Mouse or Elephant?, 2

A bit of a collection of recent rants - specifically about being gay, in the military (or like field), where gay isn't wanted:

Why did I go into the military?

[x] Parents divorced
[x] Living situation sucked
[x] No money for college
[x] Grew up fast and learned a lot

All of the above here.

I would never undo my time in the military. I learned too much, grew a lot as a person - and met some of my truest friends. BUT, I can't imagine having enlisted for another 4 yrs.

Making sure you have a strong ring around you is important.

I guess - you just have to find a group of folks that can be balanced and impartial - yet, at the same time give a gentle nudge, slap or kick as needed when you're feeling low.

My friends and family have always provided - in abundance.

As for the 'why did you enlist?', 'why do you stay?', 'have you lost all sense of reason and dignity?' type questions and comments: PIFFLE.

These are the questions you are strapped with already. Folks either have to be open to the fact you are there - or - well, zip it.

Whether the military is the most choice place to be as a homosexual or not - but for bending the rules, but for breaking into areas where folks would prefer you just don't go - it just holds everybody down.

There are so many things that someone has to do - and someone might be gay or straight - and if someone gay goes into the military, and succeeds daily despite all of the weight and obstacles that can trip that person up - don't knock that person down.

Salute them. Support them.

Some folks seem to find it incredibly easy to say - 'it's all or nothing' - come out or keep quiet.

A quote from one such folk:"What I am saying is that you are not powerless over your situation.

You have choices, and as always there is a consequence to every choice. Its life."

And as such - a person has the right to ask for help and support from other folks.

If the idea is that no one should ever approach something that's unattainable - or that a person should only do the things that allow them to be who they want to be, when they want to be, without any 'filtering' or without any weight for the consequences of their actions, what a friggin' scary place the world would be. Or may be becoming.

I would ask these free-wheeling folks, what is your life experience - your age, what you do for a living, where you live, etc. Those things have an impact on how you relate to the world. And may make it very black & white for you with regards to your sexuality.

One of the things I sometimes find perplexing about change in society is how slowly and then quickly and then slowly it occurs. And how sometimes it occurs without people realizing it. And sometimes it takes very sudden and unexpected slides backwards.

SO - that so many folks today can say they are out - to spoon in theatres, to check out other guys in malls, etc. - how many gay people in the previous generation(s) had to filter, had to slip into roles that required a little alteration of personality - and then had to come out to the right people at the right time?

And how about those who remain firmly in place on 'fronts' where they were unexpected, undesired, or not permitted - silent and waiting: agents of change.

You Will Be... You.

On the supposed "assimilation of gay culture into mainstream society..."

Borg? Where?

The idea that cultures move closer and further apart - is a constant theme in America. I see things that amuse and frustrate me to no end in how people strive to be different and cry for acceptance.

- Straight guys that dress as gay or gayer than any gay guy - adopting fashions, hairstyles, shoes that many gay men would shy away from. Of course, I sometimes suspect their girlfriends had a hand in this.- A black subculture in our country that has moved further from mainstream - creating its own vocabulary, music and idealogy. Very successfully. Only to find itself adopted and emulated.- Immigrant cultures that fear the loss of their own languages and customs as their children strive to melt into the culture which surrounds them. And watching as the culture which surrounds them adopts and emulates food, music, styles, etc. from the incomers.

Sexuality is integral to my being. But it is the least of the things that affect those I work with and socialize with. And it is the final thing I purposefully reveal - it is mine to do with what I will. It is not who I am. And should not be the thing by which I am weighed and measured.

I believe this is why - in polite society and company - it is customary to shake hands at meeting and not some other appendage.

Gay culture is a part of the world - threading itself neatly in and out of favor and in and out of history. Within the gay subset - individuals have found and will continue to find ways to reinvent and redefine themselves - over and over again.

Folks in the world will continue to see a thing they like - and in an effort to set themselves apart - they will adopt and emulate the things they see that they find pleasing or unique. Some social butterfly effect, a pebble dropped in a pond...

Defenders of ...

Whether I would be the marrying type or not - everytime I see this bumper sticker:



I want to just slam my car into the back of the car the sticker is on, shoving the bumper right up the arse of the hunch-backed, coke-bottle wearing, zit-squeezing "Defender of Marriage" with stray facial hair nervously gripping the steering wheel.

