"Butt Care is Essential" and Other Reasons to Stay in Bed
These days I feel irrelevant. Which implies I think I’m thought of that way by others. Which makes this a particularly self-centered take on not being front and center and essential. Do I really think it’s someone’s job to make me “feel” better in this time of terrible strife?
More specifically, I feel useless. I’m seventy-three. Not that old. Disabled. But not that more disabled than I’ve ever been my whole life and certainly not more disabled than my skills at figuring things out.
But I think things like, “I’ll skip the protest because I don’t know where I can park.” Or “I hurt. I should just get to stay in bed today.” Or “Butt skin care is essential. I need to stay in bed today.” Or “I have to grocery shop. And then I need to rest in bed after.” “The new episode of “Will Trent” is out. I need stay in bed and watch it.” My have-to-stay-in-bed reasons range from the essential to the trivial.
Here’s what I’ve recently done from bed:
Donate and encourage donations to Equality Florida’s lobbying bus to the Capitol.
Post a video of a local anti-ICE protest I attended. (The parking was easy.)
Donate (a small amount) to Community Spring, a local economic justice organization. My favorite thing they do is just give money to people getting out of jail with a felony record, no strings. So cool.
Donate (a small amount) to the Florida-based Southern Legal Counsel who support disabled kids in school, name changes for LGBTQ+, tenant rights, and more.
Donate (a small amount) to the Rural Women’s Health Project. It’s a Florida health justice group that’s supported immigrants since the early nineties.
Shop for a new mu mu to wear in bed.
Start the new season of “Alone” on Netflix.
Text with another “Alone” fan about how that last guy to “tap” out was such a weakling. (Yeah, I know. The irony. Or is it hypocrisy?)
Text Happy Birthday to another friend.
FaceTime someone learning English as a second language and be their “conversational partner.”
Share adorable dog pics back and forth with three different friends.
Order more Boudreaux’s Butt Paste. (They should sponsor me.)
Buy cookies from a trans Girl Scout. (Thin mints, Lemon Ups, and Trefoils)
Celebrate the winner and the runners up of the Saints and Sinners LGBTQ+ Literary Festival fiction contest. (I’m a runner up.)
Be rejected by a novel workshop. Doubt the worth of the novel. Doubt the worth of my writing in general. Doubt myself.
Talk to a writer friend about rejection.
Tell myself to buck the fuck up. I’ve written every other first draft of my previous four books all on my own, and I don’t need any dang help from anyone. Ever.
Calm down. Consider looking for help.
Read through the first chapter of the rejected novel. The main character used to be an undercover operative. Now she is an old, wheelchair using woman who needlepoints and has a tiny, mean chihuahua and is passing time until she dies. By the end of chapter one she is fleeing for her life. Maybe I should have her ask for help.
Audio Version:
"BED RIDER"
Eleanor Smith (an old friend and creator of "Concrete Change") sent these brilliant thoughts to me via email. She said I could repost them here.
"Taking off from the word “bed ridden”, in the past I contemplated editing a book to be called “Bed Riding.” Your post could have been a chapter! Kudos for touching on things no one else is writing about.
There was a guy (“bed rider”) I knew tangentially who was unable to be out of bed -- not in a wheelchair or anything that would cause his body to be bent toward sitting position. He was active in the movement, an organizer, held many meetings in his bedroom. On a strong frame a few feet above his face, aimed straight down at him, was a computer/tv etc. he was able to use. (The thought of it used to make me recoil, but in reality I guess it’s no more dangerous than the ceilings we all have above our heads.)
I’m quite a bit less mobile than I used to be, can’t jump around in bed to reach things. I have set up my little environment down to the inch. I drop multiple things. Sometimes I can recover them with my sundry methods, tools and things I make into tools."
You are one of the most relevant people I know.