Things are going to be different around here. I will have a more relaxed publishing schedule for two reasons: 1) NOTHING about my life is Facebook and WordPress appropriate right now. It’s too personal, too close. Five or ten years from now, I might write about this time in my life, but the emotions are too high all around for any blog post to come out as what I meant to say instead of crazy person emotional vomit.

That’s the thing about holding in your feelings. They probably won’t catch up to you for the first 25 years or so, but then someone will drop a Mentos in your Diet Coke and God have mercy on your soul, then.

It tastes worse coming back up.

The light at the end of the tunnel (that’s definitely not an oncoming train) is that the sooner you really put pen to paper about the mistakes you’ve made in your life, grieving what has happened to you becomes easier. Honestly, this works with dead people as well. Acknowledging your role in their lives might give you more empathy, more grace, and more compassion when it comes to the realization that you are carrying around a lot of their bullshit. It’s not intentional. It is what it is, in the vernacular. William Shakespeare had one of the greatest ideas in the history of mankind (or herstory, depending which English class you took in college…). The play’s the thing!

THE PLAY’S THE THING!

The play is the number 42, the meaning of life, and Jack Palance’s finger in the air all rolled into one. If you can figure out your character arc, you can figure out everyone else’s. Don’t treat people like you’re both on stage; however much you feel it, giving that feeling to someone else is ill-advised. Here’s the big bang moment of reality that will make you wake up in the middle of the night: the person on the stage and the person in the dressing room aren’t the same.

We’re all players. Billy Joel’s The Stranger is one of my favorite songs in the world because it speaks to that idea so strongly. Opera singers, ballet dancers, actors (in every medium), and bloggers (don’t get me started) have more practice at the idea of separate personalities, but it’s kind of like an emotional utility. You wouldn’t live in an apartment without a refrigerator.

If you are grieving a person that has died, take heart. All the pressure is completely off that your thoughts about them are going to matter to them. When you accept this, you can allow yourself to get vulnerable enough to emotionally “go into labor.” Some people equate that image with the concept of being “born again,” and for some, it’s a sign of the resurrection. Perhaps a Phoenix has decided to come live at your house and eat all your food until the day it went POOF!

We all have our own words for this idea, but the actualization of it happens at different rates. Some of what I’m learning now is age-appropriate. Some of it is remedial math and I’m embarrassed to be stuck on the short bus because I’m ADD.

After baring my soul in every way imaginable on my web site, I have discovered that death and loss are tools to teach you who you really are. I had that realization when it occurred to me that most people don’t die young, so the reminder to think about mortality doesn’t occur very often. When it does, you have a chance to sit on the floor and look at the pictures, even the awful ones, long enough to love them.

Read Death and Loss.

Dear William,

Hi. My name is Leslie. I have auditioned for and won the role of your aunt.

Right now, you are still in your mother’s womb, waiting to arrive. You hear Mommy and Daddy and Nana and Papa all around you, in stereo. Trerio, even. You have no idea what a bale of hay has landed in your lap that of all the families in all the world, you ended up in ours. We cannot promise that you will like every minute, but we can promise that we will start a fund for your therapy. And by “we,” I mean Aunt Dana and me. We’ve grown up in this family. We know what it’s like. Plus, we’re not naive enough to think that the need for your therapy won’t come from us, anyway. Aunt Dana and I were rolling on the ground yesterday thinking about how your Mommy was never going to let us babysit and it wasn’t going to have a thing to do with us being gay.

What you’ll find is that it’s worth it. The heartache, the love, the laughter, the tears… it’s all worth it. I don’t exactly mean that our family is what’s worth waiting for, although it certainly is. I mean that you are a new person. You don’t know anything yet. Your tabula rasa doesn’t even have an eraser mark. What I’m trying to say is that you are so new, you don’t know that being born into any family anywhere is going to have that same laughter to tears ratio.

Who am I kidding? In this family, you will have trouble cutting off your laughter so that you can actually think about something seriously. Although Mommy will help you with that. She’s the practical one in the family. But even though she’s the most practical, she’s also, in my opinion, the funniest. What you don’t know about your Mommy is that you have to be really quiet around her, because her jokes are made so softly that you have to be listening close to hear it. But if your ear is attuned to find her voice in the commotion, you will laugh harder than the rest of us, because you get your Mommy on a daily basis.

William, there are very few people in this world that I love more than your dad. I’m not sure he even knows it, but I do. Your dad is a source of quiet strength to our family. He lives and loves so deeply, all without ever drawing attention to the fact he’s doing it. I hope you and your dad have long days on the back porch, just sitting there. I do that with Papa and it’s my favorite place to go- into the quiet with him where we know there is nothing wrong, we’re just glad to be together and we don’t have to use words to say it.

By now, you’re probably wondering a little about me. Believe me, William, you will know more about me than you know about anyone else in our family when you’ve figured out the verb “to Google.” But there isn’t too much on the web site about how I’ve prayed for you, carried you in my heart these last few months, just loved you even though I had no idea what you looked like or if your personality was like mine or anything else that might divide us when we’re old enough to be mad at each other.

There’s nothing on the Internet about how I’ve waited for you, that I’ve known this day was coming since I was a teenager, that day when one of my sisters was going to give birth and how that meant that I would have stock in a baby, too.

