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.  

To Have and to Hold Love

“How long?”

I raise an eyebrow like Mimi taught me.  It adds a slant to my pirate eye, complimenting my grin. It's my most readily available weapon.

“Hey there, I ask about you. That's my job. I'm you're friend."

I reply with a shrug, and I look passed feeble oaks with naked limbs.  “Three; it's been three. You know that.”

“Well, you look like a ghoul or something.  Besides, don't act bothered that I ask—, about you.”

I get up. The water is boiling or it's about to, and she is pricking anticipations that were pounding before I pushed the door bell button.

“I’m sorry—, but you're carrying so much dead weight. You need…” I hear her walk toward me in the kitchen nook.  "This isn’t healthy.”

My throat is full with something dry and heavy. I push out words while I hear her too close behind me. But, it's not unhealthy.”  I press her sternum, looking for a button so I can breathe, get space. I don’t look up. “We’re just too different.”

She finds enough of the pot handle to steer it.  The glass body drops and three microscopic bubbles sear my hand. She guides my other one with a loose lead, and I follow the folds of her cotton hoody. 

“I’m just going to take this off.”

I hold my breath. I hold the top buttons.

“No?” She looks up and cups the side of my face. “Ok, I’ll take these off.” She laughs that Joker laugh of soft glee while the five steel nubs pop in series, and then I’m standing with my flaky-white skin exposed in her intimate room with all the others who have been with her.  Here. 

She raises my hips to the top of her mattress, and I stretch out of my coat.  She opens every other inch while she talks of the first time I made her laugh, of that food fight that took us years to clean, of that weekend at the beach with her crazy ex, of that week in a cabin with mine, and of her love for me. 

“I love that we can share this love.” 

She presses, pulling the top sheet over us.

...but You Can Still Kiss Your Girlfriend at the Hippie Bizarre!

If there is some intelligent entity governing my life, I imagine that she is quite pleased with the timeliness of this personal project wrap-up.  Two years to the same weekend that #3 officially consummated her affair with ‘Diapers,’ the house closed.  So, this is full circle in linear time. 

Back then, I had been in Austin for the week, seeing old friends and checking out bands at The Armadillo Bazaar.  The plan was to hang and get grounded after a whirlwind of multi-state moves.  So, I’m standing there, listening to a familiar singer and I think, “I’ve got to find a way to get home (but we just bought a new one).”  I don’t know how I'll do it; #3 won’t ever agree to it.  So, I follow Bestie to the line for a lunchtime pint and decide that I will adult-up before the trek home. 

In less than 48 hours, the break-up email would come. I would be in IKEA, reading a list of measurements for new blinds for the new office in our new home, when hemorrhoids that I didn’t even know I had would drop and begin to implode inside. “Something is terribly wrong,” I would tell myself. And there on a public toilet, I would try to avoid the pain, playing with my smart phone that would effortlessly relay a crafted email.

“Stay with friends. I won’t be here when you get back,” #3 promised.

So, you can see—for the sake of closing this personal perseverance project—I must go to The Armadillo this year. I must stand where I stood two years ago when I knew that I needed—but didn’t yet know why I needed—to come home so that my feet might be anchored when the thundering effects of Fate’s synchronicity comes around the bend and knocks me in the chest.  “NOW,” It will command.  Through this ritual, I can really, truly know that everything will begin in the land of soy and honey.

This performer, Terri Hendrix, was the last band I saw before #2 and I packed a U-haul for Tallahassee.  On a Sunday afternoon, 2 dozen girl-girl dance partners scooted across the floor—with about a hundred straight people—in the oldest dance hall in Texas.  We got there first and got to drinkin’ first, and so we set the tone.

“The lesbians will be having fun today.  We won’t be sitting on the wayside and watching other people with the good legs God gave ‘em scoot on by.  Everyone will just need to grow up,” we declared by feeling and doing what straight people take for granted while they aimlessly exhaust about the earth. It was one of the last impressions I had of Texas and I took it with me on my many moves, silently self-professing that my love could dance if gays (and exhausting breeders) could get over themselves and grow up.

This adorable and talented Ms. Hendrix is the performer I watched when I had my epiphany at The Armadillo two years ago.  http://www.terrihendrix.com/music/  Clearly, Fate is telling me that she should be gay.  I should tell her.  I think I will, and we can live happily ever after.

