Friday, December 30, 2011
Friday, December 16, 2011
Saturday, December 10, 2011
The Amazon Trail - All I Want For Christmas
The Amazon Trail
All I Want For Christmas
When I was a kid, there was a popular holiday song called “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth.” So what does a grown up dyke wish for at Christmas, Kwanzaa or Hanukah? After all these years of accumulating Stuff, I can think of more I’d rather lose than gain. Starting with pounds. So no sweet potato pie, chocolate coins or marzipan rugelach and certainly no stealing Santa Claus’ cookies and milk.
This time of year is supposed to be all about peace. I wouldn’t mind a little of that. No, make that a lot. Put a one-way ticket home in every soldier’s stocking. Take all the military funds and purchase ploughshares, not stock market shares. Plough under all the failed strip malls, strip mines and clear-cuts. Reforest our land. The returning troops and the unemployed could rebuild the United States from potholes to playgrounds to honest politicians.
It’s not that I don’t want a MacBook Air, an iPhone and a sled full of other cool gizmos, but Verizon just sent me a free android phone whose wonders I’ve barely begun to plumb. It’s not that I don’t want a hand truck or the coffee table book Vivian Maier: Street Photographer. On any given day I could add something new to my stuff lust.
The truth is, I have everything I need, including a sled full of electronic gizmos. I have my sweetheart and our comfy home and our beloved pets. We are healthy and have jobs. We have caring family and friends. I have a new mess of books from the library.
I’ll settle for folding down the seats in my car, covering them with the old army blanket and trundling off to get our tree. We have the worst luck with trees, but we keep trying. This is our fifth holiday season together. We’re kind of a comedy act around the tree though.
The first year went fine. Except it wasn’t Christmas yet. I flew from Oregon to Florida early in December and my sweetheart met me at the airport wearing a Santa hat. That was the zaniest, most festive gesture she could have made. Immediately, it really was the holiday season. We went to an outdoor stand all lit up with colored lights and got a beautiful, fresh tree. We loaded it with a bountiful supply of decorations.
By the second year, we had u-hauled me cross country and were still unpacking. We didn’t have time, energy or space for a tree.
So for our third Christmas together, we went to a PTA fund raiser and found the most perfect tree I’ve ever seen. Should I mention my sticker shock at the cost of trees? I remember paying $15.00; now you can spend $85.00 on a tree. Yet, while my sweetheart was content with a mere six footer, I knew she’d always wanted a big one. She couldn’t stop smiling at the nine-footer I chose, not knowing what lurked within.
But, okay, my sweetheart is an old fashioned girl and likes her trees so we brought home this perfect tree, lugged it into the dining room and stood it up. A clump of mud fell to the floor. Except, was that mud? What was that? A cry went up from my ferocious femme. “It’s a mouse!”
It was indeed a mouse. A dead mouse that fell out of our perfect tree. What else were those branches hiding? Yuk! I removed the poor critter, but we were skeeved out. It was like finding a cockroach in your entrée; you lose your appetite.
Then, of course, it didn’t fit in the tree stand. We bought it a big sturdy stand. Somehow, we managed to control our gag reactions long enough to get it upright. Nevertheless, we had no desire to decorate it. So it stood in the dining room bereft and when the holiday cards arrived we used them as garland until we took it to the recycling center.
In our fourth year we were exhausted from a major surgery and marriage planning. We would be out of town for the holiday. We were a bit leery of the whole live tree experience, but artificial wouldn’t do. No tree.
This year, I found a Groupon. Forty dollars for an $80.00 Douglas fir. How could we resist? Sure, we’d have to trek forty-five minutes north to get it, but hey, this is the land of Mickey Mouse. The mouse lives, right? We are over the dead mouse.
Last Sunday we trekked. We scoped out the web site, Google-mapped, GPSed, called ahead. We got up there and couldn’t find the darned place. Turns out, it was so tiny we passed right by. Some u-turning went on and we pulled up to it. The place was locked up, shut down, closed despite its Sunday hours.
We called them, left a message, gave up. We came home determined. My sweetheart went up into the crawl space and slid tote after tote of decorations down the ladder to me. Our home is adorned with many-hued totes. Will we get to empty them this year?
All I want for Christmas is to see my sweetheart smile when we light up our tree.
Copyright Lee Lynch 2011
All I Want For Christmas
When I was a kid, there was a popular holiday song called “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth.” So what does a grown up dyke wish for at Christmas, Kwanzaa or Hanukah? After all these years of accumulating Stuff, I can think of more I’d rather lose than gain. Starting with pounds. So no sweet potato pie, chocolate coins or marzipan rugelach and certainly no stealing Santa Claus’ cookies and milk.
This time of year is supposed to be all about peace. I wouldn’t mind a little of that. No, make that a lot. Put a one-way ticket home in every soldier’s stocking. Take all the military funds and purchase ploughshares, not stock market shares. Plough under all the failed strip malls, strip mines and clear-cuts. Reforest our land. The returning troops and the unemployed could rebuild the United States from potholes to playgrounds to honest politicians.
It’s not that I don’t want a MacBook Air, an iPhone and a sled full of other cool gizmos, but Verizon just sent me a free android phone whose wonders I’ve barely begun to plumb. It’s not that I don’t want a hand truck or the coffee table book Vivian Maier: Street Photographer. On any given day I could add something new to my stuff lust.
The truth is, I have everything I need, including a sled full of electronic gizmos. I have my sweetheart and our comfy home and our beloved pets. We are healthy and have jobs. We have caring family and friends. I have a new mess of books from the library.
I’ll settle for folding down the seats in my car, covering them with the old army blanket and trundling off to get our tree. We have the worst luck with trees, but we keep trying. This is our fifth holiday season together. We’re kind of a comedy act around the tree though.
The first year went fine. Except it wasn’t Christmas yet. I flew from Oregon to Florida early in December and my sweetheart met me at the airport wearing a Santa hat. That was the zaniest, most festive gesture she could have made. Immediately, it really was the holiday season. We went to an outdoor stand all lit up with colored lights and got a beautiful, fresh tree. We loaded it with a bountiful supply of decorations.
By the second year, we had u-hauled me cross country and were still unpacking. We didn’t have time, energy or space for a tree.
So for our third Christmas together, we went to a PTA fund raiser and found the most perfect tree I’ve ever seen. Should I mention my sticker shock at the cost of trees? I remember paying $15.00; now you can spend $85.00 on a tree. Yet, while my sweetheart was content with a mere six footer, I knew she’d always wanted a big one. She couldn’t stop smiling at the nine-footer I chose, not knowing what lurked within.
But, okay, my sweetheart is an old fashioned girl and likes her trees so we brought home this perfect tree, lugged it into the dining room and stood it up. A clump of mud fell to the floor. Except, was that mud? What was that? A cry went up from my ferocious femme. “It’s a mouse!”
It was indeed a mouse. A dead mouse that fell out of our perfect tree. What else were those branches hiding? Yuk! I removed the poor critter, but we were skeeved out. It was like finding a cockroach in your entrée; you lose your appetite.
Then, of course, it didn’t fit in the tree stand. We bought it a big sturdy stand. Somehow, we managed to control our gag reactions long enough to get it upright. Nevertheless, we had no desire to decorate it. So it stood in the dining room bereft and when the holiday cards arrived we used them as garland until we took it to the recycling center.
In our fourth year we were exhausted from a major surgery and marriage planning. We would be out of town for the holiday. We were a bit leery of the whole live tree experience, but artificial wouldn’t do. No tree.
This year, I found a Groupon. Forty dollars for an $80.00 Douglas fir. How could we resist? Sure, we’d have to trek forty-five minutes north to get it, but hey, this is the land of Mickey Mouse. The mouse lives, right? We are over the dead mouse.
Last Sunday we trekked. We scoped out the web site, Google-mapped, GPSed, called ahead. We got up there and couldn’t find the darned place. Turns out, it was so tiny we passed right by. Some u-turning went on and we pulled up to it. The place was locked up, shut down, closed despite its Sunday hours.
We called them, left a message, gave up. We came home determined. My sweetheart went up into the crawl space and slid tote after tote of decorations down the ladder to me. Our home is adorned with many-hued totes. Will we get to empty them this year?
All I want for Christmas is to see my sweetheart smile when we light up our tree.
Copyright Lee Lynch 2011
Friday, December 2, 2011
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Saturday, November 12, 2011
The Amazon Trail - Crying for Barbara Grier
The Amazon Trail
Crying for Barbara Grier
She could raise you like a glorious garden. She could plough you under with the sharp tines of her raking words. She could see the promise of what you could yield or trample eager green first growth. Called a force of nature, she was more than that: she was the force itself and we were her fallow earth, her heritage seed, her variant crop of many colors.
Her megalomania was my own: improving our lot in life. She devoted herself, and all around her, to nourishing and encouraging lesbians: Lesbis sustineo! (Lesbian, stand up!). Her methods could be elevating or harsh. She praised with one hand and bullied with the other, intimidating both the meek and the strong among us. She made me cry frequently, yet I’d also cried with the utter triumph and pleasure of holding a book of my own.
Of course she had an oft cursed habit of calling her writers at the crack of dawn - it was her bounden duty to Wake Us Up. She told me in just these words to “light up the skies!” and she meant that quite literally. The lesbian skies had been full of storm clouds far too long. She willed the sun to shine on us and shine it did, in the form of book after book, story after story, until she saw a deluge of lesbian literature. Our work is taught in universities. Libraries offer lesbian children’s books. We sate ourselves on our harvest: mystery, romance, speculative fiction, classics, serious novels, historical stories, text books, poetry.
She would have us keep farmers’ hours. She was our rooster rousing us, our overseer pushing us, our scarecrow guarding us. Her crops were writers and poets, yes, but also editors, distributors, booksellers, organizers, reviewers, shippers, lecturers, students, critics, activists, publishers, and most of all, readers. We flourished, directly or indirectly, in her hands.
It didn’t take a weatherman to know which way the wind blew even for lesbians. Our time was here. She seized that time and assigned us our graven duty: to awaken Lesbian Nation. She did her darnedest to synchronize our revolution. She woke early, slept little, seldom set down her phone.
She wasn’t the only one, or even the first, but she had the vision, the will, the gay grit. She, and the strong, soft-spoken, laughing butch at her side for 41 years, Donna McBride. For Barbara Grier was the ultimate bossy femme. She knew what was best for us and would move heaven and earth to make us achieve that best if it killed us, or her. Donna made sure it didn’t kill her.
Barbara Grier’s job was sales. She sold us on our talents. She marketed what we wrote. She charmed academics and earned the enmity of writers. She inveigled booksellers everywhere and cut deals with straight devils. She discovered the power of profit and abandoned what no longer fed her bottom line.
Then her work was done. With one foot in the age of closets, the other leading gay pride parades, she’d pioneered the wilderness between, set her labyris to trees hard as rock, bulldozed stone walls, then fertilized and tilled the formerly shaded soil and made it bloom. Where once there were a few toiling at that stubborn rock and soil, now there were generations harvesting. An entire civilization had become more civil for lesbians and gay men.
Barbara was my mentor, my lesbian mother. I would have written, and written what I do, without her, but would any but the few have been able to read it? Would I have had this wealth of lesbian words to read? Much has been and should be made of Barbara Grier’s life. There should be mourning and forgiveness, gratitude and celebration. Whatever her accomplishments, successes and failures – her humanity - there is no denying that she is a mythic figure in our pantheon and will be remembered with reverence.
