Now that gay marriage is becoming a reality for the United States, the last few that don’t have it and don’t want it are fighting even harder. Gay bashing has gone up, and agreeing to disagree has gone down. It’s too important now. I don’t think I would have such ill will had Texas not already started drafting legislation to circumvent the Supreme Court on its federal decision. As of right now, the government of the state of Texas is on my shit list, and I want to take them down for all they’re worth….. which is not much.
The problem is knowing how to do it. There are plenty of Texans that accept and even further the idea of marriage equality, but they are being drowned out by a congress awash in “Christianity.” It offends me that what they’re doing they’re calling “traditional.” That is a line of horse shit. HORSE SHIT. It’s not that it’s tradition. It’s that Republican candidates can’t get elected without pandering to a conservative religious base, and their churches all say that homosexuality is wrong, so the politicians who could probably give two shits about gay marriage all of the sudden start this tirade against it because it doesn’t cost anything to give people rights, but it does cost them their seats. The GLBT community is the last politically acceptable group to hate. For instance, yesterday on Facebook I had a guy tell me that somewhere there are people trying to get it legislated so that monkeys have rights and that I could just marry my monkey. First of all, he’s already married, thankyouverymuch. Second of all, WHAT? He also said something about how I should be able to marry my dog because aren’t people close to their dogs? I said that you can’t go with the dog argument because a dog cannot give consent- it’s like raping a child- and second of all, a dog cannot hold a pen to sign a contract.
He also said that my dildo was probably bigger than him, but that didn’t take much. I think he was trying to be funny, but guys say this shit to me all the time like it’s nothing and I am so tired. It gets so old that I internalize it and don’t even remember it’s not normal anymore and spout that shit to other people because I’m as fucked up as they are. Common decency has to make a comeback, which has to start with me and yet, I rebel against it at the same time. I grew up in such a fish bowl that being shocking is just my MO. It’s my teenage rebellion way into my 30s because it never really started when it was supposed to and in a lot of ways, my development was arrested at 14 and I am just now learning the pros and cons of good manners and whipping bullies into submission. I’m never going to be one of those people who is as direct and clean as a soldier. I don’t have that code of honor. I don’t have any code of honor, and I am trying to make a True North out of a compass that’s been rubbed by a magnet too many times. I’m not ldooking for a fight, but if you start it, I’ll by God finish it, mostly because I have been so meek and mild my whole life that I’ve never taken up much room. I have the ability to be so quiet and small you wouldn’t even know I was in a room if you weren’t looking for me. I have my moments where I am talkative, but they come less and less often as I age, and the personality change I underwent as a teenager was drastic. I smiled less and less. I came out of my shell only rarely, especially after the kids in my 10th grade English class decided that they were going to call themselves a family and made me the dog. They asked me to bark routinely until I grabbed one of the girls by the lapels and pushed her up against the stairs and threatened to push her over if she didn’t stop that shit. I will never forget the look in her eyes. For a moment, the bully shrank and she was scared of me. She should have been. I would have ensured that she cracked her head on the linoleum, because she had tortured me every day of high school until that moment.
I feel the same way about gay rights. I have prayed for change. I have been polite. I have understood how the Christian right has managed to hoodwink people into believing that homos are evil because they threaten the Christian way of life, even though plenty of gay people have faith.
And now, I’m done. The president of Gambia wants to slit all gay people’s throats? I hope someone slits his, first. No good can come of a president who wants to execute people, because there’s precious little anyone can do to stop him. I feel the same way about leaving Texas. I was polite for as long as I could be and then finally just decided to get the hell out. Argo and I were talking about Texas when we first met and I said that I didn’t do well there because I just walked around with this big chip on my shoulder all the time because people say and do things both without thinking and with extreme prejudice that make it where my mind doesn’t leave my own plight and how sorry I feel for myself that I have to put up with this shit all day long, every day of every year. I have actually explained how I felt and heard, “tough shit, dipshit.” Not once, not twice, but many, many times since I came out in 1990. I wanted to be one of those Martin Luther King, Jr. type characters when I was very young. Wanted to lead Texas into equality. Now, 25 years later, I have decided to stop spending energy on it that could be used for actual change instead of always feeling like I am knee deep in dark molasses.
The change has to begin with me, though. I have to learn that the vocabulary of a teenage line cook is not always going to do me favors. I have to learn to get what I want without resorting to being a hothead jackass with a God complex, because it doesn’t take much and I will try and own your ass, because 25 years is a long time to be mad about something and not have it boil over into the rest of my life. I don’t need that kind of anger in every situation, and I am trying like hell to get it to back down. I breathe. I drink tea. I take long baths and sit in the sunshine. I exercise regularly. I eat vegan food most days, and when I don’t, I feel the repercussions because I’m not getting the same nutrients and I don’t feel as well. I am trying to make it so that every day feels some modicum of sameness, so that my schedule doesn’t feel out of control. All of these things are working to manage my anger and then some conservative asshole picks a fight with me and I am back in that small place, struggling to stand up to a bully because I don’t have much practice at it. I cannot just make my point. I will send a drone with a voice signature because you made the egregious mistake of using “female” as an insult.
No, he wasn’t worth it. He was just some asshole looking to fight just for fighting’s sake. I could have taken the high road, but I didn’t. I told him I would wipe the floor with him, and I did. He ended up conceding defeat with a picture of a flame that looked like a hand with the middle finger up.
Maybe he had to go marry his monkey.
Stories That Are All True 