cancer sucks

 About 3 weeks ago, I was diagnosed with Squamous Cell Carcinoma, a form of oral cancer. It was discovered early (read: before it metastasized), the surgery was “successful” and **should** not require additional treatment (radiation/chemotherapy) if I don’t have any additional tumors. Which, all things considered, is a Godsend. If this had happened in 2020, or if the early discovery was in 8 weeks, this would be fundamentally a different letter- one where I essentially eulogized myself. 

I find myself at a crossroads: I fully recognize that with just a little shitty luck, I could be on a guaranteed death sentence. I recognize how grateful I should be that I’m getting extra time. 

I’ve had cancer before. Twice. The first time was a death sentence that if I’d known the severity I definitely wouldn’t have made it, but I was 6...it was brutal- I occasionally wake up in the middle of the night with flashbacks to the chemotherapy- which I hear has improved which I can only imagine because in 1976 it felt like being burned from the inside. I don’t have to have radiation- and it’s the radiation that, if doctors took truth serum, would tell you was the cause of cancer in the first place (radiation I had to get when I was 6 and all this tech was still in its infancy comparatively). As shitty as both of those were, it looks a whole lot like I may be spared...

When people ask how I am, what I say is “all things considered, aight.” I say that because people don’t really want to know how you’re feeling, and even if they did, most don’t have the strength to even listen to my emotional baggage, much less hold it. 

What I want to say when people ask “how are you?”

Sad. Every time I’ve been diagnosed, it’s meant that **something** I love will be taken away from me. I spent 15 months getting back to “normal” when I was a kid. The 2nd time I had cancer was while my dad was **also** dying (but if heart disease) and the energy it took from me was the energy I couldn’t give to my father in his last days, and I don’t know how you deal with damage to the soul, and I sure AF don’t know how to quantify it. 

Exhausted. Because we live in America, and my health care is tied to my job, I have to do my job **as if nothing is going wrong** which is only possible because it’s what I did in all of 2020. Except sometimes it’s that I’m nauseous because it’s really hard to get calories when you don’t really want to eat because **pain** - mostly manageable but sometimes excruciating, and because there is a limit on soft foods, soups, and smoothies. Sometimes exhausted because I can’t let people know how exhausting this is- because as shitty as this is, as shitty as this feels, it’s still better than the look of the Fear of Death in people’s eyes- their inability to say the “right” thing so they say everything or nothing- forgetting that there’s a person they’re talking to that, despite how this is for you, for them is another word I didn’t list but will now: fucking terrifying. More on that later...

Angry. I realize how grateful I should be- I mean I could **easily** be dying right now, and I’m (as of right now) not. I should be dancing the jig- it’s like getting a lease on life...but is it? Why can’t someone else- perhaps someone who hasn’t already been through this- have this lucky encounter? I’ve been to this rodeo before, and even in its best form, it’s really shitty. I’ve pretty much weaned myself off the pain killers, but it **does** mean that sometimes I’m in a fuckton of pain- a risk I accept to lessen the risk of pain killer addiction, which may be more in my head than a real concern, but I’d rather not find out. I’m in pain and know that normalcy is at best 12 weeks away but conceivably could be as much as a half-year- which I try not to think about but here we are. I want my face to stop hurting. I want to feel full but not slushy when I’m done eating. I’d like to sleep through the night pain-free without worrying about pain pill addiction.

Terrified. As well as things are going *now* I realize how fast things can go sideways- if I wake up and my mouth is bleeding it’s pretty likely I’ll be in chemotherapy and radiation within 24 hours. Anything that happens to my body anywhere on it right now makes me think about metastization in other organs- which means that the stomach issues I’m having today are being linked to the cancer diagnosis in my head.  And my terror isn’t just **my** terror- I’ve lived through this- twice actually- but that doesn’t help Carol or her family in this endeavor. I try my best to put as positive a spin on things as I can because I know that Attitude Matters in this fight...

Initially, I wasn’t planning on talking about this publicly- mostly because people don’t know how to act so they overcommit or ignore when all I really need to for you to acknowledge you’ve been told- I don’t expect anyone to say “the right thing” and if you can be there in support, I’m for that. Inevitably my shrink told me that if I use this format for disclosure then I should do that here, too, “to give your network an opportunity to support you” 

I’m hoping I don’t regret this...

The dilemma of aging...or...when neither cancer nor anti-black maleness can kill you...

 I'm old. 

People who have known me for a long time will tell you that I was old long before I got old. The goal of getting old was always to deny it was happening- go out and do the things you did when you were young as if Father Time played no role. 

But you can only do that for so long, because one day, you open the mail and your Old Age Confirmation Papers are right there, staring you in the face- the letter from the American Association of Retired Persons. That's right; the AARP came a calling. And for a mere $12, I could have access to America Largest Interest Group and the bevy of benefits. I found myself chuckling about it as I filled out the application. I knew this day would come...which got me to thinking...

I did not think this day would come, and the odds of me being here are pretty astronomical. 

I was six when I found out I had Leukemia. I don't remember a ton about the doctor's visit (which isn't true- I remember the look on the doctor's face- I vividly remember the look of terror on the faces of my parents as this doctor guy said a bunch of words I didn't understand). Still, I remember hearing the term Stage-4 a lot.  I only remember this because it sounded like "stagecoach"- a word I'd just learned. I went from the doctor's office directly into preparation for surgery, something I know happened, but no real recollection, and I don't even know if the procedure was for the cancer or the clotting it was causing. I just remember everything felt so immediate. 

My parents were in a group of parents of Leukemia survivors. There were seven other families in the cohort. These kids were my friends as much as six-year-olds can have friends.  My mom, when I was first in remission, used to tell me how all the other kids were doing. But over time, I noticed we were having far less of these conversations, so one day, I just asked why she stopped telling me about the kids. It turns out that when she heard the first parent that their child died, she was "way less interested" in keeping up, and over time, it turned out that more and more of the kids from my survival cohort died. By the time I was 13, I was the sole survivor of the group. 

