Light a Fire

I've been rather fired-up lately concerning an incident that took place last week. A gay man--someone I do not know--was talking about his boyfriend coming back home and how he needed to get back into shape because his "hot body" had disappeared. Later in the conversation, he mentioned having an oral fixation (he chewed on his fingernails.) A woman--a straight woman--was highly offended.

Straight people are granted the courtesy to define themselves in a myriad of ways: by being single or married, through their professions, the kind of shoes they wear, the kind food they make, the kind of car they drive, their hair, their clothes, their children, the church they attend, how much money they make, the jokes they tell, the friends they have, the talents they possess.

Gays are not afforded the same consideration when it comes to being who we are. Instead, we are immediately defined by the kind of sex we have. When a straight person finds out we are gay, they--for some insane reason--picture us in the bedroom. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why it is straight people are so obsessed with what we do with our sexual lives. There is an arc of perversion when a gay man can sit next to a straight women and not say a word about his sex life, yet she immediately sees him on his knees when he says oral fixation. Seriously!? Get your mind out of the gutter, straight lady, and get over yourself. What does it say about this woman? It says that she has a mind that works in a very strange, creepy, warped way. The last thing I do when I know someone is straight is picture them boning someone of the opposite sex. It's just gross.

I would bet a trazillion dollars that if it had been a fellow straight woman talking about her husband coming home and how she needed to get back her hot body and needed to curb her oral fixation--biting her nails--the woman who was offended would have thought nothing of it. She might have even had suggestions. I know it in my heart.

Ken Buck, a viable option to represent the citizens of Colorado in the United States Senate, believes being gay is a choice. The only way that argument makes sense is if Ken Buck has fantasies about the opposite sex. And because he is inherently straight, he thinks he's choosing not to be gay. Those who protest to much, who gladly show their ignorance, show the true nature of their fears: that they will not only be discovered as frauds, but their darkest thoughts will be revealed if they show compassion or understanding.

I lived a straight life for the first twenty-two years of my life. And had I chosen that life, I would have chosen emotional death. Fuck you, Ken Buck. Fuck you for just opening your mouth and speaking on a subject you know nothing about. You're entitled to feel the way you do, but when you're running for high office I expect your mouth to remain closed on the gay issue. Because when you say, to a national audience, that being gay is a choice, they are only words to you. But to me, it is real. To me, it is young gay people killing themselves because they were incessantly bullied. To me, it is gays being beaten, tied to fences, and left to die. To me, it is not holding my wife's hand in certain places for fear we will be targeted. To me, it is a gay man, just being who he is, offending a straight woman because people like you will always make it okay to hate and judge, preserving your "rightful" place by feeling better than others.

Holy Sh*t Balls

On nights when I do not have to rise-and-shine to an alarm clock the next morning, I allow my mind to wonder and fight off sleep until it is done. Last night, my thoughts were filled with Anne Boleyn. For no particular reason, really. Granted, I do have a mild obsession with her rise and fall, and the barbarically, hedonistic reign that defines Henry VIII's kingdom, but there was something specific my mind latched onto last night: Anne Boleyn's beheading.

In the beginning of the year I finished a book by Alison Weir (The Lady in the Tower) dedicated strictly to Anne Boleyn's fall. A bit of a dry read, I found the subject matter fascinating nonetheless. I, like Ms. Weir, believe that Anne was innocent of the crimes she was found guilty of committing. (I do not think she was hashing a plan to kill Henry with her alleged lovers, nor do I think she slept with her brother. Was Thomas Cromwell behind it all? Absolutely!)

There have been so many actors portraying the Tudors that I think it might sometimes be hard to think of them as real people. My mind cannot help but to think of Anne as a real-life person, with real-life fears, and thinking of her sitting in the Tower of London, knowing her head was to be removed from her body, makes me feel icky inside.

Beheading was considered to be the most compassionate way to do away with someone sentenced to death. When beheading is considered the most humane option to die, there are problems. But these were far from peaceful, friendly times. I guess if I had to choose between being hanged, beheaded, burnt at the stake, or torn into quarters by horses, I might choose the beheading. It's a tough call.

Because the thing about beheadings--and thanks to Ms. Weir I had never thought of it before--is that your brain does not die until all the oxygen is gone. Anne Boleyn's head may have been severed from her body, but her brain could have had a good thirteen or so seconds to wrap itself around what was happening to her. Holy shit balls! It shivers me timbers and makes my core cringe! I think about her head, lying in blood and straw, her eyes open, thinking, 'Well, that's that. There's my body. Here's my head. Fuck. This feels weird.' Thirteen seconds does not sound like a great deal of time, but I bet when it's your last thirteen seconds here, you're stretching it out. It could seem like a lifetime.

