It’s been 60 years since the founding of The Mattachine Society.
It’s been 41 years since Stonewall.
It’s been 36 years since the publication of The Front Runner.
It’s been 31 years since years since I marched in my first Gay Pride Parade.
It’s been 30 years since I volunteered at Gay Horizons in Chicago.
It’s been 36 years since I committed myself to a psychiatric hospital rather than go to school and face bullies.
It’s been 36 years since I tried to commit suicide because I was Gay and couldn’t deal with the bullying.
I know that progress has been made.
Enough? Not when kids think suicide is the best choice.
Yesterday, I managed to leave my apartment for the first time since Thursday. It’s too hot out, I’m feeling unmotivated, I’m tired, but mostly, I’m a little lost. I want to call my mother and say hello and tell her about the French movie I saw this week that made me cry (Time To Leave, with Melvin Poupaud). While there was never a time when I spoke to her every day, there was also never I time when I knew I couldn’t. And now I can’t.
On June 22nd, my mother passed away. She was 81, so I knew the call would come sooner or later, but she had only gone into the hospital the previous Thursday. The diagnosis of lung cancer hadn’t even been confirmed yet. By the 21st, she was already fading fast. I saw her on Monday evening at about 9pm, and she was gone 4 hours later. I don’t think we are ever truly prepared for a parent’s death, but how can we possibly begin to prepare in only 4 days?
This weekend, I saw one of the top 5 movies of the year – Milk, starring Sean Penn. How I wish this movie had been released prior to the passage of California’s Prop 8. It seems incredible to me that 3 years after defeating Prop 6, we have moved so far back in terms of Gay rights. As a few brave states move toward legalizing Gay marriage (why is it called gay marriage – why isn’t it just marriage? Never mind, I know the answer to that), many states are moving to constitutionalize bigotry and hate. I have some questions to ask for whoever finds this blog:
1. if someone African-American reads this, can you say “miscegenation”? It wasn’t all that long ago that interracial marriages were illegal. Why aren’t more African-Americans fighting for Gay marriage?
2. Where is the next Harvey Milk? I’ve been out for 31 years (yikes! I am a tired old queen!); I can’t name a single national Gay Rights leader since him.
3. Where is Cleve Jones? And why isn’t he a national leader? He was directly involved with Harvey Milk, and founded the Names Project. Where is he?
4. Has the Gay community become so complacent because of what we’ve accomplished that we no longer have the courage to fight for what we haven’t?
I have to say that I shoulder some of the burden myself. The last time I went to a political meeting was in the last 70s, when I was 19. And frankly, that was to meet men. In the last 30 years, I can honestly say that the only overtly political action I’ve taken has been to protest proposed cuts in HASA in New York City last year. I vote, but that’s about it. So what, besides a movie that Hollywood has been talking about making for 20n years but was too chicken to actually make, has spurred me to write this? An Ecuadorian immigrant died this week, after being attacked while wlking in Brooklyn arm and arm with another man. While he was being beaten, the attackers were yelling anti-Gay and anti-Hispanic slurs. I hope the story is getting national press. The ironic thing is he was straight
I had a biopsy this week. I’ve developed lumps in both forearms under the skin, some of which have been painful. I thought originally that they might be blood clots as I have a history of deep vein thrombosis. I had an ultrasound in January, and the technician who performed it showed me on the screen that it wasn’t in fact clots, but enlarged lymph nodes. I, of course, went home and googled, and read up on lymphoma, and, of course, panicked at the thought of cancer. My surgeon tried to be reassuring and told me he thought it was lipoma, which for some reason, I didn’t google until Wednesday morning just before the procedure. So it could be lymphoma, which is cancer, or it could be lipoma, which is a benign tumor. Somehow, the word tumor doesn’t reassure me as much as the surgeon seemed to think it would.
I just read to great books by two of my fave authors. Last night, I finished Duma Key by Stephen King. I think it’s as good as any of his best. I rank it as equal to Bag of Bones, and just about as good as The Stand (the best book of its genre ever written). And just before that I read Stephen R Donaldson’s Fatal Revenant, the latest Thomas Covenant book. I adore fantasy novels and Donaldson is my favorite author in that genre.
This past summer’s Oley conference took place on Cape Cod. I haven’t seen many places quite that beautiful. My sister couldn’t go, unfortunately, but she rented a car for me, and I drove all over the Cape. I even drove to Provincetown (Gay mecca of New England). I didn’t get to the gay beach, but I did get to the beach downtown.
I also took a dune buggy ride, which was great.
This June, it’s in San Diego. I hope the fleet’s in.
Well, I’ve made the move to WordPress (following in the footsteps of La Cieca, from Parterre Box). I’m still trying to figure out how to import an older blog from Blogger, which has a lote of my back story.
