AIDS 1993

When I first saw his gaunt face—made to look more thin by his over-sized glasses—I walked away—skulked away really. Not too slowly. Our paths might intersect. Not too quickly. After all, it was a health food store with some duet for harp and piano was oozing out of the sound system; anyone moving at a pace above an inner-peace stroll would draw attention.
So I wandered with studied calm away from the organic produce and toward the dried pasta that was displayed in neatly ordered bins, all the while calculating his probable trajectory through the store. The store was small, with few places to go and even fewer ways to get there. It made watching him navigate the narrow aisles easy. I noticed his thin legs under heavy jeans.
He made his way slowly past the tomato sauces toward my pasta hide-away.  I moved away. Midway down an aisle that contained nothing I needed,  my better self caught up with me.
Where did you get off dodging him? You’re treating him as if he is a predator when what you’re really afraid of is the awkward silences that spring up between casual acquaintances when one of them will die soon and both of them know it.
I tried to reason with the disdainful voice in my head. Look, I am the woman who will hide behind towels at the mall to avoid old schoolmates. It’s just the way I am.
But this was not an old school chum. And lately I had become fixated with the things I regretted, the things I did not do or say when I had the chance. No. This would not be another sad scene I used to berate myself.
I squared my shoulders and returned to where I knew he was standing.
Was it really Gary? He was so thin. The flesh on his cheeks somehow managed to sag into deep folds while still revealing his skull too close to the surface, like death struggling to break free through the shell of life.
“Gary, how are you?”
“Oh. Hello,” he smiled, pausing briefly. “Do you know if they have that, you know, pragaforda,” he asked his voice trailing away as he surveyed the shelves in front of him.
I scowled briefly at the unfamiliar word, quickly understanding that it was gibberish. Dementia, I realized with a start, but my anxiety was squelched by his quick recovery.
“I mean bread crumbs. Do they have breadcrumbs? I don’t usually come here. I go to Friendly’s or Oasis,” he offered as if trying to explain his confusion.
“I live right down the street, so I come here all the time,” I offered in return. The blank air floated out in front of us for a few seconds before I continued, “I’m not sure, but they are probably back by the bread.”
“Oh, right. Hey, are you involved with that new magazine that’s been started.”
Gary had been one of our initial advertisers. He and I had talked a couple times a week in the beginning—just six months before. Now he had forgotten that I started the magazine, forgotten our relationship to each other.
Outwardly I smiled and nodded. “Yeah, I run it.”
“Oh, that’s right. It sure fills a need.”
I couldn’t help but wonder if he really did remember or if he had become adept at covering his gaps in memory.
“It’s going well and we enjoy ourselves most days,” I answered. It was the same line I fed to everyone who asked my about the magazine. An update without thought or attention, a way to fill the void while I examined his hands for signs of Karposi. The thick sweater over a bulky turtleneck revealed only claw thin hands jutting from the gaping sweater opening.
Without warning the conversation turned again.
“I’m sorry,” he yelped. “I’m supposed to be a pinwheel.”
Before I could answer, he had turned and walked out the door, gone. The ringing bell above the door, my only evidence that he had been there.

I Gotta Get Out of This Place

I don’t post to this blog enough.

I don’t post to this blog enough because I feel pressured to come up with fully developed, intelligent analysis of life as a butch dyke in America.

I start thinking about some aspect my life and I think, “Oh. I need to write about that.” And then I start breaking it down. Parsing it out. Wondering what other people have thought or written. Bogging down for days/months on end. Every point covered, every tangent explored. Such is the life of an academic, working or not

I am adding this blog to the list of things I do differently. Rather than long, thorough analysis, I am going to muddle through, pondering as I go, leaving more to chance, to argument.

If I do that, maybe I can be in a conversation. Because, what I want more than anything else in the hell that is the Midwest is a conversation.

Maybe in the midst of all my thoughtful, thorough analysis, I may have failed to make one thing clear: I absolutely abhor living here. Period.

No Marriage for Me, Thanks.

