Tag Archives: life

Get me to the church on time!

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One of my favorite scenes in the movie Jeffrey is where a priest, played by Nathan Lane, explains to the protagonist that the protagonist’s ideas about god came from the album cover of the original cast recording of My Fair Lady. He further claims it’s where most gay men got their notions about god.

My Fair Lady Original Cast AlbumHis reasoning is: most parents in the 50s and 60s had a copy of the album*, most gay kids went through at least a phase of listening to musical soundtracks (and even if they didn’t, they all at least saw the cover art), most kids didn’t realize that the man in the clouds on the cover art manipulating the stars like puppets on strings was supposed to be George Bernard Shaw (the man who wrote the play upon which the musical was based), they believed it was god. “It was your parents’ album. You were little. You thought it was god!” Then he goes on to explain that god doesn’t run the world like that.

Part of why that scene cracked me up is because I did go through a phase of listening to the soundtracks of musicals—musicals that in many cases I had never seen. I’m not completely sure why my folks owned several sound track albums, but they did. I do know that my mom had a tendency, if she saw a movie adaptation of a musical, to buy the original broadway cast album instead of the movie album. Anyway, My Fair Lady was one of those albums that I listened to a lot as a kid, but I had never seen the show.

I wound up making up my own version of what happened between the songs. I also imagined my own versions of the choreography and costumes, guided by whatever photographs were part of the album cover, or in some cases, versions of the songs I’d seen on TV. There were a lot of musical variety shows on the air when I was a kid, and stars of movies and broadway shows would often be guests on the variety programs, and might perform a version of (or parody of) a scene from the musical, with regulars from the variety show filling in for various characters.

So in my head, the song “Get Me To the Church On Time” was not primarily about the wild last night of partying that Eliza Doolittle’s long-widowed father wanted to have before he married in the morning. I didn’t know enough of the play to know the context, for one. I think the album only identified the character as “Alfie” so I had no way to know he was supposed to by Eliza’s father. The lyrics talk about having a whopper, and kicking up a rumpus, but somehow I thought it was about celebrating the marriage itself—partying because he was overjoyed to be getting married, rather than a last night of debauchery because he would never be having fun again.

It was also about all the people around him, friends and strangers alike, joining in on the joy and exaltation.

It’s that imagined version of the song and dance that kept popping up in my head last Tuesday night as I saw that Marriage Equality was winning at the ballot box. It was that image of friends, family, neighbors, and complete strangers shouting “hurray!” that came to mind as I thought of the hundreds of straight people who manned those phone banks—calling strangers and patiently explaining that the law explicitly exempted churches and religious institutions from performing same sex marriages (not that the law needed it, it’s already established in other laws and court decisions; churches can choose to turn away opposite sex couples for whatever religious reason they want, too). The thousands of straight people who donated to the campaigns. The thousands of straight people who urged neighbors, co-workers, and family members to give equality a chance. The hundreds of thousands of straight people who voted that way.

Depending on which statistics you believe, gays and lesbians make up somewhere between 3 and 10 percent of the population. There’s no way we could have voted this in for ourselves. There’s no way we could have handled all of the ground game: the canvassing, the pamphleting, the phone banking, and so on.

It was my imaginary version of “Get Me to the Church on Time” that was playing in my head when straight friends told me, “I thought of you and Michael while I was filling out my ballot.” It was the soundtrack to the images I saw on TV of the straight couples joining in the party at the campaign headquarters on the news.

It’s what comes to mind when I re-watch the tearful speech of the straight, Republican state senator explaining why she was voting for the law that kicked this off last spring. Or when I read stories of the way, the last few years, many straight couples have taken a moment in their wedding ceremonies to acknowledge that they have friends and loved ones who are denied the right to choose to enter this important institution, and asking their guests to join the fight for equality.

Yes, part of the reason there were tears in my eyes on Tuesday night when I saw the news that marriage equality had won in Maine, and then in Maryland, and that it was leading in my home state of Washington was because I’m looking forward to finally getting to marry (rather than “domestically partner”???) Michael. But that was only part of it.

The rest of those tears of joy was the realization that a majority of my fellow citizens–not just my fellow homos, or my friends, but a bunch of people who don’t know me–has our back.

