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And Other TragediesBy Michael Cain When I was little I remember having a helium filled balloon. I think
it was red. Suddenly seized by the fear my balloon would stop floating
and die, I cried with childish abandon. To my mother’s credit,
she tried nursing the inevitably ailing balloon, tying its string to
a pan of steaming hot water at night when I went to bed — to speed
up the molecules, to keep the balloon warm. It made me feel less sad
when it finally slunk to the floor, having to be put out of its misery
and popped.
I was raised as a Leo. My mom was a Leo, and most people were really
afraid of her. I liked the whole king of the jungle thing. I even had
a key chain, a sunburst lion on one side, the Leo personality particulars
and other nifty stuff (that I never read) on the other. One day, when I was about 9 or 10, we walked into a local jewelry store,
and somehow my mom and the lady behind the counter got on the subject
of birth stones, and the Zodiac signs. I ended up showing her my Leo
key chain. She clucked her tongue, probably ticked I hadn’t gotten
it from her store, then asked, “Sweetie, when were you born?” “August 30, 1972,” I said, loud and proud. It was one of
the few numbers in this world I could remember. The counter lady smiled most wickedly. “Well, you’re not a Leo then.” “What?” Mom and me said at the same time. “Well, see here ... you were born after the cut off date.” She was lying. I could tell. She was just a Lion hater. Mom looked at the fine print dates in question. “Sure enough,” she said, efficiently popping my little red
balloon of our sharing a birth sign. “So what the hell is he?” That was a loaded question if ever I heard one! The counter woman turned and picked a dull metal key chain of much
lesser quality from her own key chain rack and handed it to my mother.
Mom gave it a disinterested glance, then handed it to me. It was a woman, in a long flowing dress, with wheat in her arms. The
back said she was “Virgo, The Virgin.” “Wrap it up.” Mom said before I could object. In less time
than it took to dial long distance I’d gone from being a fearless
lion, king of beasts, to a virgin ... in a dress ... with a bushel of
wheat ... And the “Virgin” thing stuck, like a gypsy curse, till the
overly-ripe-old age of 22.
When I was little, I darted into oncoming traffic, just missing getting
flattened by a Buick. Seconds latter Mama dragged me into Bloor’s
drug store and bought a leather leash and harness set, robin’s
egg blue. One of the Pharmacists still remembers it. He always says
that I never left Mama’s side after “a couple months of being
led around like a dog!” I also remember being sent — often — there with a pocket
full of pennies to purchase generic maxipads for my mother and sister.
Red faced, I’d count out the hundred and thirty nine pennies of
its price. Then, just as red faced, I’d watch as, with a huff of
resentment, the counter girl counted out the pennies again. I was always
wrong by two or three. Then there was the fact that plastic bags were
not around back then, at least not in Wellsville, Ohio. The only bag
choice was paper, and no paper bag was going to hide the gargantuan,
titanic, leviathan of the generic maxipad box. The box huge and white,
the lettering bold and black, no side of the box left unprinted. No
matter how I held it, the word "maxi" or "pad" showed.
I lurched up the street to my house, not looking at anything but the
sidewalk directly in front of me. To this day I think this had an influence on my sexuality. “I’m
queer because of my Mama.” I say. It’s so clear ...
Then there was the gay porno incident of ‘99. I wrote a truly, obscenely bad homoerotic short story. I decided to send it to the usual suspects: Torso, Men ... The New Yorker. So, I took my scrawny, seven-paged manuscript to the pharmacy to copy it off on the self-serve copy machine. Five cents a page was a steal! But, of course, after an exhaustive fifteen copies, collating them
on the spot and stapling them together with the mini stapler in my pocket,
then paying for the copies, I walked out the door and forgot the original
in the machine. I was already home making out solicitation envelopes
when I noticed my egregious error. I ran down to the store, believing
that I could snatch the offensively bad and embarrassing document from
the machine before anyone found out. I was wrong. The woman behind the counter said that she had thrown “that filth”
away and that I should never copy there again. I never did.
Then a couple of years ago I broke out with acne, at the age of thirty.
A dermatologist prescribed little blue pills called Doxycycline. When
the pharmacy girl looked at the prescription and the amount of pills
ordered, she looked at me with shock, then with a knowing grin. “That’s
a big prescription. I hope you feel better.” At home I couldn’t get her words (or the look in her eyes) out
of my head. So I looked up the pill in question in my trusty Medication Dictionary
paperback, a $4.95 Wal-Mart special. There it was in black and white.
Used for some respiratory infections, acne of the face, and Gonorrhea. Gonorrhea!
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