Four Sentences August 24, 2009

This weekend,  I thought about Lance and couldn’t stop laughing.  He was a hurricane of animation.   Amongst our religious community, we bonded as outcasts:  Me for being, well…me; him for being both flamboyantly gay AND in the closet (if that makes any sense). We met when he was 16 and I was 18.  Having become so accustomed to judgment and scrutiny, we didn’t know what to make of one another.  Our friend that introduced us was in line at McDonald’s leaving us in the car.  He produced a hidden 40 of 8 Ball, and said, “You want half?  I’ve never had one of these.”  After we finished, and against sage advice, we went to the hood daiquiri shop and got two house specials.  As if that weren’t enough to cement our friendship, after my night of puking, I called him the following morning.  He answered the phone sounding like Dr. John and said, “I’mma call you back when I don’t feel like shit.”  How can you not love a person like that?

We weren’t sole hangout partners, but when we hung, it was ON.  The dancing was wild, the laughter was raucous, and the fun could not be contained.  And the hugs?  The best, tightest, longest hugs ever.

People liked to ask me, “Well, what’s his story? Is he GAY?”  I would give them my best version of, “The fuck should I know?” and keep it moving.  Now, his strut, manner of speaking, fashion sense, and insistence that we see “Too Wong Foo” opening weekend pretty much told me the story, but it was really a non-issue.  It’s amazing how, even when you’re very young, your elders will jump on you and attack because you’re different, and don’t fit into their norm.  I never got that.  It’s almost like they will force you to be something that you aren’t.

And that’s sort of what happened.  He got married and had a couple of kids.  I remember him working hard for his family (something a LOT of his heterosexual critics couldn’t seem to do). Trying to force something that doesn’t fit (and we were both doing it at the time) is an incredibly draining process, and we lost touch.  When we would see each other, we were both frazzled and distracted, trying to fit our square selves into these round holes of our own creation.  The hugs were tight, but more out of relief of being with a person that accepted and knew us as ourselves, not the facsimile.

We ran into each other at the store somewhere around the summer of 2005 and made tentative plans that included food and libations.  LOTS of libations.  Of course, tentative turned to never.  Those who know me, know how terrible I am at keeping in touch, so when I moved to Maryland, of course the plans faded to black.

So it when he crossed my mind this weekend, it was very random.  I kind of remembered hearing that he’d left New Orleans, but the details were fuzzy at best.  He lived here, he was moving there, no one had answers.  Our friend who introduced us didn’t even have a current number on him, as she was going through her own craziness.

Lance, though still married, had come out a couple of years back.  Additionally, my sister was not one to gossip, so when she asked me, “Have you heard about Lance?” though I didn’t know what to make of it, I knew it couldn’t be good. And when she told me the news, I couldn’t catch my breath.  And when I could catch my breath, I went to Google and typed my friend’s name in the search box, and I paused.  And my fingers hovered over the keys, because I couldn’t really type the word that would lead me to confirm the news about my friend.

“Murder.”

The very first link contained the news about my friend’s bullet ridden body being found in a parking lot.  They found him. No one knows who.  No one knows why.  Four sentences.  He was a husband, a father and a friend.  He was loving and would readily give you what he had or find it for you if he didn’t.  He got four sentences.  Five if you count the added fact that a man in a white tee and blue jeans was spotted fleeing the scene.  His grandchildren, whom he will not hold at their birth, will not be able to give testimony to the goodness of his hugs, or how his laughter would crack through the air and force you to laugh. What he means to people just really can’t be covered in four sentences.

That shit couldn’t be covered in four billion.

The Me I Keep July 21, 2009

Moreover, I have boundary issues with men.  Or maybe that’s not fair to say.  To have issues with boundaries, one must have boundaries in the first place, right?  But I disappear into the person I love.  I am the permeable membrane.  If I love you, you can have everything.  You can have my time, my devotion, my ass, my money, my family,  my dog, my dog’s money, my dog’s time — everything.  If I love you, I will carry for you all your pain, I will assume for you all your debts (in every definition of the word), I will protect you from your own insecurity, I will project upon you all sorts of good qualities that you have never actually cultivated in yourself and I will buy Christmas presents for your entire family.  I will give you the sun and the rain, and if they are not available, I will give you a sun check and a rain check.  I will give you all this and more, until I get so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else.

