Kyle's Bed & Breakfast

The Amazon Trail - Switching on My Lights

The Amazon Trail

Switching on My Lights

It wasn't quite Hanukah, Kwanza, Christmas, Solstice or any winter celebration yet, but the karaoke crew was singing the songs of the season. There was an Elvis impersonator, all in black, with fuzzy dark L-shaped sideburns, who, appropriately, sang "Blue Christmas" in a very decent deep voice.

My sweetheart's beloved dad had just died, much too young, and we were in his coastal Florida town where she'd arranged a memorial service. She was holding herself together with baling wire and a piece of pink ribbon that came on a sympathy basket.

The plan was to get together for dinner with family, but preparations took so long we arrived in town late and the family was ready only for slumber. We had a choice between keeping everyone awake while we ate the family's traditional Christmas Spaghetti, or letting them crash for the night and finding some late night joint on our own.

The cheap motel we were at boasted a little place called Jinnie's Grille. It looked, through the glass door, dark and closed. That was my mood: dark and closed. Besides my father-in-law's passing, big changes, albeit good ones, were looming in our lives.

Inside, Jinnie's was dark, but definitely open. We sat at the bar and ordered from the minimal menu. That didn't matter, it suited my mood of emotional numbness. I'd planned a day of writing, but hadn't found the creative spark I needed.

Who wouldn't be depressed? I hardly knew my sweetheart's dad but he never expressed a qualm when my sweetheart told him who she'd fallen in love with. He welcomed me to the family like I was Prince Charming come on my white horse to bring his daughter all the happiness he could wish for her. He walked her down the aisle to me.

Each holiday we spent with him, it was the same. He was charming and gracious and embraced me literally and figuratively. Now he wouldn't be with us anymore.  It's a comfort to know that he was pleased his three daughters were settled, happy and fulfilled. He could enter the afterlife and report to my sweetheart's mom that he'd stayed until the last of their chicks was safe in her own nest.

So there we were, at Jinnie's gloomy Grille, my sweetheart devastated but not letting it show, and me glum as a grinch on the barstool beside her, no help at all. When the karaoke music started, loud enough to fill Yankee Stadium, I winced, cringed, was ready to flee.

My sweetheart was nonplussed by this surprise. With a smile, she whispered, "Everyone's old in Florida."

I looked around. Certainly, everyone was old at Jinnie's, including the lone barmaid/waitress, who served dinners and drinks at the pace of a twenty-year old.

"This place is incredible," my sweetheart said.

Without hope of incredulity on my part, I lifted my eyes to the singer, a woman who looked, under her makeup and fancy silver dress, to be in her sadly shriveled dotage. She sang an oldie - they all did - but with a voice so full-toned and professional, I had to look up again.

As I did, my eye was caught by the web of white lights strung along the walls. They sparkled in the gloom. Then I saw the framed pictures: Frank Sinatra, theater posters from the forties and fifties, quaint old liquor ads. Jinnie, whoever she was, had decorated with pre-boomer nostalgia. The karaoke singers were singing the tunes of that era. A big guy with a gut got up and belted out a lively Santa song. Someone else offered more traditional Christmas music. They were backed by recordings of big bands, swing era style.

"Hey," I said, "this place reminds me of the basement rec room bars my parents' friends built." They were the hits of their times. Dark paneled walls. Short bars that were otherwise exact replicas of the places the veterans frequented during R&R.

"You could write stories about this place," said my sweetheart.

And suddenly I was. This was what the holidays were like for old Floridians. I realized that the long table over on the side was filled with an informal karaoke club. One by one the singers performed and returned to the tables, or to tables of two or four, or to the bar, for hugs and hurrahs. They did this once a week or once a month, and prepared in between.

At the holidays they gathered and celebrated in song, lonesome strangers in this big gloomy world who found one another at Jillie's and formed a karaoke family.

