Drop the Drawbridge and We Will Show You Our Bellies!

“When I was a little boy…”

Nope.  There’s a song in there, but it’s not mine.

When I was a little lesbian, a friend and I went into this bar.  It was the kind of bar that mothers warn children about; it’s the kind of bar that burns memories into your mind that aloe can’t ooze away.  So—being back in Austin—I had the opportunity to go back, and I did.

Austin—especially that area—has changed, become trendy, and the bar has modified their marketing.  But now, condos are encroaching and a new one will ultimately bring the death of The Chaindrive as well as 200 year old oak trees where Davy Crockett probably slept on his way to the Alamo. 

I was in the neighborhood for a “networking” event with the Austin Gay&Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.  It’s a good group of business owners who get together and swap cards.  The Rainforest Partnership (http://www.rainforestpartnership.org/) spread out trays of munchies and stocked a bar. (Both staples made us gay while the philanthropists talked about their mission in a land far away that might be preserved if humans, here, would stop exhausting about and consuming so much stuff.)  Because these particular hostesses aren’t gay and about 20% of the attendees are gay-friendly, I’m used to bumping into a real and in-the-flesh straight person who has infiltrated our fortress.  In this case, they had actually dropped the drawbridge so we could cross their moat. 

I begin a conversation with a woman who is indubitably a mom. You know my gay aunt was a mom, but this one had a different rhythm.  She hands me her card…”

And we begin to talk about her work with faith-based parents who are actually trying to maintain a relationship with God as well as their gay child(s).

“WAIT!”  and, “don’t leave.” I know you’ve heard this spill. You’re probably yawning or pissed off that I would bring it up, here, in our private, safe place. 

“After all we’ve been through?!” you might have already said to me at supersonic, angry speed.

“I know.” This problem came up at the last Austin Gay&Lesbian Chamber luncheon after another friendly was supposed to be introducing her business.

Instead, she launched a presentation about being a kid, with her goofy siblings, on the family farm.  

“We didn’t know that our church was bringing gays to show them what their family could be like.”  She goes on to say, “When I started my business, I wanted to specialize in gay tax law so that I could…”

Well, you can imagine that this didn’t go over with the boys—at all! They were all haughty and angry that she would even say the word ‘religion’ in front of them.  “Did she really expect them to forgive her for brainwashing those gay men!”  And, it didn’t go over with the girls because they just wanted to learn about her tax business. “Why didn't she get to the point?” And, I thought it was awesome that she showed her belly.  (But, I was wearing a Vince Camuto dress that day, and how is it not possible to feel great in that?)

So, this woman—Susan, the mom—had walked from Rainforest, across the street, and into Chaindrive.  She sits down with a longneck and her husband—right there—where men have done some pretty excruciating things to each other with and without wearing or slapping leather against raw skin.  But, there wasn’t much chance that we were going to talk about that with them.

After the first hour of listening to the old and young gays, it was clear that the friendlies just wanted to be...with us.  They might have been only as comfortable as I am whenever I invite myself to a Hispanic family’s fiesta. (I’ve done it to strangers and distant friends of friends because I’m white bread.  I need to get a little culture somewhere. Often, I’m the only one who speaks English, but I don’t care because they make the best friggin’ homemade everything, and then we all smile and baile!)  My example might not apply. But I’m trying to say, "Not all people communicate with words. Sometimes it's good to just sit and swap energy without our mouth-a-phones."

But the friendlies listened, actively, to my rant about Christians “who have a responsibility to witness to the souls of gays” and “not turn their backs on children who were raised to have a relationship with God” while they “build and support outreach programs for prisoners who have murdered and raped…”  You can imagine that this topic, colliding with my 3^rd longneck, ushered in a personal pain about my paternal DNA donor who showed me one too many Bible verses about unconditional love.  But, these two listened—actively without saying, “You’ve got to let that go; you’ve got to get over it; you’ve got to move on."  They weren’t trying to ease their guilt by easing my pain.  They were just being human…with me.

So, I say—it’s our time for healing.  We’ve been playing into the hands of those who want us to disappear.  No more cowering in dark places on bar stools. Our souls get to breathe, swapping energy with all kinds of other (healthy) souls like They and Them do every day of their lives.