Copyright Lee Lynch 2010
Crying for Barbara Grier
She could raise you like a glorious garden. She could plough you under with the sharp tines of her raking words. She could see the promise of what you could yield or trample eager green first growth. Called a force of nature, she was more than that: she was the force itself and we were her fallow earth, her heritage seed, her variant crop of many colors.
Her megalomania was my own: improving our lot in life. She devoted herself, and all around her, to nourishing and encouraging lesbians: Lesbis sustineo! (Lesbian, stand up!). Her methods could be elevating or harsh. She praised with one hand and bullied with the other, intimidating both the meek and the strong among us. She made me cry frequently, yet I’d also cried with the utter triumph and pleasure of holding a book of my own.
Of course she had an oft cursed habit of calling her writers at the crack of dawn - it was her bounden duty to Wake Us Up. She told me in just these words to “light up the skies!” and she meant that quite literally. The lesbian skies had been full of storm clouds far too long. She willed the sun to shine on us and shine it did, in the form of book after book, story after story, until she saw a deluge of lesbian literature. Our work is taught in universities. Libraries offer lesbian children’s books. We sate ourselves on our harvest: mystery, romance, speculative fiction, classics, serious novels, historical stories, text books, poetry.
She would have us keep farmers’ hours. She was our rooster rousing us, our overseer pushing us, our scarecrow guarding us. Her crops were writers and poets, yes, but also editors, distributors, booksellers, organizers, reviewers, shippers, lecturers, students, critics, activists, publishers, and most of all, readers. We flourished, directly or indirectly, in her hands.
It didn’t take a weatherman to know which way the wind blew even for lesbians. Our time was here. She seized that time and assigned us our graven duty: to awaken Lesbian Nation. She did her darnedest to synchronize our revolution. She woke early, slept little, seldom set down her phone.
She wasn’t the only one, or even the first, but she had the vision, the will, the gay grit. She, and the strong, soft-spoken, laughing butch at her side for 41 years, Donna McBride. For Barbara Grier was the ultimate bossy femme. She knew what was best for us and would move heaven and earth to make us achieve that best if it killed us, or her. Donna made sure it didn’t kill her.
Barbara Grier’s job was sales. She sold us on our talents. She marketed what we wrote. She charmed academics and earned the enmity of writers. She inveigled booksellers everywhere and cut deals with straight devils. She discovered the power of profit and abandoned what no longer fed her bottom line.
Then her work was done. With one foot in the age of closets, the other leading gay pride parades, she’d pioneered the wilderness between, set her labyris to trees hard as rock, bulldozed stone walls, then fertilized and tilled the formerly shaded soil and made it bloom. Where once there were a few toiling at that stubborn rock and soil, now there were generations harvesting. An entire civilization had become more civil for lesbians and gay men.
Barbara was my mentor, my lesbian mother. I would have written, and written what I do, without her, but would any but the few have been able to read it? Would I have had this wealth of lesbian words to read? Much has been and should be made of Barbara Grier’s life. There should be mourning and forgiveness, gratitude and celebration. Whatever her accomplishments, successes and failures – her humanity - there is no denying that she is a mythic figure in our pantheon and will be remembered with reverence.
Copyright Lee Lynch 2010
Friday, October 7, 2011
The Amazon Trail - Scared Little Dyke Writer
The Amazon Trail - Scared Little Dyke Writer
Now that I've been around for a while, new writers sometimes tell me how terrified they are of reading in public. All I have to offer them is enormous, sincere sympathy and the story of how I started my public life as a writer.
No one warns us that we can’t hermit in our garrets and only leave to buy more Amy’s frozen dinners. No one tells us that writers don’t merely write, we also must market. No one tells us in college speech classes that it’s not over with the semester - we’ll have to keep speaking to rooms and auditoriums filled with people for the rest of our shy lives.
It’s another trick, like the one where they lead us on to think we can earn enough in royalties to be able to write full time when in reality we’ll be working at jobs full time and squeezing in a paragraph here and there when the boss isn’t looking.
The first time I read to a group I was so scared I cried. The story was about a couple of schoolteachers in the closet and the glimpse they had of freedom. I hadn’t realized the depth of my sadness about their situation, but, in my fear at reading aloud, especially in Tee Corinne’s living room, especially to a large group of mostly back-to-the land pilgrims to the rural northwest, especially as I’m an urban Yankee - I got all emotional about the story and cried in front of them.
I thought, humiliated and relieved, that was the end. No one would ever want me to read my work again. But the audience loved it. Crying made me real to them, a dyke who wrote their stories. They enveloped me in their warmth.
This experience should have made my next reading less daunting. My publishers had laughed and told me I’d better get used to it. Again, I was in a living room, this time back east. I was so scared I was practically comatose. The fact that I knew these women made the experience more, not less, frightening. I started to read, stumbled, got more anxious and then the cat who lived there jumped on my lap. In front, as cats are wont to do, of my reading material.
There could have been no better ice breaker. The audience laughed. I felt visited by my totem animal. It was as if a caring hand had come and lifted enough of my fear that I could give something to the audience rather than steel myself against them.
My fear made me inaccessible. I wanted them to disappear, I wanted a spaceship to land in the middle of the living room and take the focus off me. I also wanted to share something with these people I was writing for. Reading aloud was for them, not for me, and I needed to change my focus away from my fear and toward these readers with their expectant faces.
Did I learn my lesson? Of course not. The third time I was on a conference panel. I was teamed up with some very accomplished women, including Jewelle Gomez and two filmmakers. My publishers were in the audience. Was this a moment I had dreamed of all my life? A pinnacle? The opportunity of a lifetime?
I spent most of the 24 hours before the panel on the toilet, or with my head in the toilet. I missed a meeting to prepare – my mind was frozen. This was not something I had the courage to do and it wasn’t something I could get out of doing. The room was gargantuan. The faces dissolved in the tears I tried not to shed. I was weak and dizzy from hunger. My hands shook, but not as badly as one of the other panelist’s hands. I remember reassuring her, this veteran of two appearances. That’s all I remember. I was a block of wood, or ice. Or a scared little dyke writer.
I was like today’s new writers who quail when it’s their turn to read.
Here’s what I did. I learned to speak with my higher power: goddess, universe, my own highest spirit, it doesn’t matter. I began to take a few minutes to ask for help in giving the audience what they needed. I breathe slowly and deeply. I envision a personification of that higher power holding my hand. I even take a small dose of a tranquillizer to dissolve the fear chemicals in me. My wife hugs or holds me, whichever I need. We both hang out with the audience, introducing ourselves, exchanging a few words, breaking down artificial walls. So many readers and writers are as shy as I am.
Does the stage fright ever go away? Not entirely for me, but with exposure, time, practicing the steps that calm me, I usually don’t embarrass myself. Last month at In Other Words in Portland, Oregon, there were seven of us reading. I remember assuring one scared little dyke that, for the most part, readers would rather like us than not. When I let myself like them back, instead of fearing them, and remember that I’m there for the readers, not me, reading in public becomes a kind of holy lesbian ritual that enhances us all.
Copyright Lee Lynch 2011
October 2011
Now that I've been around for a while, new writers sometimes tell me how terrified they are of reading in public. All I have to offer them is enormous, sincere sympathy and the story of how I started my public life as a writer.
No one warns us that we can’t hermit in our garrets and only leave to buy more Amy’s frozen dinners. No one tells us that writers don’t merely write, we also must market. No one tells us in college speech classes that it’s not over with the semester - we’ll have to keep speaking to rooms and auditoriums filled with people for the rest of our shy lives.
It’s another trick, like the one where they lead us on to think we can earn enough in royalties to be able to write full time when in reality we’ll be working at jobs full time and squeezing in a paragraph here and there when the boss isn’t looking.
The first time I read to a group I was so scared I cried. The story was about a couple of schoolteachers in the closet and the glimpse they had of freedom. I hadn’t realized the depth of my sadness about their situation, but, in my fear at reading aloud, especially in Tee Corinne’s living room, especially to a large group of mostly back-to-the land pilgrims to the rural northwest, especially as I’m an urban Yankee - I got all emotional about the story and cried in front of them.
I thought, humiliated and relieved, that was the end. No one would ever want me to read my work again. But the audience loved it. Crying made me real to them, a dyke who wrote their stories. They enveloped me in their warmth.
This experience should have made my next reading less daunting. My publishers had laughed and told me I’d better get used to it. Again, I was in a living room, this time back east. I was so scared I was practically comatose. The fact that I knew these women made the experience more, not less, frightening. I started to read, stumbled, got more anxious and then the cat who lived there jumped on my lap. In front, as cats are wont to do, of my reading material.
There could have been no better ice breaker. The audience laughed. I felt visited by my totem animal. It was as if a caring hand had come and lifted enough of my fear that I could give something to the audience rather than steel myself against them.
My fear made me inaccessible. I wanted them to disappear, I wanted a spaceship to land in the middle of the living room and take the focus off me. I also wanted to share something with these people I was writing for. Reading aloud was for them, not for me, and I needed to change my focus away from my fear and toward these readers with their expectant faces.
Did I learn my lesson? Of course not. The third time I was on a conference panel. I was teamed up with some very accomplished women, including Jewelle Gomez and two filmmakers. My publishers were in the audience. Was this a moment I had dreamed of all my life? A pinnacle? The opportunity of a lifetime?
I spent most of the 24 hours before the panel on the toilet, or with my head in the toilet. I missed a meeting to prepare – my mind was frozen. This was not something I had the courage to do and it wasn’t something I could get out of doing. The room was gargantuan. The faces dissolved in the tears I tried not to shed. I was weak and dizzy from hunger. My hands shook, but not as badly as one of the other panelist’s hands. I remember reassuring her, this veteran of two appearances. That’s all I remember. I was a block of wood, or ice. Or a scared little dyke writer.
I was like today’s new writers who quail when it’s their turn to read.
Here’s what I did. I learned to speak with my higher power: goddess, universe, my own highest spirit, it doesn’t matter. I began to take a few minutes to ask for help in giving the audience what they needed. I breathe slowly and deeply. I envision a personification of that higher power holding my hand. I even take a small dose of a tranquillizer to dissolve the fear chemicals in me. My wife hugs or holds me, whichever I need. We both hang out with the audience, introducing ourselves, exchanging a few words, breaking down artificial walls. So many readers and writers are as shy as I am.
Does the stage fright ever go away? Not entirely for me, but with exposure, time, practicing the steps that calm me, I usually don’t embarrass myself. Last month at In Other Words in Portland, Oregon, there were seven of us reading. I remember assuring one scared little dyke that, for the most part, readers would rather like us than not. When I let myself like them back, instead of fearing them, and remember that I’m there for the readers, not me, reading in public becomes a kind of holy lesbian ritual that enhances us all.
Copyright Lee Lynch 2011
October 2011
Friday, September 2, 2011
The Amazon Trail - The Butch Sewing Kit
The Amazon Trail
The Butch Sewing Kit
I don’t know about butch guys, but butch women are a mass of incongruities. I used to know a butch who drove cement trucks for a living and was a minister in her free time. You don’t just drive a cement truck, you’re out there with the boys using your rake and shovel. You don’t just preach from a pulpit, you have the delicate task of counseling the human spirit. I don’t know if she sewed, but if she did, her sewing kit might have been a lot like mine.
One of the first things my wife told me was that she doesn’t sew. She’s a good cook, she organizes our home, she’ll iron on occasion, but she never sews. That is what dry cleaners are for, is her philosophy. I, on the other hand, have always had a sewing kit. When I moved out west a friend gave me a going away gift that came in a small wicker case something like a lunch box. To this day, I use that thing as my sewing basket.
