Thoughts on Orlando, Four Fears, and the Creation of Fire.

I'm so conflicted.  Everyone and their mother is writing about this usually purporting that "words cannot express"...  

I'm devastated.  I wasn't there.  I didn't know anyone, and I'm appalled quite frankly still over Sandy Hook.  As a mother I feel assaulted every time someone's innocent son or daughter is wasted in the powerfully petty smallness of this hyper-masculine bravado.  But as a queer mother, this brings me back...

   I was first coming out and I was insanely in love with my (now former) best friend.  I was flirting but reluctant to pursue a real relationship with another girl I knew personally who was purportedly bi but just as scared as me.  So I was eager to go out with the girl who worked in the deli around the corner.  She was older, Latino, and very, very comfortable with this sexuality I was only newly aware I shared.

   She took me to see Schindler's List (How's that for a first date culture shock!)  A bar called Reflections and then a nightclub named Hatfield's on Queen's Blvd.  

   Hatfield's was a little hole-in-the-wall kind of place, probably very similar to Pulse,  and after a few body shots of tequila, and very close dance where she began grinding against me on the dance floor, I was weakened, ecstatic, completely turned on for the first time in my life, and terrified with my head between my own legs in the bathroom.

   I do not know if I can explain all the fears.
#1 I was completely turned on.  I had been dating for years almost nonstop fooling around with guys I was not really into (looking for connection).  I always had control over how far I'd go.  But if this girl wasn't such an adult I'd have done anything.

#2 I was convinced the police would be at the door any moment to arrest us all, although I wasn't exactly sure on what charge.  This was the early 90's.  I mean I don't know why I thought that but I did.

#3 I was hyper-aware that I was in a condensed space with a vast amount of sexual "deviants" and I was terrified some religious fanatic would burst through those doors any second and do exactly what they did Sunday night in Orlando. 

#4 And I was convinced that if they did and I died, I'd go straight to hell.

   Earlier that evening I'd met a girl in the first bar as my date went to the bathroom.  That girl wanted to come out to her parents, and was worried about how they'd respond.  I was instantly connected.  I'd told my father already that I was questioning my sexuality, and he'd responded with love and concern that I'd lead a more difficult life.  As my date returned the other girl withdrew, but it spurred conversation about my own hesitance.  I turned to my date, my mentor and asked if she was worried about God's retribution, and though she believed in God  she responded that she was not worried because "God loves everybody."

   I was not convinced.
   The God I'd grown up with had boundaries.  The good I knew drew lines.  And the naivety I percieved from my first lesbian mentor actually made me shake my head.  Obviously, she was too far gone - too emmersed in this sinful life to see the light.

   Instead, I soon found myself drunk, spinning and huddled, head between my knees in a tiny bathroom, worried about fire - this new fire in my groin, the hot fire on my throat (tequila), and the fire I feared from the world, and from God.

   It's taken years to comprehend what my date said to me that night.  It took years to forgive her, years to forgive myself, and years to forgive my love.       

   Now it's time to forgive the world.

   This man was an extremist.  He was a homosexual.  He was born in America, raised in a religion that didn't accept him.  (I know the feeling).  He tried to marry, tried to date, and failed at both.  But he was able to go out and successfully buy a weapon that allowed him to shoot rounds and rounds of bullets at people without even having to aim.  He was assisted by so many creators of this world.  Assisted at amplifying his hate, not his love.

   I've been so lucky.  Lucky to have my every dream come true.  I have a beautiful wife, and two beautiful children who are the sweetest, most empathetic young men I've ever known.  But they didn't come out of a box like that!  It took - it takes - a lot of love, attention, and as much control over the environment as my wife and I can create.

   But I was lucky to be accepted at least at first at home.  I was lucky to fall in love with a woman courageous enough to love me back.  And I was lucky to really feel God's blessings at the exact moments when I needed them the most.