My mood turned cheerful and loving. My sweetheart had, once again, switched on my lights. I wanted to write about the one single woman at the bar, the short-haired one who was dressed in professional businesswoman clothes. A black dress, a red jacket, silver hair. Who answered everyone who greeted her with the words, "I've been traveling. And,” she added in a quieter voice, "traveling." Her sigh wasn't audible, but it was Florida-dive loud in the droop of her shoulders. Even she, older but not retired, separate but known at Jinnie’s, was drawn to the flame of this air-conditioned Florida dive.

It was a strange, unexpected refuge in an unutterably sad time for my sweetheart and me.  Holiday lights in a bar. Happy songs of celebration rising with glasses of spirits. People like us refusing darkness, reviving light.

Copyright Lee Lynch 2012

12/12

Kyle.s Bed & Breakfast

Kyle's Bed & Breakfast

Kyle's Bed & Breakfast

Kyle's Bed & Breakfast

Kyle's Bed & Breakfast

Kyle's Bed & Breakfast

The Amazon Trail - Finding Something Good Without Looking For It

The Amazon Trail

Finding Something Good Without Looking For It

    Now and then a spate of serendipity comes along. The stars align, one can’t believe one’s good fortune and we live in a benign, even benevolent, universe for a lovely while. Last night was one of those times.

I was invited to read at an event called “Wordier Than Thou,” in St. Petersburg, Florida. Tiffany Razzano, the spirited and inspiring editor of the LGTBQ blog in the local alternative paper, “Creative Loafing,” organizes this occasional gathering for the gay writing community in the Tampa Bay area. It’s held in a small space called The L Train Theatre Lounge which serves as both a performance space and a wine and beer bar.

Readings are not among my favorite activities. For one thing, I can’t sit still that long. For another, they take a lot of preparation and exhaust me because of the emotional duress that accompanies getting in front of an audience. This reading was different. To tell the truth, they are all different because once I’m there, I meet other readers and writers and my world expands. Gay people are an incredibly diverse and talented bunch.

I met a woman who practices spoken word performance, something so far from my sphere of reference I had to ask for an explanation. I met another woman who has plans for a lesbian speed dating service. I met a PhD candidate who works in a new independent bookstore that, amazingly, opens at 6:30 a.m. And I listened to a singer called Cuba Luna whose throaty voice was thrilling.

As if those gifts weren’t enough, I turned a corner from a hallway into the performance space and came face to face with two friends from Nottingham, England. As I recall, I looked from one to the other literally gaping. What were the chances that I would finally agree to read on a night that they would be visiting in the vicinity. That they would stumble across a Tweet announcing the reading. That they would be willing to leave the beach and tackle the insane Tampa Bay traffic. That they would be in the front row with my sweetheart to cheer me on during the reading.

No way!

Way! This is just how we happened to find what we hope will be our retirement home in the Pacific Northwest. Not that we’re retiring anytime soon.

We’re simply never going to move again, so when we do retire, that’s where we’ll be living.

We were actually in Oregon to visit our friends the Handydyke and the Pianist. As we plann to move back there eventually, we stopped in to see my old realtor and she kindly printed out some places to look at, to get a sense of the market. The last place we checked was a manufactured home. My sweetheart had not gotten out of the car to walk around any of the other houses, but this time, maybe because it was the last, maybe because the stars were aligned just right, she did. Then she called me to join her.

She was looking at a distant view of the Pacific Ocean. I can’t begin to describe how far out of our price range a view of any ocean, river, lake or pond is for us. But there it was, gray-blue, wild, an unobstructed and unobstructable view from this hilltop house. As we peered in windows and walked the miniscule, miniscule grounds, the next door neighbor headed our way. Not to shoo us off the property, but with key in hand,  smiling, friendly, eager to let us inside. Afterward, we sped back to the realtor. 

