Fizzle.

Up, up, up! Here we go, come on, up, okay, yes, there it goes off on its own, will ya look at that, yeeeee-hah... wait a minute.

And the ship arcs gracefully away, and the solid rocket booster is at first perplexed and then increasingly alarmed to find itself sputtering, veering, and finally plunging back down to earth, spent.

But wait, it whispers on traces of hydrogen breath, the friction of the upper atmosphere introducing it to aches and pains it never noticed before, is that it? That can't be it. I wanted to go with him a little farther. Uh, hello?

Whoomp, flash, pop, splash.

I am bobbing in the ocean now, parachute silks draped over my head, waiting for the boat to come along and fish me out and point me to whatever is supposed to come next, hoping something will light the fire again, wondering what can overcome my current waterlogged state. That was the last shuttle.

What now?

When I Walk Down the Aisle, Baby, Play Me that Imperial March

The cognitive dissonance, it burns.















Should we just adopt this as the new pride symbol? It has
enough radii for G and L and B and T and Q and I, after all.

Darth Cheney popped the mask off for a moment yesterday and said something that sounded almost human.

If you don't want to listen to the voice, which I fully understand, this is what he said:

""I think that freedom means freedom for everyone," Cheney replied. "As many of you know, one of my daughters is gay, and it is something we have lived with for a long time in our family.

"I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish -- any kind of arrangement they wish,'' Cheney said. "The question of whether or not there ought to be a federal statute to protect this, I don't support. I do believe that, historically, the way marriage has been regulated is at the state level. It has always been a state issue, and I think that is the way it ought to be handled, on a state-by-state basis...

"But I don't have any problem with that,'' he said of the same-sex marriages that most of the states in New England, Iowa and the District of Columbia have authorized. "People ought to get a shot at that."

Huh. I can't wait to hear Jabba's Limbaugh's reaction. Will he dare try yanking Cheney back into line? As much as I loathe Dick Cheney, I tip my well-worn cap in his direction for being a father first when it comes to this issue, and am gratified for this very visible proof that knowing and loving a gay person goes a long way toward believing that we all might deserve equal rights.

In Which We Blow Our Cover as a Hip Observer of the Human Condition

Jaysis. The war, the constitutional shenanigans, the attorney firings, the daily doses of anti-gay crap flung from the right--all these chap my ass, as you may have noticed. What has me near the snapping point this week? The mundane minutiae of middle class semi-urban motherhood. Which no amount of biking down to Epic Cafe for a cup of hipster coffee while posing as a too-cool happenin' dyke can dilute.

The boy sustained a knee injury in a soccer game back at the end of April, finally diagnosed as a bone bruise only this week after prodding by a couple of docs, x-rays, and an MRI. We were initially looking at an ACL tear, which would have sucked major, major ass, so this was good news. It still means excruciating pain, however--the periosteum around the entire lateral epicondyle was crushed, resulting in pooling blood in the joint--so I have to drag him through rehab stints on a stationary bike and in the weight room. I've been in that position myself three times before, twice recovering from having each meniscus scoped and once from a dandy bone bruise of my own, so I fully understand the difficulty of working through sharp pain and, worse, disconcerting catches, pops, and cracks as scar tissue breaks up and muscles that had the temerity to atrophy in only a week or two are coaxed back into stretching and working.

Naturally, tryouts for next season happened last week, so he watched from the sideline. I have known the coach for a couple of years and got his assurance that the boy would get to stay with the team, and despite this man never having given me reason to doubt his word, I will still not be able to relax until I see the boy out there at full speed, playing time uncompromised. Oh, I'm not a psycho soccer parent who is convinced the sun rises and sets in her kid's cleats. You'll rarely hear me say anything at a game other than woohoo. The boy is a solid middle-of-the-pack player on an upper level team. He isn't superstar material and has never been interested in being one, preferring a low-key approach of playing, contributing, taking out the occasional shit-talking opponent, and having fun doing it. I have seen too many kids in youth soccer get screwed out of something they enjoy, though, either by unscrupulous coaches or hard-luck injuries that set them back into more catch-up time than the team is willing to accomodate. I simply don't want my son to be one of those kids who has to stop playing before he wants to, and I want his knee to stop hurting him now.