I don’t mean to give the impression that I make overalls from scratch or sewed my sweetheart’s wedding outfit. Mostly, I repair. I carry so many objects in my pockets, and manufacturers make such flimsy pockets, that I mostly patch up holes in my pant pockets. I have no patience or interest in anything beyond the basic rudiments of needle and thread.
Someone like me should probably master the sewing machine. I do own one, the simplest model I could find. Unfortunately, I was required to take a sewing class and make a skirt in junior high and was so traumatized I have never been able overcome my fear of the contraption. I use it only once a year, to make catnip mice at the winter holidays. That project always transforms me into a grouch, what with thread breaking and bobbins running out and never remembering the order in which one threads a machine. This year should go a bit better, though, as my sweetheart suggested that we purchase pre-wound bobbins. “You think there IS such a thing?” I asked. We raced right out to JoAnn Fabrics and got me a bunch.
Meanwhile, the primary purpose of my little sewing kit is to entangle threads of differing colors from various spools into rainbow jumbles. The pin cushion gets into it too, snagging errant dangles and wrapping them around the heads of pins until the whole collision of stuff is unusable.
My sewing technique is not subtle. My stitching tends to look like an elongated version of the scar on Harry Potter’s forehead. The basting stitch is my specialty. That’s the long loping suture whose purpose is to hold the fabric in place until a more attractive finish can be applied. Except that basting, in my case, is the finished product.
Thimbles are my enemies; I just cannot maneuver with one on, and needles poke through them with ease, so my fingers at times become the pincushions.
Sewing stores make me nauseous, so I use whatever threads and materials I find at garage sales, which leaves me with a basket full of ribbons and binding tape (good for catnip mouse tails), old-fashioned snaps, hooks and eyes, zippers and strips of elastic I have never known how to use; so many buttons I keep them in glass canisters and my wife decorates the house with them, having discovered they’re heavy enough to make great bookends; metal hem holder-uppers or whatever the technical term is (I don’t know to use them); safety pins (thank you, whoever invented safety pins); some kind of marker which could probably be very useful; a needle threader that I’ll probably have to start using now that cataract surgery has eliminated my very useful myopia; and dozens of tiny spools of thread, the kind you take along in your travel bag except for the trip when you tear something and really need one of the colors.
I did buy a bright shiny new-looking hem ripper, which I believe is one of the greatest inventions of all time. It’s unfortunate, but if I’m going to rip out a hem, I’m likely to do it with the heel of a sneaker while jumping from rock to rock across a creek.
I remember learning as a kid that needles were expensive and I was taught never to lose such a precious item. One didn’t waste thread for the same reason. Possibly, that’s why the most useful tool in my sewing kit, the one I have in spades, the one I turn to for 99% of my repair needs, is not needle or thread, but is the equivalent of the handy dyke’s duct tape: sticky-backed industrial strength Velcro.
Copyright Lee Lynch 2011
September 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
The Amazon Trail - Night Owl
The Amazon Trail - Night Owl
It all started when I wouldn’t get up on Sunday mornings to go to church. I was an energetic, nervous baby dyke, and I simply could not sit still that long with nothing to engage me. And the old guy up front was talking Latin, for pete’s sake. So, over some of my most formative years, say 10 through 13, I got in the habit of staying in bed really late on Sunday mornings until my mother finally gave up trying to unearth me.
Sleeping late on Sundays led to the complete and utter pleasure of staying up really late on Saturday nights. That became my time. Listening to the alternative radio station, watching horror movies on the $15.00 used console TV and, by high school, writing love poetry to my girlfriend and my crushes.
It didn’t take long before I was staying up Friday nights and as many other nights as I could get away with. That usually depended on when my mother got up to wake my father in his recliner, turn off the TV and make sure he went to bed. Then she’d sleep a couple more hours before discovering my light was still on. The poor woman. Riding herd on her Lynches was an unwinnable battle. I remember her warning me, “You’ll read your eyes out!”
So here I am all grown up - or so I'm told. My night still doesn't end until three or four in the morning. For most of these years I've fought myself, acting as my own insomniac mother and ordering myself to bed, then not complying. Mornings I was wont to beat myself up for starting work so late yet again and I'd tell myself I’d go to sleep earlier that very night, only to be lured by the sirens of stillness and solitude into another rendezvous with an absorbing book or a project I wanted to finish.
So sue me: nights are when my inner owl awakens and challenges my intellect. I get ideas then and work out knotty writing quandaries. I dream then, of what I might achieve given leisure and a long enough life. I read my eyes out. I delight at the 3:00 A.M. madness of the cats and try to quiet them so they don't wake my wife, sleeping all lonesome in the next room.
But there I go, beating myself up again. My sweetheart doesn't. I fear creating a rift in our relationship by abandoning her to the night, when in fact she is the one with enough insight to recognize and accept - and still love - this night-fired insomniac. Just make sure you sleep long enough to get at least seven hours, she urges. What a simple revelation: be who you are.
I work on west coast time so I don’t have to be at my desk and my job till noon. Why not answer the call of my nature, she reasons. When I force myself toward early sleep, I come wide awake next to her, wriggling and itchy and grabbing index cards or the iPod to jot notes. The early hours of the morning, the rich dark of deep night, fan the fires in me. Their light flares and I’m up again, much to the cats' delight.
It's taken most of a lifetime and a perfect match to understand this quirk of mine. My wife is teaching me what love really is as she embraces this flawed being. She’s teaching me that flaws are not flaws: they are what make us ourselves when we're not trying to conform to someone else’s agenda of normal. What makes me this way? I don't know the answer any more than I know why I'm gay or how I came to be able to put pretty words on a page or how my wife got so wise and understanding.
With August's wilding of England; America’s confusion between religion and power, people and corporations; with people drunk on hate of gays and colors; with the abandonment of wildlife to bulldozing developers - how I wish my sweetheart had a counterpart who could marry the world and steer it, also, to simply love all its parts and stop trying to quash the differences among living things that make this earth whole in its glorious self.
Copyright Lee Lynch 2011
August 2011
It all started when I wouldn’t get up on Sunday mornings to go to church. I was an energetic, nervous baby dyke, and I simply could not sit still that long with nothing to engage me. And the old guy up front was talking Latin, for pete’s sake. So, over some of my most formative years, say 10 through 13, I got in the habit of staying in bed really late on Sunday mornings until my mother finally gave up trying to unearth me.
Sleeping late on Sundays led to the complete and utter pleasure of staying up really late on Saturday nights. That became my time. Listening to the alternative radio station, watching horror movies on the $15.00 used console TV and, by high school, writing love poetry to my girlfriend and my crushes.
It didn’t take long before I was staying up Friday nights and as many other nights as I could get away with. That usually depended on when my mother got up to wake my father in his recliner, turn off the TV and make sure he went to bed. Then she’d sleep a couple more hours before discovering my light was still on. The poor woman. Riding herd on her Lynches was an unwinnable battle. I remember her warning me, “You’ll read your eyes out!”
So here I am all grown up - or so I'm told. My night still doesn't end until three or four in the morning. For most of these years I've fought myself, acting as my own insomniac mother and ordering myself to bed, then not complying. Mornings I was wont to beat myself up for starting work so late yet again and I'd tell myself I’d go to sleep earlier that very night, only to be lured by the sirens of stillness and solitude into another rendezvous with an absorbing book or a project I wanted to finish.
So sue me: nights are when my inner owl awakens and challenges my intellect. I get ideas then and work out knotty writing quandaries. I dream then, of what I might achieve given leisure and a long enough life. I read my eyes out. I delight at the 3:00 A.M. madness of the cats and try to quiet them so they don't wake my wife, sleeping all lonesome in the next room.
But there I go, beating myself up again. My sweetheart doesn't. I fear creating a rift in our relationship by abandoning her to the night, when in fact she is the one with enough insight to recognize and accept - and still love - this night-fired insomniac. Just make sure you sleep long enough to get at least seven hours, she urges. What a simple revelation: be who you are.
I work on west coast time so I don’t have to be at my desk and my job till noon. Why not answer the call of my nature, she reasons. When I force myself toward early sleep, I come wide awake next to her, wriggling and itchy and grabbing index cards or the iPod to jot notes. The early hours of the morning, the rich dark of deep night, fan the fires in me. Their light flares and I’m up again, much to the cats' delight.
It's taken most of a lifetime and a perfect match to understand this quirk of mine. My wife is teaching me what love really is as she embraces this flawed being. She’s teaching me that flaws are not flaws: they are what make us ourselves when we're not trying to conform to someone else’s agenda of normal. What makes me this way? I don't know the answer any more than I know why I'm gay or how I came to be able to put pretty words on a page or how my wife got so wise and understanding.
With August's wilding of England; America’s confusion between religion and power, people and corporations; with people drunk on hate of gays and colors; with the abandonment of wildlife to bulldozing developers - how I wish my sweetheart had a counterpart who could marry the world and steer it, also, to simply love all its parts and stop trying to quash the differences among living things that make this earth whole in its glorious self.
Copyright Lee Lynch 2011
August 2011
Friday, August 5, 2011
The Amazon Trail - Beggar of Love
The Amazon Trial - Beggar of Love
The highest recommendation I can give Lee Lynch’s writing is that you will not mistake it for anyone else’s. Her voice and imagination are uniquely her own. Lynch has been out and proudly writing about it for longer than many of us have been alive. In her new novel, Beggar of Love, she creates a protagonist, Jefferson (known by her surname), so fully realised that the story seems to distill the last several decades of lesbian life.
Since The Swashbuckler (1985), Lynch has unapologetically written novels about and for dykes. As Nicola Griffith has said about ‘lesbian fiction’ (asknicola.blogspot.com), it would not be a compliment to suggest that Lynch transcends the genre; good books are not a genre. A good book can make the reader laugh, feel desire, and think, sometimes all in the same scene. Lynch does this with pithy sentences that can convey an entire relationship and more: ‘The occasional harshness that remained in Ginger’s accent grated on Jefferson, who’d been raised to sound like a class, not a location’ (p. 88). Here she describes a phenomenon this reader never had words for, but recognised instantly. Lynch is that rare US writer who knows that class—not race or sexuality—is the great American taboo. Her fiction can be relied upon to show us characters not only of different classes, pace American denial, but of different ages and racial/ethnic backgrounds—and she introduces them effortlessly, because her dyke world cuts across all those lines. This diversity is one of the things lesbian and feminist literature was supposed to deliver. Lynch delivers.
Another thing Beggar of Love does, that novelists rarely achieve, is to keep the outcome for the hero in genuine doubt until the very last page. The reader comes to know Jefferson in all her charming, sometimes infuriating butch complexity, and Lynch honors her readers’ intelligence by giving Jefferson many dimensions. In bringing these fully to life, she also does justice to her character.
Nor is gender diversity absent from Beggar of Love. Like much of Lynch’s work it celebrates butch and femme, especially butch sexuality, as more than fixed references to one point in time. There are few male characters, although there are hints that Jefferson’s father, Jarvy, sought the company of other men while married to Jefferson’s mother. Jefferson seems to have inherited her father’s roving eye, as surely as his alcoholism. Jarvy’s story brings to mind the father’s tragedy in Fun Home, Alison Bechdel’s graphic (in the sense of drawn media) memoir.
What takes the reader through the years and pages of this novel is, finally, the writing. ‘She'd been in love before, of course. Angela was still like ivy entwining her heart that some day would leave impressions, fossils of love, but her sensations now moved inside those ivied walls’ (p. 85). Jefferson’s feelings, if not her experiences, are universal. ‘Now that she knew she was capable of betrayal and inflicting pain in order to have what she wanted, she suspected everyone else in the world was capable of the same thing. She'd discovered that she couldn't trust herself to honor what she'd thought she'd believed in. How could she now trust anyone else?’ (pp. 101-02)
Lee Lynch finds the words.
