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After being greeted by the one and only Sinclair Sexsmith and finally getting to meet the oh so lovely Kristen late Thursday night, I woke up Friday morning in Brooklyn.
Kristen started our morning off with cinnamon roll biscuits from scratch (which were, without flinching in any spec of a doubt, the most delicious thing that either a biscuit or cinnamon had ever done.) After breakfast we all spent the afternoon hanging out together and being fairly restful, as we predicted correctly, this would be our last resting opportunity for several days.
That evening I had dinner plans with one of my favorite friends, Mikey, who recently moved to New York, and then we were off to meet a lovely crowd of folks at a local dyke bar in Park Slope.
Once at the bar and full knowing that we were all asking for nothing less than a wee bit of trouble, right off the bat the whole lot of us counted to three and drank our *car bombs down and gone (*a half pint of Guinness with a shot of whiskey and Irish cream.)
An hour or so later Mikey and I decide we wanted to play a game of pool. There is a back room to this bar where the pool table lives and Sinclair warned me, more than once, that she has never felt very comfortable back there. “Phshaw to that,” I thought. “It’s just pool. It is our national lesbian sport (besides camping and rugby). It is our birthright!”
Mikey and I wrote our names down on the list and waited. An hour or so later a large woman with a very serious demeanor found us up front and declared rather than asked us, “You are Mikey and jesse. You’re up against Suz and me”
We went back and the game began. It was awkwardly quiet. Both Mikey and I felt the chill right away and tried to talk to and befriend Barb a bit with absolutely no success. I mean, her disdain was so blatant and only became increasingly painful as the game continued. One of us would say something to her or ask her a question and receive absolutely nothing in return. Not a look, not a glance, gesture, scoff, not a nothing. It was really uncomfortable, to say the very, very least and it made for a long game. I whispered to Mikey, “How can she already hate us? We just got here.”
Mikey told me not to worry, that we just needed to get into the game and that things would lighten up. We both tried to keep things light. Oh how we tried.
At several different points in the game Barb switched out her personal pool stick for a different one. Switched out her very own personal pool sticks, as in plural, more than one, you ask? Yes. She was not only totally scary and wearing a black, three fingered pool glove and had made it very clear, without needing to formalize the sentiment, that we were not invited to her birthday party, she also had several pool sticks of her own.
I bit my tongue three different times but finally I decided I had a really great one liner. It was sure to crack a smile. The fourth time Barb traded out pool sticks I said, “Hey! This isn’t golf!” – aaand cue solo awkward laugh with cricket sounds in the background. She didn’t even look at me.
Mikey also tried to lighten things up with her own technique that I like to call: irresistible southern charm. She walked right up to Barb, stood beside her and postured herself exactly the same way Barb was standing: arms crossed, pool stick in the nook of her right elbow, slouched posture with a bent right knee.
Mikey (please keep in mind the butter-like Tennessee accent): Hey Barb. (NO response.) I heard y’all had a little pool club goin’ here, huh?
Barb: League.
Mikey: Well, see, I just moved here. I’m really not great at pool but it is fun. And if y’all play here all the time. I mean, I’m pretty busy and don’t live very close by but I would like to meet people and, well, maybe I could join y’alls little pool club?
Barb: League. (long pause, zero eye contact) No.
Poor Mikey. She walked back over looking quite defeated and said, “Well, that Barb has really hurt my feelings.”
I told her it wasn’t us. Barb was made of ice and stone. We were fine and kind of suck at the game but we were having a good time, or trying to anyway. Mikey nodded.
The game continued as Mikey and I did our best to amuse each other and have a good time.
Now we were 5 to 2 (and to clarify per Violet’s request, that means we still had 5 balls on the table that we needed to get in while they only had 2.) Barb’s pool partner, Suz, was up. I loved Suz. She was short and drunk with hat-head-hair to her shoulders and a big baggy red flannel shirt that fell over her baggy jeans. All she did was giggle and snort at anything anyone said or didn’t say.
At one point she walked by me and I whispered, “I love you Suz. I don’t know what I would do without you.” She snorted and giggled as she slapped me on the back before aiming up her next shot.
