TWENTY TWENTY HINDSIGHT

Although the population that identifies as homosexual in this country is a relatively small 10.43 percent, a recent New York Times article, “The Americanization of Mental Illness,” argues that, like democracy and the colors red, white, and blue, homosexuality, once a solely Western phenomenon (See: Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s response to a question posed by a likely homosexual during appearance at the notoriously liberal Columbia University, “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country…. I don’t know who told you that we have this.”), is spreading. The author, Ethan Watters, whose book Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche, will be published next month, doesn’t actually mention homosexuality in the article (or, at least, the portion of the article that I read because it was kind of long it seemed more important to throw a tennis ball against my neighbor’s house than finish reading), but this is because Mr. Watters lives in San Francisco, a noted hotbed of sodomy and Mexican food, and doesn’t want you to equate homosexuality with other mental disorders, despite what the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Vol II, 1968), which was written by licensed medical professionals, states.

Watters does, however, analyze the spread of other mental illnesses from West to East. Take, for instance, anorexia, which was an unknown dietary plan in Hong Kong until a fourteen-year-old girl named Charlene Hsu Chi-Ying collapsed on a sidewalk in 1994 after skipping breakfast one too many times. What was rare became an epidemic in the aftermath of Charlene’s death, spread in part by  headlines like Thinner Than a Yellow Flower, Weight-Loss Book Found in School Bag, Schoolgirl Falls Dead on Street. What was less common than koro, or the fear that one’s genitals are retracting into one’s body, became as much a part of the cultural landscape as vending machines that sell used underpants. That is, anorexia didn’t exist until the media made it so.

The same can be said of homosexuality. The proof is in the numbers. In 1975, for instance, Googling “Anderson Cooper + gay” produced approximately zero results. Today, however, the same search produces about 938,000 hits. Every time Anderson Cooper shows his well-toned facial muscles on cable news, a gay is born. And so, even if you are not a homosexual and no one you know is a homosexual, it’s only a matter of time before your son tells you he wants to quit Little League and buy a tutu. What follows in meant to help your transition into the world of homosexuality.

In case you’re unfamiliar with homosexuality, let me explain. Homosexuality is a psychological disorder in which one is attracted to members of the same sex. Symptoms among males (also know as “fags”) include a love of the color lavender, the pop music star Beyonce, and hair products. Symptoms among women (“lesbians” or “dykes”) are more subtle, as there are many varieties of homosexual females (see, for example, a common middle-aged variant recognizable by their Labrador retrievers and Life is Good hats and/or tee-shirts), but they are easy to spot as they tend to move in packs. While homosexual men may seek companionship among heterosexual women (“fag hags”) as well as other homosexual men, lesbians (see also “gayelles,” “scissor sisters,” and “Queen LaQuiffa”) tend to segregate from other parts of society, preferring to maintain friend groups composed solely of other homosexual woman. This does not, however, mean that all it takes to befriend a lesbian is membership in what they refer to as “the family.” On the contrary, lesbians naturally separate into different sects and look upon sects other than their own with derision. You will never, for instance, see a softball lesbian sharing a blanket at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival with a hipster dyke with prominent and colorful tattoos, most likely of inanimate objects. While it is true that they may both have bowl cuts, any chance of friendship is negated by the fundamental disparity in the widths of their pant legs.

There are multiple variations of homosexuality. Bisexuals (see also, “dirty bisexuals”) are noted for the intense jealousy they incite in their partners, who become suspicious not just of other homosexual women but also of heterosexual men, and, at times, of anyone with viable genitalia because, hey, she’s obviously undiscriminating, right? Another variation of homosexuality is transgenderism, symptoms of which include the unstoppable urge to change one’s name from something gender specific (e.g. “Sarah”) to something gender neutral (e.g. “Toast”). Transgendered populations are also marked by a decrease in sense of humor, which is the result of the large doses of hormones transgendered people often take in order to alter their physical appearances. This does not effect all transgendered people, just the one who stomped my foot when I expressed confusion about said person’s adopted pro-noun (“y’all”).

While some homosexual people choose to fight the disorder with psychological intervention or commit to a lifetime of celibacy, and some choose to enter into traditional heterosexual relationships with the hope that their gayness will dissipate in a heteronormative environment, someday making it possible for them to make love to their spouses without imagining Tom Brady in a Speedo to feel aroused, an increasing number of homosexuals are choosing to embrace their psychoses. They enter romantic relationships with other homosexuals, form performance art collectives with other homosexuals, and even raise their children to be homosexuals. In light of this movement towards universal acceptance, study the following principles to best communicate with your homosexual….

1. Two bottoms don’t make a top. While this phrase likely means nothing to you, the principle is well-known in homosexual society. Whereas traditional male/female relationships often include a built-in “top” (male) and a built-in “bottom” (female), homosexuals must negotiate these roles. And because it can be uncomfortable to discuss such preferences when you’re not even sure of your new friend’s name, homosexuals often enter into sexual congress unaware of their partner’s preference for “topping” or “bottoming.” When two homosexuals prefer the same role, one homosexual must relinquish their preferred position, or, as in the two bottoms scenario, sex looks a lot like two people laying on their backs waiting for the other person to make the first move. While it is not unequivocally true that two bottoms or two tops cannot have a fulfilling sexual relationship, it can be a complicating force. Note: femme tops are a rare and valuable breed.