“Why don’t you write a blog?” Dim Sum had phoned during the Hendrix show. I got back to her after I caught Anchorman2, a pint and a gourmet pretzel at the Alamo Drafthouse.

“I’m just taking in all of the pictures—sensory data is colliding.  Nothing connects enough to build a rhythm, to make a story.”

“Write about that. It seems to help.”

“I know—but the blog is supposed to be about lesbian dating, and I’m not doing, or watching, any of it.”

“Why does it have to be about that?”

“I don’t want to be a bore!”  But, I’m thinking and not admitting out loud, “I’ve spent the past five days walking around with Dicken’s ghost of Christmas Past. He won’t shut up about how stupid I was with #2.  God, there’s so much material.”

I glance over at two grass baskets that I bought for my house host, Betts.  She wants to put roots in them—potatoes and onions.  They are identical to two baskets that I toss’d during the move a mere three weeks ago.  I glance over.  They’re just on my front seat, rolling about with a bunch of other stuff I’d picked up throughout the weekend—not in bags with the store names on them.

“Wow! Walmart is already out of bags,” I had said when Betts and I were buying Christmas. The clerk was stacking our purchases on the turnstile that had empty arms for bags.

“No. We’re in Austin.”

“Hh?”

“No plastic bags anywhere in the city limits.”

(I remember when I shopped at the very first Whole Foods.  It was an old inner city store. You could roll an orange down the length of it, and the employees weren’t required to bathe if they didn’t have a rental agreement or know anyone who had a shower.  I always said, ‘There must be a required amount of THC in the bloodstream to work here.’ But, one guy shared an adage that I pocketed and shared in Tallahassee, ATL, OC, Roll Tide Land, and Cajun Country.  He looked up from an induced haze, retracted the plastic bag and refused to give my granola and OJ a co-habitating home, ‘Save the earth [man].’  Clearly, he was a prophet. But, this dictating of blind authority and refusing bags for others to choose or not to choose to save the earth reeks of communism and conservative controls.) “This measure is extreme even for the hippies.”

It’s always weird to start over, beginning again in a new city.  But, this is my city. And, I get lost every time I try to find once-familiar entrances to parking lots and theaters… or highways because there is this super toll road that is in the way of everything, and it is always empty. 

“Wow! Did anyone ask the hippies if they would pay to use this monstrosity?  Wait, are there any more hippies in Austin? Who the hell is running this joint if they aren’t?”

On the phone with Bestie—who was apologizing that I drove 37 miles to see a show on a Sunday afternoon and couldn’t find parking—said, with exasperation, that she and hubby got there 45 minutes early.

“We barely got a seat.” 

“I know. I have to get used to this pace. I remember what it was like—always leave 30 minutes early and expect at least one wreck along the way.  It’s just that it’s ‘break.’  I thought with the kids being gone (UT/St. Ed/ACC students) things would be a bit slower.”

“Yeah, not really. Austin is different.  You don’t really notice if the students (70,000+ of them!) are here or not.”

I stop to think about those 110 degree summers that were bearable because (at least) there is room for the wind to blow and for a spirit to breathe, and then I wonder deep inside—where authentic wonder and hemorrhoid pain comes from—, “Did anyone ask the hippies if this is what they wanted?” 

No More Voo-doo Until I Find My Mojo

I do love Voo-Doo. I wish there was some where I work so I could dash in for a quick one at lunch break. But, I have to think of reasons to not eat here.

I've got this ritual, covering the tops of saltines with burnt orange love sauce and then counting drips that fall from holes before the whole ka-bang is in my mouth.

"I need extra sauce," a take-out patron demands with heroine-addiction impetus.
"Oh yeah--you do!" I applaud in my mind but not out loud (because my mouth is full with a poor-man's appetizer.)

Besides, we patrons need to stick together, keep it quiet. No one here wants management to know how bad we need their spicy cane juice. They'll start charging to leave the bottle at the table.

Voo-Doo definitely has the best BBQ in my neighborhood--probably in the whole city. I came here after I lost a court case that my ex left me to fight. I came here after the master bedroom flooded. I came here immediately after...

I'll definitely need me some Voo-doo at the next stop.

"Wherever that might be".

