CHAPTER 19
SHADOWS WARRING
At least since the time I was the lawyer for the leadership of the Chinese Students in America at the time of the Tien An Men Square Massacre, June 4, 1989, the CIA has kept an eye on my dynamics as a completely independent, private U. S. and International Lawyer. I was surprised to see a little sketch of my personal life’s swing and sway in the description of an ex-CIA character (which I never was) in a book for which there is some indication the Agency cooperated with the author, Warrior in the Shadows by Marcus Wynne (Copyright 2002 A Forge Book published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.)
It all goes back to the most lasting legacy of the man who was FDR’s choice to succeed him as President, Henry Kaiser. He founded a health care system, Kaiser Permanente, which I understand, is America’s longest lived and most populous HMO.
We, Linda The Hon and I, are enrolled for coverage in Kaiser.
It happened on this wise.
Linda The Hon had conceived. At age 47! As the saying goes these days we were pregnant. After waiting another month, then double-checking, yup, confirmed. Preggers. (Yes I KNOW that’s English. Well, I use it sometimes . . .)
Then disaster struck.
Linda went in to have some kind of thoroughgoing OB-GYN exams. That worthy Dr. who she’d had for years told her something like a zygote had united with a sperm but it was in a tube of some kind, not in the womb, and it was never going to form anything. It would never form a fetus, not even any feet. It would never be a baby. There might be a tiny bit of something called echo-genecity, a few random cells, a tooth or hair or something but nothing more. No baby. Never a child of ours.
They told us it had to be cut out, surgically removed. Well, it was a teensy, tiny little thing, a few cells, so, looking at the anatomy charts I imagined them making a small, one-half inch incision in the skin and slipping in a tube kind of laparoscopic device with a little tweezers on the end for cutting and pulling it out.
It did not seem like major surgery and who knows maybe we’d be luckier next time.
Then we were notified we had an appointment with the OB-GYN Surgeon. This was a big no-nonsense woman. She put her forearms on the desk, leaned forward and told us the unvarnished truth.
Kaiser Permanente’s truths were HMO brand, grounded in dollars and cents. The Surgeon explained it cost something like $68,000 every time she fired up the Operating Room.
Get it? The $68,000 question.
She also told us most women Linda’s age could expect to get one or more kinds of female malignant cancer – which Linda’s condition was not - during the next 10-20 year period of life she was entering.
The best thing to do, see, would be to cut out all of her womanhood parts now.
That way, Kaiser would only have to spend the $68,000 for the OR this one time, and, as a bonus, Linda did not have to worry about ever getting ovarian cancer, uterine cancer, cervical cancer or any other of those kinds of women’s cancers.
How nice.
We were just past Newlywed status, but still firmly in Blissville, with all that implies. In our case it implied three times a day. I just had one little question. “Will she still be able to have sex?” The good Dr. seemed to brace herself up. She answered us “Yes, but her desire may be diminished.” I heard the “Yes” and figured we could find a way to deal with that diminished thing, whatever that meant.
So they cut her guts out, just the way Bob Barker likes his Neighbor’s Pets, spayed and neutered.
We waited many months, to allow healing from the surgery.
Finally, after so long I wasn’t sure I remembered how to do it anymore, when Linda said she wanted to, we made love once. It was terrible.
Linda had bad pain afterward.
We have never been intimate again.
It has been more than ten years.
At one of Linda’s gossip group of women at a big table in church, when she was not there, I asked the group how long each woman there would stay together with a husband who suddenly ceased to have any sexual relations. The answers: “A week” "Yeah, a week.” “Less than a week.” “Two days.” “Yeah, two days.” So much for the fairer sex, the weaker vessel.
Still, I thought it isn’t her fault.
Darn that HMO. Yes, it is a word, I checked. Darn is a word. I know, I know, I lived in Chicago remember? But I’m trying to keep it clean here. Elevate the debate a bit you know? Keep that kind of language off the Internet, it is politeness. “Netiquette.” Don’t blame me: what can I do? Darn.
It was that Surgeon’s fault. When she said “diminished” we did not think she had said “zero”. But zero it was.
