As the Lady From Joisey Said . . .

The Rape of Ganymede by Rubens

    “We think we know everything. We don’t know shit.” The name of the play escapes me, as does the plot, but this line sticks with me, as does the image of the world-weary drag queen who delivers it.
    Growing up, I thought I was in the know. My brand of church taught that we had the inside track on salvation, knew exactly what God wanted. It was up to us to point out to others how wrong they were.
    My eyes opened when I came out gay in mid-life. I went from a desk job at a religious organization to biscuit maker at an interstate truck stop cafe on the early morning shift. One of my co-workers was a large imposing woman with a thick New Jersey accent. I loved her sense of humor and take on the world. I often told her so. “Aw, ain’t you sweet,” she’d say. “You want to know what I think? I think you’re full of shit.”
    I didn’t want to believe her. These twenty years later I begin to think she was spot on.
    Last month I wrote a short piece about the brevity of life, how everything changes and how quickly. How to manage in such a world, I wondered aloud, and concluded: “Live as fully alive and fully aware as possible. Choose love. And gratitude. Laugh often.”
    This on a Wednesday. 
    Thursday morning, my employer called me into his office to tell me he’s decided to change my job description. I’m to identify prospective customers and sell them on our services. “I know this has been a revolving-door position,” he said, noting the average tenure of marketing personnel at our company is three months—people get fired when sales quotas are not met. “I’ve decided this is what I want you to do.”
    Had my anxiety been rocket propellant, there’d be a big hole in his ceiling. I am no salesman. As a kid, I tried peddling magazine subscriptions, and in college, vitamins. I proved an abject failure on both counts. After college, armed with a communications degree and no job prospects, I went into telephone marketing. That career topped out at a week. My next position, also in sales, lasted four times as long: I sold popcorn and caramel apples out of a wagon at the Covered Bridge Festival in Parke County, Indiana. I haven’t looked back. Until now. My boss orders me to walk the plank. 
    What I wrote about living awake and aware, embracing what is? Ehhhnhh.
    When change stares me in the face, I notice I sing a different tune. I go all queasy—and with good reason.
    It has to do with the story I heard Saturday at graduation open house for a friend who just earned her Ph.D. in psychology. As we ate out on the deck, we heard the neighbors’ chickens. Erin told us they’re being picked off one by one. Coyote? Hawk? Conversation turned to a YouTube video she’s seen: a family sets their baby bunny free to live in the great outdoors. Hop, hop, hop. As Dad videotapes its first steps toward freedom, a hawk swoops down and carries off the little rabbit squealing.
    “Run, run, be free!” said Erin, gesturing wildly. “Then wham-o!” A bunch of us laughed.
    “That’s not funny,” said her mother-in-law, who finished chemotherapy two weeks ago.
    “I’m sure it wasn’t funny at the time,” Erin said. “But isn’t that life? It’s what happens.”
    Indeed, life pulls no punches. A bald-headed woman. Bunny nuggets. Me a salesman. Everything changes in an instant and it’s not funny. It’s tragic—except that it’s also somehow comical.
    We traipse through life thinking we know the score.
    “We don’t know shit,” says the drag queen, kneeling at her friend’s grave. She carries her purse over one arm, in the other, a toilet seat lid.

I Did. I Almost Did. I Do.

    Did I grow up hearing the word “gay” mostly on Saturday mornings while watching cartoons as in,

    When you're with the Flintstones
    Have a yabba-dabba-doo time
    A dabba_doo time
    You'll have a gay old time

and notice a gay old time week in and week out involved a grown man getting locked out of his own house and hammering at the door to be let back in?

    I did.

    Did I make my way through the world compliant and quiet, the middle child, a people-pleaser who valued appearances because they helped keep the peace and make folks happy?

    I did.

    Did I embrace the Bible thumping tenets of my family with a fervor all my own, label my same-sex attraction sinful temptation fanned by the flames of hell, plead with God to remove from me the stubborn desire to lust after other boys, promise to read my Bible two hours every day, never backtalk my mother and become a missionary when I grew up, if only I could be cured?

    I did.

    Did I hear whispered that homosexuals are monsters, child molesters with horns and red eyes who lisp and can’t hit a baseball, and know for a fact I wasn’t one of those even though the part about the baseball fit?

    I did.

    Did I lean on my reputation as the shy studious type to avoid dating women in high school and college as much as possible?

    I did.

    Did I learn to live in my body as in a house divided, keep at arm’s length the despicable part of me that lusted after men, assure myself this wasn’t the real me, and succeed so well that as a college senior I could find excuses to bathe whenever our floor’s resident Greek god padded his way down the hall to the group showers wrapped only in a towel, and envy the towel, yet banish from consciousness the idea I might be gay?

    I did.