William, we are not related by blood. Your mom doesn’t have the same dad as I do. But I want you to know that I will only think that way if I have to look at your medical chart. I know that you will probably know this, anyway, just by watching our family, but we don’t use words like “step” or “in-law.” As long as you are alive, and long after you’re dead, you will always be my nephew, even if you can’t prove it with DNA. I feel the same way about your Mommy and your Auntie Caitlin.They will always be my sisters, whether you can prove it or not. I want my love for you to be bigger than the words that divide us.

Who haven’t I introduced you to yet?

The Doctor… oh, my God. It’s like I’ve just finished the seating chart and forgotten POTUS (oh, my God. We are going to have so much to talk about when you can understand TV).

The Doctor is one of the most beautiful people inside and out that I have ever met, though you won’t call her that until you’re older. But you will. Everyone does.

Want to hear my favorite joke about The Doctor, which she told me herself?

I have always wanted, in some small measure, to be an astronaut. When I was 16, I said that to The Doctor, because I had just met her then and she just seemed like one of those people you should be able to trust with that sort of information.

I told her that I thought it would be cool if she was a doctor on a space shuttle. I teased her about being a “Space Doctor.”

William, she looked at me and said indignantly, “I ALREADY AM A SPACE DOCTOR, LESLIE. I’m a ROOMATOLOGIST.

Do not engage in wordplay with The Doctor until you are ready, because you do not want to show up unprepared. It’s not that she’ll wipe the floor with you. It’s that part of the fun of wordplay is getting The Doctor to laugh. When she laughs, your insides will light up. It’s so pure that you have to hear it again, so you keep getting funnier.

I know I did.

William, I just realized that I want to stop this letter here and pick it up again in the future. You are such a new little person that writing to you feels like the best birthday present I’ve ever gotten on someone else’s birthday.

We’ll dedicate an entire letter to Lindsay.

Yours always,

Auntie Leslie

P.S. I would be thrilled if you would call me “Auntie Leslie,” because I’m a writer (you’ll come to hate that, eventually). The name I use on the web site is “The AntiLeslie.” So you see, there you go. Another play on words.

You should tell The Doctor.

It’s fun to make her laugh.

Following the social upheaval of World War II, many people in the United States felt a fervent desire to “restore the prewar social order and hold off the forces of change”, according to historian Barry Adam.

Spurred by the national emphasis on anti-communism, Senator Joseph McCarthy conducted hearings searching for communists in the U.S. government, the U.S. Army, and other government-funded agencies and institutions, leading to a national paranoia. Anarchists, communists, and other people deemed un-American and subversive were considered security risks. Homosexuals were included in this list by the U.S. State Department in 1950, on the theory that they were prone to blackmail. Under Secretary of State James E. Webb noted in a report, “It is generally believed that those who engage in overt acts of perversion lack the emotional stability of normal persons.”
——————–
“Up until the night of the police raid there was never any trouble there,” she said. “The homosexuals minded their own business and never bothered a soul. There were never any fights or hollering, or anything like that. They just wanted to be left alone. I don’t know what they did inside, but that’s their business. I was never in there myself. It was just awful when the police came. It was like a swarm of hornets attacking a bunch of butterflies.” -Shirley Evans, neighbor to Stonewall Inn.
——————–
“The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. He is not interested in, nor capable of, a lasting relationship like that of a heterosexual marriage. His sex life, his love life consists of a series of chance encounters in clubs and bars he inhabits.” -Mike Wallace
—————–
Homosexuality is, in fact, a mental illness which has reached epidemiological proportions- Charles Socarides
—————-
“We really did it, but we were going to pay.” -bystander to Stonewall Riots

——————————

Sometimes, pride is hard. Gathering pride hurts. Gathering pride hurts because the pieces you’re trying to quilt are small and fraying. Sometimes, it seems like pride is gone. And that is when we come to you, O God. When our pride is broken, our spirits are weak, and our bodies are weighted with fatigue.

—————–

Pause for Prayer-

God, I ask that you take our minds and think with them, take our hearts and love with them, take my lips and speak with them. O God, I ask that I reach these people today, and if I can’t, move me out of the way and speak it in spite of me.”

—————–

If you’ve been keeping up with me on Facebook, you know that last night at about 9:00 I posted a status update:

“Why did I agree to preach Gay Pride Sunday? I don’t know anything about gay people!”

Now, we all know that’s not true, but how in the world do you condense “Gay Pride” into one sermon? We’re headed for the parade as soon as church is over and this is like a three hour endeavor all by itself! As I was telling Martina last night, preaching “Gay Pride Sunday” is kind of like being asked to do a sermon on The Bible. Are there any parameters here? Can I buy a vowel? It reminds me of the associate pastor who gets up in front of the congregation for his first sermon. It’s great! They laugh, they cry, they take up offering. Preacher is on top of the world because his first sermon is such a raging success. Monday morning, the associate preacher takes his Bible to the senior pastor and says, “that was great! Got any other books?”

Gay Pride is too big for one sermon.

I also joked with everyone that I was going to come out dressed as Boy George. I said Boy George specifically because my dad is straight as an arrow, and in the 80s, he told his MYF group (Kristan, what does it stand for?) that he had booked him.

So my dad goes on for weeks and weeks about how Boy George is going to come and visit the youth group at our church.

It is at this point, ladies and gentlemen, that I began to completely fall apart laughing while I was writing this.

So, the night arrives, right? The kids are waiting. They’re out of their minds excited when BOY GEORGE starts coming down the stairs into the fellowship hall.

