Almost Two Months Out

Almost two months out since the death of my dad. 

I miss Dad however, I am alright. Although still sleeping a bit extra, I am pretty much back in the routine of things. I've been blogging, selling my books, [http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/SpikedUp-Frog?store=allproducts&keyword=SpikedUp+Frog]
hanging on social media-- nope, I don't do Facebook (tm)-- exercising and training the dog, and rearranging snow in the yard. And feeding the birds outside, playing with the cats inside, and feeding the indoor frogs. And back to my routine at the gym as well.

I'm not feeling any sort of "hole" from Dad's demise, not wailing as people who have no hope do, not consuming vast quantities of food. Nothing self-destructive. Life is for the living.

I will always remember Dad. 

I'm writing a second novel and some essays. 

The idea that non-theists have no hope of meeting up with dead people in a future after is probably accurate for most of us and definitely accurate for this non-theist. I don't find that thought particularly distressing.

This life is enough.

sapphoq on life

The Atheist and Loss of a Loved One via Death

     1 Thessalonians 4:13 "But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope." KJV

I took the picture of the garden spider, altered it myself on my legally obtained digital photography software, and added the quote from Charles Bukowski. Yes, you may save it to your computer and upload it to any social media of your choosing. If you are a copyright monopolist troll, you are not welcome here so go mentally masturbate somewhere else. No love for you.

     I have hope. It is not formed from the quasi-expectation

 that I will be reunited with Dad in some grand heavenly 

scheme. My hope is not the feeling of certainty that 

accompanies many believers when confronted with the 

suffering and deaths of those near and dear to them.

     My hope is different than that.

     The author of First Thessalonians made an assumption. 

Those of us who are unbelievers mourn heavily in certain 

ways because we don't have the hope of reunion after death

 that Christians have. I have not found any good-enough 

evidence for survival after physical death. I prefer to live 

life as if this is it. Because for me, this is it. Life is 

fantastic. I have not found the need to insert any sort of 

divinity into the formulary.

     My hope is in the application of stem cell research to 

medicine. 

sapphoq on life says: In the course of his Lewy Body 

Dementia, Dad lost a lot. He lost his marriage, his career,

 his money, his friends. 

     It was a privilege to be with Dad during the last years of

his life. Although there were some difficult times, I would

not have missed being with Dad for the world. Dad died

knowing that his life mattered. He certainly made a

difference in my life.

     I lost one person to death. Dad lost everyone. 

Dad

     "I want to buy a car," Dad says. He is sprawled out on his easy chair at the assisted living house, barely able to keep his eyes open. He is tired. His color is ghastly-- like the color of rotting leaves after a heavy rain. I don't even know how he is still alive.

     "It's hard to get anywhere without a car," Dad says.

     I think to myself I don't blame him. If I could, I would have driven both of us out of his current life years ago.

     Dammit.

First Grade

     I was in first grade when Dad showed me some Mexican jumping beans. "There's a small worm inside," he said. We also experimented with magnets. He explained about the north and south pole. There were little magnets and one larger one that had a red handle. There was a cellophane-like "fish" that would rise up from the counter as you stroked it, "face" first to tale. And a white furry critter that did the same. There was also fun with balloons. "Static electricity," he told me as we rubbed them on our pants legs and then stuck them to the wall. We also made static by scuffing across the rug as we walked.

     I went outside once to play with some neighborhood kids. I didn't know them well. They started fighting with acorns. They flung them at each other across the driveway. I didn't like that. I was afraid of getting hurt by the sharp acorn points. So I went back inside.

     Dad has been forgetting more and more about the old stuff. He struggles to recall how old he is. He no longer knows the town he lives in. His brain is stumbling over newer memories. He remembers things from four days back [usually, after a fashion] but not three days back. And certainly not what he had for breakfast.

     Dad's veins in his hands are shriveling. His bones are very prominent, almost skeletal. Even his coloring is off. What used to be a rich olive complexion is now rancid.

     Some days he is aware that he is dying. On other days, I find him planning his escape into a new job, new apartment, old relationship. He can be quite adamant about some land that he thinks he still owns [which was sold off years ago] which he thinks will yield him about three or four thousand dollars to start over. During one of my visits last week, he complained to me vigorously that he had wasted his time by signing up to live [in the adult home]. Today, he was content that a relative had paid him a surprise visit on Friday [but he denied having the visitor return on Saturday].

