NBCToday® | Charlotte Ponce ▶ PARIS...!!?

http://www.today.com/video/today/55964885#55964885

CHARLOTTE PONCE, a mature yet youthfully beautiful, self-assured, and giving twelve year-old adolescent American girl and would-be Makeup Artist/Beautician, intends to visit PARIS, FRANCE within her teenage years; only, after having received her newly reconstructed ear... 

Perhaps, I could accompany her on a dream-like "tour de force théâtrale de la Cité de l'Amour," as a means to acquaint the young woman with the great past & present cultural history of esthetiques, stage and fashion makeup, and the 'artistic creation and application of face;" as I might, one should presume, know so very well...

Respectfully submitted:
+MATTHEW BLANCHARD

matthew@qherekidsf.com
San Francisco, CA 94109 

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]

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]

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] 

UBIQUITY OF MY UGLINESS...

Years before a corrosive, killer HIV/AIDS and Crystal Meth Combo cut a gaping hole in the middle of my face, stealing of me my beauty in one nightmarish turn of a page, a more curious and less caustic HIV/AIDS Crystal Meth Combo calamitously curtailed my intellectual and creative development.

The first chaotic combo interrupted and/or either suspended my bright young life for a good long while by stealing of me my sanity, my serenity and by forcing me into a manic messianic schizo-delusional psychosis.

Coincidentally, while my second doomsday downfall damn near destroyed all real remnants of my tangible, physical beauty, the AIDS & Crystal Meth Combo of my first foray with death through delusions brought be into a celestially sublime connection with the pure essence of beauty.

Back when the better bastion of boyhood me beamed smiling and sexy, you would have heard me brag in brash whispers of secrecy that my unmitigated drug dependency, coupled with my not-yet-medicated, unmonitored manic depression and HIV/AIDS disease likely stole a few good inches from my inseam and waist line. Drugs, depression and disease had turned me into the tweaked-out top-hungry twenty-something twink slut barebacking bottom boy I was better off born to me. By God!!

With legs freshly shaven, I used to like to try my way at prancing and dancing in heals. I had the posture of a princess back then, or better yet, of a QUEEN!! Taut, toned, tender and tanned, my thighs tightly tucked into tawdry, sultry, see-through silk-striped stockings, topped with frilly, flamboyant, fluorescent pink tutus & leotards, a black leather-laced bodice and breasts of bagged basmati. I dreamed of doing DRAG!!... And, my delusions brought me as close as I'd ever be to a diva's starlit status.

What are the odds that a poor, sorry, solitary, sad, sick, insane queer kid for sale on the streets of Skid Row, new to San Francisco, might remember in rich vivid clarity, in multi-dimensional Technicolor timbres and tonalities, his actual psychological demise from climax to cure, from onset to overture? Well, I do!!

I recall with great delight the drug-induced, yet truly transmundane delusions that seemed — For six months, let's say! That's a safe bet. — more reasonable and real, more true to me than ordinary and onerous everyday life, thanks to the immaculate bliss and beauty that back-lit every waking instant of my insanity.

Yet I couldn't, wouldn't waiver on the whims of consciousness long enough to remember much the long stretch of days three years ago that would prove to be so much more dramatically life-changing for me: twelve days of comatose confinement caged up in my stuffy, sterile studio, asleep, unconscious. My face pressed flat onto a putrid, pestilent pillow, under the heavy weight of my aching, dying brain. Saliva dripping down my cheek and chin to the sullied, soiled, sickening sheets only to invite infection in!!

Context may help! ... Here goes!! Far before October 2007, when I was found alone, half-dead in my apartment; on the brink of dehydration, starvation and brain damage; desperately in need of dialysis; having survived only by some heavenly happenstance the devastating detriment of PCP pneumonia and a necrotizing poly-microbial bacterial infection of the face... Far before a team of California's leading diagnosticians, doctors and surgeons attempted valiantly yet albeit failed so sorely to salvage my once so cute and charismatic, gorgeous gay boy grin...

Far before I woke from coma to gasp and gawk at my godforsaken, gruesomely grotesque, ghastly, ghoulish gaping hole of a grimace, I was so long ago quite blessed — Or cursed? However the story goes! — to have had a right entrancing, sexy smile.

Before my brutal, bestial, ferocious fall from grace and yet thanks still then too to drugs, depression and disease, I could boast the beauty of a primped, polished pansy boy physique made potent by the unrelenting rush of salacious, sex-crazed hedonism which happened to hammer out haphazardly into hormonal hot flashes and "meth'merized" highs.

Oh!! And shan't I forget the illicit, alluring beauty of my tight little tush and thighs that tempted and fed far too many a head-spun, tail-furious tweaker top tucked away either between the bathhouse backrooms of Berkeley or beneath the bent, broken branches and burning bush there best past bedtime in Buena Vista Park.