My mother has done exquisite makeup. Flawless. My father’s face is completely powdered white. He has black liquid eyeliner perfectly drawn and dried so there are no lumps. His mascara is perfect.

My sister used to have this puffy doll face with long, long braids made out of yarn so she’d have a place to put all her barrettes, right? So, picture this.

My dad has taken the puffy doll face and laid it flat upon his head so that the yarn braids with all the multicolored plastic kiddie barrettes are falling to his shoulders. He puts on a Boy George style hat and wears one of our family quilts whose majority color is pink draped over his shoulder.

The kids are laughing so hard they can barely breathe because this is the associate pastor of the church in drag and they’ve rarely seen him in anything but a suit and tie, or in his robes during worship.

So if you’ve ever seen the movie …But I’m a Cheerleader, congregation, That. Is. My. Root.

I love that joke. I could only make it in front of a GLBT audience and have them start rolling on the floor. Thank you, thank you for feeding my ego. As a cook, I work with people younger than some pairs of my pants. It’s important to me that, on days like this, you all are here to remind me that I’m only 10 or 15 years older than your average line cook, and for me, pride is being able to tell these jokes without you reacting as if I am Methuselah. Because I’m not. Dana is.

No, seriously. All kidding aside, my dad is one of the first people to ever teach me about pride, even though he didn’t know I was gay at the time (or did he?). Pride, he taught me, is the systematic willingness to be yourself.

I think that’s worth a second look.

Pride is the systematic willingness to be yourself.

• Pride is knowing that you have to be yourself whether the law wants you to be or not.
• Pride is knowing that your mind and your heart bring something to the world that no one else ever can or ever will.
• Pride is knowing that the Gospels of Christ are meant for you in the same way that they are meant for everyone else.
• Pride is knowing that the Gospels of Christ are still meant for you even when someone else tells you they’re not.

It is interesting that today’s Epistle to the Galatians we talk about the law in just this respect. At issue in the new church is whether Gentile Christians must keep certain Jewish practices to remain Christian. It is a bit like what the Jews and Muslims of Spain experienced during the 15th century, as Muslim Spain gave way to Catholic Spain. Those who remained often “converted” to save their lives, but didn’t give up their original faith.

Paul says this isn’t right. He is a Jew, but righteousness doesn’t come by way of keeping the Law – for Jews or Gentiles. Instead, it comes by way of the faithfulness of Jesus, who lives with us and works through us.

Before Christ freed us with his own covenant, there was no pride in spirituality. Spirituality was by the book. Spirituality was “27 8×10 color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence.”

(If you get that reference, you’re allowed to react like I’m Methuselah, because obviously we are professional colleagues.)

It is here that we can do a little bit of rabbinical exegesis, which is a cool phrase for “we’re going to study this in-depth for a second.”

There’s this new Internet video going around that I will absolutely not show you in church because it’s filthy called “Samesies.” The premise for the skit is that it’s an early tribe of people (most probably Biblical, but not necessarily) who have no idea what sex is or really, what it does. What they have noticed, however, is that when they do “samesies,” no people come out.

It is an hilarious demonstration of Talmudic law. The leader of the tribe decides that they will do “opposites” so that they can grow the tribe, which is what binds Gay Pride with our Scripture for this morning… as absolutely freaking unlikely as that sounds.

Talmudic law prohibits every kind of sex that does not try to further the life of the tribe. Any sex that does not lead to procreation is forbidden. However, with Seven BILLION people on the planet, our need to “further the tribe” is not as dire as it once was. It is a law that is no longer useful to us as a society, but I do not base my response on science alone.

Paul tells the Galatians that this upholding of these type laws isn’t right. He is a Jew, but righteousness doesn’t come by way of keeping the Law – for Jews or Gentiles.

Instead, it comes by way of the faithfulness of Jesus.

The faithfulness of Jesus?

What does that mean?

How are those two things different, the laws and the faith of Jesus?

When you were a baby queer (and I apologize if that word offends you- I am only trying to be absolutely inclusive), were there rules?

Come on. Stay with me. You know what I mean- you have worn that place on your skin there are rules to being gay. What are they?

You can’t be fat if you’re male

Magazines tell our men that they are not skinny enough, that the bodies they have are less than perfect even when the scale doesn’t lie and neither does the mirror. Everything is in the right place and nearly flawless but you believe the article that says you only need three or four hundred calories a day to function.

You can’t be too femme if you’re female

Well, technically, you can be as femme as you want if you’re in a relationship. I have never seen a woman successfully pull off the blonde cheerleader look with any success while single, though, because no one will actually think you’re a lesbian in that kind of outfit.

You can’t be poor

Gay culture tells us that spending money on toys, clothes, and cars is your ticket to being fabulous. Your house has to be a beautiful memory picture. You max out your credit trying to understand the rules of being up and coming, fashion forward, and whatever else the industry tells you to make raging debt look attractive.

You can’t be sober

We all know it and we cannot avoid this truth. Our culture started in bars. Going to the bars was a rule of being gay.

Lucky for us, this last one is changing as gay becomes mainstream and the need for utmost secrecy has dissipated. In very few places do we literally have to look over our shoulders for gay bashers. Never let us forget, though, that when we had no place to meet, no place to be ourselves in public, bar owners took us in and gave us shelter. Very few of them were even gay. Some of them were even run by the mafia. I don’t say this to scare you, just to impress upon you how awful a situation it must have been to be gay in the ’50s and ’60s if running to the mafia was the safest choice.