     A staffer had stopped in today with two little ones in tow. Dad was delighted to see them-- he loves babies-- but they were not delighted to see any of the old folks there. The older one who I took to be around pre-school age hid behind her mother's legs and insisted that she wanted to go say hello to the people in the kitchen only. The toddler demanded carrying and turned her face away from Dad and his housemates.

     Dad insisted upon walking me out. He doesn't walk so much as stagger around. With me holding his hand and a staffer spotting him from behind, he managed an awkward lurch to the front door. He is receiving hospice now. Death is at the back door quietly waiting for him to be done with life. I will miss him forever after he dies.

     ~ sapphoq on life

Silk Flowers

     Dad had to go on a business trip or something, I don't quite remember now. He had a layover in Atlanta and found some silk flowers in one of the gift shops at the airport. 

     They were shades of blue and pink. I loved them and treasured them.

sapphoq on life

Progression

As my dad's Lewey Body Dementia continues its' relentless spiral progression, I feel like his "world" is shrinking.  I have no other words to describe this feeling.  Dad was a world-class traveler.  He went to many places, had an International Driver's License, was familiar with many cultures and customs, knew how to do so many things.  Last week, we took a trip to the cell phone store and the diner and the new Walmart's down the road.  All three businesses were along the same highway, barely five miles from his present adult supervised living house.  Four hours later, Dad was sated from a delicious lunch but also quite tired.  He does not know what county he lives in-- although so far he does know the state-- nor his address. 

Dad got here "too late."  Too late for me to take him to all the places that I know and love.  Too late to go hiking in the woods, to become familiar with the birds that visit my backyard, to even take a road trip to a scenic overlook he had taken me to years ago when I was a young child.  Certainly too late to swim in the local lakes and creeks, to enjoy my half-grown cat retrieving his toy mouse, to go to a local pig roast or ride in the sidecar of a friend's motorcycle.  Too late to discover old foundations and abandoned towns, to explore quaking bogs and deserted farmland, to take the happy well-behaved trained dog for a walk around the neighborhood.  I had longed to do these things with Dad.  He was not interested in visiting or was unable to.  Working six days a week, raising a child in his old age, endeavoring to salvage a stormy marriage all conspired against our getting together "here."  Instead, I visited "there."

When the dementia forced his marital death throes, Dad did make it "here" for a summer and an autumn but then went back to the wife who left him alone for Thanksgiving and divorced him shortly after.  He made it "here" again when his [newly] ex-wife went off on vacations several times and he could no longer be trusted to live in the condo alone for even a week.  [Yet the leased car remained in his possession.  Go figure].  Even during the five months that Dad lived with us several years ago, it was already too late.

Dad was in no shape then to stroll with my dog around the neighborhood or even walk alone in my neighborhood.  He managed a short walk along a paved bike path one day.  He didn't understand my haphazard garden plots.  He did sit on the deck with me once in awhile but was unable to focus on the birds at the feeders nearby.  

When the ex-wife broached the subject of us looking after Dad so she could go on well-deserved vacations, I insisted that the leased car remain "there."  We met at a half-way point and exchanged Dad and his suitcase between us.  When Dad came up this last time "for good," he reluctantly moved from our home into adult supervised living.  My guilt was tremendous.  But I knew that I was not equipped to handle Dad, give him the routine he needed, or the safety he required.

Dad was able to reminisce.  He could recall shared experiences from my childhood, he told stories about his own growing up, he recounted some of his travels.  He is losing the ability to reminisce now.  I noticed it the other day at the local diner.  No, he didn't remember the incident I was talking about.  The blank look clued me into the certain knowledge that he had no idea at all what I was talking about.  Time has become immediate. 

Sunday I celebrated thirty three years of continuous clean time free from the slavery of active drug [including the drug alcohol] addiction.  For the first time in a very long time, I did not tell Dad about this particular anniversary.  I knew that his world had shrunk.  His world no longer includes the stuff of memories.  He is living from moment to moment.  "I want a hot dog" is something he is still able to tell the waitress.  When asked by the waitress if he wants relish, he is able to respond with a negative.  He cannot think about chopped onions on his own.  I think for him, and again he indicates that he does not want them on his hot dog.  

