Sic transit

[muckefuck]

After spending the entire morning in the hospital, most of it waiting for the oncologist (one of these days he's going to sit down with us within and hour and a half of the time on our appointment card and we'll both reel from the shock), all I wanted to do was go back to bed. The Old Man did what he could to help by paying a cab to the grocery store and keeping our shopping there to a minimum. Even so, it was 12:30 before I went down.

As promised, he woke me up at quarter to 2 so that I could check in for my Saturday afternoon flight. After that, I was supposed to have some lunch and speed on to the memorial for Lee already in progress at Sulzer. But I groggy and I lingered and finally paid a cab myself in order to make it there in time to catch the tail end of the proceedings. (Thought, crucially, I made it there in time for the adjournment to the pub across the street.)

My cabbie didn't seem to know the streets very well. I had to explain to him, for instance, how and where Ashland and Clark diverge. Later I learned he'd only been in the country four months. Naturally, I assumed he was another Karachiïte who'd been mailed the exam by associates, but that was a near miss: Afghani. And not any ordinary Afghani but a translator who'd worked for the US Army for twelve years. I feel like I owe an apology to any Afghan I meet for the way our country has worked over theirs, but after learning from John Oliver how we've particularly screwed over the translators who worked for us, I feel even more reason to apologise around them.

Before we got to that revelation, however, we had an innocuous introductory conversation which took a very odd turn. He asked me about my Christmas plans, I talked about going home to St Louis to see my parents. He told me about how his father had died of cancer, which prompted me to mention what I'm going through now with my husband--

"You mean your wife."

"No, I mean my husband. I'm married to a man."

"Like gay marriage?"

"A same-sex marriage, yes."

"Can I ask you a question about that?"

"Sure."

"Do you sex each other?"

"I'm not sure I understand."

"How does it work in bed? Do you sleep with each other?"

"We sleep in the same bed, yes."

[awkward silence]

"Do you not know any gay people?"

"In the army I knew some." (Which is how I found out about his service and was able to steer the conversation onto firmer ground.)

* * *

As I said, I arrived appallingly late to Lee's memorial, just in time to watch a video of an event that I attended in person (and on crutches, IIRC). Andrew Patner recognised me and gave me a highlight reel of the testimonials. He also introduced me to a lovely woman just arrived from Iowa City with whom I actually spent most of the next couple hours in conversation. Again, the conversation turned to the care and feeding of elders (something we're each--to various degrees--being forced to come to term with these days) and I introduced them to the concept of "Dad jokes".

The pub was comfy enough (they made a mockery of my Sazerac, but I wasn't paying so I can't really complain) and I wish I could've stayed a bit longer, but I'd promised monshu I'd be home for dinner--party because I wanted one last evening together before the trip and partly because I needed to force myself to get home so I could get a jump on my packing. Mozhu promised to invade our home in the near future and share the fire; perhaps I can arrange to have some mutual acquaintances here when she does.

Comments

[danthered.livejournal.com]

That sounds like quite the taxi conversation.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

It's the most memorable for quite a while.