The long lesbian camping wedding weekend is over. We made it.

Now here’s the part I started writing in my head on Saturday as I sat in the sunshine, amongst a crowd of people, deep in the woods, as the music started and the brides both walked down the isle: How wonderful it can be to be wrong.

The wedding was gorgeous. Even after the sun set behind the tall forest of trees, as I watched two women, in front of a very loving crowd of more than a hundred friends and family, promise ideas and ideals of their love with all of the support from all of us I kept my sunglasses on. I think the only person crying more than me was one of the brides sister. The ceremony was perfect. And I am not trying to overplay this event. I am serious when I say the wedding, the reception, the weather, the place, the music, the people, the dancing, the singing, the food, everything was absolutely perfect. It was an incredible event and I am quite sure that I am not the only one still glowing from the experience.

Notice that the part where we camped did not make the list of wonderful, perfect things in that last sentence. I mean, it was fine and it was nice to only have to walk 100 feet from the reception to go to bed. But still, it was cold and bumpy and buggy and just not very comfortable, which is something I look for in a sleeping environment. But the magic of all that came before having to sleep on the forest floor trumps any complaint of mosquito bites I might have.

At one point my camera disappeared. I found it later that night only to find this photo of my bootie:

Violet promises she didn’t take it and I believe her only because I’m pretty sure that cute foot on the right is hers.

I feel so lucky to have been a part of this incredibly beautiful and loving event and have no trouble or resistance in retracting all previous complaints and concerns.

I am happy to say I was wrong, I was wrong, I was wrong. How wonderful it is to have been wrong.

Violet and I are going to a wedding this weekend. All weekend. Including the rehearsal dinner tomorrow night. And then the wedding. The wedding that is all weekend long.

This is a double bridezilla wedding in where both ladies have gone totally wedding-coo-coo. They have had four bridal/bachelorette like parties. Some joint, some separate, some separate that then became joint later that night. The ceremony is rumored to be a few hours long. Yes, hours. Did I mention the part where we, the guests, are to camp?

Camp? Did I say…? Surely a typo, you’re thinking. Jesse must have meant something else, anything else, as this is already a lesbian wedding and camping is just too… well, lesbian. Well folks, I’m afraid to say it’s true. These dear lezzy friends of ours are tying the knot in the woods where all hundred or so guests will make a bed on the forest floor the night before and the night of the ceremony.

I am imagining the smell of camp fire and bug spray while the brides help each other get the little bits of marshmallow and twigs out of each others hair.

How do I feel about a weekend long wedding in which I am to sleep outdoors for several days? I will be at the Holiday Inn down the road. When Violet told me of this wedding several months ago I was excited for our friends. When she added in this camping detail we both knew how this would go over.

As my jaw continued to fall while the lesbian-wedding-camping-details unraveled and unveiled themselves, the conversation that followed went something like this:

Violet: …So it’s a camping thing. It’s going to be great… sleeping outside is fun…blah blah…

Me: Ok, well I’m not doing that.

Violet: Oh jesse, will you even consider it?

Me: My dear Violet, how does one do their hair in the forest?

Violet: I knew you’d say that. Anyway you’re my date so buck up. Also, I’ve already booked you a hotel room for the first night.

Me: Cable!

Violet: Wedding.

Me: I love you

Violet: You should.

Me: I do.

::waiting::

Ok, caught up? Well, here is a golden little tidbit that fills in some long time blanks to that story. I have no idea how it came up now, but a few weeks ago Violet and I were reminiscing on all of the beautiful trouble the Seal has caused us and her shitting a shirt came up, of course. And that is when Violet’s confession came without warning or apology: “Oh ya, well she only ate your shirt because it was covered in bacon fat.

me: “Wait. What?”

V: “You mean that A-shirt of yours that she ate?”

me: “Yes, and then shit in the park, in front of all of those people. Yes. Wait. Has she shit other garments of mine that I don’t know about?”

V: “No, no. But didn’t I tell you? I mistook that A-shirt of yours for a rag and used it to clean the iron skillet. So, when I put it in the laundry it must have reeked of delicious bacon. So, of course she ate it.”

Me: (having finally learned, after years now, that picking your battles is key to long term love and so there was no need to question the obvious like, why did she use my shirt to clean a skillet in the first place? Why did she cover anything in bacon fat and then put it in the laundry? These sorts of things, you just let them go unless the moment is right.) “Ok. Well, that makes sense, I guess. As far as the Seal could tell it was a bacon shirt… that she ate and then shit in the park in front of all of those people. I get that. But it wasn’t a rag, love. It was my shirt.”