We talk about the weather.  We talk about the new cell phone that he was forced to purchase because "we no longer make batteries" for his six year old cell phone.  Dad is concerned that he won't be able to plug the charging cord into the new one.  [The old cellie had a charging stand].  He says, "This store is too big.  I don't want to shop here," when taken to the new Walmart.  This is the Walmart that he begged to go to.  It is too big.  It is beyond him physically.  The aisles stretch out into infinity.  [No, he will not use the electric get around chair offered by the store].  The stores will have to be smaller now on the rare occasion that he agrees to leave the house.  I can adjust.  It's alright.

Dementias suck.  They make the world smaller.  They wreck havoc with memories and relationships and with life itself.  I know enough to know that I am losing one person by degrees.  Dad is losing everyone.  Dad is losing everything.  Dad is losing time and place.  There is nothing I can do except to be there when he falls.

sapphoq on life 

Dad's Home

     It is very difficult to consider taking away someone's right to self-determination.  I have found that it is necessary in order to keep my dad safe and the community safe from him.  If it was up to Dad, he would get a job and a car and his own apartment.  [Amazingly, he still has a valid driver's license from his home state despite my best efforts otherwise.  I reported him as an impaired driver but they gave him back his license anyway.  He went on to have five car accidents in five months and they allowed him to keep his driver's license...].  Dad is not able to navigate around his neighborhood these days on foot, stay away for anything like four hours at a time, or keep himself safe.  If it was up to my dad, he would not take any medication for anything.  He would go to a dentist but not to any doctors unless he was developing a flu or something like that.  And he would also be treating his growing baldness with an expensive chemical treatment from a bottle.

     To those who were and are able to keep their loved ones at home, all I can say is "Bully for you."  We endeavored to do the same.  But it didn't work out so well.  My housemate was upset because having Dad in residence was like living with two of me.  Dad's politics and obsession with a certain news station were grating to the housemate.  From morning when Dad's pacing woke me up until he went to bed at night, I was his entertainment.  Even in his dementia, he wanted to go, go, go.  He refused any outside help-- he didn't even want a friend "housekeeper" coming in to our home so I could get an hour or two off for errands-- and also refused to even consider any form of day program or respite.  Having to watch that he was taking his pills was also wearing.  Dad did not want to go to his medical appointments either.  I wasn't able to leave for twenty minutes in order to walk the dog without worrying that Dad would let in anyone who knocked on the door.  So no, this wasn't working.  In spite of my best efforts, I could not make it work.  Dad was not and is not tractable.  I have the greatest respect for those who take care of their loved ones in their homes.  Please don't judge me because I wasn't able to.

     The assisted living facility takes Dad to all of his local med appointments, administer his meds, ensure that he is as safe as he possibly can be, shop for his personal needs, provide entertainment and socialization daily, and observe him for any changes in his mood or behavior.  Although Dad can be demanding at times, at least our visits have become social visits.  Dad consistently has indicated that he does not want me to help in his personal care routines.  He accepts help from the attentive and caring staff much easier than he ever did from me.  

     There are some things that Dad is still able to do.  He follows politics and voted in the last election.  He can pick out what he wants to wear.  He can shower and shave.  He can decide whether or not he likes someone.  He can express pleasure and displeasure and worries and joy.  He has opinions.  Here are some things that Dad can no longer do: balance a checkbook, dial a phone number successfully, accurately relay his medical history to medical professionals, recite his current address, cook, play cards, drive safely, reason out a complex problem, write clearly, decide to pay his bills without prompting.  Actually, Dad is resistant to paying any bills except for his rent and his cell phone.  Consequently, he no longer pays his bills.  That is taken care of for him out of necessity.  Dad does not understand why dentists cannot take time payments or that his cable bill and his cell phone bill are two separate bills from two separate companies.  Some days [although the days are fewer and farther in between these days], Dad recognizes that he has dementia-- but he can no longer recall which kind he has-- and he will say that his "brain is failing."  Other days [most days these days], he says he is in excellent health except for his eyesight and that his forgetfulness is just regular "old age."

     There are things about my dad that I wish I had never learned.  There are other things about my dad that I treasure knowing.  I love my dad.  It is difficult to witness, this losing of his self.  I am privileged that I can visit my dad and comfort him [sometimes] and laugh with him and make sure that he is getting his needs met and some of his wants.  Even though Lewey Body Dementia sucks-- all dementias suck-- I would not have missed the experience of having my dad living nearby for the world.  Eating lunch with Dad, sitting on the sunny open-air porch with Dad, hanging out with Dad while listening to some musicians that the house has brought in for entertainment, socializing with Dad and his housemates, spending quality time with Dad-- this is the stuff that memories are made of.  