*With apologies to any non-Defenders who may be hunch-backed, coke-bottle wearing, or zit-squeezing. As for facial hair: razor, tweezer, wax - you decide.

Freudian Slap...

A chum of mine sends incessant Spam. Rarely an actual e-mail - but two or three a day come jokes, photos, comic strips, etc. He also has no notion to BCC the 100 or so names on each e-mail.

So this morning - I see a reply from one of the recipients. And it's that reply that I often dream of sending myself - but... can't bring myself to:

"B,

Although I like your twisted humor, please remove my email address from the humor mailing list.

J"

Of course, this Spam was obviously going to J's work address. And J hit reply to everyone.

But - even better - a second reply comes from J,

"J would like to recall the message ... "

So, there was that moment of remorse.

Alas, that recall feature doesn't work as smartly as some would like.

The Pope. Pope. Pope.

So, that Pope died.

People have been talking at work - and someone asked how I was holding up with everything that's just happened and I was like -

"What are you talking about? Who?"

I was only relieved for that old man that he was released from the grip from all the folks so desperate to keep him functioning - propping him up in front of windows sock-puppet style for the last several months.

Which reminds me of Meryn Cadell's POPE song from an album several years back:

"Well I love that man, Pope John Paul the 3rd
I love him probably more than he deserves.
Okay, so he persecutes homosexuals, does not believe in abortion,
visits with Kurt Waldheim and tells us not to take the pill ...
There’s still a certain je ne sais quoi –
Some peace, some love, some goodwill.
Yeah, the pope, pope, pope, pope, pope.
We all here to see the pope, pope, pope, pope, pope..."

Meantime, back at the ranch, I keep wondering:

"How many Catholics does it take to install a Pope?"

Marriage

Gay and Otherwise: Marriage

Personal choice as it affects that individual.

I've been in long-term relationships. I've been in short-term ... engagements.

If you meet somebody and you *click* - and you are together with an understanding b/t the two of you (or three or four) - that's a [spiritual] union. And if that lasts 2 weeks or 80 years, it's your life and choice.

The LEGAL allowances and protections inherent to the Married. I think that is the aim. And these are things that are so quickly denied or stripped away.

The UNION decision is b/t the parties involved - and/or their friends & family they invite to witness their connection. And who support them. And if you are involved in a faith - and your faith embraces your Union - fantastic.

Of course... I have never been inclined towards the fanciness of marriage. And sometimes, witnessing folks that are desperate to achieve marriage - and then are made so unhappy by it - I wonder:

"Why would you wish this on anyone?"

AND when I see a couple skipping through the aisles of Target, zapping merchandise into their registry with the merchandise stun gun - I am emotionally overwhelmed with

An urge to slap their heads together Stooges-style.

But that's me - and I am Gay. But not as Gay as some others in my Tribe.

Don't Tell Me... (ef)

Don’t tell me to shut up, world –
I was silent for centuries before this life:
I was a stone.

So my mouth makes up for lost time.

And my eyes read books to punish you:
You can’t follow me here, world.
You can’t critique or improve my journey.

Each step this stone takes is its own –
By tongue and/or toe.

Vanishingly Small (ef)

A quadrillion
Varying forms of hydrogen or oxygen
A quintillion
Water molecules
A septillion
Snowflakes fall every winter
In North America
You and I are
Asymptotes
The harder I look at You –
The more the differences between us vanish.

Diophantine (ef)

x^{2} + y^{2}
If I worry the page
With ‘I love you.’
One million times squared –
Would you read each rendition
And feel my need in each pass of the pen?

Although I lived my life a long time before you came along –
Would you know how much I ache
When you are away?
How I can’t wait for you to return again
So I can watch your eyes and hands
And listen to your lyric voice
Play a story for me?

My friend and lover
No one thing illustrates Forever
But when you’re spooned against me
So many nights over these several years
Our history is a sum greater than the parts
Whose result defines what Forever is:
Losing count
After one.

