In Grateful Recognition of Your Support...

To commemorate my second year of philanthropic fundraising for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and in support of HIV/AIDS Prevention & Care Advocacy Services throughout the Bay Area (incl. Bay Area Young Positives, Inc.), I am overwhelmed with both pride, and – of course! – gratitude to have the distinct privilege of announcing that the TOTAL $575.00 USD in funds I raised for AIDS Walk San Francisco 2011 (as of Sunday, July 17, 2011 @ 5:30PM PST) well surpassed my initial $500.00 USD pledge, in support of Bay Area Young Positives, Inc.

All AIDS Walk San Francisco 2011 charitable funds raised to-date by Board of Directors & Staff Members of San Francisco AIDS Foundation Community Partner Beneficiary Organizations will be allocated directly back to those benefiting nonprofit organizations. 

Therefore, I am equally privileged and honored to confirm that, in light of my AIDS Walk San Francisco 2011 fundraising successes, I have exceeded my own professional philanthropic fundraising obligations to Bay Area Young Positives, Inc. : San Francisco AIDS Foundation Community Partner Beneficiary (Team #8088), as a Member of the organization's Board of Directors.

In an effort to recognize my grateful appreciation for all donations contributed directly to my AIDS Walk San Francisco 2011 Fundraising Portal: http://awsf2011.kintera.org/qherekidsf, I have designed, composed and distributed another MailChimp.com HTML email communications campaign: http://eepurl.com/eNIJQ (as summarized below):

Matthew Blanchard (a.k.a. QHereKidSF) expresses immense gratitude in recognition of your valued contributions to AIDS Walk San Francisco, benefiting Bay Area Young Positives, Inc.

25th Annual AIDS Walk San Francisco

A Thousand Times, THANK YOU!

In Grateful Appreciation of Your Contributions
Supporting Bay Area Young Positives, Inc.

The Board of Directors of Bay Area Young Positives, Inc. is now (and always has been) indeed immensely grateful to our Benefactors, for their impenetrably selfless support of our organization's mission, of its meaningful work; and, of course, for their contributions to the long and lasting lives of all the beautiful youth survivors whom we proudly call "members."

May you relish in knowing with some certainty that your recent charitable support will go far in sustaining the planning, administration, promotion, and development of an integrally effective and successful program of HIV/AIDS Prevention & Care Youth Advocacy services offered by Bay Area Young Positives, Inc., as means to fulfill the goals of our noble mission: to help HIV/AIDS infected and/or affected youth of the San Francisco Bay Area to live longer, happier, healthier, more productive, and quality-filled lives.

PLEASE NOTE: Incentives will only be distributed to those donors who have provided Bay Area Young Positives, Inc. with an authentic destination shipping address. Trust that your personal contact information will be kept strictly confidential and will never knowingly be shared with any third party. If you would like to decline respectfully any or all of your due incentives, please respond directly to this email with a clear and concise message confirming your polite refusal of specific gifts.

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Ever so rare in life are moments in which we may boast both honor and privilege enough to witness firsthand the direct impact of considerable generosity as exhibited by others' charitable support of one's own personal philanthropic cause. As a representative beneficiary of your significant generosity, I find myself now in a position of such honor, privilege, and even – of course! – responsibility!

Blessed to be able and invited to delight in the pleasures of my immediate professional obligation to respond to your recent gestures in support of Bay Area Young Positives, Inc., I savor the challenge of weaving together the gold-fleece thread of my thoughts into a meaningful expression of most sincere thanks to you.

The immensity of gratitude felt in recognition of your charity truly overwhelms me! Thus, on behalf of the very grateful Board of Directors, staff, and "youth member" constituency of Bay Area Young Positives, Inc., I proudly proclaim tremendous thanks to you, in honor and appreciation of your most generous gestures of good-willed giving to our cause: "Thank you ever so much! A thousand times, THANK YOU!!"

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Regarding the status of the incentives you, as a distinguished donor to my cause, so wholeheartedly deserve, I am obliged to report that thank you notes will be written and distributed as soon as feasibly possible (e.g., within a month's time). Those more substantial incentives that may be due to you, in recognition of charitable contributions of $50.00 USD or more, will be grouped together and shipped to you via first class priority mail, as single incentive packages. I humbly beg you to recognize my plans to group individual incentives into single packages as a necessary, albeit inconvenient, cost-saving measure.

Also, please keep in mind that Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore's anthology of queer cultural criticism essays: WHY ARE FAGGOTS SO AFRAID OF FAGGOTS? Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform, will not be available for distribution until after its official release date of Tuesday, February 14, 2012. Consequently, depending on the value of your individual contributions to my cause, your incentive package may not be set to arrive to you until well into next year.

Rest assured! I plan to keep all of my generous donors well informed of the shipping status of their incentives, through a timely distribution of regular updates via email. Such updates will also include donor impact reports that detail just exactly how your contributions are serving the administrative programming needs of Bay Area Young Positives, Inc.

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In closing, I would like to reiterate how honored and privileged I am to be able to delight in the welcomed challenge of communicating both eloquently and expressively the immensity of gratitude I feel in appreciation of your most valued charitable contributions to AIDS Walk SF 2011, supporting Bay Area Young Positives, Inc.

Please know with confidence that your donations to my AIDS Walk SF 2011 fundraising efforts will go very, very far in sustaining, promoting, and developing the vital HIV/AIDS Prevention & Care Youth Advocacy services that Bay Area Young Positives, Inc. provides to San Francisco's community of HIV/AIDS infected and/or affected youth.

In appreciation of your considerable generosity, I say to you again: "Thank you so very much! A thousand times, THANK YOU!!" Stay safe, sane, and sober, my friend! Cheers! Ciao & Namaste: I bow to the gods within you..

With most sincere gratitude...
Respectfully yours,
Matthew D. Blanchard

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Matthew D. Blanchard
Member, Board of Directors
Bay Area Young Positives, Inc.
matthew@baypositives.org

Respectfully submitted,

Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF

Matthew D. Blanchard

matthew@qherekidsf.com

San Francisco, CA USA

[20110717T181534PST] 

WHY I WALK? (Part Two) : @AIDSWalkSF

HELP SUPPORT My Week-Long Fundraising Pledge...

http://eepurl.com/eJmaI – PLEASE HELP Matthew Blanchard (a.k.a. QHereKidSF) SURPASS his week-long $500 fundraising pledge in support of Bay Area Young Positives, Inc.!

AIDS Walk San Francisco 2011

WHY I WALK? (Part Two)

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HELP SURPASS My $500 Fundraising Pledge!

Donations directly benefit Bay Area Young Positives, Inc.

http://awsf2011.kintera.org/qherekidsf

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With a soft, unpretending and polite voice: a voice ripe with care, compassion and empathy, my younger sister described to me the “difficult challenge” she and other of my closest family members faced back in late 2007 – at the dawn of a miracle and at the dusk of my demise! – when they were forced to confront the very real possibility of my overdose-induced, HIV/AIDS-related death.

Once my diseased, decomposing & comatose body was rushed to the hospital, doctors began their valiant efforts to alleviate my pneumonia, to restore function to my failing kidneys, and to combat – in hopes to conquer! – the poly-microbial necrotizing bacterial infection that had already succeeded in turning the once gentle and happy contours of my handsome smile into a putrid mess of blackened corroded flesh.

