hot dogs and such...

I have this recurring dream in which I am driving an RV that is out of control and unweildy.

I have had this dream for going on ten years...and the dreams always have the same flavor:

there's me, sitting in an RV riding down the highway...there are dream friends and dream family riding with me...and we are all sitting around in uncomfortable silence. At some point I look up at the front of the vehicle and realize that NO ONE IS IN THE DRIVERS SEAT. This causes me to lurch into a standing position and scream at my companions "WHERE IS MY DAD?!?!?!" Because of course my father is the king of all RV drivers. Even in my dreams. But dream Dad is absent and no one seems to want to do anything other than flip out and run around inside the RV screaming.

So I take my place in the driver's seat and attempt to navigate this lurching monstrosity safely to our destination. It feels like I am driving 100 mph across icy roads with little control. The steering is unresponsive, the brakes don't work and there are always bridges on my path that seem to be 3 inches wide. I am convinced we are going to die around every turn. At some point in the journey I do loose control...and we either flip 100 times or careen off one of those bridges. Taking out more than a few innocent bystanders in the process. That's when everything goes into slow motion...

I wake myself up screaming.

More than one therapist has dissected the dream.  They seem to think that the RV symbolizes my soul...or my inner most self. I have processed through every traumatic RV experience I have had in hopes of eliminating the dream...even gone so far as to take a few RV trips and try to forcefully supplant  my subconscious RV fears with positive experiences.

So far nothing has worked. But maybe that's because dreams don't represent anything! Maybe it is just random neural firings after a long day of thinking too much about the wrong things and too little about the good stuff.

I have a friend recently home from Afghanistan. She has seen the stuff night mares are made of. I asked her today if she has nightmares...and she says nope, she sleeps like a baby. This is a woman who has seen combat, watched bombs explode, held her peers' wounds shut as she prayed medical evac arrived before that artery ran dry...

and she sleep like a baby.

Because she, my friends, is a rock star. Pure muscle and a smile that could charm anyone. She has shaken the hands of presidents, and been published for her eye-witness accounts of the cruelty the Taliban inflicts on the helpless. She doesn't send money to Save The Children, and she doesn't send emails to her congressman...she picks up a rifle and patrols the dirt roads of far away lands to make sure that any young girl that wants to go to school can make her way there.

Tonight I light a candle for those soldiers who have be fortunate enough to come home from the horrors of war, and also for those soldiers who took their last breath on foreign soil...thinking about their moms, dads, lovers or children as their lives were extinguished.

Happy Memorial Day weekend y'all. I'll be at work - because hospitals don't close. But be sure to enjoy yourselves on my behalf ;)

wow

Last week I had to take my precious little man to yet another in his endless stream of doctor appointments. Poor guy has been poked and prodded until he doesn't even fight it anymore.

I knew he was stressed out though. He was silent the entire ride there. Which, if you knew my son, is incredibly abnormal.

So I signed him in and filled out paperwork while he sat in the lobby and played on his phone.

After I was done with the checking in process I joined him, by plopping myself on his lap.

Yes the waiting room was full, yes he was embarrassed.

He started giggling and asked me what I was doing..."I'm nervous" I told him. "All these doctor appointments are just too much". He laughed and knew I was teasing...but he played along. He told me that the doctor would probably be nice and that even if they needed to draw blood it only would hurt "for a second". And in his faux comforting I knew he was moving through all the grown up bullshit that he has to face.

The other people in the waiting room smiled and told him he was a good boy for "comforting" his mom.

I got off his lap and let him retreat back to his phone...but he put his head on my shoulder and whispered "you're the best".

I saw this video today and it made me think of that moment...



Happy mother's day to all the moms out there...

my girlfriend...

Oh how I always go back to her...my sweet brandi

she is always there for me - always understands my sadness, my grief, and doesn't even try to offer  hope. She knows that hope would burn up a truly broken heart. But to be understood - held with her words....ahhh it's enough. An under-girdle.



I will say, however, that I have lost some faith in Brandi.

Though her music has inspired me from WAY back when she was a soft butch playing in bars...but as I watched her climb into fame - I worried for her girlfriend. Brandi faithfully dated this older, police officer from Seattle. A woman who founded a non-profit. Back when it wasn't trendy.

I feared that fame would bring a new style to Ms. Carlile...and sure enough, it would seem a super model was more to her new taste. With a few grammys under her belt she dumped that cop and found herself not just a beautiful new girlfriend, but a wife.

These days, I picture her ex sitting at a bar, rambling on about how she dated Brandi...slurring through stories of those "good old days" where she patiently waited for the tours to end so Brandi would come home... even if just for a quick weekend visit. Maybe even no one even believes her stories (except the locals). Most likely everyone is tired of hearing about it.

If I were there, I would climb up on the barstool next to that cop and ask her to tell her story... then I would sympathetically hand her a hanky...and tell her I can relate.

And let's see if Brandi writes something this fucking amazing about her new "wife"....



Cause I doubt it.

you lost the bet...

I think of baby me...twenty years ago.

There I am singing my heart out at Finales...do you notice my guitar strap was made of strips of fabric?? Live Simply my friend. I was recycling before anyone else.

At my side was my little butch hippie girlfriend - making harmony and wishing I would just buy a real damn guitar strap.

We dated for a decade...but back when that picture was taken we had only been together a few years. She and I never talked about the future in those days...we were content to spend our time singing, laughing with friends and playing house in our single-wide trailer. No AC, no bank account, and no plans beyond trying to meet the Indigo Girls.

It wasn't cool to be a lesbian back then.

My parents wouldn't talk to me except to condemn me to an eternity of Hell...people keyed my car because of my dyke bumper stickers - and more than once our friendly neighbors redecorated our yard with garbage. Even being a college town didn't help...once after a show our band performed at Florida State, an upstanding group of frat boys chased us off campus...throwing beer bottles and shouting rape threats. I will never forget running as fast as I could and hiding in a stairwell for half an hour while those drunk college boys looked and looked so they could "teach the queers a lesson". Thankfully drunks have a short attention span and never got their hands on us.

It's hard to be brave when the world tries to hurt you.

If you had told me back then that in my lifetime domestic partnerships would be ratified by the city of Tallahassee I would have thought you were high. Sure, I could have predicted San Fran, NYC, Europe would come around...but not the deep South. I once heard a parody of that famous quote about the South: It's not the heat, it's the humidity........but they changed it to: It's not the ignorance, it's the stupidity.

;)

But sure enough, my 25 year old self would have been wrong.

This week, the hee haw city of TallyHo just made it legal for my friends to run over to City Hall and make their partnerships legal. There are pictures all over facebook of the happy couples. And their stupid pieces of paper.

I am trying so so so hard to be happy for my people. Heck, I have marched and petitioned for this moment for half my life! But (as I was very recently abandoned by my heart's love) I am instead using it for fodder to fuel my self loathing.

I keep picturing hopping in a time machine and finding my hopeful young self singing on stage. I would walk up to her and put my arms around that sweet 25 year old me...and tell her "Hey, enjoy it while you can, because you will spend most of your lifetime alone as you watch alllllllllll your friends get married. Yes, even the queers."

Then I would probably buy her a drink or two...and tell her to invest in a little thing called Google. My last piece of advice would be to maybe consider an exciting career as the foremost gay and lesbian divorce attorney  ;)

For those of you who found this blog post by googling "foremost gay and lesbian divorce attorney"...my advice is to immediately adopt a cat (or three).