HIV – Stories That Are All True

What is your favorite holiday? Why is it your favorite?

I did do this prompt last year, but it’s still in my “Drafts” folder. Therefore, I actually get to answer today’s prompt like it’s a real writing prompt day. And yet, I have the same answer- Fourth of July is my favorite holiday because all I like to do on holidays is sit around with beer and talk to people. It doesn’t matter what kind of beer. Right now, I have two favorites. Hare Chaser Grapefruit IPA by Flying Dog and Chelada Nada by Athletic.

Athletic is an N/A beer company, so all of their brews have the same amount of calories as a Coke or less…. and they go hard. You cannot imagine that lime, black pepper, and tomato will perfectly replace the acidic burn of alcohol and then it happens.It’s perfect. I love Athletic because I am more interested in flavors than alcohol. I do not have to feel bad about wanting to try nine of them. I am not the only person in Zac’s house that likes Athletic, so he’s always well-stocked. He also has every single N/A spirit one can find, and my favorite joke right now is that when we were watching “Slow Horses,” I drank a GLASS of whiskey. 😉 I can’t remember what else was in it, I just remember being delighted that I did not have to be judicious with the pour. It’s a mixologists’ wonderland, these N/A spirits, because then I can spend all night experimenting and wake up with no ill-effects from the night before. It’s also good to know that I can make ANYONE an amazing cocktail regardless of their background with alcohol. That’s because I can do just as much with juice, soda water, and citrus garnish. If the person does not have a zero tolerance on alcohol, that opens up being able to use bitters, which make fruit juice and soda water grow up in a major way. I am sure, though, that many companies make nonalcoholic bitters just for this purpose. I need to get some, but right now I’m in love with Angostura, as it makes ginger ale taste like root beer, and Sprite/7-Up taste like ginger ale. If you go to a restaurant that does not have ginger ale and you order a cocktail that has ginger ale in it, it’s a reproduction behind the scenes.

Which reminds me. I have never made a Moscow Mule out of Reed’s Extra Hot, so I should get on that at some point.

This is the kind of conversation I’d be having at a Fourth of July Party before we go to the river. And it’s a propos that Fourth of July has come up today, because I cannot remember a Fourth of July in Portland without her. It’s not that it hasn’t happened. It’s that Fourth of July without Bryn is not memorable in any way.

Bryn, like the rest of my close friends, isn’t a person. She’s an event. When I see her, I don’t just see what is happening now, but all the iterations of her person that have come before this one. I see Bryn at every age, from little kid til now. What I also have to remember is that I would look like a little kid to myself at that age, too. I was 19, which is five years older than Bryn, but at 46 we both look like infants.

That’s because we had a mutual friend that held a Fourth of July Party every year, so we’d either meet up at their house or she’d eventually wander over to my apartment with Dana, which was across the highway (26) from said mutual friend. Or, as I joked with them, “you live on the side of Powell with the Starbucks and without the strip club. I live on the side of Powell without the Starbucks and with the strip club.” Who got the better deal is anyone’s guess, because I got to go to a bar and walk home at night. In the morning, she got to walk to Starbucks in her pajamas and beg them for milk. It all worked out.

My apartment became the Introvert Recharging Station, and said mutual friend was not very gracious about it. She did not like that people came to my house to get away from all the stimulation, and there was a lot of it. Conversation, live music, all of it. It was a lot, and it never occurred to me that she would be jealous. It’s not something we would have discussed, just a rumor I heard over the years from the people that came to my house.

In my own mind, it was not that way at all. I did the same thing when I was young at my grandparents’ house. They didn’t live very far from each other, so when I got bored at one house, I went to the other. Neither grandmother worried about me because they knew I’d be back. To me, everyone wandered in and out as they were comfortable, even me. It was never a divide and conquer, but that’s how she took it.

I am not manipulative by nature and do not realize when a game is afoot. Therefore, if there was any kind of game, I won by not realizing it was going on. People did not come to my house and stay for the whole evening. When things got boring at my house, they wandered back over to hers. I didn’t “steal” any of her friends, I took care of her introverts while they were overwhelmed and overstimulated. But, she was mad, because they were HER introverts.

Never mind that I was also one of her introverts, supposedly.

Besides, when she was having a party, I did not also, in turn, decide that I was having a party. If someone wanted to recharge at our house, it didn’t matter what we feed them or what we drank. The only time I remember Dana and I breaking this rule was a private conversation between us that we had with our eyes. One of her friends told us that he was HIV positive, and we looked at each other. All of the sudden, Dana’s most valuable bottle of wine meant shit and I knew that’s exactly what she was saying to me and I was saying, “you’re right. Get it out here.”

Thank you to Lynn, Jane, and Michael for introducing “Open That Bottle of Wine Day,” on “The Splendid Table,” or else it would not have occurred to either of us that these kinds of days are just what Jane and Michael meant. The announcement of HIV was a reminder to DO IT NOW.

It’s probably 15-20 years since that happened, and I remember it like it was yesterday, so it was worth it.

But that’s just one memorable fourth of July out of 14 or 15 that I celebrated in Portland. Most of what I remember is shivering next to the river watching the fireworks…… Which I do like sitting by the river in DC, because it’s not as cold in the summer. Portland has great weather for fireworks, usually, because the rain clears up. You must still need blankets to keep warm.

It’s best that you go with people you really like, because as it gets colder you won’t want so much personal space. It’s about shivering in groups.

