Category: life

Inside out

Halloween and Christmas were my Two Favorite Days as a kid, better than my birthday (I am not sure they were better than the occasional McDonald’s Food Days we had, because those completely nutritionally-incorrect french fries were like catnip to me, and that’s just the way it was).

But I digress.

Halloween: the day when, if we allow it, some part of our inside comes out to play. A big day in 60’s Tampa. What do you want to be? my mom would ask. Mostly, I didn’t know; so she let ideas float in the air for a week or so and then, if necessary, gently steered me toward something interesting (no Snow White plastic dresses from a bag for my mom!). She made most of my costumes (including a gorgeous tissue paper sunflower headdress on year).

My folks took me out at dusk and waited in the shadows at the end of the sidewalk so that I could go up by myself to the houses. Scary, sometimes. Then as I got older, I ran with a group of kids, with a group of parents wandering a block or so behind us, their cocktail ice clinking in time with their amiable conversation. Then those couple of magic years when we kids were old enough to go by ourselves; no one told us that meant we were on the cusp of being too old to go at all, and I’m glad. Those sorts of understandings come soon enough to me without the well-intentioned help of others.

And then there’s adult Halloween, which turns out to be quite a different beastie that asks a new question: What do you want to show? When we’re kids, it’s cool to be something we’re not. When we’re adults, if we’re lucky, we have the opportunity every so often to be something we are.

I spent Halloween 1986 with my friends Chuck and Karen in Chicago. We all went out to a dance at the local theatre company (just three blocks away) where we took acting classes together (and where I did theatre subscription telemarketing in exchange for a reduction on tuition, and lemme tell you, it’s a circle of hell so far down that they don’t even have a number for it yet). We had, as I recall, a grand night, and I got to dance to 80’s music in the actual 80’s, which does my head in just thinking about it.

There’s a lot showing in this photo, but I won’t tell you what it is.

Have a wonderful Halloween. Let something out to play.

Thank you

Nicola and I celebrated birthdays in September with the Griffith/Eskridge Birthday Jubilee. It’s not exactly over yet — we still have gifts of meals, wine, conversation, and story to enjoy. But it’s definitely time for me to say thank you to everyone who wished me well, sent me champagne and wine, took me out for splendid meals and made me fabulous dinners in their homes, organized treats for me, told me they loved me, and generally made me feel special and happy to be alive.

And because this is the only way I have to thank one of you, here I am waving through the internet to the reader who sent me an Amazon.com gift card. Thank you! I have pre-ordered the new Stephen King book and I am looking forward to it with glee. Hah, which means I’ll still be celebrating in November.

And, you know, I just can’t find anything wrong with that.

Enjoy your day.

Out here

Today is National Coming Out Day.

I met Nicola in June 1988, and said goodbye to her six weeks later with my world and my life completely changed. I’d talked to people before about the possibility that I was bisexual. I’d had intense emotional friendships with men and women, love affairs with men, crushes on women, and moved in both straight and gay circles in Atlanta where I was living, and everyone wondered what was up with me. Then Nicola came along and rocked my world on every level.

I went back to Atlanta alone and knew I had to do… something. And then I read about National Coming Out Day. There was going to be an NCOD ad in the Atlanta newspaper: anyone could register and put their name on the ad. And so I did.

I’m a private person (really, I am, this blog notwithstanding). I was alone in the South with a lot to sort out and a boatload of sadness. I had survived much of my life by flying under the radar; doing what I needed to do so unobtrusively that people didn’t get in my way. Sending in my name was huge for me: and, being me, I didn’t tell anyone I was doing it. I didn’t seek counsel or talk it out or get support. I just did it.

I was scared. Why? I don’t know. Maybe I thought my name would be in 75-point type on the front page of the paper and my neighbors in the apartment complex would nail dead squirrels to my door. Maybe I just felt revealed. Maybe I thought I would ping someone’s radar in a way that I couldn’t anticipate and might not like. There are all sorts of reasons people are afraid.

On October 11, 1988 — the first ever National Coming Out Day — I opened the newspaper and found my name in the company of hundreds of others. Hundreds. Astonishing. Our names were in about 2-point type; you needed a microscope to read them. No one that I knew ever saw my name there. But I saw it. And it was a great and good thing for me. It made me feel brave, and it made me feel proud.

I look forward to the day when everyone can be out without being afraid or feeling alone. If you came out today — even to yourself — then welcome. You just made a difference. It’s better out here when we’re all here together.

Grin your axis off

There’s the snort-your-wine laugh. There’s the wicked giggle. There’s the private smile. And all the varieties in between. I treasure them all.

Today I give you the “people are amazing” grin, courtesy of the Axis of Awesome.
 

Muchas gracias a Karina, mi hermana de corazon, quien sabe cómo me hace sonrier!

Seventeen years

“Don’t marry the one you think you can live with; marry the one you know you can’t live without.”– Dr. James Dobson
 
(paraphrased, because he should have said it this way. Where was his editor?)

I never expected to be married. But it turns out that my life is full of surprises, and this is one of the very, very best.
 

