Burst Reach #47: " I too had receiv'd identity by my body"

(just a quick heads up: there is an uncensored nude photo of me in this newsletter. Please be normal about it)

Hello, we’re nearly two weeks into May and I didn’t write anything in April, despite my intentions. Sorry about that! Here’s a quick summary of what happened last month:

PAIN! Lots of it!

I’ll try to keep this short: it all started early in April as random pain and tingling feelings in my legs at night while in bed, keeping me awake at night. I went to an urgent care after work a few days later when it stopped being a night time only thing, and was told “I’m going to punt you, I don’t want to touch you” by the nurse practitioner there (after they took $150 from me.) So I went to the ER, got two shots in my ass and some prescriptions, and woke up the next morning at 5:00AM to find the tingling sensation and numbness spread to my arms and hands. I called my chiropractor for advice and went to a walk-in orthopedic clinic, where they took over $200, x-rayed my neck, found nothing, and told me to fill my prescriptions and take them before scheduling me to see a spinal doctor later this month.

Shortly after finishing the steroids I was given, the numbness spread to my face. So I finally went to my own doctor’s office, where my story stressed the nurse practitioner out, the kind of reaction you don’t want from a healthcare professional. The next morning, on his order, I had an MRI brain scan and a CT scan of my neck to make sure it wasn’t MS, costing me just over a thousand bucks. Nothing horrific was found, thank goodness! The MRI found blood vessels that didn’t develop right when I was born, but that’s apparently irrelevant. The CT scan found an arthritic lower cervical disc, which helps explain my arms and hands, but not my legs. Meds have been refilled, and I’m just hanging on until the spinal doctor appointment to see if we can find more answers and trying to figure out how to pay off all of this medical debt in the meantime.

I’ve also been trying to stretch more, take ice baths, and even had a couple of acupuncture sessions to help deal with this stuff. I don’t know if any of it really helps, but it’s not hurting either.

I hate ice baths though.

So…I don’t feel like I got to accomplish much of anything last month because of all of that. Everything has been difficult. What’s bugging me the most has been stepping back from dance classes and ruminating on what, if any, future I may have as a dancer will look like. I’ve been going back to the gym since getting on meds, mostly for the red light and massage chairs, but I’ve also been using the weight machines very lightly here and there, just to stay active. And I’ve been working through all of this too, only losing a couple days, because, you know, medical debt has to get paid somehow. But I haven’t danced and I want to but feel like the moment I try, my body may just break down.

The final week of April was the most pain-free, which was good since it was my birthday week. Ashley took me to Hot Springs, NC, where we got to chill in a private jet tub pumped with natural spring water. Reading a bit of Leaves of Grass nude in that tub is exactly what Walt Whitman would have wanted, right?

I had, back in late March, typed some stuff up for what would’ve been an April newsletter, before all of this happened. I’ll italicize it all, just to be fancy:

Sometimes I wish I’d been able to live the life I have now when I was younger. To have been able to recognize my queerness and start transitioning sooner, to have started my figure drawing group earlier, to have begun taking dance classes when I was more flexible and energetic. I feel like my younger self, if they weren’t as aloof, would’ve been better able to do these things than I am as I approach 38 years on this planet.

But the conditions weren’t there, I guess. Or the knowledge or whatever. I was a mostly directionless person without much drive up through my 20s. I wanted to make comics and art, but didn’t want to put in the work. I coasted through school and college, barely taking any of it in. Apart from a brief moment in high school that I quickly pretended never happened, I thought I was just another cishet guy like the people around me.

But if I had managed to pull off the life I live now at a younger age, the people who are in my life now wouldn’t be present, would they? The people I am doing cool things with now weren’t really around then. That counts for something, right? And a lot of things that are here now simply weren’t back then.

And even if it feels weird when I’m dancing in front of a punk band with people far younger than I am, it’s still amazing to be a part of that, and proof that it’s never too late to jump in so long as your body can still handle it. I don’t know how long mine will be able to, but I should make use of it while I still can.

Ohhhh that last paragraph, March Brett had no idea what April would bring.

But there’s still this constant thought that keeps coming to me, that every time I feel like I’m getting back in control of things, figuring out what I need to do and working towards that, something sets me back, and I am just constantly running behind no matter what I try to do, and a lot of that is the capitalist dystopia we live in, but in my brain it still feels like a personal failing. Everything just feels so much harder to do. And for the past few years it directly ties to another thought I constantly have of just giving up on things. Would life be a little easier if I just gave up on dance? If art took a backseat? If I tried to live like a more ordinary cishet human? Be a little less vulnerable?

But of course I cannot do those things without destroying significant parts of who I am.

Anyways.

I only have one event lined up this month, and it’s a new Sketchy Soiree! The last one in March was a joyful experience and I’m excited to return! I think we’re going to keep trying to do them so long as there’s an audience willing to come draw.

And a big milestone passed this weekend too: my personal little private figure drawing group called Defining Bodies turned 10 years old! We’ve been fairly inactive since our last meetup on the farm last summer, and my shifting focuses have been a big part of that, but I’m still grateful to have managed to gather a lovely group of people to hang out and draw with in various stages of undress.

Next month you’ll find me at the Saucers Over Appalachia Festival, and at HollerHouse we’re doing a group exhibition called the Astrobiologist, coinciding with the festival. I’m going to have a piece in that show too! Whenever I actually finish it.

Actually, I have a lot to work on before I go to Digimon tonight, so that’s it for this weird newsletter. Take care!