The initial prognosis of my critically weakened health was so bleak that doctors were compelled – if not forced by a strict code of ethics! – to contact my family. A triage team of medical care providers informed my closest relatives of my terrible condition, urged my loved ones to ready themselves for my impending death, and requested that they thoughtfully considering together exactly how I would have liked the final directives of my life to be executed.

The story my sister told of my family's own insufferable worry in response to the dreadful possibility of my death fell from her thoughts with surprised suspense:

It was incredible! One day, we were being told that it’d be best for us to prepare for the end. A week later, doctors called again to report that you were stabilizing. Days later, you were still critical but were responding to exterior stimuli. After another week, your foggy eyes peeked open into consciousness. Then, soon enough, you were responding to visual stimuli and were taken off life support.

Before we could catch our breath and put away thoughts of your possible death, you were on the phone with us trying so desperately to communicate your excitement, without a mouth, in spats of very happy giggles, grunts, and moaning. What a roller-coaster; you can imagine! It was a miracle – no question! And, that’s a lot to be said coming from a twenty-something military wife who had long-ago lost her faith. But, only God does miracles; right?

In the glowing radiance of my miraculous rebound back to life from death, I can only attest to the life-saving, life-sustaining force and potential of the myriad members of my social-support and care-provider networks who have remained committed to empowering my continued growth and holistic healing beyond the uncertainty of fragile health, forward toward psycho-social and physical wellness, and in the direction of a complete fulfillment of my ideal future self.

Thanks to vital contributions by countless community-based HIV/AIDS Prevention & Care Service agencies, such as those throughout the San Francisco Bay Area who will most directly benefit from the fundraising efforts of over 25,000 AIDS Walk San Francisco 2011 participants, I have been empowered to make good of these miracles of prolonged life and second chances that have been gifted to me either by God or by science – or both! Who knows?

Without the unrelenting and selfless support of the numerous humble heroes of both my care-provider and social-support networks, I would surely not have been able to sustain my course toward prolonged survival and eventual success in life. This is why I walk!

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Thanks to each of my friends, family members, care providers, and colleagues for your enduring compassion and support! At present, with $450.00 already raised in just under three days, I find myself rejoicing in this unique opportunity I have to witness the direct impact of your generous contributions to my cause.

In grateful recognition of the valued generosity of donors to my cause, each of my supporters who contributes a charitable gift in the amount of or exceeding $25.00 USD, via my Fundraising Portal, shall receive a special note of thanks hand-written on stationery that features a high-quality digital print copy of one of my limited edition hand-crafted rubber block-cut floral prints – in periwinkle and white on brown (as featured above).

http://awsf2011.kintera.org/qherekidsf

Likewise, I hereby commit to keeping all of the many generous donors to my cause well informed of their impact, as the Board of Directors and staff of Bay Area Young Positives, Inc. strives to thrive for several more years to come, in support of all Bay Area youth infected and/or affected by HIV/AIDS. Thanks again!! Cheers! Ciao & Namaste...

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In grateful honor of those innumerable heroes who have helped me redeem my right to live, to survive, to strive, and to thrive in hope, while faced with a disabling AIDS diagnosis, I am planning to participate in the 25th Annual AIDS Walk San Francisco - July 17, 2011!

As a Member of the Board of Directors of Bay Area Young Positives, Inc., one of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation Community Partners (Team #8088), I am committed to raising a minimum of $500 for my organization, during this week prior to the event.

All charitable funds raised by board members and staff of AIDS Walk Beneficiary Organizations will be allocated in full directly back to those participating nonprofit agencies. So, please consider contributing to my fundraising efforts in support of BAY Positives, via my personal Fundraising Portal:

http://awsf2011.kintera.org/qherekidsf

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AIDS Walk San Francisco is organized by and benefits the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, as well as HIV/AIDS Prevention & Care Services throughout the Bay Area.

San Francisco AIDS Foundation works to end the HIV epidemic in the city where it began, and eventually everywhere. Established in 1982, our mission is the radical reduction of new infections in San Francisco because we refuse to accept HIV as inevitable. Through education, advocacy and direct services for prevention and care, we are confronting HIV in communities most vulnerable to the disease.

San Francisco AIDS Foundation is guided by a strategic plan with three ambitious goals aimed at radically reducing new infections in San Francisco by 2015.

GOAL 1: Reduce new HIV infections in San Francisco by 50%
Leveraging scientific research and community knowledge we will devise new approaches and ensure that federal, state and local legislation supports a climate hospitable to effective HIV prevention.

GOAL 2: Ensure all San Franciscans know their current HIV status
We are expanding advocacy and public education about the benefits of testing, determining the feasibility of citywide HIV screening, and optimizing our own and others’ capacity to provide HIV testing.

GOAL 3: Ensure access to proper care for all HIV-positive San Franciscans
As the epidemic evolves, we are evolving our targeted programs to improve the health of people with HIV and AIDS, from housing and medical referrals to group support and services that address mental health and substance use among populations most vulnerable to HIV.

© 2011 San Francisco AIDS Foundation | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
1035 Market Street, Ste 400 | San Francisco, CA 94103
www.sfaf.org | +1.415.487.3000 (main) | feedback@sfaf.org

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Matthew D. Blanchard
Member, Board of Directors
Bay Area Young Positives, Inc.
http://www.baypositives.org
matthew@baypositives.org
+1.415.487.1616 (main)
+1.415.487.1617 (fax)

http://eepurl.com/eJmaI

COPYRIGHT © 2011 Bay Area Young Positives, Inc. | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

baypositives.org | 701 Oak Street, San Francisco, CA 94117 | info@baypositives.org

Respectfully submitted,
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew D. Blanchard
matthew@qherekidsf.com
San Francisco, CA USA
[20110713T061237PST]

WHY I WALK? (Part One) : @AIDSWalkSF

Help Support My Week-Long Fundraising Pledge!

http://eepurl.com/eGH7I – Matthew Blanchard (a.k.a. QHereKidSF) has pledged to raise $500 in one week to support Bay Area Young Positives, Inc.

AIDS Walk San Francisco 2011

WHY I WALK? (Part One)

Over the course of the last four years, as many of my most intimately supportive friends, family members, professional care providers and colleagues well know, the critical prognoses of my HIV/AIDS-disabled health had left me teetering to and fro, back and forth between the perniciously presumptive promises of death and the disastrous delirium of drug dependency, depression and disfigurement.

More recently, however, the courage of my convictions has kept me devoutly dedicated to a steadfast and surefooted pursuit of positive change, growth and progress in my sero-positive wellness.

Thus, reconstruction, recovery, and rehabilitation have proven to be, for me, the rightfully redemptive remedies I have needed in life, in order to resolve and ultimately reverse the very real-world rotting corrosion of both my smile, my spirit, and my surety and sanctity of self. This is why I walk!

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In grateful honor of those innumerable heroes who have helped me redeem my right to live, to survive, to strive, and to thrive in hope and in faith of self, while faced with a disabling AIDS diagnosis, I have registered to participate in the 25TH Annual AIDS Walk San Francisco – July 17, 2011, organized by the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.

