I am trying okay

This usually works pretty okay, and I only sometimes need to ask someone to repeat themself.

But on this trip to Hawaii the airplane definitely effected my inner ear and on top of that we’ve been messing around in the ocean so my aural perception is waaaay worse than normal.

Which is why when sitting down to eat tacos with my beloved wife I was absolutely stunned when they handed me a fork and said something outrageous. I ran it through my head a few times in bafflement. I knew my wife wouldn’t say that but it didn’t sound like anything I could imagine them saying while handing me a fork.

After an extremely befuddled moment I asked, “What did you say?”

“I just said you’re welcome?”

I stared at them in further confusion.

“What did you think I said?”

“Here, slut.”

We both devolved into absurd laughter. My wife protested, “I would never say that!”

The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.

So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”

1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.

Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.

Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! He wrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.

BUT

I am not close to the location it’s held, and have chronic fatigue which means I’d need to get up earlier than I’m physically able to in order to attend.

Every time I tell my manager I will try. This time I even decided to skip breakfast and most of my routine to sleep until 6am to get there. She’s very understanding about this and I’m not in trouble.

But every time I am too fucked up to operate a motor vehicle and I have to call out sick for the day. So today I had to call out sick and my whole day gets ruined because I even tried to meet this expectation.