I’ve been thinking a lot about this article. It creates a thunderstorm of emotion for me, because it is an exact description of the kind of crap I’ve lived with my whole life. The good thing is that now I have better answers than when I was a teenager.

When I was in middle school/high school, the gender roles “wave” hit hard core. I wasn’t sure I was a lesbian, but I for damn sure didn’t want to be a “woman.” By that, I do not reject the fact that I am female. I reject all the bullshit that is required to be “a lady.” I dress the way I dress and talk the way I talk (and write the way I write) to expand what it means to be female. I do not, in any way, want to feel that I am for sale. I do not want to dress so that men look at me that way, that tantalized look that says “I want her, and she’ll give in eventually.” I genuinely enjoy male company when it’s just “being one of the guys,” but when the same guys turn around and look at me differently because I don’t have the same parts, I’m out of there. In short, I dress to protect myself, and it confuses me. I don’t want to be part of the weird gender-assigned roles that argue I should be submissive to men, and I don’t know enough about myself to judge whether that’s totally weird or not. Stay tuned.

It’s hard to step out of my comfort zone, because to me, dressing up is putting yourself out there. I turn on the charm and flirt with everyone, male or female… also in protection because I think if I’m funny enough, people will focus on that instead of the outward shell. If I punch you with humor, you’ll be laughing too hard to notice anything else… like my baseball cap with REALLY short hair underneath. If I’m lucky, you won’t notice I’m gay.

It’s true, and I didn’t even put that together until now.

Growing up in the South taught me that I wasn’t normal at an early age, and I’ve been trying to make up for it ever since. I just wanted to be me, and it seemed like everyone had an opinion on whether I should be gay or not. Never mind that I could change my sexuality as easily as I could change my eye color. Actually, I could change my eye color easily with contacts, and that would turn out as real as “being straight.” It’s a mask where authenticity should be.

Moving to Portland and out of the Bible belt allowed me to start asking who I really was, because Portland doesn’t have a problem with gay people being affectionate in public. I do.

I friggin’ remember all the gay bashings in the Montrose. I remember getting royally hassled at High School for Performing and Visual Arts- a school that would lead one to believe I’d be safe(r). It’s a good thing that when bad things happen, it makes for good writing. I wrote a lot.

I come by it honestly, and I’m still working on it. In the meantime, though, I have to believe that I am hilarious.

The following is a repost from Facebook on Feb. 1

Dear Joan,*

There is no easy way to say this, so I will try to put it as gently as I can. If you are gay, God cannot help you right now. What I mean by that is not to say that God can’t help you later. As scary as this sounds, you’re on your own.

I do not mean this in the absolutely terrible way it sounds. You have been harmed by religion and told that you are less than perfect. You have been told that these feelings for women will go away, but you haven’t seen any evidence of it. You think you must be celibate for the rest of your life, never experiencing the joy of a really great marriage. The constant messages that have been drilled into your head have made you feel the fear that comes with thinking that God doesn’t love you.

Walk away. Leave that where it is. Give yourself time to heal from those wounds, because you need time to work out what you really think. Trying to undo years and years of indoctrination is going to take time, especially if you want to reach out to a more liberal denomination and keep church in your life. Stop going to church, and don’t go back until you’re ready to, in a sense, take it on. Knowing God is bigger than you think. It can and will absolutely change your life. But right now, you need to rest.

You need to rest in the same way that a church gets what they call an “interim pastor.” After a beloved pastor leaves a church, an interim is there (for lack of a better term) to take all the bullets. The congregation can be angry and upset~ why shouldn’t they be? The person responsible for teaching them things that change their lives emotionally and spiritually is not going to be one of those people that leaves without incident. The interim is a time to take a breath so that the congregation can welcome a new pastor, having resolved the issues and conflicts that came before.

In the same way, I think you also need the “peace of interim.” Leave God where God always sits on your heart. Fill the time that you used to fill with church with something else. Join a soccer team. Learn to make beer. Go to concerts and read books. Stimulate your senses in a way that you haven’t done before. Think about something else and let God fade into the background.

Eventually, there will be a time when you can think about God and not the hurt that you endured. You will see the everpresentlovingkindness. You will want to pray for your friends and family. You will see the amazing clarity that comes from getting your thoughts organized enough to speak to God one on one. There is no specific order to prayer, but in my own life, I find that if I have some idea of what I want to say, the answers come more easily.

And when that everpresentlovingkindness has arrived, you cannot nurture it in isolation. Christianity is not a solo endeavor. You’ll want to reach out to a group of people that will hold you accountable. Pray with you in pain and ecstasy. Give you the opportunity to give back to your community and feel the uplifting feeling you get when you’ve helped someone else. Allow yourself to feed your soul… that part of you that is your still, small voice.

But in order to feel that level of joy, you have to work through that level of pain. That’s going to be the hard part. In order to make yourself open to what God has to say, you have to work on yourself, first. Get a therapist. When I pick out a therapist, I go through the directory listing and write down all the names that sound like New York Jews. It’s profiling, yes, but it tends to yield the best results. My current therapist, for what it’s worth, is absolutely friggin’ brilliant and could pass for Larry David. But that’s my system. You’ll have to find what works best for you.

The point is that in order to receive God, you need to give attention and love to yourself so that you are able to recognize God when you’re ready. Again, you need to separate your old relationship with God and give yourself space to create a new one. Give yourself permission to protect your heart, because you are about to go through a tremendous loss.

The friends you currently have that are not enlightened enough to let go and love you for who you are will drop you in a hot minute. It’s going to be lonely, you’re going to be more scared than you’ve ever been in your life, until you realize that friends who don’t love you for who you are aren’t really friends. You’ll find new ones, and welcome the old ones back into your circle as they finally realize that they were wrong. And not only that, but embarrassingly so.

