THE SKINNY: Pima County Constable Pees in Yard, Wrecks County Cars
AUGUST 27 - SEPTEMBER 2, 2020 • TUCSONWEEKLY.COM • FREE
Zooming Out * Is Distance Learning Making Your Family Crazy? * Here Are Some Alternatives. By Kathleen Kunz _
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AUG. 27, 2020
Southern Arizona
COVID-19
THE LOCAL NUMBERS. The number of Arizona’s confirmed novel coronavirus cases passed 199,000 as of Tuesday, Aug. 25, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services. Pima County had seen 20,919 of the state’s 199,273 confirmed cases. A total of 4,792 Arizonans had died after contracting COVID-19, including 553 in Pima County, according to the Aug. 25 report. Meanwhile, the number of hospitalized COVID cases continues to decline. ADHS reported that as of Aug. 24, 999 COVID patients were hospitalized in the state. That number peaked at 3,517 on July 13. A total of 900 people visited ERs on Aug. 24 with COVID symptoms. That number peaked at 2,008 on July 7. A total of 319 COVID-19 patients were in intensive care unit beds on Aug. 24. The number in ICUs peaked at 970 on July 13. In Pima County, the week-by-week counting of cases peaked the week ending July 4 with 2,398 cases, according to an Aug. 19 report from the Pima County Health Department. Those numbers have dropped with Pima County requiring the wearing of masks in public but they have plateaued in recent weeks, with 832 cases in the week ending Aug. 8 and 819 cases in the week ending Aug. 15. (Not all recent cases may have been reported.) Deaths in Pima County are down from a peak of 54 in the week ending July 4 to 19 for the week ending Aug. 8. THE NATIONAL NUMBERS. Nationwide, more than 5.7 million people had tested positive for the novel coronavirus, which had killed more than 177,000 people in the United States as of Monday, Aug. 24, according to tracking by Johns Hopkins University. DUCEY:“STAY THE COURSE.” In a brief press conference last week, Gov. Doug Ducey thanked the Trump administration, local authorities and the National Guard for their work during the pandemic. Ducey said the state was making progress in the fight against the virus and Arizonans should continue taking precautions such as avoiding large gatherings, staying home when possible, washing hands and wearing a mask. He did not announce any plans to reopen nightclubs, gyms, theaters or other businesses closed by his executive order, but his administration has established metrics to guide when those businesses can
Roundup
safely reopen their doors. “We’re going to continue to be guided by the data and the doctors,” Ducey said. “Returning our kids to the classroom, reuniting with our loved ones, all of these depend on continued responsible behavior you have demonstrated so well for so long. So I urge everyone to stay the course, stay physical distanced, stay smart and healthy and continue to mask up.” AZ UNEMPLOYMENT NUMBERS CREEP UPWARD. Arizona’s unemployment numbers crept up in July, with the unemployment rate climbing to 10.6 percent from 10 percent in June. Gov. Ducey has accepted the Trump administration’s offer of an additional $300 a week for people who receive the state’s $240 a week for unemployment. That’s a drop from the $600 a week that was available through the end of July and unemployed Arizonans in non-traditional employment such as the gig sector are not eligible for the payments, although they were eligible for the federal payment of $600 a week. Congressional Democrats and the Trump administration were unable to reach a deal to extend those benefits. ASSISTANCE AVAILABLE. The City of Tucson has allocated $4.5 million of federal CARES Act funding for an emergency rent and utility assistance program available to city residents. To be eligible for the financial assistance, participating renters must have been financially impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the household income cannot exceed $68,400. Each household can receive up to $2,500 to cover up to three months of late or upcoming rent or utility payments
that were incurred after March 1, 2020. The application process is open and renters are encouraged to apply as soon as possible. Visit tucsonaz.gov/hcd/rent-help to complete an application. If you need assistance or are unable to complete the application online, call (520) 837-5364 or email covidemergencyassistance@tucsonaz.gov. The city is also setting aside $3 million of CARES Act funding to be distributed to local workers and families that have been negatively impacted by the crisis. The grant program, named the “We Are One | Somos Unos Resiliency Fund” will focus on individuals and households that have not received any state or federal COVID-19 relief money and whose income does not reach Pima County’s self-sufficiency standard. GET TESTED: Pima County has three free testing centers with easy-to-schedule appointments—often with same-day availability—and you get results in less than 72 hours. Centers offering a nasal swab are at the Kino Event Center, 2805 E. Ajo Way, and the Udall Center, 7200 E. Tanque Verde Road. The center at the northside Ellie Towne Flowing Wells Community Center, 1660 W. Ruthrauff Road, involves a saliva test designed by ASU. Schedule an appointment at pima.gov/covid19testing. The centers are also tied into Pima County’s developing contact tracing operation, which aims to be able to identify potential clusters and warn people if they have been in contact with someone who is COVID-positive. —By Jim Nintzel with additional reporting from Kathleen B. Kunz, Austin Counts, Jeff Gardner and Tara Foulkrod.
RANDOM SHOTS By Rand Carlson
Cover design by Ryan Dyson
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AUG. 27, 2020 | VOL. 35, NO. 35 The Tucson Weekly is available free of charge in Pima County, limited to one copy per reader. Additional copies of the current issue of the Tucson Weekly may be purchased for $1, payable at the Tucson Weekly office in advance. To find out where you can pick up a free copy of the Tucson Weekly, please visit TucsonWeekly.com
STAFF ADMINISTRATION Jason Joseph, President/Publisher jjoseph@azlocalmedia.com Jaime Hood, General Manager, Ext. 12 jaime@tucsonlocalmedia.com Casey Anderson, Ad Director/ Associate Publisher, Ext. 22 casey@tucsonlocalmedia.com Claudine Sowards, Accounting, Ext. 13 claudine@tucsonlocalmedia.com Sheryl Kocher, Receptionist, Ext. 10 sheryl@tucsonlocalmedia.com EDITORIAL Jim Nintzel, Executive Editor, Ext. 38 jimn@tucsonlocalmedia.com Austin Counts, Managing Editor, Ext. 37 austin@tucsonlocalmedia.com Jeff Gardner, Associate Editor, Ext. 43 jeff@tucsonlocalmedia.com Tara Foulkrod, Web Editor, Ext. 35 tara@tucsonlocalmedia.com Kathleen Kunz, Staff Reporter, Ext. 42 kathleen@tucsonlocalmedia.com Contributors: Rob Brezsny, Max Cannon, Rand Carlson, Tom Danehy, Emily Dieckman, Bob Grimm, Clay Jones, Andy Mosier, Xavier Omar Otero, Linda Ray, Margaret Regan, Will Shortz, Brian Smith, Jen Sorensen, Eric Swedlund, Tom Tomorrow PRODUCTION David Abbott, Production Manager, Ext. 18 david@tucsonlocalmedia.com Louie Armendariz, Graphic Designer, Ext. 29 louie@tucsonlocalmedia.com Ryan Dyson, Graphic Designer, Ext. 26 ryand@tucsonlocalmedia.com CIRCULATION Alex Carrasco, Circulation, Ext. 17, alexc@tucsonlocalmedia.com ADVERTISING Kristin Chester, Account Executive, Ext. 25 kristin@tucsonlocalmedia.com Candace Murray, Account Executive, Ext. 24 candace@tucsonlocalmedia.com Lisa Hopper, Account Executive Ext. 39 lisa@tucsonlocalmedia.com Tyler Vondrak, Account Executive, Ext. 27 tyler@tucsonlocalmedia.com NATIONAL ADVERTISING VMG Advertising, (888) 278-9866 or (212) 475-2529 Tucson Weekly® is published every Thursday by 13 Street Media at 7225 N. Mona Lisa Rd., Ste. 125, Tucson, Arizona. Address all editorial, business and production correspondence to: Tucson Weekly, 7225 N. Mona Lisa Rd., Ste. 125, Tucson, Arizona 85741. Phone: (520) 797-4384, FAX (520) 575-8891. First Class subscriptions, mailed in an envelope, cost $112 yearly/53 issues. Sorry, no refunds on subscriptions. Member of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia (AAN). The Tucson Weekly® and Best of Tucson® are registered trademarks of 10/13 Communications. Back issues of the Tucson Weekly are available for $1 each plus postage for the current year. Publisher has the right to refuse any advertisement at his or her discretion.
