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I have once again waited until the last of the year to do almost everything. This last week was my desperate run to take advantage of the insurance benefits that i am so lucky to have. That meant two trips to the dentist and a physical, followed by another trip to the dentist next week. My teeth came in perfectly, never had braces, but they are of a Brittish gene pool which means the trouble they hide behind that seemingly perfectly healthy smile, is really no one’s fault.
Yesterday I went in for a yearly physical which my insurance covers completely, so why not. I scheduled it two weeks ago and at some point asked Violet if a physical included checkin’ out my bizniss? And she quickly said she didn’t think so. I even mentioned this appointment to a co-worker and asked her the same question, only I replaced ‘checkin out my bizniss’ with ‘you know’ assuming that any variation leading to a direct reference to anywhere near my vagina was probably inappropriate work conversation. She said, ‘Oh no, huh uh, no… no, you have to specify that.” And so I got on with my life. Not that I don’t think getting a pap smear isn’t important, it is very important. I also don’t carry any fear or anxiety around it like I do the dentist. It’s just one of those things that I would like to be aware of beforehand, to prepare in ways, both physically and mentally.
So, yesterday I walk into my doctor’s office, a doctor whom I adore, and the assistant told me to undress into that buttless robe and that the doctor would be in soon for my annual. I immediately replied, “wait, wait, annual or physical? I’m here for a physical.” And the assistant said, “Sure, a physical which includes a pap smear of course.” And she walked out.
In hind sight, I guess I should have prepared anyway, just in case. When I’m going to the dentist I floss and brush right before hand – regardless of what the visit will actually entail. So, by myself in the room I dropped trow and began to give myself my own mini-exam. I bent over and began to snoop around a bit. My overall take on things was that my bizniss was fine. Fine enough to have an unexpected visit by the doctor.
The actual event was unremarkable and over within minutes. And per the usual I had to help her find my uterus, which is quite tilted from what I have been told. The first time I had a pap smear it took three different doctors to find it – which, one, was quite awkward and two, included a fleeting moment of my thinking that maybe I didn’t have a uterus and that this was probably why I was a lesbian. Loose connections I know, but at the time it felt like a flawless theory.
Eventually, doctor number three found my tiny little guy hiding way back and over to the left – which is exactly how I direct doctors to date. They get in there, give that curious look with a faint little ‘huh’ and I chime in with, “oh, it’s there, it’s just hiding way back and over to the left. And the doctor says, “ah, there she is” and then we’re done. We have that little bit of after-chat, pants get put back on and voila, another clean bill of health for another year before I have to have my doctor all up in my bizniss again.
3 a.m.
my brain: “Can’t sleep, can’t sleep. Must sleep, must sleep… What to do? Hmm, Violet is lookin’ mighty pretty…”
5 minutes later
my brain: “Fail. Oh well, just try to sleep.”
6:45 a.m.
Alarm goes off. I roll over to cuddle with Violet.
Violet: “Were you seriously trying to seduce me at 3 in the morning?!?”
Me: “Baby, I have neeeeeeeeeeds.”
Violet: “Well, you neeeeeeeed to get your neeeeeeeeeds to neeeeeeeeed at a reasonable hour!”
About 4 years ago I lived with my godparents, Ruth and Harold. A few months prior to my moving in Harold had been diagnosed with a pretty aggressive cancer and as they are two of the most important people in my life and both in their 80’s I offered to move in and help out where I could. Towards the end of Harold’s life he was in bed full time with Hospice folks coming in and out to help take care of different things.
As Harold began to swing in and out of consciousness the amount of care he needed became an around the clock job. Eventually, day and night became of no use or matter to him and so, being on his schedule, it had little to do with my life either.
Sometimes at night, after Ruth would go to bed, there would be this eerie moment of quiet normalcy about the house. For a few hours, around 10 or 11p.m. we were all doing what everyone else was doing. Ruth and Harold would both be sleeping and I would go off into the TV room and try to unwind a bit before I went to bed. I’d try to zone out on the TV over a few beers or some of Ruth’s Wild Turkey that I found hidden up high in the cupboard above the stove.
