I don’t want to remember

I guess the Advocate is having a tizzwhack about the ratings for “When We Rise”. Well, I know a lot of people my age that lived through all that don’t particularly want to relive that period of our lives.

Some of it hurt a lot. You’re better off reading all the “Tales of the City’ like we did at the time.

I don’t want to remember lying in bed from July to September 1990 after my knee surgery when I wasn’t allowed to be weight bearing and having my best friend lying in another bed miles away dying of AIDS. I don’t want to remember that all I could do was phone and leave messages for him with his family. The day I was finally allowed up on crutches and out was for his funeral at Rose Hills. I don’t want to remember sitting at his funeral and having a priest who had never met him start by saying “If Art was hear today…” and getting clubbed on both sides from friends when I said very loudly because I was pissed. “If Art was here we wouldn’t be”. I don’t want to remember his mom and sister coming up to me afterwards because my picture was the one he had next to his bed and I never knew but they knew me to thank me for loving him. He was my best friend, how could I not love him?

I don’t want to remember how he went into every relationship he was in, in the 80s thinking this guy would be the ONE and he would get dumped and head to the bars and the baths to console himself and come home with tales of all the famous men he had seen there and bring me a souvenir pen. I don’t want to remember how scared I was when he did it. I don’t want to remember being able to fit into his jeans after he got sick because he had lost so much weight. I don’t want to remember reading “And the Band Played On” while I lay in bed wrapped in first ice blocks and then heating pads in 116 degree heat in July after my surgery and feeling so helpless about everything including missing my chance to go to the Gay Games in Vancouver with my friends.

I don’t want to remember my friend Jim who got sick in the early 80’s and no one knew what he had when he died just that he had funky spots and they called it a liver disease when it was GRID. Grid was the name they called AIDS first.

I don’t want to remember being called dyke on the street from some dudes in a truck waiting to cross the street. We didn’t even look particularly dykey, I thought.

I don’t want to remember going to the wonderful Long Beach Lesbian picnic and having to cross past gangs of men yelling things like “Who’s the man?” and telling us they were there if we needed a “real” man. Ick!

I don’t want to remember men dressed in black with immense black signs with evil things on them at the parade and screaming we were going to hell and hearing the sheriffs say they were going to arrest them for incitement to riot when they lunged at us.

I don’t want to remember the screaming when mom figured out I was “like my brother” and she wasn’t going to get any grandchildren. And how the church tried to shame my parents for having gay children and not raising us right, and trying to reconvert Cam and I to being straight. Especially since every minister there had a gay kid in the closet.

I don’t want to remember the night my brother called in tears because the last man left that he had come out with had died and he was feeling abandoned and scared.

I don’t want to remember the night he called me because his first lover, Steve had died. When they broke up Steve had gone to work at a bar and played around, and he told Cam it was his fault. So another incredibly talented piano player and sweet gentle soul was gone.

I don’t want to remember all the guys I came out with at the Pasadena GLSU slowly disappearing from our group and finding out they had died.

I don’t want to remember walking into the AIDS Service Center when I was on call token pagan clergy person and finding out who had died between our clergy visits.

I don’t want to remember monitoring the AIDS Quilt AKA the Names Project at the Rose Bowl and seeing Steve’s quilt or walking around looking at names and realizing one square covered in roses was a guy my sorority arranged two blind dates with against my will. It did explain a lot about those non-starting dates but it really hit my heart. I don’t want to remember handing the Kleenex box that stood near every quilt square to people visiting family and friend’s pieces. I don’t want to remember folding or unfolding them every day.

Steve’s piece

I don’t want to remember being on the board that put on the first Gay Pride event in Pasadena, all those guys are gone too.

No, I do not want to remember those events. The parades were fun and the guys were wonderful and taught me so much after my first lover dumped me and most of my friends took her side even though she left me for another woman. The guys took me clothes shopping and gave me a party and got me drunk beforehand so I could meet women which was one of the most fun nights I’ve ever had at a party. There was a lot of love facing a lot of hate from the outside but now we need to face the future and do it all again and I don’t want to remember…

 

Art and I at the Gay Pride Parade circa 1982 or 83?

Advertisement

To my friends who voted for Trump

To my friends who voted for Trump for any reason you can rationalize:

It doesn’t matter why you voted for him to me

To me what matters is that you voted to hate me personally.

