What is up With Doc?

Current mood: grateful

You must know by now, where you meet the best of your friends. You meet great friends at school, often life long friends. You meet good friends at work, sometimes you’ll even know these people for a year or two after you quit that damn assed job… Outside of that, unless of course you’re the church going type, the best friends you meet will be the peoples you meet at your local bar [or simply your local in my world].

I have and have always had a number of “locals”. Matter of fact, and this is already a future hummm in progress, fact is, I always have at least four or five locals on the go at any given time… heck, the other day, I realized I had become a regular at a bar at 23rd and 1st, O’Connels, only because it’s right near the NYU Dental Center, and doink, I’m there once a week, I have a Local for my trips to the Dentist... [free shot of Jamison when I pop in post-op with a face swollen and stuffed with cotton]. I digress, the story of all my locals is on the burner, keep your eyes and ears posted… I promise a serious slew of twisted tales… BUT, wait, this little ditty isnt about locals, it is about one of my most favorite Irish/Bostonian dude-guys [thanks Wade], Doc.

The place I call my Manhattan local is a place called the Swan. OK, here’s the thing, it’s been my Manhattan local for over six years now. The x introduced me to the place mere moments after I met her. I’ve been hitting the German taps at the Swan since, since well, over a year before I moved here. A local is a place you frequent, I frequent the Swan less and less these days, I mean, it’s not twice a week like it once was… I frequent the Swan now… primarily to see Doc.

Doc’s is an older gentleman [the term gentleman survives today only to describe gentlemen like Doc], he’s older, I believe he’s 69.

Let’s get these facts out of the way; Doc is 69 he’s a Vietnam Vet, he has been awarded both a Purple Heart AND a Bronze Star [more on that later. For my Canadian, and now Italian friends, the Bronze Star is the third highest decoration one can achieve in US military service]… He’s a Vet, he’s a retired NYC plastic Surgeon, he’s gay, AND he is the best damned Republican I have ever had the pleasure to meet.

Doc and I struck up a conversation long before nine eleven… Doc and I became good friends on the basis of my complete non-homophobic ability to kiss him on the lips every time I saw him, and our ability to carry on a conversation that went way beyond the limits of Rush Limbaugh into the nether worlds where Doc and I would meet on the great plains of democratic [non-partisan democratic mind you] enlightenment. Doc is a true American argument… I mean, c’mon, he’s not only gay, a decorated Vietnam Vet, a Republican, he’s also from the Land of the evil, cursed family that tried to hoodwink this country into the belief that booze running flaming wackos… ooops, sorry, Doc is from Massacheustis [the place I cannot not only not pronounce, but cannot spell].

The brief history of Doc as I have managed to glean from those rare moments he’ll talk about himself… He was born to middleclass Irish folk up in Boston, AND he has the accent to prove it. Haven’t heard much of his childhood story, but some how he got himself through med-school. It was back in the sixties, he somehow knew, he’d have to serve; an old prof who was stationed at some camp down in South Carolina, got him assigned down there, but when that sheltered assignment was up… he requested to go to Nam [he had the opportunity to do Germany, but he REQUESTED to go to Nam].

He honestly hasn’t told me much about being a warrior/doctor. He’s mentioned that he saw action, a lot of action. He once told me a weird drunken story about this cove he’d often swim in and how he rescued a small child from the currents and the sharks, how he stitched up this boy after the boy had been bitten. He has yet to, but we have an agreement that he will one day tell me how he was awarded his Bronze Star. It is a story, a date, I am very much looking forward to.

It gets a bit sketchy, but he returned from Nam… and skippity-skip-to-lou a whole whack of stories I have yet to hear later, he became a renowned plastic surgeon in the one place outside of L.A. where plastic surgeons are regarded as absolute gods, NYC. Again it’s sketchy, but I can tell you this by seeing his old apartment, he was living the 1960’s / 1970’s Halston lifestyle…

Sidebar, Halston was the King of NYC in the late 60’s early 70’s, his fashions and scents put him leap frog years above that silly white haired boy who had a loft he called a factory down in the heroin ridden scum town they called… Art. Nope ladies, Halston was NYC in the 60’s and 70’s AND Doc’s old apartment stank of Halston… mirrored walls, zebra print bed sheets, red shag carpets and 100’s of thousand little glass figurines… every where. Not to mention two cute as doodles little doggie dogs who survive to this day at 16 and 18 years of age.

Doc has told me stories of being pulled over by cops in Toronto while breaking red lights in his big old solid gold Roles Royce… He 'Falls' with his pal Trudy [heir to the scientist who invented no more tears and sold it to Johnson and Johnson], he 'Falls' with Trudy at Villa Desta [along with Donettelo et al]… he’s a once a year Winter regular guest at the Bermuda Beach Club… He has introduced me to friends, good friends, who own restaurant chains who get chauffeured around town in classic, 70’s era stretch Mercedes Benz limos. He has told me all these stories, and, the way he has told them, I have never once felt belittled, or subrogated to another class. Doc, my good dear friend, knows the value of friendship… I will leave it at that.

Actually, no maybe I won’t… Here’s a story of good friendship. Last Christmas as I was, in a forgetable state, Doc gave me the greatest compliment a friend could give… I had a whole big whakin’ pile of problems on my plate… I wandered into the Swan and went through them with Doc… Gordon, he said, you don’t need to go to your AA meetings… you don’t have a problem, he said, you just have to do what I do and take a month off whenever you’re feeling out of control… Gordon, he said, go to the NYU Dental center [across from the VET] on first Ave, they’re cheap and they will fix those problems in your mouth… Gordon he said, you and Jen will remain good friends… and, you’ll meet someone soon… we then proceeded up Park, him drinking, while me holding him upright as I was, well at his advise taking a month off. True, utter beautiful friendship.

The compliment came when he told me, Gordon, 'the nice thing about you is that you do not present your problems as problems… things to be attempted to be solved by your friends.. You do not have drama, you have issues; issues are so much more easily manageable'. I took this compliment, stuck it in my heart and promised myself I would stick on it until the day I die… Doc has issues himself; he presents them to me as issues, I discuss them with him rationally, and while I am with him, I refuse to express the concern and dread that I actually feel the moment I walk out of the Swan and onto the L train… nuff said about that.

I have a vague memory of the things I wanted to get up to as I started to write this stuff about my good friend Doc. I think I may have wanted to write about our non-arguments over politics and the general state of the Union [over which Doc and I have buried hours!]. He’s a Republican, I’m a Canadian [and we’ll leave it at that]… We see eye to eye on about 90 percent all issues, and share both 2 of our 3 most favorite Presidents… we argue only at the point where he believes in the Gomorrah theory of the US of A, and where as I see a country, empire, epoch, not yet even beginning to take it’s place in the beautiful history of mankind… Funny thing is Doc and I will argue intensely while holding almost exactly the same position…

I wanted to write about these conversations, but as I got into writing this, I believe I may have started to realize, that although the stuff you “talk” about with your friends may be important, it really is the beautiful opportunity to talk WITH your friends, share the shit, the luck of having someone close, dear and on your wavelength that makes it all important… Craptastic Sap Master, Signing Off…

Love you guys!

[PS, I take pride in giving my younger friend bits and pieces of advice, AND I revel in the advise and examples of life living they give me… to my older friends, Doc, Paul, Fred to name but a few, I am honored, FUCKING HONERED, to have their friendship, and to have axcess to their wisdom…AND am beholden to passing the wise advise they give me onto these younger friend of mine]

Meanwhile, I continue to live as, or like a Potatoe.