Sootprints in fnow

Kevin Payravi, Wikimedia Commons

    We live so much of our lives without telling anyone. But not when we walk through a snowy landscape.

Several inches of new snow fell last night and I’m taking advantage of the afternoon light to traipse amongst the trees. I can see by the deer's cloven hoof prints the place it leaped the fence. There’s the rabbit’s dash-dash-dot and the raccoon's little paw print. Here a mouse scrimshandered a thin line atop the snow, then tunneled down under. (Such a little creature to face the great winter.) The squirrel's bounding trail of double dots connects one tree to another, then explodes in a mess of dirt and torn-up earth where it retrieved a buried nut from the frozen ground. Great galumphing footprints behind me testify to my own passage through this little piece of the world.

Traces of my presence—and yours—are not always so visible as footprints in snow, though they may linger after we’ve passed.

Recently my husband Dave and I watched the 1970 film "The Boys in the Band.” We'd heard of it but never seen it on stage or screen. The show opened Off-Broadway in 1968. Says playwright Tony Kushner of Angels in America fame, “...it certainly started a new era in American drama, and was an immense contribution in American literature because it’s so unapologetically gay.”

The action centers around nine men at a birthday party. It's funny, sad and suspenseful all at the same time. The friends trade vicious cut-downs almost as a matter of course. This put me off on a first viewing. Why must they be so negative towards themselves and each other? I've watched it four more times, however, and come to appreciate its humor, heart and snapshot of pre-Stonewall gay life.

In one scene the embittered Michael confronts his college roommate about the latter's reaction to a mutual friend’s coming out.

 “You couldn’t take it, so you destroyed the friendship and your friend along with it,” Michael says. "To this day he remembers the treatment and scars he got from you."

This line sticks with me. Even today, the coming out process for many LGBT people is fraught with peril and littered with former friendships. This was true of my experience. My life has been shaped by a society that had no place—no word, even—for someone like me. I carry the scars of my late parents' eventual and lukewarm tolerance of me. They were unable to fully embrace me as their son once they learned I am gay.

Yet others trail healing in their wake. When I came out at 35 my grandmother was 90 years old and the one person in my family of origin who accepted me without reservation. My mind goes to this scene:  Dave and I sit with Grandma in the church she's attended for nearly 60 years. The pews and paneling are of ash; the aisles carpeted in red with tiny flecks of black. Frosted glass windows discourage daydreaming. Today is Communion Sunday. Grandma learns Dave and I will not be offered the sacrament. Incensed, this little white-haired lady puts away her usual smile and marches up the center aisle, leading Dave and me out of the building.

This memory of my grandmother’s show of support nurtures and sustains me years after her death. As she well knew, people do not remember what you do or say, so much as they remember how you make them feel. Grandma made me feel like a million bucks. No, she made me feel loved.

Love. Such a little thing to arm ourselves with as we face the great cold. And best shared with another—person, animal, plant, planet. For no matter how many our footsteps upon the earth, our trail is soon ended. A few generations pass; the snow melts and all trace of us is gone.

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.

ST. JOHN IS A CREEP

He's a bit creepy, Ian Bannen, in his role in the 1970 TV movie “Jane Eyre.” He plays St. John Rivers, a solemn young clergyman pledged to be a missionary to India. He's cute enough, mixing little boy sincerity with raven-haired adult resolve. But he's got this religious thing going on. That, and an inflated ego or a bent view of God’s demands. Probably both. I recognize too much of my former self in him to think otherwise. Bannen plays the role I once lived: Good Boy/Good Church Boy/Little Mr. Please-Everyone-Else-Especially-God. 

Creepy.

I had to be good and better than good to make up for a deep-rooted inner sense that I was sick, would never measure up, was deep-down worthless. I didn't have a word for the type of person I was, didn't want to know the word. Knew it was bad. Knew I was bad. Knew I was dirty and shameful and rotten to the core. I didn't want to look too closely into the pit at the center of my psyche. But I knew always it was there. I tried to fill in the hole with religion.

I see all this in the St. John character on the mini-silver screen. My husband Dave and I look at each other across the popcorn bowl. "Repressed gay man," he says. I agree. 

St. John (Brits pronounce it SIN-jun) lives with his two younger sisters who encourage his developing interest in their house guest Jane Eyre. When he at last gets alone with Jane, St. John leads her to the village church where he preaches each Sunday. 

"I want to serve in a large way," he tells Jane. "I have to serve my Savior. I have to serve my Savior." He sounds earnest, serious, sober, intense. "Do you understand? I shall do it with all my power and with all my strength."