I can't stop thinking about what Anne might have felt and thought during the last seconds of her life. But I am grateful that when the bedroom is dark and quiet, and my mind wants to figure something out, that I am thinking of Anne's death and not my own.

Unfocused

I have a variety of things I am trying to do right now, like I can do them all at the same time:

Writing another novel. Rewriting my synopsis. Perfecting a query for an agent. Chatting with a couple of friends. And now this.

I'm struggling with focus right now. I should pick one thing and get it done, then move on to another. But for some reason, that's not happening.

Is it the weather? I wish. I would just pull the blinds.

Is it my diet? If only. I would just stop eating.

Is it because I want everything to happen right now? Probably.

Writing is not only a solitary profession, it also requires perseverance. If any of you out there find you're reading this because you're putting something off, remember that time is going to pass regardless of what you do with it. Our time here is short, and we all have things to do.

So let's stop putting off what we know we should be doing. Like checking our gmail and checking our yahoo mail and checking out the Daily Beast for today's top stories and looking at the weather cam to see if it's snowing and checking our cell phones for any missed texts!

Chasing Anna

I have always been an avid reader. In first grade I was placed in the advanced reading group. The books were red, unlike the yellow I had been reading before. I don't remember the words I read, but I remember how it felt. It felt odd and exhilarating and wonderful: I--me?--was an advanced reader!? I asked my wife the other day if she thought one was born a reader or if one acquired a taste for reading. We didn't really come up with an answer, but I think I was born a reader.

I remember perusing the shelves of the school library, barely tall enough to reach the third shelf, looking for something that peaked my interest. There were red ferns growing. Shel Silverstein. Roald Dahl. Charlotte's Web. The Hobbit. I skipped Judy Bloom and God and Margaret. I don't know why. Something about those books just never appealed to me.

And then, at the approximate age of fourteen, a single book changed my life.

My mother, grandmother, and I were in a neighboring town's mall--the Anderson mall. In the middle of the fairway--where kiosks for cell phones, lotions, fake hair, sunglasses, etc. now reside--a man was selling books out of boxes. I remember thinking there were so many books, but I bet if I were to see it now, it was a modest amount, just like the hill I used to ride my bike down seemed like a mountain at the time and now seems like nothing more than a speed bump. I had my allowance money, and so I started looking.

I was drawn to the dark, yet faded blue of the spine first. The letters were in simple block-like letters and ran across the spine instead of down. The title and author's name were etched into the spine in dirty, white letters:

Anna Karenina

Leo Tolstoy

It was a hard cover. There was no dust jacket. The book's cover felt like material more than paper, with a texture like it had been tightly woven together. I cracked the book open. The binding crackled: a sound that is now one of my favorites. My fingertips ran over the soft paper inside. My eyes loved the small, bold typeset. There were no dog-eared pages. The only writing was on the first page. It was in pencil and notated the cost of the book: $2.50.

I bought it. And devoured it. When Anna threw herself under the train, I cried. Real tears. Like a hungry baby, wrapped in a wet diaper, waking from an afternoon nap. Like I had pushed Anna and could not undo my actions. A book had never made me feel like that before. So engaged. So wrecked. So engrossed. So moved. So a part of the world. So in love with words.

I am in a constant search to regain that feeling. It happens maybe once out of every ten to twenty books or so I read. And while it now happens differently (I find 19th Century Russian literature moves a little too slow for my liking,) I will always be grateful for Tolstoy's Anna. She helped me cross over the threshold of adolescence and into the world of literature.

Anna made me realize that consonants and vowels pump directly into my heart.

Hump-day Haiku: The Family

The "church" on C Street
is a home for men of God.
Thou shall have affairs.

Power hungry men
Say it was all God's doing.
They decide nothing.

If not for being
covered by the news, smiting
would happen daily.

Sunday Brunch

When I wake up on Sunday mornings, all too often I lay in bed and wish I could go to the Chocolate Maven for brunch. I guess I could, but it would require a four to five hour drive. I simply don't have that kind of time on football Sundays.

This past Sunday, however, the dream became a reality. As sunlight filtered through the crappy blinds in our room, I knew it was only a matter of time: today was the day I would be sipping yummy, decadent hot chocolate and eating the kind of food that monopolizes my mind on weekend mornings.

