Herald of Homoness

Sorrowful Buddha

2010-11-30T22:06:00.004-05:00

There is a legend of the Sorrowful Buddha. While walking, Sorrowful Buddha came upon a tigress who was starving and too weak to feed her cubs. In an act of compassion, the Sorrowful Buddha cut himself in two, allowing the tigress to eat and her cubs to live.

For some reason, the image of Sorrowful Buddha came to me. I was sitting with my hands covering my face, just blocking out the light and noise and intrusions. I became aware of how my hands felt and how holding my own face was an act of comfort and compassion. And I became aware that I am exhausted.

I don't think that I am depressed. I don't think that I am hopeless. I don't think that I am self-destructive. I am, maybe, sorrowful.

Not in the sad sense, but in the sense of consumed and enervated. I am tired like the tigress and consumed like the Buddha.

People regularly describe me as larger than life: flamboyant and forceful and big. It may be that the largeness of being me - large ideas, big energies, enormous appetites, grand outputs, huge presence - is just tiring and I naturally seek balance by shutting down and resting. In the past, I would have used whatever energy I have in one of these periods to self-demand that I produce a reason for my listlessness. There simply had to be something causal.

In this one, though, I want to let it be uncomplicated and natural and sweet. I'm allowing myself this as an act of compassion. In the Gestalt of it, I am the Buddha - compassionate and giving, and I am the tigress, famished and weak and in need. The allowing will be an experience of growth and difference, but will be healing and is necessary. I commit to allowing it to happen, not forcing it or manipulating it, just holding my head in my hands and being.

Open Share

2010-11-20T18:55:00.010-05:00

"The ego seeks to divide and separate. Spirit seeks to unify and heal." A Course in Miracles

I have a group of people that I meet with monthly. The purpose of the meeting is to coalesce faith-based organizations and people that are interested in social ministries - support groups, recovery supports, and the like. Given my typical suspicion of Christians in groups, I would generally be very wary.

But these people are really different. They are loving, and accepting, and real. They share their experience, and strength, and hope in a way that NEVER happens at churches and is practically anathema to evangelicals. I am real with them. I am out with them. I love them.

I was sharing with a friend that I would really like to have a regular group of support people where I can just relax and talk and listen. He attends a Celebrate Recovery group that he likes a lot. He recommended it. Unfortunately, no. I reminded him that gay is a rule out in groups such as that. Sadly, he totally agreed.

Celebrate Recovery is a 12 step recovery group started by Rick Warren and his Saddleback Church (I can't say that name without snickering). Warren is well known for his purpose-driven homophobia. There are days I just CANNOT get my head around how silly and hurtful and energy wasting the anti-fag frenzy is - it defies any logic and is a ludicrous drain on our humanness.

Another friend recently posted this on his Facebook wall:

"If you truly own who you are, no one can use you against you."

Shazaam! I can list hundreds of times when people used me against me. What a tragedy. I've always been a smart and creative and sensitive person. And because I was not able to own my identity, I allowed people to use my own personhood to bully me, make me anxious, depress me, and wound me. Thankfully, I really believe most of that is behind me.

The irony of programs like Celebrate Recovery (which has been touted as a reparation recovery program for people "recovering" from homosexuality) is that they purport to move people to an honest acceptance of who they are in the context of acceptance from God. And simultaneously, they inculcate their members - reinforcing their willingness to keep entire groups of people from doing exactly that.

It's clear to me, that left to develop in their natural state, without the intervention of the Rick Warrens of the world and all of his co-conspirators, most people would be decent or at least disinterested. My group this morning proved it. They are decent and real. I have no idea how some of them feel about people who are gay, but somehow, it just doesn't matter there. They, not the rest, are the church.

Long Time, No Blog

2010-11-10T22:32:00.002-05:00

A friend from Facebook put out a call for blogs - who has one? Which ones do you read? Wanna read mine? So I gave him the link. With a caveat: "It's a bit dark - read at your own risk".

The best thing about my blog - and probably the best thing about me - is that it IS - I AM - a bit dark. However, most days my humor and general zestiness collar the black dog with a ravishing fuchsia leash. I have always been able to see the hilariously absurd in situations that would otherwise be without any possibility of survival.

I haven't written because I have lacked focus. I have been lensing everything else in my sphere of existence and spent very little time on introspection. I've just had too much to do.

And if I hadn't had too much to do, I probably would have created something just to divert my attention from all things interior. Sometimes, it's just too much.

My father used to say, "boy, you're a 220 wire in a 110 world". He's right - although he had and has no real understanding of what that means. And for the past few months, introspection would have been like wading through a puddle bisected by a downed power line. Electrifying, but not necessarily in a good way.

Dating has been completely unproductive. I had a torrid bout with a screaming male borderline - a crazy-rapid undulating of love me/hate me bullshit that was diagnosable in its intensity. I can't tolerate that - I almost projectile vomited him out of my driveway and my life at 4 am. Plus, he dissed my dog.

That kind of leaves me untethered right now. I have decided that I value autonomy and low acuity drama more than the idea of a relationship. I have great things in my life - great career, great friends, great home, and so much else. So why mess with the things that are working?

The remainder of this year, through the holidays, I want to redirect, reorganize, regroup. I need to relax and enjoy the intensity of my job, experience the peace of my home, and manage the many moods that come with family and holidays. I would like to go into the new year and my next birthday with a refocused perspective and hopefully some new direction. Maybe my new blog buddy can loan me some wisdom.

Riding the Shortbus

2010-03-29T20:26:00.002-04:00

Not a fun time right now.

I have been loathe to admit it to myself, and would never admit it to anyone else, but I'm depressed.

Not horribly-hopeless-hang-yourself-with-your-belt depressed, but more like listless and disinterested. More like a low-grade depressive fever that makes everything seem shitty.

I would like to think that it's the weather and that the sunshine predicted for the end of the week will make a big difference.

Meh.

Maybe it's just a lot of things catching up with me - big losses early in the year, tons of budget cuts, mud puddles, no relational prospects emerging.

And of course, the coach. He's back even though I gave him the brush. He's persistent. I'm easily swayed. I know that he's unavailable but I still can't help thinking of us in matching Ralph Lauren suits pledging our undying love to each other at an uber-tasteful Massachusetts wedding. More on that later.

So, my approach to this malaise is simple: sleep a lot, eat tons of simple carbohydrates, and concentrate on sad things like Old Yeller and Kate Gosselin. I don't know how long this tour on the shortbus will last, but it seems to be persisting longer than I anticipated.

Maybe the Jamies will help. I'll watch it again.

2010-03-10T17:31:00.000-05:00

I'm such a whore. At least there was no car seat in the minivan.

Truly, Madly, Deeply

2010-03-08T19:21:00.013-05:00

This may be the gayest post on this blog.

This may be the most self-disclosing post on this blog.

It is certainly the most pathetic post on this blog.

If you abhor gushing girliness, or loathe faggoty fantasies, then perhaps you'd better click here - NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION.

Even if you do find school girl crushes cloying, you might just enjoy a musical romp through the silent passions of the District Superintendent. This post is meant to be accompanied by a musical score of various songs and videos, so read and listen as directed. It's complicated, but then life is complicated. Oh shut the fuck up and just read it.

Here goes:

I never expected him to be so handsome. There was no picture with the profile and usually that's a deal killer, but I succumbed and I'm reeling from it. If I were going to anthropomorphize my grown-up Christmas wish, Troy would certainly be the incarnation.

He's very tall, and thick, and just furry enough - not fat at all but 6'5" of solid, masculine man. He has liquidy blue eyes that look down on you like nuggets of aquamarine embedded above the granite of his jaw. He has no idea how handsome he is. He has an "awww shucks" self-consciousness when you bring it to his attention: "Whatever...", he mumbles, his blue eyes rolling as if you were trying to sell him the Golden Gate for buck. In his mind, he's just a dude.

In his mind, he's a just dude that likes dick. And it's intoxicating. He's everything that I want in my fantasy husband: powerful, sweet, awkward, small town, voracious.

And. He's. A. Bottom.

Ah, sweet mystery of life, at last I've found you. He asserts that he's bisexual - of course, as a jock and a footballer, there is no other explanation. He is married after all. Yet, when the family is tucked snugly in their beds, he finds me and despite clutching at decency, I relent.

Well we all know that isn't quite accurate. I'm the exemplar of the sure thing. Now I've been a guy who has claimed to be bisexual and have been with scores of other "straight" dudes who just wanna get off or press their noses up against the plate glass windows of gaydom, their bicuriosity driving them to take just one look at the store display. One thing these guys have in common is they don't kiss you, at least not like you want to be kissed. This guy - my coach - has the most passionate kisses I think I've ever experienced.

Cue Song Number One

So let's add this up, shall we?

Handsome - check.
Tall - check.
Crystal blue eyes - check.
Kisses like I ain't been kissed - check.
Great (no really, I mean great) sex - check.
Bottom - check check.
Completely unavailable - check check check.

I am making the conscious decision to love him with all my heart. It's absolutely perfect. I get an amazingly hot shag once or twice a week - however many times he needs to do a nocturnal grocery run - AND he can be my fantasy husband. We'd surely be together if things were different, if times were different, if we were different. The potential for melodrama is irresistible.

So this is where the girlie part comes in. In my mind, he's my only source of sustenance. When we're not together I can't breathe - and when he holds me I'm breathless. I'm the other woman, waiting guiltily in the hotel lobby, swathed in a stole of arctic fox, my furtive, waiting eyes obscured by Jackie Collins sunglasses. And I love him - truly, madly, deeply.

Cue Song Number Two

So here we are, entwined in a cheap hotel room - one eye on the LED alarm. And I want him desperately to be mine forever. I want to inhale him, the smell of sandalwood and ivory soap and hope, and I want to be the woman who finally understands him. Oh fuck.

The allure here, other than the obvious, is of course his total unavailability. We can't go out to dinner or just spend the weekend Netflixing. I'm left to pine away until he calls. I can't call him, she may answer. I can't demand anything of him - he's not mine. I have to be the noble one, sacrificing everything for slivers of enthrallment - those stolen hours that leave me both sated and empty. This is what gay men LIVE FOR!

If only...but no. He's conflicted. Our trysts, he tells himself, are dalliances - diversions from the orthodontist appointments and Webber grills of his life in the light. His DL encounters are only meaningless releases, he self-affirms. But I KNOW that he loves me and I will wait, knowing that clandestine moments with him are better than a lifetime of loveless regret. I know, after all, that he is drawn out of his mundane days into my passionate nights.