The boy is fine through it all, of course. If there's a gene for rolling with the flow, he must have inherited it from my maternal grandfather. I'm still waiting for that particular protein switch to get thrown to the "on" position in my own DNA. God forbid anything really bad ever happens to him; watching and pushing him through this painful process rips at me. How the parents of boys coming home from Iraq missing entire parts of their bodies keep a happy face on for their sons is beyond me.

So with that little dose of perspective, which truly should be enough to keep from complaining about anything again ever ever ever, I acknowledge that my personal shit really doesn't merit a blip on the radar of the universe. Be that as it may, my shit is still my own. It's finals week at the boy's high school, so the daily schedule is completely out the window, meaning I've only gotten to the gym twice, and when I'm there I can't do as much lifting as I would like because my twice-partially-separated shoulder has decided to celebrate its looming 40th birthday with full-blown arthritis, which does actually hurt as much as the Celebrex commercials say, and the girlfriend's daughter graduates this weekend, meaning 50+ people are descending on the house Saturday night, which will be fun, but where are all the fucking folding chairs and where did all this dog shit come from, and oh yeah, I'm spending June in Chicago, which means I have exactly two weeks to finish work projects that are due while I'm gone and two weeks to... save money for the trip? Shite.

Video Space-filler

Sunday was spent tending my injured athlete son, doomed like... well, the literary reference escapes me at the moment, but doomed like the literary character who unwillingly plays out his destined role in carrying the family curse. You know, that one guy? Yeah, him. In this case the curse is soccer-shredded knees, and also in this case, I am tired.

Anyway. Yesterday's rehab activities, between bouts of ice, ace bandage wrapping, and fetching pizza rolls and ice cream, mainly involved sitting and watching Planet Earth on the Discovery Channel. The bird of paradise courtship displays are very impressive.



Even cooler was footage of a bunch of otters messing with a crocodile, but I can't seem to track down that video. And somewhere in Africa there are tiny wild pigs the size of rabbits. And great white sharks can jump completely out of the water while eating seals. And caribou have winter hair that is hollow, providing excellent insulation.

Much was learned.

Ouch

Oh, the pain of parenthood. The Boy played in an essentially meaningless tournament this weekend, one his team entered mainly as an end-of-season exercise to stay sharp for the high school tryouts that start tonight. They cruised through the first two rounds, and then went to championship match against a team they'd dismantled 6-0 the night before. Naturally, that game went through regulation and two overtimes as a tie and came down to the dreaded Kicks From The Mark. The first four kicks put The Boy's team up 4-3. The fifth opponent scored, tying it. The fifth kicker from The Boy's team missed, meaning the remaining kicks would be sudden death. The opponent's sixth shot scored, meaning The Boy's team's sixth kicker had to score or they lost. The Boy was the sixth kicker... and the keeper saved his shot, sending The Boy to the ground in tears and The Boy's mom holding her head and thinking, oh no, what the hell do I do now?

None of the usual platitudes (if the entire team had played better it never would have come to penalties, if your fifth man had scored you would have won, it's not your fault) matter when you're the one who stepped up as your team's last hope and put the ball into the keeper's hands instead of into the back of the net.

He is 14, tall and hairy. The moments reminding me that he's still a little boy in some ways get more and more poignant the older he gets.

Sigh. Where's that magic wand or whatever it was I had years ago that could make bad things disappear in a poof of giggles?

Anecdotal Evidence

It's the best I can do in response to the Senate criminalizing the act of transporting a minor girl across state lines to obtain an abortion, if said transportation is intended to circumvent the girl's home state laws requiring parental notification or consent. Fortunately for me, I don't have direct experience in this arena, only secondhad accounts from friends and scenarios conjured from What If Land for myself.