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THE SKINNY AUG. 27, 2020
By Jim Nintzel jnintzel@tucsonweekly.com
Whether he’s peeing in someone’s yard or smashing up a county car, Pima County Constable Oscar Vasquez can’t seem to stay out of trouble
order to avoid wetting myself due to being older.” Vasquez, who did not return a phone call from the Weekly, said in his defense that he suffered from a medical condition and was seeking treatment. The public urination episode was only one of many that have required the Constable Ethics, Standards & Training Board to investigate and reprimand Vasquez in his first term as an elected constable with the job of delivering eviction notices and other legal summons. The string of abuses—including driving county cars at excessive speeds and smashing them up; chasing down a motorist after a near-miss accident at a four-way stop; and a recent failure to take online classes in driving safety and anger management—now has the constable ethics board asking the Pima County Board of Supervisors to suspend Vasquez without pay for at least 30 days.
WHEN PIMA COUNTY CONSTABLE Oscar Vasquez arrived to serve a legal notice to Sue Carpenter last Jan. 30 at her home west of Tucson, he climbed out of his car, walked over to her neighbor’s travel trailer, unzipped his pants and took a leak—a performance that was captured on a security cam. Vasquez then walked up to her neighbor’s door and tried to serve the papers. When the neighbor told Vasquez that Carpenter lived next door, he first insisted that his GPS was telling him he had the right home. When the neighbor finally convinced Vasquez that he needed to go next door, he also warned Vasquez that Carpenter had dogs. Vasquez responded that he was armed with a taser. Vasquez drove next door but Carpenter wasn’t home, so he drove his truck across her front yard, leaving behind a rut of visible tire tracks, according to a complaint Carpenter filed with the Constable Ethics, Standards and Training Board. In his response to the complaint, Vasquez apologized for peeing in public. He said it “was not done out of malcontent.” Vasquez just really had to go: “I needed to urgently relieve myself and with the nearest restroom being nine miles away, I immediately relieved myself in
THE 144-PAGE REPORT COMPILED as background for supervisors to read reveals an elected official who just can’t stay out of trouble. First elected in 2016, Vasquez caught the notice of then-Presiding Constable Michael Stevenson within weeks of starting the job. At a January 2017 training session, Vasquez parked in a handicapped space, although he himself was not handicapped. After Vasquez told Stevenson the placard belonged to his wife, Stevenson advised him not to use it, as it wasn’t assigned to him. But as Stevenson’s May 27 report to the constable ethics board shows, Vasquez continued to hang the placard from the rear window of his county-issued vehicle. After Vasquez told Stevenson that he sometimes took his wife to medical appointments in the car, Stevenson told him that the car was for official county business only. Vasquez told the ethics board that he only used the placard when he was taking his wife to appointments in between other errands on the job. But that dust-up paled compared to the trouble with Vasquez’s use of county cars as he drove around Precinct 4 to deliver legal notices and otherwise traveled for the job.
POOR SERVICE
Vasquez has banged up so many county cars that he’s no longer allowed to have one. And in his first months on the job, before the keys were taken away, Vasquez was driving in excess of 100 mph on highways with a maximum limit of 65, and was blazing at speeds as high as 79 mph down streets with speed limits between 25 and 45 mph. During a training in Maricopa County, Vasquez hit 103 on Roosevelt Street in Goodyear and 106 mph on West Target Road in Buckeye. Stevenson repeatedly tried to discuss the unsafe operations of the car with Vasquez and on May 5, 2017, Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry restricted Vasquez from operating a county-issued vehicle outside of normal business hours. Three days later, on May 8, Vasquez blew out the engine of his county car while driving back from a Phoenix training at speeds as high as 91 mph. Following that episode, the county told Vasquez he couldn’t have a county-issued car for one year and required him to purchase a $1 million commercial insurance policy. Vasquez later had his privileges restored, but they were permanently revoked by Huckelberry in October 2019 after Vasquez damaged three more county cars and failed to properly report the incidents. Vasquez’s lousy driving habits would come back to haunt him in 2019, when he chased down a man after an altercation at an intersection. In May 2019, Michael Rios filed a complaint saying that Vasquez had narrowly missed colliding with him at a four-waystop intersection and then pursued him to his house, confronting him in front of his children and threatening to give him a ticket. (Constables don’t have the power to issue traffic tickets.) “I felt he made an attempt to intimidate me, he trespassed and acted in a way as to make me believe he was actual police officer who had the authority to follow me and issue a traffic ticket,” Rios wrote in a complaint to the constable ethics board. “My children were scared by his yelling and aggressive demeanor.” In his response, Vasquez denied Rios’ charges. He said that Rios had endangered him by coming to a “California stop” at the intersection and he’d pursued Rios back to his house and confronted him “just in a calm, deliberative voice” to let him know “he should know better by having more consideration for the safety of his kids.” The constable ethics board, taking into account Vasquez’s previous driving
PHOTO FROM FACEBOOK
Pima County Constable Oscar Vasquez has faced disciplinary action as a result of his bad driving, altercations with Pima County residents and public urination.
records, concluded that Vasquez’s actions had been “inappropriate” and suspended him for 30 days.