Cue Song Number Three

I imagine myself strong enough to withstand it. To take it one moment past excruciating and then proving to myself that I can endure it. I must think of him, of his family, of his happiness. I must resist all temptation to seduce him with my charm and cooing attention. He has a wife.

What would happen if I encountered her? Maybe I'll go mad with jealousy and pretend to be the Avon lady, ringing her doorbell and greeting her with an Amy Fisher-style spray of lead in the eye. Or maybe I'll see them in the park, all together a perfect family, and slip away crestfallen, knowing that I must leave him to his life of vapid coitus and carpool nagging, drinking beer after beer to drown her out and try to forget me.

My favorite scenario is a frantic knock on the door of our no-tell motel. Panicked, we stage whisper frenetic instructions, all options seeming terrifying. Finally, I open the door, clad only in an outrageously sumptuous bathrobe (Egyptian cotton, his monogram). She stands there, mealy and nondescript. With grown out highlights and reddened eyes, she begs me:

Cue Song Number Four

I hesitate. Should I give him up? Would his sweaty t-shirts, now a heady swath of manliness and foreplay get tedious if I had to pick them up off the floor day after day, no chance of sodomy in sight?

Probably. Okay princess - he's yours.

Dating in the Data Funnel

2010-02-19T17:49:00.013-05:00

I haven't posted in a while. Okay, more than six weeks. A lot has happened and a lot has changed. The BF and I have parted, amicably thank goodness. He moved out the same day my grandmother died. It wasn't intentional - on either of their parts - or at least I chose not to take it personally.

My grandmother was a Nazarene pastor's wife for more than six decades. There is a lot to say about that and those posts are still formulating in my skull. Too early, I suppose, to really talk about it. I loved her.

But I can talk about men. The departure of the BF was appropriate. There's really not a lot to say other than he was too young, too confined, too unready to be in a relationship. I don't blame him, I wonder if I was either. I miss his fun and his sense of humor and his love of song talking and inside jokes. But I gained tons of storage space so it was about a wash.

Meh.

What it does however, is catapult me into the dating scene. Gay men dating is a mishmash of sweat and tragedy. Most first "dates" are hook ups and most hook ups aren't first dates. Not that I mind getting in touch with my inner skank - I'm almost always a sure thing - but at some point, there has to be some way to narrow the field.

Here's what I've had so far (names have been changed because in some cases I don't remember them.)

1) Pedro. Nice Mexican guy about my age. Passionate and attentive, he was a surprising connection. I liked his sense of family (at first) and he seemed to want something qualitative. We went out about two weeks. This being my first initiation into seeing a Latin man more than once, I was bowled over by his intense interest - something that quite frankly was less than available with the BF. The interest became a bit intense rather quickly however. I know it shows my total whiteness, but I don't think I have the constitution for a full-blooded Latino. Perhaps if he had been cross bred with say, a Presbyterian, I could have managed. As it was, his crushing attention was more than I needed and I chucked him like a wet pinata.

2) Tony. Met online, chatted. Some mutual interests - both Catholic, musical, and he seemed smart. A tad reticent but he was some sort of left-brained hacker or something so that's to be expected. Okay, let's meet for lunch. The reality of Tony was significantly different from his grainy pictures (shock) by about 10 years and 50 pounds. That often happens in online dating situations. I, however, ascribe to the entirely OPPOSITE philosophy: Honest weight plus 10 pounds and crappy pictures. I'd much rather have them be pleasantly surprised than run screaming.

So back to Tony. Turns out he's VERY conservative Catholic. I also noticed that his license plates said "4FAIRTX". So I inquired. Apparently, that is the cornerstone doctrine of the Tea Party. Now gays have tea parties all the time but this kind refers to the gun-toting bailiwick of Sarah Palin and her ilk. Uhmmm....no.

But, wait for it.....wait for it....IT GET'S WEIRDER. He says, "yeah, I thought the political thing would be a deal breaker. It was when we talked two years ago." Apparently, in a conversation that was less than memorable we had conversed before.

"Do you know how creepy that is that you didn't mention that we had talked before?" I queried.

Buh bye.

3) Psychologist guy. Nice, attractive, smart. Obviously similar career interests. Mid-bang he asserts that perhaps he isn't gay. That was new. It seems Dr. Freud has some psychosexual biz to manage. Nope.

Okay, you get the idea. There have been more - shags mostly - but nothing even remotely interesting. So I turned to my academic training, hoping that application of more empirical methods would bring me, if not success, then at least understanding.

I am considering this period to be a meta-analysis of available dudes. I will survey widely, noting habitats and habits, endearments and annoyances, and dump them into a data funnel to be distilled until my husband drops out. Certainly, even through just sheer volume, eventually the unwashed hordes will be cooked down, reduced to something palatable and ultimately partner material.

I am refining the data so at least all is not lost. This is hardly a randomized trial, however. There are some (and really only some) criteria to be admitted to the study.

1) No one under 35. No one under 40 is preferable but I will enroll those between 35 and 40 if they are mature and/or hot.

2) No one over 80. I've decided to stretch the upper limits of the life span - having learned my lesson for over-fishing the waters of junior high in my last two relationships.

That's about it really. A mustache would be nice, but that is of course an optional accessory that could be added at a later date. For now, however, I will continue to serially matriculate potentials - until I find someone interesting or at least tolerable.

Repeat the Sounding Joy!

2009-12-24T06:20:00.008-05:00

It's Christmas Eve, gentle readers, and I have made the decision that I will allow myself to move into the next phase of my life without encumbrance or delay. I will deliberately create what I desire in my life, allowing the change to be created in joy.

I reread the statements that I included in a previous post and I find them even more appropriate for this moment in my experience than when I first posted them, therefore, I will repeat them:

It is easier to come into alignment with source when you are withdrawing from things that are taking you out of alignment.
If you see something that was bothersome and you look away from it, you leave the vibration right where it was.
Ask yourself - how would my inner being approach this subject? How is my inner being seeing this? What aspect of you does my inner being see?
Aligning with who you are and then co-creating with others is the best.
When you reach the place that you don't need to demand of them that they be in alignment when you play with them - because you are - now you've got it.
The art of allowing is allowing them whether they allow me or not.

In order for me to deliberately create joy my life, I must withdraw from things that will create what I do not want. At first, I took this to mean that I would disallow my partner our current living arrangement,

Too negative.

I will allow us both to move to a place where it is easier to create in joy than decompensate in misery. In any case, that means I will allow myself to claim my physical space and ask that he move on and out.

This is what I want. This is what will help me create my next reality. I feel such relief in this idea. I had in my mind that I would actually suspend creation in my life until it was convenient for him to move. His reality, although important to me, is not mine to create. I must be free to be joyful as must he.I am not willing to live in suspended animation.

That means, bye bye.

I honestly feel that I am coming to this in love - for myself and for him. I am not angry, not bitter, and not in a drama-induced frenzy. I will be gentle and kind, but deliberate about my intention. Repeat the sounding joy that is who I am.

Check this out. I have NO idea what the video is about but the narration is spot on.

We Are Complete

2009-12-22T11:06:00.001-05:00

Things have a way of just happening together – at the right time, and with confirmation from multiple sources. Last week the readings were from Luke, recounting the meeting of Mary and Elizabeth. The story is numbingly familiar: Mary tells her cousin that she is pregnant and immediately a child, destined to be John the Baptist, leaps within her.

The kicker of this is – Elizabeth couldn’t have children, and it’s pretty clear from her description that she beyond child-bearing in age. The Greek word (yes, I can still summon a few, it was, after all a quarter of my undergrad) here is probaino. The term is translated here to mean “old age” but in reality it means “advancing, or going on”.

On Saturday morning, a friend shared her spin on this story. She said that every time there is a biblical reference to someone being “too old” – that is the time that something great is about to transpire. Wow. Staring down the double barrel of my 45^th birthday, that is a wonderful thought. Something great is about to transpire.

It was also Saturday that the partner phase of my relationship came to a close. It does not seem like it is “over”, rather it is complete. The tasks that brought us together have been accomplished and thus the moving on is only hopeful and a bit nostalgic. I have no need for drama or animosity, just good wishes that the next phase of his life will be as wonderful as I anticipate mine to be.

There is something happening within me. I’m not saying that it is leaping within me like a kid destined to eat locusts, but there is something at work. I am calmer, happier, more at peace. I have the sense that everything is exactly as it is supposed to be. This Law of Attraction business is working on me in a way that things haven’t for a long time. I am going to allow it to continue to work and not presuppose what will happen. I will, however, have deliberate intentions about the types of energy I resonate.

Something from the Abraham-Hicks CD stands out: it is easier to be well than to be sick, it is easier to have plenty than to be poor, it is easier to love than to hate, it is easier to be yourself than to try to be someone else.

There is something happening, gentle reader. I will keep you posted. I certainly don’t anticipate that I will ever be a tender hippy, espousing new age platitudes and ideologies. But I can definitely be a nicer, happier guy.

In the words of Abraham, “there is great love for you here. We are complete.”

Allowing Greener Grass

2009-12-15T12:21:00.008-05:00

There is greener grass. There is always something more abundant and wonderful and available if we desire it. This does not have to mean dissatisfaction, it can mean that wonderful desire for more.

I don't think this has to be a value judgment on our current circumstances. You don't have to hate your job to aspire to a more fulfilling and lucrative one. You don't have to dislike your partner to know that you have learned what you needed to learn and then move to a new experience that can teach you something amazing and then urge you on.

This is totally the opposite of my mental construct. I always thought that people only do things differently because of misery. Clinically, I was trained to ingrain it in everyone: when they hit bottom, they'll change (or die). Wrong, wrong, wrong. I see now that people NEVER change because of pain, they change because they have a hope that things can be different, better. We change because something draws us to richer experience and greater beauty. That idea is counter-intuitive to lots of clinical perspectives and certainly a lot of theological ones.

I grew up in a theofallacy that people seek God to avoid hell. Not to gain joy or hope or sweetness. Just to circumvent the eternal barbecue. Nice. You don't deserve happiness or bliss or satisfaction or stuff. You get those as accidents if you hate yourself enough to make God pity you, and then they are just vapors that evanesce at someone else's whim.

When your primary relational construct is based on this dearth-theology, it has to be the architecture of your partner relationships. I'll never get everything I want in one person, so I need to take this dude or that trick or this other guy and try to make it work for that elusive LTR.