As a Member of the Board of Directors of Bay Area Young Positives, Inc., one of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation Community Partner Beneficiaries (Team #8088), I am committed to raising a minimum of $500 for my organization, during this week prior to the commemorative event.

All charitable funds raised by board members and staff of AIDS Walk Beneficiary Organizations will be allocated in full directly back to those participating nonprofit agencies. So, please consider contributing immediately to my fundraising efforts in support of BAY Positives, via my AIDS Walk San Francisco 2011 Fundraising Portal:

http://awsf2011.kintera.org/qherekidsf

With most humbled humanity of spirit and in hope of sustaining the impact of my own small, but significant, HIV/AIDS Youth Prevention & Care Advocacy Nonprofit: Bay Area Young Positives, Inc., I am proud to be able to entice the generosity of your giving spirit.

In recognition of your superiour contributions to my personal fundraising campaign for the 25TH Annual AIDS Walk San Francisco – July 17, 2011, I offer to reciprocate the unmatched generosity of my most valued donor(s) with various significant incentives.

$50.00 - $74.99 Donations – In recognition of all contributions of between $50.00 to $75.00 to my personal fundraising campaign in support of Bay Area Young Positives, Inc., donors will receive an example of my own personal exploration through visual art of the limitless bounds of my new-found beauty. DONATE NOW!

$75.00 - $99.99 Donations – My supporters who contribute donations between $75.00 and $100.00 will be invited to chose to receive as gifts either my literary work or my cinematic work of creative self expression, accompanied by an example of my creative expression of self through visual art. DONATE NOW!

$100.00 Donations & Above – Those of my supporters whose generosity compels them to contribute most substantially to my cause will be awarded in recognition of their charity with a combination of all three gifts depicted below. DONATE NOW!

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Creative Expression as Self-Portraiture

Since waking from death and after staring straight in the face of my ubiquitously brutish and unbecoming ugliness, I have endeavored to reclaim, through external manifestations of creative self-expression, the full-measured immensity of my own innately internal, yet outwardly actualized, "beauty beguiled, BEGODS!" Consequently, my recent corpus of creative works of self-expression, through self-portraiture on stage, on screen, and on paper, is meant to further foment our shared recognition and rejoicing in the serendipitous resplendence of my "beyond-all-odds" auspicious survival, as we struggle together to find solace in the peaceful reflections staring back at us from there, where the ferocious face of trepidation, self-loathing, and contempt very well once could have, should have been!

– Matthew D. Blanchard,
CONSTRUCT (narrator),
IT GETS BETTER? (author)

Creative Expression as Film Performance

STILL AROUND : A Short Film Compilation (2011, USA, 82 mins.)
distributed as an Outcast Films Release
prod. M. Smolowitz & J. Fockele | The HIV Story Project

funded in part by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation  

"STILL AROUND" is a compendium of 15 short films on the theme of HIV. Most of the protagonists are positive, but the ways in which they deal with their status – and associated issues, like coming out to family or getting politically involved – are wildly different. In some of these shorts we're treated to performance pieces – slam poetry and inventive filming that can tease us, as in Daniel Cardone's "CONSTRUCT," in which poetry about physical disfigurement is intensified by shots that hint at (or briefly show) a body ravaged by infection – and a spirit that has moved toward self-knowledge.

– Kilian Melloy, Edge | edgeboston.com


Creative Expression as Literary Narrative
WHY ARE FAGGOTS SO AFRAID OF FAGGOTS?
feat. "IT GETS BETTER?" : An Essay by Matthew D. Blanchard 

ed. Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (AK Press, Feb 14 2012)

Mattilda has again provided us with a collection of urgent, intimate, powerful essays that upend the horrifying hyper-visible and invisibilizing bandwagon of today's pro-military, marriage-obsessed white gay politics. These essays excavate masculinity, unearthing the complex and pervasive structures that police and construct it and exposing the beautiful resilience of its self-avowed refusers and failures. These pieces ... [provide] complex and badly needed ways to imagine and reimagine faggotry.

– Dean Spade, Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law

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POSITIVE OUTLOOK : A COMING OF AGE!

Bay Area Young Positives, Inc.

Together for 20+ years, BAY Positives' Peer Education & Advocacy Team has served SF Bay Area youth infected and/or affected by HIV/AIDS. Today, we aspire to sustain & grow our vision through dynamic inter-agency collaborations, engaging & accessible prevention interventions, and strength-based youth empowerment & mentoring.

Over the past 20+ years, the invaluable, lifesaving work of Bay Area Young Positives, Inc. has been supported in great part by significant public & private sector grants, including awards direct from the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH), and numerous health-promoting business corporations, as well as by the indubitably reliable gift-giving and grant-making of countless SF Bay Area Charitable Fund-Raising Organizations.

The Board of Directors of BAY Positives is now (and always has been) indeed immensely grateful to our Benefactors, for their impenetrably selfless support of our organization's mission, of its meaningful work; and, of course, for our contributions to the long and lasting lives of all the beautiful youth survivors whom we proudly call "members."

FANATIC FOLLOWERS!
Social Media Sharing

    
http://eepurl.com/eGH7I

Bay Area Young Positives, Inc. gladly encourages social media interaction with (and amongst) our constituents. Our Board of Directors actively engages in Web2.0 Communications, in an effort to promote and disseminate positive HIV/AIDS Prevention & Care messages, particularly amongst youth.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Matthew D. Blanchard
Member, Board of Directors
Bay Area Young Positives, Inc.

matthew@baypositives.org
+1 (415) 487-1616 (main)
+1 (415) 487-1617 (fax)

COPYRIGHT © 2011 Bay Area Young Positives, Inc. | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
www.baypositives.org | 701 Oak Street, San Francisco, CA 94117 | info@baypositives.org

Respectfully submitted,
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew D. Blanchard
matthew@qherekidsf.com

San Francisco, CA USA
[20110712T193457PST]

RE: LONG LOST FRIEND!

Indeed, “long lost,” but never in a moment forgotten! Throughout the span of a decade, with a mind tempered (or tormented) by “what-once-was” well-wishing nostalgia, remembrances and a deep longing desire to redeem the unearthly, unending exuberance of youth, I have often found my thoughts drifting towards you, my baby blue-eyed, porcelain-paled, lusciously lipped lil’ lady friend of times far past & gone. Indeed, “friend,” but oh so much and so many things more!

April Manteris, you were my Perestroika as Millennium Approaches; you were one above many of my arch-guardian Angels In America! How fitting that in my later, more recent life, I would battle with disease-induced malediction & delusions of messianic manic psychosis, much like the enlightened torment of Prior Walter told by Tony Kushner in his “Not-Yet-Conscious, Forward Dawning,” damned devilish drama staged as “A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.”

My own, personal, proprietary and unprecedented “Gay Fantasia,” told as follies of the mind and frailty of the body, was rife buttressed by more universal themes. In a demented state of holier-than-thou HIV/AIDS-instigated happenstance and insanity, I foresaw a full faith reconciliation of all conflicting religious around the world; the real-time cultivation of a post-apocalyptic, new-growth Garden of Eden; and my transsexual impregnation as an irrationally self-proclaiming, prophetic “Gift of God” with Christ Child incarnate.