The next morning we were at the mortgage office, applying. By that afternoon we had our insurance binder. Everyone was available just when we needed them. We are thinking positively that the lender will give us its blessings and we’ll be crossing the country soon. In the dead of winter, of course, leaving an unsold house behind us, but no matter how much I worry about such little details, by hook or by crook, that’s our hilltop house, that’s our future.

The UPS guy confirmed it for us this afternoon. Out of the blue, he delivered a package from our auctioneer friend. Last month, when a family member was going through a rough patch, we sent her a care package from a teddy bear company, with a bit of chocolate and the like. I hardly have to say that’s exactly what the auctioneer sent us on a whim, because the  bears reminded her of us.   

Just in case I had doubts, and despite my aversion to Facebook, I went to friend one of the incredible lesbians we met last night. On the top of her page was the word serendipity—and the definition: “Finding something good without looking for it.”

Copyright Lee Lynch 2012

September 2012

The Amazon Trail - Gaily Creaking

The Amazon Trail

Gaily Creaking

My next birthday is closing in on me. I barely remember the skinny, dark-haired kid I was. Back then I’d stay up all night playing and get to work at 5:00 A.M. Now, when I’m up late, it’s called insomnia and I take a pill for it. I used to catch boxes of groceries off a truck. Now I use a home shopping cart to wheel a half dozen of my sweetheart’s Diet Cokes from our garage to our kitchen.  I’ve had one knee replaced and the other one’s going. Something’s narrowed in my back, but if I do my exercises it doesn’t hurt too badly. What I’m learning is that while my time is running out, aging itself gobbles time like a Ms. Pac-Man.

                Suddenly my body needs all these little attentions it never needed before. What once was an annoying twinge in some joint has become my body’s demand to slow down.

Going to the beach to get a tan was an American way of life.  I see a dermatologist these days and am sent home with a pocketful of prescriptions for creams and ointments. My morning routine is becoming interminable as I armor myself to go out the door. Drops for dry eyes, gel for the mouth, cruel implements for the teeth. Medicine for the feet, for the tummy, for the mind. Liver supplements to counteract the medicines, more supplements for the bones, the muscles, the joints. Nasal sprays, pills and inhalers.

                I loved ice cream and French fries until they became the enemy, adding lethal bulk to my middle. The doctor wants me to count calories, which involves—heaven forbid—cooking.  After all that comes the exercise. The replaced knee needs exer-cycling. The back takes twenty minutes. The medical insurer is trying to pack me off to tai-chi.

                I finally understand why people need to retire. Who can work at a job with all these aging issues? There simply isn’t time enough in the day to get old.

                The republican convention was in town this week. I badly wanted to tie on my Occupy bandana and march like I used to. With the knees, the feet, the sun covering, the white hair, and sweating rivers from the heat—I’d look like a defeated soldier gimping along at the tail end. The final humiliation: my walking stick would be confiscated as a potential weapon. 

Or maybe I’ve just been lucky all these years. I never spent time applying makeup or perfumes. I didn’t sit for hours at hairdressers. Shopping for jeans and flannel shirts on sale didn’t take much time at all. Nor did I need to dress kids or bathe them or amuse them or attend teachers’ conferences. All those activities must prepare most adults to spend long periods of time taking care of themselves. I think I’ve led a Peter Pan existence, cramming writing into bits of time others devoted to trying on dresses and changing diapers.

Slowly, and everything seems slower except for dwindling time, I am devoting myself more and more to this self-care that threatens to swallow whole days. I’m at retirement age, but the Social Security payments and Medicare benefits I stashed away over the last 50 years, which the republicans are so greedily eying, are not sufficient to support a squirrel’s family, much less mine. Somehow, it’s necessary to find time in the day for all the responsibilities of a wage earner, a career writer and aging. There’s no pill for that.