Maybe, just maybe, the only LTR we ever really have is with ourselves. Maybe instead of wrapping ourselves in the seamless blanket of someone else and hoping - praying - there are no holes which will let in cold air, we need to view relationships very differently. Perhaps relationships are more like quilts, pieced together from people and characteristics and times and alonenesses and emotions that we collect over time. It's not that anyone is disposable or just exists for what you need from them or doesn't have independent purpose outside of your use for them. They are quilting with your contribution to them as well.

Nowhere is this idea more foreign than in the drama of being queer. Fagdom relies on an utter commitment to dualism. He's either hot OR he's not. He is either the "one", the husband of dreams, the prince OR he is ex, the devil who is spoken of only in veiled hisses to our equally dissatisfied friends. It's all good OR it's all bad. This dichotomy is found elsewhere in nature: adolescence. It is the developmental task of preference. Learning to prefer is appropriate work for 14 year olds. Celebrating preference is the work of adults.

Sometimes the grass IS greener. The more that I am honest about my preferences, about my aspirations, my desires, the less I need to have other people be all one thing or another. Or everything. I will allow every person and relationship to add a piece to my quilt, but I will be responsible for creating my own warmth. Not only is there nothing wrong with that, it is AMAZING!

In the mean time, I will let Miss Barbra Joan Streisand inspire us:

Good Vibrations

2009-12-13T20:12:00.005-05:00

Dr. Tracy, my fantastic psychotherapist gave me a CD at my last session. It is about ALLOWING. It is clear that when I get too caught up in controlling things - people mostly - that I am really not allowing myself to function at my happiest. The speakers are the co-creators of the idea of the law of attraction. Rather, they are the channelers of this idea. When you allow yourself to vibrate at your truest self, then you are happy and fulfilled, regardless of the behavior or interactions of others. This CD is a combination of things that are really sensible, universal even. It also has some whack job shit on it that I'm just not ready to embrace. True to the AA adage, I will take what I need and leave the rest.

By far the most difficult things in my life right now are relationships. Work is great - I love what I am doing, I am grateful for my job, I am paid well and have great benefits. Work is defining for me so that nails a huge part of my life satisfaction when that is in line.

But relationships are more complicated. Several posts ago I talked about some really crazy people at church who are just making things unpleasant as I try to help them out with music. They are blocking my chi. I allow myself to unblock it.

Of course, my partner relationship is the most difficult. It is generally devoid of the fag drama that salts most of these relationships. Generally, I said.

I think it's clear to both of us, at least it is clear to me, that this is not forever. This is for right now. Maybe that's all any relationship ever really is. There are lots of things that are good, and as many that are not good. Whatever the mix on any given day, it is simply a relationship that does not vibrate where I desire it to. I will not allow myself to relax into it and depend on it. These are difficult things for me to do under any circumstances. The difficulty is compounded by being with someone who doesn't get my frequency. That's okay, he doesn't have to.

Here is a video clip of the Law of Attraction. I have summoned some quotes from the clip to reflect on this week.

It is easier to come into alignment with source when you are withdrawing from things that are taking you out of alignment.
If you see something that was bothersome and you look away from it, you leave the vibration right where it was.
Ask yourself - how would my inner being approach this subject? How is my inner being seeing this? What aspect of you does my inner being see?
Aligning with who you are and then co-creating with others is the best.
When you reach the place that you don't need to demand of them that they be in alignment when you play with them - because you are - now you've got it.
The art of allowing is allowing them whether they allow me or not.

For Whom the Bell Tolles

2009-11-30T22:12:00.005-05:00

"Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry — all forms of fear — are cause by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of non-forgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence". Eckhart Tolle

While I'm not particularly a deep person, I have to give this one up to Eckhart. A friend is reading A New Earth. I like the IDEA of reading A New Earth - and other spiritual treatises designed to enlighten and make one a blast at parties. However, I don't really get through them easily. This quote however, stands out as almost a manifesto for the recovering Nazarene.

In the theofallacy that is most Nazarene thought, there really is no present. This moment is not even a construct. There is the regretted, confessed past that haunts us with our sinfulness. It is the stuff of weepy altar calls and mind-numbing guilt. There is the future with its promise of eschatological mayhem: the final judgement with either ultimate relief and a mansion or split level with a rec room or whatever, or the spewing out of God's mouth that is eternal damnation.
Past. Future. No present.

I kind of get it really. When your basic view of humankind is fallen, disgraced, and wanton, the view from your rearview mirror is interpreted pretty harshly. Mind you, people do some seriously shitty things - and by people I mean me. So the past can look pretty grim. But come on, how many times do you need to weep into the nine pound KJV of an altar worker for saying "shit" when you hit your thumb with hammer?

And I kind of get the Nazarene need for future. Many, many of the Nazi faithful live lives that suck - poor, drowning in polyester, uneducated, superstitious, and terrified. Hell, who wouldn't want to think of brighter days just beyond Jordan with that shitty existence. Seriously, if that's all there is, would you want any kind of faith at all?

So the ideas set forth by Tolle are really the most unnazarene type of thinking. To live in the now is not to feel consumed by guilt about past transgressions and to not be anxious and crazy about what happens in the hereafter. It is, in fact, the very opposite of what we were taught.

Somewhere along the line, I lost most of my ability to regret. I think it is like nerve deafness that comes from listening to your iPod on max volume for 20 hours a day. After a while, you don't hear it, you don't feel it, you don't give a shit.

But I do have problems with the unease, anxiety, stress, tension, and worry bit. I always have to have things just so - controlled, neat, emotionally tidy and not too involved. A plan for every contingency is my goal the moment my feet hit the floor.

Tomorrow morning, I am going to live int the present, in the presence. I will not care what happened or will happen, but only about what is happening.

I hope.

Unequally Yolked

2009-11-24T19:07:00.006-05:00

Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? 2 Cor. 6:14

In the generally freestyle world of Nazarene liturgy, Wednesday night prayer meetings were a mixed stream of extemporaneous spiritual consciousness and random announcements. On crack.

What the little Nazarene church I grew up in lacked in sophistication, it more than made up for with earnest expression. Prayer meeting went like this:

First was Opening Prayer, usually a proferred by a venerated Sunday School teacher or lesser/retired pastor.

Songs and Choruses followed. Not the Powerpoint kind with drums and a lead guitar and clip art of Mount Calvary. These songs were vituperative, instructional ditties that reminded us that one sinful slip would lead to damnation and destruction. They were usually just accompanied by a piano of dubious timbre, although I remember seeing an autoharp more than once, and I myself accompanied them (with my mother at the piano) on a black plastic flutophone. Words were printed either in purple ditto ink or my personal favorite, on the Songs and Choruses trifold published by Preferred Risk Insurance. Preferred Risks were responsible non-drinkers, and the back of the song sheet had a black and white photo of an alarmed couple being offered hooch by some derelict, refusing because they were - you guessed it - Christians and Preferred Risks.

Then came Testimony Time. Some testimonies were simple ejaculations such as "I love the Lord tonight and I want to go all the way with Him" which in retrospect is quite racy, especially given that this assertion was made by a virginal and enormously fat girl who had graduated high school years earlier but still attended the high school Sunday School class.

Other testimonies were not so mercifully succinct. Enter Mrs. Lloyd Anstine. With the regularity of an Activia spokesmodel, she dominated Wednesday night prayer meeting. She wasn't the lay leader or the youth pastor or even the substitute Sunday night pianist. Nay, gentle reader, she was a professional testifier.

I never really dared to look at her head on, it simply wasn't necessary. I knew her from behind by the disordered gray french twist that sat like a sad hoagie on the back of her head and the dacron skirt and blouse combo she was fond of wearing - modest to be sure in its turquoise and black mini-print. It was difficult to really determine where skirt stopped and blouse began because she wore the waistband just under her ribcage, sheltered by mammoth boobs.

Through her weekly purge of praise and concern, I was able to piece together Mrs. Anstine's calamitous circumstances. It seems that she was unequally yoked. She was tragically married to the unbelieving Mr. Lloyd Anstine, a man on the broad road to ruin. Daily she prayed for his conversion and - please Lord - second blessing sanctification. With tears and pleading, she begged the good Lord and her fellow congregants to remember the backslidden soul of apostate Lloyd.

Now, gentle reader, this was not a quickie testimony. Mrs. Anstine was not one to either spare nor mince words. She described in detail his carnal proclivities including Camel filtereds and playing cards. It wasn't enough for her to just inform us verbally, she often included a choreography of sorts, emphazing key points with a gesturing Bible in one hand. I'm guessing that she also suffered not just from her betrothal to a heretic but from dry skin. She always reached a hammy arm up to obsessively scratch her right shoulder blade, right under the bra strap - by all rights a quad hooker with industrial cups.

She would end with a wailing supplication for Jesus' mercy on Mr. Anstine and on her for being unequally yoked.

And I always thought that was funny as shit. Even though I was a little kid, I thought her antics were a theater of the absurd made even funnier by her sweat-stained arms raised to heaven and the fact that I thought "yoked" was "yolked" as in eggs. I had no idea of the Biblical reference and even then wanted to tell her to just scrambled the fuckers and make an omelet and things would all even out.

I have no idea what happened to Mr. Lloyd Anstine. To my knowledge he never made any profession of faith but continued to be a nice neighbor and race mini-bikes on Sunday. I am convinced that on his passing, he was welcomed into heaven with a brisk high five for putting up with her and her certain rejection of his poker buddies and his husbandly advances. In a nod to my future queerness, I always thought he deserved a celestial head start for just having to look at her in that shitty outfit day after lousy day.

In my book, he's the one with egg on his face, having played the sinful patsy to her rantings. If however, any of my gentle readers find themselves in this not-to-be-envied relational imbalance, here is a resource for your comfort.

Unequally Yoked

Redreaming

2009-11-20T14:45:00.013-05:00

"All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams." ~Elias Canett

I am shocked. Last night I had the most disturbing series of nightmares. Like everyone, I have those occasional "gosh, I'm falling" or "back in high school with no homework" dreams. They're mildly disconcerting, but easily filed as too much stress that day at work, or perhaps lactose intolerance.

Last night was different - really different. Last night was a cluster fuck post-trauma catharsis of childhood weirdness. They actually came in two distinct waves. The first was a rapid fire succession of tiny details of growing up Nazarene - traveling and ministering and being Jesus' minion. Minute cortisol-glutted memories wrung from the washrag of my REM like so much soapy water. Some were real and recognizable. Others were just terror constructs. There was no story, no sequence, no morning after tale to tell. There was only a discharge of images that eventually woke me - literally in knots, my entire body tense and aching.

That was at 3:00 a.m.

I'm often awake in the middle of the night. I have been a night prowler since childhood. So my pup joined me in the family room for a little diet coke and attempt to regroup some psychosomnolent stability.

