DANGER: Sentimental Retrospective

"I saw my life this morning,
lying at the bottom of a drawer.
All this stuff I'm saving,
God knows what this junk is for."

I'm a pack rat. I admit it. Every six months or so I grab something I desperately need out of the back of the closet, and can therefore justify saving an inordinate amount of crap for another year. Or until I move.

Before the hot Latin boys came to pack up my stuff, I went through most of it trying to throw things away. Overall, I think I did pretty well. Three garbage bags full of clothes are not going to San Diego with me.


I also managed to move into the 21st century with my journals. Doctors used to save their journals, and when they got a senior university job the department would pay to have them bound. Now, it's just a pain in the ass to save them, and they're all on line. So I ditched about 4 years worth of medical journals, too. (I ended up keeping the Gourmets.)


I also had to dig through my closet. Even though I came out of it in Atlanta, there's still plenty of crap in it. Some of it didn't make the cut for the San Diego trip.


"I saw you this morning,
you were looking straight at me,
from an ancient photograph
stuck between some letters and some keys"

I also went through my files -- even the one marked "random sentimental stuff". Mixed in with the hundreds of blond jokes and the medical school lecture run through the "jive filter", I found this, possibly my favorite picture of me ever taken:


The little creature in my arms is my oldest niece. My sister-in-law took shot this in 1997, and used it in a calendar that had a different picture of my niece every month. All of my brother's gay friends called me "Mr. May" for quite a while. Unfortunately, I was still seeing women and they were in Boston, so nothing much ever came of it.

Running a close second is this picture of me, with quite possibly the hottest woman who ever wanted to sleep with me. She worked with/for me in the lab, so I never let it happen, and it was a messy friendship at times. But she was a class act, and stayed friends with me right through my coming out. Sadly, I haven't talked to her in years.


Our last stop on memory lane comes from my colleagues at Emory. They had me pegged as a rabble rouser from the beginning, and gave me this award during my MD/PhD training. I try to live up to it.



To sum up my packing day:

"I was lost, for a moment,
in the ache of old goodbyes.
Sometimes all that we can know is
there's no such thing as no regrets,
baby it's all right."

I realize I never gave the answer to the last musical quiz. "I Have Found Me a Home" is a Jimmy Buffett song. I fully expect him to rise back to the top of my CD rack as I bask in the warm weather and sunshine in San Diego.

All of the quotes in this post are from the same song. Any takers?