Now, today, post-op eleven-fold with twelve more surgical reconstructions on the books, I'm nothing but a torn, tattered tapestry of scars, skin grafts and flaps of flesh festooning my funny, freakish face.

My legs, once softened and smoothed by the razor's edge, are now covered in patches of naked, hairless, flimsy flesh only a few layers fine. Coincidence now predominates, for the large surgical scar that defiles to devastating depths my sorry specimen of a lower left leg seems to be far smoother and softer, far more delicate and lady-like that it e'er had been before, despite the patterned ripples of a serrated texture that rises and rolls along the "miscontours" of my crippled calf.

I should be thankful then that hair still groups from the pair of embossed rectangular skin graft scars that are slowly fading from the front of my lower left thigh. But, I'm not grateful to have my torso tarnished by the twisted pucker of a scar in the middle of my gut where a G.I. tube once hung for fourteen months, two weeks and five days past the point it first proved futile at feeding me.

I call it my "Octo-Orifice!!;" although, it's shut tight & leaks no more. I call it also my "Second Bellybutton," because in all actuality, that's exactly what it is. Yet, instead of being nourished by placenta pumped to my stomach through an umbilical cord, I was this second time around, at the moment of my rebirth, fed synthetic, high-protein, carb-loaded "blender'ized" slop seeped into me through a twelve foot long number three plastic tube that hung between my belly and an upside down bottle of so-called sustenance like a drip-line. In all actuality, that's exactly what it was...

Moving onward and upward, we arrive at the loosely bandaged, still wide open hole in my neck, where my tracheotomy tube once hung. Honestly, I don't know whether or not I am more grateful to be rid of the tube that took so much time and attention to tend to, or if I am madly resentful of my own eight layers of healthy, still living skin and of the thick musculature of my tender trachea for taking so long a time to heal up and seal up.

So, still I wait... Committed to a daily ritual of stripping Xeroform® and four-by-four gauze sponges from the sweaty, scratchy hole in my neck, still I wait... I wait only still to be enslaved to a stolid, chin-strapped schedule for showering, in which I must each morn tightly velcro a water-hazard choke-guard security-sheath above my shoulders and below my chin, before stepping in to let my cleansing begin.

No wonder that I avoid the shower spigot like SARS or Swine Flu: the plagues which passersby suppose sicken me. ME! The sorry, sad face behind the surgical mask who meanders mindlessly, miserably amid mankind's miscreant misjudgments of much of my own mad, mad melancholic misfortune.

And, By God!! I sure as hell am not one infinitesimally small grain of grit grateful for this muddled mutant monstrosity of a quasimodo mouth I've been melded into for the moment. I don't have enough fingers or toes or hairs growing from my forehead flap of a nose... There are a lot of them; mind you! Bet your life on it! Hairs grow hoggishly long and hamstrung from the impenetrable depths of my makeshift nostril, nose and septum to curl down the coarse discolored curvature of my leg flap look-alike lip. And, Hell Man!! Fuck!! Do they itch or what??

Truth be told; I don't even have enough holes, appendages, protrusions, flaps of flesh, scars or skin grafts on my body to be able to begin to count the magnanimous mind's eye momentum of hatred and disgust that I have for this gruesome, ghoulish, ghastly grin of mine!

And, Yet Alas!! I've stayed safe, sane and sober over one full year, and for what reason? Because despite the ubiquity of my bitterly unbecoming and brutish ugliness, I've somehow retained remnants and remembrances enough of a time in my life when in my bitterly unbecoming and brutish insanity, I discovered the true meaning of beauty.

Beyond the awkward, obtuse, abstract, anthropomorphic aesthetic of the Tina-torn, AIDS-quilted, quizzical contours of my monstrosity of a mouth, I seen endless opportunity for elaborate beautification and solemn self-betterment. Buried not too deeply behind the dug-out disfigurements of my blasphemed, begotten, brutalized body and face — For sure! I'm certain. — there lies alive immaculately innocent, blessedly beautiful baby blue boy eyes...

Respectfully Submitted,
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew D. Blanchard
San Francisco, CA USA
[2010.07.14@20:29PST]

AIDS IS A PERVASIVE PANDEMIC THAT BLEEDS THROUGH
THE LINES OF COLOR, CREED & CAPITULATES TO NO ONE BUT
THE POSITIVELY AWARE & PREVENTION-MINDED SURVIVORS.
— Matthew D. Blanchard

THE SUBJECT NO LONGER HAS TO BE MENTIONED BY NAME.
SOMEONE IS SICK. SOMEONE ELSE IS FEELING BETTER NOW.
A FRIEND HAS JUST GONE BACK INTO THE HOSPITAL.
ANOTHER HAS DIED. THE UNSPOKEN NAME, OF COURSE, IS AIDS.
— David W. Dunlap

OVER & OVER, THESE MEN CRY OUT AGAINST THE WEIGHT OF
SO MANY LOSSES — NOT JUST A LOVER DEAD, BUT FRIENDS,
AND FRIENDS OF FRIENDS, DOZENS OF THEM, UNTIL IT SEEMS
THAT AIDS IS ALL THERE IS AND ALL THERE EVER WILL BE.
— Jane Gross

"Language Or A Kiss" : YouTube.com

People like to tell me that I am a gifted writer; however, more often than not, I dismiss the compliment as shady, insincere flattery, nothing more than a mere measly attempt to win over my good graces and high esteem. I'm not easily moved to accept such praise as genuine; instead, I seem to enjoy being so cripplingly self-critical that I find flaw in nearly all of the creative work that I produce. Flagrant masochistic introspection and judgment are the most debilitating characteristics of my intellect.