Your former friends won’t know what to say when they realize that they’ve been acting like segregationists in the Jim Crow south. Worse than that, they acted that way toward you, their old friend, the one that despite their condemnation, you’ve loved them the whole time. Despite their brazen attacks on your personhood, you still remember the time they stuck a glue stick up their nose in second grade. You will follow this path over and over as more and more people seek you out to tell you just how terrible they feel that they made your childhood so much more difficult than it had to be. It’s a good time to pull out that glue stick story.

You are going to be fine, because you are already sitting in the perfect white light, the everpresentlovingkindness of the Holy Spirit. Turn inward, and see what happens. Knowing yourself is knowing God, knowing what you are capable of giving and receiving in this absolute abundance of joy. But take your time. Don’t try to accept all of this at once. It is a journey, and not a race. I am here to walk beside you. I do my best thinking while mobile.

Grace and peace from the everpresentlovingkindness of that Holy Spirit, both now and when you decide to put the first foot forward and step down on sacred ground.

Amen.

Here, in no particular order, are things I’ve learned about working in a professional kitchen. Please note that I am not specifically talking about my current kitchen, just an amalgam of stories taken from every kitchen job I’ve had thus far.

Rule No. 1

No one is coming. Count on that. If you are knee deep in tickets and you are the only one scheduled, you are going to feel as if the world is ending, and possibly in a matter of minutes. Breathe. Just feel the panic wash over you and give yourself a minute to get yourself together. If you think that minute is taking away from your ticket time, you are sadly mistaken. It will save you from having to go back and forth from the line to the rail to see what you’re supposed to have going if you know ahead of time where you are. Take two minutes if you don’t have an expo that can call out which ticket is in which priority. I know that when I’ve been in that situation, my own name has wiped itself from my memory. Taking a second to go over the entrees and their cook times before you start will help you to lean on yourself when you’re all you’ve got.

AGAIN, breathe. There’s only three and a half more hours of complete chaos left.

Rule No. 2

Be other-aware. If you don’t know what I mean, it is possible that the rest of the cooks in the brigade hate you if you’ve left the line a lot… or been an asshole to the other cooks because you didn’t work as part of a team. You put  your needs above theirs and screwed them to the wall. In the end, it doesn’t matter. You won’t be there long.

Be relentless about calling “behind you,” “corner,” “coming down the line,” and always, always, always “behind you with a knife.” Break that rule and you’re most likely not going to hurt them. You’re going to draw back your knife quickly and miss them entirely unless the person is someone you wanted to shank, anyway. If your cut is bad enough, you’ll have to leave the line because you’re bleeding. That is several levels of deep shit all the way around.

You’re trying to clot your cut with super glue off the line, or you’re being rushed to the emergency room. Either way, the brigade is down a man. We’ll remember that absence forever if there’s twice the customers then usual on that particular night… because every time we tell that story about the night we got slammed, we’ll talk about your injury and how much pain we were in at not having you, as well as every gory detail about your wounds and the scale to which they were gross. We know it’s an accident, but we’ll still call you a dumbass for not being careful enough to avoid injury in the first place.

By the same token, realize when someone is ankle-deep in Ranch dressing and might need help with a cleanup at the same time there are five people waiting for their dinner and every order comes out of her station. Notice when pantry has nothing and saute has 15 orders that have to get out in the next 10 minutes and you need to bail them out. In fact, Rule No. 2 can be shortened to that one word- NOTICE.

Rule No. 3

There are no secrets from the chef. This is less about their interest in what you’re doing and more about being proactive about communication. This is particularly important when orders are dropped off in the morning. The chef may have ordered it last night, but things like making sure they know their veggies arrived are important. Don’t know what’s important and what’s not? Ask. Do not pass up a chance to say you don’t know something, because there’s only a short period of time in which the details are given. If you don’t know the layout of the kitchen, where everything is stored, how much we have in the house of every ingredient, and what arrives when, you are going to be hopelessly lost at your job.

The kitchen, as Anthony Bourdain has said “is the last meritocracy.” Don’t know the answers to too many questions after you’ve been there more than a month? You’d probably better study up before you get canned. When the chef asks you a question and you can’t answer it quickly, you will be sized up as a moron. The clock is ticking. Admit what you don’t know sooner rather than later, because not to do so would be a career limiting move.

It’s embarrassing, but tell the truth at all times. No one can help you if you don’t admit that something doesn’t look right and you don’t know how to fix it and the ticket time is already fifteen minutes. You’ve all been there. Don’t look at me like that. When you were coming up, you made bechamel and mayonnaise and broke both… in the same day. Your chef’s eyes went over the back of his forehead, and then everything you chopped was too big and now has to be re-sized to actually fit in someone’s mouth. Your chef may scream, but he/she does not have time to listen to you explain why something happened. Ain’t nobody got time fo’ dat (Thank you, Sweet Brown). What needs to be conveyed, even if you want to crawl into the floor, is that the bechamel, mayonnaise, and vegetables aren’t ready yet. It’s the chef’s ass on the line if you’re weeded and haven’t told him/her, and he’d rather bail you out than have the customers suffer. Be warned, though. He/she will do it, but they may take it out on you in a most unpleasant manner. No matter what happens, though, if you care about your food and your diners at all, you’ll be honest and let people help you.

Rule No. 5

Front of House and Back of House are always going to be at each other’s throats, and there’s no way around it. Do what you can to diffuse anything that crops up. Making it worse will in turn make your life miserable. It doesn’t matter whether the kitchen fucked up or the waitress left the food on the window until it got cold and asked for a re-fire. It just doesn’t. Shit happens and it’s so irritating that you might want to scream. Don’t. I repeat- don’t. The next time the wait staff sees you, you are so in for it… especially on days like Rule No. 1. Get mixed up in a fight between cooks and front of house and you are going to be in a world of gut-wrenching pain… and the horrible thing is that you knew it and you did it anyway because sometimes it feels good to take the low road.