He's trying too hard. I can relate. He wants to find a hard-headed woman to accompany him on life's journey. He’s set his sights on Jane, not because he's in love with her, but because she's strong and determined. She has character resources he needs.

"Don't you see?,” St. John says. “God sent you here for a purpose, to join with me in this great work…. Marry me. Together our strength will more than double what we each have. And we’ll give it all to God.”

Damn.

This is me proposing marriage to the woman who became my wife. Although I didn’t understand it at the time, I wanted her to save me from myself, be my ticket into heaven, my rock and my salvation. Later in our marriage I wrote her this note: “In some way I don’t understand, you have saved me—from myself—and I love you for it.”

I was way off base expecting someone else to save me. Never a good idea. I put my wife on a pedestal, myself in the dirt. I had to serve her—she was my savior. I resented her for this, and it was my own doing. I disempowered myself and sabotaged our relationship. 

In the movie, Jane Eyre has the sense to turn her back on St. John and his proposal. But he catches her, spins her ‘round, pulls her to himself. 

"Say yes, Jane, say yes. I need you as I've never needed anyone. Help me. Help me. Help me. Give me your strength as well, for I neeeeeeeed it.”

He has never been more creepy. I shudder to hear my past self in him. Funny how an evening’s entertainment can reach out and bite.

Yet I console myself with this: I was desperate, yes. I was flailing, yes. I was stupid, misguided and all the rest. But I was reaching for life as best I knew how. Perhaps this ultimately was my salvation.

This essay appeared in the January 20123 issue of The Community Letter

BLOW, GABRIEL, BLOW!

And this month the world comes crashing to an end. Or maybe not. But our nation is prone to doomsday fervor and our society does have a morbid fascination with fiery endings. How else to explain the traction the fictitious planet Nibiru has gained in some quarters? From what I read, this mystery planet supposedly will materialize (perhaps bolt out from behind the sun) and smash into the earth on December 21, a date that figures on the ancient Mayan calendar as the end of a long cycle of calendar time. Perhaps the end of time itself. Bye bye, birdie.

Such claims pique my interest much more than they poke my anxieties. I find people endlessly fascinating, and inexhaustible the number of things we get worked up about. (Please note, the things I get worked up about are no laughing matter: rigged voting machines, rabid raccoons, nylon socks.) Perhaps I can feel at peace facing the apocalypse for having already lived through my fair share of predicted doomsdays, and finding myself none the worse for wear.

Before I came out as a gay man, I regularly attended a local United Methodist Church whose pastor was quite convinced the end of the world was at hand. This I found unnerving. He had a fiery preaching style, worked himself into a sweat most Sunday mornings railing against abortion and homo-SEX-uality. 

He was certain the Judgment Day would arrive within the next year or two, before 1993, and he preached it. Listening to his sincere and heartfelt warnings week after week, repeated rapid-fire at about the same decibel level as a low-lying helicopter, I began to wonder if maybe he wasn't onto something. He sounded so sure of himself. At the time, sincerity and self-confidence carried a lot of pull with me. 

During the lengthy Sunday services my wife and I were using Cheerios, board books and little toy cars to keep our three young sons quiet. I began to wonder if I'd get to see them graduate high school before the end of all things.

That I should have been projecting so far into the future now seems poignant. High school graduation? As it turns out, I never saw them enter first grade.

The calendar turned once, twice, and our pastor scratched his head wondering aloud how he could have been mistaken. “I was so sure,” he said.

From outside the church came dire warnings about January 1, 2000. Remember those? According to some predictions, the Y2K computer glitch would have airplanes dropping like flies from the sky. Some folks dug in, built bunkers, stockpiled food and guns. Not me. I drove into town on the day before the chaos was to be unleashed, withdrew $20 and bought a four-pack of toilet paper. 

You see, by that time, the world had already ended for me. And I had learned the secret that in every ending there is a beginning. In 1995, in the middle of my life, I’d come out to myself and others as a gay man. This marked the end the world as I’d known it. End of my marriage. End of being counted father to my children. End of my job. End of friendships, family relationships, church membership. End of massive amounts of personal energy being funneled into repression, suppression and denial.

In this ending was a beginning. New life, a world of possibilities, different eyes through which to see. 

We lgbt people who have come out, who in so doing have rocked our worlds to their very core, who have lived to tell the tale, we have this message, this mystery, to offer the rest of society—or did some angel beat us to the punch?—“Fear not, neither be afraid. For I bring you glad tidings of great joy that shall be to all people.” Life is born in darkness. From the end of all things, the beginning of wonder.

This essay appeared in the December issue of The Community Letter. Photo courtesy WikkiCommons