My parents didn't tell me that, at the time, the survival rate for kids was 60% for five years. Let's remember, I'm old. This was before things like "targeted" therapy, which focuses the chemotherapy (poison) and radiation in the specific area of the cancer cells as opposed to throughout your entire body- all I knew is two times a week for three months, I went to the doctor. I felt like I was burning alive from the inside-out, and that my parents said it was necessary. The head-on collision of cliches, "the foolishness of youth," combined with an equal serving of "ignorance is bliss," made it easy to believe I would be healthy again if I followed the doctor's orders. When you have these two, it seems like anything is possible...until you get Cancer: Part Deux. 

I found out I had Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma at a college health center, a week before Thanksgiving. After taking some blood and running a series of diagnostics on me, the doctor walked in with That Look. I've seen That Look before, and I knew what he was going to tell me before he opened his mouth. The doctor told me I had Stage 1 Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, and then I'm sure he said a bunch of other stuff, but I pretty much blacked out in front of him. At one point, I asked if everything he's saying they could write down, so I could read what was wrong to my mother (my father passed away three years prior, which will also be discussed later). When I got home and checked the list to calm mom with the bad news, it was way less Draconian than I remembered, and I vividly remember thinking this was going to "be a walk in the park." I'd already looked death in the eyes and won my stare-down. This round seemed like a far less intense battle, one I was mentally and physically equipped to do. Only eight sessions of chemotherapy, with substantially less radiation therapy- and no surgery. I could plan when I wanted to do it as long as I started "quickly," which is way less intense than going to a doctor and being in surgery 4 hours later. Nothing could have been further from the truth. It was the worst physical pain I can remember, and it seemed 1000x worse. I decided to stay at school and get my treatments in the hospital there. Because I was so fucking sure I could handle it, I didn't even drop my classes. I was, however, allowed to take my finals while being proctored by my chemotherapist, which she considered "absolute insanity." Whether or not it could be classified as insane, it was one of the worst experiences of my life.

If I didn't have people I care about and who care about me, something I would **never do again.** 

There aren't many double cancer survivors, and the Black ones are but a fraction of a minuscule group.  Being in such rarified air gave me a sobering view of mortality. But being Black and growing up in my house meant I would be given a multi-year crash course in Black Maleness and the Guarantee of Insecurity. I knew we all were on 'borrowed time.'

My dad was a wonderful man, but his brutal honesty about his long term mortality was something he was not shy about discussing it. He was from a family who had men who had all died early- my great grandfather was 28 when he died, and my grandfather was 33, so my dad always acted like he was working on borrowed time. There was/is an issue of hereditary heart disease in my family, which meant that he thoroughly planned on dying early. But that also meant that he was quick to tell me any nugget of wisdom whenever it hit him, regardless of what I happened to be doing.  I can recall countless evenings where Pops would come into my bedroom, where I'd be dead asleep to wake me up to tell me something he wanted me to know but didn't want to forget. Over time, I started to figure out that all the messages started making the same argument- about friends and friendship. He believed I was a "shitty judge of character for friends." He'd say, "you let people you call friends treat you in ways I can't imagine," and "to hold people to the standards you keep for yourself." He told me two things will happen:  I'd lose a lot of 'friends,' but I'd find my 'extended family', which is what your real friends are like. I didn't understand it: he would refer to one of my friends by name, we'll call him Don (all names have been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty). My Pops felt that I was a way better friend to Don than he ever was to me. He thought it important enough that it was the last conversation I ever had with my dad: when he knew death was not just imminent but also rapidly approaching. But the last words about it were ominous- "I hope your desire to be friends with a guy that doesn't give a fuck about you doesn't end up costing you more than you want to pay- you've paid with pride and dignity, I hope you don't have to pay with something more, like your life. You have quality friends like Web. He'd be a worthy friend. 

My dad dying was surreal. Maybe not everybody, but I felt my parents were actual superheroes. From what they went through to get out of Hope, AR, to what they achieved while they were trying to raise my and my siblings, in a place where they had no support system, was actually heroic. But the thing about superheroes is they don't die- so despite knowing my dad's medical family history, I fully expected him to be the one to beat it, and to be there when I turned 50. I realized, even at the time, the absolute folly of such a wish. But isn't that the point of a wish? I feel myself digressing...

My dad spent some of the last words of his life telling me my best friend was a shitty person that may end up getting me killed. I didn't think that was possible- Don was my boy, and he had been since I got to El Cerrito- we hung out all the time, talked on the phone, went places together, and I always assumed we were boys, and that's why we hung out...and it wasn't until **his death** that I went back and looked at our "friendship." I guess before I do that, I should preface that this was a long time ago when apparently I had no self-esteem and wanted so badly to fit in with someone that-well, I'll explain that.

My "friend" Don died when I was 21 years old and on break from college. I honestly couldn't hash out the specific date or even what vacation I was on. All I can say is, the day Don died, I can confidently say that I should have been with them. 

I was back home from school and wanted to spend a weekend partying with my boy. A lot of times, when you know you should have physically been with someone who died, there's always a great chance of survivors' guilt- you lived, and they died, and it's hard to live with. I didn't have any of that, mostly because I was supposed to go with Don. In fact, the trip was **my idea**, and I was going to drive. I called Don all day and never got an answer; sometimes, his mom would answer. I would, upon reflection, bet a year of my life he was there the entire time. Finally, about 4 pm, I get a call back from Don's *mother* telling me that he had already left for Reno with S. I was dejected. I go home, continue with my evening and night, and get a call at like 2 am. I answer, and it's Don and Seth, and they're letting me know they're having a great time **without me** and that they're **glad I wasn't there** and a TON of just evil shit. If the purpose of the call was to make me cry, it worked. I hung up the phone feeling as low as I'd felt in any memorable time. All of a sudden, I could hear my dad on his deathbed, saying this would happen. It made me look at our "friendship," which, upon reflection, included these fucking friendship gems.

