Gay, Fine By Me

Original entry drafted 6/25/05, edited slightly 6/3/06:

A few weeks ago, mid-sentence, during a instant messenger conversation, Ben told me that Charlie (his roommate, and our mutual friend) was wearing a T-shirt that read: "Gay, Fine By Me". I immediately said, "what does that mean? Charlie isn't a complete asshole?" and Ben confered, "I guess so." He really should have said, "I guess ... not?"

I am offended for my fellow human beings. Can we be so stupid that we have to come up with gay rights campaigns (for straight people) that praise people for giving basic equal rights to gays? Oh, but wait, the campaign doesn't go so far as being pro-gay marriage or pro-gay family...this organization only goes so far as to say that Gay is Okay...

Sound familiar? Fine by you? Who cares what you think? Gay people...real gay people, the couple dozen I know in real life and not from the movies, don't want to be FINE in straight people's eyes. They want to be free to live their lives. Who doesn't? like all of us, they just want to be unique and in the same vain like everyone else.

Here in Oregon, our anti-gay marriage proposal was called 36. YES was a vote for a proposal that was poorly worded and meant gays could not be married. And I was shocked to see so many "YES on PROPOSAL 36" signs in my neighborhood. The YES campaign went with the simple "ONE MAN, ONE WOMAN" slogan...at first, even I thought the proposal was about poligamy...The first thing that crossed my mind was, "is someone proposing that ONE MAN should be with THREE WOMEN?"

I was even more shocked, amazed and uplifted to see that the "NO on proposal 36" campaign was coming at it so level-headedly. The TV commercials showed straight couples and families, saying, "I don't know how I feel about gay marriage, but I know Proposal 36 is poorly writen."

What does gay marriage threaten? Family? The families that already exist with two same-sex parents, without equal rights to their child? No, family values only serve the families that are practically extinct in our culture, the nuclear one mother, one father, two-point-five child homes. That isn't our America. It isn't our place to say if it should be, but I know it isn't right. Step-mother, step-fathers, half-children and grand-step-cousins-once removed, that is today's family. Children shouldn't be punished for the world they inhabit. And I do not mean that children should be punished for having gay parents. But instead, I mean children shouldn't be punished for their human parents short-commings and the close-minded settings of their community.

What does gay marriage threaten? Straight-marriage? I have had this conversatation a dozen times with my favorite Catholic Democrat Bartender, Glenn. Glenn is 50+ years old, he's been Catholic all of his life, married only 20 years of his life and worked at the same company over 25 years of those 50-plus, under 3 or more different owner/managers. Glenn is very educated and very political. He loves to stress both of these features. Glenn, like myself, doesn't feel gay marriage threatens what him and his wife hold as holy vows. He doesn't think a man marrying a man takes anything away from him, as a man, marrying a woman. He is very level-headed, hard-working, likes to drink and enjoy himself, and knows bullshit when he sees it.

What does gay marriage threaten? God? "It's against The Bible", being the most common response I can get from those so opposed. My response never falters, "Who are you to judge? Let them bring it up with God." If we all believe in The Bible and Judgement Day, and it actually turns out to be truth, we will all have to face our maker on the day of our demise. We will all have to account for the sins we have concured along the way...being gay and "acting upon" that gayness is no difference. Who are we to judge? God, did not put us here for that purpose. The great scripture states..."judge not lest ye be judged", "no one but God has the right". Jesus himself says, “Judge not, that we cannot judge." (Matthew 7:1). Let us all just stop playing God for a minute (in the form of the Father, Son or Holy Ghost) and let's try to live our own lives in the way of The Savior. Let us try to lead our own lives down a path of salvation and bring as many as will join us along. Jesus didn't want it and not even angry, vengeful New-Testimate God wanted us to live bullying and dragging people by their ears down the path of salvation.

I won't believe in a God who doesn't love all of his creatures.

Computer Error Messages

I would love to have a computer that taked shit to me. The error messages of Windows and even more so on a Mac are complete useless anyway, so they might as well be funny.

While working on my Greyhound Memoirs, I concluded that the ideal way to get into the same mind set of being a three day Greyhound journey would be to drink to the point of being slightly toasted. Sometimes this plan failed in one of two ways. Either I was not drunk enough or too drunk (more usually the later). Being drunk as a lot in common with the bus riding experience, but being very drunk is a little too happy a place to relate. Riding a Greyhound is more like being hungover than being drunk, but that is not a feeling I ever strive to achieve.

