Departures

 

Edenia  "Nelsy" Vargas-Añil

July, 1943 - May, 2011

You've broken my heart. Nothing can repair it. I miss you desperately.

It's 4 in the morning on a Sunday. I can't sleep, again, and the tears are flowing without stopping, as they have been now for two solid weeks now.

Funny how I easy I can type out a little blurb about someone who has passed on. For every celebrity that has made some form of an impact in my life I've written a short couple of paragraphs, and in lieu of that, a short sentence of remembrance. It's pretty easy, but then again, I have never met them---my life has revolved and been shaped by their influence, their existence.

Writing about them is almost an impersonal exercise in creating a tribute. Yes, there is a sense that someone has moved on... but it's not close. It's not intimate. It's not really affecting me. It's transient because they were not blood of my blood.

None of them were my mother.

Nelsy Vargas.

This is going to be perhaps the hardest piece I'll ever post. I've already skirted the idea, started, stopped, crossed entire paragraphs out, begun again, taken a break, sunk into valleys of deep depression, come back, and wondered if it's worth it, this life I'm living, if all I can think of is her absence. Life is short, and I can see it now. Ages ago, during the fall of 1976 I recall holding tight to her skirt (she loved skirts, and rarely, except towards the end of her life, she was seen in pants), and as we walked to PS 19 from our Junction Blvd home in Queens.  Our Uncle Luis had just died and the very act was something totally alien to me. Death? I didn't know what that was. Yet there it was, he was gone, and one of my aunts had yelled at me, "You'll see! Everyone dies! Even your mami Nelsy will die one day, and then what?" [Little did I know the bad blood between the paternal Vargas and the maternal Vargas families, but that's another blog post and is not important at the moment.]

The ferocity of my aunt's outburst scared me. I began sleeping with a night light (and still do, but that's for other reasons, not because I'm afraid of the dark.) That chilly, overcast morning I asked her, "Mami, you're never going to go away, right? Like Uncle Luis?"

She laughed, a thing that to her death always made me soar. You see, Nelsy had the most illuminating smile you could ever see on a woman. Yeah, maybe I'm being partial because she was/is my mother, but so be it. Everyone says their parents are the most beautiful/successful in the world. I'm no exception. I own it.

"Oh, for God's sake, Ivan! You're too young to worry about these things! I'm going to be around a long, long time. Come over here, you're nose is running and you're crying." She dabbed my eyes and blew my nose. And then she'd give me a tight hug, making the winter skies blue again, the worries a dim memory.

And she was right. She wouldn't go away for a long, long time. Yet even then, time has a way of slipping by, of letting you aware of its implacable existence when you've reached the crux of major events and the credits are rolling quietly by. When you're small, time seems eternal. Endless. Now even a day isn't enough to do everything, and a two-week time off from work means barely a second, and then you're back at the bump and grind, wondering, wondering. I had so many plans to fulfill with her. And now, she's been whisked away, painlessly, to the Other Side.

The last words we spoke to each other were words of "see you soon" and "I miss you very much" on the 14th before that terrible afternoon on May 16 when I received that disgusting phone call while I ran a mile to nowhere on the elliptical. Would it that I could have run immediately home and revive her! She wasn't sick, she was completely active, gardening like there was no tomorrow, but anxious to come back to the States from Dominican Republic where she had her house and stay half a year with my sister, and a month or two with me in New Jersey. She always loved NYC, and missed it with the same passion that she couldn't really tolerate my father's home town where she lived too much. She had so much to do, so much she wanted, and now she's vanished, and sleeps in her own hometown, surrounded by her loved ones.

I'm trying to remember her as much as I can. Time is too brief, and memories has a way of fading. It's too soon for me to really react, even though all I have been doing is going through the motions with a stoic facade and accepting this bitter pill while I silently collapse on the inside. I don't know what comes next. I'm trying to take things a day at a time. Anyone who says it gets better as time goes by clearly is trying to be helpful in their own way, and that's fine. Maybe it does get better. Maybe I will eventually heal, and smile whenever I smell a scent that reminds me of her, or see a lady that looks like her. Maybe it will get better with time. If only there were a way death didn't involve so much agony for those who remain....

On the 6

When I look at this gorgeous scene I feel an odd tingling sensation in my Made in China heart and imaginary tears stream down my grizzled, 40 year old cheeks, and I get all choked up.  Of course, it also might be the cock I've got halfway down my trachea and that I might be, in body, trapped in a stall down on my knees, eyes watering, going down, down, downtown like Petula. In any case, I admit to a sensation of sheer pride because here they are, the subway crazies, those little deluded children of LSD and Timothy Leary who roam the trains aiming at giving the cameras all they got, be it big, or in this case... minuscule and limp, like kelp. I only wonder where am I when the action is. I need to get out more.  Dingy stall included.