He spent months trying to get me to ask out a girl they had already told to laugh in my face (the girl told me when I heard about it and told her I would spread a rumor-that I happened to know was factually correct- that I'm, to this day, ashamed I would go so low). He borrowed a video game, then my game system (Atari 5200), and **never gave it back**. I found out years later he **gave** it to another of his friends, so he could play it. It also meant his mom would stop asking where he got it, and my mom would stop calling his mom asking about it. In another instance, he knew I had a crush on a girl he was friends with. When I told him he wanted to talk on the phone. But he decided to call ** her** first and told her to be quiet. He then called me and asked me how I felt. 15-year-old me professed my love- while she listened for more time than I care to admit- to which she responds by saying it's her and that "I have no fucking chance" with her.

When I  finished writing down all the instances of Don doing something shitty, I had FIVE PAGES of things. I decided that if Don ever spoke to me again, it would be the last time because I was going to speak freely, as I had never had the courage...

On the drive home from Reno, Don, and Seth drive into a 20mph curve at over 45 miles an hour. The car flips. Don dies.  When Ma told me that he died, and how it happened, all she could say was she was "glad I didn't go" and wanted to know if I needed clothes for the funeral, to which I told her I wasn't going. When she asked why I just told her, "he was a shitty friend, and if I go, I'll just say hate-filled shit." Ma's only comment was, "it's about damn time." 

I would have assumed, before that weekend, that Don would be someone who would have been at any 50th birthday I'd want to have. Don may have been a nice guy to a lot of people, but he was a shitty person to me, so much so that he made me change how I evaluate friends. For a long time, people were my friend until proven otherwise- and my goal was to have a ton of friends. I wanted to know if I had a surprise party, there would be A TON of people there, all of my friends and family. After looking at how I let Don walk on me, I decided that you didn't get my friendship; you had to earn it as if it had actual value (because it *does* have value-its worth a lot if I don't say so myself). He's also the reason I can cut a friend in a second and not look back. If I'd taken when I was 15, I would have removed most of the bullshit drama I dealt with in high school- all caused by hanging out with someone who didn't like or respect me, which in retrospect, was just him mirroring back my disdain for myself. When I learned a relationship with me was worth something, I walked away from everyone who treated me as if that wasn't true. And it took Don being a total shithead AND dying for me to be able to move away from toxic bullshit. And do what my dad asked...which got me to thinking why Web and I ended up drifting apart, based on how important he was in getting me through El Cerrito...

When I arrived at El Cerrito High School, for most of my life, I lived a vastly different school experience. I went to schools with minuscule class sizes, and so the degree of academic freedom I was used to could be classified as absolute. And despite being the only Black kid in any of my classes, nobody ever (that I remember or could recognize) treated me differently, academically or otherwise, for being a Black kid.

It was only upon entering El Cerrito where it really started to play a role. But initially, it was odd for me just to be around the sheer number of Black people I was around. Going to EC meant I now would meet more Black people than I had ever imagined. There was one overarching theme about the experience- I was told, by ALMOST ALL of the Black kids one of these statements:

“You talk white” or “You talk like a white boy.”

“Why you tryin’ to act white? You ashamed of being Black?”

“Man, you an Oreo.”

I had never HEARD any of these accusations, didn’t know Blacks could ever even be accused of acting “white,” much less by other Black people. I didn’t even know the Oreo reference and assumed the kid had seen my lunch snack choice. He laughed and told me it meant “Black on the outside, white on the inside.” Another statement I didn’t understand. If this was how this public school shit was gonna work out, I was probably going to be arrested or killed soon, because this was some bullshit. So I’m the short, smart Black guy that’s harassed in classes for fucking up a curve here and there, I’m literally the shortest person at the school, I’m "the new kid," and now I’m being demeaned by kids who are raping the English language like Jodie Foster was in The Accused.  I have nobody to talk to…this is going to be a shit-tastic experience…

And felt this way until I walked into a 10th-grade honors English class. It was the first place I felt a zone of protection, where nobody wanted to give me heat for being a smart kid. It was in this class where I met Willis Abraham. It was a relatively uneventful meeting except that he was in the Honors class. One of the things I noticed is that the school did something called “Tracking,” where they try to rank students academically and then, based on that ranking, try to get students of like academic skill sets in the same class. This allows for kids that need extra help to get it and kids that need to go faster to do that as well- but it does make these determinations, and it’s tough to get into another track.  By the time kids got to high school, most were locked into tracks, and in the honors track, there were just not very many Black kids. Willis was one of those kids. But he was, for lack of a better term, a different cat. He just operated to the beat of a different drummer and was unabashedly indifferent if you were with him or against him, as long as he was doing what he felt was right. This starts by being a smart guy.

For my first significant block of time at EC, I really didn’t speak out- in class or outside of class. I was afraid if I opened my mouth, people would find out one of two things, both in diametrical opposition: 1) I was as smart as they thought I was and would never want to talk to me, or 2) I was NOT as smart as they thought I was and they wouldn’t want to ever speak to me.  I worked it into effective catch-22, which meant I NEVER spoke up, even when I felt I had something positive to contribute. I noticed that in these honors classes, as with my classes at the private school, it seemed that students were free to express themselves and free to be incorrect and learn from their mistakes. 

After the negative impression I got from the **all the** kids at the school, it made me kind of gun-shy about being willing to speak up in class, and dare I say- in general. It wasn't as if I felt they were smarter than I was. I didn’t feel any of them even could play at the same academic level as I could. It took another Black kid being willing to speak up, ask questions, be right and especially be wrong and not care as long as he got what he needed, gave me the confidence to begin to speak up myself. All any of you need to know is, without this impetus, I'd have never gotten into Debate. It was only in his death (he died at 42) that I have gotten to reflect back fondly on the times we spent together. But I never really thought about what that time means to me now, and how it was crucial in shaping the person I ended up becoming.

The mind is a funny thing- this all started from getting an AARP membership in the mail, and the $12 investment I made to be in the largest interest group in the United States. There's really only one requirement, which is an open recognition to being old. 

And, based on what I had to go through to get "old," I will surely raise a glass, but not forget to pour out a little- for the people not fortunate enough to share with me.

2020 is the Cancer of the calendar years or why I'm afraid to get my cancer screening

2020 has been a proverbial kick in the dick. 