The bill's proponents argue the law would prevent girls from being exploited by older boyfriends coercing them into abortions they really don't want. They argue the absence of such a law actually helps child molestors and incestuous fathers because it somehow "destroys the evidence" of a crime, as if compelling a young girl to carry her father's baby to term and then deliver it so it can become Exhibit A in family court isn't a crime itself.

The rest of us in the Reality Based Community worry about girls being disowned, physically abused, emotionally abused, or perhaps killed by angry parents learning that their prized virgin is no longer pure, the sad story of Spring Adams the worst case in point. We wonder why a non-parental relative, say a grandmother or aunt or big sister, should face jail time for making the courageous decision to help a loved one in an impossible position.

But we also understand that it's not just the "at-risk" girls who are threatened by this legislation. Even those of us who were and are fortunate enough to have an open, trusting relationship with our parents may not have felt at liberty to tell our parents about an unplanned pregnancy. I sure as hell couldn't have. Not out of any fear of violence at my father's hands, but at the worse fate--in my teenaged perception--of his disappointment, the shame of knowing I'd let him down, the shame of my parents knowing exactly what I'd done to end up in that state.

Again, a situation that existed for me, luckily, only in my nightmares. I didn't get pregnant in high school. Hell, I didn't even kiss a guy more than twice, if memory serves. College was a slightly different story, with more than a handful of late periods, dread-filled walks to the Osco farther from campus where I'd be less likely to run into a dorm-mate while carrying my EPT to the checkout stand.

Some of my friends got pregnant at one point or another down the line, before they wanted to. One was impregnated by a 22-year-old when she was 14. Her mother took her for the abortion and then dropped her off at the boyfriend's house because she (the mother) couldn't stand to look at my friend any more. Another got knocked up around 16, by a guy roughly the same age. Her mother paid for the abortion but allowed her to come back home.

My own mother got her little surprise midway through her freshman year in college, and, since it was 1967, ended up married to my dad (hi, folks!) a month later. Abortion wasn't an option then, although they stayed married long enough, I learned later, to create another unwanted pregancy. This one came post-Roe v. Wade, though, and was quickly terminated.

Perhaps oddly, I don't have any sense of relief that I was conceived in the dark ages when the only recourse to a missed period in small-town southern Illinois was a hasty wedding. Her parents were furious. They were rather conservative Methodists who never liked my dad, a rowdy Catholic boy with a reputation for getting into fights, stealing beer, and other mayhem. They had planned to send my mother to France to study piano. Instead, my parents got married (in the Catholic church, at my dad's parents' insistence), and stuck it out 8 years before discovering they'd grown up into vastly different people who had no business being married to each other.

Had it happened five years later, I most likely wouldn't be typing this. They most likely would have marched in straightaway for the abortion, considering that they were both in their first year of college, they most likely wouldn't have married, saving them both a world of grief, and they sure as hell wouldn't have told either of their parental units, saving them both years of approbation. Of course, I wouldn't exist, but I also wouldn't have known the difference, so it's a fair cop. I don't breathe a sigh of relief over that any more than I mourn the loss of the embryo-sibling I never had. Quite simply, I understanf that they were faced with difficult situations and made the best choices available to them at the time.

All girls should be able to make that best choice for themselves, with the counsel of their choosing. Ideally it's a trusted adult, but you gotta work with what you have. Involve your parents if you feel that is the safest choice for you, or involve your aunt or your best friend's mom or buy a Greyhound ticket on your own if that is your only safe option. No one can dictate from a distance what that option will be.

Personal Independence Day

The coming-out process was drawn out over several months and long stretches of interstate. I don't recall exactly when it started in earnest, the precise date in January 2000 when I told the man I was married to that it was over because I was gay... His reaction, understandably, incorporated a very large dose of "You couldn't have figured this out 15 years ago?" Sorry, man. Still. That big one was followed by tentative conversations with friends, inward cringes as I awaited bad reactions that never came, and, fairly quickly, dread was replaced with bemusement as friend after friend said words to the effect of, yeah, I knew that already, so what's your news?

Emboldened, I approached my mom. She was fine with it, not very surprised, pleased I'd figured it out, hopeful it would give me some peace.

