Dlove�s party was� fucking great. Birthday boy and a few thousand of his closest friends (I may be elaborating on the number there) partied our ASSES off Friday night. What great energy. Faces I haven�t seen in YEARS and hot new meat, steamed to perfection and ready to eat. No, I�m not talking about food, just a whole shitload of gorgeous people. And some cute boys I just couldn�t seem to take my eyes off all night. Mm, mm good. Fire twirling (thanks to Dlove�s hot mama-baby-cakes), dancing, drinking, drugging, you name it. It was there.

Oh, little job update from earlier in the day yesterday! I�m not going to go into detail, but to sum it up, partners and lawyers in the firm I started at (hired for a filing/auditing project) had a meeting about ME! Fighting over which one of them would get to have me as an assistant. The managing partner from Long Island won at the end of the day. I have a job! God, the relief, the confidence, the invincibility! Okay, I wouldn�t go that far. But I feel pretty good about it, and I�m so excited to rise to the challenges presented to me based on the cases I�ve been exposed to. Wow. Speaking of this, there�s something I wanted to touch on from my experience there last week, but just couldn�t find the words. I�ll try.

My first two days, my job was to call old people who are sick for a particular case (I can�t give out details anymore, signed that confidentiality thing). The point is, I spoke with at least 40 people. All old, all sick. All men who had worked very hard, labor work, their entire lives, and now are sick because of something they worked with. Something the companies KNEW were unhealthy, but kept at the sites. But it�s not the case I want to mention, it�s the conversations I�ve had. A woman described to me how they taught her to wash the dishes from her wheelchair. She was ecstatic, I must have talked to her for 15 minutes about it. A man who had just come off a respirator asked me, �If I die in the next two weeks, does my wife get compensation? It�s her I�m worried about.� Just to hear her gruff and stern voice in the background, �Cut that out, Chuck, you�re not going anywhere, you�re just fine.�

But when she took the phone back, she did tell me that he sounded good on the phone, but couldn�t move from the bed, and that she wasn�t concerned with compensation, because she was sure they were going to be able to drain that excess blood. Men who worked for 40 years, hard labor, the backbone of our country, good, respectable, family men. And I felt reverence, I felt pity, I felt compassion, I felt respect and admiration, I felt like I could stay on that phone into the evening, just because most of them said, �Oh, don�t worry about taking MY time, I�ve got nothing BUT time!� It made me not want to be old. It also made me think very hard about the elderly around me and the lives they�ve been through. I felt guilty for feeling bad for them. For feeling as if all they want is someone to talk to and listen to their stories, understand their life situations, and I�m not even talking about their lawsuit.

Most of them didn�t give a shit about compensation this late in life. They just wanted to TALK. And a part of me felt honored and special to be an outlet for them, if only for brief moments. But then the guilt again as I wondered if I sounded patronizing instead of concerned, could they tell in my voice just how much I wanted to keep listening? Was I listening for them? Or for me? It�s been on my mind a lot this week. My father and I have this constant argument about the motives for good will. He asks me on occasion if he�s just helping sick children with Make-a-Wish because it makes HIM feel good or because he really cares about the children. I don�t know why this seemed so important to us, to know our intent. Is it recognition we sought in doing good? To tell the story later and have someone say, �You�re such a GREAT person!�? And if we get something out of giving, isn�t that all supposed to be part of giving? Don�t we give because it just feels good? Or are we giving because somewhere in our minds, we believe the reward for ourselves will be just as good?

Halcyon put it quite eloquently when we were on the phone the other day. He said I was a good friend, and I immediately tried to deny it, said, �I really hate people, and I just do things because I know it will benefit me.� A joke based on my worst fear. But then he said, �I don�t care WHY you do good things. It�s DOING good things that matters.�

Oh. Thank you, John. I can�t wait to update you all on my new work as it unfolds, and my feelings as they unfold along with it. My new relationships as I reach out and feel like dating again, as I adjust into this new phase in my life. All of it. Thanks for giving two shits about it, about what goes on with me. It�s so much more fun to share when I believe someone�s listening. Or reading. Kind of like those old people. Maybe that�s why it gets me so much.

-Barbarella

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