My saying became "Not Enough Booze in The System to Complete Download". Now why can't my computer come up with things like that to tell me when it doesn't want to cooperate? If it is going to be a moody bitch, the least it can do is have a sense of humor about it. That is how this moody bitch tries to be anyway.

Greyhound Memoirs #21

FINAL DESTINATION
5/19/01 3:10pm PST

My bus is entering Portland. It looks sort of lie Chicago; lots of run down little houses next to the Interstate. Holy shit, I just saw an ad for health insurance for pets. Fucking hippy town.

Big buildings coming up around the bend. Wow, a city. A real city, but so green (not bathed in concrete gray like so many). MAX train, not-so-distant cousin of San Francisco’s BART. “Amazon.com Wouldn’t Fit Here”, the side of a huge building reads as we cross the Willamette River into downtown Portland.

I hope I fit here...

Greyhound Memoirs #20

GREEN OREGON
5/19/01 2:16pm PST

About an hour to go and a hundred pages left in Slaughterhouse Five.

Oregon is so green, sunny, rocky and windy. Everything is going to be okay. After I shower and go to the dentist and chiropractor, that is. My teeth ache like I was socked in the face. I wonder what’s wrong. I’ve been drinking a lot of soda, but that isn’t unusual for me. It’s the front teeth especially. Maybe it has something to do with my tongue piercing. Maybe something about sleeping under a blanket of feel of sexual assault making me clinch and grind away at my teeth combined with the rattling of the uneven highway and jerky stopping.

It will take me two years to see a dentist. And after a series of consecutive visits, I will get fillings in almost all of my teeth and have 2 of my 4 wisdom teeth removed.

Huge green pines, mountains, and trickling water. The trees and water are things that have always been close to home. This flatlander will have to get used to the mountains. That shouldn’t prove to be very difficult.

Greyhound Memoirs #19

ROTTEN TEETH
5/19/01 10:30am PST

I’m starving and my teeth are rotting right out of my head. I can feel them throbbing with decay. I just brushed them for the first time on the trip and they feel slightly better. Portland is less than 300 miles away. Still five hours to go.

Greyhound Memoirs #18

STANDOFF
5/19/01 6:08am MST

Everyone’s got a hussle. Everyone thinks they’ve got to be a player. I almost lost my cool last night when an Esse named David tried to get “fresh” with me. He was talking to me, telling me he wanted to sit with me, when he had a seat across the aisle. I told him I had been traveling for two days and I was tired and I just wanted to get some sleep. I went to use the bathroom and he was sitting in my seat when I got back. I kept telling him I was tired and I wanted him to move. He was saying I could lie down in his lap and finally I got out of my seat and stood in the aisle glaring at him. Finally he moved back to his seat.

A couple of hours later, he apologized. Said he was stoned out of his mind and that I should get to know him. The guy sitting next to him, who was on the bus with me from Chicago apologized too and said he should have done something for me and to let him know if Esse bothers me anymore or I need anything.

This isn’t happening to anyone else. I’m not that cute. Do I look that much like prey? I wasn’t firm enough I am too nice, but I handled myself on both buses. I got my seats. Something I will learn as a cocktail waitress in a mismanaged bowling alley is to handle most any situation.

Greyhound Memoirs #17

VEGETARIAN
5/18/01 2:40pm MST

Quite a rowdy, lippy group on this bus. To give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they aren’t normally like this, but due to lack of sleep, shower and normal food bus travel multiplies their natural loopiness.

The driver just asked for the “off-color” remarks to stop because women and children are on board.

We stopped in Rawling, Wyoming for a cigarette and stretch near nothing. A bag lady from the bus made a remark about some of us smelling bad and “Tiny”, who is a truck driver and of course not a small man, said, “if that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black.” Everyone curses like a sailor. It’s absolutely wonderful. One woman asked another passenger to get her a soda across the street and he said, “Shit no, you’ve got legs.”

Last night, at a brief stop, somewhere in Iowa or Nebraska (pretty sure it was Iowa) the bus filled with the smell of slaughtered chickens. It was absolutely horrible. I was so nauseous; I thought I would lose it all over Jose.