As I’d watch TV at night I learned to divide my attention in half, so that I could relax a bit. Half of me would watch television and the other half stayed tuned in to Harold’s oxygen machine, making sure it was always a consistent rhythm. That oxygen machine became a strange and soothing lullaby of sorts: as long as I could hear it fill and release I could relax and with my bedroom across the hall from Harold and Ruth, that machine became the song that put me to sleep.
One night in the TV room I ran into the show, Six Feet Under, that I had never heard of before. I caught an episode in the middle of the third season and was instantly swept away. It quickly became the only consistent appointment I kept. At 10p.m. on Thursdays I would settle in to catch the latest episode. The show absolutely fascinated me. It was a strange show that came at strange timing on a strange subject and it felt like a strange mirror that I held up to see a bigger picture than I would have found on my own, in that little house. And every once in a while there would be a bit of dialog that would unexpectedly break me, make me cry, making more room for what I was in for.
Harold passed away about a month after I moved in and I ended up living with Ruth for about 8 months after that (in which time I met Violet, stories to come). Harold died in a sort of peace that I would not have imagined possible.
Every once in a while I’ll re-watch an episode or two, just because it is such a great show and in an admittedly strange way, I start to miss the characters now and then. Last night I watched an episode and heard one of my favorite exchanges between David and his dad (his dad has been dead for a few years at this point). I heard it for the first time about a month after Harold passed away.
(both staring out of a sunny window in David’s house)
Dad: The point is right in front of your face.
David: Well I’m sorry but I don’t see it.
Dad: You’re not even grateful are you?
David: Grateful? For the worst fucking experience of my life?
Dad: You hang on to your pain like it means something, like it’s worth something. Well, let me tell you, it’s not worth shit. Let it go… Infinite possibilities and all he can do is whine.
David: Well, what am I suppose to do?
Dad: What do you think? You can do anything you lucky bastard, you’re alive. What’s a little pain compared to that?
David: It can’t be so simple
Dad: What if it is.
After my parents split up my brother and I lived with my mom almost full time. We saw dad every other weekend until he moved to Chicago, when visits turned into bi annual events. I think I was around 11 when my newly single mom decided to go back to school for her master’s degree. This decision was of such a super human nature that even in my selfish little world of me-me-me I recognized how incredibly hard my mom worked, around the clock, with almost no help, continuously and somehow, most of the time, with a smile.
Monday through Friday she woke up, got herself together, made three lunches, got my brother and me together, drove us to school, drove herself to school, taught for 8 hours, picked us up, fed us, checked our homework, went off to her night classes, came home, did a few things around the house, and then went to sleep only to do this all over again in just a few hours. For years.
My mom did this for years until finally, one night she was on her way to her last class. She didn’t make a very big deal about this but she had mentioned at the beginning of the month that her last class was the last day of the month and that we’d start having more time together in the evenings. It was one of those things where I was confused by her casual attitude about graduating. In all of the movies I’d seen about someone graduating there was always a big celebration with cake.
I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to pull together a large celebration but I knew I could get a cake. I saved a little bit of my allowance for a few weeks and the second mom closed the front door, saying, “wish me luck, this is it” I ran upstairs, grabbed the few bucks I had squandered and told my little brother to go get his bike, that we were going to the store.
We pedaled the 7 or 8 blocks to the local grocery store, went in, found what we needed, paid and raced home. At this point in my life I had never tried to bake anything, let alone follow a recipe by myself but saw that all I needed to do was add some oil, a few eggs and some milk. Easy.
I poured the mix into a bowl, cracked in two eggs, two tablespoons of oil and grabbed a measuring cup for the milk. The box said to add 1 3/4cups of milk. But the way it was written, or should I say, the way I read it, it looked like it said 13/4’s. I did think it was odd to ask for 13/4’s of something but it just so happened that I had just learned how to convert fractions in math a week earlier. Confident of my ability to keep going, I rationalized this strange measurement request with the fact that these recipes were written by adults-for adults, because adults would easily know how to convert fractions. So, even though it did cause for a brief pause, it wasn’t that weird, it was just a grown-up thing, and it wasn’t going to stop me.