Oh, I know! I told you I was going to Austin, but:

• the kids gotta eat 
• the job that i hated became my life-jacket
• life is wherever I breathe
• even if i'm single for the rest of my life
• because i could still be alone in Austin
• and, i have to start over
• and, i have to find a job
• and, i have kids to feed

Tonight, I don't have to make sense of it. I just need to eat my yummy 'Mardi Gras with smoked turkey, dried berries, diced mango, and hold the stinky-sock-goat-cheese salad', please. Tonight, I play in the yummy blackberry vinaigrette, drizzling non-sensical circles.

"I don't know how these crazy Cajuns haven't figure out how to batter this shi-zizzle, deep fry it, and cover it with more sauce."
"This $4*t is serious!"

I can't ever decide which one is best. I pick blind and then get too committed to remember THERE ARE OTHER OPTIONS. By then, I'm half crazed in a way that I haven't felt since the last time I was in Voo-doo. I look at the spice rack that has holes for other choices and reach out. I don't care which one. I just need to feed this force.

"I could easily stay with this one for the rest of my meal."

I've already covered all of my saltines with one of the two when I realize I'm halfway through my pallet refreshing pint, but I haven't tasted the third sauce. I hold its label to the light, savoring the last act.

"'Mojo'! Why did I ever go for the 'Tangy' or 'Traditional' first?"

And then--after two years of involuntary celibacy-,-this entire conversation resembles a dating pattern.

"God--I soooooooo need a girlfriend!"

Tools (only) My Heart Has

          My heart has already

          gone to Austin, and I

          fear that my mind

          doesn’t’ have the tools

          to lure it east of the

          Lone Star state line.

I got notice yesterday that we’re—finally—closing on the house next month. So, I text'd these thoughts to DimSum after a night of not sleeping. 

Tonight, I’m on a business trip with Love Heroine and some others I rarely travel with. We’re playing darts in a pub. I’m up against New Guy. I aim for ‘20’ but hit ‘4’.

“I’m going home,” I think of the lights that shine on the state capitol at Congress Avenue. 

In rapid succession, I think of five friends who will be less than 10 miles away from wherever I live. I think of homemade tortillas and Town Lake. My whole body shivers with excitement, and I’m glad that I have this wonderful secret.

“It’s time.”

New guy makes up crazy ways to throw the darts, and I think of soon-to-be Saturday nights in Austin. For New Year’s, I’ll be dancing in a room that’s sticky and smelly with not-so-straight-people. My heart races at the thought that the girl in a blue dress could be in the same spot at Oil Can Harry’s. I aim for ‘19’ but it bounces and the point sticks in the floor.

“I’m going home!”

The text to DimSum caused me to think of unknowns that come with moving to this ridiculously popular city. Sure, I have friends there, but I don’t have a job or place to live with my 3 pets. I have savings; but, will it last? Then, tears release anx when I feel truth knot up in my throat.

“At least I finally know where I need to be.”

It won’t be Florida—not Georgia, not Alabama, not Louisiana, not California. I’ve been on an incredible adventure this past decade, but it’s not easy to be a stranger in the South when you’re gay. My heart hurts for familiar faces that calibrate my soul.

“I’ll be home for the Armadillo Bazaar, SxSW, and Pride. Ahhhh, Hippie Hollow!"

It’s been 11 years.  #2—who I don’t write about but was the best thing that ever happened to my relentless frame filled with too much wanderlust—taught me about unconditional love and about making a home feel inviting. But, the world was my oyster; I needed adventure. So, we moved to Florida and then Georgia.  Whatever I was looking for wasn’t in Atlanta—with her—, so I followed #3 to California, to Alabama, to Louisiana where she would leave me for a 27-year old. (Not that there’s anything wrong with marrying someone who was in diapers the summer you left for college).

It’s all good; I’m better for the toils and troubles that come with this many moves and mysteries. I finally appreciate simple breaths and beliefs from random beings. I never took the time for strangers until I was one. 

“I’m going home.”

Tossing darts with my eyes not looking toward the bull’s eye, I'm thinking about how good it will feel to play darts at Gingerman on a Sunday afternoon with a pint of St. Arnold Brown in my bellly. And, I’m thinking about outdoor concerts at Bestie’s and Bestie Jr’s. I can feel the summer Texas heat rise through my thighs, and it makes me shiver.

A few months ago, I interviewed for a job with a great company that could give me a good job title. I can stay ‘there’ for the rest of my adult career, my life.

“Maybe they’ll call back before I pack everything?”