Our minority clan is at that time in history where stinky ol' Aunt Ethel wants to give us a wet hug and a tight kiss.  It's our chance to open up and embrace those people who have slammed, and sometimes nailed, our closet doors shut, and picketed the sidewalks in front of boy scout dens, and dismissed millions of us for having the potential to marry livestock since the first patriarchs of the Bible brought their floods, locusts, and human sacrifices.

Humanity has waited at least 10,000 years. It's a great time to be alive—, dear baby God! If we’re going to be accepted by them, we have to accept them.  It’s a simple equation kind of mental math: war makes war, good sees good, etc. 

We teeter on the precipice of a new day and our generation is privileged to participate in it. Before each soul releases its mortal coil, we—the gays—deserve to be seen and heard (and I’ve been single for 3 years, so I need to be felt).  The only way they’re going to know that we too bruise and bleed is for us to show our own bellies.  And, that's going to be tough through this evolution. 

"Are you with me?"

We all have different packaging.  There’s not a 1 single phenotypical characteristic that we wear that says, "Hello, I’m a fag.”  So, rip off that tag.  It should be clear that we belong with them….because we are them. 

And now it’s time. You’re gonna get it because I need to say it, because #3 moved me to SoCal where I mediated with the best of the granola crunchers, and because you really want it, and you really need to hear it…

“We are all one.”

Now roll over and show me your belly!

Let's Not Talk About It

We need to talk about it.  I've shied from the topic, but there's a threshold that each of us, ladies and drag-queen fakers, will cross.  That's when we will cry like banshees—releasing our pain into vacuous winds.
I want to be clear that I haven’t seen 'it.'  But--, it is throb, throb, throbbing on my horizon like a neon sign in a border town, short'd-out.  Everyone knows that I'm moving toward it.  This moment of matriculation waits, sandwiched and dormant between my smile scars.
Younger friends don't linger as long as they used to. That prompts me to fear that 'it' is obvious. So, I'm not sure what to do or how to dismiss or contain the anx that my young friends have for me... and for themselves (eventually).  'It' is a hateful thing, it is.  And, it will have me.

I'd only been back to Austin a few weeks when a strange guy from Cuba (literally off the plane from Miami, and then coming from a free night's stay with Austin's finest officers) said at the bar, in the boy's bar, “What was it like?” I knew exactly what he meant.  “I haven’t crossed that threshold, yet—thank you very much!”  And then his boyfriends distracted this country’s visitor with a sugary shot of something fruity that he didn't need (more of). 

         Since I know that I’m headed to the other side of Promise Land—, I’m not sure what I think I can do about it.  Did I ever, in the course of the last 30 years, receive a courtesy call on the 27th day?

         "Hell no!" 

         And, it’s not like I get to check a box:

⃝ go

⃝ NO GO!

…somewhere, and send my mandate to the Comptroller of my biological ecological order. If I'd ever had such an option--, it got lost in the mail that was forwarding from Baton Rouge.  Anyhoo, it's probably too late because I’ve begun to glisten.  (NOTE: I said ‘glisten’, not break out in hot hives.) 

         I can always date someone who might show me how to get through it.  She can reassure me of life on the other side. 

        “I’ve always dated women a bit older than me—two weeks, four years, and eight years older,” I tell myself.  “And it’s not like it slowed any of the other, older, women in my life.” 

        But, I feel like a vampire with a heightened sense.  Their blood flow has a different rhythm—I can feel it ooze, trudging uphill as if it doesn't have enough iron to get all the way up to the heart and freshen their systems.  Healthy bloodflow is like those pantyliner commercials where butterflies dip down to dance on sundropped hillsides. 

        “Why does the voice change?” I ask my mom.

        “I don’t know,” she says politely.

        She’s been a nurse for 30 years.  She knows. So, I present my question another way.
       “It’s not like my ears can detect that extra bit of bass in real life. But, there's a difference when we're on the phone.”

       “I don’t know,” mom repeats.

       She’s known me long enough.  It's not safe to follow some of my thoughts into the tunnel of despair.  She sits quietly until some other random stimulus interrupts our car ride and brings us to the junction of ice cream or margaritas or something yummy.