Recently, I've gained a very acute, salient awareness of this fault of mine when I sat down to begin laboring over the writing of a narrative for the experimental documentary short film in which I will be featured as part of The HIV Story Project. As soon as I put pencil to paper, I arrived at a major road block. As Daniel Cardone, the director of my documentary short, expressed in his proposal of narrative beats for the film; he said (I paraphrase, albeit only slightly!), "How 'bout you tame up on the emphatic use of alliteration?"

YUP!! Semantic syncopation of syllabic constructs seems superficially smart; although, aggressively assertive, obtuse alignments of the Anglican alphabet in alliteration are ever so much more unabashedly awkward and asinine than astute or impressive. Alliterations heavily harangue the human ear e'er so often in my hand's writing as to be yet another aspect of my aimlessly affected artistic arrogance. AWFUL! I am more than mindfully aware...

So, I have to harness the potency of my "emphatically alliterative" writing style to produce something coherent yet stylized enough to sound like spoken word when read aloud, when performed as narration. The challenge has proven ever so garishly gargantuan and heavy-weighted that I've been more apt to toss my text o'er my shoulder and shudder in exacerbated ennui than to scream excitedly in the act of forcing a fluid flow of whimsically written word on whatever pad of paper presents itself to me so pleasingly to be prettified by my elaborately eloquent enunciation.

YIKES!! There I go again! Can't you see? If crippling not be my self-criticisms then these confounded constructions of collected consonants ought clearly be called out as such: CRAP!!

Failing at first to find a friendly unfettered flow of thought from my fabulously and freakishly flamboyant frame of mind to a much more mellow, mundane manifestation or monstrance of my mind's majesty e'er writ in words of wistful wisdom, I set out alternately to ponder and play with possible themes, motifs and concepts that could in effect guide my writing away from excess and more toward realism, or at least toward naturalism.

After speaking at length with Nomy Lamm, the Artists In Residence (A.I.R.) Program Director for Sins Invalid, about my background, back story, and of the context in which arose the opportunity for my story to be featured as part of a compilation of short films commemorating the thirtieth year of acknowledgment of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), I discovered my own overriding affinity for an idea that I had been incubating ever since said opportunity presented itself to me.

Today is a very important milestone for me. The Fourteenth of July (i.e., Bastille Day!) marks the anniversary of my sobriety (i.e., my CLEAN DATE!), and to celebrate, I'm a convening the production of my experimental docu-short, lead by a superbly talented team of queer film production professionals all associated pro bono with The HIV Story Project. In fact, there only remains a few more than thirty minutes before their arrival to my home to begin shooting.

As I celebrate today my one-year anniversary of sobriety, I have all but been able to ignore the crescendo'ed confluence of my creative energies and impulses around the progress of both my recovery and my reconstructions. All is explained in lucid detail by the video blog I posted to YouTube.com about ten days ago, entitled "Language Or A Kiss" after a beautiful acoustic ballad I discovered that morning, only after more than a decade of listening, on Indigo Girls' album 1200 Curfews (Live).

The ten minute home-made webcam movie features "yours' truly!" pontificating the plentiful platitudes and prettiness of a poignant, powerful idea: that of using the foreboding, intimidating, meaningful act of kissing (Romantically, that is!!) as the central motivating action of my docu-short film narrative. The YouTube.com video explains in detail the significance of this convergence of energies and ideas. The webcam movie monologue also describes the profound meaning behind this particularly challenging choice around which I hesitantly aspired to shape a cinematic sketch of my life. My aim would have been to create a piece that might have touched, moved and inspired an audience perhaps to live safer,  healthier, more sane and sober lives be they suffering or not from either HIV/AIDS, drug dependency or disfigurement.





Language Or A Kiss: QHereKidSF (a.k.a Matthew Blanchard) contemplates the
convergence of his creative energies around his one-year anniversary of clean
time. With sobriety comes sanity and surety enough to explore either
"language or a kiss" both in experimental theater/film performance.
(i.e., http://sinsinvalid.org/; http://thehivstoryproject.org/; etc.)