Suz was a good shot, but she was also a bit drunk and not on her game.
Eventually they got to the 8 ball while we still had 3 on the table (again, to clarify, this means they were on the final ball and we were really losing.) It was Suz’s turn. Barb still looked like someone had just spit on her shoes but at this point I had decided that was just her resting face.
Suz aimed. Suz shot. Aaaaand Suz scratched…. on the 8 ball, which means they LOSE and although we didn’t really WIN, by default we WON! (And the crowd in my head went wild while keeping an eye on the nearest exit should Barb lose her cool.)
So, now we were without grumpy, scary, angry Barb which allowed our breathing to return to normal. As the winners (by default), Mikey and I played another game with a decent guy with a green goatee and his friend. We lost the game quickly and painlessly to both of our relief. We had had enough of this hard core pool nonsense.
And just like someone had cued in the final credits to our pool adventure, finally my jukebox music came on and the bar was blasting “If I could Turn Back Time” (if you are at all surprised by this there is no hope for you.) And all of a sudden, my main man Sinclair Sexsmith showed up in the forbidden back room and proceeded to dance dance dance. I grabbed a pool stick-microphone and began singing along at the top of my lungs. Yes, my throat was very sore for the rest of the night and into the next day and yes we were totally fabulous.
But mid-song, out of the corner of my eye, there she was. Barb was back. “I’d take back all the words that hurt you and you’d stay…” I don’t know much about Barb, as she was a tough egg to crack, but I do know two things for sure: She hated me and she hated me singing Cher tunes in her pool room. The only time all night that we made any eye contact was while I was singing. “If I could reach the stars…” She caught my glance and beat me up with the look she shot. But I was singing Cher, I just didn’t have room to care.
After the song was over Mikey and I lingered in the back room a bit, chatting with the few other folks that didn’t hate us and who had personalities. And then, all of a sudden I hear, “Move” and feel a pretty blunt shove to my back that jolted me forward. Barb pushed me. Pretty hard really and I knew exactly what this was. This was the white shark bump-and-bite technique: First, the shark bumps you really hard with its nose to disorient you and as a test. After that, if you see the shark again it’s because she is going to eat you.
My brain, now on a few pints of beer, thought, “What the hell?!” My mouth, also talking through a few pints said, “Listen dude, I may look butch or whatever, but I am actually more fragile and sensitive than anything. ‘Can you get out of my way’ would have worked just fine.”
I am not a fighter. I do have a mouth on me but I do not throw or get in the way of punches. Ever. (Except for that one time in the 6th grade when I beat up Jake Nepp for picking on my little brother.) Mostly, my skills are in my swift ability to talk a little shit and run like all hell. (Fight and flight, remember?)
So, I made this comment to Barb with car-bomb-confidence but as it was all falling out of my mouth I had this alternate vision of seeing the shark come back and me flying by the crowd of folks in the front room yelling, “Nice to meet you all! Gotta go now! I’ll text you when it’s safe to stop running, Sin!” Fortunately, the pool shark wasn’t hungry for an innocent-little-fag-fish right then and there was no need to flee. Barb was all bump and no bite.
At this point I was a bit jostled and a little pissed off, as any innocent out of town fish who was just trying to chill with the pool school would be. So, instead of letting my mouth get me into any real trouble I went back up front, told Sin she was right about the pool room and carried on with the night and with a wonderful group of pleasant, non-angry, interesting and fun folks.
As we were leaving the bar that night I turned back and put several more Cher songs on the jukebox, just for Barb.
The last song, of course, was Just Like Jesse James.
Having recently been laid off, having more time on my hands, and with spring sprung and creeping into summer the Seal and I have been outside, out and about, for most of our day, more than not.
This morning the Seal and I went for a long walk, like we do. The lilacs are fully bloomed and just beginning to drop. The Seal and I both love to smell them in huge, dramatic inhales and stop frequently to do so. The tulips are all spent, give or take a few late bloomers, the blue bells are standing and tired, the daffodils are weeks gone and the rhododendron are all tightly budded, ready to explode at any given moment . The cherry blossoms make it look like it snowed pink last night, but only in very particular patches.