     There is a new dog living at Dad's house.  The new dog is a joy.  All of Dad's housemates appear to really like the dog.  The dog is willing to be petted but is not demanding of attention, doesn't jump on the furniture, is quiet and doesn't really bark.  The dog's presence has gotten Dad and the others to talk about dogs that they have known and loved.  The dog is an older dog who was not able to tolerate being left alone in his foster home.  Because the dog found a place in assisted living, he was saved from a certain death.  The dog is never alone.  The house is never empty.  In a sense, my dad too was saved from a certain kind of death.  Dad considers the assisted living house to be "home."  After his recent hospitalization, Dad remarked, "It's good to be back home."  Dad is comfortable there.  He is comfortable enough to kick me out.  When he's had enough of visiting, he says to me "It's time you got going."  And I can go now, knowing that my dad is cherished and looked after and that he has other people there all the time.  I hope that Dad will die in his sleep at the assisted living home.  I don't want Dad to have to be transferred to a nursing home.  I'd rather he go to bed one night at the assisted living place and drift off and just not wake up again.  Dad is as happy as he can be in spite of the lesions that are ravishing his brain.

sapphoq on life    

Happy Father's Day

Housemate and I went to pick up Dad for lunch at an Italian Restaurant.  On the way there, Dad spotted the golden arches of a fast-food chain.  He made a comment about getting a hot dog there.  [No, they do not serve hot dogs].

Dad ate half of his entree almost all of a glass of Chianti.  He is medically allowed to have one glass of beer or wine under direct supervision.  He spend most-- if not all-- of his time with us believing that we were in a McDonald's.  He remarked upon the changed decor, the changed menu, the changed prices.  Attempts to orientate him to place failed.  I figured it did not really matter if he told the family that we took him to McDonald's for Father's Day so I let it be.  The important thing was that he enjoyed his time out.

After housemate paid the bill up front, I asked Dad if he wanted a mint.  The mints being served were the little pastel-colored pillow mints that we both enjoy.  He said yes.  While waiting for the car, he wanted a few more.  The nice people at the register nodded.  Dad was happy to have the extras.

There was no mention today of finding his old bank statements or of getting money from headquarters.  I figured this as a temporary reprieve, but one for which I was acutely grateful.  I gave Dad a big hug outside the house.  He staggered up the walk.  One of the staff was waiting for him at the door.

sapphoq on life   

Haircut

Dad called me Saturday night.  He wanted me to bring a turquoise book of papers that are his.  This was what I think he wanted as his speech was a bit mumbled.  Dad asked, "Are you coming before Thursday?  I want to go over some papers with you."

So I looked for the papers which I was pretty sure we didn't have.  I do have his burial suit here, but he took all of his records with him when he moved.

I went to visit this morning.  I told Dad I couldn't find the papers.  "They are on top of the bookshelf in my bedroom," he told me.  I said I would look again.  He went on about these papers for some time.  He said they were copies of statements that he used to have to send to headquarters [when he was working some years back] and he was a top earner.  It occurred to me to ask him what he was going to do with these papers.  "I'm going to take them with me when I apply for jobs," he said without missing a beat.

Dementia sucks.  

He is falling apart physically.  He does not walk.  He lurches.  His short-term memory is failing.  His brain is turning to mush.  And he still wants to work.

He can't work.  He is beyond working and has been medically incapable of working for quite some time now.  Not even volunteer work [which well-meaning people have suggested].

There is a new hair stylist who comes to the house now.  I don't know what happened to the old one.  Dad's haircut looks really nice.  Feathery and not the kind of haircut that is stereotypical of the demented.  So there is that.    

Solemn Memorial Day

Dad was in a parade today.  He got to ride around in a car and wave at the piles of people on the sidewalks spilling out into the streets.  He was very excited about getting to be in the parade today and the smile on his face as I snapped a picture showed it.