2. Also known as butch-on-butch violence, butchinsense is characterized by the unstated conflict between two lesbians of the same ilk, typically, lesbians who display more masculine characteristics. Caused by a generalized anxiety among homosexuals due to the small number of available partners, butchinsense often dissipates when said butches converse for the first time and realize that they actually have a lot in common and might as well be friends. Femminsense exists, but is far less common.

3. Lesbian bed death is a myth. Actually, it’s not a myth, although homosexual women wish it were. Symptoms of lesbian bed death include owning multiple cats and peeing with the door open, both of which exacerbate what is already a common problem in long term lesbian relationships: that is, a tendency to be boring. There is no equivalent in homosexual male relationships.

4. Your homosexual may at some point express a desire to marry his or her homosexual lover. When this happens, you should never express that homosexual marriage is a really fun game and you’d love to play along. You should react the same way you would when the heterosexuals in your life discuss the same subject. Support your homosexual and then, after she realizes that her partner’s new spoken word piece is actually about the shortstop on her softball team, gently remind her that the whole thing was as real as two four-year-olds reciting their vows and exchanging ring pops, and thank god for that.

Because the spread of homosexuality is inevitable and unstoppable, I hope this information will help you be better prepared the next time your brother tells you about the new friend he met while scarf shopping at Banana Republic.

Things have gotten pretty serious between my virtual girlfriend and I. We Gchat roughly forty hours a week and text on the weekends and she sent me an adorable drawing of the two of us with our three future children, Rocket and Panda, who she will gestate, and Sushi, who we will adopt from an undecided East Asian nation. I returned her romantical mailing with my own—a mixed CD and a love letter that went something along the lines of, I want to make out with you and buy you things with other peoples’ money. This is how serious it is: Virtual Girlfriend (VG) came out to her parents. Frank, Betty, she said, I’m gay on the Internet. Frank and Betty may have been a little confused because they are slightly older than average and may not be entirely sure what the Internet is, but I guess they got the point, which is that their daughter likes to put her head in other girls’ laps.

So, in honor of my dear sugar bitch VG, today’s episode is all about tearing down that closet door. I realized I’ve alluded to my own coming out in previous posts, but here’s the story, real talk style….

I had a friend growing up who was obviously a boy. I mean, she was a girl, but she looked like a boy. This didn’t really change as we got older. She always had really short hair and was built like a guy. Very handsome. I realized at some point that she was probably a dyke but we never talked about it. I also remember thinking that I was really glad that I wasn’t like her, that I wasn’t a dyke. Just like parents who think that their son’s life will be difficult because he likes to shop at Banana Republic and bend over for guys who shave their chests, I didn’t want my life to be difficult. My life was already difficult. I was sixteen. Life is difficult for everyone at sixteen, especially for androgynous boy/girls in a school where the mascot is a Confederate army general. I was glad the gay disease wasn’t something else I had to worry about catching. My butch friend didn’t come out until after high school, but no one was surprised. What was surprising was that a lot of my other friends also came out after high school. We never talked about girls. We may rarely have kissed boys, but we talked about them the same way all teenage girls do. Turns out we just had to leave the vast hell of a small town to be who we are.

I made out with boys for a while in college, but anytime I found myself looking at the curve of some woman’s hip, I held my boyfriend’s hand tighter and told myself that I just really appreciated beauty. There was no way I was gay. I mean look, I’m holding hands with a boy! But then I met A—, and, along with making me crazy, she made me gay.

My friends at school were unfazed when I came out to them. My brother and sister were equally flapless. I was the only girl in Little League. Of course I’m gay. I did not, however, want to tell my parents. This wasn’t because I thought they would be upset—my parents would be more upset if I married a Republican or became a youth pastor—but because telling your parents you’re gay means telling your parents that you aren’t just emotionally and mentally gay, you’re also gay with other gay girls. Like, naked gay. I didn’t even tell my parents when I got my period. I definitely didn’t want to tell them that I was a sexually active person. You know how weird and terrible it is to think about your parents having sex? Think about how much worse it is for them to think about you having sex. You’re their little girl. You sat on their laps and giggled when they tickled you and cried when they spanked you for starting a small and completely manageable fire in the neighbor’s yard. And now you’re telling them that you not only have sex, you have the kind of sex that won’t give them grandkids no matter how hard you try. Not a conversation I really wanted to have.