What makes it my favorite holiday is that everyone is relaxed and no one has an expectation of getting a gift. It’s a stone soup holiday, where everything that everyone brings makes it better. Each person has a different type of hot dog/sausage/veggie patty, etc. Each person has that side that makes them comfortable (and I will search out the person that made deviled eggs). We all like ice lollies in red, white, and blue.

My favorite is where the white and blue meet- raspberry lemon. For my overseas readers, it’s called a “bomb pop,” and is stacked with red, white, and blue. The red is generally cherry, and I’ve mentioned that lemon is white. However, in other countries, raspberry would be a darker red, and in the US “blue raspberry” is dominant because we are crazy about artificial coloring and the rest of the world is not….. Mostly because their governments are smart and have outlawed them.

I have found energy drinks that are clear with that same raspberry lemon flavor and they’re just as good as the ice lolly. C4 makes the best, but I can’t remember what they call it. If it were me, it would be something cheesy having to do with freedom, because of the drink’s origin.

Plus, nothing was funnier back in the day to me than “Freedom Fries.”

Why wouldn’t it be? Fourth of July is my favorite holiday.

It’s the middle of the night and I just randomly woke up. I can’t get back to sleep, so I’m going to tell you about a funny conversation I had with Sam and then start reading. If I’m not hooked, I’ll go back to bed. If I am, I can’t think of a better way to spend a few hours than blissed out on the dopamine of a good book.

So, Sam wished me a happy Pride. We were talking about the events, and I asked her when the parade was. Then, I said, “I used to feel embarrassed about having to ask straight people when the parade was, but then I realized that no introvert willingly knows when events this size happen. We know it’s coming up, but we’ll wait until we know the approximate date and time before asking the exactly details.” I think it’s because we’ll spend time being anxious about the crowd- it’s sensory overload on every level imaginable. I like to be surprised with answers like “it’s tomorrow” or “it’s three days from now.” I do not want to know that the Pride parade is in three months. That’s three months of worrying about how to participate in the smallest increment of time possible.

She replied by telling me when it was (I don’t remember now…. I’ll have to look it up….. again), and then said that straight people like to be asked when the Pride parade is because they like proving they’re in the know. They like being thought of as “hip.”

Fine with me. I am not hip. I am the worst gay who ever gayed.

I’ve really only had one Pride parade that was so fun I never wanted the night to end. My sister marched with me, and we were both really young. I think she was 15-16, so that would have made me 20 or 21. There is nothing better than seeing the Pride parade through a kid’s eyes, because they notice everything and their perspective is just, well….. It’s better. They’re blown away by the floats, beads, flags, etc. and they just want to love you up and make you feel appreciated. They GET IT. Kids understand better than most adults, because they don’t like it when they feel like their loved ones are being attacked for something they can’t change, and the idea of one night to celebrate with a big party in the middle of the streets is catnip to a teenager. I think the meaningful parts of Pride move her differently than me, and I can tell you exactly why. If someone’s going to hate their sibling, it has to be them. Anyone else is just asking for a knock-down drag-out. Earrings will be taken out. Ponytails will be hastily made.

It’s not just the neighborhood block aspect. It’s also that my sister isn’t gay. She hasn’t had years and years and years of being picked on, so she has no immunity to it. We’ve never had this conversation, but I think it’s a tiny bit like Quentin Tarantino being worried that Jamie Foxx would recoil at saying the n-word while filming “Django Unchained.” Foxx said not to worry. It was Tarantino that was going to be uncomfortable, because for him, it was just Tuesday. If you are queer, homophobia and transphobia are just the iocaine powder to which we’ve built up immunity.

The struggle did not go unnoticed. The Pride parade impacted my sister’s life just as much as it did mine. She gave me so much self-confidence and love. I gave her the will to take on state and federal legislators who want to outlaw trans medicine by exposing her to what was going on in my community early and often.

My sister is pretty much the straightest straight woman I know, but at the same time, I’ve “raised her” to be a better gay person than I’ll ever be. Like, there’s no contest.

She’s a lobbyist for a federally funded health clinic that serves the queer community, working in Austin and DC. She knows more about queer issues than I’ve forgotten, and if I have questions about trans medicine, she’s the person I ask first (I’m not trans, I just always have questions about medicine). She was one of the people fighting prohibition of giving teenagers puberty blockers and the ban on trans girls in sports.

I don’t have the desire, will, or stamina to talk to Texas Republicans about that, because the fact that puberty blockers would alleviate their concerns was beyond them. Puberty blockers are a non-permanent way to treat gender dysphoria in children while giving them plenty of time to see a therapist and decide if they’re happy with their bodies as is, or whether they’d like to have surgery. It also gives them an “out” if they decide not to transition at all. As soon as you stop taking the pills, puberty resumes. I can’t imagine the disgust I would feel for my body if my entire brain was wired as male and I started seeing breasts grow in. By keeping trans people’s bodies immature, it also makes surgical transition easier later, because your face hasn’t grown into the appearance of your assigned gender- the one people decided for you because you’d just been evicted from your first apartment and measured on the Apgar scale.

For trans women, this could mean that their Adam’s Apples aren’t as pronounced and their facial features stay soft. For trans men, this could mean that their hips don’t widen in preparation for childbirth, they don’t start menstruating, and they only have to have bottom surgery later on.

It’s also misogynistic that this stuff is being targeted at trans girls, because I’ve never heard a legislator talking about males assigned female at birth and how that would affect boys’ teams. No one brought up trans men during the bathroom bill debate. It’s almost as if being female is the problem.

I don’t have the chutzpah to even read this blog entry to legislators, but my sister will keep knocking down obstacles on my behalf.

She is my Pride.