Over four years later, I remember this experience vividly. We stopped for a 10-minute rest in the wee hours of the morning. I stayed on the bus for about 3 minutes, and then decided I might as well have a cigarette, since I couldn’t sleep. As I got off the bus, the smell was over-powering. The familiar smell was hard to place at first and once I did I never thought I would be able to eat chicken again. I lit my cigarette and smoked as much as I could until I thought I would toss my cookies. I got back on the bus to get away from the smell only to find the odor had completely permeated throughout the bus and remained for hours only slowing losing its offensive power mile after mile. Somehow, I was able to choke down some chicken only a few short weeks later.

My ears have been popping a little in the mountains. I hope my stomach stays settled. Driving through the Smokey’s always made me loose it when I was younger. All I have eaten today is beef jerky and soda pop.

Greyhound Memoirs #16

A LITTLE ANI FOR THE ROAD
5/18/01 12:40pm MST

I remember my first time
riding on a Greyhound bus
A man put his hands on me,
soon as night fell.
I remember when I was leaving
how excited I was.
I remember when I arrived
I didn’t feel so well.

I wish I wasn’t so nice. Because there are a lot of situations where nice gets you deeper in trouble. I am nice because I was raised that way, but I am also tough enough to get out of any bad situation I’ve ever been in.

Girl, next time he wants to know
what your problem is.
Girl, next time he wants to know
where the anger comes from.
Just tell him this time,
the problem’s his.
Tell him the anger just comes.

I wish my anger came at the right time and I knew how to express it. I wish being cute wasn’t such a damn burden.

I have my own set of seats, away from Jose now.

Greyhound Memoirs #15

SEXUAL MISCONDUCT
5/18/01 11:02am MST

Everyone has heard a hundred stories about someone who “did it” on a bus or airplane. This is not one of those. I can't say people weren't having sex on any of the buses I rode across the country, but I never noticed any hanky panky and I surely didn’t partake in any myself.

Turns out Jose was dishonorably discharged from the Navy for seven counts of sexual misconduct, all on the same day.

We’re finally out of Nebraska.

There is a black woman on the bus who has her seven kids with her, she’s pregnant and smokes. I’m trying not to be a snob, I’m not trying to judge, that’s not working very well. My life could be much, much worse.

I called Kate and my dad from the last stop. They seem like they did when I left. I have to keep remembering that was only yesterday. Feels like weeks to me.

Greyhound Memoirs #14

MISSING ORDINARY
5/18/01 7:32am MST

Not sleeping makes me not hungry. I really like breakfast food, just not this early. The food was really expensive at our breakfast stop and I’m saving up for my chiropractic bill. Only one or two people on the bus actually ordered anything.

I want a shower. I want a bed. I want everyone to shut up. All night and continuing today these two guys have been ragging on Jose. While I was asleep, I guess he was talking smack about how I want to marry him and I was coming on to him.

Hopefully I can get more space in Wyoming. We’re still in Nebraska. For some reason I thought yesterday would be the worst, now I’m not so sure.

I can’t wait to hear familiar voices and eventually see a familiar face.

Greyhound Memoirs #13

NO WAY TO SLEEP
5/18/01 12:44am MST

I always thought Detroit was the most likely place to be panhandled. I never thought about bus stations. If you are taking a bus, doesn’t that wave a big flag saying you don’t have extra money to give away?

Another surprise, that wouldn’t happen on an airplane, is that they will actually de-board a bus in the middle of the night for “servicing”. So, here I am, in Omaha, my third choice of a place to make my new home to San Francisco and Portland.

Pray everyday of your life, to whatever god or gods or entity you wish, that you are never as poor and uninformed as I was when I chose this method of transportation.

Lowest fucking common denominator. That’s all I have left to say. Now I’m one of ‘em. At this moment, I am seriously considering spending all the cash I have, when I arrive in Portland, on the best massage money can buy.

Greyhound Memoirs #12

PEOPLE ON THE BUS GO ‘ROUND AND ‘ROUND
5/17/01 8:20pm CST

The sun is setting and we’re chasing it west down the highway. Miles and miles of farmland, green and brown, rolled out along the country. So huge, is this country – huge and vast in a wonderful and lonely way.

This bus contains an interesting selection of people typically underrepresented in my life. I have this weird knack for knowing peoples race or ethnicity. It makes me feel less snobby, less white, to say, “Oh, Diem, that’s Vietnamese right?” People are shocked that I didn’t ask if they were Chinese or Japanese. Sometimes it’s as simple as a name, such as Jose (who a little black boy just asked if he was Russian). Sometimes it’s an accent, a word they use, sometimes skin color or physical features. It just makes me feel good somehow. We are supposed to be color blind, but since that is impossible, being educated and knowing Chinese from Korean, seems more refreshing to me.

