Coming soon

Damn! I sorta got into this substack (I didn't even know what that was until I had one!!).

This is Dennis’s Substack. Like I said above. OK, I’m a WAY out gay man and back in the mid ‘90’s’ I was working as the director of the medical clinic for the Albuquerque branch of HealthCare for the Homeless. After four years I was diagnosed with chronic, persistent Hepatitis B. (I had previously helped found and worked for 7 years with New Mexico AIDS Services). The ‘cure’ was a 6 month course of Alpha Interferon chemo. Self administered shots of 5 million units of that every day - right abdomen, left/ right thigh, left. After four months of that I was so sick (I’d never had any sickness BEFORE the diagnosis) I quit my job and got on my motorcycle (1985 Yamaha maxim 700cc) (RED) took my life savings of $8K, rented my house to my son and his fiance’ for the mortgage payments and set out on a journey that lasted a year and 11 days, 25,000 miles and cured my dis-ease and my need to ‘save the world’ and learned that the world was just fine and so was I.

Since I find myself with this substack, I’ve decided to do what I always wanted to do - which is to publish my journal from that trip. It’s full of a lot of introspection about my own life and the politics of the planet as well as a lot of absolutely delightful and healing sex and learning about how absolutely SAFE I was on this planet, in this body, being outrageously queer and unashamed.

So, as soon as I get my shit together and I figure out how to do this, since you’ve wandered into this, stick around and come back. Hopefully, I’ll start soon. (Assuming I can find my way back here!!!) d

OK, here I go. I’ve posted the first of 12 sections of my motorcycle trip. If anybody finds this substack, tell me what you think. ps: this first part has my experience at a family reunion. The dynamic of that wonderful family has changed dramatically for the better since that description.

"One Queer Journey"

"a work on progressing in progress"

by Dennis Dunnum

It was sunny but really cold when I left about 10 am on Jan. 1, 1995. No fanfare, no one even there to say good-bye. I just left when I was ready - it seemed appropriate. I'd said all my good-byes during the preceding days and weeks; the housesitter wasn't arriving until later; my son and his fiancé weren't moving in for three weeks or so.

I travel really well by myself. Having spent most of my life in a crowd, traveling alone seems a lot less complicated; and some would argue, less fun. I won't argue - since there's no one to argue with (hah!) But, since this is MY vision quest I would rather not have other people's visions or quests getting me confused - a thing easily accomplished. I suspect that's why, traditionally, these adventures have always been solo. In more ways than just the obvious, if only one person takes the trip then that person's perception becomes reality - is reality.

So, this book is my reality over the next year - it all really happened or, in any case, it is my perception of what really happened. I'm not sure there is a difference, although people whose paths I crossed may have perceived that interaction very differently - you'll have to buy their books for that. Nor am I sure whether we merely interpret what is happening as positive or negative or if we, indeed, actually create reality as we go along, positive and negative, both. An interesting thought. I wonder how it would change our lives and the planet if our culture taught us THAT as a truth; maybe our collective reality would be more happy and safe instead of one of strife, conflict and a vale of tears! Unless, of course, that's what one prefers! I must admit, though, that I am consciously perceiving myself as being really cool and vital and learning my lessons in a mostly joyful way - so that's who I expect to be and what I expect will happen!

Anyway, it really was cold, regardless of who created it. The bike (a 1985 Yamaha Maxim - 700 cc, "cruiser" style and RED!) was pretty overloaded - the front wheel shuddered dangerously if I nudged it at low speeds - too much weight on the back. I almost turned back to fix it after the first scary mile but couldn't make myself do it. When I got on the highway the bike got a lot less squirrel-ly - as one friend pointed out many miles later, "there is nothing more stable than a moving motorcycle". This is true! What you've got is two fairly heavy gyroscopes spinning in unison, absolutely resisting going any other direction other than the one it is going in (much like many people I know!)

MOTORCYCLE FACT: People who don't ride cycles find it difficult to comprehend that, in order to turn a bike, say, to the left you have to move the handlebars like you were actually turning right. Paradoxical magic! Actually, it's more about the fact that the turning is done by riding on the sidewall of the tire - not turning the tire itself - like any two-wheeler - you try to turn to the right and you start tipping over to the left; the tire rides on the sidewall and 'voila', you turn left - you have to be tipped to turn (yeah, I know people like that, too).

