From [email protected] Jan 5 1992
Subject: Nurse Jones veers left
Date: 5 Jan 93 19:18:19 GMT
[It sounds ungracious to be down on George and Danny now that they've
lost the election, but I was blowing off steam when I wrote this last
Spring. I had just lost my account... had a bad day... it had been a
long Winter ... you know how it can be... Anyway, I just figured out
that Westmark is down and ASB traffic is likewise down because it is
the Christmas break for many readers. You forget about these things
when you've been out of school for a while. So with any luck, nobody
will see this depressing post.]
March 2, 1992
From Nurse Jones,
This morning on the way to work I was stopped at a stoplight and
listening to George Bush getting tough and blustering about how he's
finally going to kick the butts of whoever's responsible for the state
the nation is in, and outside the window there's this guy leaning
against a concrete signpost with a piece of cardboard that says:
"Homeless Vet.
Will Work For Food.
I'm Hungry."
He's there every morning, same place, same sign. They come to the deep
South during the winter, the homeless. Funny how we've accorded a new
dignity to the homeless these days. They used to be bums and vagrants.
Now we think "there but for the grace of God go I," and suddenly
they're the homeless. Funny how the terminology turns charitable when
you might be next.
They're everywhere now, walking along the roads with their backpacks.
I saw a family walking along the interstate with all their belongings
on a childs wagon yesterday. There is another family camped in a
convenience store parking lot where their car broke down. A cop was
writing a ticket, the tow truck was waiting, the family was standing
around wondering what to do, where they would sleep without their car.
They'll be gone tomorrow, creeping into the interstices of a world
that we rarely glimpse, forced there by the police, the circumstance,
the economy, the tow company that has a cosy contract with the city
police department.
So inside my car George Bush is going on about how the $50 billion S&L
crisis really won't cost any more than $600 billion, trust me on this
one, and the guy outside the window levers himself up from his station
by the concrete post and starts walking down the line of cars. He is
guilt-tripping the drivers while they wait for the light to change. We
all pretend to be extremely interested in our dashboards or our makeup
in the rearview mirror or the stoplight or adjusting the radio.
Sometimes someone gives him money or food. Every time the light turns
green and the cars move on, he goes back to the post and leans back
against it and bends his knee and rests his foot in the same place.
There are these two smudges on the concrete post where the heel and
sole of his boot have rested over and over and over. On the way home,
he's on the other side of the road catching the commuters going the
other way. There must be certain corners that are particularly good.
And then George Bush starts blustering about how he has suddenly
discovered that the "health care thing" for the elderly isn't doing
the job and it's time we got out there and did something about it,
goldarn it. Funny how he just noticed this.
And the light changes and I drive the rest of the way thinking what I
would say to Neil Bush if I had the chance and before you know it I'm
at work and ...
-*-
We've got a gentle old woman on our floor. She's in her eighties, a
diabetic with kidney problems. Her husband visited her, his wheelchair
pushed by their son. The son is in his fifties -- quite old for
someone with Downs Syndrome.
He's lived with them for his whole life and his parents have now grown
too old to take care of him. Neither of them can drive anymore, so
they both have to go into a home, and he can't go with them. He has to
go to another separate home.
Ever think about that? Where do older "special" people go -- people
who are too old to be cute anymore -- where do they go when their
parents are helpless? Dead?
You know, there are a *lot* of Vietnam vets still living in hospitals.
What would it take to make *you* spend 20 years in a VA hospital? I'll
tell you about my older brother sometime. Not today.
Hey, Ol' Sarge. Ever hear of Magazine Maggie or Sweet Sixteen? Just
guessing, but is that where you found your handle? No relation to
*this* Maggie... my brother gave me a copy of that little training
manual. Thought I would like it because it looked like a comic book. I
still have it. That was about a hundred years ago.
There are more depressing places to work than my floor.
Anyway, this middle-aged special person sat in the waiting room while
his parents talked. They decided his future while he looked at the
magazines.