On our walk this morning the Seal had a blossom stick to the top of her nose and after shaking her head a few times with no relief she just walked on, crossing her eyes every once in a while to focus on it. I thought it looked cute and springy and let the decoration stay until it finally fell several blocks later.
There is this older woman, 75 maybe, that lives in the neighborhood. Margaret is her name. She is always out walking with her dog. Always. It is almost impossible to stray more than a few blocks from home without passing by her. I use to catch her at my bus stop, sitting outside the bagel shop, sipping coffee and giving every other bite of her bagel to Thomas, her rolly polly little wiener dog.
Thomas has several outfits, depending on the weather, of course. He mostly sports either his blue sweater for cold, dry days or a little yellow raincoat for the rainy days. If my jacket style is similar to what Thomas is wearing I know I have properly prepared. She and I have always said hello in passing. Some days are chattier than other, like during the election, she would go on and on about how its “plenty time to let this Obama kid get going and get things going right for a change!” She is clearly quite intelligent, well spoken, progressive and very sweet and it always cracks a smile onto my face when I see her and her little fat dog walking around together.
I haven’t seen Margaret or Thomas around in months and I have thought about this a lot. I have been curious and worried with obvious suspicions but haven’t figured out how to go about finding anything out.
So, the Seal and i were out this morning, for a nice long stroll when all of a sudden, a block and a half a head of us i saw what appeared to be an older person walking what appeared to be Thomas in his little blue sweater.They were crossing the street and turning a corner and I had seconds before they would be out of site so I yelled, “That isn’t Thomas by any chance, is it?” as I began to jog towards them. A voice, not Margaret’s, said back, “This little weeny here? Ya, thats him. Who’s askin?”
My stomach sank a bit as I was jogging over, to find out about Margaret. As I got closer I could see this old man, clearly not Margaret. He had slicked back white hair, snow-white side burns, the most typical gray old-man-pants with the most typical brown leather old man shoes, a green button down collared shirt with a big blue postal jacket, a tough-guy posture, leaned up against a fence, holding the leash of that fat little rolly polly wiener dog, Thomas, that the Seal and I were oh so happy to see.
“Hi there,” I said. “My name is Jesse. Sorry to chase you down a street but I just haven’t seen Thomas or Margaret in some time.” And then I just went for it, “Is Margaret ok?”
And as soon as this old man opened his mouth and said, “Damn near died I tell you. Goddamn doctors are only human but if I hadn’t raised em’ some hell over there, well then, who knows. Nearly killed her liver with some goddamn medicine that she didn’t even need, I tell you what, I’ve had it with those damn doctors. Think they’re god but dumb as bricks, some of ‘em” I realized that this old man was an old woman. This old man was Margaret’s partner.
I smiled big and said, “But she is ok. Man, that is great to hear.”
“Of course she’s ok. They all think she’s just this sweet old lady. Well, that’s cause she is. But I ain’t.” and she laughed big, holding her belly.
We talked for a while, well she did the talking, like a grumpy old man, complaining on and on about everything from how the damned winter killed all the rosemary around here: “In all my life of living here, when in the hell have I ever had to pay for rosemary at the store? Now I’m buying the stuff from California. Damn snow took ‘em all out.” To complaining about the roundabouts at the end of all of our streets: “If your car is too big for ya, well, shame on you for it. But if it ain’t, cause you need it, like my 4×4 pickup truck, well, now, you try to get that son of a bitch around that damn circle. Try it. Gonna run up the side every time, so what good is that? Don’t slow me down none either, just pisses me off.”
I stood there listening, agreeing with everything regardless, and marveled at what an amazingly beautiful and masculine person Margaret’s partner was (I never got her name but she mentioned that they had lived in their house for more than 30 years together). And how relieved I was that Margaret was ok. And how happy I was that she had someone looking after her, taking care of her. How lucky I am to be right where I am, right now.