Even advancing in time, there are just so many rules. As for myself, I carried a picture of the woman I loved in my math book, and I had a very strict schedule as to how I would look at it. I think I only allowed myself 2 peeks a day, and actually felt very angry with myself if I cheated. My rules were important to me because I thought they were helping me to hide the fact that I am gay. I have always been gay and it takes hindsight to see just how ridiculous it sounds. But I had rules, and I followed them.

We give our rules away when we realize we are carrying them around for the sake of “that’s how it’s always been done” and not because they are helping us to achieve any particular goal. It’s deciding when they aren’t useful anymore and getting rid of them that’s the hard part.

As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5, the old is passed away, the new has come. It is a call for reconciliation so that Jews and Gentiles might live together as one body, both reconciled through Christ.

Ultimately, this is a call to participate in Christ’s own faithfulness, by allowing him to live in and through us. It is also an invitation to throw out the rules, and live in the love- apart from sexuality or any other constraint that takes the focus off our humanness.

As Carolynne Hitter Brown puts it:

All work toward social justice, then, is based on the principle that Christ lives in us. As we strive for reform, we do so in a manner that loves and respects others, believing all people are called to covenant with God through God’s grace.

So throw out the rules.

We’ve all heard of those churches where there’s no dancing, there’s no music, there’s no laughter… no pride. We’ve all heard of those churches where hiding your light under a bushel was the safest option at the time… even if the church itself is completely safe and it’s your own mind stirring up trouble.

When I was 12 years old, I saw someone for the first time… at my church. If you’ve ever had a romantic feeling ever in your life, you know what I mean. She was the one for whom time stood still, the only one in color in a room full of gray. She was so stunningly gorgeous that, at first, I forgot to notice that she was female. In fact, I forgot to notice she was female until I realized that I wanted my lips to touch hers… and that girls didn’t do that with other girls.

It was a trap. I knew that my lips were supposed to kiss girl lips. I also knew that since I was female, this might be considered, well, a problem. For starters, this girl was on my radar. There wasn’t a way that we wouldn’t run into each other. I had to find a way to ration out feelings, because to leak out too much was to “show.”

I didn’t want to love my girl because I thought I would “show.”

No pride that day.

When I was fourteen years old, I told a girl in my class that I liked her. She took me into a practice room in the instrumental music department and yelled at me until her voice was hoarse. Then, her friend came up to me and said that the girl I liked was now throwing up in the bathroom because I’d told her I liked her and she was straight.

No pride that day.

When I was fourteen years old, the girl I liked in the instrumental music department told everyone in my entire grade that I was gay. When the bell rang at lunch, several people with Bibles marched over to my table at lunch and started a dramatic reading of all the Scripture that would damn me to hell.

No pride that day.

When I was 18 years old, my girlfriend and I kissed in the dark, arms around each other, windows steaming… until she had to go and meet the boy her parents thought she was dating.

No pride that day.

We all have these moments. We all have these flaws and insecurities that pop up all day, every day, and we listen to them. We listen to the moments in which our minds tell us that it’s ok not to be proud of ourselves. It’s ok to treat ourselves like crap, because hey! Everybody else is doing it.

If we wait long enough, the domino reaction is that everyone’s brokenness collides. Pain meets pain and pride meets pride so that pieces of both are inextricably interrelated, scattered on the floor in no particular order…

just as are we,
gentle souls, flung to the corners of the earth, complete pictures of pride and pain walking upright on solid ground.

You are the complete picture of pride and pain, flung to the four corners of the earth. You are the reconciliation of the laws of the old testament and the loving Christ of the new. You are what God holds in God’s own hand and calls you perfect by name. Rejection of the law and acceptance of Christ to heal all the ills of the world.

And may we all say it together:

We’ve all got pride today.

Amen.

Unsafe, unsafe

I hear you, feel you

have worn that  scar

on my skin

Unsafe, unsafe

Because you gave it to me.

I had no reason not to trust you.

Not to trust the love I felt would

be returned.

Unsafe, unsafe

No reason to believe that wanting

to be in your life (wholly)

and not some undercover operation

was a problem

unsolvable

distant and close

a heartbeat

an echo

Unsafe, unsafe

I thought the arms

that carried me

wouldn’t let go.

Unsafe, unsafe

You push

I pull

We argue the same point

over and over and over and over and over and over

while Sisyphus laughs in

Schadenfreude.

Unsafe, unsafe

I lay myself bare in

supplication

Not because you have power

Because you have

fear

anxiety

insecurity

have always had

Unsafe, unsafe

I raise my voice

to be louder

than

fear

anxiety

insecurity

my heart

murmuring

to yours

Dear Leslie,

I know you said to email you requests for advice column Thursday but this was easier from my phone.

Editor’s note: Just get hold of me. I don’t care how. I don’t care if I have to check 20 e-mail accounts to try and find inspiration to write, but you have to meet me halfway and use something I check A LOT so you don’t carry resentment towards me that I haven’t answered your question when in reality, I haven’t read it.

