Do You Think Thomas Gangale Has Ever Had Phone Sex (and Why Do You Care)?

Copyright © 2014 by Thomas Gangale
@ThomasGangale

It's hard to believe, but the seventh most popular piece I ever posted on this blog was five years ago: "Do You Think Thomas Gangale Has Ever Had Phone Sex?" Even harder to believe is that this story is spiking this week for some unknown reason. Come on, man! I'm a sexagenarian. I've lived a intentionally eventful life. I've failed at more things than I've succeeded at, but it's hard for me to think of something I haven't tried.

I protested in the streets against the Vietnam War. Then I enlisted in the US Air Force.

I got married.

I was an air traffic controller in the US Air Force.

While a US Air Force ROTC cadet at  the University of Southern California, I worked as a screen extra in Coming Home, an antiwar film starring "Hanoi Jane" Fonda.

I hated the commute from Hollywood, so I moved to South Central Los Angeles.

I invented the time map to display the history of manned spacecraft development in two-dimensional time.

I earned a bachelor of science in aerospace engineering (yes, in fact I am a rocket scientist) and a US Air Force commission.

I got divorced.

I was a US Air Force weapon systems officer on F-4 fighter jets. I have pulled Gs and have had the blood pool in my legs until they felt like water balloons. I have been seconds away from ejecting from an aircraft. I have flown faster than the speed of sound. I have filled a barf bag so much I nearly couldn't tie it off.

I got married. I fathered a son. I was born in San Francisco, as was my mother, both of her parents, and my mother's mother's mother, but my son was born back east... Oakland.

I was an engineering manager for payloads on two Space Shuttle missions.

I got divorced.

I invented a calendar for human colonists on Mars.

There are still some unmanned satellites that if I told you about them I would have to kill you, but I worked on the Gambit and Hexagon reconnaissance satellite programs, and these have finally been declassified. I also worked on a Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) satellite program that was later cancelled.

I scuba-dived the Great Barrier Reef.

Four months after suffering a broken leg from being hit by a car, I ran the Dipsea Race seven miles up and down two spurs of Mount Tamalpais with my grandfather, who had won the race 54 years earlier; until I saw Forrest Gump, I had forgotten that as a small child I wore leg braces.

I got married.

I went to an unknown (but large) number of Grateful Dead concerts.

I invented a rational presidential primary system for the United States. Naturally, Iowa and New Hampshire hate it.

I characterized a class of orbits that I believe will be essential for maintaining communication between Earth and humans on Mars.

I rescued well over a hundred rabbits from people who thought they were cute gifts for their young children at Easter and who didn't give a shit about them a few months later. I also took in several laboratory rabbits after they ceased to be experimentally useful. I was shunned by the House Rabbit Society.

I drafted the first computer aided design drawings for a simulated Mars habitat in the Canadian Arctic.

I wrote the first scentific paper on animal husbandry in a Mars colony.

I got divorced.

I got married.

I protested in the streets against the Iraq War. I read Marx and Lenin. I was persecuted by and purged from the Sonoma County Democratic Central Committee.

I earned a master of arts in international relations.

I had myself tested for and was confirmed as having learing disabilities.

My work was published in a political science anthology along with John F. Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor, to name just a couple.

Although I am a heterosexual, as my long list of marriages to women imperfectly attests, I had phone sex with California  Democratic Party chairman Art Torres when he bitched me out over an incident that had occurred at the state party convention a few days earlier. "What the fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck are you doing! Fuck fuck fuck!" I kept addressing calmly him as "sir" until he calmed down, and finally he ended the conversation with "Don't call me sir! I'm your friend!" This is how my friends talk to me; imagine how well received I am by my enemies.

On the same day I was interviewed on both right-wing and left-wing radio: by Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation and host of The Right Hour, and by Peter B. Collins on Air America.

I have written opinion editorials in the Philadelphia Enquirer, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, San Jose Mercury News, Marin Independent Journal, and most importantly, the Berkeley Daily Planet, all the while remaining mild mannered.

I have authored and published two books, and I am working on ... uh, several more. One reviewer likened me to a slave-owner of the Old South. My wife claims a small portion of African blood, but she passes.

San Francisco hailed my great-grandfather a hero for commanding a firefighting company in 1906; I was roughed up and threatened by firefighters at the Grand Canyon, and when I filed a compliant with the county sheriff, I was criminally charged by the county attorney.

I have a cabin in North Star Borough and live under the Southern Cross. I have stood in the eye of a Category 3 hurricane and glimpsed the stars.

While living in the Kingdom of Tonga, my dog was killed in the middle of the night, cooked and eaten. Several Tongans have threatened to have me deported, although I have yet to be threatened with cannibalism.

I have drafted an international legal instrument for delimiting outer space and national airspace.

I have drafted an international legal instrument to replace the failed 1979 Moon Agreement.

I have drafted an international legal instrument to define property rights on celestial bodies.

I have drafted an international legal instrument to establish a tribunal to settle disputes in outer space.

I have drafted a United Nations General Assembly resolution and three international legal instruments to protect historical sites on the Moon and other celestial bodies.

I have drafted two international legal instruments to prohibit several types of anti-satellite weapons.

A few days ago the Tongan police wanted to take me downtown and fingerprint me because someone allegedly was bitten by an unknown dog in the field next to my residence.

Currently I am working on characterizing a new class of round-trip trajectories between Earth and Mars.

I hope to earn a PhD somewhere someday, but I must find a school, unlike UC Berkeley or UC Davis or Standord, that won't turn me down because I'm too old.

So there you have it: "A Brief History of Tom," a complete unknown, a rolling stone, fifteen minutes of fame now and then. I leave it to your fertile imagination as to whether I had phone sex with Hillary Clinton while Bill was occupied with a certain other matter elsewhere in the White House, or whether, as a supporter of SETI, I have had phone sex with extraterrestrials (the way they wrap their wet tentacles arounf the handset... ooh-h-h-h!). What the hell do I care what you think? I'm rather busy, and your reading this is strong evidence that you are not.