Rule No. 6

If you are offended in any way by anything, you need to quit. Front of house, back of house, it doesn’t matter. The things you will overhear, and in time start saying, will be atrociously offensive. Your mother is never off limits. Neither are jokes about rape, pedophilia, sodomy, incest, racism… you get the picture. You think we’re idiots, and we know that we are just blowing off steam from a night that ran us over like a slow-moving 18-wheeler.

Your non-kitchen friends will be horrified, and eventually, you’ll stop hanging out with them, or you’ll quit and you won’t. They won’t understand the rhythm and patois you’ve developed, hate the fact that your newest body accessory is a five-inch scar across your arm, and are generally unfriendly to learning what you’ve been up to at work.

This is because the idea of a cook is so much different than the reality. Non-kitchen people do not care for stories about funny things that happened at work, because so much of the time it involves things you should never say in polite company, as well as a cacophony of microdetails that we’re still thinking about from the night before. You don’t care that my restaurant needs lettuce, and you for damn sure don’t want to know where the six pan of pizza sauce is in located my low boy. You judge us for jokes that to us, seem harmless because they are told to blow off unimaginable pressure.

However, we cannot help it. We’re like doctors, in a way, because even if we leave the job, the job doesn’t leave us. On our off hours, we’re still thinking about what we did and how many mistakes we’ve made. The pressure is so intense that when we try to disengage, the switch breaks.

Rule No. 7

Always fart in the walk-in. God have mercy on your soul if you don’t.

I’ve come up as several different variations in the Meyers-Briggs assessment, but the one I get the most often is “INtroverted Feeling Judging” or INFJ. For people who don’t know me that well, it is a misnomer. No one can believe that with as boisterous as I am in public, I’m not just like that all the time. Part of the reason that people are so shocked is that introversion doesn’t necessarily mean shy. It means I get tired of you people (that was a joke).

I need lots of time to recharge my batteries, which is why most of the time, I stay home. I don’t say anything to anyone for any reason. That is because out in the world, I never *stop* talking. It takes a lot of energy for an introvert to be “on,” and once I get home and I take off my bra, I AM DONE. If you catch me in the nanosecond between getting home and changing into my PJs, I might go out with you (but you’re paying). Otherwise, sitting at home and reading or watching TV gives me the strength to go out the next day and do it all over again.

Introversion is what makes me able to be loud on the Internet. (Look for my next documentary, “Being Loud on the Internet.” It’s a blockbuster.) Typing big ideas is not the same as saying them out loud. As my friend Diane told me when I was a teenager, “saying it out loud makes it real.” She was so right. Hearing words come out of my mouth in my own voice is terrifying, especially when I have to say things like, “we don’t have the money for that.” There’s no Escape key for hard conversations, and Control-Z does not do anything in the real world (CTRL + Z is “Undo” on most operating systems).

So I hide.

But this is not necessarily a bad thing. I find that when I write it out, I have a chance to better explain what I mean. There is a thought process to communication, and I don’t put words to paper lightly. The drawback is that often, I type so fast that what, to me, is a five-minute conversation takes someone else all day to read (really must work on my editing). The plus is that if you get a letter from me, it means that I really thought about what I was saying.

There are, of course, standard clauses and provisos:

I am so ADD that I will not likely remember what other people think of as important details. For instance, I don’t know the date I moved to Oregon the first time around. I don’t know the date I moved to Oregon the second time around, either. But I can go back to my journals and letters, teasing out what I thought was important to me at the time.

It was raining the day I drove in. I went directly to my friend Diane’s office, then at the opera on SW Morrison St. I didn’t know anyone else, so it was a quick trip just to say “hi” and “where’s the Target?”

That night, I went to my church and helped stuff envelopes for some kind of financial campaign. It was fun because that was the night I met Dana. She chased me down the street, her in her green Saturn and me in my purple one.

But I don’t remember the date.

Then, I went back to my new roommate’s house and sat through all the obligatory house rules, which were extensive. I am a carnivore. She is vegan. Portlandia ensued.

Those are my important details. I remember that Diane was in the middle of what looked like PE for grownups, that the rain on the windshield looked like mist and it didn’t stop for six months, that my then-wife wasn’t just leaving, she was gone, that Dana was wearing a grey sweatshirt with a George Mason University logo.

But I don’t remember the date.

It is true that saying something out loud makes it real in the short term, but in the long term, something happens. You have time to forget the circumstances that caused you to write what you wrote in the first place. You see it with new eyes, the eyes that well up when you see how far you’ve come.

It is how I deal with both the tendency to be introverted and the tendency to be ADD. I say on paper the things most people say out loud, just to be able to remember it later.

But I don’t remember the date.

I’m reading a great book right now called Brain on Fire. It was written by Susannah Calahan, who interviewed with Teri Gross before Christmas and the book’s publication. I heard about the book as I was driving home, and in fact, I think I’ve mentioned it on Facebook before. I’m talking about it again because I’ve come across a lot in my reading that I want to share.

So relatively little is known about the brain that Calahan went through many, many neurological exams that just dismissed her as a crazy alcoholic (who didn’t actually drink, BTW) before they found the real problem, called anti-ND MA-receptor encephalitis. The book is heart-wrenching, especially in the beginning, because she has no idea what is going on with her body, and her behavior deteriorates swiftly, much to the discomfort and anxiety of everyone around her.