About a month after A— and I got together, we drove from Asheville to the Outer Banks for a romantical weekend. Before we could get there, however, we were rear-ended by a dump truck on I-40 and crashed into a construction barrier. The air bags popped. The windshield shattered. Traffic was stopped for hours. The car was totaled. We went to the hospital and got prescriptions for completely unnecessary painkillers and stayed at a nearby friend’s house that night and borrowed her car the next day so we could get to the beach and back home. While we were at the pharmacy collecting our completely unnecessary painkillers, my sister called. She happened to be visiting our parents that weekend and said that our mom knew I was homo and was really upset. Like tears upset. Like, what-if-you-had-died-before-we-talked-about-this upset. I got that sinking stomach thing right away and started screaming that I was an orphan as of right now, this very second, no longer a member of my very own nuclear family just because I’m a big gay, fated to a Christmas alone with afternoon movies and Chinese takeout.

It was a hard weekend. A— and I were still freaked out about the wreck. We weren’t farther than arms-length away from each other for three days. When she was in bathroom I waited outside the door just in case she got sucked into the toilet. But it wasn’t just the whole near-death thing that freaked us out. It was the conversation I would soon have to have with my mom, a conversation I would rather have with my cellmate than my mother, a conversation A— also hadn’t had with her mother yet, a conversation that would make everything real. Alas, I like my mother and was still on her insurance, so I at was also a conversation that had to happen. I avoided her pleading messages until we got back from the beach and popped a few of the completely unnecessary pain killers and drank a few completely necessary beers and sat on my porch with A—, holding her hand like we were trying not to get torn apart by a tornado. The conversation went exactly like this:

Me: Who told you, my brother or my sister?

Mazog: No one. You’re father has gaydar.

And while I do think that my father’s gaydar is probably better than average because he kind of walks on his tiptoes, I suspect the big giveaway was less my hair cut and more the way A— and I interacted with each other. I had taken A— to my parents’ house one afternoon to borrow their canoe. I hadn’t done this with any of my other friends. All my parents knew about most of my friends was that they littered cigarette butts on my front porch and wiped with coffee filters because we never had any toilet paper at my house. But it wasn’t just that. It was the way we were with each other. Not touchy and not fawning and not overtly together, but still together, like there was a string that connected us and only us. The string, of course, broke. But I’m still gay. That’s not going to break.

And so, welcome to the family, VG. Frank and Betty will get over it when they meet me.

1.) School clothes are far less fun when purchasing them means sacrificing a night at the bar and/or eating beans and rice rather than ordering pizza and eating it alone cross-legged on one’s floor before drinking four or five cups of laxative tea, which may limit your movement (ha!) the next day but takes care of the bloating without the side-effects of MiniThins or Yellow Jackets.

2.) Appearances ain’t shit compared to the words leaking from your word hole. Meaning, if you are reading Esquire (don’t judge) in the Salt Lake airport and a seriously adorable (not red dwarf/sun spot hot but adorable) baby dyke with a baby dyke haircut sits near you and smiles at you every time you lift your eyes from a riveting article on houndstooth versus argyle, she is could still be not just dumb but dumb and straight, as exhibited by her concourse phone call conversation that includes the phrase, “Tri Delts are way less cokey, but are still kind of sluts. Not that there’s anything wrong with sleeping with basketball players. I mean, sleeping with a Tarheel is serious social capital.”

3.) Despite surviving on student loans and government handouts and the unfounded belief that as long as I don’t know my bank balance it can never get any lower, born middle class, die middle class. The following image corroborates this observation: four girls who drink PBR because it’s cheaper than food and has a high enough water content for semi-adequate hydration with four of the most New Yorker-reading, NPR-listening, Prius-driving tattoos imaginable. That’s right: brunch

From left, Fish Fry, Small Fry, Stormy Pants, and Hotdog

My ten-year high school reunion is next summer and I’m preparing a little toast for the occasion.  I wonder if there’s a time limit….

———-

As most of you know, I was a prodigiously well-behaved student.  There were a few exceptions, like the time in Mrs. LaTorre’s fifth grade class when I led you, my classmates, in a spirited chorus of Kill LaWhore! Kill LaWhore! from my post atop the jungle gym.  You followed my command as if I weren’t just your classmate but a sixth grader or even a hall monitor.  I was subsequently forced to get a Behavior Book, wherein Mrs. LaTorre marked my behavior each afternoon with a smiley face on a good day, a middle finger on a bad one.  I then had to take this book to Mazog and Pazog, both of whom agreed that LaWhore was an appropriate term and that the bitch should stop stifling my creative expression. The disgrace of the Behavior Book was exacerbated every afternoon when Mrs. LaTorre announced, Will Katie please come to my desk with her Behavior Book, which burned my eyes like that time Scott Williams jumped me from the slide and threw his jock strap over my head. (Heard about those child pornography charges, Scott.  God damn, that makes me feel like I can predict the future.)