GIVEN VASQUEZ’S HISTORY OF vehicle damage and various other complaints filed against him, in December 2019 the constable ethics board ordered him to take online driver improvement and anger management classes. While Vasquez paid for the courses, he hadn’t completed them as of mid-July. At a July 21 meeting, the ethics board voted to ask the Board of Supervisors to suspend Vasquez without pay for a minimum of 30 days and keep the suspension in place until he completes his classes. The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to take up the matter at its Sept. 1 meeting. But other than supporting the suspension without pay, there’s not much the county can do because Vasquez is ultimately accountable to the voters, says Pima County Supervisor Sharon Bronson, whose district overlaps with Justice Precinct 4. “We have no statutory authority,” Bronson said. “The voters have the ultimate authority, although the county has liability, should somebody sue us.” The county did require Vasquez to turn in his gun, after he threatened to use a taser against Carpenter’s dogs when he was delivering the summons during the episode that involved public urination, according to Bronson. The Constable Ethics, Standards and Training Board can issue letters of reprimand or suspend constables—which it has, numerous times, in the case of Vasquez— but it can’t do much more, either. This year, Vasquez faced no opposition in this month’s primary and faces no challenger in the general election. ■
AUG. 27, 2020
tasks. Outside of that, Gardner said they are supplementing online learning with enrichment activities using the JCC’s tennis and basketball courts, swimming pool, art studio and other amenities. J-Care Plus is a Monday through Friday program for students in grades K through 6. Drop-off is at 8 a.m. and pickup is available as late as 6 p.m. Families can also request an earlier drop-off time if their child starts online classes earlier than 8 a.m. Morning and afternoon snacks will be provided and the JCC has established extensive sanitary protocols for the program. According to Gardner, all students and COURTESY PHOTO staff members will be required to wear The Boys and Girls Club has long operated a summer camp, which has now transitioned into a program that will provide for students during the regular school year. masks and students will be in groups of no more than 10. Parents and guardians are limited to curbside pick-up and dropoff so no other adults enter the building. Upon drop-off, everyone who is in the car A transition from summer camp to distance learning centers: with the child receives a wellness screenNonprofits offer space for overwhelmed families ing and a temperature check. Then, provided that no one in the car is exhibiting “I don’t get anything else done; there’s any symptoms of COVID-19, the child is By Kathleen Kunz no food prep, there’s no house cleaning Kathleen@tucsonlocalmedia.com allowed inside the facility. like I’ve done before—I don’t have time to When parents are ready to pick up do anything,” Conlisk said. “I’ve had to be their children, the JCC has developed MARANA RESIDENT LORNA a smartphone app that they will use to Conlisk never allowed her five children to so much more involved in their education than I’ve ever been.” obtain a special identification number. have electronics in their bedrooms, but Thousands of other families across This will be used to alert staff inside that the COVID-19 outbreak changed that. a child’s parents have arrived at the curb A mother of five in the Marana Unified Pima County are in similar situations. School District, Conlisk has four children While local school districts are required and a staff member will walk the child to provide learning centers for students out to their car. in grades 5, 6 and 8 that attend Dove Gardner said as long as there are Mountain K-8 School. Her eldest child is in certain circumstances, capacity is chools in town that are doing virtual ina senior at Mountain View High School. limited and many working families are struggling at home to be full-time emstruction, the JCC will continue to offer When COVID-19 arrived in March J-Care Plus as a service to parents. and schools closed abruptly, Conlisk had ployees and full-time child monitors. Recognizing this dilemma, several “We just really wanted to give people her children working from their dining community organizations have pivoted an outlet and we felt like we were kind of room table. But now that students have their resources to provide a daily student uniquely positioned to do it because we mandatory Zoom meetings throughout the day, all five children couldn’t remain supervision service to families who need have done after-school care in the past, it. so lots of families and schools know us in the same space. and know that we’re safe and we ran sum“So we had to have the kids work in The Tucson Jewish Community mer camps so successfully this summer,” their room, which is so crazy because we have been so anti-electronics in your Center has operated an after-school care Gardner said. program for a long time, and recently J-Care Plus costs $325 per child for two bedroom, from the time that they were transitioned that program into “J-Care weeks. There is a 5 percent siblings disborn,” Conlisk said. The task of constantly monitoring five Plus,” where staff members help students count for families with multiple children. throughout their online school day. Last week there were about 60 students students’ electronics gets exhausting, “We wanted to be able to support the enrolled in the program and the JCC has Conlisk said. So now, her children only parents who are trying to figure out how capacity for about 100 more. Interested use their school computers if they have to make these tough decisions, and who families can sign up for the program at an active project and she disconnects are being put in kind of a pickle about tucsonjcc.org/j-care-plus or call the memthe WiFi when they’re finished. Conlisk ‘How do I do my work and also make sure bership line at (520) 299-3000. currently isn’t working but has a career my child is on track in school and doing in federal government, most recently what they need to be?’” said JCC ComThe City of Tucson’s KIDCO the U.S. Marshals Service. She said this munications Director Khylie Gardner. after-school and summer program unique time when she isn’t working is a In J-Care Plus, staff members help has also adapted into an all-day care great help, because all she can do during the day is help with her children’s school- students log onto their classes and make program for students engaged in remote sure they are engaged in their daily learning. Staff help supervise children work.
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and troubleshoot IT issues, and provide outdoor recreational programming after the school day is over. According to Dawnee Moreno, Recreation Manager with Tucson Parks & Rec reation, the program has a 10-to-1 student/ staff member ratio and each student is provided with their own materials to prevent the spread of germs. All students and staff in the program are required to wear masks indoors and outdoors when they cannot maintain six feet of physical distance. The children will be encouraged to participate in regular sanitary protocols such as handwashing, and all materials and surfaces used will be cleaned on a daily basis. KIDCO also initiated contact-less pickup and drop-off using cell phones and perform wellness checks for all students arriving for the program. Students will stay in the same group each day they participate in the program to prevent the mixing of people across groups. KIDCO has a network of sites where their programs take place and only 20 children are allowed at each site. Moreno said that one-adult working families, two-adult working families and families with older adults such as grandparents all have a need for this kind of service. KIDCO has more than 100 students enrolled and they expect more interest in the coming weeks. As of last week, KIDCO has capacity for up to 240 students. “We all realize that there’s definitely a need for members of our community, whether it be the single parent who is working as an essential worker, or two parents in the household that are working and don’t have any family or they only have that elderly parent who’s an at-risk population and it’s always risky to have that kind of interaction every day,” Moreno said. Moreno said they are often asked why they are opening their services to students while it is unsafe for schools to be open. She explains they are running a program of 20 children, not a school filled with hundreds of students. “We’re trying to keep everybody safe, not just the kids, but the school staff that are on site and our own staff,” she said. “So we recognize the need, but we also created these new policies and new procedures and new guidelines to keep everybody as safe as possible.” Their hours are now 7:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. The KIDCO program costs $125 per child per month. CONTINUED ON PAGE 6
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Families that live within city limits can apply for a 50 percent discount program based on household income. To learn more information about KIDCO and apply, visit ezeereg.com or call (520) 7914877. The Tucson Boys & Girls Club operated a summer camp program and has transformed it into something that will provide for students during the regular school year. They are keeping their small staff-to-student ratios and are implementing new face mask requirements, wellness checks, temperature screenings, sanitary practices and more. According to Marketing and Communications Director Melissa Royer, all Boys & Girls Club staff has been trained to help students navigate their technology. The students need to bring their own computers, but the Boys & Girls Club also has some computers available to those who don’t have one. “After they finish their school day, then we’ll go into some of our programming areas,” Royer said. “That can include things like Money Matters, we have a cooking club, we have STEM activities and, of course, the one thing all the kids are really needing is some exercise so we have access to the gyms and the basketball court to play some different games while maintaining social distance and wearing your mask. So everything is modified but we’re trying to give them the best experience they can have under the circumstances.” The Boys & Girls Club will operate this program as long as the community has a need for it, Royer said. All students in age groups 7 to 17 can participate. While most of these supervision programs are geared toward younger students, the Boys & Girls Club is including teenagers as well. Royer said they were already serving highschool-aged children before the pandemic, so including them in this program is a natural segue. The Boys & Girls Club opened all six locations for this service on Aug. 3. They are open from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The program costs $50 per month per child, and scholarships are available. Royer said the interest in their program has picked up over the last couple of weeks and they expect to be partnering with school districts to provide services in the near future as well.
