My gay friend John

I try to be honest. Honest.

But some aspects of life are so boring they simply must be agitated with lies.

I’m talking about things like phone calls with tele-marketers, putting toddlers to sleep, and especially long drives alone with demented mothers.

I find lying in these situations irresistible.

With Mom, it doesn’t start out that way. But after she asks the same question five times in 50 miles, I scratch the itch to fib.

That’s how my old friend John became homosexual.

You’re probably becoming familiar with him. I wrote about him here when he considered how my near death choking incident might help him squeak out of paying the dim sum bill, and here about the recent passing of his wacky father.

We’ve been close ever since we were college roommates.

Because of these key events, I’ve probably written more about him than even Sarah Palin over the last year. And Mom’s the only person I’ve written about more than him.

I tell people she’s demented, which you don’t hear too often. Lots of people have dementia, her included, but those people are said to “have dementia,” which sounds passive and confined.

I like describing her as being demented because it connotes just how much her condition afflicts those who have to spend time with her.

Redundant questions is just the tip of the patience-trying iceberg.

“So how’s John? Is he married?”

He’s good, Mom. He enjoys being single in New York.

(Five miles pass).

“Did your friend John ever get married?”

No, he was engaged, Mom, but it didn’t take.

(Five miles pass)

“Your friend John, he never did get married, did he?”

That is correct, Mom. John never married.

(Five miles pass)

“Is your friend John married?”

No, Mom. John’s not married.

(Five miles pass)

“How’s John these days? Is he married?”

That was enough. I told her John was gay. We had another 20 minutes or so in the car so I told a long, lavish story about John and his gay lover, the extravagant parties they host, their friendship with Anderson Cooper and the pack of poodles upon which they lovingly dote.

What’s fascinating is how she couldn’t recall even the most mundane aspects of John’s personal life and now after one brisk telling remembers gay John in rich detail.

Always a progressive in regards to social movements, she's quick to tell everyone all about her son’s gay friend.

It happened again the other day when I was over for a quick visit. My second cousin -- and the 22-year-old’s really kind of a darling niece -- was there tending to Mom while she looks for work.

Mom asked me about my recent high school reunion. She asked who I’d seen and how everyone was. I skipped the divorces, the suicides and news about old friends who’d sadly become Republicans and said, Mom, everyone of my old classmates is beautiful and happy.

Then right out of the blue she turns to Jessie and says, “Chris’s old college roommate, John, is homosexual and a highly-regarded leader in the gay rights movement. He lives in Soho with his boyfriend, Burt. Burt’s a florist who was estranged from his parents until his mother published a book of poems about the difficulties of raising gay children. John and Burt are taking ice sculpting classes. They’ve lived together for eight years, but say they won’t get married until Brad and Angelina do.”

Jessie was impressed.

She asked me all about John and if it was difficult for him being gay at Ohio University way back in the mid-1980s.

I stammered some quick little lies and began backing out of the room.

I’m uncomfortable lying to normal people. Later, I admitted to Jessie I told Mom John was gay out of sheer boredom. I told her I invented Burt, his once-estranged poetess mother and all the purple-dyed poodles.

I said John was none of the heroic things I ascribed to him, that he was straight and really sort of a dick.

So now I feel a little bad about the big snowballing story. Who knows where it could all lead?

All I know is this: John should really consider becoming gay.

He’s become one hell of a great guy ever since I shoved him out of the closet.

Related . . .

Mom making crazy contagious by a nose

Crazy Mom’s awareness of brands, little else

Mom's making crazy contagious by a nose

If you think by writing about personal issues involving personal tissues twice in three days I’m developing an unhealthy obsession, you are correct.

But like a bad cold, it’s something I can’t shake.

Oh, how I only wish it were a common cold. At least then I’d know where to go.

Straight to Mom’s Kleenex castle.

When well meaning people ask me how she’s doing these days I usually just say she’s doing her best to make crazy contagious.

It’s working with me, at least.

Call it dementia or early Alzheimer’s onset. I call it crazy. And it is indeed viral.

The trigger with me is Kleenex. She says she needs three boxes a week.

She lives at her condominium home mostly with my dear second cousin, a 22-year-old godsend who’s staying with Mom while she’s looking for work.

I say selfless prayers that Trump hires this sweet, energetic girl -- the day after Mom’s funeral.

And just when will that be? God only knows.

I suppose my PC answer sure to please the never-say-die Terri Schiavo crowd is, “And I hope that won’t be for many, many years!”

Instead, I’ll offer a black humor example from my own mother who seeded any wit imbued in my life. I’ve never written about this stuff before.

She was saddled with caring for her father for three years until his 2009 death at the age of 97. Unlike her, his mind was firecracker crisp right up until the bitter end.

I remember asking him once if he ever feared death. He pounded the steering wheel (he was cleared to drive until 93) and said, “Hell, no! I pray every night it’s my last. My body’s broken down, I’ve buried all my friends. I’m sick of living.”

A pity it was. He still had 11 years to go.

About eight months before he died, he told my mother, “You know if it wasn’t such a disgrace to the family, I’d --” he made a slashing motion with his right index finger across his left wrist.

