My Second Gay Date (Sort of) and the Off Broadway Elephant

Some stories arrive dressed in sequins and drama. Others show up in bowling shoes, clutching a free ticket and a bottle of Imodium. This one has a little of both. It’s about mistaken signals, unexpected invitations, and the kind of serendipity that only happens when you stop trying to choreograph your own life. It’s not a coming-out story—it’s a coming-around story. To friendship, to truth-telling, and to the curious ways we find ourselves in the company of elephants, both literal and metaphorical. It's about how far society has come—or hasn’t.  AI…..

Over the years I’ve had several friends who are gay. One I'd known since we were both toddlers and his parents ended up divorcing over their son’s sexuality. Another guy I thought I knew well in college didn't come out of the closet until after his elderly mother died. By then he was in his sixties and his coming out was an ‘aha moment’ that made pieces of my own life fall into place. We had dated for several years and while we talked about getting married, I’m grateful that we didn’t. I can’t imagine the pain a woman goes through when she thinks her closeted spouse is rejecting her in the bedroom and she has no clue why. 

And then there was my work friend and ski buddy in the '60s who agonized over telling his military-career father that he is gay. I'm not sure if he ever did. He moved out of town to put distance between him and his family and we lost track of each other. These three guys are the defining factors in why I fully support working towards a world where sexual orientation is no longer a “dirty little secret.” Secrets hurt both the teller and the ones being sheltered from the truth. Live and let live, that’s my motto. 

Sidebar here: I thought ‘live and let live’ was a proverb based on Bible scripture but Google corrected my misconception. The phrase is a Dutch proverb and it’s earliest appearance in print was in a 1622. “The core idea of tolerance and peaceful coexistence is central to its meaning” and that’s something our country would do good to resume working toward. (Rant off.) 

Back on topic: Another related event involving a gay acquaintance happened in the same time frame as when I met my husband. I joined a women’s bowling league on the advice from newspaper columnist Ann Landers. I had sent her a letter bemoaning the fact that I was 27 and still wasn’t married. Blah, blah, blah. Apparently, it wasn’t an unusual problem because I got a form letter back telling me to not sit at home waiting, get out and do things I like doing and I’d meet someone. I leaned into that advice as if my life depended on it. I joined clubs and gyms and took night classes. The only thing I didn’t try is church. 

It did work—it’s how I started dating Don—but not before I accidentally went on a date with a gay woman. She knew we were on a date. Naive me, didn’t. I figured it out the next league bowling night when afterward I went to the attached bar with my future husband, who I’d met the week before. She came in, sat down next to me and put her hand on my thigh possessively. I removed it. That was repeated a few times before she said words to the effect that she thought I liked her. “I do, but not like that!” I replied. To this day, I don’t know what gave her the wrong impression—I was the most boy-crazy person I knew. That “date” we were on? I thought we were two lioness out for an evening of making ourselves available for the King of the Jungle to find us.

Where is all this going? I just went on my second gay date. Not really. It wasn’t a date but I did go to an off Broadway play with two gay ladies. I don’t know whether to call it a stroke of luck, a happy accident or a $209 fluke or something else. Here’s how it happened.  I play Mahjong with one of them and she mentioned that she and her partner had tickets to see Water for Elephants and I expressed how much I loved the book and the movie. Both are on my list of top favorites. “How are they going do a story that features an elephant?” I asked. “She’s a major character in the story.”  “Puppets,” she replied.

The next morning, I got phone call from Ms. Gay Friend and her partner. A woman they were going to see the play with that night couldn’t go and she was offering me the ticket for free. I hemmed and hawed, listing every excuse I could think of to talk myself out of going. Not because of who I’d be going with but because I was having a bit of IBS at the time and I knew those seats in the theater are in long rows of 30 to 40 seats and their bathrooms not the easiest to find.