The highest recommendation I can give Lee Lynch’s writing is that you will not mistake it for anyone else’s. Her voice and imagination are uniquely her own. Lynch has been out and proudly writing about it for longer than many of us have been alive. In her new novel, Beggar of Love, she creates a protagonist, Jefferson (known by her surname), so fully realised that the story seems to distill the last several decades of lesbian life.
Since The Swashbuckler (1985), Lynch has unapologetically written novels about and for dykes. As Nicola Griffith has said about ‘lesbian fiction’ (asknicola.blogspot.com), it would not be a compliment to suggest that Lynch transcends the genre; good books are not a genre. A good book can make the reader laugh, feel desire, and think, sometimes all in the same scene. Lynch does this with pithy sentences that can convey an entire relationship and more: ‘The occasional harshness that remained in Ginger’s accent grated on Jefferson, who’d been raised to sound like a class, not a location’ (p. 88). Here she describes a phenomenon this reader never had words for, but recognised instantly. Lynch is that rare US writer who knows that class—not race or sexuality—is the great American taboo. Her fiction can be relied upon to show us characters not only of different classes, pace American denial, but of different ages and racial/ethnic backgrounds—and she introduces them effortlessly, because her dyke world cuts across all those lines. This diversity is one of the things lesbian and feminist literature was supposed to deliver. Lynch delivers.
Another thing Beggar of Love does, that novelists rarely achieve, is to keep the outcome for the hero in genuine doubt until the very last page. The reader comes to know Jefferson in all her charming, sometimes infuriating butch complexity, and Lynch honors her readers’ intelligence by giving Jefferson many dimensions. In bringing these fully to life, she also does justice to her character.
Nor is gender diversity absent from Beggar of Love. Like much of Lynch’s work it celebrates butch and femme, especially butch sexuality, as more than fixed references to one point in time. There are few male characters, although there are hints that Jefferson’s father, Jarvy, sought the company of other men while married to Jefferson’s mother. Jefferson seems to have inherited her father’s roving eye, as surely as his alcoholism. Jarvy’s story brings to mind the father’s tragedy in Fun Home, Alison Bechdel’s graphic (in the sense of drawn media) memoir.
What takes the reader through the years and pages of this novel is, finally, the writing. ‘She'd been in love before, of course. Angela was still like ivy entwining her heart that some day would leave impressions, fossils of love, but her sensations now moved inside those ivied walls’ (p. 85). Jefferson’s feelings, if not her experiences, are universal. ‘Now that she knew she was capable of betrayal and inflicting pain in order to have what she wanted, she suspected everyone else in the world was capable of the same thing. She'd discovered that she couldn't trust herself to honor what she'd thought she'd believed in. How could she now trust anyone else?’ (pp. 101-02)
Lee Lynch finds the words.
Friday, July 8, 2011
The Amazon Trail - Oddly Hungry For More
The Amazon Trail
“Oddly Hungry For More”
A woman who has devoted her life to writing our stories, Karen Kallmaker has inspired waves of writers while gathering, like a femme pied piper, whole throngs of readers who await each of her books with anticipation of ever more delight. This year, author Karen Kallmaker was honored with the 2011 Golden Crown Literary Society’s (GCLS) Trailblazer Award. She is as beloved as her books.
This is a woman who, as a child, wanted to be Mary Poppins. Later, her super hero was Batgirl. She discovered, very young, that she couldn’t fly, and broke her arm trying. She still takes this approach to life and jumps into challenges. This style is clearly genetic, as she is a descendent of Lady Godiva. Fortunately for us, Batgirl grew up and discovered lesbian fiction in a library catalog after seeing the film “Desert Hearts” in 1986. She has not turned back since.
She was born in Sacramento, California in 1960. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, has worked in non-profit financial management and the vagaries of California law have led her to thrice marry her lucky partner of over three decades. They have two children.
Karin Kallmaker is a serious writer. Writing is who she is. She’s acutely aware that she writes not for a publisher, not for a royalty check, not for celebrity, but for her readers. Early on, Kallmaker made lesbian lives more bearable; she continues to enhance our lives by depicting us as we are. It’s not that her characters don't have issues, but that lesbians deserve happy endings.
Says friend M.J. Lowe, “Karin is honestly one of the most gracious and kind women I know. All things being equal, she genuinely does the nicer, more generous thing rather than not. It's not just diplomatic.”
I couldn't agree more. At a GCLS conference, during the dance, I emerged, dripping with sweat, into the lobby. Kallmaker didn’t say a word, but went to a table of ice and water and brought me some. Then, with breathtaking femme grace, she stepped away, giving me respectful space to be my sodden butch self. I’ve been secretly in her thrall from that moment. Another time, at the gay beach in Provincetown, a jumble of chilly lesbians huddled around a bonfire. Karin appeared out of the darkness with, what else, chocolate! And thawed the frozen lesbians with goodies and kindness.
The first day I met my sweetheart, the first meal we shared, we were with Karin and M.J. Lowe. Truly, Karin is the Queen of Lesbian Romance (as she was dubbed by “The Journal of Lesbian Studies”) in real life as well as her stories.
Karin’s first book, In Every Port, came out in 1990. She has 37 novels, collections and anthologies in print. These include her much-loved Touchwood; Goldie winners: 18th and Castro, Just Like That, and Sugar; an Ann Bannon Popular Choice winner: The Kiss That Counted; Lammy winners: In Deep Waters 2: Cruising the Strip (with Radclyffe); The Kiss That Counted, and the classic title Maybe Next Time. This year she was honored with the GCLS Trailblazer Award. She’s a four-time winner of the Lesbian Fiction Readers Choice Award. She writes romance, lesbian erotica, essays, general fiction and, under the name Laura Adams, lesbian science-fiction fantasy. Her books have been award finalists too many times to count. Karin’s work has been translated into four languages and she has dozens of short stories in various anthologies.
Karin on writing: “I really think it boils down to whether you feel you're being asked to be inauthentic to your vision - and whether you will be able to live with it later.”
“[Patricia] Cornwall, unlike others, has at least never claimed or used the lesbian community that I know of. There are others that do, and expect the adulation and kudos and community support etc., while doing nothing overt to bring our existence into a realistic mainstream setting. With some writers I fear I have a ‘yes, but what have you done for us lately’ attitude - I basically feel that if you want someone's support, you need to consistently court it. Since I write exclusively for myself and lesbian readers, I take the responsibility very seriously. My plots may not be reality, but they are (I sincerely hope) reflective of a reality any lesbian would enjoy.”
On lesbians: “I've long been of the opinion that lesbians do just about everything better. Can't help myself on that one. It's why other folks sometimes try to co-opt our community events and others get just plain envious of the support network, for example the way we've learned to create families we can't *wait* to spend Thanksgiving with. In difficult situations there are times when I *really* want to say, ‘Whatever, fool. I'm having better sex than you are.’"
“My partner and I found each other very young, and had to make it all up for ourselves, being the only two girls ever in the history of the world to fall in love, you know.”
“I think I heard the word ‘lesbian’ only once before I was having sex with one, and I didn't connect what I was doing with that word at all.”
On readers: “…my feeling is my books are to be enjoyed in whatever way the reader will most enjoy them... my goal is to leave her happy, exhausted, pleased, satisfied and yet oddly hungry for more. How she gets into that condition is her business; I'm quite pleased to be in the room when it happens.”
Can you fall (platonically) in love with a woman while writing about her? Lesbian readers everywhere have made room in our hearts for this talented trailblazer. What a poorer place our world would be without Karin Kallmaker,
Copyright Lee Lynch 2011
July 2011
“Oddly Hungry For More”
A woman who has devoted her life to writing our stories, Karen Kallmaker has inspired waves of writers while gathering, like a femme pied piper, whole throngs of readers who await each of her books with anticipation of ever more delight. This year, author Karen Kallmaker was honored with the 2011 Golden Crown Literary Society’s (GCLS) Trailblazer Award. She is as beloved as her books.
This is a woman who, as a child, wanted to be Mary Poppins. Later, her super hero was Batgirl. She discovered, very young, that she couldn’t fly, and broke her arm trying. She still takes this approach to life and jumps into challenges. This style is clearly genetic, as she is a descendent of Lady Godiva. Fortunately for us, Batgirl grew up and discovered lesbian fiction in a library catalog after seeing the film “Desert Hearts” in 1986. She has not turned back since.
She was born in Sacramento, California in 1960. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, has worked in non-profit financial management and the vagaries of California law have led her to thrice marry her lucky partner of over three decades. They have two children.
Karin Kallmaker is a serious writer. Writing is who she is. She’s acutely aware that she writes not for a publisher, not for a royalty check, not for celebrity, but for her readers. Early on, Kallmaker made lesbian lives more bearable; she continues to enhance our lives by depicting us as we are. It’s not that her characters don't have issues, but that lesbians deserve happy endings.
Says friend M.J. Lowe, “Karin is honestly one of the most gracious and kind women I know. All things being equal, she genuinely does the nicer, more generous thing rather than not. It's not just diplomatic.”
I couldn't agree more. At a GCLS conference, during the dance, I emerged, dripping with sweat, into the lobby. Kallmaker didn’t say a word, but went to a table of ice and water and brought me some. Then, with breathtaking femme grace, she stepped away, giving me respectful space to be my sodden butch self. I’ve been secretly in her thrall from that moment. Another time, at the gay beach in Provincetown, a jumble of chilly lesbians huddled around a bonfire. Karin appeared out of the darkness with, what else, chocolate! And thawed the frozen lesbians with goodies and kindness.
The first day I met my sweetheart, the first meal we shared, we were with Karin and M.J. Lowe. Truly, Karin is the Queen of Lesbian Romance (as she was dubbed by “The Journal of Lesbian Studies”) in real life as well as her stories.
Karin’s first book, In Every Port, came out in 1990. She has 37 novels, collections and anthologies in print. These include her much-loved Touchwood; Goldie winners: 18th and Castro, Just Like That, and Sugar; an Ann Bannon Popular Choice winner: The Kiss That Counted; Lammy winners: In Deep Waters 2: Cruising the Strip (with Radclyffe); The Kiss That Counted, and the classic title Maybe Next Time. This year she was honored with the GCLS Trailblazer Award. She’s a four-time winner of the Lesbian Fiction Readers Choice Award. She writes romance, lesbian erotica, essays, general fiction and, under the name Laura Adams, lesbian science-fiction fantasy. Her books have been award finalists too many times to count. Karin’s work has been translated into four languages and she has dozens of short stories in various anthologies.
Karin on writing: “I really think it boils down to whether you feel you're being asked to be inauthentic to your vision - and whether you will be able to live with it later.”
“[Patricia] Cornwall, unlike others, has at least never claimed or used the lesbian community that I know of. There are others that do, and expect the adulation and kudos and community support etc., while doing nothing overt to bring our existence into a realistic mainstream setting. With some writers I fear I have a ‘yes, but what have you done for us lately’ attitude - I basically feel that if you want someone's support, you need to consistently court it. Since I write exclusively for myself and lesbian readers, I take the responsibility very seriously. My plots may not be reality, but they are (I sincerely hope) reflective of a reality any lesbian would enjoy.”
On lesbians: “I've long been of the opinion that lesbians do just about everything better. Can't help myself on that one. It's why other folks sometimes try to co-opt our community events and others get just plain envious of the support network, for example the way we've learned to create families we can't *wait* to spend Thanksgiving with. In difficult situations there are times when I *really* want to say, ‘Whatever, fool. I'm having better sex than you are.’"