Mom with a straight face said, “I wouldn’t be ashamed.”

It was hilarious, only slightly less so when three months later he locked the bathroom door, climbed in the tub and made a slashing motion across his left wrist with something sharper than his right index finger.

To his furious shame, he survived. I remember picking him up from the emergency room -- as per stipulations in his living will, they didn’t even stitch him up -- and helping him into the car.

I asked if he was going to put his seatbelt on.

“Ha, ha,” was his sarcastic reply.

One more story from that indelible day. Famished and overwrought, I went out for some sushi for Mom and me. We ate it bedside as Papa lay there weak and mortally embarrassed.

The sight of an unusual food perked him up. What is that, he asked.

It’s sushi.

“Let me try a bite of that.”

I don’t know what I was hoping would happen. I guess I thought it would be cool if he’d spring out of bed and exalt, “Now, thanks to sushi, I have something to live for!”

Those hopes were dashed when I asked what he thought.

“I wouldn’t hit a dog in the ass with it.”

So there’s a strain of gallows humor in our family. I wonder if I’ll have enough of it to get me through.

I wonder if I’ll have enough Kleenex. I doubt it. She needs Kleenex the way fish need water.

As previously mentioned, she lives alone, has only one nose and there’s no evidence she’s decorating a parade float in her apartment.

Yet, she maintains she needs three boxes a week. So Kleenex has become our tissue-thin mother/son flashpoint.

“I need a lot of Kleenex! I have a big nose and it’s always running!”

Gold medal Kenyan marathoners don’t run as much.

So in a fit of childish pique, I raced to the grocery store and purchased $17.35 worth of Kleenex; nine boxes, 1,458 individual tissues.

It’s a good thing one of my best traits is self-forgiveness because I’m ashamed of what I did next.

I stacked the boxes in a little tissue pyramid on her dining room table and said, there, now you have three months supply. That gives you 16 per day.

Yes, I even did all the lousy math.

Happily, she laughed at me and my absurdity.

She’s always fretted her nose is her most dominant feature. She's way off.

Her warm smile’s always been her most dominant feature.

She’s my honky-honk woman.

She blows her nose. She blows my mind.

867-5309

The men at the bar cast eager eyes at me as I walked through the door. I imagine it must have been a look monumentals like Gen. George Washington, Pericles and Moses felt in slightly more trying circumstances.

These men needed an answer. And they looked to me to provide it.

It took me about two minutes before I shattered the tension and announced with cool confidence.

“Max Yasgur.”

They needed to know the name of the Bethel, N.Y., farmer who owned the land where the 1969 Woodstock festival was held.

I felt a cerebral surge of pride. It was particularly gratifying because I had the answer to that and every question right in my pocket.

I finally bought a low-end iPhone, a G3 for just $45. It is the most amazing device I’ve ever seen or conjured.

And I fear my smart phone will make me stupid.

That’s why my recollection of the late Yasgur was so satisfying.

Understand, in this great neighborhood bar there used to be a chalk board where the owner posted scintillating sports trivia questions. We spent hour after joyful hour challenging our intellects.

Then the stupid smart phone ruined it all. Our friend Dave stopped posing questions about six months ago when mental defectives started googling the answers before the rest of us had a real go at it.

With the answer to every question so easily accessible, why bother storing any information in our cranial warehouses?

My old phone was so decrepit we were unable to transfer the phone numbers to the new one. I had to do it manually.

Of the 77 contacts I figure I really “know” just five phone numbers. Just five numbers I could recall in a panic situation.

Ours will be the last generation to remember actual phone numbers and the only one we'll all remember is 867-5309.

Does that number ring a bell? Hell, does your phone even ring a bell? Probably not.

Now, the digital tsunami even has me feeling nostalgic for old phone numbers. 

I still remember the euphoria of slyly persuading an inebriated innocent to give me her number. The fact that it usually turned out to be a fake number did not diminish the heady jubilation.

Exchanging phone numbers was the first essential step in the tumultuous and exciting process that -- cross your fingers -- would lead to other, more vital exchanges.

Now, we give a person our names and within seconds they know everything there is to know about us.

Maybe I’m becoming more sensitive to the mass degradation of our brains because I’m dealing with a mother, 78, who, like many seniors, has self-diagnosed Alzheimer’s. She convinced herself the dreaded disease is stealing her faculties.

She watches a lot of TV and has also self-diagnosed fibromyalgia, mesothelioma and chronic fatigue syndrome. My thin patience will vaporize the instant Mom says she fears she might have erectile dysfunction.

As for the Alzheimer’s, it’s nonsense. She’s seen two physicians -- I was there for one of them -- who assured her their tests and observations reveal there’s nothing wrong with her.

They said she shouldn’t stress over forgetting minor things and suggest she might want to consider brain exercises like crosswords to help keep her sharp.

I suggest she just mutes the commercials anytime she sees an ad featuring a doctor, a lawyer or any elderly couple who appear on the verge of a romantic interlude.