This crazed-hope scares me. It would mean life in a small city-town. I think of that last weekend in Austin, having breakfast with Wingman the morning after Pride, and thinking of all of the people who were celebrating their life in public. There were thousands. And, I am remembering the feeling I had, hoping to touch the hips of the girl in the blue dress.

Last weekend, trying to stay positive—so that I can put food on the table for Sweet Georgia Brown, Cali Surfer Girl, and Puff the Magic Dragonslayer—, I got a voyeur’s license for Cupid.com. I searched within 100 miles of that city-town. Not one lesbian seeks companionship.

“Can a place like that ever be home?” 

I think about living with a lover there and know that I’ll be half living. We won’t be out; I’ll for forever be introduced as her friend. Yuck.  Even if I never find another lover in Austin, I’ll be 3-D. There, lovers hold hands in broad day light.

“Imagine.”

“Everyone should live this life wherever they are.”

Kumbaya & Cowabunga!

There’s a crazed muse in me.  She has erratic but invigorating energy that lifts when it flows.  She’s responsible for most of the 2girlsR> posts, but my day reality has been so heavy that she can’t get in and lift the muck or find room to dance. That’s why I haven’t been writing; it’s not fair to drag you through it.  Also, there are no lesbians in Baton Rouge.  

I’m in Austin for a much needed R&R and PRIDE.  Things, they are a changin’.  In the mile long parade, the majority of floats and participants come from local churches. The not-haters are carrying signs. 

“We welcome you.”  

“God has a rainbow covenant.” 

Ahhhhhhh, Christians are embracing Christ’s spirit, and the proportion of haters:lovers is upsetting the status quo.  All of this kumbaya is wonderful and great but I need to find a lovely in my size and temperament.  

So, I look toward the end of the parade to be sure I can beat these 1,000+ partiers into Oil Can Harry’s. I go to order a tall and refreshing beverage, and it’s already packed. Temperatures are high and bodies are reeking.  I push and press toward the back patio where my wingman is making friends. She points to a pack of youngin's.

“I asked that girl if I could buy her a drink.”

“What happened?”

“I turned around and she took off with her beer, and mine.”

“Crap!”

Next to them is a lovely in a blue dress.  She looks like some(gay)one I used to admire from afar.  With the doubIe-whammy of familiarity and interest, I can’t help but to stare.  But, in a place like this on a night like this, staring at someone screams, “Horny stalker.” 

I’m too shy for this nonsense. I grab Wingman and we head to the dance floor.  After a beat and a bounce, I know I’ve made a mistake. I need to go back and utter non-sequitors. I jump off the stage and bump into a straight girl who wants to mock grind, I bob and weave to race down the half stairs.

Blue is gone.  Her friends are gone. There’s no trace that they were ever there, and it’s only been the length of half a song.

“Is there a chance she was treading water in this sea for the past hour because she was waiting for me?”

“Crap!”

“She’s just what I want; she’s just what I need.”

After ~2 years without someone significant, I do need someone.  Plus, I’m getting old. If I’m ever going to be intimate with someone before I get wrinkled, it needs to happen soon.  I need for the last special someone to have a “when you were still attractive” memory before we get old and grey and too broken to get it up—our ‘love energy’ that is.

The woman in blue haunted me through the night. By the bewitching hour, I gave up and walked back to the hotel alone, crossing the bridge along Congress in the night sky’s light.  

“Alone.” 

I’d already dreamed of Blue a few times when Wingman rolled into the other bed.  This morning, I’m wondering if Blue will be at the breakfast buffet, reaching for her custom egg white veggie omelet.

“I’ll have what she’s having,” I could say. Sure—I can find the words, now.

I imagine us exchanging digits in a hurried craze because we only have an hour to seal our love and eat our complimentary meals before the coffee kicks in and carries us to our disparate realities. I would reach for the sugar, or the salsa, before I remember that I hate long distance relationships.  But, I would promise to try…for the sake of love.

Hell.  There’s too much going on in my life to insert someone now.  With all I’ve been through, the tsunami has merely reached its crest, and it will fall before 60 more days if we don’t sell this house.  For the sake of love, I couldn’t involve someone in that muck.

“I can be strong as long as someone doesn’t tell me it’s okay to be weak,” I tell Wingman during breakfast. 

This sentiment brings a tear to both of our eyes because we’ve been friends since we were teens. I know it hurts to think of all that I’ve been through and there’s nothing she can do; plus, we’re both really hung over and emotions are way too convenient after 12 straight hours of drinking and then a night of dream dancing with a girl in blue suede shoes.