Our little waiting rooms are so pathetic. For a time, the room becomes
a home for the families that use them. They get to know every inch of
it, every magazine, every piece of bland artwork, every choice in
every vending machine. Excuse me, Where are the restrooms?
And then the watershed moment comes. The Responsible Person stands up
to face the doctor. Someone else keeps the children occupied,
distracted while the news is learned and we all pretend to be too busy
to know what the doctor has to do, what he has to say.
It was benign. We have to wait for the lab results. There's an office
in here where we can talk. Please sit down. This is always difficult.
Depressing little places, waiting rooms. I wonder where that 50 year
old "special person" is going to end up? Will it be depressing? Hey,
you bet. They stop being special after a while, you know. He will
spend the rest of his life in a giant waiting room, just... waiting. A
cosmic second-class departure lounge.
Later, I walked by the old lady's room and caught a glimpse of the
family. Her son was holding her hand and trying to cheer her up.
My day always seems to rush by, there is always so much to do. People
and paperwork flash past my eyes, decisions are made, emergencies
handled... but a part of me watches calmly, like a mouse safe in its
hole, looking out and piecing together the captured images. Sometimes
they tell a sort of interstitial story.
Funny, the things you can deduce from an old woman's medical record
and a few glimpses of a tiny, tiny family trying to hold onto each
other.
I wonder if the people I work with are like that. They don't seem to
be. I'm to busy to be politically active -- or even aware -- but I
wonder if George Bush is like that.
I wonder if George Bush would try to explain Ollie North or Neil Bush
to this tiny family. If theirs were the votes that would turn the
election for him, to what private depths would he sink to justify
himself? Does he think the Iran Contra Thing Or the S&L Thing is
important to them? Does he even have any private depths?
About a half hour later I blew up and tore a strip off a young doctor
just because he looks like Danny Quayle; I had to apologize later.
The only view of politics I ever get is the view from the bottom. I'm
pretty apolitical because the actual bottom-line problem is always too
immediate and personal for me to take time to think about the
abstractions like the S&L crisis or the House Banking Scandal or the
other things that are so important to politicians.
I find it hard to think of politicians as actually performing any
necessary or useful functions, so I don't think about them very much.
So how does all this relate to ASB? I dunno. I do know that my silent
observer is there watching when Jay and I play our sexual games. There
is almost always that third person in bed with us. It has almost no
emotions, makes no comment, just watches. Then I write to ASB and it
speaks: "This is how it was," and I tap the keys.
Maybe everyone has a watcher like mine.
So anyway, my watcher tells me that the ASB crowd is pretty
apolitical, too -- threads on gay rights and censorship
notwithstanding.
Why is that?
Too preoccupied with sex? Too easy an explanation.
ASB is a discussion group where "people like us" (those that haven't
been cut off by southern syscops for the "explicit" content of their
bounced mail. Do I sound bitter?) can discuss whatever we choose. We
choose not to discuss the disgusting state of Washington politics. Is
it really because we are disgusted, like everyone else? Is ASB a
refuge from that kind of everyday garbage?
Is there a possibility that the ASB mentality spends so much time
thinking about the dynamics of interpersonal power, its exercise and
its abuse, that they/we are hypersensitive to the self justification
of the power hungry?
Someone once said that the wrong sort of people are always in power
because if they weren't the wrong sort of people they wouldn't *want*
to be in power. Are "we", as sexual power brokers, particularly good
at recognizing the wrong sort of people? Is that why we are, by and
large, apolitical? Or am I reading too much into ASB?
Or maybe my premise was wrong. Maybe the ASB crowd *is* politically
minded but elects not to discuss it here. [Maybe I should say 'there'
since I'm not here anymore.] I always assumed most of us would call
ourselves "liberal" to some degree (if not downright radical) but I
suppose, technically, there is no reason a conservative republican
couldn't be a pervert too.
It would be a point in their favor, in fact.
Boy, would I get mail on that one if I were still on the Net.
On the other hand, Clarence Thomas couldn't possibly be perverted
enough for me to like him. I just can't get past his politics.
Nurse Jones,
Former Net Queen
presently censored,
turning to the left,
but still slippery
when wet.
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