We're living through an international pandemic. The rest of the world seems to have gotten its arms around. The United States is the equivalent of a monkey trying to fuck a greased up football.  It's to the point where getting a haircut in 2020 is like buying weed in the '90s. The only difference:  instead of waiting in Long's Drugs or Baskin Robbins parking lot, I'm sneaking into bootleg barbershops in people's back yards and asking if they can "clean me up" in the parking lot of the apartment complex. I'm Californian, work at a nonprofit and my wife is a teacher, even if we both blew people for money, we'd not make enough to **buy a home** here. I have been out to eat in public once in six months, in an outdoor dining spot. I can count the number of people I've "violated" social distancing with under five fingers- but it does mean that I don't get to see most of my friends bc most of them aren't local, which means we'd have to travel to see each other, which, in a COVID-19 world, is becoming rarer and rarer.

We're also in what looks to me to be a Race War where only one side is 1) fighting and 2) allowed to be armed, and you can assume from the comment I'm not on the armed side, and I never will be for reasons that may or may not be explained later in this. The racial vocabulary the nation has adopted sound more like 1968 if George Wallace was the incumbent. I half expected a cross burning on the White House Lawn, and **nothing they say** will surprise me. However, I imagine I will be constantly depressed by the framing of my people (protesters are all looters and rioters). The people they show on camera are almost always black and brown people). There's a massive move by the right to frame things in such a way as to create fear into the suburbs- that they won't be safe if there is a move to the left.  That happens to be the most diplomatic way to say, "if you let niggers in your neighborhood, it'll go to shit- you won't be safe because you know you don't trust those niggers." Everyone says, "that won't work, it's not 1968" and "the suburbs are already brown..." Being a Black kid who grew up two ways, rural and suburban, I can tell you the suburbs I lived in **didn't want Black and Brown people.** I have no faith that the suburbs are as different as people think they are...which you should read as: "These racist ass tropes will offend people on the left, but as offended as the left will be, this will **resonate** with the right and with WAY WAY WAY more of your white friends that anyone wants to admit. 

We need to remember we live in post-reality TV generation, where we can witness something happening in what we perceive as real-time. They specifically crafted and edited to create characters where only people interact. If you doubt me, it may be because your real-life friend groups were mirrors of these edited creations, and for that, I genuinely feel for you....but I digress. The ability to "edit reality" dramatically changes the landscape- because it makes the landscape whatever you want it. It's been about 95 days since George Floyd's death, and there have been peaceful protests all over the country for three months. The conversation about "peaceful" protests and the other kind is one we don't have time for today but know I stand on this principle- **people are move valuable than property.** But as a media framing, you'd assume that the "protests" stopped, and all that is happening is "rioters are burning up the streets," which you can create with editing. As a collective, Americans are not the most thorough at the examination of evidence and have been known not to read the directions and just "wing that shit.  We can be easily persuaded to believe what people want us to think rather than what might be right in front of our eyes.

And with all of this happening, I have not had my cancer screening like I'm supposed to- my appointment is next week, but it was supposed to be three months **ago.** I know I should, because I know the benefits of early detection and the detriments of late detection, as I've lived through both of them. Both required surgery and chemotherapy. But being in Stage Cancer one and catching it early meant that chemo was only **fucking miserable and something I'd not wish on my worst enemy** as opposed to many stages past that. I vividly remember what it was like in 1976 when they found cancer late stage, and my treatments were of longer duration and intensity when I remember thinking that this couldn't continue and that if this is what it took to live, then maybe I wasn't supposed to live. I know I was too young to be conceptualizing things as I do now. Still, I do remember asking "if this is what it takes to live why do people want to do it?" which apparently broke my mother's heart and when she started just **telling** me that I was going to live, as opposed to telling me I needed to fight. But none of this is an excuse not to get my screening. The excuse I've been telling myself is COVID- hospitals are risk zones and no need to lock doctors up with "non-essential" medical care. But the reason is way worse, I think.

I'm afraid, and the way life has been going, that I'll go in and find out I have cancer. And I honestly don't think I have it in me to do surgery, radiation, and chemo again. To live in **this** world? To be treated like a second-class citizen if they're nice and like a moving target at a shooting range on their worst days? To live through cancer, you have to have the will to live and the desire to survive, and although they seem like they may be the same thing, they're not. My desire to survive is simple-there are people I love, and dont want to hurt.  I love who I know would be hurt if I was gone- I always want to prevent my family and friends' pain. The other half of that is the will to live, and that's internal. Nobody gets to control that will know except you, and it's the one thing that keeps us driving through the hard times, understanding on the other side, it'll be better. 

Cancer makes you fundamentally question that.

Many people assume that the fight against cancer is just surgery, radiation, and chemo vs. cancer. Your body is only the Antietam/Western Front/Japanese Theatre/Da Nang that battle is fought on if it were that easy more people might live. The location of the battle has agency, and it **does** play a role. If you've ever had the misfortune of watching cancer take someone, then you may have seen the point when their will to fight, the will to live, is exhausted- it's when the person doesn't have any more fight in them. I feel the need to preface this as not "losing" the battle to cancer; it's merely running out of the gasoline to continue. I've gone through chemo twice in my life.  I know how much harder cancer attacked me when I was having doubts about whether this was just how I was supposed to go. In my 20's, a leukemia survivor already and just exhausted- mentally and emotionally, but not more than physically, which was being poisoned from within, and my body reacted to poison as you would expect, which personified itself in my treatments as what it might feel like to be burned alive, except just internally which only meant nobody could see how you were**really** handling it. However, I'm sure screaming in the office and crying at home was pretty accurate. What got me through those times was being able to call Ma Dukes and talk. She'd remind me. 

Ma: "Remember what I made you memorize and say every night after your prayers- can you say it now?"t

Me: "Methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him. His complexion is perfect gallows." I get it now.

For those who don't remember or recite Shakespeare's The Tempest  (read: people who aren't **huge dorks**) it's just a saying that ''he who is born to be hanged will not be drowned," telling me that, **cancer** wasn't the way I was going to go out. It had gotten me through much darker times when my likelihood of survival percentage was determined in the teens, but I survived. So I believed that again, and I survived again. Despite no grounding in anything scientific or empirical, I believed that, almost religiously. 