In the most recent round of the battle over gay marriage, I was once again tossed into a national debate and asked to play a role in a play I did not audition for.  A play that paints the picture of a world full of nice, attractive (but not too attractive) middle class gay and lesbian couples who are really, really good people with really, really happy children, but their really, really nice lives are so sadly inadequate because their relationships aren’t “legally recognized.” A play that assumes there is only one goal for gay men and lesbians in relation to marriage rights, and the only variable to consider is the level of intensity used in pursuing victory.

Therefore, I, along with tens of thousands of other queers, was expected not only to be interested in but support the campaign because of my sexuality. I felt like a friend of mine who every time she ran into a well-meaning aunt of mine would have to endure questions about the latest Jewish this or that. She is Jewish after all, doesn’t that mean she CARES about all things Jewish? Of course, she may care in the global sense of Jewishness, but in a whole bunch of cases, the events my aunt prodded her about were half a world away. They were unrelated to her life on the ground. Kind of how I feel about the gay marriage thing.

But with friends and family and all the good kind liberals cheering on “marriage equality,” I didn’t really see a non-asshole path to intervene. Rather than rain on loved ones’ marriage parade, I kept my mouth shut, complained in private.

But now that this election cycle’s battle is over, I would like to say for the record that I don’t want anything to do with marriage as it is currently defined. In fact, I would like the straight people I know to come out in opposition to marriage, period.

Why?
1)  A contract is a contract 100 percent.

Marriage is a property contract. No more. No less. If you want to stand up in front of your church or synagogue or ashram and pledge your undying devotion, go for it, but that should not be considered the equivalent of agreeing to a binding a property contract. Consenting adults who want to should be allowed to create a property contract, but it should be more complicated and involve MANY more hours of conversation and negotiation than applying for a license. Imagine how the divorce rate might go down if the two people seeking “marriage” had to talk through every single detail of their contract from whether the couches are now considered joint property to who will have the right to make end-of-life decisions.

2) Just because they have it, doesn’t mean it’s a good thing.

Why do we think that because the majority has something, we need it? It is entirely possible, and in most cases likely, that the golden ticket they are holding just out of reach is a fraud, full of false promises of respect and acceptance. We only need to look to women’s fight to attain “equality” in the workplace to see that true social transformation will come when we redefine the meaning of work, not when we succeed in fitting more workers into untenable conditions.

3) I don’t think assimilation is the key to acceptance.

Remember the Mattachine society? Probably not. They were nice, professional gay men in the ’50s who were determined to erase the image of the perverted homosexual, replacing it with the good, clean-living respectability. Among other things, they wanted the more “socially conscious homosexual” to provide leadership to the whole mass of social deviates. Niiiice. I prefer the Stonewall model: Drag queens and bull daggers taking to the streets, demanding to be accepted on their own terms. Note to all: Gay and lesbian people are not “just like” straight people any more than Jewish people are “just like” Catholic people. Our lived experiences are inherently different and those differences inform who we are. Does that mean we should have different laws? Hell, no. It means we should have laws that acknowledge and allow for those differences.

So, while I support 100% the right of ALL consenting adults to enter into a property contract and the right of all consenting adults to declare an emotional or religious contract in front of their loved ones, I do not support marriage as it is currently defined. In fact, I think we would all be a lot better off if ALL current marriages were declared invalid and couples were required to negotiate all of the details of their marriage contracts.

And just so no one gets the idea that I am supporting a windfall for attorneys, I am confident that a nation that can come up with financial aid forms, income tax forms and the current array of application forms requiring inordinate amounts of detail can come up with a standard property contract.

To Pee or Not to Pee

As if the average adult doesn’t have enough to worry about, consider the awkward, impersonal but strangely intimate space tucked away in most gathering spots, the public bathroom. They are the bane of my existence.

I, at first glance, look like the person in the women’s bathroom that your mother warned you about — a man. And a man in a women’s bathroom is, by definition, a threat.

As a result, when I enter a women’s bathroom, I expect to run into problems. Experience tells me that I will come face to face with another woman who will not recognize me as such, and she will respond accordingly, as if she is in danger. To avoid both scaring other women and being challenged on my gender, I go through all sorts of gyrations when visiting a restroom in public is unavoidable.

