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June 22, 2008
The Itch To Hitch
Happy Summer Solstice!! And Merry Christmas while I’m at it because that’s how fast tempus is fugiting.
It’s Day #14 of my Hillary withdrawal. For at least seventeen months, I saw her every day, knew where she was going, who she was having dinner with - now nothing. It feels like a sad, if amicable, breakup. Now we have to start seeing other people. Sigh.
Perhaps the biggest shock upon coming out of the Democratic primary bubble is to realize that I had been lulled into thinking that everybody was now trying to work in an adult, democratic, progressive, civic manner. Silly me.
Out in the unreal world of Bushland, George and John McBush, his mini-me, want to drill their bits into ever inch of Mother Earth. They are squeezing the last little bit of speculative oil out before His Category 43ness leaves. They are back to photo-oping on broken levees. They are ignoring Iraq’s ungrateful but fond wish for us to leave, now that it’s going so well. [‘For whom?’ being the unasked question.] They are spreading manure lies about Barrack HUSSEIN Obama’s religious beliefs. They are going after Michele Obama who is resisting their demands for an extreme makeover.
In short, they got nuthin’ but fear and hate, their two favorite cards.
Happily, I’ve been following a different Haight. Despite the flagrant flaunting and taunting from CA friends, “Sooooo, when are you two getting married?” my gal pal and I recently reconfirmed our own vows not to marry. We do however, vigorously support the freedom of others to marry.
While we don’t have the itch to hitch, we can’t get enough of our friend’s lovely stories of all the weddings in CA. With gas at $4.65 a gallon in LA, I encourage newlyweds to locate their bridal registries at the local gas station.
And na na na na na na, back at you CA – one word: Celtics. And so much for that illusion of grownup behavior.
Our Empirical State is making progress. When Governor David Patterson issued an executive order that NYS must recognize out-of-state marriages, he spoke lovingly of the early influence of his two gay uncles, Stanley and Rodney. Rev. Al Sharpton teased him that he might have unwittingly outed them. Patterson said he was only disappointed that Rosie O’Donnell hadn’t called him. With any luck, Paul Rudnick is already writing a sequel - In and Out, Part II. I’m working on Same Sex in the City.
Happy Summer of Love! What do you want for Christmas, besides a First Lady Obama?
June 21, 2008
What’s your favorite way to celebrate the month formerly known as June – Gay Pride Month?
Kate wants to hear from you! The next question of the week, straight from Kate, is: What’s your favorite way to celebrate the month formerly known as June – Gay Pride Month?
To get your voice heard, simply hit the Comment link below and tell her what you think! No registration is necessary, and you can post anonymously if you want.
June 15, 2008
Big Love Trumps Mr. Big
Clinton Gals and Obama Gals, why can’t we all get along? Let’s take a cue from the gals in Sex and the City.
You might have missed the opening week of SATC because you were consumed with the last installments of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuit. I know I was. But it’s hot out. At least go for the air conditioning. And the pleasure of sitting in a theater packed with 85% women and the gay men who love them.
Iron Man. Indiana Jones. The dude flicks of summer’s standard “Women as After-thought Film Festivals” are usually packed with men and a few of the women who love them. No reviewer ever sniffs about that audience.
The preposterism of the ‘stylized violence’ [whatever that means] of those bummer schlockbusters made passersby in Harford, CT fully expect that the hit-and-run victim sprawled before them could get up, dust himself off and go about his day. That’s my theory.
As my SATC date [with whom, coincidentally, I have same-sex in the city] and I surveyed the satisfied, post-Sex women streaming out, in a din of high happy voices, we both thought, “What a missed organizing opportunity!” NOW should have sign-up tables in all multiplex lobbies. LATER should too.
That Fab Four loves each other! More Big Love than Mr. Big. Like sister-wives without the Mormon front-loaded hair or the prairie dresses. Unless of course it was a Frontier FLDS Fashion Week in New York.
For such a relentlessly heterosexist chick flick it was more lesbian than L-Word. And I love that the lesbian who doesn’t play one in this movie or on TV, has the steamiest, most alabaster skinned, and way too brief, sex scene. Can’t wait for the DVD extras.
Yes, they are white and rich. Yes, they marry because they can. Certainly those pre-conditions can smooth the way for friendship. But sometimes they don’t. For Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte it works because they talk. Male critics say endlessly. The friends speak their unspeakables. They forgive each other. They go on. They are there for each other.
Obama and Clinton gals – let’s get it on! And get on with it.
June 11, 2008
Do You Have to Go?
This is the first Tuesday after the Democratic primaries and it is blistering hot in New York. For days it had been rainy and cool and then suddenly, perhaps because it’s the last days of school, and god is a harsh school-mistress, the weather broke hot like blazes.
We had been out of town, there was no food in the apartment and we were trying to beat the heat. I was heading to the grocery store. My girlfriend was trying to ride the subway before temperatures on the platform reached Hades levels. It was early. We had been awakened by the sound of our a.c. laboring like a jet engine at the end of a runway.
We stopped for a quick breakfast at our local diner. After eating much too fast, I handed the check and my credit card to the owner at the cash register. He asked, “Do you have to go?” He says it to everyone, eyes twinkling over the half glasses teetering crazily on his nose.
Then for the first time, he noticed my last name on the credit card.
“That woman,” he grumbled, “she is my neighbor up in Chappaqua and she’s not nice.”
“Why? What did she do?”
I was thinking all the cable trucks and secret security details must be a pain in the neighborhood.
“I said hello to her once on the street and she ignored me. She’s no good.”
We had to go.