But, still, I was a pretty good kid.  I got kicked off of a few athletic teams (Hey there, Coach Barnes!  I can see that gin blossom from here!) and was suspended for selling hemp necklaces to those of you who  spent your Taco Bell wages on tickets to Phish shows because Principal O’Neal (RIP) didn’t believe me when I said, Look, my brother.  You’d have to smoke a doobie the size of a telephone pole to get babycakes off this shit. You dig? Oh, and there was the ninth grade talent show when my band Broken Hearts, Broken Hymens, a project influenced by Billy Joel and psychotropics, was booed off stage after the opening lines of our single, Ain’t no Moses/ Ain’t no God/ Wasting time on a saintly fraud, to the tune of “Jesus Loves Me.”  Remember that?  Throwing hymnals through my drum set?  I forgive you.  But I never got pregnant by the resource officer (I’m talking to you, Brandy Simon! Hey, girl!) so I consider myself somewhat of a behavioral blue ribbon.  I also learned a lot, like the definition of “frigid.”  But mostly, I learned about myself.

As most of you know, I wasn’t exactly prom king at Smoky Mountain High School, but you generally knew who I was—it was to hard to miss a girl with three dreadlocks tied in knots on the top of her head, wasn’t it?  And even though I frequently ate my sandwich while dodging the tater tots landing atop my head (Hey, Dan Stevens!  How’s the wife?  She left you?  Oops.  My mistake.), I like to think of Smoky Mountain High as a place of backwoods enlightenment.  We didn’t have a gay/straight alliance or a PFLAG chapter, but we did have a show choir, which is basically the same thing.  There were a few less progressive school traditions, like Christian Heritage Week—five days around that big Jesus holiday in April when the student president of Christians for a United National Theocracy (CUNT) read a prayer or fun fact about Christianity (i.e. Jesus said brown people like their chains!) during morning announcements, which, much to the regret of my inner cheerleader, quickly ceased after my parents called the ACLU.  (So sorry, Annie Tops.  I know you loved speaking into that mic.)

But the really incredible thing about Smoky Mountain High was that you, my classmates, knew me before I knew myself.  Whether I was shooting free throws or auditioning for the sophomore musical with an acapella version of the Indigo Girls “Power of Two”, you guys were always trying to break down that closet door for me.  Unlike you, I had no idea that I was lesbanese until college, when I had the light bulb realization that I was junk-struck for Catherine Keener while watching Being John Malkcovich with my first and only boyfriend, who later changed his name to Christy and bought a wonderful set of mammaries.  This first love also indicated that I’m into power suits and somewhat of a bottom, but it took a few more years for that memo to penetrate the gray matter.

There I was, happily living as a high school nobody with my posse of weed-smoking, softball-playing, ani-loving friends, wondering why none of the guys in Students Teaching AIDS Research (STAR) ever asked us out.  It was a total mystery—not just that the Vice President of STAR who waxed his eyebrows never called me back (Congrats on the Asian babies, Donnie Nickels! And those abs!), but all of it….  Why did you call me a dyke, Jamie Taylor, when I held my best friend’s hand on the way to Algebra II?  We were best friends.  It’s not like we played footsie under the cafeteria table that often.

But now—inevitably and undeniably gayelle at twenty-eight physical and nineteen emotional years old—I want to publicly thank Joe Hart, Kyle Ross, Thomas Blakley Jr., and everyone else who saw beneath my boy-loving facade.  You knew that the only thing keeping romantic fulfillment beyond my unmanicured fingertips was a lack of self-awareness.  It was you, Megan Overton, and you, Anne Nelson, and you, Bitsy Matthews—with your homophobic slurs and your poofy bangs and short shorts—who forced me to see the truth.  You made me look into my heart and my erogenous zones to see the truth, the truthiest truth, that I am not like you, Jenny McDonald.  I didn’t actually want to go the prom with you, Dylan Hendrix.  I didn’t want to make-out the in the back your parent’s Corrolla, Alex Knight, and was relieved to find that stick-shift really gets in the way of heaving petting.  No, what I wanted was Catherine Keener.  Catherine Keener and blanket space at Lilith Fair and the knowledge that I, a woman-loving-woman, could return to my alma mater one day.  Return to you, with your dead marriages and the children that you don’t really love, hand-in-hand with my beautiful partner whose name happens to also be Katie, and thank you, Smoky Mountain High Class of 2000, for making all of this possible.

So long 25. What an interesting year you’ve been.