I did the math and added 3 ¼ cups of milk, mixed it all together, greased a cake pan, poured the mix in the pan and put it in the oven at 350. The package said to stick a toothpick in it in 20 minutes.
20 minutes later I opened the oven, stuck a toothpick in the watery pan of chocolate goo and reread the box to see if I had missed something. I saw this addendum at the bottom of the box that said, “oven temperatures and times may vary due to elevation” or something like that. And although that made no sense to me, I was sure it did to adults and decided to give it ten more minutes.
10 minutes later it was just as gooey. I decided to turn up the oven.
10 more minutes later it was still gooey but now, at 450 degrees it was also bubbling and spitting like chocolate hot lava. Clearly something wasn’t right, it was just too watery. So, I grabbed a handful of Bisquick, tossed it in and stirred a little bit.
5 minutes later I opened the oven door to find a huge chocolate balloon that had swollen so high it had hit the top of the oven. It was much bigger than I had intended but it would do.
I grabbed the toothpick to see if it was done and when I poked it the whole thing collapsed quite dramatically. I pulled it out of the oven and was now holding a smoking black mass of petrified bubbles in a very, very burnt cake pan.
A second later the smoke alarm went off which freaked the dog out enough to hop the fence and run like hell down the street while my brother was screaming and threatening to call the fire department.
I caught my brother and got the phone away from him right before he had dialed that last 1, sprinted three blocks down to catch the dog, opened up all of the windows and doors in the house and went back to the kitchen to see what I could salvage. As defeated as I felt, the idea of my mom graduating from college without a cake made my stomach ache. I chiseled the cake-brick out of the pan and proceeded to frost the different rock-hard chunks with lemon frosting, my mom’s favorite. Once the oven had cooled I did my best to clean it out. I was actually a little worried my mom would be mad at me at this point and so decided to clean the whole kitchen.
By the time my mom got home my brother and I had cleared off the dining room table and decorated it with three plates, three forks, three glasses of milk, a handmade card that my brother made, a fresh bouquet of dandelions and daisies in a small cup that my brother had picked and one awful, inedible cake with a tub of vanilla ice cream sitting next to it.
She walked in the door and said, “I’m home! I’m done with school!… What’s that smell? Is something burning? What is this? Did you do this for…” and as it all started to make sense to her rather quickly, I burst with watering eyes and said, “I totally ruined the cake, mom! I don’t think we can eat it” She grinned, sat down by a plate and said, “Oh my gosh, is that lemon frosting?! My favorite!” She grabbed a fork to take a bite. And as it crunched in her mouth like a piece of gravel she said, “I think it might have needed a bit more milk, honey” and we all started to laugh for our own reasons.
My brother gave her the handmade card that read “Congratulations of your Graduation from your Degree” which included some serious spelling issues, but the sentiment was clear. My mom’s voice started to wobble and crack as she said, “You two sure know how to make a graduate feel special. Now, who wants some of this amazing food?”
We didn’t eat the cake, we couldn’t. But all three of us ate lemon frosted ice cream with some of the proudest faces you have ever seen.
Is it just me or should we be deeply concerned about the state of our social and political systems when chickens are gaining rights faster than homos? I mean, I’ll be the first to admit that chickens have had a long standing solid movement: Everything wants to taste like them, they have had Jim Henson and other prominent members of Hollywood as a long time advocates and promoters, and when you think ‘free range,’ what do you think? You think CHICKEN. And folks, that is some serious branding. So, good for chickens. I am just as passionate about their rights as the rest of California, as we should be. All animals deserve a level of justice and fair treatment, right?
But still, I am deeply bothered by the election results in California (and elsewhere but I am trying to focus on my upsets one and a time here). And after spinning things around and around in my head for a few days I think I’ve found the root source to my deepest place of concern:
Until Tuesday I had assumed that my struggle for equal rights was being funded, mobilized, battled, and batted down by this abstract entity of cross-toting, religious zealots that spend their time yelling to the sky in tongue while mobilizing against the queers with grand venom as a mere distraction to get people like baby W in office. BUT I had never ever, ever considered that the folks that are creating measures and voting against my ability to receive basic human rights were the blue people?!? The liberal, Obama supporting, Whole Food shopping, shade-grown coffee drinking, cloth grocery bag toting, recycle everything to save this planet for our children promoting, freer range chicken voting folks. Ever.