On the other hand, surviving youth and making it to this point in late middle age are achievements not to be sneezed at. Age earns some privileges. The process of finding myself is done. I know much more about what I like and don’t like, who I want to be with and who to avoid. I had to chuckle when I found myself drawn to a painter I’d never paid attention to before, Eduard Vuillard. In my college years it seemed everyone was wild about Van Gogh, O’Keefe and Gaugin. Elizabeth Bishop and the Photorealists are more to my liking today. While I’ve never lost my taste for Bob Dylan’s work, happy or calming classical music is what I listen to. I’ve learned that tastes change.

My voice has deepened—not an altogether bad thing for a dyke—but I’m not as afraid to speak up. My hearing is slightly fuzzy when it comes to certain sounds, but I believe I listen better. Lesbians are told we’ll end up lonely in old age, but I’m about to celebrate five years with the love of my life. I’m creaking gaily along.

                Is there anything I don’t take a pill for? Why yes, loving a woman, which also keeps me young.

Copyright Lee Lynch 2012

The Amazon Trail - Butch Pockets

The Amazon Trail

Butch Pockets

Is it just me, or do all butches, soft or otherwise, carry alotta stuff in their pockets? My sweetheart has chronically empty pockets. I don’t understand how anyone can live that way. I guess I’m one of many dykes who took our Girl Scout motto to heart: I’m always prepared

            Here’s today’s (and every day’s) inventory. In my right front pocket: a Sante Fe Stoneworks pen knife with a superb Camillus blade. My sweetheart gave it to me to replace a similar lost knife. Next: a Fisher Space pen that opens to full size. It’s my everyday pen. My sweetheart gave me the same pen, in rainbow colors, for book signings. Next: spare keys. When I was single, I always carried an extra car and house key in case the Handy Dyke or the Pianist weren’t nearby when I locked myself out. Now that I’m married, they come in handy to rescue the femme of the house. On the key ring: a Cruiser flash drive for my works-in-progress and an intense, teensy flashlight. But most important is the handful of treats to reward our pup and make friends with every other dog I’m introduced to.

            In this butch’s left front pocket: a blue pillbox for headaches, allergy attacks, and the

agita I get when I’m missing any piece of my pocket arsenal. Also: a melon-flavored organic, vegan, GMO-free, cruelty-free lip balm for braving the elements. And last: my pocket rock, a blue agate from a west coast beach. Carrying it is my guarantee I will always get back home, but it’s slow-acting—we’ve been stuck in Florida for four years now.

            Back right pocket: a smart phone for e-mails at long traffic lights, finding the next iced tea stop, and texting with my cool young niece. Left back pocket: bandana; black paisley today. Color is of no significance whatsoever, so don’t try to make me out a hippie necrophiliac or something

            As a young dyke, I wouldn’t be caught without a cigarette lighter. Women, not all of them lesbians, tended to be completely wowed when that handy lighter proved I was at their service. If there were two or more of us little butches around, there would always be an unspoken contest to see who offered her lighter fastest. Now the penknife has replaced the lighter. If a woman needs a cutting edge, there’s a communal butch rush to provide one: penknife, jackknife, multi-tool. When I was in retail food, I went everywhere with a box cutter in my back pocket. Air travel prohibits this now, so I keep an inexpensive penknife in my checked luggage. Though the travel knife pales next to my prized Camillus, I’d feel sissified without something.

            Aging is not kind to pocket-geeks. Middle-aged spread makes me bulky enough without bulging pockets. I used to carry my wallet where my thin phone is now, but that threw my back out. We had lunch with a friend last weekend and she took out her phone. It had an extended battery like a little hunch on its back. I was wild with envy, but how would I carry it? My suavely slim phone slides in and out of a back pocket easily, but a more powerful battery would make for unpleasant sitting.  Our friend didn’t have that problem. Proudly femme, she carries a purse.

