Peter's Place

Last week, I took a trip down to Memphis, Tennessee, right in the heart of what we northerners might call the "Bible Belt." Why would I, an out gay man, take such a trip? Well, for starters, I wasn't alone. Over 90 individuals representing 26 different states in the USA, as well as the District of Columbia, ventured to Memphis for a life-changing journey in order to undergo training in nonviolent civil disobedience so that would would be enabled and empowered to take direct action and raise both the stakes and the spectrum of the fight for equality for all but especially of us LGBTQ folk. The trip and training were sponsored by GetEQUAL , a queer-rights activist group. To be completely honest, I went on the trip for some pretty selfish reasons: I wanted to get away for a few days; I hadn't gone on any sort of trip other than for family matters in nearly a decade; I wanted to see the National Civil Rights Museum and determine how much import they'd given to Bay...

Yesterday, I had my first real experience on the journey into old age, and it wasn't fun. I've not been feeling well for a while now; at the beginning of the month I was having "stomach issues" and I've just generally been feeling pretty run down. Around 7pm yesterday evening, I began experiencing a great amount of pain in my chest, which made it difficult for me to breathe. I wasn't doing anything physical, and hadn't done anything physical in a while. In fact, I was sitting on my bed, as usual, on my laptop computer. I called a few friends to see if I they had any idea of what might be happening, and was able only to get hold of one. She suggested that I go to the emergency room ("ER") right away, as chest pains might be related to the heart. At first, I postponed such action as it didn't feel like my heart, per se. But as the minutes ticked by, the pain became worse, and it became increasingly difficult to breathe. The pain spread ...