Goodnight farmland, I’m sure you’ll be waiting outside my window when the sun returns.

Greyhound Memoirs #11

FIRST NIGHT OF NO SLEEP
5/17/01 6:55pm CST

Is Iowa still central time? I guess it probably is. I just ate the best Wendy’s spicy chicken sandwich I’ve ever had in my life and I’ve had quite a few.

I’m not looking forward to sleeping sitting up right next to Jose (who sings bad pop songs to himself) and on a bus with constantly crying babies.

Ben’s coming to see me Memorial Day weekend. “Never.” That’s all I could tell him when I called him from Nebraska, never again. I haven’t even made it a third of the way. But I still have a few hundred dollars, so that’s good.

It’s nice to look down at the people in their cars. Not in a grand way, just a different perspective, it’s nice to have that once in a while. Just a few more hours of light.

Greyhound Memoirs #10

BOOK REVIEW
5/17/01 5:10pm CST

It’s very clever, this book. I think it’s definitely shaping my writing (as all books do). I like the second story much better than the first. Basically 1) the first is written in journal and inner voice style and that in itself is pretty hard to write without being cheesy, 2) the first section was about drug addiction, which is something I have a fascination with but no real connection. It sort of seemed like neither did Leah and the second section is about sex and relationships and we all know that’s something I love to talk (and write) about.

The whole book is about Hollywood life, I guess, I mean I’m not done yet. Maybe I need to live in L.A. Irving claims everyone he knows who has lived in L.A. turns out funnier and wittier than they were before living there.

Jose isn’t a great example. He was showing me articles about video game systems. Made me feel like I was in third grade again. But really, how have things changed? Boys and their toys, as I always say. I bailed out of the clubhouse gang a few years ago, now I can’t stand their world. I’m not gonna be a woman much longer, no worries.

Greyhound Memoirs #9

INTRO TO JOSE
5/17/01 3:45pm CST

I’m sitting next to a young man who was recently discharged from the Navy. His name is Jose and he enjoys talking, even though he doesn’t speak English very well and is therefore very hard to understand. I sort of wish he would just speak Spanish, I would have a better chance of understanding him and maybe I could drown him out and sleep. He’d be more comfortable and I wouldn’t feel so bad for the things I misunderstand. He finally stopped talking and is sleeping now.

I’m reading this book. It’s really brilliant and moronical all at the same moment. Princess Leah (Carrie Fisher) is the author, you may have seen the movie, Postcards From The Edge. I always sort of wanted to see the movie, but it looked too much like Thelma and Louise for me. A few months after being in Portland I rented and watched the movie and was not all that impressed, but Shirley MacLaine and Meryl Streep are wonderful.

The second section is quite wonderful. The first section was good, but the dialog lacked something. I’m not a writer yet, so I can’t tell what. I think maybe…

Jose woke up distracting me and asked if I was writing to me boyfriend. Boys, so subtle with their intentions. I told him I wasn’t he said, “you do have a boyfriend though?” I nodded, smiling. He said, “I could tell.” How sweet is that? I guess I am easily swept off my feet.

There are a lot of people on this bus. A few small children, screaming, of course. That’s what the adults would do too, if that was socially acceptable. I didn’t really notice the screaming baby, behind me until Jose woke up, but when I think about it, the screaming has been going on the whole time.

Boys notice how annoying babies are more than girls, I think. Now that I am a mom, I notice screaming babies more because I am trained to react to it, but I’m not bothered in the slightest by it.

We’re in farmland now. Ah, middle America -- Iowa, maybe Nebraska. We stop in Nebraska for dinner in a few hours. Stomach inventory: a can of coke, a bagel and I’ve had about four cigarettes.

This bus has the rainbow seats again, that makes me smile. I wonder if I’m going to make it in one piece. No, I guess I know that I will and crack within the next few weeks. To be perfectly honest, it took much longer than a few weeks for me to crack. Ben came to visit the first or second week I was in Portland and I read him this entire journal and we laughed and drank and went out to eat and had a good old time. The whole transition was still a vacation at that point. I didn’t start feeling homesick for about a month of dead-end job searching, eating TOP ramen and living in the apartment building we would later refer to as The Asylum.

I called Irving in Chicago. I think I might call Ben in Nebraska it only seems fitting with the neb/ben joke. But I should definitely eat first. I don’t change buses until Salt Lake City.