“My partner and I found each other very young, and had to make it all up for ourselves, being the only two girls ever in the history of the world to fall in love, you know.”
“I think I heard the word ‘lesbian’ only once before I was having sex with one, and I didn't connect what I was doing with that word at all.”
On readers: “…my feeling is my books are to be enjoyed in whatever way the reader will most enjoy them... my goal is to leave her happy, exhausted, pleased, satisfied and yet oddly hungry for more. How she gets into that condition is her business; I'm quite pleased to be in the room when it happens.”
Can you fall (platonically) in love with a woman while writing about her? Lesbian readers everywhere have made room in our hearts for this talented trailblazer. What a poorer place our world would be without Karin Kallmaker,
Copyright Lee Lynch 2011
July 2011
Saturday, June 4, 2011
The Amazon Trail - Gay Gumption
The Amazon Trail
Gay Gumption
I thought it was all about the wedding, but boy, was I wrong. As they say, a wedding is tying the knot. You sign papers, make public vows, and accept the support of friends and family. You also tell your spouse that this is forever. And ever. And ever.
Once upon a time, there was nothing to signify a gay joining but a bedroom and an overstuffed VW hauling furniture, the stereo and a cat in a carrier. All too often, a few months or years went by and the VW would head off in another direction, plus or minus a cat. But that didn’t always happen. You just didn’t hear much about the knots that stayed tied.
Recently, my sweetheart and I were invited to help celebrate the 25th anniversary of a couple who didn’t have the advantage of a formal knot-tying ceremony. They fell in love in high school and had nothing but their love to keep them together. It couldn’t have been easy. Certainly my early relationships succumbed to the wrath of the closet, which could scar one with a habit of easy dishonesty, especially within oneself. If you’re not honest with yourself, how can you be with your partner? You end up stumbling around inside a house with no foundation, in a maze of lies and denial that make it impossible to sustain a relationship.
These days, I know of so many couples who stayed together till death did them part, and I know more who have hit the 25 mark, the 35 mark, 40 years and beyond. By the time I was 40, I’d learned how to stay, but back in my twenties and thirties, I only knew how to unravel the rope, never mind tie a lasting knot. And even at 40, I didn’t know enough to make good choices. That took another 20 years. How did these long-lasting couples who’ve come out since Stonewall know who to choose and how to make it work?
Our 25th anniversary friends had no guides. Those of us who came before sure didn’t set a good example. I think this couple must have had gumption, hard-headed determination and respect for themselves, for each other and for their non-anointed marriage.
Not that we didn’t have gumption before 1969. We had it all right, but most of us used it all up fighting the wrong fights. We fought ourselves because we’d been told we were demons. We had trouble respecting our unions. How could I think well of my partner if she chose a demon like me? How could I trust a relationship between demons? How could I even want it, much less confidently promise forever? It was always easier to get in the weighted down VW and move on than to face my own demons.
Then, suddenly, the Stonewall riots, which scared me because I believed that shining a light on gay people was dangerous. Those rioters flipped on the whole circuit breaker. Closets melted in the heat of the lights. A glimmer of self-respect shone into our souls. At the same time, teenagers in small town America were falling in love and looking at the marching gay people on T.V. and understanding they were not the only ones, that they were not demons, that they were people of great value.
It still wasn’t easy for our friends, because they loved in a world that continued to demonize people like them. It was dangerous outside each other’s arms, but they didn’t drown their fears in liquor, or sabotage their tie by moving away. They never found gay books until 2003, but they played sports and got good jobs and stayed together and saved money and bought a home with a good foundation. For their first dozen years they were so closeted they had no gay friends. Finally, a friend at work came out to them and they had another couple who could share the special moments in their lives. They announced at the celebration that they made it this long partly because of that friendship.
My sweetheart and I drove 25 hours round trip to witness their accomplishment. Relatively new ourselves, it was important. In the large convivial room there was a glow of accomplishment. The couples’ two families were there as were work friends and team buddies. I imagined, afterward, the heart-rending moments of rejection and eventual acceptance that made this day possible. This couple, whose gumption surely must have wavered now and then, gifted all of us by bringing us together to toast their example and their achievement.
See, their smiles seemed to say, there’s no demons in this room. Not in us, not in you. They can’t untie this knot.
Copyright Lee Lynch 2011
6/11
Gay Gumption
I thought it was all about the wedding, but boy, was I wrong. As they say, a wedding is tying the knot. You sign papers, make public vows, and accept the support of friends and family. You also tell your spouse that this is forever. And ever. And ever.
Once upon a time, there was nothing to signify a gay joining but a bedroom and an overstuffed VW hauling furniture, the stereo and a cat in a carrier. All too often, a few months or years went by and the VW would head off in another direction, plus or minus a cat. But that didn’t always happen. You just didn’t hear much about the knots that stayed tied.
Recently, my sweetheart and I were invited to help celebrate the 25th anniversary of a couple who didn’t have the advantage of a formal knot-tying ceremony. They fell in love in high school and had nothing but their love to keep them together. It couldn’t have been easy. Certainly my early relationships succumbed to the wrath of the closet, which could scar one with a habit of easy dishonesty, especially within oneself. If you’re not honest with yourself, how can you be with your partner? You end up stumbling around inside a house with no foundation, in a maze of lies and denial that make it impossible to sustain a relationship.
These days, I know of so many couples who stayed together till death did them part, and I know more who have hit the 25 mark, the 35 mark, 40 years and beyond. By the time I was 40, I’d learned how to stay, but back in my twenties and thirties, I only knew how to unravel the rope, never mind tie a lasting knot. And even at 40, I didn’t know enough to make good choices. That took another 20 years. How did these long-lasting couples who’ve come out since Stonewall know who to choose and how to make it work?
Our 25th anniversary friends had no guides. Those of us who came before sure didn’t set a good example. I think this couple must have had gumption, hard-headed determination and respect for themselves, for each other and for their non-anointed marriage.
Not that we didn’t have gumption before 1969. We had it all right, but most of us used it all up fighting the wrong fights. We fought ourselves because we’d been told we were demons. We had trouble respecting our unions. How could I think well of my partner if she chose a demon like me? How could I trust a relationship between demons? How could I even want it, much less confidently promise forever? It was always easier to get in the weighted down VW and move on than to face my own demons.
Then, suddenly, the Stonewall riots, which scared me because I believed that shining a light on gay people was dangerous. Those rioters flipped on the whole circuit breaker. Closets melted in the heat of the lights. A glimmer of self-respect shone into our souls. At the same time, teenagers in small town America were falling in love and looking at the marching gay people on T.V. and understanding they were not the only ones, that they were not demons, that they were people of great value.
It still wasn’t easy for our friends, because they loved in a world that continued to demonize people like them. It was dangerous outside each other’s arms, but they didn’t drown their fears in liquor, or sabotage their tie by moving away. They never found gay books until 2003, but they played sports and got good jobs and stayed together and saved money and bought a home with a good foundation. For their first dozen years they were so closeted they had no gay friends. Finally, a friend at work came out to them and they had another couple who could share the special moments in their lives. They announced at the celebration that they made it this long partly because of that friendship.
My sweetheart and I drove 25 hours round trip to witness their accomplishment. Relatively new ourselves, it was important. In the large convivial room there was a glow of accomplishment. The couples’ two families were there as were work friends and team buddies. I imagined, afterward, the heart-rending moments of rejection and eventual acceptance that made this day possible. This couple, whose gumption surely must have wavered now and then, gifted all of us by bringing us together to toast their example and their achievement.
See, their smiles seemed to say, there’s no demons in this room. Not in us, not in you. They can’t untie this knot.
Copyright Lee Lynch 2011
6/11
Friday, May 13, 2011
The Amazon Trail - Me and Mr. Astaire
Me and Mr. Astaire
At age fourteen, I got an English Racer for my junior high school graduation. Seven months later, I came out. The timing was great.
I named my bike Mr. Astaire. Lightweight, nimble, quick, Mr. Astaire was a handsome blue and decidedly debonair. I kept him tuned up and shiny. Saturdays, my father would put him in the backseat of our 1950s Hudson, and drive from Queens out to Locust Valley on Long Island where Grandma and Grandpa Lynch lived. I loved the smell of his thin tire next to my face and held onto his spokes. Instead of hanging around Grandma’s house, so bored I’d read their “Saturday Evening Posts” and “Readers Digests,” I was out of there.
By the next February, Suzy and I found that there was a lot more to explore in life than geography. We’d met midway through seventh grade and become best friends. We lived a long walk or two bus rides away from each other, so we usually got together downtown and went off on our adventures from there. That was before we wanted privacy.
My legs got strong from biking up hills. My arms got strong from lifting Mr. Astaire up the stairs to Suzy’s apartment. In spring, especially, I reveled in the rides back and forth to Suzy’s under the blossoming trees, across carpets of pink petals. In summer the dogwoods blossomed white. I’d whiz down the hill at 147th Street, then turn into the side streets of single family homes. Or I’d ride through corridors of six-story apartment buildings, past church and synagogue, school and blocks of stores.
They weren’t just about young love, these journeys. For so many years I’d escaped from reality through the sedentary joy of books. I loved to run, but could only do that for so long. I loved to walk, but, somehow, telling a hovering mother you were going out for a long walk didn’t pass muster. Going for a bike ride, though – there was no arguing that. It was a time-tested, acceptable activity. It evoked a Norman Rockwell innocence and turned urban danger into bucolic pastime.
I’d meet Suzy at the park and we’d take the less populated paths so we could hold hands or just be together, she walking her Collie, me wheeling Mr. Astaire. Sure, I still explored neighborhoods and stopped to write descriptions of falling leaves or drifted snow. Sometimes, I’d lock up my bike and drink egg creams with Suzy at the soda fountain near her house. Mostly, I didn’t go out to Locust Valley anymore, but stayed in the city so I could be with my lover and learn to be a lesbian.
Suzy’s family tried the West Coast for a year. My parents had forbidden me to see her by then, so I’d bike to a faraway pay phone, having turned my two-dollar allowance into coins, and call her in California. When her family returned, they moved way out to Kew Gardens. The bike ride was long, past Queens College, on busy, pot-holed main roads and over the packed Long Island Expressway. It was scary.
Mr. Astaire went to college with me, Suzy left behind. Eventually he was stolen and replaced with Ganymede. Bicycling wasn’t big back then so I never did have a riding companion. Lovers were usually on campus. Or they were so remote that trains and busses were needed. Later, my little VW bug ferried me to trysts or we’d just move in together. I never had enough stuff to need a U-Haul until I was well into my thirties. Just my bike and many boxes of books, work clothes, favorite mugs, posters and LPs stuffed into the VW.
When Ganymede fell apart I replaced him with a Raleigh Humber that I had for almost 40 years. I’d take off from work just to spend the day wheeling around neighborhoods with Virginia Woolf, the Raleigh’s name. I’d purchased her while living in a lesbian-feminist collective and had long ago shed male heroes.
I hadn’t ridden Virginia Woolf in many years when I left Oregon to join my bride-to-be in Florida. I was looking forward to biking in new territory. The movers, though, misjudged the size of the van and my collection of books and garage sale furnishings. There was no room for my bike. They were towing my car, which they’d filled to the gills with boxes. My sweetheart and I had rented a van to drive cross country, but we had four cats, a dog, supplies for us all and my most fragile belongings stowed in it.