Ortegrity (ef)

This aubergine democracy
Of spongelike texture
And disagreeable taste
Noise experts – tut-tutting without wind
Still blowing out candles
Poor traits to pass along
The struggle to survive
Withering intelligence by degrees
By moonlight this fruit seems hardened to the world
But it won’t last the winter
Without the song of the frog & cricket
Pixie – your trick too late realized -
Lost on a familiar road
A fine environment for thinking
Surrounded by the purple night,
Silently, I breathe out.

We Won't Stop Dancing (ef)

Lo Nafseek Lirkod

In the years before I came to live here
There was fool’s gold in plastic cards
Little promise of things to come…
No regard for bombs, hatred,
And a world at war,
Today is an outdoor brightness:
A day of lapis skies
The world
An emerald tablet.
Have I come to my master work –
Each moment spent
A delicate liquid-solid,
Each passing lifetime
Measured by the people
I spend it with?
For now, I am here
At the soul of the world
Challenged to speak
So much less than I listen,
To stay still and tune in to my heart
While my legs and arms are itching to dance.

Birds of a Feather...

So here's today's episode - Mr. Ireland's Mum and Brother are staying over for a few weeks:

Akethan: Did i tell you about the bird juice?

Sister: uuugh

Sister: bird juice?

Akethan: Mr. Ireland's brother - K - said he needed a few things from the store - crispix, milk, white grape juice... so I picked 'em up and they were here for him when he got here

Akethan: after the first day or so - he finished the white grape juice off

Sister: ok

Akethan: everytime he goes for juice - he gets a new glass - at the end of each day there are glasses all over the house.... i keep

Sister: <~~~skerred

Akethan: collecting them and washing them and putting them away

Akethan: then -- yesterday i noticed they all had a red juice left in them

Akethan: i looked around and couldn't figure out where this red juice was coming from

Akethan: so when they were all sitting in the living room (Mr. Ireland, Mum, K)

Akethan: i asked - "Hey, what is this red juice - ?"

Akethan: everyone just sat there and then K got up and came over to look

Akethan: i asked - "Where is this coming from?"

Akethan: he stuttered that it was juice he found in a jar in the fridge

Sister: oh no

Sister: hummingbird food?

Akethan: puzzled i walked over to the fridge and looked inside and then bust out laughing

Akethan: he had finished off a gallon of hummingbird juice

Sister: oh my lord

Akethan: *can we have a 'grandma f memorial moment'*?

Sister: uhuh

Akethan: we were all in tears. he's mildly Rain Man - and got a bit flustered.

Sister: when do they leave?

Akethan: i said - now K, it's just sugar and water - no harm to you - don't get yer feathers ruffled.

Sister: i would say poor man but cant bring my self to quit laughing

Footnote = Grandma F - a dear soul who liked to sit on the sofa for days watching PRICE IS RIGHT - was found munching serenely on dogfood which my mom kept stored in an old Charles Chips can. She didn't bat and eyelash when I told her that wasn't a snackfood but kibble. She lived through the Depression, she informed me.

Rainstorm (ef)

Rainstorm
A spray of cologne
On the skin
What summer smells like
Afternoon storms
My love for you
Again & again & again
A strip – a tester
Holds the spores
So fine & fragrant
Slipped in a breast pocket
A return ticket
The transport – a nose
We’re back in summer
Cold rain on a hot wind
Our hands & lips
Again & again & again.

Sabado (ef)

In patterns on your back
Your fingers outsides
Left gaps in sunscreen
With no rhyme or reason –
Just where your reach
Couldn’t achieve complete coverage.
Somehow the sun designed
A dolphin.

***
At the end of a cloud-stretching tether
Dangles a tourist…
White-legged, white knuckled.

***
Those braids, darling –
Vacationary nightmare
Temporary tattoos
Allow the traveler
To cut loose.

Puerto Vallarta, i (ef)

The Mexican sun is a crazy star
With an untamed whirling mane
And the maddest, laughing eyes
The most beautiful part of any flower
To my eye, a burning calyx.

Neck-lace
Is an ugly word
Hard and soft in all the wrong places
Chopped loudly from the throats
Of wandering vendors –
They follow, expectant faces
Like boats I tow behind me.

This sun and these words,
Things that bite and sting,
This skin that burns:
An afternoon in all it’s complicity.