There’s also research in the book as to how anti-NDMA-receptor encephalitis fits into the grand picture of schizophrenic research, which only served to deepen my belief that the physical and the emotional are inextricably interrelated. This is an important point when talking about mental health issues, particularly because they are such a hot-button issue right now.

Calahan has a way of explaining mental illness so that it makes sense… in fact, explaining how physical disease affects behavior and vice versa. For instance, have you ever looked at someone and thought they were drunk or high, only to find out later that they had been given the wrong medication, or worse, in the middle of a seizure?

Medicine excites me, whether it involves physical or mental health. Books by doctors and patients alike hold my attention. To me, it is one of the last great mysteries of the modern world… medicine is not science or an art. It is a time-honored method that clings steadfastly to both.

In the middle of the book, there is a great poem, aptly named “Intake Interview.” It is a series of questions posed by Franz Wright, author of Wheeling Motel. Instead of just publishing the poem, I thought it would be fun to answer the questions themselves.

What is today’s date?

Sat Jan 12 19:05:09 PST 2013 (I love “insert date” in word processors.)

Who is the President?

Ba rack Bamako

How great a danger do you pose, on a scale of one to ten?

Internally, I’m not a danger at all. There are large groups of people all over this country that disagree with me… Something about a “gay agenda.” My “gay agenda” is so boring that these people would immediately realize the error of their ways if they ever looked at it. We got the oil changed on the Saturn. Does that count?

What does “people who live in glass houses” mean?

That if you judge someone else, you are clearly going to be sorry because they are going to throw rocks at your house.

Every symphony is a suicide postponed, true or false?

For the composer or for the listener?I

Should each individual snowflake be held accountable for the avalanche?

Sure- you take 100% and divide it among every snowflake. That way, each snowflake is taking some personal responsibility without being devastated by an overwhelming amount of guilt.

Name five rivers.

Columbia
Willamette
Colorado
Mississippi
Platte

What do you see yourself doing in ten minutes?

Since this is generally an oral quiz, I’m going to skip ahead to the part after I’be finished this post. It’s almost dinner. I’ll probably cook. It will be delicious, and you will be jealous you did’t come over to eat.

How about some lovely soft Thorazine music?

Does it come with Swedish massage?

If you could have half an hour with your father, what would you say to him?

I can’t think of anything to say to my father. When I think of him, my ability to speak is diminished to nothing. Those feelings are so deep that speaking seems entirely inadequate. I would just want to sit on his back deck, smoke a cigar, and hope that somehow companionable silence would suffice. I would’t be the person I am today without him, and not fifteen minutes goes by before I do something that makes me crack up and say, “I’m just like my dad.” Words are so gorgeous, so precious, that anything I could say would have the emotional punch of a World’s Greatest Dad coffee mug. It is my intention to write him something beautiful, something he can keep, but I’be been working on it for oh, ten years now, and it’s never been just right. I want it to be just right, because the work of being my dad is sometimes difficult. It would probably be easier for him if I was a little less shy, if I’d just come out of my shell a little more.

What should you do if I fell asleep?

Call HR! You’re sleeping at work!

Are you still following in [her] sic mastodon footsteps?

No. I stood too close and she stepped on me.

What is the moral of Mary Had a Little Lamb?

If you’re waiting for someone, you’re going to have to wait a long time.
If you love that person, you know they’re worth the wait.
If Mary hand’t loved the lamb as much as she did, the lamb would not have waited for her.
Unforeseen obstacles may separate you from the one you love, but if you both are in agreement, togetherness will come *someday.*

What about [her] sic Everest shadow?

Big with the metaphors, are we?

I will surely never climb Mt. Everest, and most of the time, I’m fine with it. But then I catch a memory in my mind, and I wish I could just get on a plane and go.

Would you compare your education to a disease so rare no one else has ever had it, or the deliberate extermination of indigenous populations?

“Have you took yo’ nerve medication this week? …Cause everybody be wondrin.’ -Shirley Q. Liquor

Which is more puzzling, the existence of suffering or its frequent absence?

Both are equally troubling. Life is conflict.

Should an odd number be sacrificed to the gods of the sky, and an even to those of the underworld, or vice versa?

An odd number of what? Potato chips? Chevrolets?

Would you visit a country where nobody talks?

I visit it all the time. It’s called “my apartment.” Of course, this is exclusively when Dana is at work.

What would you have done differently?

That’s a whole other book, dude.

Why are you here?

I am here to help people. I often marvel at the things that come out of my mouth and think, “that was really good advice. Why didn’t I take it?”

AAAAAAaaaaannnnnnnnddddd scene.

Dear Leslie,

As you’ve probably heard or read, it’s calm again in Israel. Tuesday I was sure it was going to end, and then when it didn’t I was sure it was going to become awful. Wednesday, someone bombed a bus in Tel Aviv. I read about it while I was on the train to Tel Aviv myself, and I can’t tell you how much my heart sank. Once the news broke, too, the entire train car erupted in cellphone calls for a few minutes, although it took me a moment to notice, since I was lost in my own thoughts. At the same time, they were announcing a problem with the cease-fire talks, as well as that the Lebanese had found some rockets in the south aimed at northern Israel (i.e. me). Then, that evening, when I thought it was clear that it was going to get really, really, really, bad, a truce was announced. I haven’t read any of the reports of ‘behind the scenes’ in the conflict, but I imagine having Hillary Clinton and Ban Ki-Moon here helped, and may even have been decisive.

Things here have returned to normal, which, in Haifa, mainly means that people have stopped wondering what’s going to happen next in Gaza, and some of the reserve soldiers who were called up are slowly being sent home. Apparently, though, they plan to keep a significant presence gathered near Gaza for a while, which I imagine was the reason for an urgent call I saw for volunteers at an IDF food packaging plant for this upcoming week. At least, that’s all I hope it was for.