Thank You, Doric Wilson

I never met you until the night I saw your commentary on American Experience: Stonewall Uprising. It's sad, because I feel that despite me reading on the Stonewall Riots of 1969 there's still so much that escapes my grasp.  Would it that I'd done a little more investigation, that I would have sought you out via Facebook or your very own blog, anything that would have led me to you---I would have been honored to have even heard you speak a sentence.  As it is, I am grateful, for because of you, and those who said "Enough" to the hateful media that treated gay men and women like boils on the bottom of humanity, you have made it possible for me to walk the streets of my city, New York City, without fear of retribution.

You have made it possible for me to enjoy drinks with friends, male and female, in my bar of my choice, as my dance tunes fill the air and the booze flows free and thick, not watered and corrupted by Mafia money.  Because of you I can be as open as I normally am without wondering will I go to jail, beaten and broken, be treated by dangerous chemicals, or be institutionalized, my fate unknown.  I can only hope that the new kids who come to NYC understand that it wasn't always like this... that their freedom was fragile, borrowed, and confined to a couple blocks instead of an entire Tri-State area as it is now.  That their sense of a community comes from the sacrifice--the blood, sweat and tears--of so many, people of the streets who were disowned, forgotten, but who had the will to BE.

And even now, as bits and pieces of the ghost of LGBT intolerance still pop up here and there, I get stark chills.  I am reminded that had Stonewall never happened, had fags never stood up against Authority, we could very well go back to the Dark Ages and to hell with any aspirations of a free life without shame and the sense of dread.  Once again, thank you, sir, for laying the path of equality, even if it was through reactive violence and anarchy.  When you do not have a voice, mindless screaming and thrashing is all you have left.  You gave us that voice.  You gave ME a voice.  And I'll never forget that.  Or you.  Even though I never met you proper.

Lady Gaga - The Edge of Glory

Judas hasn't yet made up its mind if it's going to keep its number 10 peak on the Billboard charts or exceed it as airplay starts to take hold.  Across the sea, in the UK, it looks like this might be end of the line for the uniquely titled dance song as it struggles to keep afloat within the Top 40 after peaking at number 9 three weeks ago before plummeting to number 23 a week later.  Fresh out of the coffee pot, Lady Gaga has just disclosed her follow-up single, The Edge of Glory.  From the sounds of it, it's pretty sharp and textured---very late-80s Hi-NRG, in the vein of Judas with hints of what Stock, Aiken and Waterman used to do, it has a killer chorus and a blazing, juicy sax solo by Clarence Clemons (he of 1985's You're a Friend of Mine where he dueted with Jackson Browne -- the song went to number 18 on the Billboard Hot 100).  I absolutely love it.  Born this Way, huh?  I can't remember.  My mind just can't place it....

Update:
At the approximate time of this post, The Edge of Glory was ranked at # 154 on the iTunes singles sales chart. One hour later it has zoomed up to # 17, right behind Born This Way (no. 13) and Judas (no. 9) which have been, possibly on the anticipation of Gaga's May 23 release of her new album, been steadily climbing back the charts.

Mothers Day Cartoon

[Image from The New Yorker]

Why DOMA Must be Repealed

When I see this heartbreaking video from Freedom to Marry I wish things had not been as they still are and we could have had the same rights as everyone else.  It's tragic to see that someone as Ron Wallen had to sell his own home because the laws that we created -- laws of inequality -- did not protect him when his husband of a lifetime, Tom Carollo passed away. This is not the way our country should be. Something has to change.

All American

Saturday morning smiles...

Apostles, Motorcycles and Gaga

Last month RedOne, the producer of most of Gaga's songs, quoted:  "if Born This Way blew your socks off (it didn't, however, it did blew a hole through my anus, does that count?), then you really need to wait for the next single off her May album release. It's gonna shock. You're gonna be surprised and wanna go crazy."

Well, Judas is quite the rump-shaker. but I'm just not getting the video. A motorcycle gang straight out of Hells Angels segueing into Biblical drama and ending in the stoning of the Gaga? Give my pained eyes a break. Less could have been more. Someone call Sophie Muller onto the scene, or even Anton Corbijn. What a betrayal. All for some coins. 

Seth Meyers Destroys The Donald (and Everyone Else)

This is how you tell a clueless, attention-grabbing, dead-animal wearing, orange-faced, pucker-mouthed nobody like Trump.  It's orgasmic. Enjoy.

President Obama's Speech on Osama Bin Laden's Downfall

No comment - just brilliant.  Thank you, Mr President.

Osama Bin Laden Is DEAD

I'm not one to celebrate the dead, but considering what happened on September 11, 2001, which not exactly a comedy in three acts with a happy ending, this will come as a form of closure to anyone who in one way or another found their lives turned upside-down by those events, and it comes near the ten-year mark of the fall of the Twin Towers in downtown Manhattan. In short, the man behind those attacks who proudly became the face of global terorrism, Osama Bin Laden, is dead.