Already I had read some article with dire advice from other also-rans about how to handle the depression that is to come. My local NOW chapter has told me to send her a letter of thanks for all she’s done. What are they, my mother? Of course, I thank her. I'm just not going to bug her for a few days.
On this hot, ordinary Tuesday morning, I hope Hillary Clinton slept in, put on her bathrobe, padded downstairs for coffee, in her own hair with no makeup, didn’t read any papers or watch any TV and maybe just sat quietly and watched peonies bloom in the back yard.
June 10, 2008
Carpooling on the Straight Talk Express
Newsflash:
You are not going to believe this! I just got a call from that darling Caroline Kennedy on the Obama v-p search team, and she said they need a 60 year old white woman, last name Clinton. Just not that one. Would I be her stunt double? Kidding.
Hillary can’t win. She can’t even win for losing. The night Obama finally hit his lucky number, she wasn’t gracious enough for some of the prissy Miss Manners of the press. They wanted groveling, sackcloth, ashes, rending of garments, tearing out of hair. Tears, maybe.
No wait, not the tears! She might accidentally win another primary. Jesse Jackson dawdled Michael Dukakis for days. Come on.
The night of the last primaries, she won, but lost. She said she wasn’t ready to concede, you hideous sexist pigs. She didn’t say that last part. Some day I’d love to have a boilermaker, or eight, with her, up at the house in Chappaqua. She’d be doing her hobbies: scrapbooking the campaign, decoupaging war endorsements, gelding Bill and Terry. We’d be talking.
But I’m projecting. Compared to me, she’s the nice Clinton. Bitter? You want bitter? I could give you bitter. But I don’t have time.
As I have said, I am a Democratically fluid adult. I will go to the polls with the candidate we have, not the one I wished to have.
Far be it for me to step on anyone’s smile. Congratulations Barrack Obama! May you wage as brilliant a presidential campaign as your primary campaign.
Beware the pundits. They need their jobs, so they’ve got to make up stories. Set your own timetable as you have with your vice presidential choice. And we all know girls don’t ask boys to dance. Duh.
Do not ride the Straight Talk Express bus. John McCain will say “my friend”. You are not. Karl Rove is the bus driver. You’ve got the money. Do not carpool with McCain. They will make you sit in back.
The pundits have said, so it must be true, that Obama has to win white non-college educated voters. Well then, how about giving them no-strings tuition and sending them to college? But they have to guarantee they stop watching FOX news.
Already I heard one pundit say that if Obama wants to win, he’s going to have to muzzle his wife. Once again, cynicism humps my leg.
June 05, 2008
He Sees Gay People
After my Memorial Day run at the Crown and Anchor in Ptown, I took a lovely local nine-seater CapeAir plane into Boston for the 27th Annual MA Bill of Rights dinner. The pilot was in training and kept reading the laminated instruction list. It was a quaint reminder of early flight.
But if you want to meet some real risk-takers, look no further than the honorees at the ACLU dinner. The founder of Boston’s Wainright Bank, committed to progressive lending and minority ideals, disproves the real current mantra, “When banks compete, you lose.” While Errol Morris’s film Standard Operating Procedure is certainly not what you’d call a date movie, he deserved the recognition for telling the back story of Abu Ghraib. Ironically, on the same day of the release Scott McClellan’s belated tell-all book What Happened, Watergate’s John Dean, was honored for his work. I asked him to please thank his son, Howard, for his good job rebuilding the Democratic Party.
MA ACLU also honored the twenty years of work of their legislative director, Norma Shapiro. The diminutive, Jewish grandmother strong-armed the Catholic boys of the Legislature into passing gay marriage in MA. Talk about a vein of iron. Lots of attendees got me aside and whispered, “She knows where the bodies are buried.” I bet she knows the whereabouts of fugitive Whitey Bulger.
And then it was off to San Fransisters and the NCLR Gala Dinner. And more about gay marriage They were partying and celebrating the lifting of the ban on gay marriage in CA before they go off to fight yet another costly ballot initiative. I wondered why we can’t sue the fundamentalists for harassment. The NCLR lawyers told me they couldn’t and that you can’t initiate a ballot to get rid of ballot initiatives. Dang.
Two of the marriage plaintiffs, and my good friends, Jeanne Rizzo and Pali Cooper took me to a Giants Game at their lovely in-town stadium. It was Until There’s a Cure Night at the park and the SF Gay Men’s Chorus did a mini-concert before the game. The crowd cheered them and long time city pol, and comic, Tom Ammiano who read a declaration from Mayor Gavin Newsom. We’ve come a long way since 1981. The Giants lost in extra innings, but we were long gone because it was a gusty 42 degrees and I did not have on my stadium hot pants.
I kicked off Gay Pride Month, by appearing in the True Colors Tour lineup at Radio City Music Hall: The Cliks, the Indigo Girls, Regina Spector, Rosie O’Donnell, the B52s and finally Cyndi Lauper still kicking her eight octave range. I pinch myself.
After the craziness of CA, and I must say there was some flaunting and taunting – “So when are you and yours coming out her to get married?”- it was great to be back in New York, where Gov. David Patterson issued an executive order that NY State must recognize out-of-state, same-sex marriages. After Gov. Spitzer and Patterson’s own revelations about his marital excursions, it might be that NY doesn’t actually recognize in-state, same-old-sex marriage.
Nonetheless it was a proud moment. Patterson said that when he was little, whenever his parents went out, they would leave him with his uncles Stanley and Rodney. They played cards with him and helped him with his homework. Because of that early and formative familiarity, though legally blind, he sees gay people.
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