I’m incredibly glad it’s over. In Haifa, we only saw the rockets on TV, but living here was starting to feel like being trapped in a surreal sports bar where everyone keeps asking you which side you’re on and doesn’t understand you when you tell them that, actually, you don’t really like the game.

Dear Leslie,

The waiting is terrible. I realize that I’m impatient. I just want to know what’s going to happen, whether they’re going to stop or make it worse, if the latter, how bad it’s going to get and if I should make plans to leave for a while, and when it will finish, so I know when to plan to come back. (And also at what point my job will accept that I should leave and keep paying me if I go. I can work from basically anywhere, but technically I have residence requirements in my contract.) It’s hard to focus, and I find myself checking Israeli and Gazan news updates compulsively. It’s all the same: Rocket shot from Gaza at X, Israeli attack at Y, Iron Dome intercepted Z rockets, A people killed, B wounded – the Palestinian news prints the names of the dead as well – possible ceasefire from talks in Cairo, but not very likely that it will be today or tomorrow or the next day, if it happens at all, ground troops ready, but still just waiting.

I do worry about it spreading if there’s a ground strike, but I can’t decide if I’m being paranoid or if there’s really something to worry about. I definitely worry more about this than most people around me, but there are already some disturbing signs. A short firefight across the Syrian border was confirmed yesterday, though it didn’t lead to anything. This morning, there was an arson attempt at a mosque in a village in the West Bank, but the villagers (so far) just put the fire out and went home. It’s presumed by police that this was a hate crime from Israeli settlers in a neighboring village. It would only take a few random attacks and counterattacks to start an unfortunate chain reaction there, too… Isrealis have an extraordinary capability to act blase about war (which I find disturbing), as if they accept it as an unpleasant but unavoidable part of life that you have to accept, like, I don’t know, dental work, except that you can die from it, or be maimed for life. I haven’t gotten there yet, and I hope I don’t. On the other hand, if a war happens and you have to live through it, I suppose that being too scared or nervous about it all the time probably doesn’t help, either.

In trying not to worry, I guess, I got sick – my first flu in many years. I’m off to find myself some soup…

Best wishes,

X

There was a line in a NYT op-ed from today that I’ve actually been thinking all week, which is that everyone’s been arguing over whether the latest round of attacks are justified, but no one seems to be asking if it’s wise. I think the main thing it’s going to accomplish is to strengthen the hard-liners on both sides, which I don’t think is going to be helpful. The situation in the south before the assassination was bad, but not so different from the way things have been for the last 10 or 12 years, and you can argue that they had even improved some because of the new missile defense system. The sirens were still disruptive, but fewer missiles hit the ground in the past year or so than before. Also, they’ve tried this already, and it didn’t work. There were rockets before the last Gaza war, and the war didn’t fix it. There have been frequent bombings of launch sites after previous rocket attacks, and the rockets still came.

What did work was an power-sharing agreement with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which is largely peaceful now, and even safe, except for the Arab areas where Israel is responsible for police work, because they don’t do a very good job. Unfortunately, the PA is extremely corrupt, not well liked by a lot of Palestinians, and now that it isn’t causing any trouble, the Israelis aren’t doing much to improve the situation there or move them toward more autonomy. Hamas is not inclined to make such an agreement with Israel, but there were indications that they were open to a long-term truce, but that’s now dead in the water. I guess what I’m saying is that the rockets shot at Israel were a serious problem, but not an existential one, and that this is a terrible way to handle it. It’s already causing a big mess, and I would be shocked if it fixed anything in the long run.

The region has also become even more unpredictable since the Arab Spring started, and, while it’s very likely that a ground invasion will stay contained to Gaza, it’s not completely certain, and not be joined by over-enthusiastic Syrians who are shooting people anyway, or Hezbollah will decide to bomb the north, too, which is more vulnerable, or if it will prompt Egypt to re-evaluate it’s peace agreement. In fact, an IDF jeep apparently just received some shots from Syria in the Golan, according to a local news web site.

In the end, if Egypt and/or Turkey manage to broker a cease-fire, whether it happens now or in a few months, they’re the ones that ‘win’ the conflict, since they can then claim to be the real brokers of power to deal with in this new Middle East. It will be interesting to see if Israel agrees to that (or even if they realize that that’s how they set up the pieces), or if they will keep fighting until Hamas can’t fight anymore and Israel feels like it’s done for now. At the moment, it looks like the latter, but right now, at least, it could improve with the same speed that it could worsen.

I’ll write more soon, if you like. I really need to sleep now.

Best wishes,

X

It’s hard out here for a blogger. I have so much to say, and yet, when I sit down at the blank page, I get to about “there once was a lady from Dallas” and I’m ready for the cooldown… maybe a beer or a cup of tea. Endurance is only partially my strong point. When I’m “in the zone,” I can concentrate for hours. It’s literally like Zeus giving birth to Athena- the words come out of my forehead and onto the page as if just pushing myself harder will move the writer’s block out of the way. Let me tell you, on the days when I’m not feeling inspired, that is a BIG DAMN BLOCK.

Writing is even harder when you’ve just read someone else’s work, and it’s as finely crafted a sentence as anything you’ve read in the last ten years. I subscribe to Esquire, because they tend to have a stable of writers (including David Sedaris) that knock my socks off. [Incidentally, you might want to pick up the July and August issues- they contain part 1 and part 2 of a novella written by Stephen King.] The July issue has a lot of fiction in it, and there’s one story called Ice by Colum McCann that literally made me lose my breath for a few seconds. Here are the haunting lines: The bed of their wagons was black with blood. It had fallen on the wheels too, so that their lives seemed to circle and turn beneath them.