So when I realized this my head did a few flips and when it fell back onto my body and reattached itself I had a few new things to consider: I am obviously a tad more naïve than I would wish to admit; I obviously need to refocused my eyes and no longer safely consider the Obama bumper sticker as an auto-ally; it is unhealthy to ignore how disgusted I am with the people’s ability to abuse my life through government power; and I no longer have any clue as to who I am up against.
Measure 8 (and the other few homo-hating measures that I will emotionally sort through later) was a political hate crime. AND IT PASSED. AND I AM PISSED.
Although I was jumping up and down on Tuesday night, screaming YES WE CAN at the top of my lungs with the rest of the ecstatic Seattleites who took to and over the streets until the wee hours of Wednesday morning, I woke up, read the results and was totally pissed off. I kept asking myself, “who in the world?” until eventually the question went from rhetorical to literal. And that’s when the hurt began to penetrate.
I have no solutions. No plan. No idea where the emotional, community, political and legal repair will come from. Per my usual, I put on a thicker skin before I read the results, just in case, but that sort of blow cut right through to that soft little place that can usually take it easy because it is well protected and rarely gets hit. And it was shattered.
Wednesday morning I read the results of measure 8, hopped on the same old crowded bus to go to work and ended up crammed in next to a man, who, after bumping into another man at a jolted stop, began to rant and rave with a sweaty, red face that he was going to kill that fucking faggot if he so much as looked at him again- that if any homo looked him in the eyes he’d kill them. He repeated this chant several times, and each time he would emphasize louder than the last, and I mean any fucking homo.
I know he saw me as he got on the bus and as he continued to yell I continued to tuck into myself as much as I could, to prepare. I kept anticipating him punching me in the back of my head each time he said it, and I mean any fucking homo, but it never came.
It was 8:45 a.m. in Seattle Washington, one day after Barack Obama was elected president, and I was stuck on a crowded bus, on a stopped highway, next to a man yelling about how fucking queer motherfuckers are all deranged animals, and it is our human duty to kill deranged animals. Don’t let them suffer. Fucking kill them.
He was one of 100 people stuck on that bus and he was the only one that said a word that entire commute.
I was terrified.
And all of a sudden every little abstract attack on homos that I constantly but safely read about on paper or online was now standing right next to me, threatening to kill me over eye contact.
I believe in Barack Obama. I have renewed faith in the voice of the people and our political system. I feel empowered by our ability to apologize to each other and the whole world with our decisive presidential decision. And I am deeply humbled, in a very literal way, that we, the people of United States of America, as a collective, want greater things, want hope and change, prosperity, freedom and the ability to believe that anything is possible right now… for some.
Yesterday I stayed home from work for no other reason but that the idea of not going to work heavily outweighed the idea of going. It was an incredibly gorgeous fall day. The sun was shining so brightly that it was making the trees in my yard look like they were glowing bright red and yellow and orange. The Seal and I spent the whole day outside. Our big project for the day was to get the rest of the fire wood chopped up and stacked.
I don’t know if it was just a good day or if it was the universe attempting to validate my choice in ditching responsibility, but my whole day was filled with sweet little moment after moment. I met several of the neighbors that I had yet to properly introduce myself to, including a four year old named Jeremy, who while walking by with his mom, just plopped down on my steps and started asking more questions about chopping wood than the sky has stars. He and I started trying to decide, “before I hit the wood with that axle”, if it would totally split or not. We did this by holding the wood and looking at the rings. We decided together that the less heavy the wood or the more grainy the wood, the easier it would be to “chop it up!” We were right 4 out of 5 hits with the axle.
A few minutes after Jeremy left the old man that lives two houses down came walking by. He was wearing a blue US Navy sweatshirt tucked into his jeans with suspenders, a beat up Navy hat, and holding the leash of his tiny little Jack Russell dog. He and I have had quick ‘hellos’ in passing but this time he stood on the sidewalk and chatted away while I hacked away at the fire wood offering an ‘oh really?’ or ‘wow, that sounds really interesting!’ now and then. He told me he was about to go to his friend’s farm “to visit and pick up some goods.” He asked me, “Hey, you ever heard a such a thing as blueberry jelly? Well, cause my friend has it, makes it himself.” He also claimed that his friend grew the tastiest corn you could find… and he means anywhere!