– Elizabeth Gilbert - eat, pray, love

The first time I read that, I cried until I curled in a ball.  I cried because this skinny white girl, whom I had never met – who, at first glance, I couldn’t imagine that she wore the same KIND of shoes as I, much less walked a mile in them – summarized my personality (and ergo, my dilemma) to a tee.  And the thing is, I’m not just like that romantically; with family, with friends, with homeless people on the street.  I’ve been known to give a person the sandwich out of my hand, the drink out of my cup, 50 cents of the last dollar in my purse, the earrings out of my ear, the shoes in my trunk…anything.  You need a ride from West Bumblefuck because your man decided to show out in public, I’ll pick you up and peel off when he decides to try to punch my window in.  (True story:  Big Pimpin – RIP – jumped the neutral ground; or median for you non-New Orleanians).   If I have it to give, it’s yours, because the truth in my life is that I’ve always been blessed with more.  And I don’t like being without, and I can’t stand to see others being without.  And when it’s gone, it’s gone (because nothing is endless), but I do my damndest to make more; more food, more money, more time.

More love.  There’s always more love.  And my love is a geyser.  And I’m boundlessly optimistic.  Loving you, is enough for me to decide that you are worthy.  Until you prove yourself unworthy, I put a pit-bull lock jaw hold on that feeling.  I’m not going to dismiss you based on what the last cat did, because the last cat is history and you are so now.  And I’m not going to let you wonder if I love you, because who knows if there will even be a tomorrow, so you have to know today…RIGHT NOW.  And, really, in real time, I guess it seems like a good idea, but on paper, it sounds so damned overwhelming.  It’s a safe bet that when you’re on the receiving end, it IS so damned overwhelming.

Dave Chappelle spoke comically of when keeping it real goes wrong, and I’m the poster child for it.  One male friend told me that for a homeboy, my frankness is funny and pretty spectacular.  For a dude that I’m trying to date, however, it’s too much.  Because:

I believe the less men know upfront the more they are willing to work at getting to know you.

And that stung, because I’m a rather transparent chick.  I’m not the hidden agenda girl.  If I like you, I’ve told you.  If you didn’t seem to be with it, you don’t have to worry about me telling you twice.  I’m the girl who will say, “Oh, by the way, I like purple and Junk Food t-shirts,” because I figure there are a million and one things on your plate.  Agonizing over a present for me doesn’t have to be one of them.  So my challenge?  I have to learn to be the study guide instead of giving away the test.

My other issue:

The REAL irony about you, to me, is that you act very much like a dude.  You think like a dude and you often say things that a dude would say.  I think cats don’t know what to do with you.

I never told my friend this, but when he said that, it really made me cry.  Reading it again is sort of getting me a little teary now.  Because when it comes to amour, I always feel like the lone acquaintance at a party of bosom friends. One wrong move, and the situation becomes, “Who invited her?”  Quite often, more often than makes me comfortable, I find myself being on the business end of a blank, “Um, so now what?” stare from the guy du jour that I thought was the bees knees.  Or at least I did, until he looked at me like  I was some ghetto unicorn where instead of a horn, a chicken wing grew out of the middle of my forehead.  I mean, it sounds really interesting, but where would you put it?  I was told that I need to “try reigning in this Camille Paglia/May West/Angela Davis thing you’ve got going on.”

And so, I’m going to do that.  No, really.  I’m going to do that.  When EVERYBODY tells you the same thing, they’ve got to at least be partially right, right?

So, I’m sifting myself.  Searching for the me I let go, and the me I keep.

Sometimes September 30, 2008

We want to believe in people who have no desire for our faith.

We want to love people who do not want our love.

We want to embrace people who recoil from our touch.

We want to behold people that want to disappear from us.

And, when faced with that harsh reality, we can do little more than let go, accept it, and keep it moving.

I’ve been on the emotional roller coaster lately, partially because that letting go shit is hard as a muthafucka.  Especially when you feel that there was something at least based on the foundation of friendship.  When that slips from you, it kind of feels like you’re losing twice.

And it hurts.  It all fucking hurts.  The confusion hurts.  The silence hurts.  The unanswered questions hurt.

Sucks much, but, c’est la vie.