But 2020 has me here losing my religion. 

Immunocompromised Indifference...or...Fuck Em Gotta Go To The Beach

I'm immunocompromised.

That's a word I'd not ever heard used in conversation before the last 4 months. All I knew is I sometimes got sick more frequently than other people. If you were to ask my mom back in the day or my wife today, they'd probably tell you that eating more vegetables would definitely help strengthen my immune system, and they're not wrong. But let's keep it 100, there are a ton on issues not related to the absence of leafy greens on my plate.

I have asthma- all things considered, it's really not that bad. The doctor called aggravated asthma. This means that unless I'm running or playing hoops, I never found myself in a situation where it was ever really an issue, which with pretty bad allergies, which was really the only other time it was an issue.
Being a cancer survivor, twice, also doesn't generally allow for the most robust immune system. Chemotherapy wreaks havoc on your body (it's literally a poison meant to kill cells that will kill you if you don't kill them- now imagine doing that to your body twice). I also have a bevy of other physical ailments, but I'm not sitting here trying to give any future employer a reason to not hire me, so we'll leave it at that.

For most of my life, the fact that I get sick more frequently has been something I've considered, but never really let direct my actions in any real, measurable way. I mean, I even spent a decade teaching high school kids and traveling with them on weekends. If you know anything about kids, know they're simultaneously Petri dishes of diseases and transfer hubs for vectors. This meant I spent from about late October to mid-April with varied illnesses- some enough to make me miss class, but most I just soldiered through. Did I worry about getting sick? Yeah, but not to the point where it changed my actions. But that was then.

That was before the Coronavirus Invasion- the Beatles of Infectious Diseases.

And now I have to consider, at every turn, that a careless misstep on my part or just shitty luck and I'm in a game of roulette. And that's terrible. It sucks knowing that if some asshat decides to stand too close to me in line at the grocery store and sneezes. Its miserable knowing I could be at the doctor getting a refill in some anxiety medication, touch the same counter as someone infected, and begin playing rock-paper-scissors with my mortality. It's atrocious even more that I could sit in my house and do my best to not leave the house and be safe. The pizza delivery person and cannabis delivery person may unknowingly bring me an unexpected guest with my delivered essentials. But of all those things that are a hypothetical dick punch, none of those things are what keep me up at night.

Nobody really gives a fuck about us. Which is pretty consistent with the indifference to ableism.

I'm a Black man, and I have been my entire life. This means I have lived a life where, depending on who sees me, I have an existence of hypervisibility and invisibility. People either *can't* see me or **all they see is me- not my essence, merely my presence. And although these are divergent worlds,  they are, in all honesty, quite easy to navigate. Those that see you as hypervisible, my goal is to interact with them as little as humanly possible. People who see you (well, me) as hypervisible are always trying to find an appropriate box to put me in. Being hypervisible is what lets police officers see me, among 20 cars all driving the flow of traffic, to be pulled over. Being hypervisible is what makes (white) women cross the street to avoid me. It's why I'm asked, "Do you work here?" in a ton of grocers, Targets and Wal-Marts, but the place **where I actually worked** nobody ever assumed I did and was present to receive services. That's a slap in the face, but it's an expected and predictable one- and as much as I hate being hypervisible- I'm pretty good at it.

I'm also used to being invisible- in that people just don't see me. If I had a dollar for every person that runs into me and then tells me, "I'm sorry, I didn't see you," I could buy a home in 35 (31 red) states. I don't think people really get how **dismissive** that is. In 2011, I made a pact with myself- that if people didn't say "excuse me" when they passed, I would make **zero** effort to move. This led to an enjoyable year split about evenly with two types of people. The first set would run into me and become **really** apologetic (almost everyone- the phrase "I didn't see you" is sometimes attached to the apology). The second set was actively combative (almost exclusively white men) "why did you bump into me?!?! you trying to start something?" Let me tell you, it's hard being invisible, and it's hard being hypervisible. It would seem impossible to be **both things simultaneously**, and yet I had what appeared to be hundreds of these interactions that year. To be honest, in previous and subsequent years as well, I just couldn't see them coming until they happened- in 2011, I had a **pretty good idea** of the people who would start some bullshit. If I had to come up with a premise for **why** there was such a visceral reaction, I'd probably have to say it was my visibility. I'm sure he had been working hard to keep a world construction he was happy with, and what I am sure of, from those interactions, is that there are no Black men in any form of a protagonist role. We may be servants (think of most black and white movie, we may be sexual desires (think Idris Alba/Gabrielle Union), we can be athletes (think LeBron or Lamar Jackson), but we can't just be. We're not allowed to just be people. But if I want to keep it 100- being invisible to most people is my goal. I would love to walk through the world,  being recognized by my friends and family, and being entirely anonymous to the rest of the world. Like most people.

The indifference of the treatment of people not fully able was simultaneously shocking and will-breaking. The first shock was the seeming inability to look at immunocompromised people as a group of people, rather than individuals in a group that can **also**  be dismissed. Even the Surgeon General of the United States did this. He said, "we need you to do this, if not for yourself, then for your Abuela, doit for your granddaddy, do it for your Big Mama, do it for your pop pop. Now someday that's not today, we'll talk about that Stepin Fetchit shit that Surgeon General Adams did- I should shut up they coulda made that motherfucker do a shuffle too. But what he did there, other than being Uncle Ruckus level racist, was he took **a subset** of the immunocompromised and said, "let's do it for them. Other times, the conversation about the coronavirus attacks people everywhere, but it's been particularly damaging for people with some pre-existing conditions- diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, asthma, cancer, etc. That conversation **immediately** pivots to how that means it disproportionately affects Black and Brown people. I guess they hope that telling people that the disease is killing Black and Brown bodies would be an impetus for people to act in a way that would keep them safe. Which is the problem- we take immunocompromised people and dissect them into their (mal-intentioned) subgroup. When we're broken out of a collective group in need of protection and get broken into other groups, it allows for people to, as Ma Dukes might say, to "show they asses." When you break immunocompromised people into just old people, it allows us to be summarily dismissive of them. I mean, we're not the Inuit, who it has been said leave their elderly out on the ice to die, but with the mistreatment and horrific abuse stories from nursing homes, even before they became coronavirus death camps, maybe they'd be safer if we did. We live in a society that not only doesn't respect their elders, they are also generally willing to sacrifice them for their common good. The idea of taking an elderly person to die somewhere other than with their families is pretty white, and thus also pretty American). 