[TIME ELAPSE] » As I type, my production team is shooting extreme closeups of the interior textures of my apartment. The cinematographer has just lifted himself from the crouched near-fetal position he took to "get lost in a bunny" rabbit knitted Christmas ornament that hangs from the cord of my venetian blinds, swaying ominously in a shadow of light just in front the sullied, dirtied retractable screen that props my window open. I'm not sure what they're filming now, as my back is toward them while they traipse around my studio capturing the phenomenally complex idiosyncrasies of my mundane, boring abode.

Turns out that my director, Daniel Cardone, hasn't yet had a chance to view the YouTube.com video I've posted above; so, in all likelihood, there will be no true central motivating action for this film narrative. We have no plans today to shoot me kissing anyone, and it is far too late in the game to go out on the street to find some random Polk Street callboy we could pay twenty dollars to try their damnedest at getting romantic while maneuvering their lips gently and with compassion onto my muddled monstrosity of a mouth. HAH! Could you imagine?

I've never simulcast the writing of a blog entry with live action. To be frank and forward, it's quite nerve-racking and unsettling. I wonder whether or not anyone in the room knows that I am writing about them as they toil around my studio on a voyage of cinematographic discovery

As I type, the warmhearted, bundled-up in a sweater and gloves, uber-zen sound technician is recording "room tone" with his boom microphone perched as ominously as my bunny rabbit just over my shoulder, so as to capture the sounds of my fingers tap, tap, tapping away on the keys of my laptop. I am terribly conscious of the fact that I tend to backspace a lot, which probably dashes his hopes at capturing a cohesive rhythm. Alas! Oh well...

"Alright! Stop. I've got another idea now...," says Daniel, the director, as our cinematographer completes a rack-zoomed extreme closeup of the grains of wood on my floor. Now, the production team is duplicate-framing a similar shot of the MUNI Metro & Busline map than hangs on the wall in the hall way next to my front door.

It is indeed a very good thing that as an artist, I've learned how not to be too utterly disappointed when one's vision is not wholly and fully adopted by every member of a production team. Blame the absence of a ironically romantic kiss between tweaked-out twink Polk Street callboy and my still quite sane and sober Skid Row mutant, monstrous, alien, Audrey II-like lips on the capricious whims of the film artist's mind. Although, unlike the sound technician's hopes which fizzled with the realization that I am not quite such a melodic typist, my dreams have not yet been dashed.

You see! I still have the theatrical medium with which to toy around salaciously and sexy-like. The kiss could still come to pass as I see it! I've got six long months to workshop scenes for Sins Invalid which perchance could center around this challenging, compelling, confrontational act of compassion and enduring, caring love. Those who follow me in the blogosphere must just wait patiently to hear word soon of the developments that unfold with my experimental ensemble performance work.

And in the meantime, both all of you and I must also patiently await the post-production work on and premier of my experimental documentary short film, entitled "(TBD)!" If the work we have completed already today is any testament to the quality and caliber of Daniel's artistic vision, then I'd have to say that we are surely heading in a "positive" direction (pun intended!). A thousand thanks to Daniel, Jörg, Josh, and Doug: my production team! It's been a real joy working with you all. And so the work continues... Who's a Movie Star? I'm a Movie Star!!

Respectfully Submitted,

Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF

Matthew D. Blanchard

San Francisco, CA USA

[2010.07.14@15:03PST]

FERGUSON : A Loquacious Look Inside...

Daniel Cardone, an Australian film/television producer & director living & working in San Francisco, was recently matched to me as a subject for the three to five minute HIV/AIDS survivor's story film documentary he has been commissioned to direct as part of a compilation of 15 to 20 short films of various genres that is now being called The HIV Story Project.

Jörg Fockele, a German film/television producer & director who is Executive Producer of the project, was introduced to my story when I met him as a youth liaison member of the Board of Directors of Bay Area Young Positives, Inc. He was searching for youth to profile for the film project, but was coming up short with the membership of BAY Positives and the clients of Larkin Street Youth Services, Inc. Assisted Care/After Care.
I did what I could during the conversation between Jörg and myself to advocate as well as I could for a focus on youth-aged subjects for short film exposes, but we were running into an obvious brick wall. That's when Jörg asked me how it came to pass that I had been associated with the project.

I gladly explained that Derrick Mapp, an HIV Health Counselor and L.I.F.E. Institute Facilitator from The Shanti Project, had told me of the Project and was immediately moved to get me involved either in a development capacity or as a short film subject. Derrick incubated the original idea of a short film compilation commemorating the 30th Anniversary of the emergence on the scientific scene of the "Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)" as a nominal spoken word diagnosis for the then popularly known "Gay Cancer."