At any rate, I was on the move, leaving my "normal" (open to discussion) life behind, casting off the ties to security, familiarity and ennui - and I was freezing.

Perhaps it was because of the long period of inactivity during my five month chemo treatment for Hepatitis B that lowered my resistance to the cold but by the time I got to Socorro, ninety miles from the start, I was very, very, VERY cold. I had planned to stop for lunch and hot coffee at a friend's house but as my brain defrosted I decided that there was more to this journey than covering distance. I graciously submitted to his ministrations that warmed my body, soul and libido. Two days later all my molecules were back in motion and, while not exactly rested, I was eager and ready to get back on the road.

I asked at the gas station in Socorro about the road stretching directly west over the mountains. Fortunately, there was a trucker in there paying for his gas who said there were 2 inches of snow on the ground at the top when he came through several hours earlier. Heading straight south and down (altitudinally speaking) was clearly the wisest and safest option - but I took it anyway, mostly because it also promised to be the warmest. I am always amazed at how one can be so warm and so quickly get so cold again. It wasn't as quick or as cold as the first day but that was then and this was now and I was not pleased.

It was after many more chilly miles than I want to admit that I remembered (duh!) that I had bought some "instant heat" packs at Wal-Mart. I pulled over at a rest stop and opened eight of these magic little pouches. I put them on my knees, on top of my toes and two in each mitten. It is so comforting to be able to access warmth from something outside yourself. The time-honored ploy of putting your hands in your armpits may be great for your hands but sooner or later your armpits are going to get resentful. (This is also not an easy position to get into on a bike!) Having these wonderful little things warming my body was almost as good as sex (which is also not easy on a bike). I could finally relax a little and start enjoying the scenery. I made about 150 miles, as far as Deming. It was kind of fun trying to dodge the rainstorms. There were actually only a limited number of options since I thought it best I stay on the road. I could go faster or slower or take this highway or that. I wound up taking the "shortcut" through Hatch (famous for its fabulous green chile) down to Deming and actually did miss a lot of what looked like nasty (nastier) weather down Las Cruces way.

I stay at a really inexpensive but clean motel on one of the back streets. Many of these old and somewhat shabby establishments have been bought by East Indians or folks from the middle East after they'd been abandoned by their former owners who couldn't make the transition from mainstream to freeway backwater. I assiduously avoid the ones that say "American owned"; it usually means "white owned" and cost more.

Wednesday dawns bright and chilly but as the day progresses it gets cloudier and warmer (relatively). I arrive in Chandler, Arizona toward evening, just before it begins raining again. My old friend Roger (Urban Coyote) is ensconced here with his roommate, Bruce, in a very middle-class neighborhood. All life, however, is focused and turned inward as manifest by the shades that pull from the bottom up in the rooms that face the front - you can see the sky and forget that there are neighbors on the earth around you. The streets are spookily empty except for the occasional child who doesn't know any better or has run out of things to do in the back yard. For us adults, however, the back yard is a refuge - pool, hot tub, ceremonial circle and gracious comfortable furniture under the 12 foot deep porch that runs the whole length of the house. Bruce (and Roger) are truly living with AIDS. Roger, like many men I know has learned how to work the system so that he has more income now in disabled retirement than he had when he was working. I have to acknowledge a twinge of jealousy (or envy - I never remember the difference); I look at that feeling and let it flow through. My life is so totally different from his that there is really no comparison (or judgment). There is simply no way I could have or ever will be able to put something like this together for myself and still do what is MY journey. My life is about risk and adventure and excitement and motion. Although it's great to have friends like Roger to play with and share their nests with, gathering this kind of comfortable moss is not in the cards for this stone. (rolling stone, moss - get it? - it's early in the book and I'm not going to keep giving you hints like this so pay attention!) I guess some would (some have) said it's irresponsible of me to not plan for my future. Maybe it is; I really don't know what will happen when I'm too old or feeble-minded to make money - die, I guess, that's what most people on the planet do. But, I'll worry about that then.