Dear Jesus, how can I follow that? So succinct that the impact hits you like a 12 gauge kickback [RACK!]. Perfect synecdoche (naming the part for the whole, e.g. blood for life). It’s a grasp of the English language to which I aspire, so deeply and sincerely that it is my life’s work, no matter my daily occupation.

Speaking of which, my dad was the one who told me that… but he is not alone. So many poets and prose writers have worked in restaurants, sold insurance, anything to make ends meet… and they prefer it that way. Sitting in a locked tower with a typewriter is not being a writer. What do you possibly have to offer the world if there’s nothing to write about? To me, that’s the best take-home message that one writer can offer another.

Some of the best stories come from work, play, relationships… living life to the fullest. Of course, there are limits- don’t get fired for telling company secrets (like your hatred for the Asian Database Administrator). One of the best blogs I’ve ever read was called True Porn Clerk Stories- now available in paperback and Kindle editions. It’s the type of writing that will make you love your job more than anything in the world, because even if it’s bad, it’s not as bad (or at the very least, as weird) as this. What made Ali (TPCS author) so successful is that every word she wrote was absolutely true. She couldn’t have made it up if she tried.

So that’s where I am. Living life, collecting stories, and when I write, putting down Truth. What’s the difference between truth and Truth? Truth with a little t is something that’s true for you and you alone. Truth with a capital T is something that, when people read it, their hearts say to them, “I remember feeling like that!” Sometimes the reaction is more like, “I am sure that the writer is telling the truth, because there is nothing about him/her that screams “that never happened.”

Truth with a capital T also comes from the Deep South, because many of the stories we tell there have been so embellished that what really happened is long gone. But if the moral of the story is sound, it’s still true. In that way, truth and Truth are reactions, and neither of them are up to the writer. The writer is responsible for taking on the project and writing in such a way that whatever feeling they’re trying to elicit comes to the surface.

Writing is living in the balance between “about to give birth” and “about to shit.”

-Leslie Lanagan

How can you say that? That’s disgusting. Writing t’aint that hard. Really? REALLY? If your blank piece of paper isn’t gnawing at your soul, you’re not doing it right… unless you’re only writing for yourself. Why is it different? BECAUSE NO ONE WANTS TO READ ABOUT WHAT YOU HAD FOR LUNCH.

No, writing is responsive. Life throws you all you can handle and then keeps piling. Life is glorious and fleeting and full of pain. It deserves further examination in able to take life on life’s terms, rather than bending it to your will.

I am certain that there are people who would disagree with me- CEOs, Directors, etc. Of course there is a certain amount of making your life fit you, but the happiest execs I know are the ones who say, “wow- this is more than I ever expected. I’m not sure how I got here, but I’m glad I did.”

That’s not bending life so much as saying yes to what’s presented… made easier by a firm grasp on how you really feel- you know, in that place in the middle of your chest that gets tight when things are getting harder and you don’t know what to do.

Try and get that out without a sweat.

But here’s the payoff- all that sweat and tears will bring you a reader. And maybe that reader is a friend of yours, or maybe they live in Belgium. Whatever. But they’re going through the same thing. They’ll tell you that they never thought about it that way… the way you’ve presented it… and a point of connection exists that wasn’t there before. Over time, people will gather. And then it will be three months and then three years of great writing that reaches people across continents who will pick you up when you are down and turn into stark-raving psychopaths if someone tries to put you down via the Internet.

And if you’re lucky, that shared connection will create a cultural thing, like Dooce’s firing, Wil Wheaton’s interaction with WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER, and Jenny Lawson’s giant metal chicken named “Beyonce.”

So give birth. Learn why writing is hard. It’s worth it.

If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us, we’d all be millionaires. —Abigail Van Buren

I have to take that mental trip all the way back to when I was 12 years old, and I saw you for the first time. I have to get this all out, exorcise the demon that is you and release you back into the ether from which you came. This is not the story that I wanted, but it is the story that is.

I heard you before I saw you. The week prior had been spent packing up and moving to a city of four million from a town of 2,000. I was emotional to the point of exhaustion, and there it was- this soprano voice more beautiful than the lighthouse at sunset we would visit years later. It called to me- who was this voice? Where could I find her?

scales
arpeggios
warmer
colder
glissandos
appoggiaturas on simple melodies
warmer
colder
sanctuary door
electric
heat
blushing
there you were

To hear you was to relieve the sting of leaving everything I’d known behind. A child’s intuition bonded me to you, and we hadn’t even met. When we did, I don’t remember what was said. I was too wrapped up in my own head to have had room to store such a thing. I remember first conversations, bits and pieces.

Our music backgrounds gave us our first real interaction, a lesson in concertos. Later on, we walked to McDonald’s from our church, and I told you that people had confronted me and told me that you were gay. I saw your face, like you had been slapped, and I wanted to crawl into the cement. You didn’t confirm or deny, just said “how would you feel if people said that about you one day?” In that moment, I knew they would, and I felt like I had been equally slapped. The realization was huge- and looking back, it wasn’t that people were going to say that about me one day. They were saying it behind my back as we were forging this path right then, the one in which I’d have to tell you that I just didn’t feel normal and you assured me that I was.

There were so many things I didn’t know about being a lesbian, and about being a woman in general. For God’s sakes, I had to ask you how to use a tampon because my mother had all but stopped speaking to me. The week prior, she’d heard me on the phone with you and cornered me as I got out of the shower. She told me that I would NOT put my father’s job in jeopardy, as if I had that kind of power.

And even then, your secret belonged to you. I had only intuition, and the words of your college self that appeared in the journal you gave me when I turned 14. I read about sex and love and desire and everything that a 14 year old wants in a book about who she might become. I remember that you also gave me a stuffed squirrel as a birthday present, and I slept with it for the next five years, because you didn’t live close anymore and it was my only talisman.