Then, sitting there at an empty desk in the back of the BAY Positives' office(s) with Executive Director Curtis Moore, MPH (a dear, dear friend of mine, as well as one of my most distinguished professional colleagues) at my side and Jörg Fockele sitting across from me, I downed my mask and recounted my story of disease, drug dependency, delusional psychosis, and just short of death, disfigurement, etc. Jörg was stoic in his reserved response to my story, and in a very unexpected matter-of-fact sort of way, he confirmed Derrick's assumption, "Yes, you'd surely make a decent subject for a short film. I'll have to see if I can find a director who is up to the challenge." I, in turn, smiled in delight and then just waited to discover who he c/would find to direct me in my own short film documentary!!

Of course, in light of all the anticipation of knowing that I would soon be collaborating on and starring in a documentary short film about my climactic curtailing and confounding of my desolate doom in a destitute room: a slovenly studio begrimed in blood, urine and other gross indecencies of death at the door, I eagerly awaited the opportunity to meet my director. 

More so however, I eagerly anticipated the opportunity to broad cast my nevermore nefandous net to work my story through communities of survivors: a story of a reluctant rebounding, a refusing at first of the miserable misfortune that was meant to map out my unfathomably forlorn future of disconsolate discomfort and disdain, to reclaim courageously, confidently, and above all conspicuously my right to life well-lived.

Thus, in waiting for eventual contact with the film director assigned to document my story, I went ahead and proclaimed to the world that I was going to be a star. Short of posting the news to my blog for all the world to see, as I'm doing now, I've told everyone I know that I am going to be featured in a short film as part of The HIV Story Project. And just in time for me to begin to substantiate my claims to stardom, Daniel Cardone has entered my life as a true Godsend!

The following text is taken directly from my most recent email to my documentarian, regarding our struggle to find a logical link between the performative spoken-word aspects of the excessively loquacious, prosaic pedantry and pomposity of my creatively written exposes or essays (or whatever you'd like to call my boisterously shit-for-brains, blabbering behemoth of a blog?) and a certain naturalism of the cinematic narrative.

Yesterday evening, after pondering further the myriad of possibilities for juxtaposing the performative spoken-word with stoic straightforward naturalism in film, I realized that the production dates that Daniel had proposed to me perfectly coincide with my one-year anniversary of sobriety.  I realized also that a speaker's visit to Ferguson Place, my Recovery & Rehabilitation House (spotlighted in previous blog entries) was long overdue and that one could easily coincide or conjoin with a community celebration in honor of my "WATCH" (i.e., my achievements and accomplishments since first establishing my sobriety a year ago).

Below, you will read a very intimate depiction of Ferguson Place, as well as a downright dutifully dramatic portrayal of my personal experiences disclosing my disfigurement and disease(s) to my community there. In writing this email and sharing it here as a blog post, I have no intention or desire of breaching confidentiality clauses or the confidences of my confidants there.  I can only say that I intend with this presentation of text to pay homage in a very real and honest fashion to my friends and family at Ferguson Place. Enjoy the read!! Thus, I quote:

Let's see.. What happens/ed at my Recovery House?

Well, Ferguson Place is a Triple Diagnoses Residential Substance Abuse & Mental Health Rehabilitation & Recovery House for people living with HIV/AIDS. To graduate from the program, one must transition successfully through four phases:

a.) ORIENTATION PHASE: a two-week in-house lock-down usually meant to empower the recovering addict to recover completely through the withdrawal of most illicit substances and to attend to medical and psychiatric appointments, putting their schedule into place for the subsequent three phases;

b.) PHASE ONE: the recovering addict can only attend medical and psychiatric appointments on their own; at all other times, s/he must be accompanied by a PHASE TWO or THREE buddy to all social activities and out-of-house recovery meetings (including 12-Step);

c.) PHASE TWO: INDEPENDENCE = recovering addict (usually after one month of in-house semi-lock-down recovery) can leave the house solo as s/he pleases but only to pre-approved recovery-related appointments and social activities.  The purpose of this phase is to prove your ability to maintain sobriety on your own through near independence, while demonstrating that you are able to be relied upon by other housemates in lower phases to accompany them to appointments and social activities;

d.) PHASE THREE: TRANSITION = During this final phase, the recovering addict is meant to focus all of their time on maintaining their recovery and health regimens, as well as to devote concerted effort toward the process of transitioning into short-term to long-term co-operative Baker Places, Inc. sober-living housing. During PHASE THREE, recovering addicts/residents/clients are expected less to accommodate to the needs of their housemates and more to focus on their own individual transitional needs.

During these four distinct periods of progressive recovery, the client/resident partners with their primary counselor to set their weekly schedule of mostly recovery-related activities. Primary Counselor's are all extensively trained in substance abuse recovery, mental health disorders and their psycho-social treatment, and HIV/AIDS health promotion and advocacy.

