Having grown up in Bolinas during a period where people were tearing down road signs so that outsiders couldn't find the place, I have been acutely aware that I was surrounded by Xenophobes - a term that means people who are afraid of outsiders. Xenophobia, is the name of a board game that I have often thought of marketing, with characters from Bolinas as pieces on the game, and places like the Free Box, the BPUD Building, the Macrame Playground (that no longer exists), and the Dock as corners on the board. I have considered something like a "Get out of Free Box Free" card, but that doesn't make a lot of sense since the Free Box doesn't cost money, anyway.
With the passing of Gary Abler, and the aftermath of the "pre-obituary" that I wrote about him, I have found that the town has morphed from a place where Xenophobia is the order of the day to one where Narcissism, and a heightened cultural ethnocentricity now reigns supreme. What that means is that if you write about something in Bolinas, you are automatically writing about them as indivuals.
Case in point: a sampling of the comments that I received from individiuals in Bolinas after the Pre-Obituary appeared in newspapers and publications ranging from this blog to the moremarin.com website, sfgate.com, the Point Reyes Light and the West Marin Citizen.
"He sure isn't dying with any dignity."
"Gary was ungrateful for the help that people tried to give him."
"What did her ever do to deserve so much space in print?"
"I just don't think it's fair for you to make the town look bad."
None of those comments are very nice, but it's the last one, the one about not making Bolinas look bad, that I take issue with.
Nothing that I wrote made the town of Bolinas look bad. What I did was to print the words of Gary, who said them while I was visiting in the hospital on October 28th. His comments may have been tinged with anger, and God knows with a bit of mental illness, but they were his comments. Everything that that he said that appeared in my story had the attribution of "Gary said," "he said," or "according to Gary." None of what I wrote was my opinion. It was the result of spending twenty minutes with a dying man and chronicling his thoughts and feelings at the time.
But let's be honest. The part of writing this article that has left a bad taste in my mouth is not so much seeing Gary with arms that were as thin as broomsticks, or urine in a cup that was as black as coffee. It's the reaction of the town... People who think that they were somehow short-changedbecause they weren't mentioned in the Pre-Obituary. People that attempted to help him, at times something that was far more trouble than it was worth given his negative reactions, and didn't think it was fair that Gary got the attention, instead of themselves.
Bolinas has long been a town that has been the epitome of tolerance with regard to absurd behavior and the violation of cultural mores. You can try blanketing it all you like in the name of gentrification, but Gary's is not the first case where the town, for the most part, has looked the other way while a long-time resident who is among the less fortunate has suffered in the final years and months of his life.
A case in point is Ed Heiber, who lived in his van in the parking lot at Smiley's Saloon and Motel. When Ed could no longer work due to illness, his van was towed away, and Ed was sleeping on the beach. He was found dead in the laundry storage in June 2005 , where he had snuck in to sleep.
You've got the case of Bicycle Tim, who was angry with officials at the Community Center when they would no longer let him be in charge of cleaning it. In his mind, I'm sure that Tim showed everyone by hanging himself from the stage in March of last year. Buddy Craig, a talented musician with his own share of problems, blew his head off two days later in a room at the old Gibson House, a former restaurant that is now used as affordable housing for the town's working poor. But let's not think about any of that. Nor of Pearl Heylar, another suicide by hanging. Or any number of others such as Eric Platsky, Stu Smith, or even Michael Sims, who mysteriously wind up dead, cut down in the prime of their lives for reasons that are never disclosed.
And let's certainly not think about Ricky Green, who found himself on the wrong end of group of skateboarders, who pummeled him to near death on Brighton Avenue in 2008. Oddly, the issue divided the town, with a vocal group of people arguing that Green deserved the beating that he got, which included being hit over the head with skateboards, and stabbed.
When I met with Gary, I hadn't planned on writing anything at all. The next morning, after spending a night mulling the visit over in my head, I knew that I had to write something. That's the way my brain works. And the clearest, most honest thing that I could write was about spending twenty minutes with a dying man. The writing was exactly that - nothing more, and nothing less.
Yes, I was fully aware of all the people that had helped Gary in his final years. But they were not germaine to my "Pre-Obituary" - something that was designed to remember a unique individual who would likely not get an obituary in any other way, given the costs that most newspapers charge for them these days. And if he did get one, it is unlikely that it would consist of the colorful stories of Gary's life that I included in my prose.
To anyone that was offended by the piece, and there were several, I have offered an apology - but only for offending them, not for the writing. I couldn't have written the Pre-Obituary in any other way. Nor would I have wanted to.
What I have gotten from my Pre-Obituary for Gary Abler are two things: Satisfaction for doing a pretty good piece of writing, and a sense of disgust, and sadness, for some of the people that live in my home town.