Right before he left we had a quick exchange that won my heart:
Old man: I’ll tell ya what, it’s not very often you see a woman choppin’ up the wood. Normally, I mean, you see the man doin’ it.
me: Well, if I had a man, maybe I’d have him do it.
Old man: Why dontcha?
me: Don’t want one.
Old man: Well, you don’t say. Happy choppin to ya then.
—-
A few hours later I left for my woodworking class and got home around 9. Violet was inside cooking up a storm of several incredible dishes to have a late night dinner together. In the midst of juggling all four burners she asked, “Hey, why is there a bag of fresh corn by the front door?”
I had just fallen asleep when I heard Violet, who was obviously thinking with her eyes closed, start to mumble:
V: “In my head, green trident and celery are the same thing.”
me: “…Um… what?”
V: “I guess that’s because of Texas though.”
me: “Right, of course.”
V: “Even with the foil.”
me: “Ok, Violet, goodnight.”
V: “…Hehlerrrvyuherrrrrrr.”
me: “I love you too, darlin’. Sweet dreams.”
Violet is on the east coast. They needed the big boss over in Boston for business, and so off she went. I’m following her tonight, on a red eye, for pleasure. No, we’re not sneaking away to get married. We wouldn’t do that. I want the center stage of it all and she wants the gifts. Eloping offers neither. A little shallow? A little showy? Maybe. The point is, unlike my parents’ sneaking suspicion for this random get away together, we’re not off to get hitch. Not.
Violet called this morning, while i was still sound asleep, or should I say, while I was still thinking with my eyes closed:
me: Hello?
V: jesse.
me: Ya?.
V: You are my girlfriend.
me: I know.
V: Ok then, little sleepy shrimp mushroom jessaronie bologna man, talk to you later.
::click::
me: Hey Violet, have you ever shop lifted before?
V: Noooowah! Are you serious? No way, jesse!
me: Geez, I’m just asking.
(a few minutes later…)
V: Oh no!
me: What?
V: I have!
me: You have what?
V: You! You made me a thief!
me: What the hell are you talking about, Violet?
V: When we go shopping at the co-op.
me: Yeah?
V: When we go grocery shopping and you snack on things from the bins, like those little chocolate covered almonds. You’ve offered me some before and I ate them!
me: Oh my gawd, Violet, everyone does that. That’s not shop lifting.
V: Did we pay for those almonds?…
me: (Speechless and smiling)
V: (looking quite proud) …Mmm hmm. Thought so.
me: You’re a risk taking rebel, Violet.
V: You! You’ve corrupted me!
m: Straight to hell… now we both shall go. Isn’t that cute, Violet?! Won’t that be fun?
I am grouchy today, really grouchy and can’t shake it. I had a long weekend that started with a 6 hour drive down to see my family (shoulda been a 3 hour drive). The way down was slow and miserably hot (and I really don’t complain about heat unless it is just too much). It became miserably hot instead of just hot when the car started to overheat, like it does, several different times while idling in traffic jams for which i remedy by turning the heater on full blast, which then causes the already hot tarmac of a highway parking lot heating the inside of my car ten fold to become even hotter, which causes my jet black dog to respond by panting very heavily, which in turn causes me to pull off at the next exit to walk and water her, which then puts me even further behind in the traffic jam.
.
All of this to get to a 3 day family gathering that is so complicatedly annoying and dysfunctional that i couldn’t and won’t know where to start until after a few more years of therapy.
So, I’ll jump to the middle, where the second round of drinks (it now being 2 in the afternoon on Friday and all) inspired my step-grandmother to start up the easy and light hearted question, “So, now that we know Obama is a Muslim who in the hell do we vote for?”
As one could probably guess this was met by several different angles of passionate political fury (which eventually led to my being cornered by my other grandma admitting her homophobia all over the place, but we’ll get there in a second.)