“We work with children every single day, and we know that it’s not always in the best interest of children to be sitting at home alone, or being home in the environment that may not be safe,” Royer said. To apply and find more information, visit bgctucson.org/clubhouses/membership-info. The YMCA of Southern Arizona has a remote learning program called Y Kids Choice available at five different locations. Students can come with their laptops and staff members are trained to help them set up and stay flexible with differing school schedules. After online computer learning has finished for the day, the Y Kids Choice program allows students in small groups to pick which extracurricular activity they want to engage in for that afternoon. Face masks are required for all staff and students indoors and outdoors when physical distancing is not possible. All children are instructed to follow sanitary practices such as handwashing. For all activities, students have their own materials to prevent sharing between groups and all materials are sanitized daily. Y Kids Choice is available for all children ages five to 12 years old. Like other programs, the YMCA plans to provide Y Kids Choice as long as schools are operating remotely in the community. As of last week, there are 193 students enrolled and they have capacity for about 20 to 25 spots per day that are available. Y Kids Choice costs $35 per child per day, with a subsidized rate of $25 per day and other scholarships available. Families sign up for flexible two-week blocks where they can pay only for the days their child actually comes to the facility. To apply, visit tucsonymca.org/ program/ykids or call (520) 623-9481. While there are childcare options available throughout the region, Conlisk said she is more interested in sending her children back to school once in-person classes are permitted. “I think that there’s a lot of responsibility on the parents to make sure the kids are attending the Zoom meetings and stuff that they have to attend,” Conlisk said. “It’s throughout the whole day. So I have to watch the clock all day and remember which kid has what at what time, and the kids are well intentioned, they’re really trying, but they’re kids, and they get distracted.” ■
GOODBYE, DAD RIP James Counts, 1958-2020
By Austin Counts austin@tucsonlocalmedia.com JAMES CHRISTOPHER COUNTS lived life on his own terms. The man was born on July 23, 1958 in Birmingham, Alabama, and bled Bama’s crimson red until the day he passed away, Aug. 23, 2020. He was 62 years old. Like many southern gentlemen, Jim had a charming personality but could be as ornery as the day was long. More often than not, he was generous and kind to those around him and quick with a joke—usually inappropriate— to lighten a somber mood. He’s best known for owning Nimbus Brewing Company from 2000 until its closing in 2018. Jim was the youngest of three siblings who spent their formative years living throughout the country and Europe due to their father being an electrical engineer always on the hunt for the higher paying job. He said it was an exciting childhood but moving nearly every school year left him without close friends. Jim wanted to make sure my brother James and I were spared this fate. In 1989, my father drove us cross country to take a job in the Old Pueblo. He briefly visited Tucson in the mid 1980s and thought it was one of the most beautiful places he had ever encountered in all his travels. The Sonoran Desert is where he wanted his family to settle down and grow roots. Jim purchased a Hallmark store in a no-so-great shopping center soon after moving to Tucson. He saw the investment as his chance to be a business owner at 32 years old, while buying into a franchise at a rock bottom price. Within a few short years Jim had moved the card shop to a better area and turned business around. He sold the store for a considerable profit in the late 1990s and soon purchased Nimbus Brewing Company in 2000 after his son, James, gave him a tip it was for sale. My father didn’t start Nimbus—that honor goes to Nimbus Couzin—but he had a vision of what this city’s brewing culture could be while helping kickstart our local craft beer community. While Nimbus Brewing Company never made the leap from its ware-
house location on 44th Street—political and local opposition to the proposed building’s construction site soured the brewery’s move downtown—Jim did open a satellite restaurant, Nimbus Bistro on Tucson’s old Restaurant Row. In the mid 2000s, Nimbus became a go-to spot to see the best in local bluegrass as well as a known stop for many touring blues and classic rock artists. Greats like Mountain, Savoy Brown, Guitar Shorty, Percey Strothers and Chicago’s Magic Slim graced the brewery’s stage. He lost money on nearly every blues show they put on, but Jim wanted to make sure the music he loved was alive and well in Tucson. When he went through the double-whammy of a second divorce and recurrent throat cancer treatments, Jim was unable to keep the Nimbus ship afloat after nearly two decades. The brewery and bistro were gone and so was his former wife. However, he seemed to have fully recovered from his throat cancer battle. An X-ray after a bad motorcycle accident in 2018 turned up a new mass. The throat cancer had metastasized in Jim’s lung and he soon restarted chemotherapy. I spent a lot of time with him during these last years, mainly watching Bama whoop everybody’s ass in the SEC on Saturdays while drinking beer and eating red beans and rice. We didn’t see eye to eye when I was growing up, but after these last few years I can say I understood who he was. He wasn’t perfect, but Jim had tenacity. Sometimes that’s all anyone could ever hope to inherit. Jim is survived by his brother Victor Counts, sister Teresa Counts, sons James Counts III and myself, daughter Koko Counts, grandchildren Alexander Counts, Josephine Counts, Gabriel Counts, Daniel Counts and his beloved yellow labrador, Porter. ■
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Story & photos by Brian Smith
HOME IS WHERE THE HATRED IS NOT A CUSTOMER MASQUERADING as a human is caught lifting a pair of boots and it is the first time ever this single mother of three and grandmother to six gets called nigger. She asks him to leave and he cusses up others outside the store. He does not know this woman, could never guess where she has been. She is working the front of the Tucson Goodwill store on Fort Lowell Road. The dude squeals again, this time threatening, and he means it: “I’ll fuck you up, nigger.” She says to him, “Really, you gonna call me that? We gotta be all this?” The guy commands certain fright, and the store calls the cops. Tawana Brown’s guts churn inside out but she will not let the 12 or so employees working see her bust in two. She is the store’s manager, after all. Later she wrenches away to the bathroom to collect herself, to face down the shock, to soothe the tears and wounds in her mind. They say to call if he ever shows up again... Well, dude shows up again days later. The call is made and cops haul him off. An angry crusty white guy with his previously banned-from-the-store girlfriend in tow step into the store and go at her too, crazy as caged monkeys. Brown recognizes the woman and asks them to leave. Each vomit the same thing, “make me leave, nigger” and “Nigger bitch.” If only those were isolated moments from several weeks ago Brown could gaze back on, but they aren’t. It happened two other times, different people gibbering at her “nigger” or “you fucking nigger.” Brown used to show up early for work, alone, to set up COVID temperature checks and symptom forms, sometimes to unlock the doors and allow employees who arrive early in to avoid a summer-sun wait. She is too frightened to show up alone or early
now, and a Goodwill’s district manager scheduled someone to come with her. Goodwill does not tolerate this racist shit. No one ever called 46-year-old Brown a nigger in eastside Detroit, where countless whites drive into the city for work and then spend their money in the lily-white suburbs, with its clean streets, kept landscapes, dependable municipal services and white nationalist neighbors. She grew up with three brothers where whole city blocks are burned out, street after street boasting homes charred to the ground or boarded up or swallowed by earth, where a street is good if one in three houses is livable, where there are no grocery stores or working streetlights. If the elementary schools aren’t shuttered they can’t afford pencils. It is where long gray winters feel like endless silent vigils to the dead auto factories and their long-gone bustling workers, glory days before crack-cocaine huffed it out in the 1980s. Its residents reflect that, the depression and boredom and risk inform everything, the waning self-respect and inner poise. If ever there was tragedy to expedite a Detroit escape, Brown’s blighted eastside world was it. No one ever called her nigger until Trump was in the White House. She didn’t fear for her life because of her skin color until, really, Trump began sending troops in and gassing peaceful BLM protestors for his own photo ops. She can only shake her head when the notion of Trump enters it, an acknowledgement of a stirred-up hatred. THIS IS THE STORY OF A woman basically saved by Goodwill Southern Arizona, an American dreaming, and there are those who don’t make it and others who won’t
Tawana Brown in front of her Goodwill store: “Look what Goodwill is doing for the community. It’s giving single moms a job.”