When I was 17, I asked you how to make love to a woman. I think I surprised you, because for the first time, I waited for you to leave the room you were in and for a time, we were alone- me in my room, you in yours.

For the first time, I can face this truth. Remembering that conversation, standing in the emotional place that I stood, I realize now that the moment was the first one in which I wanted to save you, protect you, do anything in my power to make your life easier. I was 17. You were 28. There was no way it could or should have happened, but I was deep in thought about your lover, how she mistreated you, how she abused you, and wanting for all the world to put myself in the middle. Be the one to tell her to go away and not come back, because she didn’t deserve you. I didn’t think it all the way through. I didn’t know what I would do if you said you wanted me to do such a thing. Would have freaked the fuck out if you’d ever wanted to see me naked. But what I knew for sure is that if I’d had the chance, I’d have torn her limb from limb and laughed my way through it.

—

I remember the first time we hugged, and the room spun. I was in love with you, but too young to feel romantic about it. I felt the way it felt to be picked up from school- not seeing my parents all day and the explosion of excitement at seeing their faces.

Wrapped up in you, because you could practically swaddle me with your arms.

Smelling your perfume, that perfume, the one that to this day makes me tear up when I smell it because the way things started are not the way things ended and oh, God…

What have I done? What could I have done?

In the beginning, things were so simple.

I noticed it right off. You were different than any other woman I’d ever met. I didn’t have a word for it, but I knew that you were like me- girly, but not overly so. Not afraid to roll in the dirt with boys and beat them up if needed. Equally comfortable in heels and combat boots. Gap sweaters and Dr Martens and penny loafers, which I also bought because you made preppy cool.

I could barely breathe on Wednesdays.

I awoke at 6:00 AM, and from that moment on, you were all I could think of. What I’d wear that day was really important, because I wanted you to think I was cool, even though I wasn’t. I took forever in the shower, and it was never a good hair day. It was never right enough.

I went to school and suffered through every class. Nothing mattered except making it to 6:00 PM, where I was supposedly doing homework and realistically writing you notes that I hoped you would enjoy. Over time, I noticed that when I was thinking about you, my handwriting started slanting to the left, my d’s looked like eighth notes and my D’s had to curve just so. I used endless amounts of paper, because if my D’s did not curve just so, I had to start over. It rarely occurred to me to just use pencil.

I am sure now that they were tween drivel, but to me, they were trying to communicate over our age difference in the hopes that one day, you’d think I was funny and brilliant. 11 years never seemed so insurmountable as the time I spent trying to figure out how to be interesting to someone I adored. And those were just the notes I handed you when you walked through the door. There were pages and pages that you never read, because in my head, you were my diary. I could never be as good a writer when I thought there would be no audience to read it.

And then it was almost 6:30 and the anticipation was palpable. You were going to walk through the door at any moment and I would be swept up in those hugs, the ones I lived for, because they were unique to anyone else I’d ever met. Intense because they lasted longer… just to touch you, in my mind, was a miracle. What could we possibly have in common that would make you love me back?

The other adults around me thought they knew. Some of the more vocal members of the church cornered my mother and told her that they thought we were sleeping together (though I didn’t find this out until I was 30). They said to my mother, “you have to get your daughter away from her, because gay people molest kids.” My mother confronted you, angrily. I didn’t know what the confrontation was about, but I had a very good feeling about how it would end. I was outside the door during the whole conversation, unable to hear and sweating blood. You were my heart. From then on, I knew that there would be no one that could separate us. My mother was wrong. I knew it like I knew the earth was round.

It was then that all the secrecy began. We would disappear from dinner, talk after choir practice when no one else was around, and notes began appearing in your choir folder so that no one would see me hand them to you. It felt awful and exhilarating to have this kind of secret. I was astounded that you were willing to put yourself at risk just for me.

It wasn’t too long after that I figured out the specifics of why. When my best friend and I used to talk late into the night, it sometimes got intense. We were seventh graders, didn’t have a clue what we were doing, but being with her felt so right. She was so emotionally vulnerable with me, allowed me to be me and just be the goofy mushball I am until I realized, “uh oh.” These are not feelings that girls are supposed to have with each other. When we slept next to each other, I somehow knew that I shouldn’t want to be in her arms, but I did. It wasn’t about sex. I was 13. I just wanted the distance between us in bed to not be so far. I wanted to put my head on her chest and listen to her heart beat as she slept… listen to her breathing become deep and even. Hold her hand and look into her eyes and tell her that I loved her.

But I didn’t. I did the only thing a lesbian seventh grader could do at that point. I became a total asshole to her and never told her why. I never even gave her the choice to accept or reject me, I just assumed that she would. Hung out with a different, rougher crowd. Had crushes on other girls, but stayed as far away from them as humanly possible. I was a total freak of nature, and I knew it.

Until the next Wednesday at 6:00 when I was wrapped up in you again. Held close in protection from the outside world. In those hugs, nothing could get to me. You were my safe place, and you knew why, and so did I… I just didn’t have the words for it.

I started dating boys because I thought I had to. The cognitive dissonance of the situation was not lost on me. I loved everything about my boyfriends that was male- their voices as they dropped deeper, their muscles, their charming smiles and cute little flirts. That being said, when I looked at the moving pictures of my future life, I didn’t see men… I saw you. I was 14 and starting to realize I did have feelings for you-mostly because in my teenage mind, we were the only ones who felt that way about other girls. It was you and me against the world.

I wish I had been more enlightened. I wish I could have saved myself from the deep chasm I dug between us. I was really too young to know what I was doing- playing with fire. I was putting in danger the only relationship that was literally sustaining me.