It is Memorial Day.  I would be amiss if I did not pause here to remember those who gave their all for us:

Dad loves parades.  He always has.  When I was younger, he took me to my first parade in New York City.  I remember the people and I remember Dad lifting me up and putting me on his shoulders so I could see the marchers.  We went to other parades after that one.  But there is no parade as grand as the first one in my memory.  Dad used to take me to parades.  Now I take him.  [But this parade, I didn't take him.  I took pictures of him in the car with the flag waving to the crowds].

sapphoq on life  

The Overalls

I was living with my dad.  I had gone to the army navy store but I don't remember with who now.  I found a pair of overalls.  They were fairly typical blue jean overalls with the big pockets and the bib.  The straps were blue and white stripes and might have said the name of the company on them.  At any rate I was thrilled.

Dad didn't like them.  There was something in his face that said, "don't mess with this one."  So I didn't.  We agreed that I would wear the overalls when he wasn't home to see them.  This was something that he could live with.  So that is what I did.  I wore them only when Dad wasn't around.

Years later, Dad told me with pride in his voice that he had never owned a pair of jeans.  To him, jeans and overalls reminded him of the Depression.  That association was one that he never broke.

I don't know much about what Dad had to live through during the depression.  I know that the family had chickens [in the small village that they lived in!] and when things got really really bad, the whole family moved to a truck farm.  The chickens and what they grew on the truck farm kept my dad and all of his brothers and sisters from starving.  After the worst was over, the family moved back into the village.

Dad's oldest brother had to quit school to help out with the family grounds-keeping business.  In return for doing that, he was given a car by his dad [my grandfather].  A few years later, he went into the military.  All of the boys followed him when it was their turn.  Two of Dad's brothers became landscapers after their stints in the military were over with.

There are no pictures that I know about still in existence today.  I've got Dad's high school graduation picture.  

sapphoq on life    

Signs

 Dad took me to a professional football game when I was a real little kid.  Two guys in front of us began fighting and dumping beer on each other.  Dad said we were on teevee.

 Dad taught me how to drive.  He had me drive around an empty parking lot first.  "You just wiped out five cars," he'd say as I zig-zagged over the white lines we were using to represent cars and obstacles.  

Dad took me out into the woods.  We saw all the places where George Washington slept.  He sure got around.  Dad taught me how to navigate through the woods and how to observe the stories going on around me.


I don't know why anyone would want the signs.  But yeah, as usual, if you do go ahead.  Right-click to save to your computer...no hot-linking...blah blah blah.  And this should not have to be said, but I took the pictures myself on my cheap [and now apparently outdated] digital camera.  So you copyright trolls, go away now.

sapphoq on life 

A Brown Notebook, A Waterbed

My mother hated my dad.  I saw him on Sundays for eight hours.  He came at 11 a.m.  He was supposed to drop me off at 7 p.m. but as I got older I learned that I could beg to stay longer.  Whatever time he dropped me off, my mother was always waiting.

She kept a notebook in the pantry.  The pantry was actually an old set of steps which originally had led upstairs.  The upstairs door had been blocked off.  And so this set of stairs became the pantry.  My mother kept canned foodstuff there and her brown notebook.  Sometimes, the red telephone wound up in there.  Sometimes, I would sit on the steps while talking on the phone seeking privacy in a house where privacy was non-existent.

The brown notebook was not a three ring binder.  It had a slider.  You slid the two metal rectangular fasteners-- one up and one down-- so the two metal points would stand up and then you could add paper.  My mother had stolen this thing from work.  She stole all of our office supplies from work-- three ring binders, notebooks of various descriptions [but all with plain solid colored covers], pens and pencils imprinted with the name of her company, rulers, pencil sharpeners, staplers.  I never got to go to a store at the beginning of the school year to pick any school supplies out like other kids.  To this day, I love going to office supply stores.  I love the smell of them.  I love picking stuff out there.  I didn't get to do that as a kid.  I knew that stealing was wrong, but there was nothing I could do about it.  So I went off to school with the stolen pens and pencils, notebooks of various descriptions, paper, graph paper, and so on.

As I came through the kitchen door on Sunday evenings, my mother would get out her brown notebook and a blue pen.  She would ask me, "What did you do today?" and then she would write a paragraph in her notebook.  I hated it.  She said it was so she could prove in court that she never kept me from my father.  On the day that I turned twelve, she said, we were going to go to court.  If my father could prove otherwise, I would be forced to go live with him.  I waited anxiously for that birthday to come along.  That morning was a school day.  I asked about court but I was made to go to school.  And even after the day when nothing happened, my mother continued to record my Sunday visits in her notebook.