Bruce was diagnosed with AIDS 3 years ago and is consuming enormous amounts of chemicals all day long (even pumping them in through the night at times) in a valiant effort to continue living. He smiles a lot, walks slowly and deliberately; a fragile shell housing a weak but precious light. It rains all day Thursday. I watch with amazement as Bruce loads up two trays with six or seven compartments for each day with drugs of all colors and shapes. It reminds me of the penny candy store across from Mother of Good Counsel Grade School. This finished, he loads a battery-powered pump with a viscous white nutrient mix and plugs it into the tube that leads into a vein in his arm. He hangs the pump over his shoulder, checks the seal on the bag connected to the drain from his intestines and we all go out to eat to an Italian restaurant. I am self-consciously aware of the contrast between my frenetic, passionate energy and Bruce's calm intensity. I am wallowing and squirming in life as children are wont to do while he exists only by his own careful, conscious intent. Bruce is some 12 years younger than I. We giggle at the sounds coming from the colostomy bag - I want to scream.

The next morning I'm on the bike and ready to back out the driveway when Roger asks if I have checked the oil and tire pressure (this relative to a conversation we had the night before - Roger has biked a lot and he said this should be done each morning - I agreed intellectually). Of course, I hadn't. To please him and appear to be the cool, Zen biker I want to be I got off and dragged out the gauge. The oil was fine - but discovered the rear tire had only 15 lbs of pressure. Further checking revealed a nail. Thank you, Roger; thank you, mother universe. I am continually grateful to the powers-that-be for delivering lessons such as these so gently. I will not forget this one, either.

It takes about 2 hours to get it fixed. I didn't realize how much it costs to fix a flat on a motorcycle - $32 - because it's such a big deal to disconnect the gears, etc, on the back wheel. The trip from Phoenix to Hesperia, California was wild! It was almost all on the freeways at 80 to 90 mph. To escape from a ferocious 30-50 mph headwind I would tailgate eighteen wheelers for as long as my conscience would allow. I realize it's hard on the trucker to know I'm back there but too close to see. It really is a rush to be 10 feet away from something that big going that fast. It sure does take the pressure of the wind off, though. Almost like getting sucked along - no, exactly like getting sucked along! It's times like this when I wonder what, exactly, I am doing in my life! Not what I'm doing but how I'm doing it! I've just traded the stress of being a non-profit administrator for this kind of laid back travel? Which should I fear more, losing program funding or being scraped off the rear door of an ICX Freightliner? Is there a pattern here I should be concerned about? Maybe the rest of this trip will help answer some of these questions!

The canyon from Palm Springs and San Bernardino is unbelievable! The wind is from the left so strong that I have to lean the bike into it to keep from being blown off the road. It sometimes feels like if the gods of gravity notice the position I'm in it will be all over. Every now and then there is an abrupt lull that results in the bike suddenly shooting off in the direction the wind was coming from. I try to keep myself in the open and moving slightly faster than everyone else on the road. This avoids having other vehicles sneak up from behind to occupy the spaces to my right and left that I may suddenly find myself getting sucked or blown into. It occurs to me that, while blowing and sucking are usually considered to be two separate actions, if one is being blown constantly (an interesting concept on its own!) that sucking can be merely the absence of blowing and, conversely, that one can feel blown with the sudden cessation of suction. (You begin to get a sense of what goes through one's mind after many hours on a motorcycle!) This is very exciting; I'm not sure people my age should get this excited unless we're lying down. I'm very much aware of how fast I'm going. I really do want to slow down but the need to get to Hesperia and my family reunion there is a magnet that is pulling me. I'm wondering if merely having a destination automatically diminishes the enjoyment of getting there.

(The following paragraphs concerning my birth family are a period piece - things have changed dramatically and for the more loving since I wrote this. I leave it in because it was important and true at the time - not to mention it is a large part of my own unresolved angst and anger.)