I’m also not a spur of the moment person but no matter what excuse I came up with, Ms Gay and her partner came up with a solution or answer I couldn’t refute. Finally I caved, promised I’d take an anti-diarrhea pill and two 500 mg of Tylenol and all would be fine. They promised to take good care of me. Said they wouldn’t leave me alone to have a panic attack—which, the older I get, I’m more prone to having in new situations. Not serious panic attacks, mind you—it was just a tiny stretch of the truth I used to wiggle out of going. But once I said it, I was locked into that little gray lie.

If you’ve seen Water for Elephants on stage, you already know that the large cast was full of feats of acrobatics, puppetry and cirque soleil style action. There was so much going on you didn’t know where to look first. I LOVED it! I’m not sure if a person who didn’t already know the storyline would be able to follow it. That part was a little sketchy, I thought, but the 20-something girls sitting next to me had not read the book nor seen the movie and one of them said she liked the production better than she thought she would. She, by the way, was on a very obvious gay date—but unlike me fifty years ago, she knew it. 

I recently came across a quote by an American photographer, Sally Mann, that nailed what I feel about storytelling.  “The thing that makes writing so difficult is you don't have the element of serendipity. At least with a photograph, you can set up the camera, and something might happen. You might be a lousy photographer, but you can get a good picture if you just take enough of them.” 

And sometimes, life hands you a story so full of serendipity, all you have to do is write it down. © 

 

“The Gays” and Six Feet Under

Sometimes it’s easy to forget to filler myself when it comes to recommending a Netflix series to binge watch. At the lunch table recently, here at the continuum care facility, we shared what we were binging and without thinking of the content of my current obsession and the people present I recommended Six Feet Under to a couple of deeply religious women who have lived sheltered lives and don’t approve "the gays.” Six Fee Under is full of sex and nudity and not just ordinary sex, but gay sex. But the underlining theme in the series is so much more than that. A Rotten Tomatoes review sums it up like this: “Laced with irony and dark situational humor, the show approaches the subject of death through the eyes of the Fisher family, who owns and operates a funeral home in Los Angeles. Peter Krause stars as Nate, who reluctantly becomes a partner in the funeral home after his father's death.” Other reviews have called the Fisher family ‘dysfunctional’ and I’d agree with that but five episodes in I became fully invested in the family---flaws and all.

A Guardian Review depicts the series much better than I could ever do: “Many of the show’s themes are incredibly difficult: hard drug use, sex addiction, abortion, dementia, to mention only a few. But just like its treatment of death, Six Feet Under doesn’t insert these issues for melodramatic effect, or use metaphors or workarounds to avoid facing the hard stuff. It invests in its characters and their struggles, unpacking the issues they face and finding shades of grey and, crucially, some kind of understanding and empathy.

“Outstanding scripting is also supported by some of the finest acting seen on the small screen – there’s a reason the cast received dozens of Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations over the life of the show, and won a swag of them too.”

Everyone's family has a one or two gay people in their midst whether you know it or not. And while acceptance is better now than in past decades it’s still got to be a scary thing to openingly pin that label on yourself. One of the Fisher brothers is gay and the writer of the series is gay. In one interview Alen Ball (the writer) shared the fact that every situation that David Fisher was in was drawn from his own life experiences living at first in the closet and after coming out. One intense episode in particular had me sitting on the edge of my bed in the wee hours of the morning fearing that David was going to end up like Matthew Shepard, who you might remember was found on a fence in Wyoming after being beaten and tortured to death for being gay. That happened not long after I found out that someone I know and love is gay and it made an impact on me. Just this year, 25 years after they found Matthew, his mother said society’s acceptance of the gay community has recently been moving backward. One step forward, two steps back. Societal changes never take a straight line, do they.

I hate that organized religion has scapegoated our fellow human beings into becoming objects to hate. Biologists can explain until they are blue in the face that same-sex activities have been “observed in 1,500 animal species, from primates to sea stars, bats to damselflies, snakes to nematode worms” but it doesn’t get through to the haters. Logic suggests that these documentations in nature are an argument that same-sex behavior is not an 'unnatural choice' at all but rather part of the Master Plan. 