            So for these kinds of conundrums I have a pocket annex. It’s an “Uncle Milty’s Travel Vest” and it came with 17 pockets. It’s kind of hot for wearing in Florida, but the pocket rock will get us home soon. Besides, nobody, except one British firm, < thebutchclothingcompany.co.uk>,  designs clothing or accessories for butches. Yes, rainbow t-shirts and key fobs are readily available, but they’re uni-gender and uni-style and, while I’m proud of their message, they don’t solve any problems exclusive to butches. We get hand-me-down styles from men. Or tailored looks rejected by high femmes.

            It’s such a narrow line we butches walk. I do not in any way shape or form want to pass as a man. But if I want to wear a full tuxedo, I’ll be wearing one made for guys. When I wear Uncle Milty’s vest, passersby question my gender with their disapproving eyes. If I want to carry an adjunct pocket over my shoulder, I can choose between a ladies’ purse or one of those heavy, oversized carryalls with the unattractive name of man bags. As a matter of fact, I just looked for bandanas on Amazon because I want to get a few as a gift for a friend. What did I find? Bandanas modeled as hair scarves for women. And on Etsy, women, little girls and dogs are the models.

            But my pockets? I claim pockets as butch territory.

Copyright Lee Lynch 2012

Kyle's Bed & Breakfast

Rafferty Street

My book Rafferty Street is now available in electronic format.  I wonder if you could make mention of that, perhaps instead of a bio note. I’m including a blurb below and attaching the cover photo.

Thank you for considering this.

Lee Lynch

Lee Lynch’s novel Rafferty Street concludes her epic Morton River Valley Trilogy (Dusty’s Queen of Hearts Diner and Morton River Valley). In this stand-alone novel Annie Heaphy, beloved hero of Lynch’s classic Toothpick House, reunites with her old crowd. She loves her job driving people with disabilities to and from work – until being gay becomes an issue. Valley gays unite to defend her as she revels in love with the right, and wrong, women. Lynch’s warm, engaging prose deeply affects her readers as she tells her story - even more powerful today when civil rights for gays are still denied.

Now available in electronic format from Bold Strokes Books: <http://goo.gl/1a1Lz>.

Kyle's Bed & Breakfast

Kyle's Bed & Breakfast

Kyle's Bed & Breakfast

The Amazon Trail - What Gays Do…On Vacation

The Amazon Trail

What Gays Do…On Vacation

I love my uber-friendly dentist’s office.  They are totally moderne and pain-free in every way.  The doctor loads up his iPod with cool tunes and docks it in his sound system.  He could have a show on a west coast public radio station with his eclectic mix of rock, folk, blues and jazz.  The receptionist/scheduler looks like a pleasant straight church lady, and probably is, but she gushes with pleasantries and stories when I arrive.  It almost doesn’t hurt to give her my credit card.

This visit, she told me about her summer vacation. She and her husband planned to visit family back in Ohio, but she had an intuition, a funny feeling that something would go wrong.  She didn’t know if the car would break down, or an accident would happen. So she stayed home, caught up on house work and tackled overdo projects. Midway through the staycation, the day before the Fourth of July, she got a call from her mom.  The family had been without power for three days, the heat was killing them and the neighborhood was flooded by the line of storms we all read about in the news.  She was bubbly with excitement about dodging that bullet and enjoying her safe stay-at-home vacation.

The hygienist had not cancelled her trip to the mountains of North Carolina and reported that the temperature reached 111 degrees, hotter than home in Florida. Gosh, I thought, it’s too bad there aren’t het vacation meccas for them to enjoy. Of course, hets have the whole world to choose from, but my gay superiority complex knows that we get the best vacations.

I’m thinking of the long weekend my sweetheart and I just took up to Minneapolis. Well, not exactly the city, which I had hoped to see, but we were at the Golden Crown Literary Conference < goldencrown.org> and it was so exhilarating I was happy right where I was. Where else can you go on vacation to hang out with Jewelle Gomez, Ellen Hart, Lori Lake, K.G. McGregor, Susan Meagher, Karen Kallmaker, Elizabeth Sims, Lynne Ames and all sorts of other lesbian writers.  Not to mention passionate readers.  And we got to dance, go to a fifties sock hop, pay homage to one another and buy dyke books galore. The Doubletree by Hilton staff treated us like we were the biggest show in town plus they serve hot chocolate chip cookies on arrival—total seduction. It was a do-it-yourself lesbian vacation mecca.