My sweetheart is right here with me, my wife now. Finally, there’s no need to travel across town. There’s no need to escape. It turns out I enjoy exploring more with her than on my own. It was time to let go of my romance with wandering wheels.
Lee Lynch Copyright 2011
5/11
At age fourteen, I got an English Racer for my junior high school graduation. Seven months later, I came out. The timing was great.
I named my bike Mr. Astaire. Lightweight, nimble, quick, Mr. Astaire was a handsome blue and decidedly debonair. I kept him tuned up and shiny. Saturdays, my father would put him in the backseat of our 1950s Hudson, and drive from Queens out to Locust Valley on Long Island where Grandma and Grandpa Lynch lived. I loved the smell of his thin tire next to my face and held onto his spokes. Instead of hanging around Grandma’s house, so bored I’d read their “Saturday Evening Posts” and “Readers Digests,” I was out of there.
By the next February, Suzy and I found that there was a lot more to explore in life than geography. We’d met midway through seventh grade and become best friends. We lived a long walk or two bus rides away from each other, so we usually got together downtown and went off on our adventures from there. That was before we wanted privacy.
My legs got strong from biking up hills. My arms got strong from lifting Mr. Astaire up the stairs to Suzy’s apartment. In spring, especially, I reveled in the rides back and forth to Suzy’s under the blossoming trees, across carpets of pink petals. In summer the dogwoods blossomed white. I’d whiz down the hill at 147th Street, then turn into the side streets of single family homes. Or I’d ride through corridors of six-story apartment buildings, past church and synagogue, school and blocks of stores.
They weren’t just about young love, these journeys. For so many years I’d escaped from reality through the sedentary joy of books. I loved to run, but could only do that for so long. I loved to walk, but, somehow, telling a hovering mother you were going out for a long walk didn’t pass muster. Going for a bike ride, though – there was no arguing that. It was a time-tested, acceptable activity. It evoked a Norman Rockwell innocence and turned urban danger into bucolic pastime.
I’d meet Suzy at the park and we’d take the less populated paths so we could hold hands or just be together, she walking her Collie, me wheeling Mr. Astaire. Sure, I still explored neighborhoods and stopped to write descriptions of falling leaves or drifted snow. Sometimes, I’d lock up my bike and drink egg creams with Suzy at the soda fountain near her house. Mostly, I didn’t go out to Locust Valley anymore, but stayed in the city so I could be with my lover and learn to be a lesbian.
Suzy’s family tried the West Coast for a year. My parents had forbidden me to see her by then, so I’d bike to a faraway pay phone, having turned my two-dollar allowance into coins, and call her in California. When her family returned, they moved way out to Kew Gardens. The bike ride was long, past Queens College, on busy, pot-holed main roads and over the packed Long Island Expressway. It was scary.
Mr. Astaire went to college with me, Suzy left behind. Eventually he was stolen and replaced with Ganymede. Bicycling wasn’t big back then so I never did have a riding companion. Lovers were usually on campus. Or they were so remote that trains and busses were needed. Later, my little VW bug ferried me to trysts or we’d just move in together. I never had enough stuff to need a U-Haul until I was well into my thirties. Just my bike and many boxes of books, work clothes, favorite mugs, posters and LPs stuffed into the VW.
When Ganymede fell apart I replaced him with a Raleigh Humber that I had for almost 40 years. I’d take off from work just to spend the day wheeling around neighborhoods with Virginia Woolf, the Raleigh’s name. I’d purchased her while living in a lesbian-feminist collective and had long ago shed male heroes.
I hadn’t ridden Virginia Woolf in many years when I left Oregon to join my bride-to-be in Florida. I was looking forward to biking in new territory. The movers, though, misjudged the size of the van and my collection of books and garage sale furnishings. There was no room for my bike. They were towing my car, which they’d filled to the gills with boxes. My sweetheart and I had rented a van to drive cross country, but we had four cats, a dog, supplies for us all and my most fragile belongings stowed in it.
My sweetheart is right here with me, my wife now. Finally, there’s no need to travel across town. There’s no need to escape. It turns out I enjoy exploring more with her than on my own. It was time to let go of my romance with wandering wheels.
Lee Lynch Copyright 2011
5/11
Saturday, April 2, 2011
The Amazon Trail - Choosing an Effing Cell Phone
The Amazon Trail
Choosing an Effing Cell Phone
Hoo boy, all I want to do is get a new cell phone. Our contract is up and our old phones keep their battery charges about as long as a gay bartender gets to stand still. For a week now, instead of disassembling the patriarchy or doing something equally useful, I have spent my evenings researching this little purchase.
What I really want is to sign on with CREDO, which donates to progressive causes. I was with them for years, but when I went all-cell-all-the-time, they didn’t have coverage for my area. Now they do. It’s too late, though, as everyone I know is on Verizon, which means no charges for talk time. Verizon is said to be the undisputed king of coverage, another factor I deem important. It’s unfortunate that for Verizon customers not in the market for a smartphone, the pickings are sparse.
Is choosing a phone this hard for everyone? In the recent olden days, I’d get a free Nokia and be thrilled. Verizon doesn’t even carry Nokias anymore, although I’ve read they are the most reliable phones. Hmmm – connection there? Last time we got the very adequate Samsung Alias. A friend has the Alias 2 and loves it. Samsung has replaced it with the Zeal.
The names they give phones are unreal. Well, except for the Samsung Reality. But, no, really, the Fascinate? Intensity? Octane? Gravity, Citrus, Flipout, Charm? Who exactly would buy a phone because it’s called Eternity? Maybe it’s got a speed dial to someone’s Galaxy?
Here’s what I want in a phone. First, no required data pak! I’d rather send the $30.00 a month to Credo to help fight the Defense of Marriage Act. Second, a QWERTY keyboard; texting has become the communication mode of choice for enough people that I, gritting my teeth, have begun to text. Unless a phone has a cute little slide-out, touch screen or dual-hinges, texting is an onerous task.
But why pay to, essentially, e-mail someone? One answer is that not everyone is wired into a computer, smart phone or tablet 24/7. Or maybe I jst lke the txtng language, with its short-cuts and appealing, Twitter-like brevity.
I texted my niece, an enthusiast of the medium, and asked what kind of phone she has. I expected her, as a Gen Xer, to be somewhat of an expert. “I forget,” she tapped back. How could someone forget? I study major purchases like a little boy with baseball stats. I may never forget the specs for the Kin Two “m” which started as a smart phone and has been downgraded to a feature phone – with benefits, like Wi-Fi.
I posted a friend at work, also a Gen Xer. “I have an LG with a keyboard,” she e-mailed back. OK, maybe, I thought, her husband picked out her phone. She said she really liked it, so I was interested enough to send her a list of LG feature phones to see if any sounded familiar. “It just says LG,” she replied. Maybe I should ask a Millennial, like Wonderboi, but I’m pretty sure Millennials all have iPhones.
My third, and final, requirement for this new baby, is that it doesn’t call people from my pocket. I stash so many objects in there that the phone keys have to be covered. My sweetheart carries her phone in a back pocket or else leaves it lying around the house never to be found again, but it never calls me by mistake.
I’d be concerned about battery strength if it wasn’t a lost cause. It'd be logical that strong, clear sound would be a priority for telecommunications manufacturers. It’s not, but you can’t get that kind of information from reading the company web sites. You have to wade through consumer reviews that rave or rant or curse or ramble. If I’m lucky, I get a pretty rounded picture of the pros and cons of a specific phone. Sometimes the reviews warn me off, sometimes they give me both a problem and a fix, but mostly, they just confuse me. Techie reviews are even worse. There is much tossing around of undecipherable concepts like dumb phones, sim cards, removable memory, GSM and jailbreaking.
Next to an iPhone, the gadget I most admire is the Samsung Convoy, a ruggedized phone built to military specifications and oh so butch. Apparently butches don’t text as it has no usable keyboard. I’m stuck with a scrap pile of poorly reviewed devices that Verizon offers in an obvious ploy to force customers to choose smart phones and pay higher monthly fees.
Maybe it’s time to build a better mousetrap. A rugged little machine with fabulous voice clarity and easy texting that we could dub the Gayphone. It would come in lavender or lavender camouflage and the default ringtone would, of course, be Lady GaGa’s “Born This Way.”
Prfts wd go 2 gay orgs.
Copyright Lee Lynch 2011
Choosing an Effing Cell Phone
Hoo boy, all I want to do is get a new cell phone. Our contract is up and our old phones keep their battery charges about as long as a gay bartender gets to stand still. For a week now, instead of disassembling the patriarchy or doing something equally useful, I have spent my evenings researching this little purchase.
What I really want is to sign on with CREDO, which donates to progressive causes. I was with them for years, but when I went all-cell-all-the-time, they didn’t have coverage for my area. Now they do. It’s too late, though, as everyone I know is on Verizon, which means no charges for talk time. Verizon is said to be the undisputed king of coverage, another factor I deem important. It’s unfortunate that for Verizon customers not in the market for a smartphone, the pickings are sparse.
Is choosing a phone this hard for everyone? In the recent olden days, I’d get a free Nokia and be thrilled. Verizon doesn’t even carry Nokias anymore, although I’ve read they are the most reliable phones. Hmmm – connection there? Last time we got the very adequate Samsung Alias. A friend has the Alias 2 and loves it. Samsung has replaced it with the Zeal.
The names they give phones are unreal. Well, except for the Samsung Reality. But, no, really, the Fascinate? Intensity? Octane? Gravity, Citrus, Flipout, Charm? Who exactly would buy a phone because it’s called Eternity? Maybe it’s got a speed dial to someone’s Galaxy?
Here’s what I want in a phone. First, no required data pak! I’d rather send the $30.00 a month to Credo to help fight the Defense of Marriage Act. Second, a QWERTY keyboard; texting has become the communication mode of choice for enough people that I, gritting my teeth, have begun to text. Unless a phone has a cute little slide-out, touch screen or dual-hinges, texting is an onerous task.
But why pay to, essentially, e-mail someone? One answer is that not everyone is wired into a computer, smart phone or tablet 24/7. Or maybe I jst lke the txtng language, with its short-cuts and appealing, Twitter-like brevity.
I texted my niece, an enthusiast of the medium, and asked what kind of phone she has. I expected her, as a Gen Xer, to be somewhat of an expert. “I forget,” she tapped back. How could someone forget? I study major purchases like a little boy with baseball stats. I may never forget the specs for the Kin Two “m” which started as a smart phone and has been downgraded to a feature phone – with benefits, like Wi-Fi.
I posted a friend at work, also a Gen Xer. “I have an LG with a keyboard,” she e-mailed back. OK, maybe, I thought, her husband picked out her phone. She said she really liked it, so I was interested enough to send her a list of LG feature phones to see if any sounded familiar. “It just says LG,” she replied. Maybe I should ask a Millennial, like Wonderboi, but I’m pretty sure Millennials all have iPhones.
My third, and final, requirement for this new baby, is that it doesn’t call people from my pocket. I stash so many objects in there that the phone keys have to be covered. My sweetheart carries her phone in a back pocket or else leaves it lying around the house never to be found again, but it never calls me by mistake.
I’d be concerned about battery strength if it wasn’t a lost cause. It'd be logical that strong, clear sound would be a priority for telecommunications manufacturers. It’s not, but you can’t get that kind of information from reading the company web sites. You have to wade through consumer reviews that rave or rant or curse or ramble. If I’m lucky, I get a pretty rounded picture of the pros and cons of a specific phone. Sometimes the reviews warn me off, sometimes they give me both a problem and a fix, but mostly, they just confuse me. Techie reviews are even worse. There is much tossing around of undecipherable concepts like dumb phones, sim cards, removable memory, GSM and jailbreaking.