We said goodbye and as the Seal and I walked off I heard, “Come on, you little weeny. Let’s go now.” A few seconds later I turned around and saw Margaret’s partner bent over, picking one of the last tulips standing and I realized that bringing your girl a flower never gets old.
I went to bed last night with this nagging feeling that I might die. Not that I would die, but that I might.
I know I’ll die, of course I do. Of course I will. But minus a few exciting moments in my life I don’t regularly consider this as an impending situation for myself. Last night, as I lay next to Violet, who was sound asleep by hours already, I battled a few different philosophies around the idea of dying and somehow fell fast asleep.
- – - – - – -
I am allergic to bees. Very allergic. If the allergist who discovered this for me read my blog he might have said I was ‘allergic-squared’ because I am. But instead he said I was ‘off the charts’ allergic. I have only known this for less than two years now and so my relationship with bees, which has always been a bit odd anyway, has shifted.
I am a gardener by trade and by passion and so I spend quite a bit of time with bees. I still love them and find them more fascinating and beautiful than most animals (octopi and elephants also making the list of top-animal-awe). I understand that bees do more good for the world than I could ever thank them for – but there is this new twist to it now. If one of them, just one, just any ol’ bee, for whatever reason, was to sting me – who knows- and that scares me in the same way that all of those things that could, but haven’t, and probably won’t, but could, things scare me. It ‘s peripheral, but it’s there.
Most days I have a pocket full of Benadryl and an Epi Pen in my bag, just in case. And when they are buzzing around I am still not afraid of them really, they’re just doing their thing and I know that, but I’m obviously more on guard than I use to be. But we still get on together as a pretty strong team: I weed, sculpt, tend to and water the earth around their flowers, plants and berries while they pollinate and flourish the colors and fruits and buds into their fullest, illuminated ability. Not a bad team, right?
But I do, and have always had, this odd relationship with bees, that for the most part I think would be too hard to explain. But quite simply, I’ll be, or the bee will be, in the strangest of places for a bee to be – and still somehow, there will be me and a bee.
I have been on an 60 story elevator ride alone with a bee. I recently found a dead bee in the bag I took to work each day. A bee and I once drove through 4 different states together without my knowing (until it left me at a rest stop in Tennessee). I once walked an entire block, covered in a foot of snow, with a bee buzzing at my feet like an obedient pet the whole way. Maybe these don’t sound that odd, but my strange bee moments have been frequent and always notable and make room for pause, like, ‘hey there little bee, what are you doing here?’ And now that I am knowingly quite allergic, I ask this with a bit more concern tucked into my wonder.
- – - – - – - -
So, yesterday (ah, the point to all of this!) Violet went to take a quick mid-day nap when all of a sudden I heard, “jeeeeeessseeeee!” in a sleepy-sweet and mildly alarmed tone. I went upstairs assuming I would be removing a spider or something and I walked in to our bedroom to find this not-so-little bee sleeping oh so soundly right in the middle of my pillow.
I went downstairs to get a jar to catch it and put it outside but when I got back upstairs the bee was gone. We both timidly looked for the bee for a while. I checked behind picture frames and drawers while Violet combed the bed. No bee.
What bothered me the most was how the bee got in the house – in our bedroom. No windows have been open in quite some time and we just couldn’t figure it out.
As soon as we gave up looking and I had already decided that I would sleep on the couch that night, there, two steps in front of me was the not-so-little bee, sitting as properly as the Seal does when she wants something, just staring at me. We caught it, put it out side and got on with our day.
It wasn’t until I went to bed last night that I started to wonder again, how in the world that bee got inside. And why was it on my pillow? All of a sudden I was overwhelmed with this fear that the bee on my pillow was a prelude or foreshadowing to something and I really scared myself. What if I had just lay my head on that bee sleeping on my pillow? What if there were more bees in the room, even just one more – and I fell asleep and was stung? Would it wake me up? Would I sleep right through? It was amazing really, to think, to all of a sudden realize, how fragile it all is. One little bee, me and a sting. Done. I think it eventually all felt too easy, too unbelievable that I exhausted myself and somehow fell asleep.