Yet Linda was great. She is now. A very lovely person. She is now. I loved her very much. I love her very much now. In all the circumstances, if I had left her she would have been devastated.
I am very tenderhearted towards her, partly because of a medical problem she was born with. Her long bones are not straight, and they have many cartilaginous tumors in them that grow beyond the normal size of the bone and must be surgically sawed off even with the bones. One arm is five inches shorter than the others. Every long bone in her body had to be surgically broken and reset straight. Her childhood was a long painful series of such operations. I could not allow myself any cruelty that would add to her sufferings.
[Incidentally, gentlefolk of the press and others out there who might think it is fun to throw stones at public figures. Linda has been through enough. You bother Linda one iota and I will be sure you and anyone and anything you care about regret it the rest of your life. This is my one exception to being gentlemanly.]
So, we stayed together, just were never, you know, together. That was fine for her. She did not care. She had no feeling for sex. For me, however, it squeezed nearly every drop of joy out of my life.
All we ever talk about is animals. Cats, raccoons, possums, squirrels, blue jays, the neighbors’ pets cute, cute cute and so on forever.
For me, part of the problem to be overcome was not to turn into Phil. No, I do not refer to that fine TV popular psychologist Dr. Phil. I refer to the other famous Phil, the one from the if- hate-were-people-I'd-be-China Phil in the fine Billy Crystal film City Slickers. I did not want to turn into that Phil. So, over time and after some typical male mid-life crises, I ended up with the fairly workable modus vivendi portrayed by the ex-CIA guy in Warrior in the Shadows. I eat out or coffee bar around town a bit and find a little light conversational friendliness with the working women, there only.
Sometimes there can be a feeling of warm appreciation, but it stays in the light customer-server situation in the restaurant. I never get too close, and I move off of a favorite spot if need be and switch around my routine. So, men, if you encounter a major issue on your bumpy road to love, remember, there are more ways to handle it than just the worst way. A bit like Jabez in The Bible.
There are no meretricious relations.
In this way I am able to honor my marriage and also not dishonor anyone else’s.
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Married Men: I've Learned Do Not Treat Anyone Else Better Than Your Wife
Chapter 20
AS THIS VOLUME ENDS
I have written quite a bit, enough to reveal my heart and spirit. You have also been able to peer into some of the less heavily forested parts of my mind. The few situations involving government corruption are dealt with in this volume only, as a means of clearing the deck. I do not intend to revisit these issues in Volume II Under Discipline or Volume III State Craft. There will be, however, a Report Card page showing how responsive, thorough and businesslike each offending government unit has been in cleaning up its particular mess.
In relations with China it is called transparency.
When I first met with the First Secretary – Consul Chief of Visas in the U. S. Embassy in Beijing just before mid-March 2000 The Year of The Golden Dragon I committed to writing my guiding principles in working with China. In effect, I was working between the two national governments of America and China. Imagine the Adventure!
Between The Dragon and The Eagle.
The guiding principles I committed to were transparency and working within the publicly stated laws, rules and regulations of both China and America. This was made possible by my policy of being Honest-In-Fact with both governments simultaneously through transparency.
You might think it was a bit of a fine line to walk. You would be right to think that. Akin to performing a tightrope act without a net is more like it.
In any event, I have emerged alive and wiser for the experiences I have been fortunate enough to learn from.
As President Kennedy wrote in his good little book Profiles In Courage, I have fought some good fights, which simultaneously benefited both America and China, and now go on, asking God’s help, to fight this next fight.
If The Good Lord is willing and will bless me with His wisdom, as a good President for The United States of America.
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As the fine song by Carly Simon Like A River starts out
Dear Mother Your Struggles Are Through
Thank You For all I Learned From You
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I place this photo here expressly to honor my father.
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The Best Is Yet To Come.
Disclaimer required by the Federal Election Commission Rules:
This web site has been paid for by the Principal Committee To Elect John W. Stevenson President of The United States of America in the 2008 Election.
John W. Stevenson approved this web site and intends it to comply with all relevant laws.
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