But loving you came so hard and fast that it was cemented before you told me I wasn’t alone. You knew. I know you knew, because even as a kid, I wasn’t shy about telling you. Understanding that you couldn’t love me because I had little girl hair was beyond me. You let me down easy every single time (which, in retrospect, seems like somewhere around a hundred). It was cute until I was far too old to be wrapped up in you, and instead of realizing it, I just kept shoving my foot in my mouth.

That’s my part of the end. I own that. I drove you to hold me at arm’s length because I wouldn’t give up the idea of being with you. Your part is that you were old enough to see that I was just a kid and it’s 15 years later and you still haven’t forgiven me. You filter everything through the lens that I’m just some sort of crazed fan with no real basis for adoring you the way I do.

I adore you because you saved me. I made it through my teenage years without killing myself. I’ve never had to turn to alcohol or drugs because I couldn’t deal with the fact that I’m gay. I have never left the church because I thought God didn’t love me. And that’s all because of you. Why you don’t get the way I love you is simply surprising, and I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t know what to do with this river of emotion that I feel I’m being forced to let go for no good reason except your reticence to tell me your side of the story.

You love me. I know you do, but not in the truly madly deeply that a parent feels for a child. The raw deal is finding this out, after having spent over 20 years not knowing. It is heartbreaking, and it feels like the grief will never end. I don’t want to get married in a church without you. I don’t want to have a child without you. I can’t imagine a world in which you aren’t “grandmother.” I think about how it felt when you told me it was my job to take care of you when you got old, and how humiliating it feels to know now that you were joking. I would have been honored had it come to that- to take care of you in all the ways that you took care of me… to be your safe place.

I think about what you mean to me and my chest feels tight, my breath goes into fight or flight. This is so unfair that I want to scream it from the rooftops and graffiti it on the walls.

I wonder if I’ll ever get over this enough where seeing you in public doesn’t rattle me like I’ve seen a ghost from my past. I saw you through car windows and street congestion and flopped onto the backseat in pain. We share friends- it is impossible that this won’t happen again and again as we age, and that seems like the cruelest punishment of all- empty interactions where there was once such great love and affection.

The only alternative is to concentrate on the memories I love, like walking arm-in-arm around downtown and having you tell me that I’m the closest thing you have to a daughter. We were both a little tipsy, and your voice came out so sweet and clear and genuine… until later on when you didn’t remember that you said it. Here’s the thing, though, I have that memory, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything or anyone.

It wraps my heart in one of those hugs. In those hugs, nothing could get to me. You were my safe place, even if I was the only one who knew why.

—————————

Epilogue

There are good days, bad days, and very bad days. However, the very bad days are fewer and farther between, as if this is meant to have happened so I could breathe. Our conflict was causing me so much pain that I would become wrapped up in solving it, because I honestly believe there is no emotional conflict on earth that can’t eventually be defeated. But I was wrong. There’s one conflict that can never be resolved: when only one party wants resolution.

I’ve had to evaluate everything that’s happened between us, and the first thing I realized was that it wasn’t my fault. I was too young to be friends with an adult that couldn’t level with me, because I didn’t realize it was even happening. I took everything you said as God’s honest truth and didn’t realize that in a lot of ways, I was being jerked around.

It’s not your fault, either. You didn’t jerk me around on purpose. You were 23. I was 23 once. I didn’t know what I was doing at anything. You didn’t expect to birth a teenager, but I thought you were and I was wrong. There was nothing that could shake this belief that one day, it was all going to work out and you were going to understand me and I was going to understand you.

After all this time, you know me.

I have only observations that you will neither confirm or deny. I don’t know what you really think about anything. The problem was that I was willing to stick it out because I thought we were going to have a moment. The moment that we could understand each other and stop fighting about our roles like we’re one step away from Jerry Springer.

I believed in you, and instead of feeling like you believed in me, I felt that if I could just do enough, try enough, be enough, that things would change.

It embarrasses me to no end how long I marched forward with all of this when there was no clear evidence of this ever actually happening. It was a family tie that lived in the clouds and not on the ground.

I miss you so dearly, and I will not hear a bad word about you. At the same time, I am grateful that I can move on, knowing that in my mind, things are settled.

Whenever I start a new blog, this is always the first title. That is because an exordium is a beginning, a fancy word for an often frightening concept. It may take me a little minute to get into the regular schedule of posts to which you’ve all become accustomed. I’m coming back to writing slowly, after my previous blog, Clever Title Goes Here, was finally taken down as it limped under the weight of bad writing and filler articles because I didn’t have the courage to write the truth anymore.

People FLOCKED to CTGH because in the beginning, I would just spill my guts emotionally and everything was out there for everyone to see… including when I would make horrendous mistakes. We could laugh together, connect, and generally share the pain (and elation) that comes with being alive. 

By the time Clever Title tanked (at my initiative), it was a shadow of itself. People got butt hurt about some of the things that I wrote, without ever realizing that those were my stories, not theirs. And as that happened, I became so careful about what I would say that I didn’t say anything.

In this blog, I’d really like to shatter the fear that made me run a past popular blog into the ground, so angrily that I didn’t even save the posts that were already there. I lost stories about my first “wedding,” in quotes not because I was marrying a woman, but because the story itself is such a wild farce. I lost stories about life and love, riches and poverty. The messiness of life and my attempts to clean it up.

There is no way to say this delicately, so here it is:

These are my stories. They belong to me. If you see something that you don’t like, read it several times before contacting me, because you might find if you look closely enough that my stories are often (if not always) about the life lessons I learned from my interactions with you. You are not responsible for how I respond. And read closely~ more than likely, if our interaction was negative, I will talk about all the things I did wrong. I am taking back my power. I am not a victim, but I’m not coming after you, either.

I can’t say it enough: these are my stories, and life is messy. So is my writing. Enjoy.