Next to an iPhone, the gadget I most admire is the Samsung Convoy, a ruggedized phone built to military specifications and oh so butch. Apparently butches don’t text as it has no usable keyboard. I’m stuck with a scrap pile of poorly reviewed devices that Verizon offers in an obvious ploy to force customers to choose smart phones and pay higher monthly fees.
Maybe it’s time to build a better mousetrap. A rugged little machine with fabulous voice clarity and easy texting that we could dub the Gayphone. It would come in lavender or lavender camouflage and the default ringtone would, of course, be Lady GaGa’s “Born This Way.”
Prfts wd go 2 gay orgs.
Copyright Lee Lynch 2011
Friday, March 4, 2011
The Amazon Trail - Qpondering
The Amazon Trail
Qpondering
Although it’s not one of the certified butchly arts, I am a coupon clipper from way back. If for no reason other than to justify buying the Sunday paper, I have at hand my nifty sliding coupon cutter (that I haven’t mastered) to make back the cost of the paper with snipped savings. If only I remembered to use the coupons, the plan might work.
I’ve tried everything: stacking them on the kitchen counter where I’ll see them, or at the front door where I’ll miss them when I go through the garage to my car. I’ve stashed them in the car only to forget to bring them into the store. I’ve stuck them in my wallet with the cash so I’d find them at the register, then used my credit card. I’ve gone to the cashier with coupons in hand and, distracted, stuffed them in my jeans pocket while emptying the shopping cart. My good-natured sweetheart calls me an absent-minded professor. I forget that I swore off newspapers, buy the Sunday paper and start all over again.
There are coupon traps. I’ve purchased stuff I’ve never used because I had a great coupon. It hurts now to pay full price for anything. I bring home items like frozen dessert for our overweight dog because I can’t pass a clearance bin without exploring it. Some mega-corps, whose names I won’t mention, are really, really stingy with their $.25 off coupons for $15.00 packages of Charmin’ (who’s squeezing who here). There are certain items I won’t buy anywhere but a dollar store. I search out businesses that give AARP discounts. Still, I’m glad to have made it to senior citizen age before the stampede of boomers inspires companies to redefine the concept of senior – we’ll have to be 85 to get in to a movie matinee at half price.
This is what modern day hunting and gathering looks like. Eventually we will all have iPhone-like devices that flash coupons to computers called cashless registers (RegX ®) when we go to drive-in bars for our Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters. The Sunday paper will be replaced by online feeds that continuously scroll Preferred Product Coupons (PreProCs®), that amazon.com knows we’ll use, along the sides of our screens while we’re working at our jobs (till age 85), reading tweets or composing love- mails. “Wait!” I’ll post to my sweetheart in the middle of a passionate declaration via her iTop® (something like a netbook but invisible to management.) “I have to capture a promo code for a Wild-Salmon Entre-in- a-Capsule® at the A&P’pod®.”
Currently, I’ve been training myself never to make a purchase without checking on line for promotional codes, coupons and deals. It’s frustrating that businesses don’t just charge what goods and services are worth instead of pretending to save us money. At the same time, it’s very gratifying to score “free” shipping on an item as heavy as a ton of bricks, or to bring the price of a dinner out down to the price of a dinner in.
For my sweetheart’s birthday, I paid for part of our visit to the pricey Gallagher’s Steak House with a deal through groupon.com. On Valentine’s Day we grouponed ourselves to a pleasant repast at a favorite local Irish pub. No wonder she was willing to marry me; I take her nice places and save money doing it.
She has no objection to my skinflintery and claims her Scottish blood is in cahoots with me. It’s gotten so I’m signing up for all sorts of possible coupon resources. Grocery stores, gas stations, Dunkin’ Donuts (which is also stingy) – my inbox looks like a phone book. Some businesses give out coupons for birthday specials, some offer sweepstakes, some have printable coupons. The paper pile on the kitchen counter grows. My sweetheart, bless her patient heart, sorts all the offers and puts them in the junk drawer. Once a month she extracts them, not an easy task, and does our big shopping.
This has backfired a few times. Last week I printed a grocery store coupon worth $10.00 off $40.00 in purchases. My sweetheart lost no time dashing off to use it. While trying to spend the required $40.00, she racked up a bill of $111.00 and came home all proud, declaring, “I saved us $19.00!” I said I would never print out one of those coupons again, as if I could resist. No wonder I married her; she makes me laugh at myself for my coupon clipping frenzy and with her, when she plays the mad shopper.
At least we’ve finally answered that age-old question, “But what do lesbians DO?”
Copyright Lee Lynch 2011
March 2011
Qpondering
Although it’s not one of the certified butchly arts, I am a coupon clipper from way back. If for no reason other than to justify buying the Sunday paper, I have at hand my nifty sliding coupon cutter (that I haven’t mastered) to make back the cost of the paper with snipped savings. If only I remembered to use the coupons, the plan might work.
I’ve tried everything: stacking them on the kitchen counter where I’ll see them, or at the front door where I’ll miss them when I go through the garage to my car. I’ve stashed them in the car only to forget to bring them into the store. I’ve stuck them in my wallet with the cash so I’d find them at the register, then used my credit card. I’ve gone to the cashier with coupons in hand and, distracted, stuffed them in my jeans pocket while emptying the shopping cart. My good-natured sweetheart calls me an absent-minded professor. I forget that I swore off newspapers, buy the Sunday paper and start all over again.
There are coupon traps. I’ve purchased stuff I’ve never used because I had a great coupon. It hurts now to pay full price for anything. I bring home items like frozen dessert for our overweight dog because I can’t pass a clearance bin without exploring it. Some mega-corps, whose names I won’t mention, are really, really stingy with their $.25 off coupons for $15.00 packages of Charmin’ (who’s squeezing who here). There are certain items I won’t buy anywhere but a dollar store. I search out businesses that give AARP discounts. Still, I’m glad to have made it to senior citizen age before the stampede of boomers inspires companies to redefine the concept of senior – we’ll have to be 85 to get in to a movie matinee at half price.
This is what modern day hunting and gathering looks like. Eventually we will all have iPhone-like devices that flash coupons to computers called cashless registers (RegX ®) when we go to drive-in bars for our Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters. The Sunday paper will be replaced by online feeds that continuously scroll Preferred Product Coupons (PreProCs®), that amazon.com knows we’ll use, along the sides of our screens while we’re working at our jobs (till age 85), reading tweets or composing love- mails. “Wait!” I’ll post to my sweetheart in the middle of a passionate declaration via her iTop® (something like a netbook but invisible to management.) “I have to capture a promo code for a Wild-Salmon Entre-in- a-Capsule® at the A&P’pod®.”
Currently, I’ve been training myself never to make a purchase without checking on line for promotional codes, coupons and deals. It’s frustrating that businesses don’t just charge what goods and services are worth instead of pretending to save us money. At the same time, it’s very gratifying to score “free” shipping on an item as heavy as a ton of bricks, or to bring the price of a dinner out down to the price of a dinner in.
For my sweetheart’s birthday, I paid for part of our visit to the pricey Gallagher’s Steak House with a deal through groupon.com. On Valentine’s Day we grouponed ourselves to a pleasant repast at a favorite local Irish pub. No wonder she was willing to marry me; I take her nice places and save money doing it.
She has no objection to my skinflintery and claims her Scottish blood is in cahoots with me. It’s gotten so I’m signing up for all sorts of possible coupon resources. Grocery stores, gas stations, Dunkin’ Donuts (which is also stingy) – my inbox looks like a phone book. Some businesses give out coupons for birthday specials, some offer sweepstakes, some have printable coupons. The paper pile on the kitchen counter grows. My sweetheart, bless her patient heart, sorts all the offers and puts them in the junk drawer. Once a month she extracts them, not an easy task, and does our big shopping.
This has backfired a few times. Last week I printed a grocery store coupon worth $10.00 off $40.00 in purchases. My sweetheart lost no time dashing off to use it. While trying to spend the required $40.00, she racked up a bill of $111.00 and came home all proud, declaring, “I saved us $19.00!” I said I would never print out one of those coupons again, as if I could resist. No wonder I married her; she makes me laugh at myself for my coupon clipping frenzy and with her, when she plays the mad shopper.
At least we’ve finally answered that age-old question, “But what do lesbians DO?”
Copyright Lee Lynch 2011
March 2011
Friday, February 11, 2011
The Amazon Trail - Social Insecurity
The Amazon Trail
Social Insecurity
Wow! I just got my first Social Security check!
Darn, I must be really, really old.
Not as old as Washington is planning for its kids and grandkids to be. As often as I hear that Social Security is about to go bust, I hear that it’s fine. Hey, you guys in D.C., like they say in twelve step programs, if it works, don’t fix it!
I imagine visiting the Capitol Building and buttonholing a Congressperson. Look, Representative Womanizer, I’d say, try this for a hypothetical. Your once-favored child grows up. He becomes an artisan, a tile setter, a job he’s great at, but there’s no pension. He saves the best he can, but one of his kids has a chronic disease and you voted to disembowel universal health care, so he’s broke from medical bills. His partner dies, but your son doesn’t benefit from his pension because you voted to outlaw gay marriage. Sonny boy’s job does in his knees and back and he develops an allergy to the glue he uses. In constant pain, asthmatic, he manages to keep setting tiles until age 65. But, wait, you voted to increase the retirement age to 70! You’d help him, but you’re dead or in prison for skimming or scamming or conspiring. Is this the life you wanted for daddy’s little boy?
The word security is pretty misleading these days. My father had a secure job with the federal government. When he died my mother received a pension and health care for life. Which was good, since she’d light out of the house every day, well into her 90s, get on a bus or subway and go shopping somewhere, anywhere. She was thrifty as only someone who survived the American Great Depression can be, so she only spent at sales.
Security died with my mother and father. The very concept of security gets more obsolete every year.
All my life I’d planned to retire at age 65. Then congress changed the rules. So, okay, I can wait till 66. Only I didn’t. The Republicans won some elections this November and are yammering about fixing Social Security. While I didn’t lie awake worrying, exactly, I did panic.
Okay, I thought. If I retire in November, 2010, how soon will I break even with the amount Social Security would have paid me if I’d waited another 12 months? I got as far as stating the problem in words and then I spaced out, escaping into a daydream of winning the lottery, enabling my sweetheart to retire and me to write full time.
A month or so later, I took up the problem again. This time I mentioned it to my sweetheart. She’s the math-head in this marriage. A minute later, or less, she’d calculated my answer. We had a decision to make. I could apply for Social Security immediately and start working at my job only three days a week. That sounded wonderful! I could take my first checks and buy the Mac Book Air I’d been drooling over. Tempting, but kind of splurgy for a semi-retiree. I could stash the whole year’s payments – down to eleven months by now – in the bank and have it as a cushion. Or I could quit my job altogether and maybe finish my new book by the promised deadline. Wow. This was exciting. Thirty years earlier I would have gone for finishing the book.
But I don’t have a pension. Or a 401K or company stock. I let all that go to finish the last dozen books. What I have is Social Security and you politicians are messing with it. What are you thinking? That no one you care about will ever actually need to live on the rather paltry stipend Americans are awarded for working all our lives? Well, I say, stop it, Representative Womanizer!
Stop kicking aging Americans’ futures around in your power plays. Be fiscally conservative at the expense of someone who can afford it, like the beneficiaries of boondoggles from Boston to Bagdad.
Ah, Representative Womanizer, does it rile you to think entitlement programs feed and clothe Democrats and gays? Are you afraid seniors are going to use birth control and get abortions?