 

What would you do?

This made me cry today.

The context is that ABC Primetime set up an experiment in how Americans are responding to prejudice. Do watch it all the way through; there are some amazing moments.

(click though here if the embedded link doesn’t work; YouTube’s being unpredictable).
 

 
Of all my many fears, one of the greatest is that my courage will fail me when I need it, or when someone else does.

The Cursing Mommy

I very much adore The New Yorker‘s Cursing Mommy, even if she is a man. And so on the Fourth of July — a day when I find myself in special sympathy with Cursing Mommy because I would like everyone who sets off fireworks (which are illegal in Seattle by the way) in residential neighborhoods (specifically mine and you bet your ass I’m territorial about it) to suddenly find themselves in a Cone of Explosive Noise That Makes Them Want To Fucking Die bang bang pow boom bang! — this column from the Cursing Mommy seems like the perfect gift to give to all of my beautiful readers who I am sure would never, never do such hideous things.

I feel better now.

Enjoy your Fourth (bang bang oh look I just lit my own house on fire because I’m a moron who thinks the law is written for other people! Oh, there goes my neighbor’s house! Oops! Boom!).

The hope of reconciliation

I have written before about my belief in the power of Truth and Reconciliation projects. It comes up towards the end of the long comment conversation on this post, which itself links back to two posts I did about jury duty. The three posts together are one of the most fascinating and most widely-read conversations on the blog. (And if you go read, be warned — I had a database upgrade glitch a while back that whacked out the formatting of old posts, so it might look a little weird…).

Anyway, regarding reconciliation — here is an unexpected example.

When we offer truth and apology without defense in the hope of reconciliation, we take an enormous risk. When we offer reconciliation to people who have harmed us, we take an enormous risk. But look what sometimes happens. Well done, well done to all of these people.

—–

Write-a-thon running total: 3,040 words out of 12,000. Things have taken a sudden new turn. I love the way that writing the story leads me to such unexpected places. One of the benefits of being more experienced than when I was younger is that I don’t need to hang onto an idea just because it’s the one I started with. I feel as though I can “follow my nose” down the trail of a story and know fairly quickly if it’s a path I want to take. I no longer need to have my early ideas be right. Ideas are easy. There are a million different ways to tell a story. What I am doing is finding the story, rather than forcing my earliest notions to become the story.

Back in my early days, writing was a very serious activity (picture me with Serious Face: I Am Writing). These days, writing is serious play. Picture me with How Cool Is That! Face. I am writing.

Alone

My name’s Lauren, and i just read Solitaire. It made me feel like… i don’t know. It’s ok that you’re alone, just let people you love in sometimes. I don’t think i’m articulating that properly, but I’ve been going through a depression and your book just made me feel good. So, thanks!

And thank you. I really appreciate that you took the time to let me know, and I’m very glad that the book helped in any way.

I think the notion of alone has become so scary in our culture that people don’t really think about what it means. But alone isn’t an on/off switch. Part of the reason I wrote Solitaire was to explore what alone means to me, because I think that we are all alone inside our own skin regardless of our love life or family dynamic or social circle. And yes, I think that’s okay. I think that the whole spectrum is necessary to have a full human experience. There are things that we can only learn, do, be with other people; and there are things we can only learn, do, be with ourselves.

I can be lonely with other people. I can be all by myself and feel like the world in my head and heart are the best possible place that any human could be at that moment. Being afraid makes me feel alone even if I’m surrounded by people who love me. Those people help me look at my fear from a place of relative safety, and help me understand it better sometimes. If I can’t face my fear, then people I love carry me until I can. But I still have to face it and overcome it on my own. I’m ultimately responsible for that. Every choice I make is mine, even the ones that work out badly. If that isn’t alone, I don’t know what is. It can be frightening and debilitating beyond belief. But it is also the source of so much power…. *shakes head*. This is one of the Big Questions, and I’m still working on it.

I do know that the power of being alone only ever really comes into its full strength when one who is able to be alone is also able to connect with others. Love matters. And the real power is not being able to get love, it’s being able to give it. Part of giving love is letting other people in. Other people don’t get inside us because they love us — they get inside us because we love them. Isn’t it a funny old world?

I hope you’re feeling better every day.

—–

If you’d like to start a conversation, please follow Lauren’s lead and use the Talk to Me link on the sidebar.

That’s what it’s like

I really love this short documentary. It’s about writing a novel getting a degree building a marriage building yourself painting signs.

Once the video has started, I recommend double-clicking the image to bring the video into full screen mode. Or you can find it in full-screen mode directly at Vimeo.
 
Enjoy.
 

UP THERE from Jon on Vimeo.

Write-a-thon running total: 2,381 words out of 12,000. Today was about making what was already on the page deeper, rather than moving into another scene. So much of beginning is setting the anchors in place for the important emotional arcs that will play out in the book. And so this deepening I’m doing will, I hope, bring more resonance to some of the key moments to come.

And tomorrow we will meet an Important Character! Someone who will change my protagonist’s life. I’m excited about it. I always like it when the players come together onstage.