You voted that way and you knew I was gay and that people I love are gay

And you voted for the guy who believes you can electrocute gay people to change them

You voted knowing I was pagan and that I love other pagan people

And yet you voted for the alleged Christian candidate

Who wouldn’t know Jesus if he stood before him

You voted knowing I need access to healthcare

You voted to deny it to me

You voted knowing I’m a woman

A woman who has been molested as a child

by an adult

And you voted for someone who is accused of child rape and the guy with him was already convicted

You voted knowing all women have been street harassed

Harassed at school or on the job

And you voted for the guy who bragged about how he can do it with no penalty

I know you know people of colour or who have people of colour that we all love

And you voted for a white supremacist

You voted for the politics of hate

And you are making me hate you

And I never thought I would

 

 

 

 

Feeling powerless

I feel impotent because I can’t stop the killing of my sisters and brothers. I’m tired of fighting to be accepted for who I am. I didn’t get up one morning in 1979 and decide to make life difficult for myself. I decided it was more important to be honest than to hide. I decided that love was more important than lying and I became a whole person.

I didn’t decide to have people hate me at my church because some mistranslated book told them I was now evil when I wasn’t evil the day before or on my job by someone who also wanted to thump that book or someone who sees me on the street because I had short hair or wore a rainbow shirt or because my friends looked like lesbians or my brother looked like a “faggot”.

I can’t change people’s minds when they don’t know me. I can’t make a Republican senator see that hate isn’t anything but evil and that taking money from the NRA isn’t more valuable than saving thousands of people’s lives. They’ve been bought and paid for with blood. They have blood on their hands and heads but it just isn’t that important to them to have free souls.

I can’t change a hateful pastor’s mind who has forgotten that his Jesus said he was about love and not hate. He is a Pharisee not one of Jesus’s disciples and gave up his soul for hate and money, he will have to explain to his god how that happened.

I can’t change the person’s fear who’s hiding in the closet. I can’t pull them into the sunshine. They may have too much to lose, a job, their children, their life.

I can only live my life in the love I believe is all around us every day if we only look at each other and at the world around each. I can live so that all people are sisters and brothers as is every animal, tree and bird.

I can only live as if my brain, heart and hands are enough even if it feels like I’m too small to feel like I’ve made a difference. Maybe if enough of us live that way there will be change but may be not.

A prayer for today

Hecate watch over them
Hecate guide them
Calm their fears
Hecate watch over us
It could have been any of us
They were in our temples
They were celebrating love
They were celebrating joy in living
They were celebrating the pride and freedom to be who they are
Hecate calm us
Our fears are huge
And not without reason
Hecate help us to stand up and face the hate in the world
Some of us have been doing it for a very long time and we are tired.
We may have thought for a brief moment things would be easier.
Hecate help us hold our burdens
Hecate help us to remember those who love us for being who we are.
Hecate remind us that love is always more powerful than hate.
Hecate help us mourn in all the ways we need to
Hecate,  be here now!

Kat 2016

A Lesbian Scot tries to use the restroom

Back in the 80’s right after I had come home from a month in Britain, I went to hear the Royal Massed bands with the Gordon and Sutherland Highlanders at UCLA with my parents. We used to go whenever any of the Scots Guards bands came to town.

At intermission I went and stood in the enormous long line for the women’s restroom and didn’t think anything about it until this expensively, badly dressed woman started asking me at the top of her voice if I was in the right line. Shouldn’t I be in the men’s room line?

She was making an effort to embarrass me and she was sure I was a man. I was dressed in a blue button down shirt and a tie my grandfather had left me, blue jeans and the blue Fairisle I had bought in Scotland and I had just had my hair cut short in a pixie cut. I had 44 D boobs at the time but I guess she could only see my clothes since I weighed about a 110 lbs at the time, you could see that my top story wasn’t really small.

I just stared at her because I really didn’t know what to do. How do you prove you’re a woman without stripping to some unintelligent bigoted yahoo? You can’t.
Thank heavens for little old Scottish ladies that are used to seeing women in ties for school or other things. This tiny old woman walked up to the old bigot and in a very thick Scottish Highland accent told her to shut her mouth and asked if she had a brain since it was obvious to her that I was a woman and that she really should invest in some glasses if she couldn’t tell.

The woman quickly left the line and the Scottish lady came over and patted me and reassured me that some people were just stupid and she went into the bathroom with me and that was it. I had an a least 80 year old fierce protector as only little Scottish grannies can be and I was so grateful.

When I got back to my seat and told my parents , it was a very good thing my dad didn’t have a claymore. He always got worked up at Scottish events and could yell during “Black Bear” with the loudest of them, something that used to make my brother and I want to crawl under the seats. There would have been blood. (http://cornemusique.free.fr/ukblackbear.php)

Nowadays it looks like someone would have called the cops and I would have had to pull down my drawers in public. This is all just wrong

Coming out isn’t easy — Part 3

I said I came out by the Oops method because I did. I had been moved out for a while and for some reason was over at my parent’s house gardening, I think, and my mom must have started at least four sentences with “when you get married”. I finally lost it and said I wasn’t getting married and she lost it. She lost it at the top of her lungs. She kept screaming, “You’re just like your brother!” Well duh?