I need to paddle toward the tsunami and hope that I can shoot through the tube. I’ll be a better lover when my feet hit the shore. 

“Peace out, the surf's up!"

Guest Blogger #4: Merit for Marit's Sake

This entry was connected to a comment. But, it is a story in and of itself, ") :

I have an issue. I don't like to write in black and white. I certainly don't see the world in that way at all. Not to say grey, but; "Live in living COLOR."

But as it took me as long to type in this whole longggg address, I may as well make the most of it;-)

I pondered as I was nursing looming tendonitis from keyboarding the previously mentioned address; Is this rather cute woman I've been sending often rambling, lacking any sense of order sending me on a wild goose chase, just to send me to the land of "yer weird & bugger off?" I'm glad that isn't the case... yet.

I smoke like a flipping chimney out of Mary Poppins. She was kind of a prudish nanny and supercalifagilisticxbalocous aside, Miss. Poppins would have a heck of a time getting me off the ceiling. Weeee, flight from laughing too much!

Ah, yes, my smoking. true it is smelly habit. I started only five years ago, in Baton Rouge to be exact. Somebody said 90% of models smoke for weight control. Boom! I found me the nearest7/11 and bought Malboro's because that was only cigarette I knew the name of. Better for the waist line than bags of Bit-o-Honey's.

I will quit, someday. I will just wake up one morning and be done with them. That day has yet to arrive. Smokers are now quite a sub culture. 

We are banished to the outside nearly everywhere & when it is -15 degrees outside ya tend to band together.

Normal. You mentioned normality as being individualized, so true Grasshopper. Getting older, 'tis good to embrace ones individuality. FFolks, either like me or more often tThan not, after the polite niceities (so no how to spell that) people either think i'm a hoot or a glaze comes over their eyes as they look for a quick exit. I happen to like being quirky and wow, what I wouldn't do to to meet a woman who also isn't afraid to jump in puddles and are willing to not only take a risk on occaision, but to stop dead in their tracks because there is a field of daisies. Slow down enough to appriciate the beauty that surrounds us.

My dinner is ready. Loaded potatoe sticks and warm cookies. Yeah, that's the way to stay healthy ;-O

Goodbye and good luck i'd now like to sign, from the cheerleading squad of Edison High!   - Marit

The Truly Revolutionary Promise of Our Founding Sinners

This book, Skipping Toward Gomorrah, has been on my night stand for about 2 weeks. It looks lonely.  Maybe I should sprinkle salt on it? I’m sure that would cause the raising of an eyebrow for conservatives who are fingering through my personal items while pretending to want to buy my home.  It would be the first whammy!, coupled with the Hindu-Buddhist-Muslim-Goddess-Christian altar that is in the bonus room immediately above the master.  Near it is a framed pastel of my guardian angel and a 4 foot oil of the prophet Isaiah. Otherwise, I’m sure my realtor would have instructed me to put the silliness away (so that I don't offend) for the sake of a sell.

I’ll need to return the book, so I thought I would skip church and read a few chapters.  Within the first, I’m uneasy and don’t know why.  I like that the author, Dan Savage, is pounding the social conservatives, and I kind of like the tongue-in-cheek angle that he’s taking.  (And, I liked him and the things he said in his NPR interview: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=186926890). But then, he summarizes with a sentence:

There are millions of ethical, fully moral sinners in America, and I’ve grown sick of listening to the right wing bitch and moan about them while the left wing refuses to defend them.

Again, I'm surrounded with my own agreements.  I like that he differentiates between ethics and morals.  Theses words are different but are often used interchangeably in debates. The slight-of-hand switch allows scold mongers to skew the conversation just enough that you're no longer talking about what you were talking about. Savage calls out this tactic:

        By successfully framing the debate as virtue versus sin, and not the laws versus your freedoms,
       the virtuecrats have succeeded in silencing their political foes...

And, I like that he calls out the left for not defending the American/God-given right to pursue peculiar happinesses. But, I know why I’m gradually letting my fingers loosen from the box car on his runaway train. It's the word ‘sinner.’ Up to this point, this author defends the right of (American) humans to pursue happiness, but then he acquiesces to the enemy’s position that homosexuals and other happiness-seekers are sinners.  What happened during the 8-10 pages of defending the right to follow one's own pleasure principle?