Thank you.

And I hope you all get invited to a lot of weddings, because you deserve to celebrate with us.

UPDATE: I started this the morning after Election Night. Because of craziness at work, I didn’t finish it until a day later. And I didn’t see this column by Dan Savage on the same topic until Thursday night. His is definitely worth a read.

* Remember, Jeffery is a comedy, it’s not a real statistic.

One size fits none

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Sometimes when I’m explaining to someone what I like about my computer, or my phone, or a particular software product, or [fill in the blank], someone feels compelled to explain to me why I’m wrong to like it. And sometimes they get very emphatic.

Of course, sometimes if someone mentions certain software product (such as a much-used word processor that my various jobs have forced me to use {and co-workers have assumed I must be an expert at} for more than twenty years) which I happen to loathe, I often get very emphatic about exactly why I loathe it. Including a long rant about a fundamental feature that has been buggy since at least the version released in 1989 (yes, really) and is still buggy in all the same ways in versions released this year. And, yes, I am a little confused as to why anyone would enjoy using the product. So I probably come across as emphatically trying to explain to them why they’re wrong to like it.

I have to remind myself that one size never fits all. Because something meets my needs doesn’t mean it will meet your needs, and vice versa.

Which means I have to let them choose what they want. And I will.

As long as they always do the same for me.

Why I hate hay fever, reason #5792

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While driving home last night, I was just thinking that my allergy prescription dose from the previous night must be wearing off when Michael mentioned that his sinuses had started going whacko. He was attributing it to the change in weather.

Most of last week was very wet, with rain every day. Parts of Friday, all of Saturday, and most of Sunday were quite a bit drier, but only relatively. We had some sun breaks, and what rain there was came in very light, occasional showers. Sunday night we got the deluge.

Radical shifts in air pressure or humidity sometimes cause my sinus passages to either get tender or to close up temporarily, regardless of the pollen, mold, or spore count. And while most people living in the northern hemisphere with ordinary hay fever are free and clear by this time of year, I’m not. Pollen counts are so low as to almost be nonexistent, and fern spores are tapering off. But November is toadstool and mushroom season, which means fungus spores are just ramping up.

In addition to my usual prescription, I took a bit of over-the-counter stuff before going to bed. I awoke in the middle of the night with the sinuses in super-hyper congested mode, along with the itchy eyes. So I took another type of over-the-counter stuff and managed to go back to sleep.

This morning I broke down and raided my pseudo ephedrine supply. Can I say, by the way, I hate that meth heads and meth lab runners have turned thousands of innocent sinus-problem sufferers into suspects, forcing us to show ID, sign extra paper work granting the state, the feds, and the pharmacy companies permission to examine and share information about our purchase history of what used to be a cheap, over-the-counter nasal decongestant? Which is rationed by those same forces, now?

I’m sorry, the usual substitutions don’t work anywhere near as well for me. So at times like this, where everything above my jaw line hurts, aches, and stings, I just don’t understand how restricting law-abiding people from buying a legal medication (a practice which has had zero effect on the illegal trade of the substance that said medication can be used to manufacture) makes any sense.

Now excuse me while I pack some extra tissue into my backpack before I leave for work…

Nightmares

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I have trouble with scary movies. At least certain types of scary movies. They give me nightmares, and I’m the kind of person who, while having a nightmare, climbs out of bed, running around waking up everyone I can find, frantically trying to explain the horrific danger we’re facing and how we have to come up with a plan to deal with the threat now.

I love certain types of scary movie. I could watch the 1931 Dracula, or the ’31 Frankenstein or ’35 Bride of Frankenstein, or the ’32 Mummy over and over and over again. Give me a classic Godzilla any time!

Sometimes while explaining this, I’ve had friends ask how this can be true, when they know I have written some pretty creepy and horrific stuff. Or, as a friend very recently put it, “How can you love Fringe so much? It presents a lot of things far worse than many scary movies you’ve refused to watch!”

Part of the issue is control. If I’m writing the scary stuff, I’m in charge. I can save whoever I want. I can make the bad guy lose when I want and how I want.