She had met all my friends who were out and she liked them but my being out meant her stakes in the “I have to show off my grandchildren at church” lottery had dropped astronomically. What she never figured out was that even if I had been straight she would never have been allowed near my kids. She was just too mean and self-centered a person. To the point that when I had an emergency hysterectomy many years later I had to ban her from visiting with Security because she said she was going to stop it and I was being a hypochondriac. Even when told I was going to die without it, it didn’t matter to her because everything was about her and according to the surgeon after I was about 2 weeks from dying from gangrene.

She really didn’t want grandchildren, she just wanted to have them to show off to everyone. My mom was all about her image and how she looked to others. Sadly, my sister and I, by being the least girly girls ever had started embarrassing her in public early in our lives. I was an obvious nerd by the time I was 6 and a lot of people fed that and considering that was in 1960 that says a lot about whom they were.

Example? At the yearly Choir retreat, the men of the choir went diving and brought up a huge kelp tree onto the beach and it was full of creatures. I am told, I ordered them to stop and not touch anything until I got my books on sea creatures, tidepools, shells and other beach life  and they honoured that request of an excited 6 year old and I went and got them and they helped me identify everything and collect everything that I wanted to save in my plastic bucket. That was an error in 6 year old judgment because I collected a teeny tiny lobster along with a really tiny octopus and some small starfish. The lobster put a hole in my bucket and the water ran out and they died sometime in the night but as a 6 year old I had established my nerd/geek propeller head status. So not a girly girl.

Other people at church or at least, the choir loved us and didn’t really care. They knew us from birth, it really shouldn’t have been a surprise when we came out. I do have to admit my parents lost some close friends from their Sunday School class/social group because they obviously “hadn’t raised us right.” But no one from the choir ever loved us any less that I know of. Mom’s best friend did give her a book called “Where do I go to resign” about de-gaying your kid but for the most part no one ever said anything to me or Cam.

Once she had me drive her to what was allegedly her psychotherapist at church. I don’t remember why she didn’t want to drive but sometime during the drive I figured out if I went in with her there would be a full court press to get me to REPENT and go straight. So I just politely refused to get out of the car when we got there and she got really mad and she had to go inside without me because she couldn’t tell the truth about setting me up. She was convinced she wouldn’t get into heaven if we stayed queer. And she felt she looked bad.

It was when she found out I was a witch and went blabbing all over church that I was worshipping Satan things got said. But I wasn’t and anyone with a brain should have known that but I haven’t been back to church except for my dad’s funeral since. Mom had the minister do an altar call at my dad’s funeral because she knew my coven and some of the Temple of Isis were coming. I have never been so furious in my life and I was glad I was sitting with my aunt and cousins and not up front with her or there might have had to be two funerals.

I had a graveside service for mom and gave the minister readings that were really stealth pagan readings like the Gaelic blessing, Deep Peace. It made me happy, it made the Christians happy because they sang the incomplete version in choir and it made my pagan friends happy.

I did go to both Cam’s funerals at his Episcopal churches, one near where he lived in northern California and one at the one he went to in Pasadena before he moved up north. At the one up north I was asked to read something at the reception. It was a little easier because I only knew a few of his friends. I read the Hymn to Osiris from the Book of Coming Forth AKA the Egyptian Book of the Dead. I did announce that I was a Priestess and pagan and watched some mouths drop open. That was kind of fun. Mom couldn’t go and I was very glad. The SF Gay Men’s Chorus sang because he was a member. It was really beautiful.

I guess for most people Coming Out is a process that never really ends. You are always coming out to someone new whether coming out as a lesbian or as a pagan or as both. And lot of times it doesn’t make the bigots happy. It makes people question themselves and they really don’t like having to questions their own life choices.

I have lost many friends over the years over one or the other. It hurts but you learn that the ones who always love you no matter what are the ones that matter and the ones that don’t are the ones that you have to leave behind on your journey and maybe you have made it easier to love the next gay or pagan person that comes into their lives. Knowledge does create change. And love is all that really matters and we choose our families the older we get and if it means we lose blood family, were they really your family?

Coming out is never easy — part 2

Part 2

There were a lot of things I had to work through. My parent’s church was heavily anti-gay even though every minister at the church just about had a gay kid including the executive pastor and the one my mom went to when she began to figure it out, who told her there was no such thing as lesbians when his own daughter was a dyke.

The next year at camp I was almost ready to come out when this woman I could not stand kissed me in front of the kids in the dining hall and told me to come out and I went running to our camp director who was also an out lesbian that year who just laughed. I’m afraid that scared me into the closet for another year especially since I later got that counselor fired for molesting some kids and assaulting another on a backpack trip and all I kept thinking was “I’m not like that” even though I knew the rest of the camp counselors were really nice people. Some of the one’s friends still haven’t forgiven me to this day for getting Huggie fired.