I woke up, obviously, and am just a little more aware of myself today than yesterday. Violet is almost annoyed with all of the kisses but happy to have come home to her favorite dinner and dessert, all home made. My grandma, my mom, my dad, my brother, an old friend and Ruth were all happy to hear from me, but curious.
No catch, just glad to be here.
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.
Lately, at some point in a discussion of gay rights (and the lack there of) someone will inevitably tell me to be patient, and I’m sick of it. Um, no. I am at zero patience in attaining equality as a human. Not at this point. Not with all of the information we have in our hands. Not in 2008. No way.
I asked Violet the other night how come we haven’t seen a surge in historian suicides in the last 8 years or so. I mean, these people spend their lives researching and documenting the past so that we can learn about and consider, in times before us or in places that we don’t personally exist, how things have happened, what has worked and what didn’t. My guess is that they also have a sneaking hope that this information will be considered in present time.
So, either most of us aren’t considering anything that we have not personally experienced or the current majority of the collective social conscious isn’t taking the time to truly consider what legal, emotional, and social ramifications they are taking the time to empower and impose on their queer co-workers and sisters and aunts and friends and children and dads and neighbors. Maybe taking this time would not leave time to catch the latest episode of Desperate Housewives? Or maybe a part of our humanness is that we are doomed to continue to learn the hard lessons over and over.. and over regardless of what we do or don’t know.
But I just don’t see anywhere else in our recent US history where landmark rights were/are being handed out and then yanked away like they have been with queer rights.
I mean, when we finally decided that women weren’t as dumb as we had previously thought we gave them the right to vote. And to our pleasant surprise the political system didn’t explode and so we never reversed this decision.
Abortion is extremely contentious and is constantly under attack, but thus far the right to make that decision for our own body has held strong enough since the day it passed (not without constant maintenance, but point is it became federal law and still is).
We eventually realized that when people with different skin colors marry each other or share the same drinking fountains or go to the same schools that the sky doesn’t start to collapse on top of us in large deadly chunks and so we legalized it all. And interracial marriage and desegregation have never been legally re-revoked.
Now granted, these examples took a lot of time and diligence and pain staking social activism and created massive social divisions and did not happen easily or overnight. I am not trying to make them look like simple feats. They weren’t and they aren’t. The thing is, measure 8 and the like are just more of the many examples of the legal attempts to take human rights away from a minority that had JUST BEEN GRANTED these rights a few months earlier. AND IT PASSED. And this seems to be the theme with ‘gay rights’ and I am wondering why this is happening and how this is legal?
Ok, getting off of my circular tangent here to make a point: I am concerned about how we are going to try and challenge all of this, in general, in the big picture. I am looking at history and I see that things like waging war work sometimes. I can see that protests and strikes have brought light to and have created a platform for change. I see that unexpected civil disobedience tends to make news and is a good way to get air time.
But looking at this last presidential election, the one where a black man with a funny name, that most people had never heard of before, accused of incompetence and all sorts of suspicious no-no’s, somehow, caught our attention. And one by one we started to listen to him and more of us than not liked what he said above all else. What he had to say trumped the powerful potential detriment of his skin color, because let us not be fooled and dismiss the power of the color of our skin in this country. I am looking at history and I am seeing a new wave of how to create political progress and I just saw some of the previously mentioned tactics getting booed and voted out of Washington.
No more dirty campaigning. No more half witted pretty faces. No more slander. No more wasting time trying to correct outrageous mistruths. No more bullshit distractions. No more yelling back and forth. No more name calling. No more manipulation. No more us versus them.
So, before my last statement, I want to make clear that I am not suggesting or superimposing a right and wrong for anyone else here. I am just talking about me. Plus, I think that variety paves smart progress. So, for those of you who are standing outside with signs and for those of you who are creating social chaos through radical gestures and for those of you who are yelling or not saying anything- I totally respect you and your decisions, so long as your brain and your heart were in on the decision making process.