Election Night
Now that was a party. We danced, we cried, we waited in the cold to get into the bar for most of it. Months of hard work—all the witty jokes about Palin’s Eskimo pie, marching with the Obama contingent at North Carolina Pride to better peep potential life partners on the sidelines—it all paid off. There was the time we skipped work to watch Arcade Fire play for free in the Town Commons while brown-bagging Sparks and congratulating ourselves for living here, not just America, but Carrboro, a place even Canadians love. After the show we all went to the bar to drink domestic beer and congratulate ourselves again over what just happened, what we had just seen, what we had just done for Him, not for Jesus, but for Obama. Later we went to the afterparty, just a few of us, drinking more cold beer and asking Regine questions, important questions, questions no one else has probably asked her, like where did you get those boots? It was worth all the the bumper stickers that January morning when snow fleeced the East Coast and people flooded into the capital to see Aretha’s hat on the jumbo tron while blowing on their hands and wishing they had stayed in Connecticut and watched it on the couch. This was an especially important day for my family, immediate and extended. My mother may be a little disappointed that the Bash Bush Bashes she hosted for the last eight years are no more, but she’s pretty sure the renewal of civil liberties are worth it. My grandmother, an octogenarian fireball who spends her time gambling in Jersey City, signing petitions, and sending the findings of her closets to her children and grandchildren (e..g half-dead pens, rosary beads, decade-old postcards), couldn’t make it to DC, but she sent a contribution to my aunt who did attend: a box of Depends. Yes, that was one exciting snow day. We got to the bar at 11 in the morning, left when Erin M. got cut off at two in the afternoon, and went back late for a fancy dance party. On the way home, I slipped on some ice or maybe on my liver and smashed my face open and spit my front tooth on the sidewalk. I couldn’t eat, drink, or brush my teeth for a couple days, but I would sacrifice a tooth for our handsome new president anytime.

Equal Rights
The tide seems to be tiding toward gaydom. California denied the fags and faggettes the right to marry, but a bunch of other less important states realized that gay marriage will fix the economy. Who has more money than gays? Republicans, but gays still have a lot. Look at how many records Barbara Streisand has sold. The gays have waited forever to get hitched. When you’ve patienced this long, you’re not going to shotgun that shit. You want it all—the wedding planner, the tux(es), the destination, the hyphenated last name. Fuck the stimulus package. It’s all about samsie sex marriage. And while I’m theoretically glad to the whole gays-are-human thing is catching faster then Swine Flu, I’m actually a little disappointed. I like being oppressed. I like telling people that I’m a lesbian seperatist, which isn’t actually true but makes me feel like it’s okay if I forget to shave my legs every once in a while. And as much as I appreciate that my mom gets pleasure out of texting me with gay marriage updates (e.g. “gehys kn mrry n main! kl!”), it makes me feel kind of guilty when she says things like “I’ve got big plans for the garden. Maybe you can get married at home one day.” How does one say, “Mom. I’m never getting married. I’m never gestating. Any girl willing to marry me probably needs a green card. You want to talk gay marriage, I want to talk gay boobs.” I’m also afraid this is going to encourage straights to refer to their legally sanctioned husbands and wives as their “partners.” You people have everything. Do you need our oppression too?

Athletics
As dear Jenny W. used to chant over the bar, I finally became One Of Us. I caught Tar Heel flu pretty hard, although I pretty much talk through the first 43 minutes of the basketball games and pay attention only long enough to holler at the end. I did listen to the last quarter of the Villanova game on the radio, which is basically devotion to the max. But even though Tyler Hansbrough is the cutest special giant in the NCAA and I love nothing better than watching drunken co-eds set bonfires in street, I was maybe the sole resident of Orange County, NC who woke up without a hangover after the ball dropped because I stayed home to Tweet about Gossip Girl. It was a decision not based on a of lack of desire, but a fear of leaving my house due to previous Bad Decisions and Terrible Mistakes that finally caught up to me like a bad case of herpes. That shit was not good for my Fear of Missing Something Syndrome. I get weepy just thinking about it.

Romance
The best part of my 25 year was a gift from Craig’s List. I was the recipient of two Missed Connections, neither of which I responded to, but was, none the less, a little flattered and a little creeped. The second Missed Connection, said something about the Ramona Quimby tattoo on my arm, and inspired the following response from an anonymous w4w: The girl with the Ramon Quimbley tattoo is everywhere and she’s shady. Don’t bother. Now shady I get, but “Ramon Quimbley?” Seriously? Did your parents not read to you as a child? That’s just sad. Speaking of Craig’s List, no LTR this year. When I moved to Carrboro two years ago, I thought that all I would have to do is say, “Yeah, I just came from Portland,” and the girls would jump my shit like fruit flies on a nanner. Wrong. My chance of finding a boo here—or maybe anywhere–decrease every time I write this blog, but the comments are worth it.

But it’s all over now. As Kirk R. said, I am now looking down the barrel to my 30s. And even though my liver looks forward to the year my birthday involves a quiet dinner at home and maybe some mommy/mommy time instead of a lap dance and a WUI, I realized yesterday that if my friends in their 30s and 40s are any example, sometimes maturity just doesn’t take.

During my semi-annual car bathing today, I balanced my wet Hooter’s tee shirt and short shorts with a little NPR.  Terry Gross was interviewing a novelist named Ayelet Waldman, who just published a memoir called Bad Mother, a title that refers to some pretty unchristian criticism she received after publishing an essay in the New York Times with the following statement:

If a good mother is one who loves her child more than anyone else in the world, I am not a good mother. I am in fact a bad mother. I love my husband more than I love my children.

Whoa.  Lady Waldman may be the only mom since Mary-Mother-of-Jesus to admit that sort of Hallmark-kiling sacriledge, and she was married to God.  My mother, however, loves me more than anyone else in the world, which I know because she sends me texts like, i <3 u bestst 4 eva., so Lady Waldman’s discount mothering isn’t really something I can relate too, nor what I really want to talk about.