Delusions of near godly grandeur galloped as chariots of fire along the strangely strung-out or awkwardly wrought and wired synapses of my parasitically enslaved psyche toward a new and evermore illustrious Elysian Fields. I was a hopeful, kindhearted and jubilant psychotic; not a criminally paranoid sociopath.

In my lonely, lachrymose, lunatic madness, I believed that all humankind would fall down under the watchful rule & gaze of intergalactic warring Angel/Alien brigades, led by Michael, Gabriel, Beelzebub, and Lucifer, only finally to be throttled full flight into a world far more beautiful, blissful and serene that anyone could have ever imagined before.

Funny thing for me though, during my drug-delayed, disease-induced delusional psychosis, I actually possessed the superhuman scope of mind and intellect to imagine the unimaginable as actual and real! What a harrowingly exhilarating experience! Moreover, you were there with me in spirit, all along the way.

For, I was convinced that you, April: my dream dancing “tell-it-to-snow” Eskimo named Harper Pitt, were suffering from a simultaneously paralleled, prophetic psychosis there, on your side of the world.

In my dreams, I imagined our union as beleaguered, but still sun-beaming and boisterous, biblical brethren, once each of us (and countless other young-spirited saints, psychics and soothsayers) had rightfully sown the heavenly seeds of a new beginning for our separate communities, cultures and societies on this dying-to-life, righteously reincarnate Earth of ours.

So much coincidental quizzicality has shaped the “nefand, sullen languid stories of my last-ditch, last-chance life,” including the serendipity of that first meeting of our two minds.

Our two submedially mature yet still quite sycophantic student souls were somehow, at some point, so mutually confounded, mesmerized and inspired by the truly enlightened intimacy we would go on to share, that we often (if I remember correctly!) smothered each other in self-obsessed, other-opposed & ostracized narcissism.

I fondly reminisce, remember and recall just exactly how we together, as the closest of friends, dealt only in the immaculate intimacy of trusted truth (or truthful trust). Tantamount to our unfettered ferocity of faith in one another, such truth tightly intertwined our hearts & souls together in both telltale-tangled threads of deliberately disgruntled dysfunction or malcontent malaise and sumptuously bittersweet stories of irrational, unreasoned, and misguided boy/girl romance gone awry.

Truth is, all throughout our first two years of undergraduate, I tormented myself terribly in confused and conflicted recognition of the dichotomically opposed binary between mainstream, most fortunate and “full-worth-the-effort” male-female love and its exact opposite: gay love, or “queer” love, since there was nothing “gay” about such love for me, during those years, or even ever after!

Truths is, that one occasion of my coming out that you so fondly remember in email, could have panned out in two very different ways; and trust me, when I say that you would not at all have been pleased by the alternate “outcome” of such proceedings!  WINK! WINK!

Oh! I should scream it from my rooftop! I’M IN LOVE WITH YOU, APRIL MANTERIS! I always have been and always will be! Never once have I not regretted the decision I made to proclaim my homosexuality to the world, because all that led to was me being pigeonholed in to a nasty, putrid, pestilent and perverse segment of society, where I subsequently succumbed to a lifestyle of depression, then deviance, then drugs, then disease, then delusions, then death, then disfigurement.

And, all that’s been done to me without my ever having witnessed once again the trusted truth (or truthful trust) of such mutually equitable & reciprocal platonic intimacy as we once shared, let alone anything remotely resembling the romantic!

So, that said, I’ll conclude in recognition of how immensely blessed I am to have found you meandering back into my life with such a generously opened mind and heart, with such forgiveness of the trifles of the past, and with such dignified poise, to reclaim our friendship from the exact point where we once left it off.

I welcome you into my life with widely opened arms, April! Moreover, I do ever so hope that we can rekindle that platonic intimacy that once existed between the two of us and that defined our very profound and beautiful friendship!  I look forward to a future with you in it, and I hope you do of me, as well…

With fond memories…
And, In fond regards,

Most sincerely…
Your dear friend,

Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew D. Blanchard

matthew@qherekidsf.com

http://www.qherekidsf.com

http://bit.ly/qherekidsf

San Francisco, CA USA

[20110401T223247PT]

PHOENIX a'FIRE: In Rehearsal

When my application was accepted by SINS INVALID A.I.R. Program Director, Nomy Lamm, thus clearing way and confirming my participation in the inaugural 2010 SINS INVALID Artists In Residence (A.I.R.) Program, I found myself immediately embarking upon a long and exceedingly adventurous journey in discovery of perfection in performance-based self-portraiture through storytelling and song.

Little did I know then where it would lead me; however, I must say that truly I enjoyed every subtle step and bounding leap forward down that path I took from mere obscurity toward meager-to-maniacal celebrity, even if only within a very small, intimate community of disability activists and performance artists/aficionados, here in the Bay Area, alone.

The exact date that I happened to happen happily upon the NIEHS Sing Along Songs Children's Website and discovered their substantial collection of musical "midis" (i.e., simple, electronic instrumental versions of the vocal melody of a song recorded without audible lyrics, but rather with accompanying lyrics attached as text), I do not specifically recall.

Yet, I will not forget the tremendously joyous, spontaneous impulse of creative genius and pleasure that came to me when I fell serendipitously upon the musical midi of Alan Menken's "Part of That World," from the Disney masterpiece, LITTLE MERMAID.

Straightway, I knew just want I desired to do with this song. Thus, from that point just about a year ago today, when I did "stumbleupon" this particular melody and its lyrics, I endeavored to do meaningful justice not only to the song and songwriter himself, but also to my own audaciously bodacious and bawdy, unkempt, uncontrolled and unadulterated, quasimodo, quasi-grotesque, imperfect and ugly story of the destructive force of careless sexual device and drug abuse and my almost mythic – certainly, quite blessèd!! – rebirth as a "not hot, not well-endowed," but still quite sexual creature, deservedly so!!

With a spit-bit of pride, pomposity and yes, even perversion, I have the unique honor and privilege to premier a video recording of PHOENIX a'FIRE, a workshop rehearsal version of the song I performed as a live drag-burlesque musical number for the SINS INVALID A.I.R. Show: RESIDENT ALIEN.

Please be advised, as the title credits indicate, this video-recorded song is not intended for all audiences; the recommended minimum viewing age is 17 years. With PARENTAL ADVISORY, the video is given a Content Rating of NC-17, and all youth below that age are urged to seek parental permission before viewing this short webcam recorded musical video.

For those of my fans/followers who are of adequate age to view the film directly, I invite you now to enjoy a curiously compelling retrospective look back at my own creative process at work. And, I also encourage you, please, to share your thoughts on my original lyrics, as well as on the philosophy behind this "Musical Reconstruction," either by emailing me directly at matthew@qherekidsf.com, or simply by commenting directly on this blog post.

Otherwise, you also have the option of visiting my YouTube® Channel, where the video has also been posted for mass audiences and the world public at-large: http://youtube.com/qherekidsf. Please ENJOY!! Comments and feedback are duly encouraged! Thanks...