1) Decloak

First and foremost, I remove whatever outer clothing I have on that masks my breasts — coat, sweater, scarf, sweatshirt — you name it, it’s off.  I put my curves on display. You would think that being a 42C, I would be easy to code as female when the majority of barriers to boob visibility have been removed. But, it doesn’t seem to work that way. Somehow my short hair and masculine features erase my breasts.

Once while walking back to the car after a football game, my dad and I stopped the local Elks lodge to use the bathroom. It was an unseasonably warm fall day, and (out of character) I was wearing a form-fitting tank top so no de-cloaking required. Once in the door my dad and I split up, and I asked one of the club regulars, “Where’s the restroom?” “Down the stairs to the left,” he answered, smiling. I followed his instructions only to come face to face with my father entering the men’s restroom. A repeat of the question to another club member with the gender specified — “Which way to women’s restroom, please” — offered a new set of instructions. “Back up the stairs and to your right.” Three feet from my original location.

2) Avoid
If there is a choice, I avoid crowded bathrooms. We people are pretty much sheep, following the leader to the nearest thing that meets our need. Luckily for me, that means that there is usually some second-floor, around-the-corner, down-the-hall alternative bathroom that is virtually ignored. Of course, this technique doesn’t always work because other people are looking for hidden bathrooms, too.

The last time I climbed the stairs to use the “alternative” bathroom at a small regional airport, I walked in on a young woman in the middle of changing her clothes. It is one thing to think a man has walked in while you are washing your hands. It is an entirely other issue if “he” walks in when you are stripped down to your pretty little things. I didn’t even bother to point out that I had boobs and they were a lot bigger than hers. I just put up my hand to block my eyes and backed out.

3) Survey
At busy airports, malls and movie theaters, it is often difficult if not impossible to find a low-traffic bathroom. But with careful observation, I can usually get a read on who is going in and who is coming out. And with a little bit of math, I can guestimate how crowded the bathroom is and when I will most likely be able into a stall unseen. (Getting out again, is any entirely different problem.) At any rate, the survey method is, again, not foolproof.

Recently I made my way across the lobby of a theater toward what I had determined was a fairly empty bathroom, only to have a woman chase me down from 25 feet away. Determined to stop my imminent invasion, she wildly waved her arms. “Excuse me! Excuse me!” she yelled. “EXCUSE ME! You are going in the wrong bathroom!”

I’ll admit that on this one, I wasn’t as gracious as I usually am. My parents were standing to the side watching it all. I was embarrassed. Letting my ego get the better of me, I turned toward her slowly, looked her dead in the eye and in a  low voice, snarled. “No. I am NOT.”

As is usually the case, the timbre of my voice combined with a closer look at my body eradicated her confusion, and she stood sputtering an apology. In the cosmic balance of things, her teenage daughter was completely mortified and was certainly much more affected than either my parents or I.

4) Look Down
Every once in a while, there is no getting out of it. I have to go into a crowded bathroom and wait in line for a stall. The first step is simply to lower my head and get in the line, then I wait out the first round of recoiling and gasping as the others in line absorb the evidence that I am actually supposed to be there. Unfortunately, the person who joins the line after me, more often than not, is sure that she has discovered what no one else has. THERE IS A MAN IN HERE.

I have had women tap me on the shoulder in a line of ten women in an airport bathroom, step to the head of the line and block my way to the stall in a packed concert hall bathroom, tell the other women that there is “a problem” in a football stadium bathroom.

I don’t expect this to change much. And, honestly, I consider it my responsibility to figure out how not to scare women, no matter how much of a hassle it is. The only thing I would change is the line police. I find them perplexing. Do they think all those other women are dumb? Do they think a man wouldn’t recognize that all the other people in line were not like him? Do they not know that the first thing in a men’s bathroom is a urinal. Trust me. If a man walks into a woman’s bathroom by mistake, he knows it immediately.