The third year at camp I spent edging out of the closet a toe at a time because I was in love and because I was A&C/ Nature Director I had a place to sleep in Lakesite Unit but no kid responsibilities so I could sleep around the camp in whatever shelter my crush was living in that week and people were convinced something was happening even though it wasn’t. It was also the year we had Peter Pervert running around at night torturing counselors by appearing at their bed after we were lights out and trying to sleep so I had an excuse of being extra security in the worst hit units. By the time I was out of camp that year I had finally admitted at least to myself that yes, I was a lesbian but it was not easy nor a fun process.

It would be years before I was out to my parents. I only came out to my brother because all my friends said Cam was gay so the first time we were alone I asked him and his answer was “Are you because all my friends say you’re gay?” We ended up abandoning the errand we were supposed to be on and went to the grand opening of the first Different Light bookstore when it opened in Silverlake and meeting a bunch of Cam’s friends.

Mom confronted Cam first about being gay and it wasn’t that bad for him when he said yes. When she finally figured out I was during an Oops moment on my part, she started screaming because my being gay made her getting grandchildren had dropped by 2/3s. Good thing my little sister wasn’t really out until mom had dementia.

“2 queers and a question mark”

Meanwhile my friends were convinced my sister was gay too and used to call our family, “two queers and a question mark”. My sister played softball and was really good in sports, refused to wear dresses unless my mom threatened her lifetime and would only wear her hair really short. She had better dyke credentials than I did.

Coming our is never easy — Part 1

I came out in 1979 and it wasn’t easy. I didn’t know why or what I was growing up. I just knew I had no desire to having anything to do with boys. I spent a lot of my time in high school avoiding dates. My senior year in high school a bunch of us gravitated together and went around in a big group. I now know that most of us were gay and the rest just liked being in a group with no pressure. We confused the hell out of the rest of the school because we seemed to be always switching partners and the rest of the school sometimes thought we had something very weird or kinky going on but what we were was a mutual protection society. My brother, Tony, and Jerry were cute and always had some girl after them and hanging out with me, Georgia, and Michelle meant we were nice beards for them as they were for me. Clayton was a good friend and a late bloomer, 10 years after high school he turned out to be gorgeous but then he was over 6 feet tall, pizza faced, braces and skinny. There were a few other girls that would join us but we were the core. We’d go to the movies and sit in different couple combinations so no one could figure out who was supposed to be with whom. It was also cover for things like homecoming dance that we wanted to go to but didn’t want a date. Cam, my brother, Jerry and I all went to the same church and Tony when to another Presbyterian church in Glendale so we had that in common too. None of us were out to ourselves let alone each other.

I spent the first 2 years of college avoiding dating except for when a sorority sister would ambush me with a blind date. One poor guy I ended up with twice and there was absolutely no chemistry. Many years later I found out why when I monitored the AIDS quilt and found his name lovingly embroidered on a large panel. I wish I had known in college and we might have been friends instead of something to avoid. That hurt.

I left school to work at a year round camp and things started to relax and for the first time in my life I felt free to be me. I started at a YWCA camp in 1975 and worked all of 1976 until we ran out of money in the spring of 1977. My boss, a Camp Fire Girl like myself talked me into working for her a the Girl Scout camp she has been hired to direct to be her Arts & Crafts Director. That year was a year in hell and it was a wonder that I decided to try a different camp the next year and not just stop

. That year I fell heavily in love with a straight woman and scared the crap out of her and me since I really didn’t understand what was going on. That year there weren’t any out lesbians or if there were they didn’t come out to me and I felt really alone. In July I got struck by lightning and pissed my friend, the boss off for scaring the kids and then in August I ended up getting poisoned by buckthorn and almost dying at camp because they wouldn’t take me to the doctor until I was unconscious but that is a story for another time. The poisoning happened during a staff game and my boss got mad at me for that too and even though I was really sick she sent me home with a concussion, a deep wound from surgery on my calf to try and get the thorn out and shock and a fever of a 105 and a blood pressure of 80/60 when they finally took it a day later. Camp was done for that year and I never heard from my boss again.

I learned then to keep things to myself and when I went to my next GS camp I thought I would do the same. The first night of precamp was a full moon and I got invited to a top of the road party by an bunch of the staff. We couldn’t drink in camp so you had to go to the top of the road to partake and this group of staff turned out to be lesbians and had assumed I was but I still didn’t really even know what a lesbian was. They were very confused when they figured out I was clueless about why I was invited. They left me alone for most of the rest of the summer and I had started to process that I might really be like them.

Thank you, Notorious RBG!

Rights