You can publish my question if you want but I would prefer you not use my name. I have been trying to figure out how to accept and deal with an issue that continues to bother me and one I cannot get over…I am the single friend in a group. One other friend Sherri is seeing someone long distance but I don’t know if it’s exclusive as she is very private. Other friends all have spouses (with whom I’m also close) and we all hang out together. One couple has kids. All the females work together and are pretty close. We’ve managed very well to keep our work issues from affecting our friendships. I live with my parents who are in their 60s and 70s and we have a good relationship but I don’t want to hang out with them all the time. My friends don’t include me in things they do with their spouses etc. Like if it’s a holiday weekend and they do a cookout they don’t invite me. They go to a local street party and don’t invite me. They either don’t think to include me or just don’t. I don’t know which is worse….they didn’t think about me or didn’t want me around. If I say anything I get the feeling like they think I’m being petty and they say they didn’t even think about me. I tried being the one to initiate “anybody want to do anything this weekend?” Or “do you want to go to the street party?” In the past either I got no response or last minute excuse or even one time got into an argument and was told not everyone has money to go out all the time like me. It seemed if I asked no one wanted to go or could. But if someone else in the group asked then everyone wanted to. So I stopped asking and just wait for someone else to initiate. Which leaves me disapointed and feeling left out a lot. How do I get past this? Since I know I can’t change them …I can only change me. I’m pretty self confident and ok being alone but I love just spending time with my friends even if it’s at someone’s house byob style. Anyway…any advice you can give would be great!

 Sincerely,

You know my name, but they don’t.

——————————————-

Sweet reader,

Let me free you from your own head, even if it’s just for one full second. No one thinks about you at all. I do not mean this in the absolutely horrible way it sounds, only that it is a universal Truth. Especially in a Facebook-paced world, no one is going to hear you say anything unless you scream it at the top of your lungs, and I do mean this literally. You’re going to have to make phone calls, you’re going to have to move under your own power, and in the beginning, you’re going to HATE EVERY STEP OF IT.

That’s the first part. The complete first step is to acknowledge that you won’t get better by trying to change their behavior. Getting out of the house under your own power will give you the strength to make other friends, which is easier because they don’t know you enough to hate you yet. Believe it or not, I mean that in the most loving way possible. Old relationships thrive on being close enough to poke fun at each other without poking THE BEAR. That’s what I call my oldest friend’s inner personality. In fact, it’s a joke in my house… don’t poke the bear.

I will never stop poking the bear. She’s my oldest friend, like I said. However, there are a few rules you should learn before you go around poking bears. The first is that she’s going to be grumpy when she wakes up. The second thing is that once you’ve gotten her attention, you don’t need all of it. But the hard part is getting the bear’s attention, right?

Do your friends know how much you need them? Do you know how much you annoy them? I mean that in the nicest possible way because that is the balance that we all face when trying to make a friendship last over many years. How can I make enough noise to be heard without sounding like a rock concert? What is going on with me if I have to get THAT loud before people drop everything and come running? Because it is true, if your behavior is totally alienating, people will run not to spend time in your black cloud.

I don’t know your black cloud, but I know mine and It. Is. Fluffy. When I go off, I explode, and people absorb my emotions and it truly feels like Fallout. But at the same time, I also have an extremely long fuse… extremely… and I feel that I can start talking in my still, small voice and I never have to raise it as long as my friends make the pact with me to answer when I call. Because I’m so independent, I will rarely call them unless my nightgown is on fire. Want to know how rare that is? I don’t have a nightgown.

Of course your parents are not your friends or your therapists, and realistically, they don’t want to know that much about you. It is unfortunate that my life’s work is writing, because my parents are always going to know more about me than I know about them unless they want to share it. I feel like we are even. They listen to me vomit on the Internet, I listen to them during discussions about money. The emotions we share during those conversations are exactly the same, so I feel like if they’re willing to put up with my crap, I’m willing to put up with my own discomfort when it comes to talking about how to direct cash flow.

And that’s the kind of deal you will need to make with every friend you make, ever. If you want to be a good friend, you need to be able to say two things in your head all the time and have those two things not overlap, as if they occupy completely separate parts of your brain… because they do. I will say it in a serious way, and then I will joke with you to relieve the emotional javelin I’ve just thrown down.

Real Emotions

1. I love you, and you are one of the companions I choose for this life thing.
2. So help me God, there are days when I just want to murder you in your sleep.

Jokes You Make to Deal with Real Emotions

1. You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, inside and out.
2. If you put an icepick through the front of my skull and twisted it around a little bit, I could still parallel park better than you.

Do you see what I mean?

Accept people for all of who they are- angels and morons. Accept that you’re an angel.

And a moron.

And that just has to be okay, because you’re a human, and so are all your friends. I really hope this helps you, and I encourage you to get help outside this letter. If you find that your behavior is stopping you from getting the results you want in your life, it’s probably time to talk to someone who doesn’t have a horse in the race. If you are broke, run to your pastor or to a 12 Step. I never thought I would say this, but one meeting was like group therapy and I loved it so much that I want to go back next week. I don’t feel that I need intensive therapy to deal with my old issues. I feel like I need to deal with my old issues so that I can have new issues. Life is progress.

People ask me, “why do you call yourself names so much?” I say, “my self-confidence didn’t go up until I realized that humans are morons and I am not, in fact, the exception to that rule. It gave me a way to recognize the humor in all of my quirks, because all of my stories, no matter how legal, are funny as crap because of the way I frame them. They’re framed in my head like that, too. I don’t let bad memories eat me alive anymore, and that’s what is SO freeing. The bonus part of going to Al-anon now is that the tapes I have are *so* old that I am able to listen to my own voice without flooding out emotionally. Them being old has created a layer of clinical scrutiny, as if I am the next greatest psychotherapist in the entire world because I’m so clever on the inside, dumb on the outside (there has to be a name as derogatory a term as “oreo” for that. Who’s on it? Double Stuff, baby.).