Batting a thousand, I figured Dad would be a piece of cake. We'd become quite close during my college years and after, happily transitioning from father-child to a more mature partners-in-crime sort of relationship spiked with random moments of him harrumphingly reasserting his position of fatherly authority. I figured coming out to him would be not much different from him, years before, mustering the courage to tell me that his second marriage had failed. I had clinked my bottle of Moosehead against his and said, "'Here's to ya." (note: that's how he proudly remembers it, so I let the fuzzy reinterpretation of history stand; it makes a better story anyway) I expected a blink or two, a toast to my happiness, and then moving on to whatever the next thing was we wanted to talk about. We were sitting in front of his fireplace. He had just finished telling me that I had been the perfect child for him. I seized the carp and asked if he'd still think that if I came home with a woman next time instead of with a man.

Mmmmmm, major miscalculation there.

Dad wasn't happy. Are you sure? Why are you sure? Are you sure it's not just [the girl]? Don't you think if you found the right man, say someone like me or your uncle, you'd go back to men?

And, of course, the biggest question: How will you decide who mows the lawn?

It was bad.

That was February 2000. I moved on at something of a distance from him, beginning the inexorable separation that continues to this day. Spring came and went; I planted flowers and tomatoes in the yard, played with my son, hung with friends, dallied very long-distance with a woman, endured the occasional phoned-in admonition from Dad that my body was sacred and moving from relationship to relationship was unhealthy. I'm still not sure where that came from, since I hadn't actually had sex with anyone, let alone an actual girlfriend, since my divorce. Maybe it was the Straight Man's Imagination run wild about an unattached lesbian in a city full of women; somehow I don't think my single brothers got the same kinds of calls. Meanwhile, the boy frolicked around on the cusp of eight, getting used to his parents living in houses a few doors down the street from each other.

July 4, 2000, I took him down to Barrio Libre so we could get an up-close view of the fireworks shot from A Mountain (A as in Arizona, for the non-natives). The James Dale Boy Scout thing had just hit the Supreme Court, and the local council had just sent out a particularly nasty mailer to all the Scout families decrying the Homosexual Attack On Scouting... we talked about that a little, and I told him the Scouts didn't think gay people could be leaders or good role models. I asked what he thought about it, and he said he didn't think it was fair just because a guy loved another guy. I took a deep breath and asked what he'd think if he found out I was one of those gay people. He looked at me and asked, "Are you?" Sigh. Yes, I said, I am. He thought about it for a splittest of seconds and then said, "But you're still a good person, right?" Yeah, I said, I try to be. "That's all that matters," he said.

Then he sat back on my knee and we went back to watching the stars explode overhead.

Today we're watching the World Cup game with his dad before the boy heads off to hang with his friends. He'll watch the fireworks with them tonight, a confident kid on the cusp of 14 who still tells me "I love you" every night when I tuck him in.

Maybe I'll climb up on the roof tonight to watch a few stars explode, remembering the night six years ago when I had the one coming out that mattered.

Kiddie Flashback

Memories popping up out of nowhere. 1976, nine years old, reading The Hobbit for the first time. I get inspired to draw a picture of Bilbo and take it to show my step-father, the big Tolkein fan who lent me the book in the first place. He glances at it and points out some rather major flaws--for one thing, I've put shoes on the hobbit--and goes back to whatever it was he was doing. I go back to my room and tear the picture into little pieces and throw them away. Some time later, maybe the same year, maybe not, I'm in my dad's office, drawing again. I produce what I think is the best german shepherd profile I've yet drawn and show it to my dad. He says it looks more like a bear than a dog, takes a pencil, sketches out a properly elongated muzzle. I take the picture back and, when he's out of the room, tear it up and hide it in the bottom of the trash can.

My mom? She usually thought anything I did was golden. I wish I could remember that as easily as the unexpected criticisms.