The thing is, some people are immunocompromised that aren't old or have diabetes or hypertension. They're just people unfortunate enough to have at one time been ill and/or currently sick and suffering due to no fault of their own. Trust me, if, given a choice between being a two-time cancer survivor and being 100% healthy, I'd have opted for the one that didn't have them pump me full of poison and burn me from the inside. If you'd told me that because of cancer, **now** I get to worry about every jackass who decided it was more critical for them to go bowling or get a massage than to worry about some dude they don't know- 100% sure I'd have passed on it.

To be indifferent, in this instance, says more about you than the person you're indifferent towards. I am indifferent to little kids. They're not invisible like I wish they would be. They're clearly there, doing annoying kid shit.  The other part is, for lack of a better way to describe it, I'm not **trying** to deal with a kid- they play so little a role in my day to day existence that I **flat out** don't acknowledge little kids. But here's the thing- I **fully recognize** that this lack of acknowledgment is solely because I don't give a fuck about a kid. My indifference to kids probably makes me (a bit of) a curmudgeon, but it's a pretty simple thing. Unless the kid is unlucky or shitty, someone out there is in the kids' corner- and that person is usually someone who can provide that kid some kind of protection. I don't have to have that kid's back- s/he doesn't know me from Adam...

In this society, under this pandemic, I feel like that kid, except I'm kind of an orphan. This means that everyone knows that I'm there- but nobody cares. I can handle being fetishized. I can deal with being feared. I can accept, and most of the time, enjoy, being invisible. Being treated as indifferent is worse than all of them.

They know you're there and they know you need them to help you. They just don't give a fuck.

Every time I see people at the beach, or walking around in groups, or even walking around without a mask on, I see the world giving the finger to every other immunocompromised person and me. When I see the government easing restrictions **everywhere** as the numbers are still increasing, it makes my blood boil. It means they made a **specific risk calculus** and decided that my life is worth rolling the dice for so people can hang out with friends at the beach, or if I lived in Georgia. Let's keep it 100: I'd never do despite Atlanta being Wakanda for my people) motherfuckers would be rolling the dice with my life to see the new Troll's movie. All of this is a vivid as fuck reminder of my individual value to the collective- and it's zero.  I guess I now get to apply my "rules for getting in the car" for leaving my home at all. Is getting this fried fish worth the risk of being killed because of this choice?" For anyone who was supposed to meet me somewhere and I backed out at the last minute, I can pretty much guarantee **this** was the reason.

And it's hard to get in your car when you know that, once you leave home, the world has decided to play roulette with you- maybe you live because you went out today, but maybe not.

It's way, way harder to do it in **every** interaction I make out the house.

It's So Hard...or...Black Exhaustion

It's so hard.

It's already hard to be a Black man in America. I know it's hard to be a Black woman, too, but I don't walk in those shoes. In a world before coronavirus, it was already hard. I could run off a bunch of statistics- make less per dollar, lesser life expectancy, institutional surveillance, and the implications within- the list could go on for weeks without exhaustion. Every time I got in the car, I felt like I was playing Russian Roulette. Any time I left home, a cop could pull me over-  I was playing a game that could, with an unpredictable or sudden move, could have ended my life.

And that was **before** coronavirus.

Now, in the face of an international scourage,  something that will change the way the world functions, all I can see in the response is how little bodies like mine matter in the decision-making process for them- which makes it hard for me to give a fuck about them, either.

Initially, the COVID-19 story was simple- it was a disease that didn't care about race or socioeconomic class or political affiliation, which is **kind of** true- except its not.  It brings forth an analogy my mom used to bring up to describe the difference between my white and Asian friends and me when I moved to California: "you may be in the same storm, but you are **not** in the same boat." What she meant by that was, despite the situation, my friends and I being in could *look* the same to me, she was quick to remind me that people, especially cops, would see differently than my white friends. The storm can be the same (you're both stopped by cops together doing the same things) only to find that your treatment was much harsher and less reasonable- which you only get to tell because you can **see** the difference in treatment (yes-this happened **many many many** times).

The coronavirus attacks everyone in the same way. In the same way that, despite the police stopping my white friends and me for the same reason, I was the only one detained. However, it seems to hold particular vitriol for people of color- well, the group is more substantial than that- people of color, older people, and people in tight quartered marginalized spaces (prisons, nursing homes,  meat processing plants, etc.). I'll be talking about Black (and to some extent,  Brown) people as an example of this.

I'm offering tangential information, let's get back...we are in the same storm, but not the same boat...

If we were all on the same boat, we'd die equally, and as we have seen, that's just not the case. In cities **all over America**- Chicago, New Orleans, Atlanta,  Los Angeles, New York City to start an exhaustive list- the percentage of African Americans who are dying of COVID-19 does not align with the proportions of African American residents. Chicago's was particularly stark- 30% of the population, 70% of the deaths. This data isn't even surprising to me- the very people who are being most hurt by this happens to be a group that has what can only be called "reasonable skepticism" for the medical establishment. We don't even have to look deep in the crates to find an example of this.  In the search for an American panacea for COVID-19, the president pushed a drug called hydroxychloroquine, which they use for ailments like malaria and lupus. I can not say what this drug is like,  but I **have** taken anti-malaria drugs before. My clear recollection was, "how fucking bad could malaria **be** if the drugs are doing **this** to me? The only other time that thought has crossed my mind was during chemotherapy. The president was in a **hurry** to find this drug, so he can get everyone back to work and the economy up and running again. They were in so much in a hurry; they decided to sidestep some of the processes and get it into humans ASAP to see if it worked...and it did...if by working it meant "was more likely to die with it than without." And, if you're going to be rolling the dice with the health and well being of Americans, and you recognize there's a substantial risk that it won't work- find some Black people and do it while making a mockery of informed consent. Which is what they did, and why the tests subjects were described as **mostly** Black people. We run the tests on them to check the medication, and it kills them. These racist health policies didn't happen in 1955, or 1927.