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With the primary counselor's guidance during ORIENTATION PHASE & PHASE ONE, the client/resident sets the following "PLANS" for their time in residence at Ferguson Place, as needed:

a.) RELAPSE PREVENTION PLAN: a step-by-step worksheet with numerous questions related to trigger identification & monitoring, and exploration of safety/sobriety response tactics that the client/resident would use ultimately to prevent relapse. In this plan, you also define the repercussions to any unexpected relapse, including demotion from your present phase, one-week lock-down, urine test, properties search, etc.

b.) HIV/AIDS HEALTH PROMOTION PLAN: a progressive plan meant to augment one's HIV/AIDS HEALTH PROMOTION practices through regularly scheduled appointments with specialists, any necessary additional appointments to follow-up on important HIV/AIDS health related issues, and prescription regimen adherence. In this plan, the client/resident defines the requirements s/he must meet to eventually hold their own meds; otherwise, meds are kept locked in the main office and are monitored and administered under staff supervision. The purpose of this plan is to optimize one's HIV/AIDS Health through weekly rehabilitative activities during the entire length of stay at Ferguson Place, with the hope/expectation that the client/resident would maintain the activities, therapy, psycho-social and prescription regimens well after they leave the program.

c.) MENTAL HEALTH REHABILITATION PLAN: much like the RELAPSE PREVENTION PLAN, this plan starts from a comprehensive fill-in-the-blanks worksheet which challenges the client/resident to define the triggers of symptoms of their mental health defects or disorders. The Primary Counselor offers general guidance and community health education about the client/residents' specific mental health disorder(s) and suggests to them avenues for ongoing treatment needed to maintain mental stability through difficult and challenging times (especially as their mental health is integrated with their substance abuse disorder).

d.) TRANSITION PLAN: This is the final "plan" that a client/resident completes, only after having defined their day-to-day psycho-social & medical treatment structure. This plan is meant to be introduced and initially adopted during PHASE THREE of the program, challenging the recovering addict to devise a three month schedule of recovery and rehabilitation-related health promotion activities that they would follow once they have graduated the program. This plan often has ulterior foci, including vocational education development, financial planning, residential/housing planning, and recovery maintenance.

The first plan listed: the RELAPSE PREVENTION PLAN, is the most important and often overrides the stipulations and expectations of all other plans, for the simple reason that RELAPSE DURING RESIDENCY is taken very seriously (albeit, less seriously than I would have liked!!). Client/Residents are only permitted TWO (2) relapses during their residency at Ferguson Place, and with each consecutive relapse comes more severe repercussions.

Client/Residents sign an universal substance abuse testing release, granting any member of the Counseling Staff to test all residents for the presence of illicit substances (including everything from alcohol to amphetamines, from barbiturates to opiates and other narcotic substances) in their urine at any time of any day for any reason or under any suspicion of use whatsoever.

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Ferguson Place houses a total of 12 recovering addicts with HIV/AIDS and mental disorders on a rollover basis, meaning individual addicts enter into residence at any time that there has been at least a two day vacancy. While I was a resident for three months at Ferguson Place, from July 14 (Bastille Day) to October 11, 2009, I saw only five residents graduate the program, not including myself. Evidently, the program was much more difficult to maintain for others than it was for myself.

In total, I saw 25 residents enter the program and 19 leave before they had graduated the program, either due to relapse, or psycho-social tensions in the house, or because they simply felt that they were ready to move on. Across the board, every resident of the house who was unable for whatever reason to graduate the program, left only to relapse within two to three weeks (usually in much less time).

As for the graduates, we are all invited back twice a month for alumni activities, where we can keep a pace of each others' achievements (or failures) at maintaining sobriety. I've counted four graduates that I know of since my residency at Ferguson Place ended who have relapsed. The sobriety and health maintenance success rate of graduates of Ferguson Place is somewhere around 7 to 1, success to failure (for lack of better phraseology), I would estimate.  Which, I believe, are outstanding figures.

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Ferguson Place is like a second home to me: home away from home. The veteran Counseling Staff there and the alumni I still have relationships with are like family. They play a significant role in helping me to sustain my sobriety, because I know that no matter what happens (sobriety or none, recovery maintenance or relapse at any time), I will be accepted there with love and admiration, compassion and care, sympathy and a strident strict hand of accountability.

My individual experience at Ferguson Place was quite very unique. I arrived there on July 14, 2009 at around 11AM in the morning with my mask tightly taped to my face to completely cover my forehead flap and nose. I remember, everyone made a point to introduce themselves and to start some semblance of a conversation with me, even though I was terribly nervous.

And each new person I met brought to my attention in their own time the fact that my mask was making my glasses fog up, as it usually does when I'm sweaty or the tape is loose. Most of the residents there were kind enough to give me permission to take it off, but I had previously planned with the staff there to set aside a dinner plate, skip the meal with everyone in the kitchen, and to wait to unveil myself until after dinner during mandatory evening group.

I was my normal gregarious, outgoing self (just an understandably tense tangle of nervosity, with a mask on!) interacting with everyone one-on-one as I could; however, I didn't discover true, absolute, total comfort and acceptance of my uniquely tragic, terrible but immensely beautiful blessings of circumstance and survival, until I sat down with the entire group of residents and staff to begin to tell my story. My voice was cracking; tears were welling up in my eyes, but I just took a deep breath and committed to being 100% honest.