To a lesser extent, watching a scary movie (or series) at home on TV or iPad is different in part because I have some control. I can pause or stop the movie when I want. More importantly, if I’m not immersed in the big screen setting without the theatrical sound system it’s easier for me to remember I have control. I’m not trapped in the center of a row of strangers in a dark room. And sometimes just looking away isn’t enough.

There’s also familiarity. Forbidden Planet was one of the first movies to trigger this reaction when I was about five or six years old (it’s the one my Mom still tells stories about), but now, it’s one of my favorite movies of all time. I know how it ends. I know what the monster is and what its limitations are. None of that was true the first time I saw it.

And in Fringe‘s case, there is an additional salvation: there have been very, very, very few scary movies ever made which any character who is even one-tenth as smart as Walter is on the good guys’ side.

Because what’s missing from most nightmares is a hero you’re confident will win the day.

Mr Open-minded Seldom Is

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As a gay man hoping to one day enjoy full equal rights under the law, I spend probably far too much time reading about people who are trying to prevent those rights from being granted. A surprising number of them describe themselves as open-minded, just before they start spewing their most bigoted talking points.

Which reminded me of a discussion I had with some friends a while back. We had all met people who had described themselves as open-minded, yet once we got to know them, they were quite the opposite. There are several reasons for this phenomenon:

The first is defensive: some of them have been accused often enough of being narrow-minded or intolerant that they are now trying to preempt more accusations. Like the professional spokespeople for various hate groups, they operate under a delusion that simply saying they are open-minded will somehow cause you not to notice their narrow-minded behavior or statements.

If they aren’t delusional, they’re simply trying really hard not to appear to be intolerant, because they’ve realized that if people think you’re intolerant, only intolerant people will hang out with you, and they aren’t usually good company. You would hope that realizing this would make them try to figure out how to actually be more open-minded. Maybe someday it will.

Some people are genuinely trying to be open-minded. In some cases, they recognized that their past narrow-minded behavior ruined a friendship, broke up a relationship, or simply hurt someone they cared about. Now they feel guilty and are trying to be open-minded. And there’s nothing wrong with trying, per se, but it is a little disingenuous to say they “are” open-minded when they’re only in the hoping-to-be stage.

There are others who aren’t at the trying stage, they simply misunderstand what open-minded means. For instance, for some open-minded means smiling condescendingly at people, ideas, or behaviors they disapprove of—sometimes even encouraging the behavior—only to ridicule and condemn it later when the person isn’t around. It’s a form of social entrapment: I’ll pretend I accept you as you are in order to get you to reveal more of yourself, then use what I learn against you.

Similarly, some think being open-minded means letting the other person have their say before telling them just how very wrong they are. Now, sometimes that’s how a debate can look to an outsider, but every interaction shouldn’t be a debate. And there’s a difference between gritting one’s teeth while waiting for the other person to finish spouting off their nonsense so you can tell them what they ought to think, and sincerely trying to understand why the other person feels that way. And consider whether maybe there might be room in your worldview for more than one opinion on the matter.

Along the same lines, some folks think that they have a nuanced position on some issues, because they are willing to be friends with the unfortunate people who are so wrong-thinking. “I’m not bigoted! I know that it’s not really your people’s fault that all of you are mentally ill and morally bankrupt. It’s like a sickness. And look at how big hearted I am, willing to be next to you and not at all afraid it might be catching!”

Most of these are just a subset of a bigger truth about human behavior: the more eager someone seems to be to describe themselves with a particularly positive treat, the more emphatically they insist that they do not feel a particular negative way, the more likely that the opposite of what they are saying is the truth.

As Hamlet’s mother famously observed, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

Personal isn’t always private, part 2

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For a long time there was a forum on Reddit called “jailbait” whose purpose was for people to post pictures of underage girls they thought were hot, sexy, what have you. Most of the pictures posted there had been stolen from Facebook accounts or similar online forums, where the picture had originally been posted by the girl herself. The guys who frequented the jailbait forum and posted there rationalized their theft because “if the girls didn’t want people looking at those pictures, they shouldn’t have posted them.”

None put forward the argument more loudly or prolifically than the moderator, a guy who called himself Violentacrez (pronounced “violent acres”). Continue reading Personal isn’t always private, part 2 →

So, what are ya gonna do about it?