Okay. I'm all right. That was weird. God I'm sore. Breathe deep. I'm exhausted. Back to bed.

And it happened again. Apparently whatever psychic Draino that had attempted to clear my sleeping affect had failed to detonate completely, because there was a LOT more.

Round two was all about demons and Gothic torment, again curling me in on myself like a convulsing fetus. It was a lot of fun.

I'm pretty clear about what set the table for this mind-fucking feast. Of course, I had a very stressful evening. I've recently taken a parish job as their organist and choir master. I am following a carnal old bat who had been there since the patron saint of the church was a toddler. She died. Everyone I talk to says she was caustic and inexorable. Yet upon her passing, they now venerate her like the love child of Mother Teresa and Virgil Fox.

Last night, they decided to let me have it. Full frontal, no holding back. I simply don't play like their beloved Betty did. They don't like this, and they don't like that. Trust me, I heard Betty play - and it is a total compliment that I DON'T play like her.

The specifics of their cannibalism are less important than their archetypal significance, a primordial manifestation of so many Jeebus people who are just assholes. And it caused millions of such experiences with church folk to shoot out of my dendrites like Scud missiles, bombing my sleep with their latent trauma.

And so I'm shocked. Just when you think that you've diluted the deleterious persistence of memory, you go nighty nite and wake up in a Dali painting.

I have no one to blame but myself really. I know the formula. I know the result. Put some old ladies, vapid and embittered, in a setting where they get punch drunk on the power of Jesus, and they will cut you. Always.

Every. Single. Time.

Bitches.

My First Bear

2009-11-16T20:40:00.005-05:00

I love the autumn. Everything about it – the coolness, the color, the coming of winter. I love the way that the chill moves you indoors and redirects you toward the home and safety and warmth. I love the memories of autumn, of Halloweens and Thanksgivings, of midterms long since taken, of turkey comas and the first Christmas carol on the radio.

And I love the memory of Rolland.

It’s been a quarter century since we last saw each other. He was my first bear, and definitely one of the great loves of my youth. I don’t even really remember the first time we met. But I remember his presence that I still sense almost 25 years later. I didn’t know when we met that he was going to be the first major loss of my life, but when he let himself slip off a bridge into the flooded Kankakee River, he took my belief in youth and infinity with him.

Rolland was immensely talented. He was a musician and true Renaissance man. Reared in the Nazirene Church, he earned his musical chops at the organ of low church and eventually went to Olivet. He hated Nazirenes. In their typical myopia, they completely missed his beauty. They completely missed who he was. He found a home in the Episcopal Church, but never really got over the wounds of his Nazirene history.

I was immediately entranced by him. He was, after all, my first bear. Bearded and shaggy, he had soft chocolate eyes and a wonderful belly. While the seeds of my bear fetish certainly predated him, he was the one who brought it to life.

And he was amazing.

He lived in a place I considered magic. It was remote and far away from campus – a place I desperately wanted to escape. His home was quirky and artistic and full of unique things like finches named Winken, Blinken, and Nod. He raised beautiful Arabian horses and loved to ride in the woods behind his old stone house. It was just the type of hiding place I needed. Everything was delicious and interesting. And I loved him and wanted him.

Our relationship didn’t really last long, just that autumn. But I can remember so many details. It was my first real move out and away from what I knew to who I am. I remember doing very ordinary things with him – cleaning horse stalls and canning tomatoes. We sat on his bed and drank scotch and I pretended to be sophisticated. I didn’t know it, but I was handsome then – I look at the pictures now and wish I had seen it. But with Rolland all I wanted to do was be beautiful and grown up and have it last forever.

And then he died. I was at my grandparent’s house when a friend called and told me that he had committed suicide. November 18, 1985. I remember not even being able to react because I couldn’t explain to my family who this man was and even more importantly who he was to me. It would have been too risky, a blackjack player’s tell that tips off the dealer that he’s way over 21 and should have held on the last card. It was Thanksgiving break so I didn’t go to his funeral. That was it. No closure, no grief space, just move on.

I interpreted his death as the ultimate morality tale. It confirmed what every Nazirene knows at his core: faggoty sin such as Rolland’s is tragically fatal. The wages of sin is death. I didn’t know then that after taxes it’s more of just a tired feeling. I took a good long look at the broad road I was on and recoiled in terror.

It took me decades to not be afraid.

I see now that his death wasn’t the result of any Nazirene voodoo but he was sensitive and depressed and damaged by the people and superstitions that damaged us all. I also see that I was sensitive and depressed and damaged and let the theological inventions of a sub sect of a sub sect paralyze me into anesthetizing a part of myself, cryogenically freezing my identity until I was able to find a cure and thaw out.

I believe that there will be a giant reckoning. On one side of the balance will be the good works of the Nazirenes: feeding some hungry and clothing some naked. On the other will be an enormous heap, osmium dense and amorphous, representing all of the shards of God’s image that have been destroyed by their tiny theology. These are shards of creativity and humor and fun and beauty and humanness, real people not just “souls” to be saved.

It is years later, Rolland, and I still think of you. My first, beautiful bear.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Miss Fifi Capri

2009-11-13T11:14:00.026-05:00

Recently, I made the acquaintance of Miss Fifi Capri. It was the highlight of a recent professional meeting, and one of the more interesting random acts of the universe I have experienced. I didn't actually meet the drag diva Miss Capri, but met her gentlemanly alter Kevin. Our meeting was random enough, our shared history of Nazirenedom is a fluke on the magnitude of a Cecil B. DeMille epic.

For the gentle reader, I will tell you about Kevin - hoping to paint his portrait in the meaningful way I experienced him.

Unlike many of you, Kevin was a relative late-comer to the Nazirene universe. As a 17 year old young man, he was disconnected and without a tether from his parents and school. In yet another more perverse random act of the universe, he discovered a Nazirene girl who, with all of the denominational skills imbued her, drew him into the fold with the gravitational pull of Deep Space 9 on a shard of meteor.

Of course, he was infected. The good-willed surface presentations of Nazirenedom were exactly what he needed: certainty, family, social acceptance, and a belief in something concrete - a Jesus capable of being completely known, understood, and predicted. And like so many before him, he succumbed to the contagion and contracted the disease at stage 4.

Of course he married her. Of course, he's gay. Of course, he found himself desperate and unhappy, at psychospiritual war with himself and who he is.

And eventually, he had to leave the Nazirene mothership. Like most of us, leaving caused extreme pain, rejection, and loss. The most insidious part of the Nazirene virus is its ability to bring euphoria before destruction. There are wonderful connections and pieces of the affliction. In a world of complete maelstrom, it offers something cozy and knowable. It brings comfort and a closeness of family and extended family. It is small in a cosmos that is chaotic and overwhelming.

And all of that works. For a while.

But Kevin was simply too good and too real to allow the disease to be fatal.

His exit story is gruesome and far from spontaneous remission. It was the agonious recovery that we all experience. Fortunately for Kevin, he had an enlivening nurse. Enter Miss Fifi Capri. For several years, she offered him life renewing succor - an emotional sanatorium where he could self soothe in anonymity. Her feminine wiles were both an emotional softening and rapier defense. Girlie, to be sure - but threaten her bleeding patient and she would cut-a-bitch with a razored acrylic nail.

For reasons that weren't exactly clear, there came a time when Miss Fifi's medicine was no longer needed and Kevin experienced an abatement of sorts. True to her nurturing nature, she stepped aside and allowed her tender patient to continue his rehabilitation in the outside world.

When I met Kevin, he presented as walking, yet still wounded. He is the man who is able to leave home and return to work no longer contagious, yet still exhausted from the emotional H1N1. The most powerful contaminant in the Nazirene petri dish is social inoculation. They infect their marks with a toxin that paralyzes them and makes the cell walls of their reason impermeable to outside common sense - the only antibiotic the doctor needs.

Of course, I was intoxicated by his vulnerability. All of the carnal, codependent fibers of my being wanted to fuse to him and tell him that everything is going to be okay. Because he still wonders.

It is a high and treasonous crime that the Nazirene pathogen devastates such exquisitely beautiful people. So much goodness is destroyed and so much tenderness is crushed. But I believe in the resilience of beauty. And like an immense canyon, the are breathtaking spaces carved out by the raging rivers of Nazirene venom. The are not our consolation prize - they are our purpose. They are deep hollows that we can fill with love, empathy, and soothing balms for those who share our history.

I know that Kevin will continue to emerge and strengthen. He is beauty. He is good. To the universe that sent him - and Miss Fifi - to my life, you have my gratitude.

Social Inoculation (aka Nazirene Theology)

2009-11-13T11:07:00.000-05:00

From Wikipedia -

Inoculation Theory was developed by social psychologist William J. McGuire in 1961 to explain more about how attitudes and beliefs change, and more importantly, how to keep original attitudes and beliefs consistent in the face of persuasion attempts.

Inoculation theory states that to prevent persuasion it is necessary to strengthen preexisting attitudes, beliefs, or opinions. First, the receiver must be warned of an impending attack. This establishes threat (or a recognition of vulnerability) and initiates defenses to future attacks.
Therefore, the idea is that when weak argument is presented in the inoculation message their process of refutation will prepare for stronger persuasion later. It is critical that the attack is strong enough to keep the receiver defensive, but weak enough to not actually change those preexisting ideas. This will hopefully make the receiver actively defensive and allow them to create arguments in favor of their preexisting thoughts. The more active the receiver becomes in his or her defense the more it will strengthen their own attitudes, beliefs, or opinions (McGuire, 1964).

Thankful...

2009-11-09T22:08:00.010-05:00

It's been a long time, gentle readers. And yet, it's as if we never said goodbye. It's not that I'd forgotten you. No, I think of you each and every day.

Today is a special day. It is the anniversary of my decision to come out. I remember the setting, the feeling, the music, the time. It was the right decision. It was hard, of course, but not nearly as hard as I had imagined, dreaded. I'm not a guy for whom the bromide - "What's the worst that can happen?" - is ever a comfort, for I can imagine gruesome atrocities in perfect technicolor. And so I built it up in my mind to be unbearable.

In actuality, it is quite bearable. Happy, even.

I want to give a special ghetto Price Is Right shout out to all along the way who have made this journey tolerable, interesting, joyous, hilarious, even treacherous.

It always amazes me how many fellow sojourners I meet with the SAME story of the SAME experiences of the SAME Nazirenes oppressing them for the SAME tired homophobic reasons. At a professional meeting today I met a man from another state who, it turns out, has the same sordid tale of sexual repression and spiritual evisceration. We will be discussing his developmental romp through the psychosexual Abu Ghraib that is Nazirenedom in an exclusive interview later in the week. Please check back.