Salvation in a Gig Bag

Flailing about for a topic today. I could write about how odd I find it to still be amazed that I'm actually using the stuff I learned in freshman algebra in my work. Thank you, Sister Jeanne Clennon, wherever you are. I hated algebra but got decent grades in it. My main memory of that class is Sr. Jeanne threatening to collect money from the boys who misbehaved to send to the Holy Cross missions in Bengal. She was an okay nun, kinda old even then but pleasant enough. The last time I saw her was when I bumped into her walking along the train tracks that led from St. Mary's College past the backside of our high school, a couple years after I had graduated. Nuns never seem to change very much.

Or I could write about the whirlwind of growing-up ceremonies my son sailed through last weekend as he exited eighth grade and promptly sprouted whiskers. He picked up a couple of awards and a token scholarship, was offered a roster spot on the club soccer team he's been wanting to play for, and hopped on the bus for his class trip to Disneyland, which he paid for out of his referee earnings. He's somehow managed to grow into an independent, responsible young man-child despite (as his grandfather never ceases to remind me) the huge--huge!--disadvantage of having a lesbian mother and living half time at the lesbo lodge with mother and said mother's girlfriend, who is also--also!--a big bad lesbian. The girlfriend's kid earned a slew of year-end high school awards of her own following a year of AP classes and straight A report cards. Despite being raised by dykes. Maybe Jesus is interceding and raising the kids without us knowing; I can think of no other rational explanation for their good grades, fine characters, and sarcastic senses of humor.

I could write about AG Gonzales threatening to charge reporters with espionage. I could write about the New York Times apparently running so low on salient news that a front-page expose on the Clintons' marriage made sense. I could write about John McCain getting his ass handed to him by the students of the New School during his ill-advised commencement address.

Unfortunately, my attention is elsewhere. I am partially in a sulk, since the girlfriend and her kid are off on a college visit to Notre Dame (!) and left me at home with the dogs and tomato plants. But--BUT--I can almost forget about that due to a certain brand new bitchin' little baby guitar waiting for me, snuggled into its bombproof gig bag, in the back bedroom. The Little Martin LX, a 3/4-size acoustic designed to be shoved into overhead bins or stuffed into the trunk, but with a rich, near-full-sized tone that belies its HPL (!) construction. Oh, what a sweet sound from such a little critter with not much actual wood in it.

I first ventured into the world of stringed instruments a couple years ago, trading an old trombone for a Laurel electric bass. Fun, fun! I was always leery of trying the guitar, though; a lifetime of playing horns had left me afraid that all those strings and fingers flying around were counter-intuitive and would be impossible to crack. But then I picked up the Little Martin and found that it's actually pretty intuitive after all, and was able to splat out some Dandy Warhols chords in no time without much trouble.

Ain't it just the cutest thing?

Wedding Season

Spring's upon us, meaning the hetero wedding season is in full swing. Not the weddings themselves--goodness, it's not June yet--but the planning is certainly churning all across the land. I was married to a guy for a while, back in a former life that seems more like three or four lifetimes away. We were young and I was apparently a little clueless about who I really was. Not much harm came of it, no permanent injuries, anyway, and I got a magnificent son out of the deal, so on balance it was well worth the 14 years or so of life invested therein.

The ex is getting hitched in June, officially joined in a state-sanctioned union to a nice woman. I'm sure they'll be very happy together, and I'm hoping their signatures on the marriage license will somehow translate to my own karmic tab being stamped Paid In Full by the end of the reception.

I'm dreading it. Not out of any simmering jealousy, of course, nor doubt that getting out of that marriage was anything less than a necessity or foregone conclusion. Maybe it's because, despite the fact that I will attend with my partner of five-plus years, that we will depart for said wedding from a house we bought together and whose mortgage papers have both our names and sets of initials all over them, well, the ex is the one getting the party, the joint filing on the 1040EZ next year, the thousand or so federally recognized rights, and the general societal recognition and approbation.

I wonder if it should bother me this much. I wonder if my discomfort is really about the fundamental inequality the whole Wedding Weekend represents, or maybe some inner fear that the ex and his new wife (and her son) will be able to offer the kid a home and family life that is altogether more seamlessly integrated, comfortable, and appealing than what I've been able to offer him. I wish I didn't feel like I've failed him.