PHOENIX a'FIRE: In Rehearsal

COPYRIGHT © 2011 QHereKidSF | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

(recorded: San Francisco, CA USA; September 19, 2010)

http://www.youtube.com/qherekidsf

PHOENIX a'FIRE

Lyrics: Matthew Blanchard

Score: Colleen Nagle

Presented by SINS INVALID

2010 A.I.R. Performance:

RESIDENT ALIEN

Look at my face! Isn’t it gross?
Wouldn’t you think 

I’m much worse off than most?
What do you think of my grin, 

so grotesque & frightening?
This is my story; secrets revealed…
If I had lips they’d be loose and unsealed.
Looking at me you must think, 

“Shit! He’s lost everything!”
True - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

I once had good looks & was handsome.
But, - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

I was a barebackin’ tweaker whore.
I often begged for big cocks, 

“Cum inside me!”
Truth be told! Shame on me! 

I want MORE!!
I wanna fuck raunchy, nasty and wild!
I wanna cock raw, wet, deep inside me!
My ugly face would be frightful for
Licking. Sucking. Bareback Fucking!
Wearing a mask I don’t get too far;
Lips are required for kissing, sucking.
Can’t fit my mouth 

‘round a cum-dripping cock!!
Me sucked! Bare fucked! 

Tweaked high! Me DIED!!
 I smoked Tina first for the thrill;
I smoked her ‘til AIDS came for the kill.
Death had its aim; Meth was to blame!
Still I SURVIVED!!
As the myth goes, from ashes I rose
Like a great big fiery bird.
Nothing may spoil my heart unfurled
I’m a Phoenix a’FIRE!!
No I’m not hot! Not well endowed!!
But next to you, I can laugh & be proud.
Love me dearly! Do not fear me!
Dare just one glance at my pretty ass!
Just tell me… (spoken)
What is desire, and how does it 

What’s the word? – BURN?
Please hold me dear! Kiss me right here!!
My heart’s a Phoenix of DESIRE!!

RESIDENT ALIEN: 2010 SINS INVALID A.I.R. Performance

January 28 & 29, 2011 at Mission Cultural Center

2868 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94110-3908

© 2011 QHereKidSF | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Respectfully submitted,

Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF

Matthew D. Blanchard

matthew@qherekidsf.com
http://qherekidsf.com
http://bit.ly/qherekidsf

San Francisco, CA USA
[20110311T010356PT]

A LOOK BACK @ 18MTHS. OF HOPE!!

A LOOK BACK! At 60DAYS SOBER, ... I once concluded that "I JUST have an UGLY face." However, despite the devastation of disfigurement, I was/am still conscience & cognizant of the fact that my Seventh Chakra shines – Sahasrara : "The Thousand-Petaled Lotus" – "signifying & assuring QHereKidSF of his supreme consciousness & sublime connection to the cerebral, spiritual & physical worlds" (cf. http://youtu.be/gg8mjhUqSpw – below).

At 1YR. CLEAN, I affirmed "BEAUTY!" ... "But, only at God's speed. God willing" : the choice words Director Daniel Cardone & I used to frame the closing of CONSTRUCT, our "epic" (not in length, but rather in magnitude of reverberation & depth) experimental docu-short, filmed as part of The HIV Story Project's STILL AROUND 2010 compilation (Exec. Producer: Jörg Fockele; Producer: Marc Smolowitz), which together feature a day-in-the-life of 15 individual PWA (i.e., People With AIDS) protagonists.

Now, today... At 18.5MTHS. OF HOPE (not dope!), I take the stage in a short time to proclaim how indeed I am finally & once again ablaze with "DESIRE" : red hot & risen, redeemed & reborn; as a "PHOENIX a'FIRE" (cf. "Resident Alien" - the Sins Invalid Artists In Residence Show), who prances, dances and sings poemsongs of Paphian pleasantries, indulgences & delights...

As my Sins Invalid artist bio reads, I am: "grateful for God's boundless love of & faith in [my] own purely imperfect and human desire 'for elaborate beautification & solemn self-betterment" (cf. CONSTRUCT, 2011). "But, then again, I'll be quick to say: We live to die and die to live... Forever! Come what may." (cf. JEER NOT! FEAR NOT!!; "Resident Alien," 2011).

STAY TUNED!! for my "flagrantly unfettered" foretelling of a future full of fortitude, good fortune, and truly "fag-o-licious fabulosity" of face... SUBSCRIBE TO MY YouTube® CHANNEL – mindflux | matt(e)o | mayhem : http://youtube.com/qherekidsf.

Cheers! Ciao & Namaste...
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew D. Blanchard
matthew@qherekidsf.com
http://bit.ly/qherekidsf

San Francisco, CA USA
[20110125T071435PST]

Alien Annuciation: Unearthing My Sacred Self

The following is a dramatic monologue I prepared for my SINS INVALID Artists In Residence "Resident Alien" Performance Showcase; however, this exact text will NOT be performed the evening's of the show. I therefore am now at liberty to share some of the copious work I have been preparing for performance during the last nine months for review by my peers. Please indulge me with your insights into this work; provide your own critical response and feedback, and I will be happy to take whatever you have to say to heart when considering revisions of the piece for future performance.

ALIEN ANNUCIATION:
Unearthing My Sacred Self

Fuck! Face it!! I’m a fagged-out, ferocious, Fog City funambule Freak Show — or Peep Show, depending on the scene [chuckles] — fabulously fucked in the head — HOLE! — for far too long [laughs outright]. FUN? For sure!! If by chance, you get some crazed, cracked-out, masochistic satisfaction from — OH! SO SAD! — strangely spiritual & surreal stories of catastrophic crystal-lined “Quarter-Life” crises, then maybe I’m your man!!

The mindflux & mayhem of this “MATTO” Matteo manifest as anxiety, manic depression, numerous non-specified personality disorders, coupled with devastatingly detrimental drug dependency and HIV/AIDS disease — BAM! Axes one through five, in no specific order!! My psychiatrists would all be proud. During the long-stretched syndrome of illness, disease & disorder that is my dismal, abysmal life, I was only ever once lost to languid torpor; torpor which turned out tantamount to torturous (i.e., id est… the ten to twelve days I laid unconscious, inactive & still; the skin & bone of my once boyhood beautiful face pressed flat, flush, firm & dying against a putrid, pestilent pillow).

Yet, for a time, prior to my tragically traumatic end, back before my whole “Fuck! Face it!!” mantra came into play, I once touted myself better than plainly pretty & princely. Back before my very real ruination ripped apart my smile; before antipsychotic psychotropics pretty much fucked up, tore down and all but annihilated my lachrymose libido, I spent my days super-speedy, sexed-up & salivating for raucously wild & raunchy “fag-fornication” – E, K, G… Crystal Methamphetamine sure’nough spewing from my sweaty, slimy skin!!

For lack of food, lack of sleep, but with no shortage of insanely over-indulgent fucking, I was led libidinally through a caustic, quixotic, voraciously vivacious and virulent six month schizoid-delusional messianic mania (i.e., id est… “crazed and cracked-out,” I told you!!). Here’s how the story goes…

After twenty-four-plus hours of positively preposterous unguided, temper-tantrumed and tweaked-out tantric yoga, I found myself falling flat on the floor from a backbend. In a glorious instance, I could both hear, feel and fear my mightily tight military neck flicker from firm to flaccid to flat with a couple of cracks and a crunch. 