Until then, I am again thankful for all of you, gentle readers. Here in its entirity is the haunting theme of my coming out - playing preternaturally as the score for my coming out moment. A coincidence? I think not.

Please enjoy. Don't forget to check back for the exciting interview!

Camp Meeting USA

2009-08-06T21:08:00.004-04:00

I walked by and smelled it. The scent carried me right to hot August nights of childhood. Off. The mosquito repellent. You know - the one in the orange can that doesn't repel mosquitoes and gets on your hands and makes your mouth taste like Deet. When I smelled it I went to Camp Meeting. Holiness Camp Meeting.

Every year, we marked time by the opening and closing of Holiness Camp. Not content to going to church on Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, spring revival, fall revival, Bible study, Vacation Bible School, and any other special service, we needed that extra boost of piety that could only come in the great out-of-doors. I can remember going practically from pre-consciousness, but the real fun was when I was old enough to ascertain what a freak show it really was. The cast of characters was absolutely the same from year to year because many people, socially mobile high-rollers just like us, vacationed at Camp Meeting.

A few days prior to the opening of the Camp, our youth group and a few of the more skilled dads would arrive at the campgrounds. Set in a barely wooded sector of farmland surrounded by corn and soybeans, the camp was a bivuoac of cottages and ramshackle outbuildings centered around the tabernacle, much like a feudal village ringing a great cathedral. All the buildings were painted a flat, chalky white and were toenailed together to withstand two full weeks of rauccous holy rolling.

It was our job to clean the tabernacle. The carvernous building had flying buttresses of oxidized 2" x 8"s which were inhabited by starlings, bats, and the occasional barn owl, all of which pelted their guano on the homemade pews below. Said pews were splintered and often cracked, the split frequently catching small nips of your ass through your navy polyester pants. The concrete floors, never clean by any standards, had accumulated a year's worth of dust and debris which had to be swept out, and benches had to be dusted and stocked with Songs of Holiness - the musty hymnals that pitched shaped notes for the vocalization of congregants.

And the fans. No camp meeting was official if there were not paper fans glued to tongue depressors to stave off the breezeless late-summer evenings. Usually depicting images of Christ's Last Supper, the fans advertised all sorts of business from hardware stores to Grange Mutual Insurance, but the most common was Randolph's Funeral Home. When the evangelist gave a particularly brimstoney diatribe, the fans flapped in unison so rapidly that there could have easily been lift off.

The people were the most interesting. There were evangelists and the ever-glamorous song evangelists and their sturdy, dour wives who sang alto in harmony and played the piano with lots of chords. Occasionally, you would get whole families as special ministers in music. Mom, dad, and all five children appeared playing various musical instruments and dressed in clumsily sewn matching outfits - mom and the girls in platter-collared calico jumpers and dad and the boys in matching calico neckties and white short-sleeved shirts. Kinda like trailer park Von Trapps.

The real show was in the pews. At Holiness Camp there were the frog eye people - an elderly brother and sister with some sort of adrenal misfire that caused their eyes to bulge as if in perpetual surprise. They were also covered with warts the size of walnuts and - although I'm not medical man here - sported expansive goiters.

While the frog people sat off to the side, the twin midgets always toddled to the front, presumably to be near the altar when the evangelist gave the invitation to accept Jesus as your personal savior. Clearly nearing 70, the twins were elderly women who brought donut cushions to line the pews and enable them to see the real action behind the pulpit. I often thought they also helped them keep from falling through the cracks in the pews.

Apparently, this diminutive duo lived lives of complete carnal abandon the other 50 weeks of the year because they spent the 14 consecutive nights of Holiness Camp in a frenzy of repentence. Every time the preacher warned them that they might get hit by a train on the way home if they were to spurn his mercy, the lept to their Lilliputian feet and ran into Christ's forgiving bosom. Looking back, one has to wonder if they ran some sort of niche porn concern out of their senior housing complex.

Like VBS, Camp Meeting is a mine with ore to rich to be excavated in one post. After all, it lasted two weeks. Come back tomorrow night for more exciting revival news. Until then, enjoy Nazirene Song Evangelist Paul Qualls in a Camp Meeting favorite.

Focus on the Fagly

2009-08-03T22:21:00.005-04:00

I got a FW: of a FW: of a FW: today from a woman I know casually through a group from work. She is a lovely lady, very devout, and sweet like shoo fly pie. She is sincere and guileless and would never intentionally hurt anyone. The content of the email was typical Focus on the Family propaganda, this verse of their same tired song stating that the Ohio legislature was going to pass "special" protections for GLBT people that included "hiring and public restrooms." Of course, this would require that the "homosexual agenda" be taught in public schools. Blah. Blah. Blah.

The bill is actually a localization of hate crimes legislation. Important stuff. I was not offended by the intentions of this woman who forwarded me the email. Like I said, she is naive and sweet and a little dim. And I certainly I was not offended by Dobson - he and his fellow Jeebus Republicans have a LOT to lose if open homosexuals start using public restrooms. With their wide stances and their foot tapping, they would lose all of the clandestine glamor of not knowing if the airport stall-dweller next door is actually going to come over and blow you or book you for importuning. Openness is so gauche and unsubtle. Besides, the best closet is hating fags in the name of Christ, although it's SO been done that it's like Paris Hilton saying "that's hot" - very 2006.

The irony in this instance is that the sweet, gullible woman knows very much about hate crimes. Several years ago, her husband - a retired law enforcement officer - was jumped by a gang of girls while he was delivering pizzas. The girls surprised him and literally beat him senseless. He was so badly beaten that he was near death and years later has both physical and psychological trauma. Horrific.

I decided that I needed to respond to her. I gently explained that the legislation was NOT about reading "Heather Has Two Mommies" to the local Montesori kids - it's about safety. I told her that several thousand people have the same thing happen to them that happened to her husband - just because of who they are. We can disagree with people all day - as long as everyone is safe.

She emailed me back quickly - thanking me for helping her understand, and conceded that she often doesn't know the details of such things. She was dear.

That is what makes Dobson and his ilk so insidious. It's not their "Jay-zus hates the homuhsexual" bullshit, it's the fact that they exploit the innocence of good people and purloin it for their own purposes. I can take their wretched screaming and rabid frothing. I can take their unconscionable hatred. I cannot, however, abide their deception of the artless - people who would otherwise experience life and draw their own conclusions.

That's the real fuel for these hatemongers - people's trust. It's not paying for Sarah Palin's ass waxing so she can their minion who is but a heartbeat away, it's not their barely-laundered bank rolling of the RNC, and it's not their warlords of the universe addiction to militarism. Nope, it's their use of stupid, sweet people who send their money and their faith in sticky envelopes to be used for the edification of these doughy pricks. Certainly not for the glory of God.

I believe that there is a special place in hell for Dobson and Pat Robertson and James Kennedy and the rest. Jerry Falwell is already there tossing shrimp on the barbie. Or salad on the Devil.

I have a warning to them and the others: leave these people alone. They are not yours. You are bearing false witness. In my book, that makes your sin #9 in the top ten. Mine is NOWHERE close to that.

Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves

2009-07-30T21:14:00.003-04:00

"Welcome to our Bible School - we're so glad you're here.
And we hope you'll with us stay, God's own word to hear.
Learn with us of Jesus' love - how from heaven He came.
Died to save us, lives to keep us - Praise His holy name!"

And with this humble chorus of invocation it began. Vacation Bible School. VBS.

For most lucky children, VBS was an annual event, a time to sing and rough house and learn about Jesus and make meaningful Holy Spirit neck lanyards. A fun week. Just a week.

Not so for the boy-child District Superintendent. He was what is known in the business as a serial schooler - a child who frequents VBS after VBS throughout the summer, sometimes overlapping morning and evening.

It wasn't hard to do really. VBS was a family business. Like Santaguida and Sons Italian Bakery or Welch Bros. Plumbing, Vacation Bible Schools were literally our intergenerational bread and butter. My grandparents and my mother made their summer living traveling from small church to small church, staging a week Christian education at each.

Through years of trial and error, the family had perfected VBS into a well-oiled machine of inculcation. Everyone had their roles and responsibilities. My primary occupations were puppet set up and playing the piano for song time. Puppetry was the cash cow of VBS and I was the puppet master. I carefully erected the stage and skirted it with fabric and thumb tacks. Each puppet - antique by any standard by the time I became their keeper - had to be carefully groomed and placed behind the acid green dollhouse that was their home.

This was no easy task. In fact, it was physically grueling. Elmer and Lopsy, the crocodile and bunny rabbit that mouthed morality tales from the dollhouse, were nothing. It was their sound that was a bitch. Scripts were recorded onto reel to reel and played through a Wollensak recorder that weighed as much as a Buick. Just making sure that everything was straight and the recorder in place was enough to overwhelm a lesser child. I flourished.

Far more glamorous was my role at the keyboard. I didn't play for the opening or closing - at least not yet - for I hadn't perfected the arpeggios and glissandos that were necessary for the full assembly. My musical genius was saved for a parade of classes that came for song instruction. First kindergarten, then primaries, then juniors. After you graduated juniors, you were either spiritually complete and on your road to the mission field or a derelict on the broad road to candy cigarettes and Mad Magazine.

Moving from church to church was no easy life. Being gypsies for Jesus took a lot of work. We pulled a large trailer behind my Grandfather's Oldsmobile and parked it in the patchy gravel beside the chapel du jour. The bonus was that in the hick towns of Seelyville, Indiana or Crestline, Ohio, we were minor celebrities. Kind of like a tatty circus with one tired elephant or Huck Finn's Royal Nonesuch.

The components of our VBS were as complex as they were prescriptive. The show was the same from town to town. Lots of sticky kindergarteners and a bumper crop of primaries - all learning their rote and incomprehensible King James Bible verses and screeching songs of salvation. There were portions though, that were mesmerizing. Of course, the puppetry which ended the night was much anticipated and way too short for most tastes. And the stories.

My Grandfather was a master yarn spinner, a scop who could enthrall the youthful audiences with his dramatically rendered tales of sin and redemption, parableized in Scene-O-Felt. The upscale cousin of Sunday School flannelgraph, Scene-O-Felt was handsomely painted on thickly swatched wool. Each night, a different set of figures appeared on the black-draped easel, their silhouetted shapes telling allegories of children who were wayward and willful who repented and lived lives of entire sanctification. I got saved hundreds of times under their mythical spell.