Research scientists are on the edge of being able to fully understand "the interplay of genetic, hormonal and environment influences that start before birth" to cause homosexual behavior. I used to call it a birth defect but in the light of those 1,500 other species I’m coming around to not using that label. And also there is a debate going on over calling it a birth defect because on one hand that is the same as calling those born gay “a mistake” and, some say, it's not a defect that needs fixing---what needs fixing is society's mind-set on the topic. On the other hand science is close to being able to do treatments in-utero to prevent any ambiguousness in sexual orientation and why not give those babies an easier life? Wouldn’t it be interesting to be able to come back to earth in a hundred years and see how all this pans out. 

Before I end this post I want to explain what it is about Six Feet Under that I love the most besides the gifted writing and acting i.e. it’s the death and dying conversations that often gives me food for thought long after I turn off the TV. The series ran for five seasons and each episode is a half hour long and each one opens with someone dying. Things that the grieving family say or ask while planning the funeral or things said at the funeral or the way the deceased lived dovetails into the life of one of the Fisher's---what they might be going through at the time. Some of the ‘conversations’ the embalmers have with the deceased in the embalming room also make it seem like a perfectly natural thing to talk to the dead as I do to my husband from time to time. 

So, after all this if you are curious enough to try this series give it until after the forth or fifth episode before giving up on it, if you do. It’s starts off a little weirder than we’re all used to seeing on TV and it took the director a few episodes to figure out what he was doing.  It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea but I'm glad I gave it a shot. 

(Side note here: Fans of Kathy Bates will see her directing talents in five episodes and her acting skills in two seasons.) ©

Quotes from Six Feet Under---

 

Tracy: “Why do people have to die?”
Nate: “To Make life important. None of us know how long we’ve got, which is why we have to make each day matter.”

 

Brenda: “You know what I find interesting? If you lose a spouse, you’re called a widow or widower. If you’re a child and you lose your parents, then you’re an orphan. But what’s the word to describe a parent who loses a child? I guess that’s just too fucking awful to even have a name.”

 

Ruth: “Life doesn’t stop, alright. WE didn’t die. We have this precious gift of life and it’s so terribly fleeting, and that is precisely why it’s important to keep on living and not give up hope.”

 

Rabbi Ari: “Maybe your soulmate is the one who forces your soul to grow the most?”

 

Father Jack: “People might wonder what point there is in leading a life where you don’t touch any other lives. But it would be arrogant of us to assume that. Every life is a contribution, we just may not see how... Everyone comes into our life for a reason, and it is our responsibility to learn what they have to teach us.”

 

Nate: “I’m just saying you only get one life. There’s no God, no rules, no judgments, except for those you accept or create for yourself. And once it’s over, it’s over. Dreamless sleep forever and ever. So why not be happy while you’re here. Really? Why not?”

 

Nathaniel Sr.: “You hang onto your pain like it means something, like it’s worth something. Well let me tell ya, it’s not worth shit. Let it go. Infinite possibilities and all he can do is whine.”

 

Keith: “When someone sees you as you really are and wants to be with you, that’s powerful.”

 

George: “The loss of a young person is always a terrible blow, but in this case, it’s even more cruel, because Nate was an idealist and he struggled all through his life to be a good man. He wasn’t perfect, then whom among us is? And he never gave up on himself or the people he loved, or even love itself, in all its vexing, beautiful forms.”

Brenda: “All we have is this moment, right here, right now. The future is just a fucking concept that we use to avoid being alive today. So be here now.”

Father Jack: “The hardest part about my work is the fact that most people don’t want a real relationship with God. Yeah sure, they’ll pray to a man nailed to a cross, but they’ll ignore the gay kid who gets strung up, or the black man who gets dragged behind a car, or someone’s mother living in a box.”

 

Nate quoting Bhagavad Gita while high and thinking the sage words were his own.

 

Until Next Wednesday...  

 

The Charm Bracelet and the Devil at Book Club

Women's fiction writer Debbie Macomber says The Charm Bracelet by Viola Shipman, is “Utterly Charming!” And another back cover blurb sums up the story this way, “Through an heirloom charm bracelet, three women will rediscover the importance of family, love, faith, friends, fun, and a passion for living as each charm changes their lives.” 