They. Just. Happened.

And when I read about it, only one word came to my mind: Tuskeegee.

And as odd as this sounds, the magnification of racial inequalities based on medical care is horrific, but also dangerously predictable. When we look at African Americans and health care generally, and concerning COVID-19 in particular,  we need to make sure to factor in a couple of things- the medical reasons for someone being more susceptible to the disease but also the social reasons,  and how those reasons interact...we can start with the medical reasons. COVID-19 is a disease that anyone can catch. Still, the likelihood of and quality of your recovery depends on your immune system- this means being immunocompromised is not just some shitty luck, it makes a possible interaction with COVID **way** more dangerous. Here is a simplistic look at the numbers (and these are speculations, as we haven't done anywhere near enough testing to know if these work out over more extensive sets of trials).  Many people will contract the virus, and of those people, 80% will recover with self-isolation. If you're in the hospital and you're in the ICU- your life chances just went to a coin flip. If you end up on a ventilator is a death sentence  5 out of 6 times. That's if you're healthy.

Unfortunately, a lot of Black people are **not** healthy. Black people in spades hold many of the underlying issues that make you susceptible to COVID-19: heart disease, hypertension, obesity- these underlying issues run through the African American community like COVID-19, with two exceptions: a) it's been running through for generations, and 2) nobody seemed to care. In contrast, the community beat the drum about it. The lack of management of these diseases in the African American community has made it more likely for the virus to do real damage if it gets ahold of one of us...

But like I said before, there are also a lot of **social** determinants to make us more likely to get the virus. And the list here is long, and yet any record I ever produced would be incomplete...let's start with distrust in the field. This can be measured by things like Tuskeegee, but it can also be measured by the information that Black people can tolerate more pain and that half of the medical trainees think that blacks have **literally thicker skin** than whites. If you throw in poverty and lack of opportunities, it's particularly bleak. The jobs that exist are essential service jobs that don't give health care. There is also high-density living (created by HUD), mandating people are always really close to one another. Many of these families need more than 2 incomes to pay rent and bills, which means sometimes houses have 2-3x the expected residency. How do you socially distance if 8 people live in an 800sq foot apartment? And why are heart disease, hypertension, and obesity issues? Well, not having access to healthy food will do that to you. If you don't have a grocery store in your neighborhood, and the place where you get to do your shopping is the local liquor store, if you're not lucky and the Dollar General if you are, your options are what they sell. Or maybe you have a McDonalds in the neighborhood- where they offer cheap, and they offer "healthy," but they don't offer both.

And as frustrated as all of this makes me, the reason why the song at the top is "It's So Hard" isn't because of the depravity of the health system. I'm a grown-ass man, heading on a bullet train to 50 years old- the government fucking Black people over is depressing, but by no means **will breaking**- hard to have your will broken over something fully expected...

What's getting to me is that it is becoming apparent I think, to a lot of pro-Trump white people, that they believe going back to work is necessary, and if "some" people have to die for that to happen, so be it. At the very beginning, when we thought it was **just** old people- lots of people wanted us to act- can't have grandma and grandpa die- they matter to us. Then the second wave of stories came out about nurses and doctors getting the disease en masse- and it stirred up a national discussion on  PPE  (which most people didn't know what they fuck that even stood for at the beginning of February and now it's as much of the American lexicon as immunocompromised is now (a word I'd seen on paper maybe 3 times before COVID-19). When the wave of stories about the racial disparities with COVID-19, a couple of things happened: a) the stories that I call the "it be like that sometimes" stories- these just said "well, Black and brown people are less healthy in general, so..." or "well if they didn't live like *that* (in close quarters) or "they had better education they could get jobs that mean they can work at home." As offensive as these are, they are a) not the only comments I read, and b) not even **close** to the worst comments I got to read. 
Finally, the wave of "we need to stop staying at home" movement began, and in it, white people began showing their asses. When this started, I decided to start reading the comment section, and that was my biggest mistake. 

I read more than one comment from people who were out with a firm belief that it was more likely for them "to give it to some nigger or illegal" than for them to get it themselves. I had more than one person comment that if they could bottle it and spray it on "those fuckin porch monkeys" they would. That they **hoped**  COVID-19 was a chemical weapon to kill all non-white people. 

And that's when I just collapsed. I closed the door to the Mancave and just cried. Uncontrollably. 

I can deal with the world sucking. I can deal with the government not giving a fuck. I can even deal with shitty anti-black racism. I'm having a hard time dealing with the kind of hatred that thinks like that. I'm having a hard time not looking at people and assuming they **all** think like that. I'm having a hard time not letting all the hate and anger get to me. I'm trying really hard to not let myself "go" there. Samuel L., at the end of Pulp Fiction, says it best..."The truth is...I'm the tyranny of evil men."

But I'm trying real hard, to be the shepherd.

why i have a hard time sleeping at night...or...we're probably pwned

We're heading into the forty-day plus period of the stay at home orders established as a response to the coronavirus. And as the deaths in New York City begin to decrease and the national curve stops its essentially vertical ascent, there are moves pretty much everywhere to begin to take the reigns off of the country and let people get back to living their normal lives.

It's like these motherfuckers have **literally no idea** of the kind of dilemma we're in.  I sit around and listen to the media, the medical professionals, and when I'm in the need for some straight humor or to be openly deceived, the President. And if you listen to them all, you'd have no idea what to do, or who to believe, or when to believe them.

To be clear, there will be some meandering as this comes along- it's not an article,  but more a stream of thought that may have value to **someone** and even if the only someone it has value to is me, that shit matters too...