There is simply too much VBS for one post. This story, were it told in Scene-O-Felt, would not be through a mere half of the carefully numbered pieces, each waiting to be adhered to the story board. You, gentle reader, will have to return to VBS tomorrow night. Please bring a friend who was not here this evening: someone you believe needs the love of Jesus in a special way. And don't forget your dimes for the offering.

Remembering VBS Cookies

2009-07-29T16:54:00.007-04:00

[This is the first in a series of Vacation Bible School reflections. -D.S.]

It happened with a glimpse of them in a supermarket parking lot today. A heedless view from the periphery really. But of course, I knew them. Instantly. Cheryl and Jane Skoker, and their mother Mrs. Skoker. Middle aged women and their slow-moving mother, together as always. A triumvirate of yeasty womanhood. How many years had it been?

Hmmmm...

It was 1980. Hot - oppressively hot. I can still smell the grass and the sweat and taste the metal of my trombone. Marching band. Summer drills.

Amazing the way the sensation of memory reinvents itself in the nostrils of my present.
She marched in front of me, Cheryl did. Sweet, untalented, walleyed and mammoth, chewing the whiny black clarinet that wheezed her into third chair. Jane too. A year older, a size smaller, a chair ahead, but sisters interchangeable, practically modular.

But it was Cheryl who mesmerized me, the flesh on her back burgeoning out of the triple hooker that failed to contain much of anything, let alone lift or separate. Orbs. Flesh orbs. Orbs of softness and desperation and isolation. Back fat. Ample back boobs that winked coyly at the row behind as she marked time. Left, right, left, right.

I knew her. Not just from band, but from VBS of years before. Mrs. Skoker had a small bakery in her home behind the Nazirene Church. From the peeling, aqua walls of the Vacation Bible School classroom, I watched her heave dozens of just-baked cookies to the lawn of the church and position them in tidy rows on the yellow melamine trays like stalwart soldiers in the Lord’s army. Beautiful. Sweet. Soft. God, is it snack time yet? If I squinted, I could just make out the varieties – and yes – they were there. My favorite: brown sugar butterscotch, baked in russet ovals of deliciousness. Their ambrosial goodness made Bible School tolerable.

And band.

Sometimes Mrs. Skoker would bake those same butterscotch cookies for the long band trip bus rides. She always went along, the strings of her apron a metaphor for the umbilical hovering over her daughters. But bake she did. And Cheryl ate. I ate.

As the cadence gathered us and the drills began, I wondered what would happen if I cupped her yielding mounds that teased me from a row ahead. Would she scream? Or perhaps just collapse into my reckless strokes, her loneliness split like a reedy squeak from her clarinet. Warmth and softness. Nudging and unrelenting, like the importunate mew of her enormous tabby.

Today in the parking lot I think I stared out the window of my car for an eternity. It was my turn to feel warmth. And weight. The pit in my stomach migrated, stirring a swelling southward heat that capitulated to my back fat fantasy. I knew what it meant. I knew what it always means.

I’d still go to second base with Cheryl Skoker for a dozen of those mother fucking cookies.

The Wheat from the Chaff

2009-07-26T20:22:00.021-04:00

I chatted with a nice guy this afternoon who is a member of a large Nazirene church. The church is known locally for being "Non=Nazirene" and more of an evangelical mega-church. Okay, mega might be a bit of a stretch, but it is large and it is NOT your garden-variety Nazirene gig.

Growing up, I saw more than my share of the REAL Nazirenes. The following Top Ten list is what really defines a Nazirene church.

1) Holiness Unto the Lord. Jigsawed out of plywood and stained a warmy maple, this apothegm graced the sanctuaries of RNCs (real Nazirene churches). The words were a trademark of sorts, a reminder to all who entered that this was the 9th holiest place on earth.

2) No RNC would be discernible from some low-church Baptists if it were not painted seafoam green. Slathered on the rough stucco walls, this particular green created a shekhinah-type glow when viewed through the swollen eyes of a tearful testimony time.

3) Plumbing and heating in RNCs is always suspect. One never knows if there will be a warm Sunday School classroom or a flushable toilet come Sunday. The furnaces in RNCs tended to be pre-war behemoths that had bad attitudes when roused from slumber. They emitted a dusty musty aroma, wafting toxins throughout the service and certainly posing a biohazard to those napping in the nursery.

4) Paneling. Not the warm, knotty pine of a Vermont breakfast nook, but a thinly-laminated faux bois that added architechtural interest to the vestibule and the dank basement cubbies. The resulting warrens multitasked into classrooms, covens for the women's missionary society meetings, and even dressing rooms for the Junior Church Christmas Pageant, spewing tinsled baby angels into the choir loft like devout oompah loompahs.

5) Speaking of vestibules (and they ARE vestibules, not the affected "narthex" of the godless and/or Presbyterians), the anteroom to holiness was a veritable Library of Congress for the righteous. Lined with yellowed world maps with thumbtacks representing those serving in hostile mission fields, the vestibule was a place to exchange confidences (aka gossip) or pick up an Alabaster Box. Not orderly places, the vestibules typically held stacks of missionary books, back issues of "The Other Sheep", and bulletins from services that were to be remembered only as a few underlines in your New Testament.

6) RNCs do not have "multipurpose rooms" or gymnasiums with PowerPoint screens- they have fellowship halls. The kitchen in RNCs are spartan - no commercial appliances or espresso machines. There is nothing needed to feed the flock that a stained crock pot and a few dented ladles can't produce.

7) Real Nazirene Churches don't have grand pianos or Yamaha synthesizers or midi-spitting soundboards. Hymns are instead measured carefully out of spinet pianos and Hammond organs. The pianist and organist positions in RNCs are venerated only slightly less than missionaries or Sunday School Superintendents. Organists in particular came to their bench through a monarchial lineage, their sovreign right to play exclusively granted by the fact that they have been members since Roosevelt (the first one). No one would dare suggest she retire or share her throne, the fear of laity and clergy alike keeps her glued to the key manuals until she dies in situ during a particularly vigorous "Marching to Zion".

8) The importance of Christian education cannot be discounted: the inculcation of new Nazirenes is the primary purpose of the sect. Train up a child in the way he should go, yadda yadda. Sunday School is the conduit through which all piety flows. No DVDs, no high tech, no "Christian" rap groups - just the puerile rudiments of catechesis. Nappy scraps of flannel tacked to the paneled walls hold figures of disciples and vaguely middle eastern architectural backdrops that illustrate any of the major Biblical yarns: Zaccheus dangling from a Sycamore or Jonah being puked onto dry, painted sand. They made the point: sin and die.

9) Genuine article Nazirene congregations try in earnest to bring in the harvest of souls even if that means rounding them up from their broken homes. RNCs maintain a church bus, not a fleet of people movers that have Veggie Tales DVDs playing in transit. The church bus, a long ditched from a neighboring school, has only slightly less reliability than the tempermental boiler. Prone to cranking fruitlessly whenever the temperature hits the mid-20s, the church bus is also a surefire mechanical liability when found smoking roadside on the way to church camp. Forget the various harnesses, belts, restraints, and safety features of vans found in the Episcopalian parking lots, RNC busses leave the driving to God. He is, afterall, your copilot.

10) There are far more than 10 defining characteristics - tattered hymnals, violet-inked dittos of
prayer choruses, and posters announcing VBS or revivals, and on and on. The point is, be not dismayed, God is not mocked: these megachurches with their "sanctonasiums" and basketball leagues are Satan's playground. The Thursday morning Praise-R-Cize classes are little more than thinly disguised dances and there is nary a Manual to be had. Go to one of these fiendish facsimilies and you will be fondling backsliders, your own soul in peril. Just don't do it.

Hey Sistah, Soul Sistah

2009-07-23T21:51:00.006-04:00

Before our offertory hymn (Almost Persuaded #351) , I would like to make a few announcements.

First, next week is Vacation Bible School at the Herald of Homoness. Each night we will reflect on the true meaning of VBS. Gentle readers are encouraged to submit their VBS memories for publication.

Second, and I hate to belabor this, really. I'm starting to sound like a broken record - a one trick pony, if you will. However, I'm inclined to believe that misogyny is the new black, coming back into fashion like low rise jeans or greed. As a bit of a disclaimer, I want to assure you, gentle reader, that there are many women I love or at least abide. Our discussion tonight does not include any of them.

Here goes....

I hate lesbians. Not all lesbians and certainly not because they like boffing chick on chick. I’m not talking about those quiet matrons who have shared the love of Sappho for decades or the militant über-dykes who call themselves “womyn” and do performance art with tampons. Love ‘em. You go sister.

I would, however, reserve a dirt bunk or two for those nubby Peppermint Patties who are guilty, in my reckoning, of the ultimate feminine crime: having no style.

I have always ascribed to the theory that there are really very few ugly women, but that there a LOT of lazy ones. Most women, if tarted up a bit, could pass as attractive or at least earnest. Not these bitches. Totally unblushed by anything color coordinated, they take the rugby-shirt-of-least-resistance to their jobs as Driver’s Ed teachers or assistant managers. Never really in a relationship of any ilk, they drive their Pontiac Sunbirds with rear spoilers to limited social events, perhaps a darts league or company volleyball team where they mouth-breathe and eat chips.

I think the thing that I find most vexing about these she-sloths is their disregard for the great things about being a woman. I’m not talking about the wisps of frilly pinkness that most people think of as feminine, but the ability to be concerned about niceties and details that make the world habitable: cakes from scratch and red lipstick and smelling amazing. They totally abandon themselves into genderless blobs of waxy lipid, their only adornment being a SWATCH and that little braided ducktail.

The acid test for determining if one of these stumpy creatures is in fact, the genuine article is this conversation:

“Dang, Cheryl smells kinda gamy today. Do you think she’s a…”

“…I don’t know, man.”

Workaday World

2009-07-21T21:38:00.001-04:00

I work with a woman who is particular boil on the butt cheek of my existence. It seems that there is always one of her in my direct sightline, buzzing like a mosquito when the nightlights are extinguished. Unlike other objects of my pervasive misogyny, who might be excused from the undercroft if space were limited, I would happily exhume some of the others with a spork in order to place more of her in the dirt. Yeah, I hate them that much.

Picture it:
You’re in fourth grade and lumbering through the school yard, bapping younger kids with your lunch box and belching chocolate milk. You decide that sprinting is immediately called for, and break into bolting run. You are only a few meters into in when you hear, “WALK!”