Last time my wife and I ate at the Maven for brunch, the parking lot was stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey, and we had to wait forty minutes. This time, as we made our way through the parking lot, there were spaces available. People weren't clustered outside the door. We walked in and were seated right away. I wanted to kiss the hostess.

The hot chocolate was everything I remembered. The red chile is never as spicy as I want it to be, but it's still mmm. It was divine.

The check came. I opened my wallet to produce my debit card when my driver's license picture caught my eye. I studied it. It was taken almost eight years ago. My cheeks look swollen. I was probably a good twenty pounds heavier than I am today.

I stretched my arm over the table and presented my wallet to my wife like an FBI agent presents their badge. She was looking down, so I said, "Look at my big fat face!"

With no hesitation, with no qualms whatsoever, my wife bypassed the picture in my wallet and looked me right in the face. My real time face.

My mouth fell open. I gasped like I was wearing a $10,000 gown--on loan--and had just dripped marinara sauce down the front of it.

My wife finally looked at the end of my arm to see what I meant. Of course, she didn't mean it the way it all seemed.

Brunch in Santa Fe...there's nothing fatter, I mean finer.

It's a Red Chile Kind of Day

Greetings, all!

This may be my last post until next week: I'm off to Santa Fe!

This is the perfect opportunity to catch up on past posts, or to read them over and over again until you've committed them to memory. Whatever gets you through until my return.

On my last trip to Santa Fe I ended up causing some drama at the local CVS. Apparently, they really like to have the line you're in clearly defined. I had no idea that my waiting for the next available register was going to cause such a fuss. But, before I knew what was going on, a lil' old lady angrily asked me, "Which line are you in!?!?" She had not appreciated I'd let another lil' old lady go ahead of me either. Who knew being nice would cause such annoyance and grievance. If I ever meet Oprah, I must ask her how she does it.

So this time, I will try and be aware of my surroundings and not rile the blood pressure of any more old people. But I can't make any promises.

Hump-day Haiku: Religion

hCongress rep Bachmann
Was told to run for her seat.
Thanks for the laughs, God.

Fred Phelps heads a church.
Members are mostly family.
Hell has group rates, right?

I'm so important
Someone in the sky watches
As I go potty.

The List

Certain behavors are guaranteed to kick you off my list of respectable human beings. The following are just a few examples. Enjoy.

When you tell me that I need to respect what other people want to do but will not allow me to have my own opinions without growing horns and trying to gouge my point of view out of existence, I take issue with your hypocrisy. Off the list.

When I hold the door open, and you walk through it like I was born to be in that exact spot, at that exact moment, to hold the door open for your precious, important self. Maybe you're saving up your thank you's for your Oscar speech. Regardless, Your Majesty, you're off the list.

When you tell my wife how hot she is and that you hunt Libras (my wife's sign) like you're some kind of sexualized Rambo, and your girlfriend is less than two feet away, you're off the list. (I don't care that you told my wife she is hot, because she is. But your girlfriend might.)

When both of us are headed towards each other on the sidewalk, and you assume I will be the one who will move out of your way without the slightest acknowledgement that I'm even there. Allow me to step aside, Mr./Ms. President. Off the list.

When you take one bite out of a hot dog and throw the rest of it in the trash. Why, yes, the animals DO love to suffer and then meet a grisly death so you can be so frivilous with your food choices. A big hug and thanks going out to you from the barnyard. So off the list.

When you tell me what God is thinking, and how he feels. Really? Crazy, party of one. Off the list.

When you score a touchdown or last minute shot and you point to the sky. Get your ego in check. God could really give a shit about your game. I don't care how much money you make--your catching a ball is not that important when it comes to an entity who allegedly created the whole flippin' universe. Supernovas, black holes, 5000 species of frogs, and the six/two points you just scored. Get off the list, egomaniac.

When you set boundries--and stick to them--for what you will and will not deal with, the list becomes a short one. But those who have made the list are very dear to me. I would have my life look no other way. And thank you all (you know if you've made the list) for being in my life.

Waiting

I'm working on sending out more queries.

Just because an agent requested to see my manuscript is no guarantee he/she will want to represent me. I read recently that an agent requested to see 125 manuscripts in a single year. He/she ended up representing two. So I continue to move forward as if nothing has happened.

When I think about it, nothing really has happened. Waiting for something to happen feels strange and exhilarating and depressing all at the same time.

The numbers will never be in my favor. But still, an agent's eyes are/will be reading my words and that still feels oddly incredible. If I could convince my heart to stop trying to climb up my throat and right on out of my mouth so it can get a better view of what's to come, I think I would feel relatively calm.