Speaking of being clever, when I watch Doctor Who, I begin to appreciate the value of “clever.” The Doctor uses it for both defense and distraction. He uses humor as deflection when you shoot an arrow at a millennium of pain.

My name is Leslie Lanagan, and whether you like it or not, I am the 12th Doctor. Just not in Wales.

I realized last week why it’s you that gets the longest letters. You were my blog before I could type. When my keyboard became an extension of my mind, e-mail sent you my first entries. My first Fanagan. The only one who got pinged for years and years and I’ll be even more pleased if you don’t know what that means and laugh to yourself that it must be something dirty. Please know that I know you are my Clio, and if I make it as a writer, really, really make it, it will all be because of those letters we wrote to each other. You have no idea how healing this writing experience has been for me because having a foundation in writing to you every. single. day. is what allowed me to go from good to great at a high rate of speed… all of those e-mails that you called “emotional bombs” were actually blog entries meant for an audience of one. I realize now that you might not have understood this; I used an equal amount of heightened language because that’s how you got my attention. Things began to get better for me when I realized that I could never be bigger or louder. I could only talk about my still, small voice and hope that in some way, one day, it would call out to yours.

Writing has allowed me to erase my shame. I have none. Literally. Because what experience is there in the world so embarrassing as the one where you take a look at the patterns you’ve built up over time that are now weaving into an exquisite noose? No one can embarrass me more than I’ve embarrassed myself. No one can shame me into better future behavior than I can. No one can weave a tighter noose than I can and then get me to use it as easily.

Writing self-reflection pieces, for me, is like volunteering to live in a house with floor to ceiling mirrors. My blog is the running commentary of trying to accept myself as I am. As I REALLY am, with tiny emotional warts and boils that I hate just as much as you hate your <insert flaw here>. In the process, it is often entertaining, but the comedy is rarely the thing. I use the comedy to get you to stay for the drama. It’s a reward.

Today is the day where I got to look in the mirror and see the real picture. What I looked like with some validation that my situation had changed. With some validation that you might have influenced my life beyond what you thought you did. It allowed me to lose a lot of the anger, bitterness, and resentment that I have toward you that I just loved and loved and loved you even though everything was so lopsided. I had the classic kid reaction to an adult they loved drinking, smoking dope, and living with an abusive spouse. I curled up in your lap and loved you and snuggled up into you even though you were just a wire monkey roller coaster, and, after a while, an idea in my head.

But because I knew how I felt every step of the way, it didn’t send up the red flags that it should’ve. I didn’t notice or care that my behavior was alienating, because I felt I’d lost all dignity long ago.

Today, I gained it.

————————————

Read Growing Up, Part 1

Today I learned that I’m a blogger because I grew up writing letters in a time where there weren’t fifty other ways we could contact each other. Get this, children. I wrote letters in longhand because calling to a city in the same state COST MONEY (and dinosaur eggs are DELICIOUS WITH KETCHUP).

I realized today that I liked who I was in those letters- warm, patient, kind, funny, and most importantly, not attached to a physical body. If you hadn’t seen me in a while, you could probably forget what I looked like. To you, I could be 8 or 38 or 78, just a voice across time. Because in those days, children, people called “postal workers” came to your house and delivered your e-mail, called letters when they were printed on trees. If you had an e-mail to send, you gave it to YOUR “postal worker.”

In letters, I could be a knight. I could ride a white horse and place a cloak down on the rough parts of your life so that you could keep your footing on uneven ground.

In letters, I could be a painter. I could use words to reassure you of life’s beauty when you felt like your cloud’s “silver lining” turned the whole sky green.

In letters, I could give you the most I could give you, because words were my only means of providing comfort to someone who really seemed like they could use it.

I used letters because it was too dangerous to touch you, to be seen touching you, to know I wanted to touch you and I couldn’t because perception is reality no matter what reality entails.

I used words because people were watching for me to lose it. People were waiting for me to sneeze wrong as proof that being gay is contagious. Writing allowed me to fly under the radar, to feel like the pilot of my own ship, to get messages to you by courier as if your body was a sacred island of mercy during the war that raged around mine.

Everything within me funneled towards those letters because it was what I could do. I couldn’t be big and strong. I couldn’t be wise (well, I could pretend). I couldn’t stop the people in your life that I knew were hurting you or had hurt you. I didn’t have an outlet to talk to anyone about it because I wasn’t allowed to talk to you so there was no reason for me to need to discuss you with anyone else. You have been the best kept secret of my life.

At what cost, though?

My favorite book in the entire world bar none (do not pass go, do not collect $200 before you buy it and read it. Short and wonderful) is The Giver, by Lois Lowry. It’s about a boy who is raised in the world of Same, and in the world of Same, almost everyone has the same memories. The reason I say “almost” is that in order to keep the peace, the people had elected one person to be the keeper of the memories, so there was only one person in the entire world of Same that knew ideas like war, famine, pestilence, etc. The person elected to carry the memories was titled “The Giver.” When The Giver started to get old enough that they needed to start thinking about a replacement, the boy is elected as The Receiver.

The Giver and the Receiver are not allowed to talk to anyone but each other, because they are the only ones above the rules in the world of Same. They are allowed to know anything and everything. Transferring memories is as easy as skin to skin contact.