   See, we create the world we live in.  And we affect those around us who create here too.  There is no difference between Islam, or Christianity.  There is no difference between blaming Jews, or women, or blacks, or Latinos, or Muslims, or queers, or white men.  We are all individuals, charged with living or dying together whether we like it or not.  We cannot avoid being part of some group.  But we can help supply and sustain the love or the hate, the confusion, or fear together.  No ethical person believes any good comes from the availability of these ridiculous guns for the hyper terrified insecure.  No armed civilian was there in Florida that night to protect these hundreds of people.  No argument against vigilant, disciplined peaceful people like Barrack Obama makes any sense.  Think about all the labels you perpetuate, and all the evil perpetrated by other individuals in those groups.  Do they deserve to be ousted?  Do they deserve to be unloved?   Hated even?  Due to crimes committed by other people who's lives you know little-to-nothing about?

"Hatfield's" long ago closed down, but I frequented that place long beyond that date with my deli counterperson.  I learned to face my fears and celebrate love with my equally brave societal rejects.  But I remember the fear, self-hate, disgust and homophobia.  I remember quitting high school because I was made to dance with a girl I perceived queerness from in gym class.   I remember the pain, and fury of the rejection of my best friend and first love.  I remember the general rejection, the lack of empathy.  I remember complete loneliness.  That place was dark, hot, excruciating.  It was hell.  But it's a place I'm now proud to say that I've been, and returned from.  And I would never put anybody else there, willingly.

   That alone will help.  Please, please join me.  Don't give in to hate, or fear.  Love.  Pray.  Forgive.

Me and Amy

   My wife and I are awesome.  We followed all the rules:  We met and had an instant meeting of the minds, we were friend's first, we valued honesty, we cultivated communication and trust while inspiring growth and adventure.  We're together now almost twenty years with two beautiful, well behaved, intelligent, interesting young children.  But, like life, it's always an adventure.

   We met while I was in a relationship with a straight girl.  I had no interest in putting up any guard.  Two years later, Amy bought me a skydiving gift certificate.  That day I left more than just a plane at 4000 feet behind.  I left my old self, the one that thought I deserved a relationship I wasn't number 1 in.  Of course being number 1 only lasted so long.

   The day my son was born was by far the best of my life.  It was incredible in large part because she birthed him.  And in addition because it took us over 4 years to conceive.  My favorite uncle, the donor, helped me defy nature by genetically connecting me to my fiancé's baby.  And we, determined to realize this dream together, proceeded to drive 3-4 hours south from the Canadian border when we were in college, and north from the city when we came home, every month or so often in the middle of the week our first few years as teachers.  Between calculating ovulation, correlating with a 55+ man's sexual readiness, and my astrological preferences (I really wanted only certain signs) it took us 4+ years.  But the minute I saw his beautiful face, heard the crackly sweetness of his beautiful first cry, and comforted him into his first quiet skin to skin snuggle - I knew it was all worth it!  I was happy and ready to embark on this next new adventure.

   But the next day we were greeted by the hospital photographer.  "He's a lucky boy to have two moms like me" she said.  At first I thought she was mocking us.  But she went on to us very interested new mothers about how she was raised by two moms, and she felt like the luckiest kid in the world.  All the while she's talking I'm marveling at the strong bonds between women are and how natural a lifelong commitment must be to us as a community.  That's when she drops the bombshell.

   "So how long have your moms now been together?"

   "Oh they're broken up now."

   "Broken up?!"  My wife and I look on her in horror.  Divorce?  Two women divorced??

   "Yeah.  All their friend's are too.  Lesbian couples all break up after menopause."

   And now, 18 years and 2 kids later, on the precipice of the big "M" we live in daily fear of this impending doom looming over our lives.  We've learned to tone down the fights.  We've learn to accept the worst in each other.  And we've learned that much of what breaks other couples up is the rolling momentum of life's potent stress.  I love my wife, but I've fantasized.  And my wife loves me, but she's hated me too.  The best advice I can give to any couple looking to make it this long, is to never rule out the possibility of breaking up.  Amy and I grew up knowing nothing is forever and that is true of marriages as well.  We're not the same couple we used to be and we're not the same as we'll end up.  The trick has something to do with always growing and evolving - hopefully in the same direction.