Then, out of nowhere, but to my tearfully giggled and enraptured delight, the “cycloptic” serpentine energy force of my kundalini uncoiled itself three & 1/2 fold from deep within the pit of my scrotum, as if a cataclysmically massive monster cock was fucking me from bottom-end to top-end entirely. My phallic kundalini snaked its way like speed-lightening straight up my squarely smacked flat spine, erupting explosively through each of my leveled & loosely lain chakras. Past my shoulders. Into my head. All with a sparklingly celestial shudder of glee!!

My voraciously virulent kundalini energy force broke the blood/brain barrier with the cracking and collapsing of my never near too straight again neck, and was free!! At that moment, deep from within a blinding, brilliant light, I saw the rebirth and renewal of all life, the reunification and redemption of retaliatory religions of the World, embodied as a dying leafless triple-branched tree: a familiar scenic device of Beckett’s brain, symbolizing the existential nihilism inherent in “waiting for God…”

But, the tree at the center of my powerfully immaculate vision was quite unlike the grey, lifeless, hollow-trunked, death-determined tree that so thwarted the mindless meanderings of Vladimir and Estragon. The tree at the center of my celestial light budded a new growth, new birth branch with a single, glowing emerald green leaf which dripped dew of heavenly angelic gold from its tip.

Two Men Contemplating the Moon, ca. 1830
Caspar David Friedrich (German, 1774-1840)
Oil on Canas, 13 3/4 x 17 1/4in. (34.9 x 43.8cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
Wrightsman Fund, 2000 (2000.51)

My kundalini force thrust me thankfully toward my heavenly father – at least, I’d hoped it would – through ungodly, goliath insanity and bliss. Thus began the potent perversion of my intellect, my psyche, as I set off on a profoundly esoteric and spiritually pious six month search for the “One,” Almighty God.

Six days to six weeks, I spent alone, shut up in my sparse, stark and sullen studio apartment, spiraling my insanity into a chaotic hoarded mess, savagely searching for God. No, I didn’t find him…or her…or them. Well, maybe them!! If you’re one to consider the sublime god force a pluralist spiritual entity, then I’m almost certain that my schizoid-delusional miscomprehension of individual life forces, as being all parts of a prophetically benevolent community of angel/aliens who had come calling for me as a veritable “MATTO” Matteo, would have intrigued and enticed both your own spiritual and intellectual curiosity.

So, I didn’t find Him (or “Her”) in my search for the Divine, but I did find my own angelic alien annunciation as a “Gift of God” : Matthew, for I believe with all my kundalini life force that during this six month psychosis, I was being suited by a community of angel/aliens for my god-given, divinely apostolic duty to proclaim to the World the imminent arrival of a purely peaceful, nonviolent, anti-diabolic Armageddon.

I was called upon, or so much I wholeheartedly believed, to return from the “deathspace” transexualized and impregnated with an angel/alien Christ-child to usher in the climactic rebirth, re-growth and cultivation of a global unifying force: a “Garden of Eden,” Elysian Fields, Les Champs Élysées leading into more than just a city, but rather into a World of lights, illumination, rapture!!

I speak of chakras and kundalini sparingly here; even though, these words as psychic phenomena seem to predominate my prose. But, don’t get me wrong! I’m a good faith, good Catholic, Christian boy of Franco-Polish Hebraic descent; therefore, the word “RAPTURE” should make more sense!

You’d sooner find me carving a Cherokee totem disparaging my colonial heritage as self-proclaimed proudly pompous, well-educated elite alum of Jefferson’s own “Alma Mater of Our Nation.” Hell! You’d sooner find me rigging a home-made I.E.D. car-bomb in my Fresno-based meth-lab storage garage while bowing toward Muslim Mecca – No, not GAY MECCA!! – as I pray in istikhara, and offer supplication for divine guidance on how best to cripple and destroy Judeo-American neocolonial forces.

You’d sooner find this white-bred, white trash, euro-mutt, slut, goy-boy American speciously boasting either indigenous or Islamic roots, rather than spiting my own just and good Judeo-Catholic heritage by following blindly the wisdom & stricture of Sanskrit/Hindi yogic faith teachings, if not just as a Eurocentric fad of the intellectual and spiritual post-colonial diasporas…

Yet, sadly still, contrary to my Judeo-Christian biblical heritage and learning – if even as a namesake, merely!! – I did neither see nor encounter my single almighty God, the Father: The Maker of Man, of me, of my mindflux, mayhem and misery. But, I swear on the last remnants of sanity and semblance of beauty that this mad, mad monstrosity of a man may have, I swear…

I saw something! Something real. Unimagined. Something immaculate. Holy. Sublime. In fact, I saw many things, which I remember vividly and in distinct detail, despite near half a decade of dutifully downing each dawn & dusk the fists full of psychotropics my doctors order me to take to keep pace of peace and order in my boyish, good goyish brain.

I could go on and on and on without a single smile – I could, and I should, but I wont! Anyway. – I could catalog… In fact, I HAVE cataloged pages and pages describing the many multitudinous manifestations of my immaculate enlightenment. I could retell my rapture. I could narrate my nirvana; translate my transcendence for you all – I could, and I should, but I won’t! Anyway…

And, why not? Because, trust!! You’d only spurn and scoff at my seemingly spurious, counterfeit, tall, tall torturous tale; even though, it be not torturous, but tender, touching truth!! Unless, of course, you are curious, and have come across us angel/aliens in our own right with open minds and open hearts, then there’d be no point in proclaiming the snippets of specifics of my all too perturbing albeit prophetic schizoid-delusional messianic psychosis.

Respectfully submitted,
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew D. Blanchard
Artist In Residence
SINS INVALID
San Francisco, CA USA
http://bit.ly/qherekidsf
[20110111T235237PST]

ON MOTHERHOOD: "Nature vs. Nurture"

While researching the meaning and popularity of my given name: Matthew, in preparation & as subtext for a monologue that I'm preparing for my Sins Invalid Artists In Residence (A.I.R.) Showcase performance, I "stumbled upon" the website, CafeMom.com, which conveniently catalogs baby names by category, popularity, date and by other distinguishing factors; the website also provides a social networking platform for expectant and/or experienced mothers.

The following is the complete text, which was intended to serve as my profile discussion introducing my puppy dog, TANNER'baby, as my first and only child. I discovered only after a few good hours of creative writing, when I tried to confirm my profile on CafeMom.com, that the website prohibited any discernibly male-gendered persons from accessing their social network as a member.

Nonetheless, I feel it worthwhile for me to post what I had written for their website, for the simple fact this, my essay: ON MOTHERHOOD, indeed reveals some very pertinent & potent aspects of my psyche, as they be related to relations with my own mother. In fact, what was supposed to be a passage limited to 500 words, turned into a torturously contemptuous tirade against my own mother.

I'll be straight forward with my introduction here, for I admit frankly & freely that this essay against my mother can easily be interpreted as damned vehemently vicious, venomous and cruel, if read out of context and incompletely; however, MIND YOU! This is a happy story!