understand it. How she was encouraged and supported, mentored, and overcame Detroit-weaned low self-esteem and unmarketable skills, and was trained and paid for it. It wasn’t easy for her, starting at $5.65 an hour in 2003. Three months later she was promoted to supervisor. I walked into the Goodwill thrift store one day and met Brown. She informed me I had to go through the company to get permission to do any kind of story, which I hate to do. If there are channels and permissions and auditions and flacks I won’t do it, the stories too-often become PR. I called the company marketing director, Matthew Flores, and he was cool, said I could talk to anyone I want and later left me alone to do just that. I returned to learn more about this woman at the register, who seemed to possess that trick of inconspicuousness only possible when it articulates the precise organization of the world around her, this Goodwill thrift store she oversees, its employees and donation center in back. Everybody has the fuzzy unseen spaces where sadness and joy fight for light, and her face, through its congenial yet unclear expression, showed an earned abundance of both. IT IS MONDAY MORNING AND the Goodwill store smells of floor cleaner and M&Ms. It is heavy in the
decoration of ordinary lives, dominant colors of oat and orange, an adult re-entry office to the side denoted with wall messages of Goodwill’s missions. It is beautifully lit. Racks and shelves heave with household items, clothes and melancholy treasures, a camo toy copter, a 3D unicorn coffee mug, Mexican embroidery and some William Faulkner. Masked customers and employees circulate at distances, young and old, brown, white, black, tatted or wrinkly. A wordy old-timer addresses a half-startled preteen boy nuances of Harry Potter characters, an elderly woman fills her cart with stuffed animals, happy to discover a koala bear for 99 cents, which, she grins, will nab her $40 on eBay. Brown is in the back of the store, its airy warehouse and donation center, wearing a floral blouse and black mask and gloves. Public donations fill myriad containers and shelving, some kind of island of misfit toys for kids and adults. The warehouse is sectioned in easy, right-angled pathways, an organizational philosophy based on the Kaizen strategy, a Japanese term meaning “continues improvement,” which seeps into Goodwill as an operations enhancer for every employee in all aspects of work. The store is short-handed today, down four employees, so the store manager is quietly and carefully CONTINUED ON PAGE 8
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sifting through boxes and containers filled of shoes and boots from other worlds walked, separating them. Goodwill radio plays softly throughout the store, Lulu singing “If you wanted the moon I would try to make a star.” After careful examination, Brown will either price the shoes to be shelved up front in the store, or place the more imperfect ones in a box to be later sold by the pound, or another box, one meant for the boutique store or online sales, which today contains a beige pair of Ferragamo kitten-heel pumps, at least $500 new. She works and talks, good-cheer conversations and the occasional self-directed barb while ticking off the intricacies of her work duties. She is quick, intelligent, her words zip in terse, melodic sentences, as if the life stories lift on some unheard musical backdrop, as comforting as someone recalling a trip to Disneyland. There is no bitter rant, her hands are not clenched tight in recall, no outward hatred towards others or groups, and it ain’t easy to miss the kindness in her dark eyes. Her life treatise is modest now: she is relaxed, able to enjoy a level of financial and emotional security she has earned, a woman who welcomes thoughtful opinion but sidesteps with a chuckle racist concepts and tawdry conspiracies. She’d rather talk Hector, for instance, the older gentleman working his ass off 20 feet away sorting newly arrived donations under the rollup loading-dock door. “I’m really happy with him,” she says. “He’s kind, and he just works hard.” The employee work here is filled with completable tasks, sorting, pricing, watching the floor and stocking the shelves, as certain as hanging a shirt. “The young ones who come in here, between 19 and 25, saying they want and need the work and will do a good job end up quitting. They just don’t want to do the work, and it’s so easy. She points to Hector, says, “He can outwork all the young ones.” After a pause she adds, “Look what Goodwill is doing for the community. It’s giving single moms a job, it’s giving Hector a job.” “I love the crew I have now. I like to get dirty with them,” she laughs.
Brown arrived in Tucson from Detroit 17 years ago on a Greyhound bus with her three children. A two-week vacation to visit a cousin, relief from a fierce Michigan winter. Tucson in January was heaven then, a veritable land of milk and honey next to Detroit—85 degrees on a winter’s day, a forever big-sun sky above strange spiky landscape. The vacation turned to survival, the family never returned to Detroit, except later to visit people, lonely as it was in Tucson with no immediate family or friends. They left behind their place and all their things because, simply, Brown wanted a better life for her children, and schools that didn’t pass them for merely wearing shoes and showing up.
stupid,” she laughs. That daughter is now 31 and lives back in Michigan, married, earning a living wage, with three children of her own. Brown moved out at 17, dropped out of high school (later earned her GED) to work whatever temporary job would have her. She didn’t want to rely on her family, “felt guilty my parents were taking care of my daughter.” She met another man, Ike, fell in love, as evidenced by his name etched into her neck in fading cursive, to which she rolls her eyes in embarrassment. Her parents wouldn’t even allow him in their house. He’s in prison now and Brown is not even sure why, and doesn’t care. No love lost there. She outgrew him years ago.
Quinn van Renterghem (left) and Matthew Flores. “I’m not so much into religion now,” says van Renterghem. “I am into Jesus, though. You know, helping the widows and orphans.”
She didn’t fully understand the circle of poverty of her existence until she left Detroit and looked back, could detail with hindsight and new experience a place where you live and die and suffer and no one notices or cares. Where men in your life count off days in the big house. Her younger story is a classic Detroit one, that one of failed industrial promise. Dad worked his years until retirement at Chrysler, and a stay-athome mom. Brown had a baby at 15, who she would bring to high school with her. She split from her first child’s dad, a kid too, who did what he could, and still does. “We were young and
IT IS DIFFICULT NOT TO question the wide-eyed optimism and open-heartedness of Goodwill Southern Arizona’s non-profit state, this honed philosophy keen to bust circles of poverty, and ignorance, fueled on a rugged sense of self-sustainment, people working for each other, not some Wall Street entity. Seems more like a dream, where some Pavlovian conditioned response idea that the depressed or mentally or physically disabled person is defined by how they are judged and treated, is completely circumvented. Like any business, the attitudes trickle down from the top. Headed by two female co-presi-
dents, Liz Gulick and Lisa Allen, and nearly a dozen others on a Board of Directors who oversee the grant writing and fiduciary to the community outreach, teaching the disabled, the lost, the hurting, the homeless, the recovering and the getting-back-ups. Whole operation is ridiculously organized, down to monitoring the fuel consumption of trucks used to haul donations from its 19 Southern Arizona stores, and seven separate donation centers, and the main warehouse, and on rare occasion, the city dump. Right now, the fulltime workforce totals a little under 400 folks. On average it’s more than 500, but it fluctuates with high turnover at entry-level. Goodwill shuttered stores during the pandemic and furloughed many employees, most of whom returned upon reopening, some stayed on unemployment. Also, there’s a workforce development staff and academic specialists at the Pima County One-Stop Centers and Goodwill’s own Metro Program (which partners with local employers) a homeless drop-in center for kids, and those emerging from foster care. The Goodwill headquarters houses its workforce development team, administration team, training rooms and classrooms. Since founding in Tucson in 1969, Goodwill has helped countless souls overcome work inhibitors and financial catastrophe, and in turn their families and kids. Its litany of progressive turns includes a grant-funded adult re-entry program, which focuses on getting recently released inmates gainfully employed through apprenticeship and certification training, job placement, and more. So far that program has been going rather swimmingly; just halfway through they have already met all but one of their Department of Labor requirements. For example, records show only 4.3 percent recidivism of the more than 100 entered in the program convicted of a new offense within 12 months of release or probation placement. It is the little things, the tuition reimbursement for schooling, 403b matching (retirement for employees of tax-exempt organizations), disability programs, free tele-medicine for every employee and health care if they choose it. They offer soft-skill training and post-secondary schooling for
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self-sustaining employment and any kind of career advancement within Goodwill, or anywhere else the person chooses. The list goes on. Goodwill Southern Arizona is autonomous from its national Goodwill aegis, and to uphold its own weight, 92 percent of the money Goodwill Southern Arizona spends as an organization goes back to programs or employment. Basically, if you give to Goodwill, that is where the money goes. The other 8 percent is in administration costs. There are multiple revenue streams too, and it tallies like this: 93 percent of Goodwill’s revenue comes from the stores, the rest is from contracts and grants, monetary giving etc. Last fiscal year Goodwill Southern Arizona’s total revenue topped $31 million after taking in roughly 33 million tons of donations. That’s more than 30 million tons of stuff with which folks in Southern Arizona did not burden a landfill, stuff that employed and fed. MARKETING MAN MATTHEW FLORES
and Quinn Van Renterghem, a Goodwill Employee Development Specialist, are hanging in the Fort Lowell store, shooting the shit, talking religion, soccer, education and why they chose Goodwill as a career. How the business model is an original social enterprise, established more than 100 years ago by Dr. Edgar Helms in Boston. He relieved discarded items from the well-off and employed people to repair and refurbish the items to resell. “The overall structure has been established for years,” Flores says. The paradigm is simple, as Flores notes, excess from one household used to generate income for the hurting in a community. Helms’ early funding came from the Methodist Church, but there are no religious ties now in the Southern Arizona branch, nor is it cultic or greedy, terms leveled at various national Goodwill organizations in the past. No one is getting rich. Flores and Van Renterghem make a fair living wage for Tucson. There is non-judgy humanity in the mission, but, as they point out, “obviously human dynamics get involved.” “Helping the seemingly unemployable become employable can be really
Tawana Brown, working in the back of the store. “When I was a girl, I dreamed of living in an apartment like mine,” Brown says. “I never thought I would ever be where I am.”