Trading security for inspiration, salary for fulfillment

As in many parts of my life, the biggest struggle I am facing right now is a conflict between what I know is right for me and what the culture tells me I should be doing. On the one hand, there is my belief that we should love the life we live, which led to my decision to resign a lucrative faculty position that was sucking the life out of me, inspiring me to act like someone I didn’t recognize and generally leaving me feeling bereft. On the other hand, there is the prevailing logic that each of us should be shoving our way to the top of whatever ladder we have access to and the top of that ladder should offer “security” and benefits.

Until this past May, I had the luxury to claim both positions. As a journalism professor, I had a job where I could teach and write, both of which I love. As an person working for the state, I had health care and sick leave and was accruing retirement, not to mention maintaining a schedule that was almost entirely my own. The combination seemed perfect.

Some days, I could clearly see the life-changing power of journalism, and by being in the classroom, I felt as if I had the opportunity to help capture the lightning in a bottle that is undergraduates flinging themselves into the unknown in search of new knowledge.

I was inspired by fine examples of mainstream journalism like the San Jose Mercury News’ Frank’s Fight. And although, my geographic illiteracy left me perplexed by the Midwestern student body as a whole, I took found a wonderful enthusiasm in those journalism students who were determined to carve out a place in a shrinking workforce. Even if journalism and the academy were flawed, I told myself, when it all came down to it, I was making a difference by training people for a field that made a difference.

I believed I could walk the line, accepting the good and the bad. And then I didn’t. It was not specific negative events or experiences in the university environment that made me submit my letter of resignation, but rather the outcome of those experiences.  I didn’t like myself in my job. I could no longer meet the one standard that I believe is required of every teacher: Love the mind of the student as much as you love the subject you teach. So, when the only feelings I could consistently access about teaching journalism to college students were negative, it was time to go. As a good friend reminded me: “One soul. Lots of ways to pay the rent.”

It is worth acknowledging nonetheless that, soul or not, the rent remains and ideals don’t pay it. Months ago, when I submitted my letter of resignation, I was pretty flush. Now, as I struggle to build a freelance writing career, get a new business off the ground and find a path back to the West Coast, my confidence in my convictions is being put to the test.

I want to believe that if I set my intent, I will succeed, but then when I move my million-hits-a-year grammar Web site off the UO server where I haven’t taught in six years, the traffic plummets to fewer than a thousand hits a day and I struggle not to run looking for a day job. Eventually, I figure out what I did wrong, but not before the site has disappeared off the Google rankings map. (So much for my fantasies of an instant steady income from that decade of work.) Rather than panicking, I remind myself that the site climbed to No. 1 before, and it will again.  I just need to have faith.

The same kind of faith that I need to have in my teaching skills. I know from all of the awards and accolades that are still shoved in the box that I carried home from my faculty office, that I have valuable guidance to offer writers. I believe that my writing studio in the mountains will offer them the same respite and inspiration it offers me. But the economy is playing hell with dreams right now, and in the past six months, the prospects for building a “luxury” business have contracted. But I know that the answer does NOT lie in following the path of the economy by succumbing to limits and fear.

In reality, to choose fear would be the biggest failure of all. I did not leave the academy planning to become the most famous or the wealthiest writer and teacher in the world. (Now that would have been a bit nuts!) I left to find the path that brings me joy, that reminds me every day why I do art. Because, for me, that is what teaching and writing are, art.

I’ll admit it. The stakes are huge. For the first time since I was bumbling along from job to job in my twenties, I am without a parent company to house my career. It’s not just the salary and benefits that I decided to relinquish, but I have removed a significant place to lay blame. There is simply no one to take the hit — not even the pretend bogey men “economy” and “301 redirect” — for my failing to find the path, because the goal is finding work that inspires me and that is on me.

Ultimately, my career hopes hang on my faith in the power of setting an intention and pursuing it unwaveringly. So, even as the temperatures here plummet into the single digits, and I contemplate the frozen flatness and the specter of another bitterly cold winter, I dream of mountains and writing and home. This January, I will try another round of workshops at Trillium Creek in Oregon. I have anxieties about whether classes will fill up, but I am choosing to believe that intent matters, and it is my intent to teach writing at home. If I keep myself focused on that intent, something will give.