V: “Well yes, I realize that now.”

And really, it hasn’t happened since, thank god for the Seal’s poor bowels and for all of those visually scarred onlookers that morning, so who cares about one shirt of mine turned bacon-shirt turned shirt-like-dog-poo. And most importantly, as far as I’m concerned, the shit-a-shirt mystery is solved. Case closed.

She called me yesterday. It had been seven days without hearing her voice. And I’m not certain but it just might have been the longest amount of time not hearing her voice since the night we met. I was walking the Seal when the phone rang. I picked it up and said, “Hello?” When I heard this soft, sweet voice say, “Hi J.J.” my knees turned to goo and buckled a little bit. And then the sun swooped down from the sky and into my chest which woke up all of the butterflies in my tummy and had them flying around like crazy right when the road underneath my feet suddenly turned to an endless blanket of marshmallow. I could have walked and talked to her forever. I would walk and talk with her forever, that is the plan. But my sweet girl can be a bit cheap frugal and so the phone card she bought only had 17 minutes. So, for 17 minutes I walked and talked with my favorite flower.

There was this way that she sounded: far. For 15 months she sounded this way and I had forgotten how that felt. I don’t know what it is about calling from a different country, but there is just something in the connection that lets you hear all of the miles in between and it sounds different, it sounds fragile and it sounded so familiar. It sounded like some of the best days I’ve ever had. Violet sounded just like the girl I use to talk to every day on the phone, for hours sometimes, about everything and anything. And sometimes we just did what we had to do, without talking much, just to do things together, like cooking or folding laundry.

I try not to write too much mush here. I know my infinite consuming desire, admiration, adoring and my immeasurably, exponentially expanding potent love and like for all things Violet ring loud enough and clear enough here in other ways. I also know hearing mushy-romantic-wooings about another relationship besides your own is like someone going on and on about how great their dog is… only worse. Fine, cute, good for you, enough already, gross. Which is why I don’t do that either.

So, I’ll keep this one as short as possible, which is never very short if you hadn’t noticed. But the most frequent thing that folks ask me about is this: How in the world were you and Violet long distance for so long? And right now I have no idea. Because on the 8th day of this go I am feeling like a big pouty baby who just wants to sit in the corner scowling with my arms folded. And even if you offer me a beer and cookies I’ll just say, “I don’t want beer and cookies! I want Violet!” And then I will take the beer and cookies and eat and drink them and love them but act like I hate them. There is a “how Violet and I were long distance for so ephing long” post in the works but today, I got nothing, folks.

This entire post is just to update you on the going ons in my life, and by that I mean I just want anyone that is willing to pay attention to me to know that Violet is gone and that means everything is boring and poor me!

That is all.

Well folks, clearly you have time on your hands. Enough time to read the folly happenings of my life and then still, even more time to nominate this little blog for a Lezzy Award over at The Lesbian Lifestyle. So, first off, THANK YOU. Very, really, truly, thank you, thank you. Getting nominated for a Lezzy Award was quite flattering. Finding out that I am a finalist for the “humor” and “personal” categories has me jumping up and down.

I’ll attempt to keep this one short(er than usual), just in case y’all have work to do, it is Monday after all. The point to this entire post is to thank you for taking the time to stop by here, and also for taking the time to nominate this little blog and… oh shoot… hmm, there was one more thing… now, what was it?

Oh, right! VOTE!

Once again, the rules are as follows:

1. You can vote every day! Clearly y’all are fierce voting machines, so, keep it up!

2. I must continue to remain an active lesbian for the duration of the competition. With Violet out of town having lesbian sex is out. So, I will have to improvise my lesbianism. How about this: I promise to watch one episode of the L Word for every five Golden Girls (ugh.) I will also make plans to hang out with other lesbians in lesbian establishments and talk about lesbian stuff (i.e. Old Navy sales, Rachel Maddow, the newest Sugarbutch post, Lilith Fair, etc.) I will also put an Indigo Girls album and an Ani Difranco album on my ipod to offset the abundance of Cher. (If I come up with other ways to be lesbian-like, I will let you know. Feel free to offer suggestions.)

3. Voting closes on March 1^st.  So, until then, vote!

So! Once again, ladies and gentlemen, and every beautiful representation, possibility, perversion, invention, diversion, rebellion, infusion, expression, combination there of,  if you would please, click the pink box to make it happen! (yes indeed, that’s what she said.)