The hiss comes from her. She’s the AAA Safety Patrol. Emblazoned with a fluorescent orange sash, she wears her title with the pride of Miss USA and the intensity of an air traffic controller. A mere year your senior, she nonetheless claims all of the authority invested her by the American Automobile Association, oddly the guarantor of all things safe on the playground. You look at her, her smug self-righteousness, and your belly oozes with rancor. I wish that I could tell you, little moppet, that the bitch with the neon badge will outgrow her sanctimonious score-keeping. However, she will never be any different than she is at that very moment – and you will have to deal with her or one of her sisters for the rest of your life.

For her, there is absolutely no gray – only the most polar black and white. She lives for rules and minutia and “what ifs” and her very presence causes little pin-prick hemorrhages all over the surface of your brain. Even as I write this, I find myself wincing in a grimace of loathing for this hell spawn, my mouth spewing frothy little flicks of bile which land on my monitor. I fucking hate her.

Invariably, she is in charge of safety or supplies or payroll – anywhere there is a tally to be made and lips to be pursed. She controls the keys to the shitter, noting on a clipboard the frequent urinaters, and inventories the toilet paper at the beginning and end of each shift. She is the one who takes the initiative to dock you eleven minutes of vacation time when you are caught by a train in the morning, and casts a shadowy, squinting glance when a coworker leaves early to take their kid to an organ transplant. It doesn’t matter that none of this is any of her fucking business, she answers to some satanic authority that compels her to be such a bitch.

Any, and I do mean ANY, change is greeted with extreme suspicion and a barrage of potential consequences. Move the water cooler a foot to the left and she announces that the secondary means of egress from the work area is now potentially blocked, possibly endangering the lives of all and incurring the wrath of Jesus or Zeus or the fire marshal. No one is safe from her judgment – it doesn’t matter if it is a hapless subordinate or the CEO. Rules are rules and she is the minion who must report.

She is universally disliked by everyone in the office. There is an unwritten bit of etiquette when you see a coworker being accosted by her, drawn into her hatey vortex over some infraction. The protocol is simple: do not help them out in any way. Don’t clear your throat, don’t walk in and change the topic to American Idol, and certainly don’t assert any sort of explanation or defense on their behalf. It is the exact same behavior that you would use should you happen upon a dingo consuming a baby – just keep on walking it has nothing to do with you.

She has been a serial character in my experience – different incarnations playing the same demagogic role – forecasting the demise of life as we know it if the over-utilization of Post-It notes doesn’t cease and desist. I hate her wherever she pops up – “confirming” your extended lunch for corporate records or chronicling your work-time internet shopping as if she were catching a Dateline sex predator.

I have found that a bit of guided imagery helps me maintain my psychic stability in her presence. I often go to my “special place of healing” and imagine myself ripping her fucking arms off and bludgeoning her to death with the blood-spurting stumps. It calms me, really.

Taming those nasty bones

2009-07-16T22:39:00.003-04:00

This is absolutely hilarious. I love the "dead animal" section.

When I went to the ONU "counseling center" and told the dude I was gay, the "psychologist" gave me an MMPI and recommended aversion therapy. I was a confused kid but I knew even then that was retarded. I hadn't seen A Clockwork Orange yet but I had enough brains to know that aversion was WRONG!

Check this out!

Backslidden Rants

2009-07-13T19:36:00.004-04:00

Don't be alarmed, gentle reader, by the District Superintendent's backslidden departure from all things sanctified. I have taken a leave of absence from being twice graced and on the road to Christian perfection simply to serve as a warning of what can happen when you let your holiness drop like a hooker's thong. Consider this an admonitory missive, issuing guidance for what I hope never happens to you.

That being said, aren't there certain types of people who consistently make you want to stack them in your crawlspace like cordwood, perhaps covering them with baking soda and lime to suppress the stank of their decomposition? I'm not talking about your alcoholic dad or your handsy uncle or the woman who ran over your kitty in a drunken stupor. Crawlspaces, by their design are very small and therefore require a certain economy of effort when selecting which of the legions of people who piss you off deserve a berth in the basement.

In order to organize my own space planning, I have developed a top ten list of the people who immediately create a visceral surge of rancor. I will submit one each day until we have a definitive list, a catalog of archetypes that gives fair warning to the sadly unsuspecting. While these are in no particular order, I would suggest that their rank in my consciousness intimates some sort of ordinal standing. In the event that I rediscover my sanctification, I will of course relent on the ninth verse of some cloying invitational hymn and confess my transgressions to a professional altar worker with a smudgy King James.

Until then, here we go...

1) You met her in my previous post. She's a white, 50ish woman. Critical and carping, she is joyless, sexless, tedious, and petty. She pretty much hates everyone but her own offspring, although there are many days that she would retroactively abort them given the chance. She wears her bitterness like a drag queen's feather boa.

She stopped loving her long-suffering husband about 15 minutes after she reluctantly consummated their union. Never fulfilled by anything, her only gratification comes from sneering at others and pretending she is more affluent than she is. She hates that she has to work, and never misses a chance to puke her passive aggressive antipathy on the women in her nondescript office, particularly if they are even slightly younger, leaner, or prettier.

Her weapons of choice are terse, demoralizing cracks that cut to the embarrassed core of their intended targets. Usually, they have to do with the most miniscule foibles - a tragic haircut, a pair of slacks that are slightly too tight, or one too many personal phone calls into your cubicle. She hates men as well, but recognizes that she is less likely to get under the skin of most oblivious males, and much more likely to dupe them with her veneer of a pained smile. She also knows that should she challenge them, she may get a full frontal in return.

The brilliance of this bitch is that she does this all while vocally metering faint praise and pretending that she is civic-minded and upbeat. If I shot one of them, on the hour - every hour - until the end of time, there would still be more.

Here is a sample of these bitches. Note that this image is purely representational, and in no way suggests that these women, unsuspectingly culled from Google images, are in fact women of this description. Draw your own conclusions.

My assumption is that (L-R) woman number 1 and woman number 3 fit this description. Woman number 2 has genuine warmth and woman number 4 has a mood disorder and low self-esteem.

Just one of the women I hate.

2009-07-11T19:38:00.002-04:00

One of the things about growing up Nazirene is that it is a universe dominated by women. Sure, there are Nazirene men and there is the blustering of men being the Ephesianic household head.
Ha. Ha. Ha.

Women run the game. They wield their piety like a light saber and slice the man-nuggets off of their husbands and sons.

I hate women. Here's one I hate REAL BAD.

Now, I'm a person who is relatively tolerant of abuse. I am regularly the bitch of choice for most anyone who wants a patsy. People can do really big stuff to me (e.g. remove part of my small intestine with a spork) and I usually pass it off as them having a bad day. The big things roll. The little things, however, do not.

I suppose that it is one of those silly personality disorders that compels me to take disproportionate offense at an ill-chosen phrase, a subtle bump without an "excuse me", or a simple act of forgetfulness. And when the moon is full, and the bile is flowing like maple sap, I will bludgeon you.

To illustrate, here is a little morality tale that teaches us the important lesson of courtesy.

Last Friday, I was driving in a city about 2 hours away, looking for a place to do some recreational shopping. The traffic was murderous at 5:30 on a Friday, and cars were jamming like a teen garage band. Of course, I was in a relatively strange place and apparently only one of the 15 lanes could take me into the strip mall I was eyeing.

Traffic was at a dead stop and I needed over. Next to me was this older lady in a gold Buick. I gave her one of those "gosh, I'm new here" shrugs and motioned for permission to merge. I used the international hand gestures for "hey, help me out", and a nice toothy grin.

What I got in return from this bitch was the contemptuous eye-roll of a 14 year old girl as she edged her car into the rear bumper of the pick up in front of her. She slow-moed her head to look away from me, not in a "no, sorry you can't come over" way, but in a depersonalizing "you have less value than a chicken McNugget" sort of way.

God I hated her. Bad.

And I just couldn't let it pass.

By the time I finally merged, she had lurched seven or eight cars ahead of me, turning right into the mall. And I lost her. But unlike other losses - teeth, dignity, whatever - this loss was not to be permanent.

For the next 90 minutes, I snaked my way through the parking lots of 10 or 15 stores and restaurants - obsessed with confronting this malicious and condescending gorgon.

I thought I found her car in the parking lot of Lowe's. Fortunately, there was a parking space next to the sedan in question and I inched beside it. I was willing to wait. But first, a quick recon of Lowe's.

She wasn't there. Damn.

Now let's pause for a brief profile of this shrew. You have to know a dozen or more just like her. She fancied herself as upscale, more than the aged-out soccer mom that she was. Skin too tan, too many gold herringbone chains, pulsing with the hormonal fluctuations of a difficult menopause. Think Laura Bush with a mood disorder. There are only about a billion of her. And I hate every fucking one of them.

They emit their derision like sonar from a bat, bouncing it off of everyone and everything so they know where to move. Every hair of her expired Dorothy Hammill blow dry was an argument for misogyny. I milked every drop of reflected hostility I could and distilled it into a visceral liquor of loathing.

Needless to say, I kept looking. And then in Target, it happened.

There in the toy aisle with her daughter and grandkids was my phantom detractor.

I pushed my empty cart up behind her. "Lady, you have a manners problem," I hissed.

She looked puzzled, and then thinking that she had stepped in front of me or some such slight, she moved out of the way.

And I let it rip. I disgorged my indictment of her, and she was unrepentant. Her daughter, a predictable junior version of the she-devil, stepped to her aid, confused but able to muster her sorceress genes on a whim.

Not gonna work, muffin. Now it's time to greet the children.

"Your grandma is a bitch," I admonished the pair. I'll call them Caitlin and Cody, although they could have been any variant of Ashley, Dakota, Brittany, or Dylan. $50 says one of them has ADHD.

I was done and rolled the empty cart toward the door. Hag daughter had to have the last word about the quality of my example for children.

A gentle "shut the fuck up" closed the goings-on, and I left, obsession squandered, to be a nice guy until the next one.

Promiscuous Mixed Bathing

2009-06-23T22:15:00.004-04:00

Wow. It's really getting hot. Summer is upon us. Gone are the springy, refreshing days of weeks past and now we are in the throes of the languid summer afternoon. Time, to be sure, to cool off down at the old swimmin' hole.

In shifts. An hour apart.

In many Nazirene households, it was impermissible to go swimming, unless of course, you were with persons of the same sex. Girls were allowed to feel the cooling waters of Grand Lake St. Marys at times other than their baptism, only if they were properly attired.

Unlike the harlots that clutter the streets of Hollywood, California like styrofoam packing peanuts on the Post Office floor, a woman of true holiness would never wear an actual bathing suit. On the contrary. The only proper dress for such occasions is in fact, a dress.