She remains a vivacious and engaging woman and last night we chatted about how great it would be if, like Dad seven years ago, she just toppled over on the couch one day and was dead before hitting the floor.

She doesn’t fear death. She fears losing her mind.

I fear with my precious new smart phone I’m just giving mine away.

It’s something to think about.

Doc says Mom's not crazy

I took Mom to the doctor’s office to see if, as she suspects, she’s losing her mind.

My amateur diagnosis is no, she’s not crazy and that her forgetfulness has become her schtick. At 77, she’ll forget one of her 12 passwords to one of her 12 computer functions and she’ll insist she’s losing her mind.

No, she’s just lost amidst her clutter the slip of paper listing the 12 elusive passwords.

Like my dear widowed Mom, many seniors reflexively self-diagnose Alzheimers anytime they forget to include milk on the weekly shopping list. It’s a legitimate fear and she’s forgetful enough I thought a professional opinion would put her mind at ease or instigate any necessary treatment.

Really, it’s a miracle anyone’s sane these days. It’s like the old obesity standards. The Centers for Disease Control reports the average American weighs 25 pounds more than he or she did in 1960.

People who used to be considered ample are now average.

I believe we’ve gained an equivalent amount in crazy weight. We just have too much to remember. Author Larry McMurtry remembers growing up in a small Texas town where his first phone number was “9.”

Like him, Mom was raised in a small town -- Punxsutawney, Pa., home of Groundhog Phil! Now she has more Facebook friends than she knew in the first 20 years of her simple, happy life.

But in the rare role of good son, I agree to go to the doctor with her to help answer health history questions and provide anecdotal support.

First of all, the doctor wants to know why she’s here.

She has no idea. Neither do I.

His eyes light up like he thinks he can get away with charging us double.

A friend recommended him, we finally agree.

He says she’s duplicating what her regular doctor is already doing. Yet we decide to press on.

He asks all the usual questions about smoking (not for 30 years), surgical history (breast cancer survivor since 1983) and family health history (excellent).

He even asks unsettling questions about parts of my mother that haven’t concerned me since she gave birth to me 47 years ago in that very hospital.

He takes us down the hall to a room where a nurse will administer a memory test. The nurse asks if she’s had one before.

She says she can’t remember.

That’s Mom. This woman whose endearing sense of humor will always remind me of Carol Burnett is either making a deadpan joke or something’s wrong.

The test is really simple and, surprisingly, a sound indicator of advancing Alzheimer’s.

They ask about the date, the year, the season. They ask her to start at 100 and subtract a series of sevens.

“100, 93, 86, 79, 71, 64, 57 . . .”

Damn.

They ask her to repeat the following three words: apple, table, pencil.

“Apple, table, pencil.”

They ask her to write a simple sentence on a sheet of paper. She writes, “It’s a beautiful day outside!”

Again, that’s Mom. Take away all her concerns and she’s a lovely and sunny person. And, yes, it is a beautiful day outside, which makes her answer even more euphoric.

I make a mental note to remember if I’m ever given a memory test to write, “I enjoy screwing beautiful nurses!”

In my head, I’m thinking . . . apple, table, pencil, apple, table, pencil . . . and hoping I can psychically transmit
those three nouns four feet across the examination room from my brain to hers.

She asks Mom to fold the paper and set it on the floor. She does so. She asks her to pick it up. She does so.

She asks her to draw two odd geometric shapes on the page. She does so.

She asks her to repeat the three words she asked her to remember. I squeeze the muscles of my face together to kick my brain into a higher gear . . . Apple! . . . Table!  . . . Pencil!

Maybe she’s not my real mom because she cheerfully blurts out, “Apple, table, mirror!”

The nurse says, “Well, you do not have Alzheimers.”

She tells a heartbreaking story about how people with even the early stages of the dreaded disease are unable to understand a simple request like, “Fold this piece of paper, put it on the floor and pick it up.”

Mom scored 26 out of 30 on the memory test and those are numbers I’ll remember with loving relief for a very long time.

The nurse says she just finished a revealing book called “The Myth of Alzheimers: What You Are Not Being Told About Today’s Most Dreaded Diagnosis,” by Dr. Peter Whitehouse. She says the book tells us the aging brain is going to struggle to remember so much thrown at it these days and none of us should panic about forgetting all the unnecessary minutia inundating us.

Unlikely, I think. It’s been four hours and every ten minutes my mind is still chirping . . . apple, table, pencil.

She hints we’re raising a generation of addle-brained morons who will slide across the surface of their lives thinking multi-tasking isn’t harmful to learning.

She says the surefire ways to keep all our aging minds supple is to exercise our bodies with sunny strolls and exercise our minds with reading and puzzles. It makes a difference.

I hope this puts her mind at ease. I hope she remembers to not be so hard on herself if she carelessly calls my daughter by her sister’s name.

That’s not a symptom. It’s a slip of the tongue.

Thus ends my adventure with Mom at the doctor’s office.

And, yes, I’ll go again anytime she needs me. I want to support this still vivacious woman even in trying situations.

Make that, especially in trying situations.

I’m just not all that crazy about the whole idea.