In the fall we’ll take our other week and go to Provincetown.  It’s Women’s Week for us.  What’s to do in Ptown? Be ourselves! While lesbians have come a long way (like Bears, singles and gay families who each have their own week), there would be nothing comfortable about flaunting our gender preferences in Ohio or in North Carolina, where the non-gay voters don’t want to share the institution of marriage with us. Of course, by flaunting, I mean walking down the street arm in arm, gathering in rowdy groups at the Post Office or Lobster Pot restaurants; laughing ourselves silly at lesbian comedienne performances.

Heck, we’re so special, we even have our own jewelry and clothing to flaunt. Guaranteed, I’ll buy at least one item of rainbow clothing or an accessory. I’ll wear it all week, then put it in a drawer for the rest of the year because it’s not safe to display where I live. Next year I’ll forget to bring it and buy something new: a rainbow baseball cap, a rainbow car sticker, a rainbow t-shirt.  To tell the truth I’ve learned, after all these vacations, that it’s more sensible to buy a t-shirt from Womancrafts—they sell a different classy design every year—and to shop at the Human Rights Campaign store. I’m not afraid to wear their products even to the dentist’s office.

Which, by the way, is one of the few places around here I could wear them.  The hygienist, with a sharp instrument at my gums, had just confessed to being a Diet Coke addict. I gabbled that my partner was too and the hygienist laughed and said, “Oh, is she?” I’d plumb forgotten that I was out at the dentist’s office and that they treat me like they do everyone else. 

But only because they don’t know our summer vacations are better than theirs.

Copyright 2012 by Lee Lynch

Kyle's Bed & Breakfast

...Can't go into the pool because your gay...

A hot summer day, a swimming pool. A 2-year-old being told he can't go swimming because his dads are gay?


Will Trinkle and Juan Granados say they applied for a family membership at the Roanoke Athletic Club in Virginia, clearly listing themselves as same-sex partners with a 2-year-old son, Oliver. Will says he was encouraged to apply for a family plan by a club employee because only children on family plan memberships are allowed to use the club pool.

But Will says that just 9 days after his application was approved, a club employee called to tell him it was a mistake, that the club was revoking their membership because the state of Virginia doesn't consider Will, Juan and Oliver to be a "real" family.

Mark Lynn Ferguson is a Roanoke native, and he's outraged by this alleged discrimination against Will and Juan's family. That's why Mark started a petition on Change.org demanding that the Roanoke Athletic Club reinstate their membership and treat all families equally.

The Roanoke Athletic Club is owned by the Carilion Clinic, a company which owns and operates 150 hospitals and medical clinics in Virginia, serving over 1 million people. "If Carilion won't give unmarried couples access to a pool, how will it treat them at a hospital?" Mark asks.

Will Trinkle says that he was told by a Roanoke Athletic Club employee that "they were 'tightening policies' so no families like us would ever 'get as far' as we had." That's why Mark thinks it's so important to send Carilion's leaders a strong message right now, before policies are changed and more families face discrimination.

"Folks in Roanoke are good hearted and fair minded, so I was just horrified when I heard how Carilion treated this family," Mark says. Mark thinks that if enough people sign his petition, Carilion's leaders will see that people in Virginia and around America believe that all families deserve to be treated equally, married or unmarried, gay or straight.

Thanks for being a change-maker,
- Joe and the Change.org team
Start a petition

Kyle's Bed & Breakfast

The Amazon Trail - Dyke Caves

The Amazon Trail

Dyke Caves

My anger had nowhere to go. It was huge.  The headline that enraged me? “50 chief executives in finance saw their pay rise by an average of 20.4 percent.” Huh?