I told them about my accident, moment by moment; about my hospitalization and reconstructions, day by day, month by month; and I told them about the taut tight suspension cord I was delicately stumbling back and forth upon in pause, recollection and relapse, waiting either to fall again to my miserable demise (i.e., death by meth!!) or to continue onward to the other end of the tight rope, as a faithful master funambulist would do, to step square-footed in stable surety onto a platform miles high, where peace, serenity, self-acceptance and resounding love of others reside.

I expressed to them at that moment that I was standing at the center of a bowing, wickedly imbalanced tight rope, reaching in their direction for a helping hand.  I told them that I could not live in residence with all of them for three months with a mask on all the time.  It would have been unfeasible. How would I eat? How would I shower? How would I breathe when I slept? It was necessary for my safety and my success at recovery that I be accepted into this household without my mask on.

I admitted openly and without any shame whatsoever that what they would see behind the mask would surely frighten them.

"I'm grotesque.. a monster; however harsh or sad it may sound, but I ask you... I challenge you to look beyond the disfigurement and inside of my deep grey eyes or into my crooked half-smashed smile, where you'll inevitably find resounding, remarkable beauty," I told them with utmost confidence and courage.

I told them in true faith of my own pride and potential, valor and value, "Just try. Just look. Inside. Deep Inside, and you'll find a beautiful young man who's just starving for love."

That's when I deliberately dipped my fingers behind my ears to untangle the cords of my mask from my hair and began pulling it off my face.  I peeled the tape from my face that was securing the mask to my nasty mutant double-nub, single-nostril nose, and slowly dragged the mask along a horizontal directly in front of me, still blocking my face from view.

Then, "VOILA! A la Française! Quel dramaturge que je sois! Voici my quasi-moto mouth and flagrantly flagitious, nefariously nasty nose."  I had those lines memorized, as if to cap-off my performance with as much of a shock of language as of sight. "Happy Bastille Day!" I said, "I hope you'll have me."

One by one, each of the staff and residents there in my audience briefly stumbled through a silent pause of shock and trepidation, and then one by one each in his own time, curled their lips into broad outstretched smiles.  All I saw was a small throng of floating tooth-filled tender smiles.

Someone who would become a very close personal friend of mine: a heroine addict with a three year old daughter in foster care, raised her hand gently, bashfully from her lap and asked politely, "Matthew, do mind if I say something?"

I smiled back at all the smiles smiling at me, and nodded in her direction permission to go on.

She continued, "You might hear this a lot. I don't know. But, really, honestly, to be brutally truthful with you... and I don't mean to diminish your story or your pain, but you don't look half as bad as you make yourself out to be."

Of course, I had heard that before from kind, courteous paid professionals, but never from a real person. And never had I witnessed an entire room full of people adamantly affirm her observation with hugs, kisses, embraces...long, thoughtful, sincere embracing.

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That experience... my welcome to the world of Ferguson Place, to the world-at-large... was pivotal in my transition out of addiction and into good, sober health, because it was only then, in witnessing the immense impact that my story had had on this small group of strangers, that I realized that all the politicking my pious, plaintive, yet cheerfully cynical and lugubriously lonely priest had preached to me was true... Truer than true!!

Ever since first passing by my cordoned-off curtained corner of an obtrusively unobstructed and open HIV/AIDS hospice hospital ward where I wailed away the whys and wherefores of my worrisome woebegone and weary unwelcome melancholia, my priest has preached to me of our pathways toward purpose, piety, and perfection as ultimately imperfect invalids in the eyes of the Lord.

With the audience, the friends, the family I had found at Ferguson place, I realized that all the merry mentioning of mankind's mighty miracles by my propitious priest was in fact not forlorn unfortunate fallacy, but pure untethered truth! I caught a clear glimpse of veracity in that very real instance of courageous communing.

I began to believe wholehearted then that holy hubristic happenstance looms over we the lowly licentious laymen only to transmogrify us as demonic lookalike leftover lovers of life,... as admonitorial addicts who have through hyper-tragic trails and tribulation taught themselves to be teachers above all else, community leaders or heuristic heroes to the still hungover and high.

And that truth, revealed before me in this breech backward birth of brotherhood between a garishly gruesome ghoul of a boy and his blind-sided brethren, painted my pathway and purpose toward a transmundane telling of my tragedy-turned-triumph testimonials.

Just then, I realized that my definitive purpose in the world, the purpose for which I had all but almost given up an aimless search that defined every waking moment of my yuck of youth and muck of manhood, is to share my story with the world in whichever way I could.

I would for thence onward broad cast the calamity, capitulation and comeuppance of my story through tender telling in any media and any form, so that I might ultimately save others from such sufferance, such mistakes and misery, mindflux and mayhem!!  