After wife number two left Dad, Dad and I spent a winter of Sundays watching football in his apartment.  He was too depressed to do anything else.  He managed to rouse himself for Christmas visiting with my aunt and her family.  But otherwise, we would go to the supermarket and pick out two snacks.  Then we would go to his apartment and watch football.  During that winter, when my mother came at me with her hated brown notebook, I made stuff up.  I knew that the truth was dangerous.  So I lied out of a sense of self-preservation and in order to protect my dad from my mother's wrath.  In the spring, Dad was able to rouse himself from his depression and we went back to visiting woods and beaches and historical sites and relatives.

I don't think dad knew about my mother's brown notebook.  I don't remember ever telling him about it.  I don't know what happened to my mother's brown notebook.  If she leaves it to me when she dies, I will throw it out.  Those memories-- of her interrogating me about what my dad and I did on Sundays-- are not ones I want to be reminded of by the possession of an object of my hatred.



After school was finished, I went to live in Baton Rouge.  I had a job there.  My first apartment there I shared with a young woman named Neomosha.  She told me that her name meant "new moon."  It was a very pretty name.  We had a two bedroom apartment.  I had snuck in my cat Dylan.  We weren't allowed pets or "parties."  After moving out, our landlady did not refund any of our deposit because "you had pets and parties in your apartment."  There was a neighborhood cat that Neomosha had nicknamed Fleabag.  We figured that Dylan must have invited Fleabag in through the open kitchen window at times when neither one of us were home, and a few times when we were.

A guy who called himself Bozo lived behind us in a basement apartment of another building.  A Cajun named Villere lived on our right in a back second floor apartment.  One time, Dylan ran up the stairs, into his apartment and to his open air balcony.  She jumped off his balcony and landed on four feet on the ground.

Bozo and Villere were both partyheads.  They were free with their booze and drugs.  They were serious users and were interested in getting high but not in sex.  I could always go visit either one of them and get wasted with them and whoever happened to be around.  One night at Villere's, I got really really drunk and went to lay down on his waterbed.  His waterbed was on the floor with boards around it.  Huge mistake.  I could not extricate myself from it.  Plus, I had the distinct sensation of seasickness.  The thing kept bobbing up and down.  After awhile, I did manage to roll off the thing without puking. 

Bozo hung out with a local band called "The Shit Dogs."  I became a shit puppy, one of their groupies.  The shit puppies would show up during practices and get trashed as the band played in their garage and also got trashed.  The Shit Dogs shared a really cool rambling house.  It was in that house during a block party in a first floor bathroom high on mushrooms-- boiled in grape sugar water-- and marijuana and beer that my fingernails "told me" their names.  They had old-fashioned names like Nathaniel, Benjamin, and Emmy.  Each fingernail had its' own distinct voice.  The mushrooms grew in the cow shit of the Brahman cows that hung out in rented plots along the Mississippi.  We would go there to pick our own right out of the cow shit.  We never had to buy shrooms in Baton Rouge.

Villere was a Cajun born and raised in the swamps.  Through Villere, I got my first introduction to shrimp burgers.  One time, a bunch of us went to a small bayou south of Baton Rouge where someone had an old boat turned into a diner.  Shrimp burgers were a dollar and ten cents, cheaper than hamburgers.  It was really cool sitting on that old boat eating shrimp burgers, surrounded by the Cypress trees and murky swamp water.

To this day, I don't know why people allowed me to visit.  I used all of the drugs in whatever place I was in until the drugs were gone.  I didn't care what drugs.  If you had it, I took it.  When I left, you were cleaned out of drugs.  I rarely brought my own stash to share.  I wasn't into sex when high or drunk.  And I didn't have a winning personality.  'Tis a great mystery.


sapphoq on life says: Oh by the way, all you guys who think you are some kind of Don Juans when you are high or drunk-- you aren't.  The genital and the urinary systems are connected in men to form the genital-urinary system.  That system does not work well when you are wasted.  I never had sex with Bozo or with Villere-- we were all far more interested in listening to "We Are Devo" or other albums and getting blasted-- but the few men I did choose to have sex with while partying, well as I said, your genital-urinary systems failed to live up to anyone's expectations.  Just saying.