I scurried back into my dyke cave and plunged my brain into fiction.

I really dislike the term man cave. It creeps me out with images of unpleasant smells, hairy limbs and terrible hygiene. Then my sweetheart referred to “my” end of the couch as my dyke cave. Ick, was my fleeting reaction. I looked around.

Behind the couch was my special Verilux floor lamp. In front were two hassocks, the kind with storage, filled with books, maps, pens, paper cutters, scissors, rulers, book covers, newspapers, magazines, a heating pad, pet toys and brushes,  a good supply of index cards, an iPad, calculator, ear buds and ear plugs, magnifying glass, jackknife,  and more—all jumbled together.

The dog was on a pillow between us. A cat was curled up on one of the hassocks.  Mail and library books were on “my” side of the coffee table. Two favorite throws lined the back of the couch. I’m surprised there was room for my sweetheart, though it would be awful lonesome with her further than the reach of my arm. Yeah, I guess my setup could be called a cave without walls.

I need a cave. Maybe we all do. The Huffington Post went on to report, “Bonuses didn't fall nearly as much as anyone expected. And compensation at a number of major banks even approached record levels.”

Wait a minute. Did the bonus money trickle down? Did all the workers get a 20% raise or only those who were already earning half a million or more?   If there are enough funds to pay such a huge raise to the highest wage earners, why are they laying off so many employees while adding more work to those who are left?

Some of us are hoping to have enough money from Social Security to survive old age and there are plans for deep cuts. That bonus money? Maybe it’s going to the wrong people? Others are scraping by—or not—on disability payments, which also face deep cuts. Doesn’t someone who makes multiple millions in salary and then gets millions more for, maybe, increasing his (seldom her) company’s income feel kinda uncomfortable as they pump people into poverty?

Or maybe they didn’t notice all the job cuts in the financial sector—their own employees—and how they are now living high off the hog because they laid off or froze wage increases for loyal, productive, long-term employees whose paychecks wouldn’t cover the furniture in one room of a penthouse.

When I read the local paper in my tiny, cluttered dyke cave, I’m frightened by the increasing disparity between the superrich and the working stiffs. I wonder, what can I do? What can anyone do?

Occupy Wall Street has definitely had an impact. The Republican National Convention will be here in the Tampa Bay Area this August and the media turns to the local Occupy folks for information about the protests. Of course, the city of Tampa has declared certain natural protest areas to be completely out of bounds. The Republicans are claiming whole parks as their territory.  The papers are running front page stories about the strip clubs and other adult entertainment venues spiffing up for the upright, uptight conventioneers.

I simply can’t understand. Conservatives vote over and over to take away everything they can from the poor and the middle class. They vote to take less and less from the obscenely rich. They run on archaic moral platforms yet are not expected to disappoint the owners of local dens of iniquity.

Inequity, iniquity. Cave men; man caves.

I used to live in a city which greeted visitors with an enormous statue of a cave man right off the freeway. Every year there was a parade and the Cave Man Club float featured a rough-hewn cage. The “cave men” would go into the crowd with their “clubs” and, to wild cheering, grab women to drag into the cage. Huh?

I sense a direct relationship between that sort of behavior and the callousness of the modern man cave dwellers. I am so angry that the governor of Wisconsin is still in office. I am so angry that Karl Rove expects to buy the presidency with billions of dollars that are so needed elsewhere. I am so angry that the Supreme Court made that possible when it decided that corporations are people.

With the return of cave man mentality, perhaps it’s best to live simply and enjoy what we have. That may be the only insulation possible against greedy, uncaring, destructive powerfreaks. That, and our dyke caves.

Copyright Lee Lynch 2012

June 2012

Kyle's Bed & Breakfast

Kyle's Bed & Breakfast

The Amazon Trail - Thank you, President Obama

The Amazon Trail

Thank You, President Obama

         

         My week was looking like a trailer park after a tornado until the announcement came that the President of the United States supported marriage equality, also known as civil rights for gays. The day before, North Carolina had fallen into the hands of the morality pirates.  