But, for now, I will come out and say that you will not find me protesting at a Mormon church, nor will you find me publicly pledging my allegiances on myfacespacebook, nor will I go on strike for my rights as a homo. And honestly, I still don’t know what to do about things like measure 8 or the guy who threatened to kill me over eye contact a few days ago. But I am looking at our political history and our political present and I see a trend that I like. Pushing and shoving works sometimes, but it doesn’t last and the backlash seems to be a grand call for something different. Em left a well written and smart comment on my last post that included, “Many people who voted for Barack voted for republicans in other elections, but he explained to them why they needed to vote for him.”
How simple. How reasonable. How peaceful. How authentic. And it worked.
So, my gay agenda of now, as I will openly admit to having one, is to be willing to explain over and over, to anyone, until I am blue in the face, why I think I deserve the opportunity to be treated with the same decency and rights and respects and protections as anyone else. And I’ll just see where that gets me.
Don’t get me wrong, I am totally pissed off and encourage everyone to do what feels right. And I do love a good fight now and then, it just seems to me that it’s time to try something new.
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.
This last weekend with my mom and my grandma in town, and then the unexpected guest(s), Violet’s brother and eventually his girlfriend too, went well. Good actually. Nice. And at times, fun. And, in a general sense, I feel a little closer to my grandma in ways. She was, as expected, difficult at times, but nothing major, nothing too over the top.
I watched my mom deal with her during those few moments when she was being a PIA (pain in ass) and I watched my mom be remarkably patient. I could tell that she was annoyed but she was so flawless in remaining calm and kind that I realized I had always just assumed this was a natural characteristic of my mom, when in fact her sincere, “It’s ok, no problem” is an intentionally practiced skill-turned talent. I observed (and admired) this in hopes of learning something, as patience is not free and my mom has always been bottomless.
After I dropped the two of them off at the train station my mind started to replay the last few days. I started to realize how much I don’t know about my grandma – and want to- and probably never will. There were moments where I wondered if she was apologizing for what she had said the weekend before, in her own way – or if she had just moved on and softened up that quickly? I couldn’t stop wondering about a lot.
I’ve talked to my mom about this before, and I wonder if my grandma would have been/ would be a lesbian if that was an ‘option’ for her? Despite several husbands, a few of us were never convinced. Is she a feminist? Has she ever had an orgasm? Has she ever kissed another woman? I started to see her as a whole person who has had a really big life… and I don’t know any of the internal stuff to ANY of it. I want to know but I have no idea how to know. I just can’t see her opening up that way and I also can’t see myself asking my grandma if she’s ever gotten off.
She was born in West Virginia and now in her 70′s, has ended up a fairly well off, twice widowed, retired woman living in Hawaii. How in the world did that happen? Did she MAKE that life happen or did it just go that way? She was in love with my mom’s dad, but ever again? I’m not sure. I’m not sure if she’s sure. I’m not sure that mattered.
I’m not sure how she came to think the way she does about anything. Is she a republican because of her money? Or does she really believe it that political philosophy? Does she really think gay people shouldn’t marry? Or is that just an unchecked opinion? What in the world does she really believe in? What in the world really matters to her? I don’t know. And I don’t know if I ever will.
On Saturday, while walking through Pike Place Market, my grandma asked a woman to take our picture, “This is going to be my Christmas card so sunglasses off and smile” she said to mom and me through her already ready camera smile.
The woman held the camera to her face and asked, “How do y’all know each other anyway?”
My grandma responded, “We’re three generation right here, out on the town together.” And it was right then, arm in arm in arm, that I realized I was in some pretty incredible company.
I’m both, really. Ever since my cornered conversation with my grandma I’ve been reviewing my own personal relationship status with people/ friends/ family. That quick little back and forth last weekend really upset me and I feel like I need to do something, but none of my natural reactions feel right.
My usual response is to first fight a bit and then flee to whatever degree I deem necessary. Really, Violet is the first person in my life where the impulse to flee has diminished so greatly that sometimes it just takes stepping into the next room for a minute so that my rational brain can reattach to my body before my mouth opens again. But besides my relationship with Violet, if you corner me into feeling defensive I will usually bite back some and then get the hell out.