There’s a famous scene in the book where Jonah (The Receiver) starts his training by lying face down, shirtless on The Giver’s bed. The Giver touches Jonah’s skin and sends him great memories like snow and sunshine. Then, because he knows that all the memories aren’t going to be good, he asks for a negative memory. The Giver shows him thirst and sunburn.

It is my favorite book in the entire history of books because what I know for sure is that when I am with you, I feel like I am The Receiver. When you touch my skin, memories transfer. How could they not? So many times I have done the emotional equivalent of taking my shirt off and lying down on your bed, knowing that what you had to give me that day wasn’t snow and sunshine.

There is no sexual content in the book whatsoever, and I mean none at all now. I want to talk about nakedness as it applies to the relationship you have with your massage therapist, how they can feel in your muscles the kind of day you had.

When I dove into letters, my training ended abruptly as there was “no need” to be skin to skin… or at least, that’s what I told myself when letters became my only option.

Yesterday, I wrote an essay on my experience with Dr. Robert Morgan, the jazz director at High School for Performing and Visual Arts when I attended. I sent it to him, and this was his reply:

Hi Leslie:

I wrote you via my e-mail account, but I’m not sure it went through. I’m copying my message below:

Hi Leslie:

I read this last night (more-than-once), but was so overwhelmed I couldn’t immediately reply. I “slept-on-it” and will now attempt a thank you.

THANK YOU!! I have been privileged to receive quite-a-few written acknowledgements over the years, some “private,” some “public,” but I have never received anything (not close) so beautifully-written, profound, and touching. I’m sure this took a lot of time and thought on your part, and I appreciate it very much.

For my 60th birthday (2001, to be exact), my wife, Helen, surprised me with a scrapbook, full of testimonials from ex-students that she had secretly gathered. If OK w. you, I’d like to print out your remarks and add to the book (on p. 1, actually!). I wish she had known to contact you at that time…

I remember “Come Rain or Come Shine” – in fact, I have the concert printed program in front of me as I write! Nov. 6, 1992, to be exact. Do you still have a copy of the program? If not, let me know, and I will scan and send.

In looking through my program booklet, I see that you were in the band when we accompanied Milt Hinton. I hope you found that as memorable as I did.

A few questions:

From the programs, I’m reminded that you left ‘PVA after the 10th grade. To where did you transfer? Why did you leave? (if you don’t mind me asking; I can’t recall details – I’m sure I was disappointed!).

Could you provide a few details about your writing career? Do you have a website?
I see that you live in Portland – a great place! Helen and I went there for New Year’s in the late ’90s.

Do you ever get to Houston? If so, PLEASE let me know, and let’s meet for dinner.
Thanks again for your *priceless* remarks, which are now part of my psyche in perpetuity! (Einstein, yet…)

With love,
Doc

After I read it, I asked Doc if he minded hearing the reply from my web site, and he said no.

Dear Doc,

Leaving HSPVA was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my entire life. It changed me irrevocably, but not all in bad ways. Sometimes I feel that going to a regular high school was an experience I needed to have in order to function in the world. Most of the time, though, I know that the microcosm of HSPVA is what allowed me the most growth at that age. I struggled badly with Attention Deficit Disorder, and having three performance groups a day where there was no written homework to be turned in was a blessing for my GPA. However, even thinking about the question is moot, because I did not leave HSPVA because I wanted to (exactly). I left because my dad had gotten a new job at a different church and I was too scared to drive from Sugar Land to Montrose every day all by myself. I think my parents were scared of that for me. It just seemed better all around that I went to the school where I lived. But again, it was the hardest decision of my 16-year-old life.

I think that the problems I had because I was coming out would have gone away. I think I would have found a way to deal with all of the grief. Leaving wasn’t really so much about giving up HSPVA as it was feeling I would never be worthy of it. It may have just been my impression at the time, but people like Justin Furstenfeld, Mireille Enos, Beyonce Knowles, Steven Powell, Jason Moran… those people were PVA. I wasn’t sure that people went there to make themselves so much as they went there to further what they already had. I didn’t feel secure in anything, least of all my talent, so that’s the way I justified having to make such a hard decision in the first place. Plus, the year that I left was the year that HSPVA said you had to live in the district to go to school there. We had plenty of people offer to let me live with them or use their address, but I was still “little me” inside.

I thought of you every day at Clements, and missed you mightily.

Love,

Leslie

I don’t mean in the biological sense. I mean, who are the people in your life that have shaped you, for better or for worse?

I just got finished reading a few archives, trolling for ideas (mostly), and I came across a line that I wrote in High School Stories We Still Tell. It was about how my senior English teacher, Dr. Hudel Steed, made me into a writer. That led down the mind worm of who else holds that title.

