-up hit song. This was a surprise to hear given their successful Love Life album of 1984 and huge hit ''Take My Breath Away'' song that had owned the charts just a few months before she made this comment. It was all I could do to keep a straight face and not burst out laughing. It wasn't that she had gotten something wrong that made it so funny to me, but the air of authority she had put on when stating it, making it sound like a fully considered and unquestionable fact.

I soon realized that Rochelle was a bit full of herself, but I had found that everyone had their peculiarities in life and didn't worry about it.

She and Daina came to my mother's mobile home to find out more about Doctor Who and I showed them a selection of episodes while explaining the background of the series. They also joined Wayne and me to a movie outing and they even visited me at the grocery store to see for themselves where I worked.

One day Rochelle needed some PC software disks and asked me if I could help her with them. It wasn't something I could, but I recommended my friend Jeff and as she didn't know where he lived I ended up playing chauffeur for her to his place as they worked out what she needed. Once done, this was when we were leaving Jeff's house and he gave me that big thumbs-up. At first I was befuddled as to why, but when I later asked him about it he told me that he thought I had landed Rochelle as a hot girl friend. Hearing this, I just smiled. After years of others furtively wondering about my lack of interest in sexual matters, people seeing me hang around with her gave me a reputation for liking the girls. Given that I've now cataloged every interaction I'd ever had with Rochelle to this point, I'll let you decide if that reputation was earned.

Still, by the end of the Summer, I decided I was finally going to tell someone about my 'situation' and thought Rochelle would be a good choice. I called her home and got her answering machine and mentioned that I'd like to talk to her about something when she was available. I never heard back from her and thus I never got to tell her.

I would hear through the social grapevine years later that when she'd talk about her long list of boyfriend conquests, I numbered among them. This was news to me and I think she would have been very surprised and had a very different story to tell had we become that 'familiar'. She told her friend Daina that she had cut contact with me because I was getting to be ''too serious''. This became a head-scratcher for me as I tried to figure out what that meant.

Did she think I had called and left the message about wanting to talk to her as a pending proposal for marriage or something?

Given the amount she had been talking about me to her friends even though nothing had ever happened between us, in retrospect I realized I had ducked a major bullet. I came to believe that if she had been the first person I had talked to about my strange puberty 'situation' it seems she would have immediately tossed it out there as fresh meat into the rumor mill rather than respectfully listening and giving me advice...

And so for the few times I'd seen her and had little else to do with her, she remained the girl who gave me 'my reputation' and made me a man in the eyes of my long-time friend Jeff, if not others. I guess if she was going to give me a reputation for something, that was the best I could have hoped for.

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Withdrawal

34

I had continued to gradually lose weight over Nineteen Eighty-Six, in fact new friend Daina said she saw me as a walking bean pole, though I didn't let on that it was an involuntary condition at the time. Rochelle said she liked my cheek bones, but when I asked her why she said it was because they were prominent, I didn't bother to mention it was just the sunken-in cheeks below that made the bones above stand out. Along with my weight, my hair had started to thin out as well as my stamina. My hope was, by dropping my Saturday computer monitoring job, it would help me retain enough energy to continue college classes and work. By January of Nineteen Eighty-Seven it was clear that it would not be enough and, unless I got whatever condition was wasting me away under control, I would have to give up College next as I still needed a job to pay for food and fruitless doctor visits.

Starting with headaches months before my bout of walking pneumonia in the Spring of Nineteen Eighty-Four, after the pneumonia had been treated I had started to painlessly lose weight and become intolerant of direct sunlight. I had subsequently gained joint pains in my knuckles and knees by Nineteen Eighty-Five. By the Summer of Nineteen Eighty-Six an emergency room doctor had discovered I was having dangerous blood pressure spikes when drinking soda with corn syrup in it and recommended I switch to diet soda, after I did the headaches had gone away. After years of small moments in sunlight leading to longer exposures, I gradually gained a new tolerance to sunlight, functionally putting that silly problem behind me. If I hadn't been starting to lose my stamina by the end of Nineteen Eighty-Six I would have been happy enough with my health because, lets face it, who doesn't want to lose weight? Especially when they didn't even have to try!

By the turn of the year, some of my coworkers were complimenting me on how much weight I had lost over the years and I would smile and thank them, but their compliments only reminded me of the Burt Reynolds movie ''The End.'' For those not familiar with it, it opens up with his character perplexed at the doctor's office as he's just been told he's terminally ill. He tries to argue with the doctor that it couldn't be as everyone had been complimenting him on his recent weight loss! In my case though, it was more a question of getting a doctor to take notice rather than discouraging one.