But Mz Waldman’s memoir isn’t just about hating her spawn.  It’s also about sex.  Specifically, the anticipation of her children reaching that parent-dreaded period of early sexuality.  At 14, her oldest daughter is precisely the same age the author was when she dropped her pimento.  Ignoring that slightly disturbing fact—disturbing, at least, to a late bloomer still waiting for those buds to bud—Mother Of The Year Waldman has a good 21st century attitude about sex and discussing it with her young’uns.  When relating the unfortunate tale of her unfortunate hymen-breakage to her daughter, her advice was to not go into a room with a 21-year-old Israeli soldier with a drinking problem and a boner, which seems like a good idea to me. (Apologies for the anti-semetic implications here.  I’m not anti-semetic but I do have a fear of the awkward hand gestures used to bridge language barriers.  And boners.)

After the interview ended and NPR returned to the usual communist/botanist/astronomist propaganda, I cleaned my cigarette lighter with a Q Tip and Windex and pondered that thorniest of horniest issues: sex and kiddie….

My parents told my sister and I about the whole bio-ween/vagine thing when we were relatively young.  And when I say “told,” I mean they gave us a book called Where Do I Come From? after B– said “stop sexing me” after our mom gave hugged her.  The book was cute.  Sperm were dapper in top hats and tuxes, eggs matronly and welcoming in aprons and bonnnets—the kind of cells you would want to catch lightning bugs with.  Where Do I Come From included such insight as, “If sex is so much fun, why don’t we do it all the time?  Well, because sex takes a lot of work.  Jumping rope is fun but you couldn’t do it all day, could you?”  This particular statement was proved problematic after I told my gym teacher that I didn’t want to jump rope because I was tired and you can’t have sex all day.

Sex wasn’t really something I discussed with anyone in my family, which is sort of surprising considering that my father taught Human Sexuality and regularly enlisted my siblings and I to help him grade quizzes on autoeroticism and self-flaggelation.  He is also the proud owner of a New Guinea penis sheath, a vibrator from the ’20s, and a penis pump once reportedly owned by Rodney Dangerfield.  Even though we are progressive folk, the kind of folk who are more likely to get a letter of recommendation from Sinead O’Connor than the Pope, sex in my younger years was only discussed when promient God-fearing d-bags got busted for some man-of-the-cloth/altar boy action in the confessional at the local diocese.

I haven’t gotten any more comfortable talking about sex with my folks, no matter my age.  I think it’s great that some mothers advise their daughters on keeping the maritial bed busy when the kids are asleep, but that will never be me.  At this very moment, for instance, I’m sitting in my parents’ living room while they’re watching Law & Order.  The victim of this particular drama is a high school sophomore who’s into sending photos of her naked self to her mans via cell phone.  And even though I’m 25 and I’m in graduate school and I live alone and I got my oil changed and my car inspected today, my mom just leaned over to ask if I’ve ever heard of “sexting,” and I am now fighting the urge to flee from the room as fast as a tween to a Jonas.  The mere acknowledgment that sex exists when I am in the same air space as my parents makes me feel like I’m ten years old and Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze are doing that thing with the clay and the wheel and I am so embarrassed that I would rather tell my third grade teacher Mrs. Sheapard that I love her (which I do) than sit here for another goddamn second.

Yes, I am perfectly happy to tell the Internet that I have only a vague idea of how many people I’ve slept with because my definition of sex changes to suit my needs at any given time, but the idea that my parents realize that I have been and may currently be a sexually active person induces the sort of panic other people feel when stuck between Rick Warren and a Twinkie.  Ignoring the things that make me uncomfortable (swine flu, for instance, and Ohio) is one of my more refined attributes, so it’s easy enough for me to maintain the illusion of my parents’ ignorance.  That is, until my mom discretely places a dozen Gardisil pamphlets in my bathroom.

But it’s not just talking about sex with ma and pa that makes me feel like a Mexican jumping bean.  It’s also the gay thing, and this is especially weird because the vast majority of my tongue kalestenics come via the discussion of gay people, gay music, gay jobs, and gay hair.  But every time my mom asks if I’ve been keeping up with the WNBA, I hate that little gay gene and it’s blonde tips inside of me as much as Larry Craig hates the foot-rubbing bottom inside him.  It’s not like my parents even give a fuck that I’m homo.  In fact, I bet they prayed to the Flying Spaghetti Monster that at least one of the twins would be either black or gay.  I mean, what’s better than having a gay daughter to a couple of left-wingers?  A gay son, of course, but a dyke will do as long as there are a couple of Asian babies in a Prius somewhere in my future.  Shit, I didn’t even come out to my parents—they came out to me.  When I asked who told them, my mother said, “No one.  Your father has gaydar.”  And yet, every time my mom suggests we watch Boys On the Side, my gay ass knows the hometown reprieve has come to an end.

Oh, fuck.  Lil Kim is on Dancing With The Stars. I gotta get out of here.