aggravating at times,” Quinn laughs. Unusables are occasionally dumped in off hours and today there are dozens of spent tires someone unloaded by the donation dock. If one uses Goodwill as a dumpsite, they can’t accept it. Flores could’ve chosen other more profitable careers. Hell, he has another, unpaid fulltime gig as a woman’s soccer coach, a top-tier team rising through its ranks. He rose up too, the Tucson High grad first attended an Air Force Academy on a soccer scholarship before graduating from NAU. The former semi-pro fútbolero player began on the bottom rung of Goodwill marketing. The 38-year-old was born in his parent’s house above the fire station in Bisbee, Arizona. Dad was in community resource development, working with Native tribes. Growing up, Flores spent time in his dad and uncle’s childhood town in central Arizona, remembers the “No Mexicans/No Dogs” signs. “We had friends in straight poverty, and I didn’t have new shoes, but they did, my dad made sure. And I was pissed. I got older and realized what a piece of shit I was. The majority of us have plenty to live…” He pulls a mint, dry-cleaned shirt listed for under 10 bucks from the rack, recognizes it sold new for $200, and places it back in the rack. Adds, “The excess is enough for everyone.” The 29-year-old Tucson-raised
Quinn, with Jesus hair and a blue Goodwill tee, looks more like a guy who’d back Conor Oberst on the drum stool than one leading groups (pre-pandemic) of 30 packed into a small room teaching, say, self-care, communication, respect for the effort of others, that sort of thing. He graduated from Oklahoma Wesleyan University, a Christian liberal-arts school (entered keen to become a pastor, studying philosophy and theology) and returned to Tucson to flee Oklahoma’s ultra-conservative backdrop. Before landing at Goodwill five years ago he worked a Tucson Starbucks. “I’m not so into religion now,” he says, and he’s studied them all. “I am into Jesus, though. You know, helping the widows and orphans. Matthew 5 and 6 is all anyone needs.” Adds, “Before I worked at Goodwill I was a thrift-store guy, but never went to Goodwill. I somehow thought it was kind of ghetto,” he laughs. “Then I began to learn what they do for the community.” “I GOT ME A SAVINGS ACCOUNT for the first time,” Brown says a few days later, sitting in her office off the warehouse floor. “And I bought a good car. When I was a girl I dreamed of living in an apartment like mine.” She adds, out-scissoring her arms, “I never thought I would ever be where I am.” She’ll tell me she honestly doesn’t know how she did it, but the answer comes.
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Brown found Goodwill through the Department of Economic Security the year she moved here. Goodwill work enabled her to get an apartment, to keep her family clothed and fed, with some early daycare help from DES. Goodwill chipped in with gifts and food and clothing to mark her first Tucson Christmas here. The next year she bought an $800 car, no more negotiating bus routes and transfers to daycare and work, and drove it until “the wheels fell off. My kids,” she adds, “never knew we were poor.” Her parents left Detroit for Tucson a few years later and moved into their daughter’s same apartment complex. “They surprised me! They came out here on a Greyhound bus, had their things shipped later.” Brown’s eldest daughter got pregnant while attending high school too. Twice. Brown laughs, “she had a baby in a swing and one in her arms while doing her homework. She said, ‘Mama, I did it myself.’ So I got to be a grandma, not a mother again. That’s what tells me I raised them right.” Over the years, two of her children and a son-in-law all worked at Goodwill. Quinn even helped one daughter fill out financial aid forms for school. Her father died four years ago and mom suffered a stroke. “But,” Brown grins, “she still lives around the corner from me.” When Brown retires to her apartment after a long day of work she’ll greet her one daughter still at home, who is 20, studying IT work at Pima Community College. She will pour herself a glass of wine and relax on her porch with her pet terrier. Soon she’ll rise, shower and ready herself for bed, prepared to do it over again. A once-frightened person embracing the sweet routine of her life. Or maybe her 25-year-old middle daughter will stop by, who also has three children, and is working her way up at Tucson’s Comcast corporate. Maybe Brown’s boyfriend will appear too. Before I leave she tells me that she never allowed her kids to use the n-word. “They got some of that in school, so they understood what I was going through here,” she says. “My daughter told me, ‘Some people are just gonna be stupid.’” ■
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Medical Marijuana
HIGH COURT BACKS WEED PROP
AZ Supreme Court unanimously says voters can decide the fate of recreational cannabis initiative on November ballot By David Abbott david@tucsonlocalmedia.com FROM GATHERING SIGNATURES during the early days of the stay-at-home portion of the COVID pandemic to fighting a legal battle against opponents, it’s been a long road for the team behind Smart and Safe Arizona, the citizen initiative that will ask state voters to approve the adult use of recreational marijuana. But after the Arizona Supreme Court said challengers didn’t have a case, the initiative cleared its final hurdle last week and will appear on the November ballot as Proposition 207. The court supported—without com-
ment—an earlier decision by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge James D. Smith on a challenge filed by Arizonans for Health and Public Safety attempting to poke holes in the 100-word summary on petitions to qualify the initiative for the ballot. “We’re thrilled that the Supreme Court upheld the lower court decision,” said Stacy Pearson, spokesperson for Strategies 360, the political firm handling the Smart and Safe initiative. “Our 100-word summary aligned with the law and the Supreme Court unanimously agreed, as expected.” Arizonans for Health and Public Safety, a prohibition group opposed to the initiative, filed its original complaint on July 20, alleging the summary on the petitions was mis-
leading. Among the alleged “fraudulent” claims made in the complaint: a perceived “redefinition” of marijuana that includes derivatives of the plant such as hashish and concentrates and arguments that the proposition decreases the standards defining DUI; allows household cultivation that is not taxed and allows unlimited commercial cultivation, and eases regulation of cannabis vis-a-vis underage use. Smith’s 15-page opinion was not sympathetic, as he believed the principal provisions of the Smart and Safe Arizona Act were properly represented, stating that lawyers for legalization foes took 25 pages to describe provisions they said should have been included in a 100-word summary. In his decision, the judge noted that concentrates are already defined as marijuana under medical marijuana law. Smith pointed out the summary essentially used the same legal definition in its wording. “Electors are not likely to be confused that legalizing recreational marijuana will include resin extract when the medical marijuana law allows it,” he wrote. According to Ballotpedia, Smith also posited that, “Addressing legalizing a previously illegal substance must account for laws touching many parts of life. But if everything in an initiative is a principal provision, then nothing is.” Now it is up to Arizona voters, who support legalized cannabis in some form to the tune of 62 percent, according to some polling. Smart and Safe collected a symbolic 420,000 signatures delivered to the Secretary of State’s office on July 2, 2020. On Aug. 10, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs certified the validity of 255,080 signatures and on Aug. 20, the
Supreme Court released its unanimous decision, paving the way for the initiative to move forward. In a press release dated Aug. 20, Arizonans for Health and Public Safety restated its dedication to continue to fight the most recent attempt to legalize weed and expressed disappointment at the Supreme Court’s ruling. “We are disappointed in the decision, which sets a concerning precedent for our voter initiative process going forward,” stated Lisa James, chairwoman for Arizonans for Health and Public Safety. “Our goal was to ensure voters were informed. But neither the 100-word statement or this decision will stop us from educating voters from now through November on the dangers of this sweeping 17-page initiative.” They further charged that “Big Marijuana sought to deceive Arizona voters and got away with it” by writing a 17-page initiative that “could have been legalized in two pages.” Arizonans for Heath and Public Safety is largely funded by Center for Arizona Policy Action, a conservative Christian PAC, “whose mission is to promote and defend the foundational values of life, marriage and family, and religious freedom.” Smart and Safe received its largest donation from Harvest Enterprises, Inc. to the tune of $1.2 million. Harvest CEO Steve White is from Tempe and a graduate of Arizona State University. “When they talk about ‘Big Marijuana,’ they mean Harvest. Steve White grew up in Tempe,” Pearson said. “For pro-business conservatives to paint Harvest as anything but an Arizona success story? He went to school in Tempe and is a graduate of ASU. CONTINUED ON PAGE 13