So, everyone grabbed a handful of chips or a deviled egg and split from that part of the house, pretty immediately, except for my grandma (my mom’s mom), my step-grandma (my step-dads mom), and my godmother, whom I adore to no end and politically align with). Well, she couldn’t bite her tongue and began with, “One, he is not Muslim and two, even if, where in lies the reason not to vote for him? His entire purpose is to rejuvenate this country, repair all of this last administrations disaster.”
Step grandma: “He is too a Muslim, I got an email about it!”
Grandma: “Well, if by repair you mean raise our taxes through the roof then…well, just think about your taxes!”
Godmother: “Raise our taxes? Maybe. But I would gladly pay more in taxes for his ideas to come to life. I would gladly give up more money so that people that want an education can have one. I would rather pay to educate our society instead of paying for more jail cells. Either way, its going to cost more to begin to repair what Bush has done!”
My stepgrandma stood up, went outside and told her husband that they were leaving. My grandma grabbed a carrot stick, dipped it in the ranch dressing like she was at high tea and proceeded to take a very elegant bite.
My godmother left the room saying, “Well, we’ll never agree on this so, we should just move on.” She stood up and went outside until suddenly it was just my grandma and me.
(here’s the surprise-homophobic cornering part of the story)
Grandma: “So, where is Violet, anyway?”
me: Kansas.
G: Why?
me: Vacation to see a friend.
G: Now, tell me again, why is she a dual citizen?
me: She was born in England. Which will be really handy if we ever want to live there someday, you know.
me: Kansas.
G: Why?
me: Vacation to see a friend.
G: Now, tell me again, why is she a dual citizen?
me: She was born in England. Which will be really handy if we ever want to live there someday, you know.
.
(My grandma was still holding that carrot stick, and now like a cigarette, flailing it around in between her fingers with her questions. I could tell she was still pissy but hey, Violet is one of my favorite topics, I’m her favorite grand-daughter, so, I figured I could roll with this conversation).
.
G:And why does that help you?
me: Cause we could get married in most of those countries, no work visa stuff, you know?
G: Don’t do that.
me: Don’t do what?
G: Get married.
me: Why?
G: Because.
me: Because why?
G: jesse, I’m sorry, but same sex marriage anywhere is wrong.
my brain: AAAAAAaaaaaaaaAaAAaaAAAAAAAAaaAaAAAaaaAAAaAAAAAAH!
my mouth: Well, that’s one of the most prejudice things a family member has ever said… to my face, that is.
G: (dipping her carrot again) Well, I’m sorry, but honestly…
and in walked my mom, “What are you two up to?” she said in her bubbly-sunshine voice. And out walked jesse.
me: Cause we could get married in most of those countries, no work visa stuff, you know?
G: Don’t do that.
me: Don’t do what?
G: Get married.
me: Why?
G: Because.
me: Because why?
G: jesse, I’m sorry, but same sex marriage anywhere is wrong.
my brain: AAAAAAaaaaaaaaAaAAaaAAAAAAAAaaAaAAAaaaAAAaAAAAAAH!
my mouth: Well, that’s one of the most prejudice things a family member has ever said… to my face, that is.
G: (dipping her carrot again) Well, I’m sorry, but honestly…
and in walked my mom, “What are you two up to?” she said in her bubbly-sunshine voice. And out walked jesse.
.
I grabbed Dog for a long walk and tried to sort enough out to be able to go back. I couldn’t figure out what to think or do about any of this. When I got back my step grandma and her husband had left. My godmother had moved on to some sweet story about her past, my grandma did her needle point and listened, my brother worked on his car, my step dad hid by the BBQ, my mom acted like everything is, was, and will always be just fine and I proceeded to drink… heavily, which worked, until the next morning, where, different topics and the same dysfunction started all over for two more days.
“Happy Independence Day”, I said to Dog as soon as I unlocked the front door to our house Sunday evening, “you hear me, don’t you girl.” She and I both plopped down in the back outside and stared at Fraidy swim around and around… and around for a while. It was warm and quiet. It was nice.
But then it was Monday and I still can’t shake the weekend. I need a weekend for my weekend, you know?
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