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).