• Ms. Protheroe
  • One of my language arts teachers at Clifton. I was a little bit in love with her, but only because I wanted to look like her. My favorite memory is walking into her class for the first time and seeing her little glasses, preppy clothes, and short hair. My mentor looked a lot like her, style-wise. I never told her, but I thought of her as “home away from home.” I am sure that whether or not she was actually a lesbian is negligible. Even if she was actually straight as an arrow, it didn’t matter to me. She just looked the part, and it was comforting in a world where I had trouble seeing what I thought of as myself.
• Mr. Garvin
  • We never said a word about it, but we knew. He opened my mind to Will Durant and the great philosophers contained in his wonderful work. I read Kant and Nietzsche, James and Skinner. We watched My Dinner with Andre, which is really all I need to say about that because if you’re familiar with the movie, you know it probably bombed the hell out of my brain and turned it inside out and upside down. My Dinner with Andre is the first movie in which I knew the effects of hallucinogens, because even if those guys were completely sober, they so were not. The entire conversation sounds like a mandala made of mushrooms, seeds, and stems. Louis Malle is the movies’ best Mad Hatter. My Dinner with Andre is so frenetically weird that it is as if they are traveling in a TARDIS no one else can see.
• Mrs. Forrest
  • She was my fourth grade teacher, and I was in love with her a little bit. Yes, Gaby. Emma, Topper, Jimmy, Paul, Daniel, Doug, Shane, Derrick, et al. I was gay even back then and you were right and I was wrong. Here’s the five dollars I know you bet as to the exact date and time at which I would say so.
• Ms. Meracle
  • Seriously the meanest dyke I have ever met in my life, and I would say this regardless of whether she’s actually a lesbian, because honestly, I don’t know or care. The only inkling I have to go on is that she seemed mad at me all the time, and at one point, I just flat out wondered if she was jealous. Here I was, this outrageously out lesbian in Sugar Land, Texas, where she herself would have been fired for saying the same thing. If she’s straight and I’m wrong, I sincerely apologize. It’s not like I’m old enough that saying this online won’t get to her somehow, and I am not cruel enough to judge anyone. I can only tell you how I felt. How she feels has never been up to me. I couldn’t empathize with her, though, because her anger was too pointed. When I was in marching band practice one day, she was trying to get me to inhale all the way down to my diaphragm… so she started pushing the end of a baseball bat into my abdomen so I’d have some resistance to push against. That was fine in and of itself, but I felt she was mad… and you don’t let momma brush your hair when she’s mad.
• Doc Morgan
  • Doc Morgan is the only instructor I had in the entirety of my grade school education who gave me the gift of feeling humbled in his presence. Doc Morgan didn’t give me an education, he gave me the world on a silver platter and an engraved invitation to carry it. He believed in all of my talent and my potential even when I myself could not bear the thought of my own performance ability. To know the depth and breadth of my love for Doc, you have to know that he taught students like Everett Harp, Jason Moran, Eric Harland, Brandon Lee… he has taught the greatest jazz minds of our generation, and he also taught me. It was amazing to me that his pedagogy was so fine, he knew how to reach the brilliant and the barely-hanging-on. When I was in ninth grade, he picked me to have a solo tune in our first concert. It wasn’t high or difficult, just these lazy B’s slinking across chords… maybe you know it? It was called “Come Rain or Come Shine.” Doc Morgan gave me a gift in that solo. He taught me what I could look for in my playing that was admirable. What I found was that I wasn’t very mathematically quick, so the calculations of what notes would fit in the given key- the foundation of soloing- was often beyond me. What I did have, though, was the lazy, rich, fat sound of one of those old guys who can hold you in the palm of his hand because the notes coming toward you are so thick, you could use ’em to sop up gravy. In a lot of ways, High School for Performing and Visual Arts was damaging for me, because my life was slowly coming apart at the seams due to the reception of the news that I liked girls. The woman I loved had just moved away, and I was dying inside trying to deal with my grief. My grades were so bad that I was on academic probation nearly the entire time I was there. And then there was Doc… the brightest light I’ve ever seen before or since. It is fitting that he wears his hair curly and wild, a bit like Einstein, because when the light shines on his curls just right, the halo appears.

An Open Letter to Martin Clunes:No matter what anyone says, until the role is filled, you’re my Doctor.

— Leslie D. Lanagan (@ldlanagan) June 7, 2013

 

In my mind, I have on scrubs and a white coat (The Outfit™). I am pacing back and forth in the waiting room like an anxious father and desperately hoping that there is a cigar around here somewhere. Something to dicker with in my hands because no news is good news and it’s been a while and I can’t keep still. My sister, my brother in law, and my nephew are just in the next room, and it’s not my area. My area is by the Pepsi machines. My area is to sit and think about how this little Texan will change the world, just by being in it.

An hour goes by, there’s nothing to do but wait. I can’t leave, I can’t even move. I can’t even bring myself to do so. I just have to go the distance. I have to be one of the first to know that the baby is okay , I have to be one of the ones that feels the relief and joins in the hugging and crying.

And that’s what I’m thinking about as I sit here in a restaurant in Portland, Oregon.

I am so homesick I can barely think about it. I don’t have time to go “home” until after the 16th of June, and the baby is supposed to be born exactly at the same time.

All I can do is hope, pace, and try not to worry. Because I’m not worried.

I’m just waiting.

Hey advice lady, I had a long night of not a lot of sleep, and now I’m fighting the sleep demon. I can’t do coffee this late in the day and going out to my car to nap is not an option…I need to know how to stay awake during a particularly tedious day.

Sincerely,

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

My preferred method is coffee in the morning and diet soda throughout the day. In fact, the housekeepers at Marylhurst thought I had a “drinking problem” because of the amount of cans they removed from my office. But at the same time, I choose to keep a low, steady amount of caffeine in my blood rather than one of those MEGA Gargle Blasters with 500mg of caffeine in each sip… with Taurine. It’s simple. Don’t let the bus go below fifty, and it won’t explode.