    Did I marry a hard-headed woman in the sincere belief I was doing what was right, honorable and holy, and in the hope she would save me from myself only to learn she did not have the power to change me?

    I did.

    Did I become father to three sons, change diapers, read stories, play Robin Hood, sing songs, make funny voices and discover that parenthood, while demanding, did not lessen my attraction to men nor its accompanying self-hatred?

    I did.

    Did I finally devise a way to kill myself and test it on several small animals to make sure it worked?

    I did.

    Did I successfully use it on myself?

    No. I almost did. Although I peered into the void, I did not follow through with my planned suicide. After I composed my final farewell, I made a small choice for life, postponed my death for an hour, then a day, a week. (At such times grace may be measured in minutes.)

    Even as I believed hope was gone and all was finished, a whole new world was waiting to be born—a world I had never dared imagine, never heard described in positive terms, never believed would receive, bless and nurture the likes of me. A world in which I am acceptable as I am, loved without having to change, remake or undo myself. Nowadays I often see it reflected in my gay friends and chosen family, in our shared laughter, warm embraces, genuine regard.

    Here’s the thing: this world had been there all along. It had been and was and is within me. Within each one of us.

    The path is uncharted, the way perilous, the door hidden, the night dark. Yet life endures. Life cloaks itself even in catastrophe, calls to us ever and anon, in tones loud and soft.

    May we with courage listen, respond, reach deep, take hold the key, unlock and prise open the door, step into all that awaits us there.

    Did I commit myself to such action, to shaking myself awake and having a go at it over and again?

    I did. I do.




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Illustration credit: Spooky Dad, at flickr

STOP IN THE NAME OF LOVE

 Even in rural Indiana, traffic can be crazy. On our trip into town yesterday, at two separate intersections my husband and I watched dumbfounded as an approaching driver ran the stop sign. One vehicle we could have broadsided had we wanted to. I wanted to. We had already sidled up to the bright red octagon, come to a complete halt. Our turn to go when a man in a gray sludgebuster coming from our right slowed and drove right on through, right in front of us. I wanted to ram him. Good thing Dave was at the wheel.

 Me, I was wielding the December issue of The Sun, a favorite literary magazine. I often read aloud when I’m riding. A few hundred yards back I'd finished a brief piece by Thomas Schritz recounting an experience he had while waiting at a red light in Los Angeles. He watched a man who appeared to have palsy attempt to cross a busy six-lane freeway. As the man stepped out into the crosswalk Schritz thought to himself, he’ll never make it in time. He was right. The light turned green when the man was only a third of the way across. A nearby police cruiser sounded its siren and pulled into the intersection, lights flashing. Schritz grew angry as he waited for the officer to give the man a ticket. “The Los Angeles police are not known for being overly friendly,” he writes. He was surprised when the officer simply blocked all traffic until the man made his way safely to the other side.

 My voice had caught in my throat. I’d choked up. Dave had glanced over. “What?”

 “Sometimes we all need help making it to the other side,” I’d said.

 “You’re right. You and me, both. And Joe, for instance.”

 Joe entered our life quite recently when he mustered up the courage to call the phone number his therapist had given him. “This is the contact information for a gay couple who may be able to offer you some support,” she’d told him. We’d been cued in that he might ring.

 A denizen of small-town Indiana, Joe is in the early throes of coming out to himself in mid-marriage, midlife, mid-air. He feels like he’s falling, not sure what to do, where to turn, how to find his way. Not sure he’ll survive.

 Over 15 years ago, Dave and I found ourselves in similar straits. More than 15 years later we are still grateful to the people who extended a helping hand, warm welcome, listening ear. We too came out in midlife. We too wrestled with how to tell our wives, children, parents, siblings and society the truth we were discovering about ourselves.

 There is no easy road, no one right way to exit the closet. And there are no guarantees. Not everyone makes it. Most everyone hits hard times somewhere along the way. Joe tells us he feels lonely, depressed, afraid. Feels sad, scared, foolish. Feels like a teenager. Feels like an old man. Feels hopeful one minute, then despondent for days.

 “It’s all a part of it,” I tell him. “It’s natural to feel a wide—and wild—mix of emotions. How could you not? Everything is changing for you right now. It’s an unusual time, a remarkable opportunity. How many people have their world upended and get to recreate their lives half-way through? These days hold great peril and also great potential.”

 We’ve met with Joe a few times. We’re going out for pizza together tonight. We look forward to staying in touch, offering him the kind of support we received as we took our first faltering steps into new life. Simple kindnesses, really. Stop, look, listen. Bear witness. Offer encouragement, pointers and warm regard.

 After all, the traffic is crazy out there. The lights change quickly. We all need help making it to the other side.

This essay appeared in the February issue of The Community Letter