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There! Enough garrulous gab from the so-grotesque-he-makes-you-giggle gay boy!! Consider these past paragraphs petty practice and preparation for my sumptuous sophist spoken words of wisdom we'll frame in film for the future.

Back tracking... Besides the telling of my especially serendipitous story of survival to a group of strangers turned family in an instance of wonderful welcome, for what other reason could I reason myself to be rightfully removed from the common clientele of this Recovery House?

Well, unlike most other client/residents, I came to Ferguson Place with much of my mental health and substance abuse treatment already lined up and scheduled. I would have advanced to PHASE TWO directly from ORIENTATION PHASE had I not suffered a severe withdrawal-related anxiety attack and fainting spell by throwing a riotous temper tantrum after only a week in the house.

I was convinced that I would not be accepted by the folks there because of my disfigurement and that none of the residents or staff would ever be able to grapple themselves into an intimate enough understanding of my addiction, my disease and my experience(s).

So, in light of my hospitalization due to mental instability and to my general unease and discomfort with my position in the house, my Primary Counselor decided to extend my ORIENTATION PHASE by four extra days.

This was challenging for me to accept, so I immediately submitted a Grievance Report to the Program Director asking for a new Primary Counselor. The two of them met with me. Speaking very openly, honestly, and with compassion, they told me how much they cared about my success in the program and how much they worried that the instability I exhibited could be endemic of an underlying doubt or insecurity about my sobriety, I was easily convinced that they had made the right decision.

I accommodated, obeyed, followed the rules to a tee the rest of the way and was in the end a model resident, building very strong, intimate relationships with many people there, most importantly with my Primary Counselor and the Program Director.

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As for your question related to the frequency of speakers' visits to Ferguson Place to tell their success stories in sobriety, I'll answer by saying that during my three months as a resident there, I was audience to two alumni speakers. Both individuals had incredible stories to tell. I got to know them well.

Also, exactly three months, one week and two days after having graduated the program, I myself went to Ferguson Place to present the story of how Crystal Meth and HIV/AIDS had literally destroyed my life. I went there to share the story of how I rose like a phoenix from the hot embers of the hearth that resides at the core of this amazing place of transition and have gone on to achieve full and complete reintegration into society, to achieve great success in my sobriety, in my personal and professional life, in my HIV/AIDS and mental health rehabilitation, etc.

To be honest with you (since we are at that point now already in our acquaintance), the ultimate reason I went back to Ferguson Place after I had achieved the minimum six months sobriety to speak there was to reintegrate into the community, to take off my mask(s) for a new audience of would-be could-be friends, and to reclaim my proper place at HOME.

And in fact, the speaking engagement definitely worked in my favor; for a month and a half afterward, I would regularly stop by Ferguson Place for visits without my mask on to interact with the new and old friends I had made there, and BOY!! WAS MY IMPACT ON THESE PEOPLE IMMENSE, OR WHAT!!??

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To sum things up in brief... Ferguson Place should be entirely accommodating to me celebrating my WATCH (i.e., one year anniversary of sobriety) at the house after speaking to the residents there and sharing my amazing story with them. We'd have to get special permission from each individual who might appear in the film as audience members.

If we do this, I would plan on inviting all of my closest friends and providers to bear witness to my achievements and to testify as well to my accomplishments, to join in the celebration as audience members. All I have to do is talk with the Program Director of Ferguson Place who is a very close friend of mine to schedule my speaking engagement for Wednesday July 14, 2010, and I'm sure she'll be excited to support the cause.

One potential snag in the plan could be that Wednesday night's from 6:15 to 7:30 at Ferguson Place, is usually reserved for a mandatory meeting between the Program Coordinators and the Residents.  What's called "Client Council" is a venue in which residents can contend with any psycho-social and interpersonal issues that might be negatively impacting the community.

Also, if there have been any relapses or phase advancements by client/residents during the previous week, time is allotted to process these milestones as a group. But I don't see why we couldn't organize to have guests arrive at around 7:30/45 to proceed well into the evening with my celebration and the filming. I'll definitely talk to the Program Director pronto!!

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WOW!! What a terribly loquacious long-winded rambling about nothing but trifling tedium. I hope you don't mind how I've gotten carried away in this prosaic escapade of unequivocally illusive eloquence and pedantry.

Like I said, consider it all practice and preparation for my spoken-word narrative for the film. Tell me if anything I've written strikes a cord with you, or if it strikes a nerve!! Either way... I need to bridle my "boisterously babbling behemoth of a" brain, and learn to trim up the curvaceous corners of my ultimately square head.

Read in peace and in pleasure... I hope all this typing to which I've so tentatively (or should I say, tenaciously??) tended tonight (and into Thursday morning) treats you tenderly and touches your heart. Be well, and write soon.

Regards,
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew D. Blanchard
San Francisco, CA USA
[MDB2010.06.24@09:59PST]