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It’s a cliché to say it rains a lot in Seattle. Jokes about long-time residents having gills, or webbed feet, or that we don’t recognize that blinding bright ball that appears in the sky sometimes passed both cliché and passé decades ago.

This year was unusual. We had a drier than usual July. August, which is statistically our driest month anyway, wasn’t merely drier than usual, it was the driest that has ever been recorded. September nearly tied the record for driest September, ever, and for the first 11 days of October, the dry streak had continued. We had experienced just over 13 weeks of extraordinarily dry, warm, sunny weather. It was not as bad a drought as the midwest was experiencing, but it did effect crops throughout the state.

On Friday morning the dry streak ended with a light misting of just over a tenth of an inch of rain (though more was in the forecast, and heavier rain was falling nearby). I was checking my usual collection of news blogs and sources on line, and there, on one of my regular places, a reporter who I know has lived here for more than seven years, was already bitching about the rain.
Continue reading So, what are ya gonna do about it? →

Come out, come out, where ever you are

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Today is National Coming Out Day. If Ray were still alive, it would also be the day we’d be celebrating the nineteenth anniversary of our commitment ceremony (he promised to stay with me for the rest of his life, and he did).

Since I am still regularly surprised to learn that someone I’ve known for a while hasn’t ever figured out I’m gay: my husband and I are both men, and we’re very much in love with each other and happy together.

But while I’m (re-)stating what I think ought to be obvious, I would like to announce that I am a card-carrying liberal gay man who thinks:

  • that gun control means hitting what you aim at but people who irresponsibly allow guns to fall into kids’ hands resulting in death or injury should face severe legal consequences;
  • that the death penalty has a place in a well-run justice system but so does jury nullification;
  • that a flag-burning amendment is as un-American as anything could possibly be, but people who fly a flag should learn the flag code and stop leaving their flags out at night and in the rain;
  • that war and violence are terrible things we should always work hard to avoid, but the people who risk their lives in service to their communities and nation deserve our respect and gratitude;
  • that the right to assemble and petition our government absolutely allows people to march, protest, chant, and otherwise demonstrate in public places, but if you’re not willing to pay the price of possibly being arrested for blocking your fellow citizens from going about their business, you deserve a slap up-side-the-head;
  • that people have the right to control their own bodies, but refusing to get your children vaccinated demonstrates a criminal level of ignorance, is the equivalent of child abuse, and puts neighbors, friends, and strangers at risk for preventable and sometimes fatal diseases;
  • that no one who is not going into a battle zone needs a Hummer, but people who blindly protest nuclear power plants can’t do basic math about energy needs and energy sources;
  • that proportional representation would greatly improve our country, but so would at least one of the major parties actually moving left-of-center;
  • that the right to believe as you wish includes the right not to believe at all, but rabid atheists are no less annoying than the other kinds of fundamentalists;
  • that being polite costs nothing while reaping great rewards, but no one should have to put up with disrespectful behavior;
  • that there isn’t enough science education in our schools, but there isn’t enough art, music, or history either;
  • and that you get out of life what you put into it, but you also get a lot of both the good and the bad through no fault or merit of your own.

Abby someone

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One of my favorite scenes in Young Frankenstein is when, after the recently animated monster goes on his first mini rampage, the doctor gets Eyegore to admit that he dropped and destroyed the brain of the brilliant scientist Dr Frankenstein had hoped to revive and had taken another brain from the brain depository.

“Abby Someone… Abby Normal, I think. I’m almost certain that was the name.”

No one wants to be labeled “abnormal,” but most of us also don’t want to be described as “ordinary.” We want to be close enough to normal to be excluded from the freak category, but also to be considered above average at something. So many of us spend at least part of our lives walking a tightrope, trying to find a path through that ill-defined territory that brings both acceptance and maybe a teeny bit of acclaim.

One problem with walking a tighrope is that there isn’t any room for error. And certainly no opportunity to explore new territory.

I fell off the tightrope pretty early in life. At some point before kindergarten, my parents figured out that when I was talking (or rather, babbling incessantly) while playing by myself, that I was responding to voices that I was hearing in my head. I thought everyone heard voices like that. It was the only way I knew how to think, to have conversations with different parts of myself.

