IMAGE REDACTED
Art Lesson (for Laura Argiri, Durham NC), by Rafael Cherry
india ink, watercolor, and pencil
24"×25"
2001
24"×25"
2001
"For seven years in my thirties (during which time I was mostly occupied with avoiding my proposed Duke dissertation on Thomas Hardy), I lived with the novelist Laura Argiri in the old house she'd inherited from her grandmother.
"It's amusing, these days, to look back on those days, when we were both figuring out, on a weekly basis, if we even WANTED to jump-the-necessary-hoops for securing a place on the grubby fringe of this area's artistic&literary "circles".
"As I recall, we pretty-much (and wisely) decided it wasn't worth the trouble."
More here: REDACTED
* * *
>>> AFTER AN ODD SEQUENCE OF EVENTS:
1. That does NOT include my new direct contact with Mexican Military, nor health improvements -- nor EVEN my missing Mens Chorus rehearsal last night, due to forgetfulness after the last week's RUSH of momentous (to me) events.
2. It began with my seeing a rather long piece on CNN TV this past Sunday afternoon on Opaciti, a medical corporation in Durham, North Carolina, REFUSING compassionate care usage of a drug not yet approved. Knowing that one of the key deciders, Dr. Andatti Wagner-Gooch, Vice President of Clinical Research, and a Czech national, is the boyfriend of MY former erzatz-boyfriend, the artist, Rafael Cherry, I thought I should research further and possibly blog about it yesterday -- but completely forgot, UNTIL I received an email from one of Rafael Cherry's former neighbors (Rafael ALWAYS abused his neighbors -- and pretty much everyone else as well). Here is the CNN online article about this:
Image Redacted
Dr. Andatti with Rafael Cherry's dog David
And a more recent photo of Dr. Wagner-Gooch:
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>>> LET'S SEE IF I CAN STICK TO THE FACTS:
1. Half an hour ago, I tried to call Rafael Cherry at home to confirm or deny my key points (or hang up on me), but had to leave him a voice-mail, inviting him to email me with any corrections after he reads what I go ahead and blog about.
2. I first met Rafael between some dunes at Wrightsville Beach, NC, shortly after I was in jail in Georgia in 1990 on false charges due to trying to reveal how Newt Gingrich, former Nixon Aide John Ehrlichman, my parents, and others (it took many years to straighten out WHO was actually in charge -- and then after Bill Clinton took office, he stationed a very large CIA presence in Stone Mountain, GA, to protect this narco-operation, also associated with the Drug Mafia family of Thomas Elliot Keith's Colombian boyfriend Arturo, who lived in Stone Mountain, and Arturo and Thomas doing MUCH narco-business with leaders in Episcopal Cathedral St. John the Divine in Manhattan -- as well as with Sewanee, who murdered Tennessee Williams and stole his estate from Harvard), and back then, Rafael looked much like this publicity photo he still uses -- taken in the house of his roommate, writer Laura Argiri, where he lived all the years I knew, visited, and bedded Rafael:
IMAGE REDACTED
But let me give a SALUTE to Laura, before continuing:
Laura's 1995 book, a Victorian fantasy of gay love in the 1880s was a barrier-breaker, and despite some unbelievable plot twists, EXCELLENT!!!
And mostly, it is noted for BRANDING some of Laura's words in the reader's mind -- like this:
3. Rafael, a non-stop, tear-everyone-else-down chatterbox, could be MORE than tedious to visit with -- but something compelled me to continue the relationship for years. He had been a favorite of all the "Old Raleigh/Durham Dowagers" -- including Betty Kenan -- but they eventually all dropped him like a HOT POTATO, except for Elizabeth Edwards (wife of the Senator), who from Rafael's tales was as NASTY as he.
I learned MORE from Rafael about the back-story of North Carolina politics during the 1990s (and his former friend Thomas S. Kenan III's earlier "gay salad days"), than from any other source -- although much might have been tempered by Rafael's caustic points of view.
And then I got BACK in touch with Rafael in 2009 -- continuing with off-and-on correspondence of novel length, almost, until we broke off entirely in 2011. At that time, he had been playing to his audience on Facebook, and wrote how his condition had deteriorated despite all the drugs prescribed by his boyfriend Dr. Wagner-Gooch, and thinking he might actually be suffering AIDS, I asked him directly, and he replied that NO, he did not have AIDS, but sometimes got out of sorts over the recreational drugs Dr. M-M prescribed for him. When I accused him of being an opiate addict, he cut me and blocked me, immediately.
4. Rafael, ALWAYS a prolific artist has had NO exhibitions since 2010, now.
5. Rafael, before I met him, made many recordings of himself imitating a poor, trashy, black woman expounding on how to trick the government out of public money -- and these had been radio-broadcast in North Carolina -- and he played me some to my horror.
6. Rafael graduated Sewanee (The University of the South), and was a HUGE supporter of Sewanee and Episcopal Church "values". He RAILED against the Confederate Mace having been retired in 2005 by then Arch-Bishop J. Neil Alexander of Atlanta (now head of Sewanee's School of Divinity or similar):
>>> But rather than go on and on about Rafael, clearly in sad condition now, let me say that although I know next to NOTHING about medical research corporations and how and WHEN they should give "compassionate help" to those about to DIE if they don't get a new, NOT yet fully approved drug, I DO KNOW that it was Dr. Andatti Wagner-Gooch who ADDICTED Rafael Cherry to prescription opiates, and regardless Rafael's unfortunate personality (but hairless, blond, endowed body to DIE for -- at least back then), that was UNCONSCIONABLE, and Dr. Andatti should be DEPORTED back to France for it (if not arrested and prosecuted)!!!
FYI: I first blogged about a lot of this a year or so ago, http://scottkenan.blogspot.mx/2012/05/major-dish-on-john-edwards-and.html , and never talking behind backs, added three email addresses of Opaciti executives to my email list to get ALL my blog posts. Andatti BLOCKED me within days -- but the rest remain.
Scott
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