To hide how much weight I had actually lost, and to help me with the cold of frequently working in the refrigerated room at the grocery store, I had taken up wearing two to three shirts at a time to keep me warm. When I had started at this grocery store, I would load the milk cases four gallons of milk at a time, two gallons held in the fingers of each hand. But now, two and a half years later, I was having to use both hands to maneuver a single gallon of milk from the box into the display case. Where once I would unload a pallet of boxes a few at a time, now I was huffing & puffing to get a single box off the stack and to the case were it needed to be unpacked. Ultimately this reduction in the amount of work I could accomplish just wouldn't do if I wanted to keep my job and I was back to my mother's primary care doctor's office to find out what was going on and what to do about it.

He had sent me to the joint doctor two years earlier for my joint pains but while I had experienced a brief improvement on a course of antibiotics, the joint doctor had discontinued it early as he found I didn't have the disease he had assumed I had. After that relationship soured I had taken about a year off from having any doctor check my long term health and so this was my first time talking to the primary doctor about it. He was of the impression that one could never lose too much weight, though, and simply suggested I eat more food. I assured him I had been eating plenty of food but it only slowed down my decline, not stopped it.

He seemed perplexed by the whole idea of why losing weight would be a bad thing and didn't have a clue where to start looking into it. He finally concluded we should start by my having a physical examination and I should see the girl at the front desk to schedule a day for it. I left the examination room in a panic. Ever since my thirteenth birthday my mother had discouraged me from seeing doctors for fear of what they might find. While I had grown-up wanting to be an astronaut and planned to get there by first becoming a military pilot, I had concluded that given my 'surprise puberty', I wouldn't be able to pass the necessary medical review needed to get in, thus those dreams were discarded. While I had been successfully seeing doctors at the emergency room and at their offices during the past three years since moving to Colorado, none had needed to see me fully undressed as they did their examinations of my limbs and reflexes.

But now that I had a physical examination scheduled what was going to happened?

Going to my night classes, I debated canceling that next doctor visit and go back to ignoring my health issues, but given the struggle of making it through the night class and then do a full day's work before returning to my next night class, I realized I didn't have that option if I wanted to continue with College. While I had been top of my classes at both the original Business College and now attending the accredited big brother school, my studies had started to slide as I was having problems paying attention and staying on top of my homework due to the fatigue. Ignoring the never ending weight loss I could choose, but the dwindling stamina meant I'd either have to pick between finishing College or quitting my one remaining job. I couldn't afford College without the job so the choice was a no-­brainer. But losing College meant losing my hoped for destiny as a software developer. Even though it was already a job I could do for these past many years, being a stutterer without a degree meant I was never seriously considered at interviews for such jobs.

I couldn't give up either my job or College if I wanted to have a future and I only had a year and a half of night classes to go before I had that degree... So I went to the physical.

The nurse lead me to a different examination room with a table and told me to undress and put on only the gown and sit on the table until the doctor came in. She told me to have the opening of the gown in front and left the room. I did as I was told and sat on the cold table and waited. After a bit, the doctor came and untied the gown and opened it up. He burst-out laughing and fled the room, slamming the door behind him.

I assumed he had left to just regain his composure and would be right back. But after a few minutes I decided to at least close the gown to keep warm and I sat there and waited. After about twenty minutes, the nurse opened the door to walk in with another patient and was surprised to find me still there. She quickly took the patient to another room and then came back confused that the doctor hadn't seen me yet. I told her he had briefly come in but left before he had actually done anything and I was assuming he'd be back. She left the room to check, then came back and told me that the doctor was done and I could get dressed and go home.

That was all there was to a physical examination? I had always thought they were more involved than just glancing at the naked patient and then leaving the room. Still, I did as I was told and when I got to the front desk to find out about my follow-up appointment, I was told the doctor didn't need to see me again.

As I went to my class that night, I realized this meant that he wasn't going to address my weight loss & stamina issues and, as the spring semester had just started, I concluded to withdraw from my classes while I still could and not get charged for them. Withdrawing from College, I left my future hopes behind and just focused on a life of working to make ends meet without any prospects for advancement.

Yet, with my ever declining health, even that working for the sake of living goal would soon slip from my grasp.

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