I tried explaining that, but being only—what, three years old?—didn’t have the experience, vocabularly, or conceptual framework to get the idea across. All my dad understood was that 1) I heard voices, 2) I did not think of them as imaginary friends, and 3) I couldn’t stop them.

So he told me, in no uncertain terms, that I was never, ever to let anyone hear me talking to the voices. If I did, very bad things would happen to me. The least of which were that no one would be friends with me and that I would be taken away and locked up somewhere.

Dad isn’t exactly a touchy-feely kind of guy, you know?

Now there’s neuroscience to show that talking to oneself makes several mental process work better. There’s additional evidence that imagining different trains of thought as a conversation is simply an outgrowth of a number of perfectly unexceptional mental processes. The extent to which my internal monologue splits into a couple dozen dialogues is more than a single standard deviation away from the median, but it’s not so far out as to be worrisome.

I also see relationships between things differently than most. It’s the reason I used to confuse some of my fellow orchestra and bandmates when I would say that playing the tuba was no different than trumpet, you just needed to move the root note of the scale. Reading Bass or Treble clef (or, once I took up bassoon, Alto and Tenor clef) was simply a matter of sliding the starting spot up and down, as well. Switching between bassoon, saxophone, clarinet and flute was all about transposing or rotating finger positions.

I think the one that weirded them out the most was trombone. “First position is just like all valves open because the air path is shortest.” (Though French horn was actually the hardest—I had to visuallize it as air paths, but my fingers kept wanting to treat it as one of the other valved instruments.)

None of which made me a musical genius—it was just me looking at music as a series of math problems. (Of course, there were the other math majors in college who thought my love of Differential Equations was the equivalent of performing black magic).

Seeing those transpositions and substitutions as being the same whether we’re talking about notes, numbers, labels, or commands is why I can quickly (I mean really quickly) learn new scripting or programming languages, et cetera.

Which all sounds really impressive and cool and such. But that same brain is incredibly proficient at losing my keys, or the pile of papers I just had in my hand, or what do you mean my glasses are right there? I looked five times already and they’re not… Oh, well, what do you know?

The faster I run…

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It seems as if I’m always playing catch up.

There is never enough time in the day to do everything I’d like. Never enough time to see, talk to, email, or otherwise check-in on everyone I care about. The pile of books I have been meaning to read never seems to get smaller, no matter how many I read.

Everyone feels that way some of the time. Those of us with a wide variety of interests may feel it more often than others. Or maybe we just think we do.

I was reminded of this while sorting out some things regarding the collaborative sci fi project for which I’ve been editor for a number of years. I and one of the authors were figuring out where, on the project timeline, a particular tale could take place, and which characters would be available to use in the story. And I mentioned a character, and the author said, “Oh, was that the guy whose story never got finished?”

The character had been created by Gerald P., an extremely enthusiastic and always busy member of a lot of projects. He had submitted a couple of rough drafts to our project, along with this character and a number of proposed further stories with the character. He completed two stories, only one of which included this character (and in a small, supporting role, to boot!) which we published several years ago.

Subsequently, whenever I talked with Gerald, whether it was at a convention or online, he would talk about the other stories. He would occasionally send me revised individual scenes from the stories. I would send back comments.

Soon, whenever I would see him in person, he would get a slightly guilty look on his face, and would open every conversation with an apology for not finishing a second draft of the stories. We’d talk about what was holding him up on this scene or that, but soon we would be talking about other things. Often other stories others had written and how much he enjoyed them. Or stories he had finished in other projects. It was impossible not to enjoy these conversions, because Gerald’s joy and enthusiasm for everything he did was just that infectious.

Unfortunately, a few years ago, Gerald unexpectedly died. He’d been fighting cancer for a while, but it was undiagnosed diabetes that brought his untimely death.

He never finished those stories. If there is an afterlife and I am lucky enough to see Gerald again, I am certain he’ll give me that familiar guilty look, apologize for not getting a new draft in, and start talking about the intricacies of the plot that have been troubling him. And I’m just as certain that our conversation would quickly drift onto other topics.

Because all of us are always playing that crazy game of catch up.

Otherwise known as life.