When I was 19 and found out my first love, my high school sweetheart, had cheated on me I booked a flight from Oregon to Vermont in the middle of January. It was a bold and cold (weather-wise) move bought and sold entirely by a first-time broken heart. I fled the scene in hopes of my aches staying behind, and that taking me away from her would hurt her. My plan was to go far, far away from the chaotic cloud of a break up and dance in the streets on a different coast, any street, free. And so I left. And what I thought would be a few months wandering aimlessly to pick up the pieces and come home ended up in my landing and living in Atlanta, Georgia for a few years (where my heart finally healed enough to get by and I ended up meeting my next great love. I never did move back to Oregon).
Another relationship’s end, in my mid-twenties, resulted in a one way ticket to Croatia, where I traveled most of Eastern Europe by myself for several months (Dubrovnik – go there!)
I think I must have learned this fight and flight technique from my dad, or at least that’s where it was introduced to me. When I was little, he and I got into it all of the time, over anything and sometimes everything. I’m have vague memories of spatting angry words back and forth over a two-by-four I loved, or something just as pointless, until eventually we’d both mutually retreat to somewhere away from the other, until later (the time frame that ‘later’ refers to varied depending on the individual level of injury due to insult).
When I would storm off, usually to my bedroom before he could tell me to go to my room, I would hide in the closet (yes, literally) and make and hang signs on my door that read things like, “Anyone can come in this room unless you have a mustache” or “All welcome, except for guys named William”. He thought this was cute, but it was my anger finding a way out. If I couldn’t leave I would keep him from coming in.
The first time I really upped my ability of flight was after a big blow out with dad. I can’t remember how old I was exactly, maybe 8. We were yelling aimlessly at each other and I remember it originated with a fight I was having with my brother and my dad taking his side. I stormed off yelling, “Fine. I don’t want to live here then! I’m running away!”
There was no response from dad, which was typical, meaning he was pissed, which was exactly what I was looking for. I packed a t-shirt, a pair of shorts, a yoyo, my rubik’s cube, a few marbles, a little notebook and a small pencil into a handkerchief, that I would later tie to the end of a stick, just like in the movies, and walked out of my room, nervous and prepared for more battle.
“Ok, I’m leaving now!” I yelled, kind of wondering why he wasn’t right outside of my door.
“Wait. Here.” Dad said, coming out of the kitchen holding two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cut diagonally, the way I liked.
And I left, right out the front door. I walked down several blocks in our subdivision until I got to a point where I would have to cross a pretty busy road. I stopped and stared. I was so torn. I wasn’t allowed to cross that road without an adult… but I needed to run away to prove a point… but I really didn’t want to break that rule and the road kind of scared me.
So, I stood there until finally I sat down there, at the edge of that busy road. I ate one of the sandwiches dad had made for me and then became really thirsty – too much peanut butter like always! I stared at that road and started to obsess over the idea of a cold glass of milk. Eventually, the milk won and I turned around to go home.
I walked back in the house, having been gone all of 45 minutes and went back to my room to unpack. Dad came inside from the garage and said with a surprised voice, “You’re back, huh?” which made it all feel worth it to me for some reason. (He told me years later that he had secretly followed me, just in case, and when I came back he acted like he was in the garage doing something).
Later that evening we were all watching TV, Scarecrow and Mrs. King to be exact, and I asked my dad if I could sit on his lap. He patted his legs and said, “Get up here,” and that was that.
There’s no point to this I guess, except that I am realizing that I need to learn how not to leave, or I need to pay more attention to my intentions for leaving. When I’m arguing with Violet I usually leave so that I don’t say things I don’t mean. The other night when my grandma cornered me I left with Dog for a walk and when that didn’t work I left by drinking my way out of the situation so that I wouldn’t have to accept what she said as something she really said.
But thus far, every conflict I’ve ever been in with someone I love has either worked its way out or it hasn’t – and that’s just the way things go and will go whether I’m there to see it through or not. So, my grandma is going to be here this weekend, and in every way I can figure out how to, I’m going to try to be too. We’ll see.
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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