The Dunnum Family Reunion - second in a short series. This is a very strange event. It's the first time the family has tried to get together in the two and a half years since my mom died. She had planned the first reunion for a year and a half to make sure we would all be there. She died a week later - sometimes we know more than we think we do; a good reason to go with your instincts. We're mostly all here but there doesn't seem to be a focus; I guess Mom served that purpose. I doubt there is anyone else in the family who can fill that role. I'm sleeping in the back yard in a camper van my sister borrowed from her in-laws. I'm realizing that I've never even met any of my brother's or sisters' extended families. Sue's seems the oddest but I don't know why I say that - maybe because the high desert of California seems the most foreign from our Midwestern incubator. There is a pervasive christianity here - but a pinchy kind - I guess when most people refer to christian values they are thinking about love and caring. That maybe works if you're a christian yourself but if you're not - and especially if you're born queer - those values look more like hate and exclusion. That is largely what is keeping our family from coalescing. Three of us kids have turned out to be the people our parents warned us about - sadly, we knew we were, somehow, those people even as they were warning us. That probably explains why we have either laid our native Catholicism aside or stomped it as deep into the ground as we can. I, personally, have rolled a very heavy rock on top of mine after putting a stake through its heart and cutting its head off. But I'm not bitter or anything. In their turn, my two other sisters have become our parents and must counter our possible effect on their own children. So we ignore each other as much as possible and try keep the illusion of 'family' uncomplicated by reality.

If you get up on my sister's roof, squint your eyes and use your imagination you can see a faint hint of the famed "Palmdale Bulge" off to the northwest. It's a huge section of land that is slowly swelling amidst all the fault lines and rifts of Central California - an earth zit that for all the subtlety of rising only an inch or two a year suggests the building of enormous pressures underneath. I find it strangely symbolic of our family because, like our family, no one in California acknowledges that there is a problem - if they did, they'd have to deal with it. Have you ever seen an earth zit pop?

I think most people will understand when I say I love my family; I just do not like some of them and they don't particularly like me. If we were to meet as strangers I don't think we would even bother to engage each other in conversation much less become friends. So, we have a very strange relationship. We get together infrequently - funerals and, doubtfully, weddings. We can wax nostalgic for a period of time and genuinely enjoy what we had when we could still pretend to be who we thought we should be. But then we quickly run out of stuff to talk about - anything of substance needs be avoided because we have grown so far apart that we quickly expose ourselves to archetypes of who and what our culture, religion or experience has taught us to dislike and, sadly, to fear.

I remember making a joke about how pitiful it was that Clinton fired Jocelyn Elders as Surgeon General for using the M... word. It fell absolutely flat - even as rabid Republicans, my family had to praise him for that; masturbation is not a fit topic for the nation's head doctor to broach. There was a re-affirmation of our bond when my littlest sister (herself a proud and "out' lesbian) arrived the following day and made a similar comment on the same subject to be met by the same silence.

I still do yearn for real family values of unconditional love and acceptance. In 'primitive' societies, it seems, even the insane were cared for and a place and role allowed for all; the term, "village idiot", is familiar to all of us. These were actual people who were pretty out of it but the town sort of took care of them and allowed them to rant and rave, even gleaning some savage wisdom at times. Today we throw them in jail if they somehow get out of the decaying centers of our cities and wander into the quiet empty streets of the middle class. If we encounter them on our way through the city, we keep our windows rolled up and our eyes straight ahead because they don’t exist if we don't look at them. I know - I used to do it - but now there aren't any windows on my motorcycle.

It seems that once we became civilized, we've begrudgingly had to legislate even minimal tolerance for the old, sick, disabled and differently colored. We haven't even begun to consider allowances for the just plain "different", especially for those that seem to be happy being that way. Against this background the Dunnum family cavorts in the high California Desert for a very long and very wet week. To avoid confrontation, most of the week is spent eating, drinking and playing cards. Unfortunately, for me, the one card game I enjoy, the colloquial "Sheepshead", falls by the wayside because there are so many of us and the younger generation, having grown up outside of Milwaukee, have never learned the intricacies of this marvelous game. The group opts for dealer's choice poker-type games with 8 or 9 people. A chaotic revelry of 5 card draw followed by seven card stud with 8's wild unless there's a red jack showing then it changes to 4's wild unless....you get the picture. I opt out and write in my journal about how I feel about my family and read and anticipate my journey which, although I've left home, I don't feel that I have begun yet.

On Monday, surprise - it's grey and raining! - so we decide to go skiing. A bunch of us pile in my brother-in-law's van after emptying my sister's closets of anything that fit. Why would any one bring warm clothes - we were going to California! I had warm clothes but leather doesn't work real well in the snow and rain. We modeled family closeness and shared warmth as we drove the 40 miles to the ski area.

