you want the greatest thing, the greatest thing since bread came sliced

in brief, some highlights:

- new job managing a children's clothing cart (mad dough)
-boy(s)
-wine and poetry reading in harlem with a kindred
-a truly amazing boy who rides my bus with make up like heath ledger's in batman
-writing new stand up material
-obsessing over the book about carole king, carly simon and joni mitchell
-being told i have beautiful tattoos by a breathtaking stranger.
-talking to an italian immigrant about the difficulties of love and language in our city while trapped on the 1 train.

ok. i am recommiting to fun. fun that's an adventure, and laughter, and unique, and happy, and good, and true, and not about beverages and fear.

i promise. i'm gonna fix this.

new york, new york is a friend to the traveling kind.

For a few weeks now i have thought about subversiveness. about that drive inside so many to be alternative. to fight against the way it should be. i'm told these ideas are "very rent." la vie boheme, right? the other day i realized there is no more subversiveness in this city. new york. my home. i was on the 1 train. the 1 train was once the luxury liner of the different, the outcast, the vagabond. people who got off at christopher st. and reclaimed downtown. that is gone. the west village is gone. alternative is gone. i see kids in ripped jeans and chucks, items that once meant maybe you were interesting, walking into modeling agencies ( and not in a gia kind of way). i see pink hair trannies taking pictures with casserole eating midwest farm wives who have spent the last five days wandering my fair city, loving the "safety" of the neighborhoods i was found solace in.

there are no more outcast. not in a loving positve way anymore. there are no more queer revolutionaries in docs and tank tops (least we count the crowd out side of the eagle leather bar, and even they are talking about adopting and subarus). there is no place for the downtrodden. it's all gentrification and parental help and lackluster sparkle. hip minus the bones. fat minus the sass. cool minus the struggle.

i've been thinking of a song, by amy ray-of the indigo girls. called put it out for good. it speaks truth. i will burn it and mail it to anyone who will listen.

Alright I hear what you're saying to me
Alright I hear what I just can't do
But I got this spark I got to feed it something
Or put it out for good

i don't want to put it out for good. i don't want to be a lark. a sign that straight white boring as hell america has accepted me. embraced me. i want to scream and say fuck you and be fat and ride my bike and be brave and have that not mean my life is screwed. i don't want to drive a hybrid and go to fire island family weekend. i want to fuck and love and hug and kiss and scream and drink like my life depends on it. i want to make them think that maybe we are different and that's what makes us braver and more beautiful then them and i want them to feel afraid and bad for not taking OUR feelings in to consideration.

memory

i can't sleep. the heat is creeping in to announce the pending arrival of summer. i hate the heat. i am laying here. tossing and turning. thinking. remembering.

i am 7 years old. it is easter. i am scared and saucy. this is not uncommon. i am wearing my favorite shirt. a button down shirt, maybe some sort of silk, it is a very busy pattern. i am wearing a blazer. i have just received a card with five dollars, from an aunt or a neighbor. my mother is sad. my mother is always sad. i was going to make her happy. two blocks away from our apartment there is a photo shop. i used to go in there alot. i used to go into a lot of the local businesses a lot. nobody ever gave me the crossing the street lesson. i just knew how to get away. i walked the two blocks. i said hello to my old familiar friend, the photo shop owner, and asked what he could help me get with my five dollars to make my mother smile. they had a cut out of marilyn monroe, i always said hi to her too. he suggested making a picture magnet. i said, only if marilyn could be in it. he took the picture. a polaroid. a magnet was made. momma smiled. i saved the day.

it's easter again. 3 years later. mom is sad. still sad. times are hard. times are always hard. i am sent to get my sister something to wear on easter morning before i help my mother make baskets out of whatever is left in the local general store. i go to fifth avenue, the main shopping block, filled with the smell of cinnamon sticks and the sound of chicano music. always crowded. i went to the kid's clothing store. i remember that my sister loves to wear her construction style boots. and i remember that in movies fun ladies wore those kinds of boots with floral dresses. it is 1995. i buy her a denim/floral dress and white leggings. ten dollars. five dollars under budget, which will make mom happy. i saved the day again.

i have to jot these down. i am afraid to lose them.

my moral compass

this one is about him. my dad. the man who taught right from wrong. every single memory i have of my father is of him standing for everything that is good and right and true. i remember christmas cards to my mother, after divorce. during the silence. in those cards cash. needed money. the means to give us, his children, a little something christmas morning. i never talk about how poor i was growing up, because i never feel like i have the right to speak on that topic. because for most of the time anyone i currently associate with has known me, i have been comfortable, or with the means to obtain the things i want. growing up this was not the case. like so many things in my life there has always been duality. mom and dad. strength and wisdom.

to be blunt and give as little self pity to this story as i can. when my parents split it was good. it was, i think, an attempt to let one of them walk away alive from a ship that was sinking fast. drunks, who come from drunks, with troubled kids, it was all too much. more kids. more bills. one job. one steady flow of income. the pressure, i imagine must have weighed him down. so my dad, in an act of survival, saw a life preserver and grabbed hold. i have never been like so many children of divorce, optimistic for a norman rockwell painting they could never be. i know my mother's abandon and need were draining. i believe that had they stayed together they would both be dead now.