I look back to the opening sentences:

The truly revolutionary promise of our nation’s founding document is the freedom to pursue happiness-with-a-capital-H. Unfortunately, this promise is considered problematic by some Americans. The very pursuits that make some Americans happy (some very happy indeed) are considered downright sinful by social conservatives.

The opening position seems to contradict the concluding one. Did Mr. Savage convince himself that the “moral scolders” were right, or did he always secretly accept that homosexual interactions are sinful? If my guy is in flux, I don’t want to depend on the fire-spitting protestors who stood at the doors of the casino (where the Baton Rouge PRIDE event occurred yesterday).  Those people were certain in their beliefs even though they were unbelievable.

I might have found my answer at the thinking church.  I intended to go because all ages and models of Unitarians came out to support our gay rights march to and up the Capitol steps. But—, I checked the sermon topic—I can’t make it on Father’s Day.

I tried to remove this holiday from my “smart phone” calendar, but it kept coming back! I haven’t spoken to my paternal-DNA donor in about twenty years, and it’s been longer than that since I believed his unbelievable truth.

“You’re going to hell,” he had said with delusion.

He was (and possibly still is) an uber-conservative prison-preacher who has the audience that he always demanded—a captive one.  (That’s a slow-rising joke). 

In high school, I had wanted to be a missionary, but God did all he could to steer me away—save coming down, wrapping flesh around his holy spirit, and pointing a big fat waving finger, “NO!”   So, after funding couldn’t be allocated for my mission-field training, I opted for a student loan and landed on a college campus with 20,000 pagans. 

“She just needs to get to the ‘Psychology of Women’, and then all will fall in place,” God must have said. 

I can attribute my gay awakening to this undergraduate class, and my spiritual awakening to a ‘Bible As Literature’ class in graduate school.  The latter was conducted in the most conservative part of the south that I’ve ever perpetuated in.  (To give credence to this claim—I’ve lived in Texas, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana.) So, I found it surprising that an atheist who was also a lesbian would replace the local Southern Baptist preacher and be this university’s chosen professor.  

On the first day, she had us bring a Bible—the only required text.
“Which version,” many of us asked?

“Whatever you like,” she said.

So, we all show up with everything from KJV to The Living Bible versions. The class unanimously agreed that one guy’s bible was paraphrased by rappers. 

The prof would review a book (of the bible) and point to someone to read a verse.  Then, she would point to someone else to read the same verse.  And then, she would point to someone else to read it.  The most amazing revelations would occur when comparisons were made because within the English language the meaning proved to be inconsistent.

“’Man’ wrote this book,” I finally had to accept.

Biblical scriptures have been translated from Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic and/or Greek, and then carelessly documented into English, reflecting social prejudices of the 17^th Century.  I had learned from a Rabbi (when I was young) that the word ‘homosexual’ (as it is used today) didn’t occur in ancient scriptures.  Early communities accepted same-sex couplings except where older men had sex with young men. This act, rightfully, would have been viewed as pedophilia &/or rape.  This caused me to have an "ahh-ha" moment, realizing that the woman who turned around in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah was an example of the "salt of the earth" because she had so much compassion for the people who were burning that she couldn't not look back and save her own life. 

It was difficult for me to write the required papers for that class.  I offered topical treatments of the subjects that had little to do with the Bible and more to do with socio-political struggles that the allegorical figures, in their hypothetical communities, were presumed to have participated in.  Throughout the semester, I tried to process how all of my pre-college positions had foundations in something so unbelievable.

Knowing that the words can be so easily replaced with words that appear to be synonymous, I can’t place my spiritual faith in man and his static words.  When I hear the fire-spitters reference the Bible and claim that I am a sinner, I want to ask, “Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?” I imagine the conversation will go this way.

“Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?”

“Of course, I do!” the spitter would spit.

“Then, you believe in the spirit of the Law?”

“Of course, I do!” the spitter would spit and maybe stomp for emphasis.

“How do you believe in the spirit of the Law and the letter of the Law?  These contradict each other.”

At this point the spitter would spit, quoting Bible verses that defend hatred.  In response, I would not offer all of the verses that represent God’s (inspired) love.  With love and logic lost, I’d be wasting valuable energy on this hate monger. I’d rather channel it toward people who understand Christian charity. 

On my way past the fire-spitters, I’m in step with a girl who is walking toward the entrance. 