The story centers around a 70 year woman, Lotty, who lives in rural Michigan, close to a small town that everyone in my book club thought was patterned after Saugatuck, a popular tourist place on Lake Michigan. Her daughter gets a phone call from someone who’s worried about Lotty so she and Lotty’s granddaughter take vacations to go to stay with Lotty for a few weeks to assess what’s going on with Lotty’s memory loss and while they’re visiting they learn the stories behind the charms on the bracelet that Lotty hasn’t taken off since she was a teenager. I found it hard to believe that a person could get that old without having already told those stories to her daughter and granddaughter, but a book has to have some structure to hang its chapters on so I could overlook that head scratcher. All but one person in the club thought it was a nice, light summer read, an unabashedly sentimental story. The odd man out called it “corny” and note it wasn’t me. I found it fascinating, though, that three others reported crying through out the read while the book didn’t milk even one tear out of my eyes. The only emotion it stirred in me was a burning curiosity about where the author lives and an increased fear of not having family closer by if dementia shows up at my dinner table.

A google search turned up the fact that the author is actually a guy---a gay guy who lives in Saugatuck. His ‘Viola Shipman’ pen name belonged to his grandmother, and he’s a critically acclaimed author with nine published books---six of which are non-fiction memoir-style under his real name (Wade Rouse) and three fiction books under the pen. I’ve probably mentioned before that I have a love/hate relationship with my book club and I couldn’t wait to share this detail on book discussion day, knowing several members belong to churches that condemns homosexuality. Ya, I know. That’s Mean Girl thinking, isn’t it, wanting to taunt them with reality, but on the other hand I could talk myself into believing I had an altruistic goal of illustrating without words that you can’t judge a person’s worth by their sexuality. You be my judge---devil or angel. If I had to put a label on my big reveal I’d called it passive aggressiveness. 

I didn’t bring the pen name thing up until after everyone had shared their opinion of The Charm Bracelet. Then I told the group I had tracked down one of the author’s memoir books and it covered a period of time when he and his partner bought a cottage near Saugatuck and he quit his job to write full time. The cottage was the same one he described in The Charm Bracelet. I never got to the part about how they occasionally referred to Saugatuck as Gayberry, a nickname that’s been around since the 1920s when it first appeared in an underground tourist guide of gay friendly places. (The things you learn when you collect antique maps and travel guides, like my husband did!) But I never got a chance to mention Gayberry---the open secret most tourists don't know about---because another book club member challenged me by saying, “Oh, no, the author is married and has four children! I’m sure I read that somewhere. Can't be gay.” I replied, “I just finished reading one of his memoirs and at 40 he’d been in a ten year relationship with his partner and he didn’t have any kids.” She insisted again and she started talking about the son in the book at which point we all knew she had her books and authors mixed up because there was no son in The Charm Bracelet. 

After that little “oops!” I shared the fact that Wade Rouse’s memoir had me laughing out loud so many times that the dog got up and left the room, giving me a dirty look for disturbing his sleep. Before the move to rural Michigan, Wade was a city guy who, like me, loved his Starbucks. Even his dog, he wrote, was so citified she didn’t know how to walk on a leash without cement underneath her feet. The book---titled At Least in the City Someone Would hear me Scream---was one of those books I didn’t want to end. When I finished sharing these last few sentences, no one said a word. Not. One. Word. It’s not unusual for us to talk about other books besides the one we’d all just read, so that wasn’t it. They just stared at me, looking like goldfish waiting for someone to drop some floating food pellets into their tank. The little devil on my shoulder laughed, but the angel on the other shoulder felt guilty for shocking the ladies speechless. Either way, I couldn’t help it. I found this author’s memoir humor to be too good not to share. (Humor was all but absent in the book club selection.)

On Wade’s website I found out he does library talks from time to time in my hometown and you can bet the next time he’s in town to hawk a book or host a workshop for to would-be-writers, I’ll be there. And I’ll be wearing my charm bracelet with its fifteen silver charms. ©

 

Note: the photo at the top is my bracelet, started when I graduated from high school and finished ten years later with the love birds---Don and me. Now, that's what corny looks like.