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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
By Rob Brezsny. Go to RealAstrology.com to check out Rob Brezsny’s EXPANDED WEEKLY HOROSCOPE 1-877-873-4888 or 1-900-950-7700 $1.99 per minute. 18 and over. Touchtone phone required.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Aries author Kareem Abdul-Jabbar writes, “Some stuff can be fixed, some stuff can’t be. Deciding which is which is part of maturing.” I offer this meditation as your assignment in the coming weeks, Aries. You are in a phase when you’ll be wise to make various corrections and adjustments. But you should keep in mind that you don’t have unlimited time and energy to do so. And that’s OK, because some glitches can’t be repaired and others aren’t fully worthy of your passionate intensity. You really should choose to focus on the few specific acts of mending and healing that will serve you best in the long run. TAURUS (April 20-May 20): “There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice,” wrote author F. Scott Fitzgerald. This is true even between the same two people in an intimate alliance with each other. The love that you and your spouse or friend or close relative or collaborator exchanged a month ago isn’t the same as it is now. It can’t be identical, because then it wouldn’t be vibrant, robust love, which needs to ceaselessly transform in order to be vibrant and robust. This is always true, of course, but will be an especially potent meditation for you during the next four weeks. GEMINI (May 21-June 20): As a professional writer, novelist Thomas Wolfe trained himself to have keen perceptions that enabled him to penetrate below surface appearances. And yet he wrote, “I have to see a thing a thousand times before I see it once.” In other words, it was hard even for him, a highly trained observer, to get a deep and accurate read of what was going on. It required a long time and many attempts—and rarely occurred for him on the first look. Even if you’re not a writer, Gemini, I recommend his approach for you in the coming weeks. You will attune yourself to current cosmic rhythms—and thus be more likely to receive their full help and blessings—if you
deepen and refine the way you use your senses. CANCER (June 21-July 22): It’s sometimes tempting for you to seek stability and safety by remaining just the way you are. When life pushes you to jump in and enjoy its wild ride, you may imagine it’s wise to refrain—to retreat to your sanctuary and cultivate the strength that comes from being staunch and steadfast and solid. Sometimes that approach does indeed work for you. I’m not implying it’s wrong or bad. But in the coming weeks, I think your strategy should be different. The advice I’ll offer you comes from Cancerian author and aviator Anne Morrow Lindbergh: “Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found.” LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): “To be successful, the first thing to do is fall in love with your work,” says author Sister Mary Lauretta. Have you been making progress in accomplishing that goal, Leo? According to my astrological analysis, fate has been offering and will continue to offer you the chance to either find work that you’ll love better than the work you’re doing, or else discover how to feel more love and excitement for your existing work. Why not intensify your efforts to cooperate with fate? VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): “Self-love is also remembering to let others love you. Come out of hiding.” Poet Irisa Yardenah wrote that advice, and now I’m passing it on to you, just in time for a phase when you will benefit from it most. I mean, it’s always good counsel for you to Virgos to heed. But it will be especially crucial in the coming weeks, when you’ll have extra potential to bloom in response to love. And one of the best ways to ensure this extra potential is fulfilled is to make yourself thoroughly available to be appreciated, understood, and cared for.
SAVAGE LOVE TALL ORDER
By Dan Savage, mail@savagelove.net
I’m a cis male in my late twenties. I’ve recently become consumed by a specific fantasy I fear is unattainable, a fear that has been made worse by several failed attempts to research it. A little background: except for a couple dates and make-out sessions with other men, my sex life has always been exclusively with women. I’ve had male crushes and often thought I might be bi or pan, despite never masturbating to thoughts of men or gay porn. (Don’t worry, Dan: I’m not going to ask if I’m gay. I promise.) In general, I’ve led a
privileged sex life. I’ve never been broken up with and it’s rare for me to experience any form of rejection. But in early 2020, my libido vanished. I stopped masturbating and only orgasmed once or twice a month when my now ex-girlfriend would insist that we have sex. But then a couple of weeks ago I began imagining being one half of a loving gay couple that replaced all MM penetrative sex with MMF sex. My sex life with my male partner would revolve around the two of us going out and finding submissive women for kinky threesomes. Since then, I’ve
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Libran poet Wallace Stevens wrote that if you want to be original, you must “have the courage to be an amateur.” I agree! And that’s an important theme for you right now, since you’re entering a phase when your original ideas will be crucial to your growth. So listen up, Libra: If you want to stimulate your creatively to the max, adopt the fresh-eyed attitude of a rookie or a novice. Forget what you think you know about everything. Make yourself as innocently curious and eager as possible. Your imaginative insights and innovations will flow in abundance to the degree that you free yourself from the obligation to be serious and sober and professional. And keep in mind that Stevens said you need courage to act this way. SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): “As idiotic as optimism can sometimes seem, it has a weird habit of paying off,” writes author Michael Lewis. According to my analysis, the coming weeks will provide you with ample evidence that proves his hypothesis—on one condition, that is: You will have to cultivate and express a thoughtful kind of optimism. Is that possible? Do you have the audacity to maintain intelligent buoyancy and discerning positivity, even in the face of those who might try to gaslight you into feeling stupid for being buoyant and positive? I think you do. SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Author Rebecca Solnit writes, “The things we want are transformative, and we don’t know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation.” Her statement is especially apropos for you right now. The experiences you’re yearning for will indeed change you significantly if you get them—even though those changes will be different from what your conscious mind thinks they’ll be. But don’t worry. Your higher self—the eternal part of you that knows just what you need—is fully aware of the beneficial transformations that will come your way when you get what you yearn for. CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): At age 22, future pioneer of science Isaac Newton got his col-
been masturbating to this fantasy daily and I’m excited at the possibility of finding a new lifestyle that brings me a lot of joy. However, I’ve grown concerned that nothing else seems to turn me on at all. Equally as concerning, even minor adjustments to this fantasy ruins the whole thing. And to fulfill it I’d need a man who’s at least all of the following: 1. Sensitive, giving, easy-going, and an all-around good guy. 2. Very physically attractive. 3. Into cuddling and general affection, some make-out sessions, and occasional hand jobs and blow jobs—but absolutely no penetrative sex or anal play. 4. Into picking up submissive women for MMF threesomes.
