The Island of Dr. Mirones

Throughout my entire life, I have struggled with the concept of truth in nature. I am required to exist in a black and white world. The shades of gray that compile the wide psychological spectrum of my reality are endless. I have constantly found myself trying to subdue these shades of gray, to adhere to the norm. I vividly remember a time when it wasn’t only me, but my entire family that did not fit in. The 12th St. riots of 1967 put my family in a place they had never been before. I remember that oppressively warm July morning, when Jimmy Fioretos called my father. Jumping out of bed, Milton barely had time to put all of his clothes on. I remember running into my father’s room that morning. My mother was up earlier than usual, and I could tell there was quite a fuss. Milton was digging around in his dresser, trying to find the gun that Lefty had given him years earlier. It was a big old thing, I remembered only seeing it one other time. He grabbed the gun and ran out the door, and we were hurried up into the attic. I remember Mom packing a baloney sandwich for Dad that day. She slapped that mayonnaise on that bread faster than I had ever seen before! I know I was only seven years old at the time, wait, seven and a half, but I remember this so clearly.

After two days of waiting in that attic, I decided to leave. Looking back on it, I can’t believe I did that. I guess you can attribute it to a child’s curiosity, but anyone who ran out into the street on that hot summer day was a fool. As my bike wobbled down to the family restaurant, I began to get worried. The riots looked awfully bad on TV, who knows how bad they would look in person. My dad always told me that things were always actually bigger than they looked on TV. In response I would always tell him that was completely reasonable. After all, how were real people going to fit in that little box? My fears multiplied as I got to within about a quarter mile of the restaurant. I decided it would be safer to go the back way into the restaurant, maybe there was no shooting there. Gliding my hospital pink Schwinn between the stacks of empty boxes and overflowing trashcans, I came on the back door of the renovated Zebra Room. I liked it more before the renovation, and even through all the chaos of the current day, I could vividly picture what the place used to look like. Soft lamps overhanging groups of bar stools, seemingly huddled around the rickety tables. The white and black stripes of an apparently enormous zebra wrapped its way around the room. Not anymore though. Before the fire, the place was all leather and “American” like my dad used to say. We had conformed to what the people wanted, and our business was more successful.

Forgive my digression. The last thing I remember about that July day was when my father ran out of the back of the restaurant, screaming and wild eyed. He looked like a crazed man, like he had just seen a ghost. It wasn’t a type of fear that might creep over me in the middle of the night, as I wondered about the creaking in my closet. It was a type of shaking fear, as if his whole soul had been squished and turned upside down, as if the black had been sucked from his pupils. I remember hysterically crying, but I remember the look on my father’s eyes even more.

The type of fear my father felt that day as he ran out of the burning family business is almost identical to the way I felt throughout my entire childhood. My father was suddenly alone. The patrons who used to frequent the restaurant had suddenly turned on him. His whole way of life had been turned upside down. Everything that he had known was destroyed to the core. After a stint in the Korean War, he had come home to a life that he was going to be very comfortable with. He had an established identity within the community, and made friends with people who accepted him as one of the best restaurateurs in the area. When the riots came, that identity was destroyed. He couldn’t go back to his store if he wanted to. I felt the same way. There was nowhere that I could go if I wanted to. My entire life, I struggled with being out of place. It wasn’t like nobody understood me, it was just as if there wasn’t a problem. I was subconsciously denying my status regarding the 5-alpha-reductase-deficiency. I had created an identity that I could physically not adhere to. Milton was the same way. Suddenly, he had created an identity that was impossible to live. I was doing the same thing, acting like a girl when I really wasn’t. I was trapped with no way out, largely because of what I had done to myself. It wasn’t even me, though, dear reader! I had no part in the way I was raised. My parents taught me to be a girl, so I quickly became one. America taught my father to work hard and become a restaurateur, and he did. As both of our identities were ripped away from us, we crumbled under the pressure (even though we both got right back up).

So, now you may ask, what is natural? To me, natural is something that you create for yourself. My Greek ancestors were heavily concerned with fate, and they might even say my deficiency is fate. Brought on by the “unnatural” joining of a brother and sister, I jumped out of that womb kicking and screaming, ready for the world. It was up to me to make that incestual relationship natural. Just because someone shoves me out of the way, telling me I’m not natural doesn’t mean I’m going to skip town (like I did when I ran to San Francisco). I believe that natural is what you make of it. Sure, the joining of my grandparents was not natural; but we made it work. I consider myself a successful person, regardless of my sexual status. I have created an identity that is inherently natural to me. Maybe it is not natural to you, but the process of self-identification that I went through made me more natural than you will ever be. In struggling with who I was, I became much more in touch with my spiritual side. I learned a lot about the world and consider myself much more natural than many of my colleagues. I have to cut this blog short, Julie and I have to catch a show in downtown Berlin.

Until next time,
Cal