my father taught me to do the right thing. early. when they split 75% of his take home pay was put in my mother pocket. he kept just enough money to eat (a little) and give money to the house he was staying in. legal matters ensued. money distributed. and still everyweek he would bring her, my mother, food and help. aid in battle she never could have won. a battle to survive.
i know, from him, the importance of helping whenever you can. of giving that extra bit, even if it might strain you. of favors and selflessness. of giving, without bells and whistles.

the silver lining

when you come from crazy you convince yourself that, at times, the terrible things that happen to you are deserved-stops on your on kilter journey. providence. you think that all hurdles you face are deserved. in short you never really ask for more. the more that can cure.

mary, mother of the motherless

mother's day is rather terrible when you are motherless. In a year, in a day, in an hour, there are reminders left and right of your loss. of her, she who has all the answers. she who is gone. no day is more full of those reminders than mother's day. Especially when you are not yourself a mother and there are no evolutionary prospects to make you one.

i try, though it is difficult, not to think of her on days like this. the darkest days. try and try as i might, she is in my mind, non stop, my mom. in life she had a big personality, sweeping gestures, dramatic responses, the resemblance sometimes is more than i want to admit to. i wonder, i wonder all the time, if she had lived, would we be friends. would our role reversal, i the parent to her ailing child, would that have made for a friendship. i think it would have.

i dream. i dream of mary. mother mary. mary, mother of the motherless. mary, like my sister, like my grandmother. fragile women all of them. i dream of mary telling me it's ok, and giving me a green light, only i don't drive. what the hell does that mean?

since she has gone, i watch t.v. movies geared at middle aged women, about middle aged women getting a second chance, starting over, rediscovering their high school sweetheart in the wake of their crumbled marriage or recently benign mastectomy. i watch these movies as a way of morning the second chance that seem to evade her. i read novels about women's journeys. journeys to rediscover their past in the middle of their lives on the longest days. you know the type of book i'm speaking of-high quality middle brow fiction by the likes of Elizabeth Berg, Jane Hamilton, and Kaye Gibbons. novels with titles like, Never Change, A Map of The World and A Virtuous Woman. i watch these movies, i read these novels, despite my alterna queer 20 something indie cred, because they connect me to moms, to women of her generation who made good, to the hope i think that lived inside her.

i am seriously losing faith in the world.

the life everlasting.

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
the Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:

Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended into hell.

The third day He arose again from the dead.

He ascended into heaven
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,
whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy *catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.

Amen.

those words were the guidelines by which i lived my life, day in and day out for the first 14. though i disagree with most of those catholic teachings, i am a product of my upbringing. i know the importance of a sentence that starts with "i believe..." i forget sometimes, though, to make those statements. so many of us forget, those words, i believe. we hope instead, that people can tell what believe from our clothes, the books we read, the people we are seen with. but i think sometimes, plain and simple, words are louder than words.

i believe in coffee and the need that a person sometimes has to keep going, even when they're going, going, gone. i believe in the diners and the power of late nights. i believe in girls, that in them there is a future, a better future. i believe in our voices, i believe in singing, because i swear, as doris did before me, that there is nothing wrong with your voice. i believe that, though it's trite, there is someone for everyone, i believe in love everlasting. i believe in you, you who i have met and you who i haven't, i believe in you because i need to. i believe in falling stars and snowflakes. in mothers and sons. in the truth underneath it all.

i belive.

a funny story, i couldn't remember for a long while.

i have been attempting with no luck to tell this story while with friends in new york, but always it had left me. it returned to me tonight. here you go.

during the end of my time in pittsburgh i went on a date with a man, a much older man, who i was certain would not be compatible, but he was persuasive and rather handsome, so i agreed. i arrived at the agreed upon bar, which was as close to fru fru as pittsburgh was ever going to get. i arrived and i could tell i was not what he had expected. gay men, gay.com, it's an old story. my date as it were was sitting at the bar with 2 other gay men, the kind of gay men that blend well together and i find utterly boring. he introduced me to his friends and i could tell that they instantly thought there new found friend had made a mistake. surely this chubby awkward 20 something could not be there friends date. the date went badly. my date was hitting the sketchier of the two men we were sitting with. my date was hitting on a coke dealer. ah romance. he left to accompany this entrepreneur on a call, leaving me with 60$ to stay and have a few drinks. i felt like julia roberts in the heartland.

the coke dealer's roommate and i sat there. he was eagerly typing a cute guy he wanted to come meet him for a drink. he was excited because word on the street was that said cute guy had lost some weight. ooooo. we made small talk and drank overpriced martini's. yum. he looked at me and said, "Wow, you have really clear skin, I have to pack on the foundation to get skin that clear." i was flattered but, as always, i'm skeptical. so i turned to my drinking companion and i said, "Well thank you, but it's a trade off, I get clear skin, but I'm fat." my new slender friend's jaw dropped. he sat there silent for minutes, and i asked, "What? Hasn't anyone ever called themselves fat around you? Haven't you met a self identified fatty before?" he remained silent, and finally whispered, "No..." he continued, "...I'm sorry, it's just that i only know skinny people." I had a friend, a very good looking friend, meeting me, and as luck would have it he walked in at that moment. we kissed. i left.