We stood at the foot of the chair lifts and peered through the heavy mist for a sign that higher up the drops might be congealing. We decided to take a chance - the alternative was a heady game of Barstow Showdown with 4's wild unless you have an Ace. It actually turns out to be one of the most enjoyable events of the reunion. I hadn't been skiing in 24 years, mostly for economic reasons. I had been on the volunteer National Ski Patrol in Santa Fe back then so I could ski free; but when the owners decided they needed a patrol they could control they went 'professional' and that was the end of my sport.

I actually learned how to ski the way I've learned most everything in my life - by diving in with no way out except figuring it out or dying. Often death seemed the better alternative except, since I could never figure a way of having it look graceful or heroic, I always kept going. I was in college in Las Vegas, NM, in the 60's hanging out on the weekends with several of the crazed priests of Northern New Mexico who were either alcoholic, brown berets, or just plain crazy (one ripped out the wall of his rectory after starting the engine of his nearly completed gyrocopter in the living room without balancing the rotor shafts).

Anyway!, I had gone skiing with this bunch and had spent my requisite first day on the bunny slope at Sipapu (a sipapu is the ceremonial hole in a kiva symbolizing the place where the first native people came up from the underworld - it took clever white folks to name a mountain after it). The next day we went to Taos Ski Valley which, I later learned, is in a whole different league. As I watched all my role models climb on the chair lifts I decided that I, too, was ready for the big-kid stuff. I carefully watched how others negotiated getting on the chair and felt an unmitigated pride of accomplishment as I was swept up, skis airborne and my butt firmly planted on this park bench on a stick.

It was a heady ride to the top, skiers schussing down below, the trees becoming increasingly surreal until at the top they were phantasmagorical snow creatures stream-lined uphill by the fierce prevailing wind. I noticed these mostly in the very busy 5 seconds between the time my skis touched the top of the mountain and my eyes submerged into the snow mound wisely placed to keep fools like me from continuing our forward momentum over the other side, precipitating great inconvenience and expense in recovering our bodies.

Now, I'm one of those people who chooses never to appear uncool by asking silly tourist-type questions. We'd rather risk looking really, really stupid later begging for help getting out of the ridiculous situations we've gotten into. I, therefore, assumed that the safest and least-likely-for-me-to-get-lost-on trail was the one right under the chair lift. I realized pretty quickly that I was at least half right; I wasn't going to get lost with everyone coming up the mountain watching me. As for safety, I was to learn later that this was "Al's Run" featured in Life magazine a few years later as one of the top ten most challenging runs in the world. It consisted of a series of cliffs with ledges wide enough for maybe three skis (not skiers, skis!) so steep that skiers two ledges down were out of sight. Once on it there was no way off except down. I knew I would die here - my only hope was that one of my priest companions would reach me in time to give me the last rites.

I skied from one side of the run to the other, stopped, did a kick turn (silently blessing the person who taught me that), posed a while, trying for a studied nonchalance for the benefit of the silent audience gliding by overhead. When my legs stopped shaking I would sideslip (fall) down to the next ledge and repeat the process. I had the unsettling feeling that if I ever lost control and got going too fast that, although a tree or another skier might stop my body, my soul would hurtle all the way to the ski lodge and I would spend eternity wandering aimlessly among tasteless Texans with matching outfits, great tans and perfect teeth.

Three pain and terror-filled hours later I was sipping mulled wine on the deck. Now, normal humans would have learned the lesson of caution and the wisdom of not pushing your limits. I, on the other hand, having had my friends notice me (fortunately while doing the nonchalant bit) on their way up the mountain and being mightily impressed with the fact that I actually survived Al's Run on my second day on skis, fear that I learned something quite different. Perhaps the most juvenile (which is not necessarily 'bad') aspect I learned was that risk-taking gets you a lot of attention (assuming you survive - and probably even if you don't). I mean, I didn't have to buy a drink all night - I was "the man". A more important lesson, however, and more lasting, was that it made a great story!

Ursula LeGuin said in one of her works, "Stories are our boats for sailing on the river of Time." If you think about that, it's true - not to mention, deep. We can play in the forests of early America with Hawthorne or go back to Victorian England with Dickens or on more familiar ground, know how our grandparents lived or what our kids did at school this morning because of their stories. If you have no events in your past memorable enough to recount, how can you be sure you were really there or why would you care if you were or not! I feel sad for folks who have no stories.