Homophobia at the Olympics and Lunch in the Heartland

FOX News columnist and executive editor John Moody wrote a hissy-fit column this past weekend where he said that the U.S. Olympic Committee this year has changed their motto of ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger’ to ‘Darker, Gayer, Different.’ “Were our Olympians selected because they’re the best at what they do,” he asked, “or because they’re the best publicity for our current obsession with having one each from Column A, B and C?” Setting aside the fact that all the athletes have to go through stiff competitions to qualify and they’ve earned their places on the team, Moody’s attitude reminded me of the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin when someone else tried to make the Games about something other than being faster, higher and stronger. Yup, that’s the one where Adolf Hitler intended to showcase his warped ideas about the superiority of having an Aryan Nation. Instead, the Fuehrer stumped off in anger when a black “sub-human”---his words, not mine---named Jesse Owens won four gold medals in track and field events.

What possible reason other than racism and homophobia can explain Mr. Moody’s anger over having ten black athletes competing in South Korea and for the first time, having two openly gay U.S. athletes at the Games? And I’m still trying to figure out what he meant by “different” unless he’s talking about the eleven Asian-Americans on our squads or the fact that 45% of the athletes this year are women. “No sport that we are aware of awards points — or medals — for skin color or sexual orientation,” Moody wrote. Is it any wonder the blow-back on his column was so fierce that FOX ended up taking it down?

Next up: The mini controversy created by Adam Rippon, our openly gay figure skater, when he didn’t want to meet with Vice President Pence before the opening ceremony. His reasons? Pence has advocated for federal funding to go to institutions that offer gay conversion therapy and, as governor, he signed a bill that allowed businesses to refuse services to LGBT customers. Then there’s free-style skier Gus Kenworthy, a returning Olympian who won silver at the Russian Olympics. He came out of the closet since those Games and he was more diplomatic in his refusal to meet with Pence stating that he didn’t want to be “distracted” from his training. About coming out of the closet? Gus said it felt good not to carry that “dirty little secret” around anymore---his words, not mine---and the peace of mind that brought him, he says, has improved his skiing. 

The whole issue of gayness and being in the closet was brought down to a personal level for me this past weekend when a young relative I haven’t seen in over six years came into town and wanted to take me out for lunch. I’ve known he is gay since he got married three-four years ago but I’ve never had a conversation with him about the topic. I had heard stories from others in the family about who did their best to accept and understand the news and who initially rejected the idea adding extra drama to his disclosure; I’m guessing it’s that way in most families. He brought his wife/husband with him---I still don’t know what label to hang on his marriage partner---and I was a tad nervous on what to say when meeting him for the first time. I decided to make it clear from the minute they walked into the house where I stood on the acceptance scale. After being introduced I hugged the partner and said, “Welcome to the family. I didn’t get to tell you that back when you two got married.” By the time they left after lunch, I knew we couldn’t ask for a warmer and more likeable guy to join the family fold.

Over the years I’ve had several friends who are gay. One I've known since we were both toddlers and his parents ended up divorcing over their son’s sexuality. Another guy I thought I knew well in college didn't come out of the closet until after his elderly mother died. By then he was in his sixties and his coming out was an ‘aha moment’ that made pieces of my own life fall into place. We had dated for several years and while we talked about getting married, I’m grateful that we didn’t. I can’t imagine the pain a woman goes through when she thinks her closeted spouse is rejecting her in the bedroom and she has no clue why. And then there was my work friend and ski buddy in the '60s who agonized over telling his military-career father that he is gay. I'm not sure if he ever did. He moved out of town to put distance between him and his family and we lost track of each other. These three guys are the defining factors in why I fully support working towards a world where sexual orientation is no longer a “dirty little secret.” Are you with me…or do you share John Moody’s fear that the Olympics and life in the U.S.A. are getting “too dark, too gay and too different?”  ©

Photo: Adam Rippon and Gus Kenworthy at the Olympics.