I’m spending the next few days at an “artist retreat” in the mountains (AKA my parents’ house). Even though I like my hometown about as much as I like waking up in a stranger’s bed covered in stale DNA and realizing that I don’t remember a) said stranger’s name, or b) where I left my car, this is a necessary sabbatical now that school is over. Because my six hour work week isn’t quite enough structure and there’s a direct correlation betwixt free time and reputation erosion, I have to retreat to a dry county to preserve my good name every once in a while. Cullowhee, North Carolina is pretty like Shiloh, Vivi, and Knox are pretty, but I have no lust for the place that is the archive of the many small humiliations of my youth. There was the time, for instance, that I was pissing behind my car after a high school football game—something, by the way, I seriously did not belong at—when my sister pulled away from the curb, exposing my expelling lower half for all to see. And by “all,” I mean my English teacher and her family, including the two preteen boys I often babysat until that very night. Also, people used to call me gay.

Because no one in my hometown understands that my mullet is ironic, I don’t plan on leaving my parents’ property and therefore anticipate plenty of shit-done-getting. I’m going to spend the week browning my opalescent skin and working on my resume, both of which are difficult like the Jew’s harp is difficult. I know this is shocking, but my work history is a little, um, marbled. I’ve had a lot of jobs, but the longest was for just a year and a half—a job, by the way, that I did not get fired from, though I probably should have considering that I took smoke breaks at the bar across the street, g&t in hand. My first job, besides selling hemp necklaces and nickel bags stolen from my friend’s parents, was Taco Bell when I was 16. The shirt was to big for me and the rubber gloves made my palms sweat, so I left on my lunch break and returned to pick up my one and only paycheck the next week. I somehow convinced my parents not to make me apply across the street (Wendy’s) because my athletic training was more important than learning self-sufficiency and work-ethic. The sports thing is actually factually. For most of my teenage years, I was a serious athlete, which seems about as likely as that time five minutes ago when I smoked a bowl with Drew Barrymore, but it actually is true. I wasn’t a ribbon girl or anything, but I was a semi-professional freestyle kayaker, which basically means that I wore a lot of Patagonia and had swimmer’s ear from 12 to 20. My athletic career didn’t work out in the end, maybe because I was surrounded by dudes all the time and I’m not really socialized to enjoy that sort of thing. Months traveling around the country with eight dudes might seem like an opportunity for ass-getting/cloud-surfing to the heterosexual among us, but for me, this was about as fun as taking out your contacts after cutting jalapenos. I also wasn’t much of an athlete.

Anyway, my checkered work history is problematic because, of the 24 jobs and five internships I’ve had in the past nine years, my only references are people I’ve never actually worked with but who have professional-sounding outgoing messages and don’t mind lying for me. My sister’s resume, however, is well-stocked with fancy titles and the only things I have to alter are the letters b, s, and y, and poof! Job offers aplenty.

In addition to resume-stealing, I plan to spend the next few days writing letters to President O in support of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, which I think is the best thing that’s ever happened to the fagotry and cannot understand why the gays don’t realize this. It’s not bigotry if it keeps your well-toned ass out of fire fights and combat boots. Believe.

In addition to the aforementioned noble pursuits, I’m going to choose my new name. I just don’t think that Katie is appropriate for either my appearance or personality, and, as hard as I’ve tried to convince people to call me Ajax, I won’t feel complete until I’ve paid the government, gotten the certificate, and seriously offended my parents. The problem is that I can’t actually think of a name that embodies the characteristics I want to project and masks the ones I don’t want you to know about. Considering that I spent the majority of yesterday being referred to alternately as Hotdog and Ding Dong, I’m kind of stuck on one of those. I could really use your help on this. Email suggestions to krherzog@gmail.com or post in the comments if you’re feeling creative and your boss isn’t looking over your shoulder.

Apologies for the recent delay in bullshit-spouting. It’s the end of my first immensely successful* year of graduate school and I’ve been uncommonly busy in the past five days due to the impressive lack of neurons I’ve fired over the previous four months. My final term paper (“In Yr Bed, On Yr Facebook: Queer Disclosure on Online Social Networks”**) will be done as soon as my intern gets her shit together, at which point I’ll resume lie-telling/compliment-fishing, but in the meantime, here’s what I’ve been thinking about:

Over Panzenella Scramble (good, but with that weird Mexican cheese that melts well but tastes like flavorless sno cones) on Sunday afternoon, the palsies made a list of summer goals (i.e. camping, beach trip, tennis tourney, tailgating, spray tans, and turning Carrboro into South Beach). In the spirit of Summertime Self-Improvement, I’m working on a personal list as well. All I’ve come up with is to make out sober-style at least once before September. Considering Operation Don’t Be A Douche 2009 entails yoga, patio gardening, and Netflix (aka near solitude), this is unlikely to happen.

Oh, and I want Kim Stolz to follow me on Twitter.

Three more days of fanger-tapping. Pray for me.

*Lie.
**See what I mean when I say school is gay?