I just got a comment from Lesbian Life Style on my last post informing me that I have been nominated for a Lezzy Award. I am still trying to figure out what this means exactly but in all of the mean time I have been asked to grab this graphic and link it to the award nominations and quite obviously, ask you, my fine flanneled friends, to also nominate me (top 3 blogs with the most nominations in a particular category by the 22nd go to “the final round.” Again, not totally sure what that means…)

I was told that I have been nominated under “humor” and “personal” and am assuming that is because there is no category for “unemployed faggot dyke who has a fish and raccoon as closest friends, with an entire blog about Cher, her dog and her girlfriend, that posts photos of animals balancing random items on their head and chooses to watch Golden Girls reruns on Friday nights while simultaneously tweeting everything Blanche says rather than hanging out with real-life people award.” I’m not saying that shouldn’t be considered as a category in the future but honestly 1. Hi. You lose. I win. and 2. How very, very sad.

So, if you feel so inclined to nominate (vote for) this blog, well, shucks and thank you in advance! (fyi: Thanking someone in advance is a popular sales technique that makes the “customer” feel like they are special and like they have already done something nice, causing them to feel a temporary obligation to do so… do not be fooled by this.)

The rules for this award are that I must remain a lesbian for the duration of this contest and that you can nominate (vote) once every 24 hours. So, if I don’t make you laugh or tell you anything personal or if you suspect that I might be straight- do not vote for me! But, in the spirit of competition, I promise to make out with Violet every day for the duration of the voting period, and, like always, I will continue to share with you the personal, self-deprecating moments that come my way.

Click the pink box to make me rich and famous (that’s what she said):

Last weekend Violet, the Seal and I decided to go on a last minute adventure. We ended up driving north for a few hours to the sweet little town of Bellingham. On our way back we stopped at Larrabee State Park. There was a short wooded trail that led to a small beach. Violet, the Seal and I explored our little desert island of a beach together, walking in the sand, climbing on rocks, looking at little tide pools with sea anemone, starfish, and little crabs. At one point, maybe a few hundred feet away, we watched a blue heron stalk and catch her lunch. She was huge and her graceful ability to dart her beak into the water and come back up with a fish was beautiful and had all three of us awe-struck.

We didn’t know we were going to stop here and I certainly wasn’t wearing the right shoes for it. I had on a pair of very water unfriendly leather loafers and because of that I was trying to be extra careful not to get them wet with salt water (It was really cold and we were walking on rock with bits of coral barnacle or I would have just taken them off.) After a few hours we decided we should get going and began walking back up the beach. Every step I took my foot would sink in a puddle of soggy sand and after several steps my feet were getting quite wet. My mind thought, “I am going UP the beach, AWAY from the ocean, there won’t be any water this next step.” But sure enough, somehow every step I took landed me in water. I became more and more focused on my feet and where I was going to step next but I didn’t want to stop moving because that would make my feet sink even further into the wet sand. Eventually, I started to try and hop quickly, hoping this next time my feet would find dry land. But still, with every step my foot found water.

Finally, Violet said, “jesse, stop! Just stop and look at the big picture here.” And so, quite frustrated and soggy footed, I stopped and took my focused attention off of my two wet feet and looked all around to see where I was in the scheme of things. Because I had only been focusing on my feet and nothing else I hadn’t noticed that I was walking right up the path of a shallow but wide stream of water that was flowing from the hillside into the ocean. Three or four steps to either side was an entire beach of dry sand. So, now that I had seen the whole beach compared to where I was exactly I hopped three times to the right and that was that. Dryland.

So, to keep on with my offlineness this might well be a record short post from yours truly. Happy Friday to all.

Last night the three of us went out for dinner. After eating way too much fabulous Thai food at (yes, I am about to plug a restaurant) Sea Thai in Wallingford (I have been there 2,387 times and it is ALWAYS delicious), we decided to get a movie and have a cozy, early night. The movie we wanted, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” was checked out so we had to come up with a plan B. And I don’t know about you, but for me, renting a movie is like going to the grocery store in that there are tons of things I want but if I don’t make a list before I go, as soon as I step foot in the store, all of a sudden I can’t think of anything specific, in the whole wide world, that I have any interest in at that moment. This happened to all three of us and when the movie we wanted wasn’t there we all ended up staring blankly at a wall covered in dvd’s. Eventually, a woman that worked at the store asked us if we needed help. Clearly we did.