Oh! I forgot to mention – this bus' final destination is San Francisco. How sad is that? A couple of years ago, I planned to move to San Francisco with Ben and now I am moving to Portland “with” Irving.

I’ll finish the second section of this book and continue those broken thoughts later.

Greyhound Memoirs #8

WINDY CITY BLUES
5/17/01 2:40pm CST

Back on the bus. I packed too much stuff. I got rid of ninety percent of my shit and it’s still too much to carry and watch by myself. I’m never riding a bus again and I’ll think twice before traveling alone.

This whole bus system is crazy and unorganized. I hope I’m on the right bus. It is very hard to tell. I hope we leave Chicago’s lovely bus station soon. I was trying to perfect my big city, cold, blank look. No such luck, I’m obviously a naïve Midwesterner with too much stuff and no strength or coordination. Perfect target for pick-pockets and crooks. Everyone’s got their scam. A man asked me twice in the same hour if he could draw my face. “Such a pretty face, you don’t like it, you don’t buy it.” At least I know better than that, I’m not that gullible.

Greyhound Memoirs #7

LAST NIGHT OF SLEEP
5/17/01 1:40pm EST

Last night, around 4am, I said “Mom, fuck it. We might as well just stay up now. Let’s have breakfast.” She burst out into a sleepless cackle.

This morning waiting for the first bus, I was going though the contents of each bag in my mind. Worries. Why am I so worried? I said, “Mom, let’s just go home.” She was shocked for a moment at my frown and she smiled saying, “You are going home.”

Greyhound Memoirs #6

GARY, INDIANA
5/17/01 1:15pm EST

“Gary, Indiana, Gary, Indiana, Gary, Indiana…”

Stretched hard and had a smoke in Gary, because hell what goes better with the lovely smell of steel factories and oil refineries than a nicotine fix?

The Australian woman, who’s been the only one with me this whole time (since Ann Arbor at 7am, yes this is still the same day I started my trip), said she thought someone famous was born in the land of Blast Furnaces of Northern Indiana, but I couldn’t understand who she was talking about through her thick accent. Thinking back, she was probably talking about Michael Jackson, but I was too exhausted to think of that then.

I used the bathroom onboard, for the first time, right before Gary. There is no sink. I hope tomorrow there’s a sink, because I am going to smell offensive. Turns out, I never even checked the bathrooms on any other bus. I figured if I smelled bad enough, maybe I wouldn’t get my own two seats to sleep in.

Ah, that Gary funk. Rivaled only by Detroit, that smell on a hot day after a light rain. I miss the D already.

Next stop: Chicago.

Greyhound Memoirs #5

CLASS STRUGGLE
5/17/01 12:10pm EST

I didn't mean to sound like a snob about homeboy. He was very kind to me, got off the bus and told me to have a nice trip. It's just, maybe I don't, what's missing? I just don't relate to people well. I don't know how to interact on a superficial level. I will soon learn, in my first ever job in the beloved and well-appreciated service industry. Customer service has nothing on service industry. It may seem obvious to you that they are completely different things, but for me, the way I am, I needed to learn it through experience. I will also learn, among the lessons that I can never relate to you, that I know nothing of relating on a superficial level. I did learn very quickly how to deal with drunks, how to defuse a possibly volatile situation and how to step back and let someone take care of situation. I continue in my Greyhound journal to say that I loath small talk, which I will learn to crave and respect. And I always thought somehow that made me a deeper person and I couldn’t do it because it wasn’t worth doing. And that’s the thing. I’m all talk.

My mother grew up in the south and in the 1950s. Needless to say, she is very chatty. Go to the grocery store, she talks to the bag boy. Go to the movies, she chatters to the ticket-taker. Go to a restaurant, she’ll talk the waitresses ear off. All these people are paid to be nice and so I always assume they are thinking, “Lady, shut up.” But now that I’m a mom, I think that was what I was thinking and those people probably enjoyed someone being nice to them while they were at work.

My personality confuses people. Well, it confuses me too. Most people see either one side of me or the other and think “Oh, I’ve got her pegged”. When I wrote this journal entry, I thought I was the only one person who was multi-dimensional.

It always made me feel like a fake. I was one way with my friends and another with my boyfriends and another with my parents and another with my teachers.

Insert rant about how this all ties into Irving and Jamie. Any rant will do and be better than the one originally writen in my journal.