Truth be told! This is a story founded on a sincere desire to love and be loved, to restore a stable, healthy, worthwhile and meaningful relationship between mother and son. All the pejoratives and derogatory vocabulary I use to describe my mother come from a place of immense sympathy, empathy, and love.

True, it is inappropriate to call such deprecation empirical, however constative my utterances may seem; being that these words are mere manifestations of my own severely biased, negative judgments and opinions of my mother. Despite the harsh tone and timbre of my words, I freely, confidently & gratefully admit that my mother's love for me (and her other children) is truly immense! 

In fact, I would even go as far as to argue that my mother's love of her children is so intensely, unfathomably immense that, just as the scope of Man's intellect is far too limited to contain and comprehend a truly complete understanding of the Sublime, the sublime love my mother has for her children fully exceeds the capacity of her imagination, emotions and intellect.

For this sad fact, my mother truly suffers, and I'd be damned if I didn't wish things different for her, for me, for us. Likewise, this sad fact defines and buttresses my own sympathy and love for my dear, dear mother, MOM!! God bless her, endlessly!! I pray.   

Before I begin serving up pleasantly sycophantic praises of my oh so adorable, high-energy & affectionate amber-haired Terrier-mixed mutt, permit me please to describe the context within which a 30-something, single, San Francisco Fog City gay man, like myself, presumes to find new friends amongst CafeMom.com members.

As a young queer, but closeted, college-bound over-achiever of teenage years, I sadly suffered the wrath of dysfunction born of my own mother's unmonitored, unmitigated manic depressive alcoholic binging & blackouts. Thus, I forcibly distanced myself mentally, emotionally, and yes, even physically (i.e., geographically) from my seriously sick and psychologically frail single mom.

Coincidence smiled slack-jawed some thirteen or fourteen years ago, when I first mandated distance from & distrust of maternal wrath & reign in my life. Concurrent to the disappearance of my mother, my benevolently better-intentioned & bigger brained educators innocently indulged and thus cemented my caustically cautious contempt for the schizoaffective, severely alcoholic & codependent maternal forces of my absentee and/or aggressively antagonistic family.

My teachers, to whom I gratefully granted custody of my capriciously prodigal intellect, introduced to me through scholastic study the convincing conclusions (i.e., covertly complementary bio-psychosocial arguments) of Francis Galton's Darwinian-based theories & theses on "Nature vs. Nurture."

By analyzing the extensive empirical evidence acquired through the lifelong, cutting-edge biological studies of his cousin, Charles Darwin, Galton determined the unequivocally evolutionist role of the relationship, first interpreted as dichotomic binary, between "an individual's innate qualities ('nature,' i.e., nativism or innatism) versus personal experiences ('nurture,' i.e., empiricism or behaviorism) [...] in determining or causing individual differences in physical & behavioral traits."[1]

Modern psychologists have come to criticize Galton's distinction between nativism & behaviorism "for its binary simplification of two tightly interwoven parameters."[2]

Today, the empirically extant binary between "nature" & "nurture" is more commonly interpreted as involving a relatively DYADIC (i.e., linked, interactive, symbiotic) co-dependence, rather than a DICHOTOMIC (i.e., contrary, mutually exclusive, independent) opposition, between the influence & impact of:

A.) "NATURE" : the uniquely concretive genetic profile of individual progeny inherited directly from their biological progenitors, and...

B.) "NURTURE" : the subtly nuanced psychosocial behaviors, traits and/or characteristics learned [i.e., "gain[ed] (a habit, mannerism, etc.) by experience, exposure to example, or the like; acquire[d]") from those individuals serving or interpreted as role-models, guides, or teachers within one's sociocultural environment.[3]

Today, in my "eyes wide shut," there no longer seems to exist a valid argument, but rather an agreement, between the concepts of "nature" & "nurture." In this vein, I see myself the son of a manic depressive, schizoaffective, actively alcoholic mother, who in his own time has perpetuated the traits, traditions and inheritances of his maternal line through severely catastrophic "quarter-life" crises.

Such crises began cruelly crippling my confidences, as far back as the Second Grade -- How well I recall that ineffable moment, when I was first called, "FAGGOT!" I often bitterly & begrudgingly recall the ostensibly laughable fact that, at the innocent, naive age of only seven, I was belligerently lambasted with brutal, brutish teasing for having erroneously defined "blow job," as being: You know! Like, when you go to SuperCuts®, and after the lady cuts your hair, she "blow" dries it!

More recently, these crises have tangibly & tragically crippled my mind, my body & my health. Fast forward to (or remembering in retrospect) the most ineffable, ill-fated & unfortunate day of my sad, sorry life: October 7, 2007.

Sure! We are now many chapters further along from my early adolescence, but this single day in my turned 'round story of survival & redemption is equally (if not astoundingly more) unforgettable than the years upon years of persecutions I succumbed to as a very lousy, lonely, lachrymal school-aged lad.

In early October, just over three years ago, I was found alone & on the brink of death, after what doctors now believe must have been 10 to 12 days of comatose confinement, brought on by overdose-induced, HIV/AIDS-related PCP pneumonia and a poly-microbial bacterial infection of the face.

The San Francisco Fire Department busted down my door to find me lying face-down & belly-up in my stark, unsterile studio apartment; painfully contorted and coiled up in the soiled, sickening sheets of my sullied, stained single bed. Blood streamed sanguine from my back-end, from my blackened necrotic nostrils and mouth, from the empty ethereality of my ears and eyes.

I was covered in my own vomit, urine and defecation, and all but nine of my teeth had fallen out "under the weight of my aching, dying brain." I had been forgotten, left alone, depraved & denigrated, deteriorating toward death; yet, by some ridiculously rare reversal of fate, I was rescued, redeemed & restored to life.

A rescue brigade – purportedly, a near dozen of emergency vehicles; all with lights emblazoned & flashing; sirens blaring in cacophonous mayhem and mercy – rushed me speedily & without delay, directly to the nearest hospital emergency care unit. After some quick and effective lifesaving maneuvers (i.e., blood transfusions, dialysis, wound care, heavy doses of generic antibiotics), my fading heart rate was stabilized; brain activity restarted.

Then, "a team of San Francisco’s leading diagnosticians, doctors & surgeons fought valiantly, yet failed so sorely to" curb, control and defeat the necrotizing bacteria which infected my face. Their only option, in order to ensure my survival, was the immediate debridement of all the necrotic, infected skin, flesh and bone of my once quite beautifully handsome visage.

For eight weeks, I remained in a drug-induced comatose state, with my entire head wrapped in white gauze bandages. After having amputated my entire upper jaw & palette, as well as deeply denigrate parts of my mouth, the left side of my nose, and my septum, a godsend group of most heavenly, heroic healers waited for the great gaping hole in the center of my face to heal.

Sadly, I cannot recall or recognize my selfless saviors, these "heavenly, heroic healers," as my mind's eyes were closed off to consciousness & seeing, while they worked their wonders on me.

However, you cannot conscientiously consider this lifelong continuum of crises after crises as mere counterfeit confabulations of my residual angst & anger, psychically preserved in the seemingly spurious spewing of my gad-awfully disgraceful, ungrateful gay boy guts.