I asked the nice woman exactly this, “Ya actually. My mother in-law and I (Violet was off looking at subtitled documentaries) are looking for a comedy, but not slapstick, you know, something with smart dialog. ” The movie-rental-lady scratched her head and said, “Let me think a minute.” Fine. Violet’s mom and I continued staring at the wall. The movie rental lady pops back, hands me a dvd and says, “Here. This one didn’t get enough attention as far as I’m concerned. It’s from the 90′s. I bet you all will like it. Funny, smart, coming of age. Great dialog.” The movie title was “Slums of Beverly Hills.” Ok, well, it has Marissa Tomei. The plot didn’t seem particularly good but also not bad so it seemed fine. We were all at a loss for other options, so, this was perfect.

We got home, changed into our pajamas and the four of us (the fourth being the Seal, of course) cuddled up on the couch and pushed play.

First scene starts: And BAM! BOOBS. I’m not kidding, no credits, no song, nothing but boobs. The whole tv screen was covered in a close up of some teenaged girl’s breasts. There is a close-up of her trying on bras while her dad is in the background talking about how “she is stacked.” Awkward. Very awkward start. None of us say anything. “It’s just the first scene” my brain is whispering to me, “it’ll get better.”

Second scene: Marissa Tomay attempting to hitchhike in the dark wearing what appears to be a hospital robe. And as a huge semi truck comes blazing down the street, she stands in front of it, the semi honks it’s loud horn, insinuating “get out of the road lady, I got places to be” when all of a sudden… yep, she flashes her breasts. Once again, all in a matter of 5 minutes, I am sitting next to Violet’s mom on my couch trying to figure out how to exist while my tv screen looks like one big poster of breasts. So. Awkward.

Finally, I say something. I have to, no one else is and clearly this might not be the movie for us. “So, should we all start considering something different to watch?” Both Violet and her mom nod their heads. “Should we just give up now or…?” Violet’s mom says, well, let’s give it a few more minutes but so far this movie does not have my attention.” Which was totally opposite of me. I was so mortified by this movie it was consuming me.

Next scene: The “stacked” teenager is looking inside her family’s new apartment when in walks the neighbor. He is smoking a cigarette, comments on her breasts, which then leads to another close up of her “stackedness”, and then asks her if she would like to buy some weed.

So, wow. Now we have a movie about teenage breasts and drugs. Awesome. Awesome recommendation rental store lady. This movie shouldn’t be so vaguely placed in the “comedy” section. No, this movie should go in the “very smart witty comedy movies to watch with your mother-in-law, grandparents, and young children” section.

Oh, and right before we turned it off, the “stacked” teenager’s little brother pulls a cooked cat out of the oven. I might even ask for my money back.

The story here is tricky, because I love my family, immeasurably, and I understand them in ways and know them with layers and layers of time and connection. So by recounting snippets of moments where my grandma was remarkably rude to Violet then goes out to a world where my grandma has no reasonable and warranted back up- all of the millions of beautiful and loving things about her, you know? The fear I often have writing here, is the fear of delivering a two dimensional, one sided, flat, imbalanced reality. When what I want to do, what I try to do, is simply paint pictures, tell stories.

So, to continue annoying myself with resistant writing, the best I can do for this one is to say that Violet and I have known each others family exactly the same amount of time but the level of inclusion into each others family felt so imbalanced over the holiday it broke my heart a few different times and it kept me up at night. My family being the folks invalidating my relationship by repeatedly reinforcing, sometimes with ignorance, sometimes with intention, that Violet is not their family.

It broke my heart to watch Violet try to stay strong and kind and loving when my family would make Violet an outsider. I have never had my teeth so clamped around my tongue with them before (which is saying a lot, believe me) and the only reason I kept my mouth shut was because I feared that if I exploded and started pointing fingers they would all blame my outburst on Violet. Well, that, and Violet wouldn’t want me to defend her that way.

My instinct to defend and protect and keep Violet safe and happy and loved is potent and unstoppable. And it is mutual. I know this because she tells me and shows me this all of the time, in ways that are so intentionally loving and soft and infinite. In ways that cradle me to sleep at night, past all of the anger and anxiety and fear that I carry, into dreams about being free. She does this for me all of the time, she always has, and this, over the years, has softened my brow. And this kind of love has taught me how to hold my angry, defensive words, this time towards my family, until what I have to say has the love I feel for them tucked in as well. This is what Violet has always done for me, and this is how I am learning to love the world back.

This post was suppose to be a vague recap of my holiday adventures, but I like it better this way, and so, for now, I’ll end here.