          It had been the week that was. We were getting ready to try to sell our home, not an easy task in itself these days. Immediately, the house protested. Not only did it start having little issues here and there, but it sabotaged our efforts to fix what broke.

          The news that our president considered my sweetheart and me entitled to marry was vastly validating. It gave me hope that the people of North Carolina would see through the lies told on talk radio and FOX TV. It gave me strength to tackle our more commonplace difficulties. My sweetheart, close to hysterical laughter, listed these.

          Five HUNDRED and nine dollars to Stanley Steemer for leaving more stains on the floor than we had before they cleaned. Not to mention that cleaning the tiles did not include cleaning the grout between the tiles. That would cost hundreds more.

          A day after President Obama blessed our unions, I read that nearly three dozen congresspersons demanded that same gender weddings be included in the Democratic Party's platform. It reminded me how vilified our small Democratic party was for proposing the same thing and opposing the well-organized and very nasty homophobes of Southern Oregon back in the 1990s.

         Then came a two HUNDRED and nine dollar charge to “fix” a four-year old kitchen faucet that still imitates Niagara Falls every time we turn it on. Now the plumbing company wants us to pay another three HUNDRED to replace the fixture they didn’t fix. I began to suspect these service companies had business plans like Mitt Romney's: don't fix it, toss it and abandon the people.

          Our friend from North Carolina, who recently celebrated 25 years with her partner, wrote that after voting this week, she was so shaken that straight people presumed to vote away our rights, she had to sit in her car a long while before she could drive. Multiply her by every gay and progressive in the U.S. getting the news that the haters won, and we'd have national gridlock.

          Three HUNDRED and five dollars for an air conditioning unit we had serviced. The next week it started leaking all over our garage. Two service calls and many buckets of dripped water later and it's leaking again.  Did I mention that nothing in this house is over four years old?

          Back to the plumbing. My sweetheart, being a very competent femme, tried to fix the faucet herself. I looked at the problem and offered her my butch card. She watched repair videos. She talked to the faucet company. Our water bill crept up. She called the plumbing company and they agreed that, for what we paid them, they should redo the job for free. My sweetheart only asked that they send anyone but the initial service person, Steve. On the big day of our new appointment the doorbell rang and the man with the toolbox said, “Hi! I’m Steve!” We still don’t have a working kitchen sink, but no new bill because my sweetheart wouldn’t let him touch a thing. Including the toilet with the broken tube holder-in-place thingy.

          And then we heard that the Secret Service is broken. How could they be so careless while on assignment? We trust them with our leaders. With the President’s stand on marriage equality putting him in greater jeopardy than he already is as our first African American president and our heath care advocate, he is risking more ire from the right than any president in memory.

          When the Stanley Steemer guys came back out to clean up their mess, I mentioned that we kinda thought that for five hundred plus dollars, they might have moved the living room chairs, the lighter bookcases, maybe even the floor lamps...

The floor scrubber stuttered that if we’d asked them to move those items, they would have. I guess if we’d asked them to clean up their dirty puddles they might have done that too?

          As my sweetheart concluded: “$509 for splotchy floors; $200 for a faucet that still leaks; $305 for an AC unit the service guy broke—having the President of the United States say heck yes you should be able to marry – priceless!”

          Our snafus are nothing, however, compared to the way President Obama is now exposed. I’m worried about his safety. I hope the Secret Service and whatever other entities are responsible for protecting him have doubled up on security. The man has stuck his neck out for us big time. He deserves protectors of higher caliber than Steve the plumber and Stanley the floor scrubber.  

          Today we didn’t bother calling an electrician—my sweetheart fixed the light switch that broke. And we sent the money we would have spent on the electrician to the President’s re-election campaign.

Lee Lynch Copyright 2012

May 2012