“Grab my hand,” she commands.

It takes me a minute to understand her words, but I follow her inviting smile.

“Good call,” I say when we release and reach for the doors of the PRIDE party. 

She smiles.

“It’s always surprising to me that prisoners get care and compassion, and we get that.”

She smiles and shrugs, heading toward a group of girlfriends who are reaching out for her sweet embrace. 

If the Gays Jump'd off a Bridge, Would You Jump Too?

I met Colt for dinner. We talk about anything. I'm a bit giddy with him like I was when I dated boys. I have to calm myself, but it takes some time because I just love this guy.  Weird, huh?

We talk about health and happiness. We talk about softball (girls) and baseball (RBIs).  And when I'm lucky, he explains—with judicial authority—why this country is at the brink of a radical change for gay rights.  Girl, I get giddy then.

I think he is a true believer which is odd since I'm the one who should be telling straight-man lawyer how things should be. It's me who should be pointing a wagging pointy finger. But, in fact, he's the one telling me.

"It is unconstitutional that the law does not extend the same rights to gays that it extends to straight couples," Colt is talking about surrogate parenting laws.

I did not know but a current case is hanging in the balance. I'm bad; I didn't take note of all of the specifics. I remember he said that the straights could lose their rights to use surrogates because the courts—or the conservative majority (which may be the same thing)—fear that this ruling will allow same sex couples as well as gays to use surrogates [sperm or egg] to perpetuate a lineage.

"If they allow the straights, this law will allow the gays.  So, here's where the fight is," Colt says.
"That's awesome!" I pound my fist on the table. "It's like when all the boys were dying from AIDS, Reagan turned his head and no one cared until the straights started dying. Then and only then did the nation care about what AIDS was doing to citizens."
Colt is visibly alerted.
"This is what gays have always needed," I'm amp'd and awake.  "We are a small minority. Until what they want is what we want, gays can't get empathy, grounds for commonality."
Colt shakes his head.

I'm not sure if he's disagreeing or searching through his '80s memories for some similarities between then and now.  He begins to talk about how great it would be [for any lawyer] to present a case to the Supreme Court.  I offer to help him have this opportunity.

"Let's go out and get me a girl to marry, right now." I pound my fist on the table, gently.  "Tomorrow, we'll demand that Louisiana marry us. You can defend us."
"Yes, that would be nice of you," Colt smiles because he knows that my motive has less to do with getting him to a higher court than it has to do with getting me to a higher state.
"If I can't find a girl, I'll get a rope and a goat! That will get you the case before the court," I am thinking of the Faux news statements about how the nation's acceptance of homosexuals will cause some percentage of humans to want to marry any old beast of choice.
"No—because the goat can't offer mutual consent," Colt offers a trump smile, again.

After a long conversation about who will pay the bill and what significant things might happen this week, we part ways with a hug and a promise that we'll buy tickets for the baseball game on Friday. I head home and pass the gay bar. MacTiger's car is there, so I pull in for 1 beer. He gives me a hug and a few of us enter into a conversation about the differences between male and female bonding.  MacTiger has a good friend who is straight.  She talks about need for personal space.

"I want to go for a vacation without feeling like he [the boyfriend] must come. Don't get me wrong; if he walked in right now, I would light up," she says.

I get her.
I get that we live, today, with fewer gender laws.
We live without grandparent's social laws.
We struggle to find norms.
I thank the good Lord.

I opted to spend the evening with my straight male friend while MacTiger sat in the gay bar with his straight girl friend. And to complete the circle, Colt has been in the bar a few times with his gay (male) friends. Life is changing whether (us) old farts are ready for it or not.  The questions for the next generation is, "Will you accept your right to be free-er? Expect it? Demand it?"

Colt's words reassure. The stand against gay rights has taken "a mortal blow." The proof is that a conservative Supreme Court Justice (Scalia) can't find justification for denying rights to homosexuals who seek marriage equality.

"Well... if the Supreme Court doesn't vote the way of the land, can you imagine the day they don't award us our rights?" I paint the picture of a drag queen ass-whooping. "We will riot like no other minority ever."

Colt sits back. He is alerted.

"They broke glass; our boys will break stilettos. And, there will be pink triangles spray painted across this land by every Zorro mask'd lesbian who drives a semi."

Colt imagined the worst that we could do; and, he smiled, knowing that we'd be righteous in our long-time-due rainbow rebellion.