I know that not all of you are family, but from the number of people who stumble upon this blog by Googling “dyke drama,” “dickthroat,” and/or “Lindsay Lohan,” a whole lot of you are at least distant cousins. The following is meant for the sinners among us.

———-

Dear Gays and Gayelles,

As some of you know, I am an ambitious and dedicated graduate student. Meaning, I have a project due in a week that I haven’t started yet because I’ve been too busy mourning the break-up of our model duo, Lindsay and Sam. However, it’s Spring and life starts anew, so I have decided to pull myself together and get this shit done. And I need your help.

Basically, I’m doing a project of the disclosure of queer identity on Facebook and I’m passing this here scientastic survey around to get some info. Just skip the next “What Peanut Butter Are You?” quiz and contribute to the repository of homo sapien/homosexual wisdom. You dig? Great.

Yes, please.

——

Thanks, peeps. Feel free to pass this on. Oh, and if you’re not queer, sorry for the mistake. It must be your haircut.

In light of the recent developments in Iowa and Vermont—two hotboxes of leather, ribbed tank tops, syrup, and white people—we at the Federation for the Advancement of Gays and Gayelle (F.A.G.G.) are enlisting your help to end the debate over gay marriage.

It’s time for the faggotry to stand on their twinkle toes and refuse to be defeated!!! It’s time for the dykes to stamp their hiking boots and shout NO!!!

I know you got all teary at the People spread of Ellen and Portia cross-legged on velvet pillows surrounded by friends, family, and vegan fare, but if queer folks really thought about what marriage entails, we would run from the alter as fast as possible, fags piggy-backing Dykes on Bikes.

Here’s why:

Gays are cheaters. All of us. And while everyone knows fags have embraced this fundamental part of the gay DNA, the stereotype that dykes have U-Haul on speed-dial gives breeders the false impression that all we want is a girl who’ll refer to your dogs as your “kids”.

This is far from the truth. Yes, like all couples, we nest for the first part of new relationships—the part where we’re actually having sex. But then the novelty wears off and you realize your gay’s habit of pissing in the shower because it supposedly prevents athlete’s foot is not endearing, it’s fucking gross. At this point, your romance sags like Rick Warren’s tits, but you don’t move out or even talk about leaving because a) you’re a pussy and it’s easier to pretend that you don’t think her mom is ridiculous for calling her husband her “partner” just because her daughter’s queer, and b) where would you go? Potential housemates apparently aren’t into the Scorpio sun/Virgo rising combo, which you discovered after your last breakup and subsequent Craig’s List search. But when your g.f. eventually hears about that time in the bathroom with the girl from that band, say goodbye to the teddy bear you’ve had since you were three. Cozy is headed for the trash compactor.

When this happens, as it inevitably will, the dramz will commence. There is no drama like dyke drama. It doesn’t just effect the two or three or four people who are directly involved in the messy shit; it involves everyone. We immediately pick up the old tin can and spread the news far and wide. Shit is bi-coastal. Someone in Chicago spends a few hours tribading with the barista from down the street and Seattle knows it by happy hour. If it’s real bad, some Lohan/Ronson shit, we say things like, “Well, there’s always Austin,” and start packing. We change our names to something more gender-neutral and start the fuck over.

This cycle works for us—we cheat, we fight over the dog, we realize we don’t actually want the dog but we don’t want her to have the dog, we leave, we cheat, etc.—but it wouldn’t work if we could get married. Divorce is ugly and expensive and you have can’t just load the Subaru and move to Portland. You’re gay—you’re never going to change, no matter how long it’s been since you skinny-dipped with that very young but very cute baby d. Marriage will take all the fun out of taco-bumping. Isn’t this why we chose to be queer? So we could avoid legal entanglements like marriage?

The only reason breeders support marriage is because they want us to be more like them. They’re jelly that we will never get drafted and come out five years later with PTSD, a flat-top, and one less finger. Why the fuck would we want to be more like them?

Take, for instance, the stirred shit between one B. Palin and her ex-fiance Arctic White Trash. Did you see those knotted panties on Tyra? Talk about fierce. I can’t tell who’s more fucktardy, B. Palin or AWT. Shit makes Queer As Folk look like Bob Ross. You don’t want to get thrown in jail for a little cheek-spread, but you also don’t want to end up on Tyra’s stage.

We aren’t like them. We are special. We didn’t have friends in high school, so when we finally get to San Francisco, we bond like morning-after lube on the inside of your thighs. We talk about being gay ALL THE TIME. We have our own bars because straights get sick of talking about gaycism and don’t want to come near us, whereas we will never tire topics like homosexual undertones on The View or, another favorite,The L Word: Helena vs. Bette: Who Would Top? They only want us to get married so we stop talking about ourselves.

Do not give in, Family. We can defeat this if we throw our softball caps and our tiaras in the ring and FIGHT.

Sincerely,

President and Founder of F.A.G.G.
(Donations accepted via PayPal. Email kherzog@gmail.com for details.)