For years, there was a folkloric prohibition against "promiscuous mixed bathing", promulgated in some or other version of the Manual. My knowledge of our faithful sisters dog paddling in their polyester frocks is thus second hand. I totally, however, embrace its veracity. If I were prone to wicked imaginations, my mind's eye would conjure images of holiness chicks floating about the lake on pontoons fashioned from their gathered skirts.

Sadly, I am not apt to envision women swimming in any manner, and think that perhaps the moratorium on intersex aquatics was something most of my fellow Naza-queers found fabulous!

Were I to conceive of such a scene, I immediately go to images of those Morman offshoot sects. It was strange when I saw the pictures of polygamist compounds and their women in home-fashioned togs, I felt an embarrassing affinity to them. Their separatist ways and tacky Victorian vestments seemed to me decidedly Nazirene.

What made me think of this thing, this day? France has declared the burqas of extreme Islam to be unacceptable - and recommends the outlaw of the full-swaddled fashion. "In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity," stated French President Sarkozy.

Where the hell were the French when those poor Nazirene girls were soaked to their corsets in pond water, necklines shielding them from even the romotest chance of sunburn? Damn the frogs, you can never really count on them, can you.

Now. Wait an hour then the boys can get in the pool.

Unbelievable

2009-06-22T21:48:00.004-04:00

The weekend brought a strange mix of old and new. Friends from eons ago and the boyfriend of slightly less than a year. Young ones and old ones. Some from the old world and some with no conceptualization of how it was for us "back in the day".

It is impossible to tell "normal" people what it was like growing up on the outer fringes of the right wing. We make jokes and sometimes try to give them insight. They just don't get it. They don't understand the insanity of it. My partner once asked me if it was "like on TV" - Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell or the ilk.

Sort of. It was all that and so very much more. What you can't see is the interior. You can't know the mind-bashing, spirit-crushing, crazy shit that really happened (happens) over and over. When you try to explain it, there is a discernible tipping point where people from the "outside" glaze over and stop listening. They can't imagine such a thing. The simply cannot take it in.

We talked, my partner and I, about the conversations the duo and I had this weekend. I don't know if it's important for him to understand. Hell, I don't understand.

Music from an Amazing Duo

2009-06-21T22:00:00.001-04:00

I never thought I would want to revisit those days. Emotionally, I mean. It was a period of supreme suckage - my time at Ye Old Holiness Institution. But seeing the duo again was wonderful. It is amazing the way time has reframed our experiences there and now hazes them over with just humor and an eyeroll.

Neither of them has changed really. I haven't. But we are all very different than we were in the era of shoulder pads the size of sawhorses and parachute pants with an infinite number of zippered slashes. We are more ourselves. I think we're better.

When you grow up in the hothouse of sanctification and psychospiritual waterboarding that is the Nazirenes, you either break it, or it breaks you. It could have. It didn't. Olivet was like being sent into combat with men you don't know and emerging sisters. The family is hellaciously dysfunctional but nonetheless maladaptively bonded. Your choice is to make comrades or suicide notes. Comrades is definitely the preferred course.

I can't believe that it has been a quarter of a century since our last meeting. It was like a New Year's Eve at the VFW where you run into a foxhole buddy from 'Nam that you haven't seen since you were defoliated, yet can pick up where you left off. It isn't long until the sweetness of your youthful time together washes over you and softens the most painful of memories.

And it wasn't long before we were beyond reminiscing and were on to dishing on tiny secrets kept for the last couple of decades: confirmations of furtive, late-night gropings in dorm rooms; tales of lusts past and youthful indesretions; and gossipy speculations about this boy or that- now men as old and probably jaded as we.

I loved it. The trip made a final piece of coming out sort of snap into place. Or perhaps more accurately, it was the slight turn of the dial that brought brought focus to the times seen now only through the lens of hindsight.

Either way, reconnecting with the duo was unexpectedly wonderful. Oh. And it wasn't THAT duo.

Time is running out....

2009-06-11T22:36:00.000-04:00

When I was young, there were more sins than there are now. That's just how it was.

In our house, it was clearly a sin to play cards with "playing cards" - their kings and queens and (gasp!) jokers representing some sort of minions of the dark prince. Mere possession of these 52 tickets of carnality was enough to put you on the slippy slide to hell via the state penitentiary.

Movies, too, were verboten. Disney flicks like 101 Dalmatians were not sins per se, but they were made in Hollywood, California - the veritable ground zero of licentiousness - and therefore those lovable bespotted puppies were damned by association.

Such benign flicks were also aired in movie theaters where pornos like Dr. Zhivago were screened. Given the depravity of the owners of the backslidden bijous, they were apt to switch projectors and show open-mouth kissing when Snow White was on the marquee. The summer that my sister was obsessed with getting to see Grease at the drive-in was a summer of unprecendented spiritual brouhaha in my house.

At some point, however, the statute of limitations ran out and these things ceased to be among the seven deadlies. Family foursomes of the Hasbro game Rook were replaced with euchre without explanation. My aunt took us to the drive-in to see Song of the South and That Darn Cat. The sin had simply expired.

Before long, there was mixed bathing (also known as passes to the public pool) and the words "crap" and "dangit" peppered my father's conversation. I got a small black and white TV for my bedroom and watched Soap, a scandalous sit-com (with one of TV's first gay characters). Of course, I kept the volume practically inaudible just to avoid confrontation.

I have to wonder if some of the heart-burning transgressions that are on the current roster of mortals and venials will also suffer the same unceremonious discharges that allowed Walt Disney and the Queen of Spades their shock parole. Will the same goofy gusses that break into hives at the idea of queerness not even raise an eyebrow in a decade or so? Of course that will happen. Of course it will seem like way too long in coming. But come it will. Their time is running out.

40 and FABULOUS

2009-06-09T21:31:00.000-04:00

"When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child. When I became a man, I put away the things that belonged to childhood."

I love being in my 40s. I don’t even want 40 to be the new 30. I’ll take these years just as they are. I think I’m just better now, certainly happier, definitely more contented.

I was talking with a friend about the stages we go through in accepting where we come from, that frothing fundamentalism that shaped us and made us who we are. In my 20s, there was the abjuratory rage that was always simmering just beneath the surface of my emotional kettle. Still trying to reconcile the cognitive and spiritual disconnect, I found myself intermittently apostate and then momentarily contrite. The undulations of that decade were nauseating, a riding sea swell on a berth where I rarely caught the glimpse of any emotional or spiritual horizon. Like dry heaves, the experience seldom produced much.

No thanks, I’m a landlubber.

My thirties were, for the most part, a period of near latency – a respite of sorts form the fray of it. I was busy building a career, crashing a career, and starting one again. Not much psychic energy for blaming parents or denominations or ideologies. There simply wasn’t time or room. Sure, I did the required amount of introspection - often with the guidance of demons or angels or therapists or friends or whoever happened to be handy. Some of it was good work. It was mostly about me and not them. The decade was about gathering experiences and world views that gave, if not balance, at least counterpoint to the dogmas of childhood.

But now the 40s. I don’t need more experience for balance, no more contrapuntal data to water down the slender theologies that irked me for so long. I see the people for who they are – folks who are just trying to get by doing what they know. Small, like me. But for the few of the religious right who are not religious but clangingly political, most are not to be blamed or disparaged or vilified. They are just riding their own ferment, clinging to the tiny rafts they have been given. Do I agree with them? Hell no. Do I need to beat them up with my dissent? Probably not.

Most of the time these days I just look around and think, “what does that have to do with me?” To be sure, there are times when the spokesdemons - the Dobsons and the Robertsons and other prominent wingnuts say something that scotches the activist in me. More often, I just roll my eyes and feel grateful that they hold no power over me or whatever remains of my immortal soul.

I feel sadness for the friends I have known who are well into their 40s and beyond, who still have no peace with their families or churches or selves. I see that there are many pieces of me – some of the qualities of which I am most proud – which come that upbringing. Some are there in spite of it, but many are there because of it. Most are tributes to simple people with simple beliefs who were simply trying to do and be good.

A Recipe for Our Time

2009-06-07T20:46:00.001-04:00

The 1980s were a raucous time of parties, entertaining, and unbridled glamour. The Reagans brought a certain star quality to all things political, and if there is one thing that Nazarenes love more than a ninth verse of "Just as I Am", it's politics.

Not to be outdone by Ron and Nancy's tony state dinners on gaspingly expensive Lenox china, the reigning royals of ONC (because it WAS ONC then, dear) brought the idea of the "reception" to its zenith. There were receptions for visiting evangelists, receptions for donors and their helmet-haired wives, receptions for this and receptions for that.

First Lady Lora Lee (FLLL) was the dowager queen of these affairs which often featured vittles from one of her many cookbooks. Written in a homey and exhortative style, these books were the must-haves of all who sought to excel in the womanly art of Christian entertaining. One always imagined that writing these books was FLLL's way of staving off the encroaching loneliness of life in the manse, and avoiding the pitfalls of things like nervous breakdowns and being all hopped up on Pamprin.

In this edition, FLLL is seen clutching a demure basket of joyful carnations, undoubtedly arranged by one of the Marks, either of whom had a certain flair for all things floral. She looks radiant in her Nancy Reagan red, although one doubts that this particular frock was borrowed from James Galanos.

The recipe of note in this volume is FLLL's French Iced Coffee. The reader will recall that this was long before those earthy Seattle types created the caramel macchiato, so the invention itself was quite novel, and the receipt highly sought after. Here it is, this pearl, in its original version.

FLLL's French Iced Coffee

3 cups strong coffee
2 cups sugar
1 pint cream
1 quart whole milk
2 teaspoons vanilla

Dissolve sugar in hot coffee. Cool.
Add other ingredients. Pour into milk cartons to freeze.
Remove from freezer 2 hours before serving.
Mix and serve very icy.

Now.
Nothing says "I want you to enjoy eternal life" like a frosty of mug of health-inspiring sugar and cream. However, given that we girls are now a tad more figure conscious, here is the PRIDE adaptation.

PRIDE French Iced Coffee

1/2 cup skim milk
1 packet Splenda
3 cups Kahlua or other coffee-flavored liquer
1 bottle Absolut Vanilla

Mix with crushed ice.

There. Now isn't that refreshing and fetchingly updated?

Welcome to our Official Publication!

2009-06-07T15:16:00.000-04:00

Yeah, we don't really have much to say yet, but definitely check back. There will be all kinds of great ways to participate in the Olivet Nazarene Pride movement. I mean, come on. Olivet is BY FAR the gayest place I've ever lived, and I only wish that I knew then what I know now. Seriously, open showers in boys only dorms. Please.