For, however unrealistically severe sound my stories of sad, sad sufferance – both inherited & learned – the gad-damned destitution, destruction, deprivation, drug dependency, depression, disease and disfigurement, which have tortuously tormented me 'til present day, are terribly, entirely telling and TRUE!!

Still, such conspicuously catastrophic crises have, each in their own turn, torn me from the bliss of my not entirely outlandish optimism, inspiration, aspiration, hope and faith in Self, only to catapult me cruelly and contemptuously toward all but indomitable death; as if, as retribution for the heartless, angry animosity I've held toward my mother for my entire young life!

In spite, despite, or perhaps even because of my madly miserable mother, I have learned to survive great sufferance & struggle. Finally, at the age of thirty, I have come to transcend the pain, the shame, the disgust and disgrace, the disappointments, dissatisfaction & contempt.

I have languished and labored in battle over the brutal bereavements & bombardments of the neuro-psychobiological symptoms and side-effects of my bipolar disorder, schizoid-delusional psychosis and substance abuse; indubitably, inherited from my mother. 

I have also always often fought against my psychosocial behavioral impairments learned, gained or acquired by example, as the middle child of a hyper-dysfunctional threefold broken family, which manifest in my lonely life as parallels to my mother's last-ditch, last-chance, leftover life, as well.   

Yet, instead of still so stupidly sustaining such suffering in my life, I have in turn tended to cultivate a feverishly Faith-focused and thankful fortitude of smile, spine, spirit and psyche. 

This, I've learned or acquired, not from my weak and woebegone, miserably melancholic, mentally depraved & miscreant, degenerate mother, but rather from the countless coaches, counselors, providers, preachers, fans, friends and family who sit loudly lauding me court-side, during this furiously & ferociously fun game we call, "LIFE!"

My many loving laudators, whose encouragements, praise, counsel and commendations have rightfully and willfully replaced the disappointments of deprecation manifest by the damned near always drunken, depressed and indiscriminately desultory, dissatisfied, dreary but deadpan, stone-faced, icy, empty smiles of the mad, sad, sullen source of my genetic degeneracy (i.e., good ol' mother, MOM!!).

My many myriad advocates, supporters, defenders, patrons and providers stand tall, strong and sturdy as proud pillars of the wholly turned 'round reversal of my Fate.

Through a renewal of my Faith, a return to my roots (as opposed to my running away!), and my rightfully deserved Redemption, I've earned (as my mother would have, could have, and perhaps, still can!!) divine, sublime recompense for the determined, dutiful and devout good-doing and grasping toward greatness that I aim and am poised to achieve, through a careful, caring and conscientiously heralded sharing of my tall, tall telling tales of tempestuous turmoil and tragedy turned to triumph, after all.

These pillars of my survival and success have proven empirically, time and time again, through thoughts, words, sentiments, support, and – above all else – through past & present affection, admiration & ACTION, to be my guardians, my protectors, my heroes, my role models, my mentors, my teachers.

As I stand today so surefooted & secure in recognition of my Salvation through survival, I swear so surely to return to the origin, to the roots, of my Redemption, so that I may – God willing!! – give back to my guardian angels in gorgeous, gleaming, goliath grins of goodwill & gratitude.

I’ve joined CafeMom.com, as a thirty-something diseased, depressed, disfigured codependent; because, in spite, despite, or perhaps even because of the madly, miserable mindflux & mayhem which define the dysfunctional distance separating me from my mother, I aspire to find new friends here. 

I am looking neither for a new mother, a substitute, nor a replacement. However, I am looking for guidance from compassionate confidantes and role models, from whom I may learn how best to repair, restore, cultivate and nurture a stable, healthy, mutually beneficial, respectful and responsible, adult relationship with my own MOM – a wounded, weary woman who is oh so wanting of love; especially, from her estranged children.

For any future dialogues ON MOTHERHOOD, I will dutifully & discriminately describe the cripplingly corrupt manifestations of my own psychological frailty, social ineptitude & awkwardness, and substance abuse. A cataloging of my own many myriad imperfections, I presume, will prove them inherited and/or learned. But, from whom?

Does this question really remain altogether unanswered? If I have not at length provided a fully convincing & complete argument in favor of a DYADIC/CAUSAL/EMPIRICAL interpretation of the "Nature vs. Nurture" debate, as it relates to my life and to motherhood, then I briefly reiterate:

I argue adamantly that the utterly execrable, nefand, ne'er-do-well iniquities of my colossally corrupt character are ultimately my most reprehensible & reprobate inheritances: glaringly ungodly & grotesque gifts from my emotionally maladroit, compulsively codependent, maniacally defensive, nefariously perverse & irrationally self-repudiating mother.

While the "plentiful beatitude" of my blessedly blissful, infectiously intrepid, jovially just, fortunately fortitudinous, faithfully frank & fair, sacrosanct sense of survival, I've learned (i.e., gained or acquired) from the many "heavenly, heroic healers" who, hearts aligned in prayer, have held such a superhuman hand and played such a specially sublime role in sustaining my survival for so long, against such awful odds. THANK GOD!!

PERHAPS, some other mothers might find plausible, in my long, languorous tirade, the possibility for friendship & the turning of a page: a new leaf! For, while my tirade may have been told in a heated, contemptuous tone, I believe that therein lies loving, tender, telling TRUTH!!

PERHAPS, the love of mother & child might be restored here, starting with this still young, but no longer naive…; this still ridiculed & persecuted, but now more proud, tough-knuckled & thick-skinned…; this still mentally distorted, diseased & disfigured, but no longer depraved, dissolute, debased, degenerate, deteriorating invalid, now no longer deprived of love.

PERHAPS, this happily home-bodied, healthfully integrated & involved, ultimately indomitable and inspiring, safe, sane, sober thirty-something, solemn & blissful believer...; this no longer languishing, but still lauded lifelong learned laureate and lover of life...

PERHAPS, this “fagged-out ferocious Fog City freak show,” who is as delighted as he is grateful to have had so many successive second, third, and fourth choice chances to live again and again, may find it in himself here to restore trust and faith in family connections, in maternal instinct and love.

PERHAPS, this next chapter of my life might begin with innocently simple & patient, carefully & caringly cultivated conversations over my own compassionately p/maternal role as proud, proud papa of a vivaciously sweet, loving and affectionate two year old, gorgeous Terrier-mixed mutt, named Scruffy “TANNER” Thompson: my “PRIDE & JOY!!”  We’ll see!!

OR ELSE, my words are wasted… And, what a shame that would be for me: the marauder of one mightily mammoth & megalomaniac monologue! WINK! Like I said, “We’ll see!!” Thanks for reading… Cheers! Ciao! NAMASTE…

__________________
[1]     Wikipedia contributors, "Nature versus nurture," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nature_versus_nurture&oldid=395464833 (accessed: November 8, 2010).
[2]     Ibid. (accessed: November 8, 2010).
[3]     learned. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/learned (accessed: November 8, 2010).

Respectfully submitted,

Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF

Matthew D. Blanchard

San Francisco, CA USA

http://bit.ly/qherekidsf

[20101109T052758PST]