Letting In (ef)

We are not terrible enough
To qualify for godhood.
Maybe for minor demons
we could pass...
As we go our bad proliferates:
A willingness to
Drink entire oceans,
Push under entire lands.
Prerequisites to the trade:
Letting in a little good -
Mercy versus a change of mind.
So, divinity evades.

Queen for a Day... or Two

If I were Queen... I would smite some folks - and verily.

> The hands-free headset in-duh-viduals. They who wear their hands-free "safe as houses" headsets while they drive - but still, they are holding the cellphone in one hand as if it were a communicator pad or they're triangulating. Use headset. Place phone in lap. Hands on wheel. Drive. Talk. Stop it!

I've had some weird moments in stores standing next to someone who bursts into laughter or asks a question out loud -- the first thing I look for is that wire snaking from their ear into a pocket.

> "My kingdom for your cracker!" Yesterday a woman zigged into my lane and I into the shoulder lane. Then she zagged back into her own lane and then slightly back my way again. She was reaching for something in the passenger seat. As I drew up next to her, it was to see that she was wrestling with a sleeve of saltines to get a cracker free to munch on.

Your life - ahem - my life is worth a cracker?!

Let the smoting begin.

Defense of Marriage

As for the Defense of Marriage - what the heck are people thinking anymore? It's all very separate - your state can approve/disapprove your legal union; your church can approve/disapprove your spiritual union. You make your choices accordingly - pick your church; vote your state into your way of thinking. In theory - right? In a Democracy - right?

A friend sent this to me today - and I thought I'd add it here:

*Ronald Reagan - divorced the mother of two of his children to marry Nancy Reagan who bore him a daughter only 7 months after the marriage.

*Bob Dole - divorced the mother of his child, who had nursed him through the long recovery from his war wounds.

*Newt Gingrich - divorced his wife who was dying of cancer.

*Dick Armey - House Majority Leader - divorced

*Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas - divorced

*Gov. John Engler of Michigan - divorced

*Gov. Pete Wilson of California - divorced

*George Will - divorced

*Sen. Lauch Faircloth - divorced

*Rush Limbaugh - Rush and his current wife Marta have six marriages and four divorces between them.

*Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia - Barr, not yet 50 years old, has been married three times. Barr had the audacity to author and push the "Defense of Marriage Act." The current joke making the rounds on Capitol Hill is "BobBarr...WHICH marriage are you defending?!?

*Sen. Alfonse D'Amato of New York - divorced

*Sen. John Warner of Virginia - divorced (once married to Liz Taylor.)

*Gov. George Allen of Virginia - divorced

*Henry Kissinger - divorced

*Rep. Helen Chenoweth of Idaho - divorced

*Sen. John McCain of Arizonia - divorced

*Rep. John Kasich of Ohio - divorced

*Rep. Susan Molinari of New York - Republican National Convention Keynote Speaker - divorced

I may not be the marryin' kind - I like it out there on the open prairie (?) - but if I wanted to marry one day or form a legal union with a consenting partner - WHY DOES IT FRIGGIN' MATTER TO ANYONE ELSE?

In The Neck

I am in the neck
from my last life
of wide horizons
into my next
it being endless
in its possibilities.

I am in the neck
pressure building
toward an awaited spasm
an excruciating anticipation
of future, of fear
of the letting go.

I am in the neck
much like other
pinches of past
and premonition
I will recall
the width and hours
my mark will be left
my skull reshaped
inside & out - reborn
into my next tenure.

At the Age o' 33

...tiptoes in...

I had this boss - a fairly good-looking 50-something gentleman... balding, wrinkles, normal wear-n-tear.

He went on a two month "vacation".

He returned with a blondish-orange crew-cut rug. He returned with raised cheek bones, a slightly hooked aquiline nose, a be-dimpled chin. And he returned with eyebrows raised to the heavens. Some kind of tattoing process?

He never mentioned it. He acted like we couldn't tell and as if he'd always looked this way.

To me, he had lost his character. And - it actually felt like a bit of his soul, too. He was obviously concious of his changes, but really carried on as if this was the set of features he'd been born with.

So I always wonder... at the age o' 33... what would I do? What will I feel about myself as I age? Will it be easier than it seems or harder than it ought to be?

And at most given moments, I just try to go with the flow, take care of myself: exercise, eat, sleep, learn, and laugh as hard as I can everytime the opportunity presents itself.