lege degree just as the Great Plague peaked in 1665. As a safety precaution, he proceeded to quarantine himself for many months. During that time of being sealed away, he made spectacular discoveries about optics, gravity, and calculus—in dramatic contrast to his years as a student, when his work had been relatively undistinguished. I’m not predicting that your experience of the 2020 pandemic will prove to be as fruitful as those of your fellow Capricorn, Isaac Newton. But of all the signs in the zodiac, I do think your output could be most Newtonlike. And the coming weeks will be a good time for you to redouble your efforts to generate redemption amidst the chaos. AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): The rapper named Viper has released over 1,000 albums. In 2014 alone, he created 347. His most popular work is You’ll Cowards Don’t Even Smoke Crack, which has received over three million views on Youtube. According to The Chicago Reader, one of Viper’s most appealing features is his “blatant disregard for grammar.” I should also mention that he regards himself as the second Christ, and uses the nickname “Black Jesus.” So what does any of this have to do with you? Well, I’m recommending that you be as prolific, in your own field, as he is in his. I’m also inviting you to experiment with having a fun-loving disregard for grammar and other non-critical rules. And I would love to see you temporarily adopt some of his over-the-top braggadocio. PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): “If you don’t ask the right question, every answer seems wrong,” says singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco. I suspect you may have experienced a version of that predicament in recent weeks, Pisces. That’s the bad news. The good news is that I expect you will finally formulate the right questions very soon. They will most likely be quite different from the wrong and irrelevant questions you’ve been posing. In fact, the best way to find the revelatory questions will be to renounce and dismiss all the questions you have been asking up until now. ■ Homework: If you could change your astrological sign, what would you change it to and why? Write: FreeWillAstrology.com.
5. Into penetrative sex with said women. 6. Into using roleplay and D/s to take out our kinks on said women. 7. Into giving me the more dominant role. Now for my questions: Does anyone like this actually exist? Is there a name for the fetish I’m describing? Does it have a community? Is it similar to any more accessible fetishes out there? Does my loss of libido and this specific fantasy say something about me that I’m too close to see? —Can Anyone Tell Me Anything Now First and most importantly, CATMAN, kinks aren’t things you “take out” on other people. They’re things you share and enjoy with other people. Perhaps
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that “take out on” was a slip of the tongue or a little premature dirty talk; lots of people into D/s get off on talking about their kinks—BB or TT or CBT—as if they’re things a sadistic Dom gets off on doing to a helpless sub. That’s the fantasy, CATMAN, but in reality, the Dom and sub discuss their desires in advance, identify areas of overlap, and set limits. (Not just bottoms; tops have limits too.) However brutal things may look to someone who wasn’t a part of those negotiations, however degrading things might sound, kink play is consensual and mutually pleasurable—and if it’s not consensual and mutually pleasurable, CATMAN, then it’s not kink play. It’s sexual assault. Again, maybe it was a slip of the tongue and I’m being a dick; you did mention a desire to find submissive women, CATMAN, which most likely means you were planning to seek out women who wanna be “used and abused” by two hot bi guys in love. And you’re in luck: there are definitely women out there who would be into this scenario—some readers probably went all WAP reading your question—but you’re unlikely to meet those women on a night out. Meaning, you shouldn’t be thinking about casually picking women up, CATMAN, but rather cultivating connections online or at kink events with submissive women who would get into subbing for you and your imaginary boyfriend. Finding a guy who meets your long list of particulars is a taller order. It frankly doesn’t sound like you’re looking for a partner, i.e. someone whose needs you want to meet, but rather a guy you can plug into your masturbatory fantasies. He’s gotta be bi but not into butt stuff, a good guy, a hot guy, a sub where you’re concerned and a Dom where women are concerned… and any deviation from that
long list not only disqualifies him from consideration for your life partner-incrime, making each and every item on that long list a deal breaker. Relationships require compromise, CATMAN, no one gets everything they want, and a long list of deal breakers makes for even longer odds. If you can’t budge on any of the items on your list… well, then you might wanna think about getting yourself a sex doll or two. You also might wanna give some thought not just to your long and rigid list of deal breakers, but to why that list is so long and rigid that you’re unlikely—as you suspect—to ever find someone. Zooming out… You say your libido tanked in early 2020, CATMAN, and studies show you’re not alone. The twin pandemics—the COVID-19 pandemic and the stupidity pandemic—have tanked a lot of people’s libidos. So, if this fantasy is working for you right now, I think you should lean into it. It may be a tall order, it may be so unrealistic as to be unachievable, but indulging in this very specific fantasy has cracked your libido open and continuing to beat off about this fantasy might blow your libido wide open. I don’t like to pathologize people’s kinks or attach meaning to what are usually arbitrary, random, and inexplicable sexual interests. But the taller the order, the less likely it can be filled, CATMAN, and it’s possible you may not want it filled at all—at least subconsciously, at least right now. Sometimes when sex is scary we obsess about fantasies that are impossible to realize or partners who’re impossible to find because it allows us to avoid partnered sex. I know at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic I was obsessed with a guy I couldn’t have because it got me off the hook. My list of deal
HIGH COURT
advantage over its main opponent, having raised nearly $3.5 million to $142,065. As to the number of pages in the initiative, Pearson believes that 17 pages is not too many, and that the economic activity legal weed would bring is sorely needed during the COVID crisis, when medical marijuana dispensaries were considered “essential services.” “The opposition confuses me: Marijuana is going to be sold in [licensed dispensaries] much like it is today,” she said. “You’re not going to be able to go into Safeway and buy it in the produce section… Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean you have to consume it.” ■
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10
That’s typically what they applaud.” But James is not finished with the fight and plans to take her message to the voters. “We have a plan to present facts to the voters,” she said in a recent interview. “Our state is not better off with legalized marijuana.” When asked if she would support an initiative written differently, James said she is “focused on this one because it’s the one we have to work with.” Pot legalization is now in the hands of voters and Smart and Safe has a huge cash
breakers at that time was ironically pretty short: He had to be Tommy. If he wasn’t Tommy, I wasn’t interested. Tommy was amazing—totally obsession-worthy—and I did love him. But I know now that I threw myself into my obsession with Tommy to protect myself from a terrifying epidemic. Maybe you’re doing something similar, CATMAN. But if I’m wrong—if this is what you want—there are cities out there with kink communities large enough for two partnered bi guys to find a steady stream of submissive women who wanna sub for them. But your list of deal breaker is going to have to shrink if you ever hope to find a guy who’s close to what you want. And that’s all any of us ever gets, CATMAN. Something close. I’m a 39-year-old gay man living in Chicago. Recently a good friend of mine got engaged to a wonderful man from Gambia in West Africa. She’s planning a ceremony there next summer and has invited me to attend. After doing a little research I found out that being LGBT is a crime in that country and the punishment is execution. Should I go to the wedding
JEN SORENSEN
TUCSONWEEKLY.COM 13
and stay in the closet the whole time? In general, what do you think about gays traveling to countries that murder our LGBT brothers and sisters? —Intensely Nervous Venturing Into This Event I wouldn’t go, INVITE, and if I were a straight girl, I wouldn’t expect my gay friends to risk their lives in order to attend my wedding. While a quick search didn’t bring up news about any gay westerners being executed in Gambia in recent history, gay tourists have been arrested, imprisoned, and fined. So instead of attending your friend’s wedding next summer—which may not even happen, due to the pandemic—make a donation in her name to Initiative Sankofa D’Afrique de l’Ouest (www.ISDAO.org), an organization working to improve the lives and legal position of LGBT people in Gambia and other West African nations. ■ mail@savagelove.net @FakeDanSavage On this week’s Savage Lovecast, learn all about cuckolding. www.savagelovecast.com
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Kaplan course subj. Neighbor of Algeria 15 Snubs, possibly 17 Swaying just before a disaster 18 Blarney Stone site 19 Wedgy 20 Part 1 of an instruction for solving this puzzle 22 Mean 23 Donna’s predecessor? 24 Glamping option 26 Bold alternative: Abbr. 27 Image on the Missouri state quarter 12
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DOWN 1 Result of loose lips? 2 Job that involves a lot
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