Wait! Social security isn’t an entitlement program! It’s completely funded by employers and employees. We pay for it with chunks of our wages. We gave it to our government to hold until we needed it. Now, when more of us than ever do need it, you want to treat our contributions to our own futures as taxes so you can make government look lean? And keep your congressional seat? I don’t think so.
I don’t trust you, Representative Womanizer. I’ve decided: I’m going to keep working at my job, continue writing my subversive lesbian books. Then I’m going to vote you out of office.
Copyright Lee Lynch 2011
Social Insecurity
Wow! I just got my first Social Security check!
Darn, I must be really, really old.
Not as old as Washington is planning for its kids and grandkids to be. As often as I hear that Social Security is about to go bust, I hear that it’s fine. Hey, you guys in D.C., like they say in twelve step programs, if it works, don’t fix it!
I imagine visiting the Capitol Building and buttonholing a Congressperson. Look, Representative Womanizer, I’d say, try this for a hypothetical. Your once-favored child grows up. He becomes an artisan, a tile setter, a job he’s great at, but there’s no pension. He saves the best he can, but one of his kids has a chronic disease and you voted to disembowel universal health care, so he’s broke from medical bills. His partner dies, but your son doesn’t benefit from his pension because you voted to outlaw gay marriage. Sonny boy’s job does in his knees and back and he develops an allergy to the glue he uses. In constant pain, asthmatic, he manages to keep setting tiles until age 65. But, wait, you voted to increase the retirement age to 70! You’d help him, but you’re dead or in prison for skimming or scamming or conspiring. Is this the life you wanted for daddy’s little boy?
The word security is pretty misleading these days. My father had a secure job with the federal government. When he died my mother received a pension and health care for life. Which was good, since she’d light out of the house every day, well into her 90s, get on a bus or subway and go shopping somewhere, anywhere. She was thrifty as only someone who survived the American Great Depression can be, so she only spent at sales.
Security died with my mother and father. The very concept of security gets more obsolete every year.
All my life I’d planned to retire at age 65. Then congress changed the rules. So, okay, I can wait till 66. Only I didn’t. The Republicans won some elections this November and are yammering about fixing Social Security. While I didn’t lie awake worrying, exactly, I did panic.
Okay, I thought. If I retire in November, 2010, how soon will I break even with the amount Social Security would have paid me if I’d waited another 12 months? I got as far as stating the problem in words and then I spaced out, escaping into a daydream of winning the lottery, enabling my sweetheart to retire and me to write full time.
A month or so later, I took up the problem again. This time I mentioned it to my sweetheart. She’s the math-head in this marriage. A minute later, or less, she’d calculated my answer. We had a decision to make. I could apply for Social Security immediately and start working at my job only three days a week. That sounded wonderful! I could take my first checks and buy the Mac Book Air I’d been drooling over. Tempting, but kind of splurgy for a semi-retiree. I could stash the whole year’s payments – down to eleven months by now – in the bank and have it as a cushion. Or I could quit my job altogether and maybe finish my new book by the promised deadline. Wow. This was exciting. Thirty years earlier I would have gone for finishing the book.
But I don’t have a pension. Or a 401K or company stock. I let all that go to finish the last dozen books. What I have is Social Security and you politicians are messing with it. What are you thinking? That no one you care about will ever actually need to live on the rather paltry stipend Americans are awarded for working all our lives? Well, I say, stop it, Representative Womanizer!
Stop kicking aging Americans’ futures around in your power plays. Be fiscally conservative at the expense of someone who can afford it, like the beneficiaries of boondoggles from Boston to Bagdad.
Ah, Representative Womanizer, does it rile you to think entitlement programs feed and clothe Democrats and gays? Are you afraid seniors are going to use birth control and get abortions?
Wait! Social security isn’t an entitlement program! It’s completely funded by employers and employees. We pay for it with chunks of our wages. We gave it to our government to hold until we needed it. Now, when more of us than ever do need it, you want to treat our contributions to our own futures as taxes so you can make government look lean? And keep your congressional seat? I don’t think so.
I don’t trust you, Representative Womanizer. I’ve decided: I’m going to keep working at my job, continue writing my subversive lesbian books. Then I’m going to vote you out of office.
Copyright Lee Lynch 2011
Thursday, January 6, 2011
The Amazon Trail - Queen of the Road
The Amazon Trail
Queen of the Road
Mrs. Bundt is our outdated, refurbished, very basic 3.5” Garmin Nuvi GPS. We named her after a heart-shaped bundt pan which was our first purchase as a couple. I can only say, by way of explanation, that the GPS voice sounds like a Mrs. Bundt.
One day, my sweetheart was imagining Mrs. Bundt’s potential in more weighty endeavors than her role as navigator. She told me, “The first time Mrs. Bundt yelled, ‘Turn right! Turn right!’ – that confused me. Then I realized she was talking about ur house and not criticizing my political leanings.” I laughed with her, but I’ve heard Mrs. Bundt’s voice drip with disapproval as she announced, “Arrival at destination – On Left.”
“Our country needs direction,” my sweetheart said. “Wouldn’t it be great if the politicians had a Mrs. Bundt to tell them which way to turn?”
What a fine idea. When the pols do something heartless and illogical like extend tax credits for the rich or undo a necessary health plan, Mrs. Bundt would cry, “Recalculating! Recalculating!” When the electorate chooses to install wacked out crazies in office, Mrs. Bundt would screech, “Turn left! Turn left!” or, depending on the extremists’ direction, “Turn right! Turn right!”
Ah, The Bunster, our little bunster, all grown up and ready to run the government.
I hope she’s less abused as a policy wonk. I know I’ve uttered a passel of bad words trying to get Mrs. Bundt to talk to me sooner, or more, or less, or at all. Or trying to get her to shut up. She gets so overwrought.
Sometimes I think it’s because we’re gay. Not that we’ve come out to Mrs. Bundt, but, well, the kisses at traffic lights, the affectionate hands, the hot little murmurs. She took us to our wedding, after all.
So call me paranoid, but does she get this snippy with everyone, or is it just us? Her insistence that we call her Mrs. – is that a hetero-chauvinist statement?
We would never call her the Bunster to her face – ah – to her screen. She’s humorless and, I hate to say it, cold.
I’ve shared with Mrs. Bundt my feelings about Big Roads. But will she acknowledge alternatives to super highways? No, not the Bunster. If it’s got a federal or state highway sign on it, that’s the road she wants. Never mind that we’re in Florida and the highways are in continual rush hour condition. Never mind that there’s been a 43 car pileup or a bridge has collapsed.
“Turn in point three miles.” Her diction is perfect, her sentences clipped and to the point. She’ll pause, then say, more insistently, “Turn in Point. Two. Miles.” Another pause, heavy with impatient patience, and she commands, “Turn in point one mile.” More quickly now, not caring if she sounds like a manipulative femme, “Turn in 500 feet.” Her voice is shrill with restrained panic. She shoots her white arrow around a corner, showing us the turnpike ramp. “100 feet!” she cries in desperation. “Turn right! Turn right!”
In the long pause that follows, I imagine her closing her eyes in exasperation, reminding herself not to take it personally, trying to think of us as errant kids because, given the chance, she’d say, “Effing dykes! Stuck on this dinky road behind a thresher going two m.p.h. Why didn’t you listen to me!”
Fortunately, the Bunster has no hair to pull out or there’d be continual mess on the dash. She gets control of herself eventually. Through obviously gritted teeth, she announces that she is, in her vast wisdom and with her generous forgiving spirit, will recalculate our route: “Recalculating!”
I can hear the vindictive smile in her voice as Mrs. Bundt directs us to turn right and the screen shows some complex maneuvers that are the equivalent of a U-turn.
Queen of the road is our Mrs. Bundt. My sweetheart will give me a conniving look. I’ll silence the sputtering queen. But before I can, Mrs. Bunt, as if by her efforts alone, crows with triumphant finality, “Arriving at destination!”
Copyright Lee Lynch 2011
Queen of the Road
Mrs. Bundt is our outdated, refurbished, very basic 3.5” Garmin Nuvi GPS. We named her after a heart-shaped bundt pan which was our first purchase as a couple. I can only say, by way of explanation, that the GPS voice sounds like a Mrs. Bundt.
One day, my sweetheart was imagining Mrs. Bundt’s potential in more weighty endeavors than her role as navigator. She told me, “The first time Mrs. Bundt yelled, ‘Turn right! Turn right!’ – that confused me. Then I realized she was talking about ur house and not criticizing my political leanings.” I laughed with her, but I’ve heard Mrs. Bundt’s voice drip with disapproval as she announced, “Arrival at destination – On Left.”
“Our country needs direction,” my sweetheart said. “Wouldn’t it be great if the politicians had a Mrs. Bundt to tell them which way to turn?”
What a fine idea. When the pols do something heartless and illogical like extend tax credits for the rich or undo a necessary health plan, Mrs. Bundt would cry, “Recalculating! Recalculating!” When the electorate chooses to install wacked out crazies in office, Mrs. Bundt would screech, “Turn left! Turn left!” or, depending on the extremists’ direction, “Turn right! Turn right!”
Ah, The Bunster, our little bunster, all grown up and ready to run the government.
I hope she’s less abused as a policy wonk. I know I’ve uttered a passel of bad words trying to get Mrs. Bundt to talk to me sooner, or more, or less, or at all. Or trying to get her to shut up. She gets so overwrought.
Sometimes I think it’s because we’re gay. Not that we’ve come out to Mrs. Bundt, but, well, the kisses at traffic lights, the affectionate hands, the hot little murmurs. She took us to our wedding, after all.
So call me paranoid, but does she get this snippy with everyone, or is it just us? Her insistence that we call her Mrs. – is that a hetero-chauvinist statement?
We would never call her the Bunster to her face – ah – to her screen. She’s humorless and, I hate to say it, cold.
I’ve shared with Mrs. Bundt my feelings about Big Roads. But will she acknowledge alternatives to super highways? No, not the Bunster. If it’s got a federal or state highway sign on it, that’s the road she wants. Never mind that we’re in Florida and the highways are in continual rush hour condition. Never mind that there’s been a 43 car pileup or a bridge has collapsed.
“Turn in point three miles.” Her diction is perfect, her sentences clipped and to the point. She’ll pause, then say, more insistently, “Turn in Point. Two. Miles.” Another pause, heavy with impatient patience, and she commands, “Turn in point one mile.” More quickly now, not caring if she sounds like a manipulative femme, “Turn in 500 feet.” Her voice is shrill with restrained panic. She shoots her white arrow around a corner, showing us the turnpike ramp. “100 feet!” she cries in desperation. “Turn right! Turn right!”
In the long pause that follows, I imagine her closing her eyes in exasperation, reminding herself not to take it personally, trying to think of us as errant kids because, given the chance, she’d say, “Effing dykes! Stuck on this dinky road behind a thresher going two m.p.h. Why didn’t you listen to me!”
Fortunately, the Bunster has no hair to pull out or there’d be continual mess on the dash. She gets control of herself eventually. Through obviously gritted teeth, she announces that she is, in her vast wisdom and with her generous forgiving spirit, will recalculate our route: “Recalculating!”
I can hear the vindictive smile in her voice as Mrs. Bundt directs us to turn right and the screen shows some complex maneuvers that are the equivalent of a U-turn.
Queen of the road is our Mrs. Bundt. My sweetheart will give me a conniving look. I’ll silence the sputtering queen. But before I can, Mrs. Bunt, as if by her efforts alone, crows with triumphant finality, “Arriving at destination!”
Copyright Lee Lynch 2011
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