This stay at home order has gotten me to do be more in my own head than I like. I think the official term our state uses is Shelter-In-Place, but as an old high school teacher, that term has a very specific, and pretty terrifying meaning- it's how one is trained to respond to a school shooter- both shitty but by no means analogous...but I digress. When I've been sitting at home, I've been fortunate enough to be able to keep working- the only difference is now I can consume copious amounts of information while I work on writing grants or doing reports. And the more news I consume, the more concerned I get that we may be getting an illegitimate bag. I understand everyone wants to be optimistic, but it seems there are a few things that make that projection of confidence particularly complicated...I'll talk about just a few of them here...

1) As of April 26, 2020, we have no immunity, treatment, or vaccine. We don't **really** know how efficiently it spreads.

2) Every conversation about vaccines I've seen is 12-18 months. I find that peculiar, as there has literally **never** been a vaccine produced that fast and the fastest, from samples to a licensed drug, took four years with the Mumps in 1967.

3) Even if we could produce the vaccine in 12-18 months, we'd need to produce **way** more vaccine than we're used to. In an average year, for average vaccines, we need to vaccinate kids under 5 and adults over 65 which ends up being about 5 million a year. This is a different motherfucker- almost everyone will want to get vaccinated- even some of those old-school anti-vaxxers from both parties (kale eating progressives and slack-jawed yokels who both believe the Lancet article (that's been discredited for like over a decade now). We have 350 million people...we don't have the kinds of labs to do the kinds of scale necessary to create that much vaccine. You know who does?

China.

Probably makes you wish we hadn't called it the Wuhan virus now...

4) All of this presupposes something-  that we could make a working vaccine for this. We've tried to make vaccines for **other** coronaviruses, and we're zero for every time we've ever tried. The vaccines we've made that have sometimes had some success in animals have also been known to make the disease more likely which makes it a really really shitty vaccine.

5) Treatments require study and trials, too. We've FDA fast-tracked some drugs and tested them on humans (overwhelming African-American you say?? I call shenanigans!!!) and turns out the studies indicate the drug was more likely to kill you **if you took it than if you didn't** which makes it a particularly ineffective treatment.

6) Immunity- we have no fuckin idea. People who have had the disease are being tracked with really low to no antibodies- this would mean that **even catching the disease would not make you immune- which with no treatment or vaccine means...

The disease, if all this is true, would have no check. The only natural resolution would be international herd immunity- which a) isn't particularly fast and b) has the kinds of death totals that sound like they destroyed Houston or Los Angeles or Chicago. This is grim as fuck- I get it. And maybe I've up too late and have just missed some simple shit. But as of now, I don't see this shit getting any better.

I haven't even cracked the door on the economy or mental health, both of which are essentially nuclear explosions as well...which is probably why I don't sleep well anymore...

Today Kinda Broke Me...or...Why Am I Crying Over An Empanada...

It's clear we're in a "New Normal." I get it. The world is changing fast,, and it's imperative to be flexible to change at the speed and magnitude the world is changing. I get it. It was less than two weeks ago that my wife and I did something as taboo as fucking an animal is **right now**- we went out to dinner, to celebrate.

Now both of those things, dinner in public, as well as celebration.

Now, if we're sincere, this whole "shelter in place/stay at home" thing isn't as will-breaking for me as I'm sure it is for some of my more extroverted friends- if being around people is what gives you energy, brings you life, this would be close to will-breaking.

Fortunately, I'm not that guy.

I don't go out a ton, an occasional Happy Hour with work people or friends, but for the most part, I went to work, came home, got groceries and/or take out, picked up weed from the dispensary (but usually even that was delivered). So outside of going to work, I might only leave my house a few times a week, and only to do things that **are all currently allowed under the shelter in place order.** Other than not being able to buy shit like hand sanitizer and dry beans when I want to, it's not that bad. I can do 100% of my job from home (which makes me lucky), and my job is necessary even when the econ goes down the shitter (which makes me more fortunate). I have a great support system with a wife that's better than I'll ever deserve, two cats that make my world way brighter, and people who I know have my back and know it's reciprocal.

Which is why today was so odd.

Today was rough. And it's not that anything **in particular** made it rough- I mean Covid-19 has been running a train on the United States. The exponential math I've been concerned about is becoming to come to fruition, but that's neither surprising nor moving to me, as I've kind of seen that coming. It's not that the President, in the face of all of this, is looking at ways to get people back to work and standard routine. I've been watching the President do **dumb shit** for 4 full years, and people of all walks of life have been Getting Done Raw Dawg the whole time- kids in fucking cages, making migrants wait in Mexico, tax cuts, I don't have the time to list them all. It's not that I get to watch the thing I've tied my reasoning to in times of trouble, science, be burned at the stake like a Salem witch- dude literally is erasing any governmental claims about **climate change**, so that was to be expected. So what was it that broke me today?

I wanted to eat a ham and cheese empanada.

You see, there's a spot up the road about 4 miles that sells baller ass empanadas. I don't eat a ton of empanadas, but when I want one, I **fucking want one.** As I said, the store that sells them is just up the road, and I could have just gotten in my car and driven and gotten one.

Except I'm one of those immunocompromised people you read about. One of the people they tell you to stay home to protect. A two-time cancer survivor (and chemo survivor) and I have asthma. So if I get Covid-19, it's **probably** going to not go well.

They said they delivered, but their driver was sick, so they told me "to just come in" and pick them up. But I really don't **do** that anymore, if I can avoid it. So as much as I wanted something as simple as an empanada, and as easy as it would have been for me to just go **get it** we no longer live in a world where I **feel safe enough** to just go **do basic shit.** And it broke me. I just started fucking bawling alone, with the door closed in my office because my wife was teaching, and the cats hate being locked in the mancave with me.

I had planned on being in Vegas with my boys for NCAA Opening Weekend, with a dip to Portland for my boy E's bachelor party. It didn't happen. I would be leaving for Disney this weekend with my wife- some time in the Happiest Place on Earth with the person I love the most. Not going to happen.  And these things definitely had an effect on me. But I kinda shrugged my shoulders, cursed China for being slow to let us know and our government for being **even slower** but invariably kept it moving.

But this empanada.

Clearly, the empanada was a symbol of something- normalcy. I don't know if I need the world to be "normal" again, I just need the world to stay the fuck home long enough to contain the disease sufficient to let me **go get a fucking empanada.**