Journal
Years ago, I saw a play where one woman told another, “I can’t stand these young women who say their names like there’s a question mark at the end. Like they aren’t quite sure their name IS their name. Maybe it isn’t?” I stressed about that for ages. I told every woman I knew about it. And most of them did what I had. Stood there struck by the dialogue. Retracing every time they’d...
Read MoreWhen you were 44, you fell in love with the young woman you had been. The one that used to embarrass you with her earnestness, her certainty. Do you still remember the day that you woke on the beach in Kaneohe with your head in the lap of another girl, and her tears falling on your face? Her tears woke you. The sun had dragged the top of its head over the horizon, and...
Read MoreI have one rule: don’t post when you’re mad. This is one of those times when my rule doesn’t matter. It’s Pride month. And the celebration is hard-won. The glorious riot of people who’d had enough of indignity and cruelty. We are a community that celebrates the families we have made, and the truth we tell, despite the danger inherent in telling the truth. In being disobedient to the dominant culture. You don’t have...
Read MoreI knew I was gay when I was five. In my family, it was the worst thing you could be. My dad called it the dark place. At the same time, he liked that I was good at sports, thought it was hilarious that I was constantly mistaken for a boy, and actively encouraged me not to be feminine in any way. He raised me like a boy. It felt like a fracture in...
Read MoreNine years later, I’m still a fixer in recovery. For me, the most difficult thing is that I am paid in my professional life to fix all the things. To manage literal millions of dollars a year and abide by all the variable state and federal mandates. I’ve told you before that I’m a Faux Chaos Muppet. Or, as my wife said when we were first dating, “Don’t let her front like she’s chill...
Read MoreI got uveitis for Christmas. My optometrist described it as a charley horse in your eye. But it’s worse than that. Your eye burns red. Your vision is blurred day in and day out. There is radiant pain throughout your sinus and eye socket. Light hurts you. Sunlight is terrible, but indoor lights are worse. And, in my case, my eye became so inflamed that my lens got stuck, and my pupil disfigured. My...
Read More1. When were you safe in your relationship? A rubber tree cloaked us from the shoreline. Her bikini soaked into mine as she straddled me. I remember her hair in my mouth. The heat glimmered. That summer that I skipped nearly every mandatory basketball practice. That summer that I slipped down two flights of stairs at 1 a.m. to meet her in parking lots all over Honolulu. She’d pull my tampon out to fuck...
Read MoreIn February, I tore the attachment between my hamstring and calf. In April, the outer toes on my left foot started to go numb on long walks. The nerve was compromised. In June, I aggravated the tendons in my foot and was sent, at last, to physical therapy. Physical therapy taught me that I have terrible balance. My strengthening exercises involve standing on my injured foot and shifting my weight here and there. Slow...
Read MoreWe’d lost count of the bars. Nine? Thirteen? It was impossible to say. At first we had a pint per pub, but then there were shots. And now mayhem. I’d piggy-backed a man who had run shirtless through a parking lot, and dumped both of us onto the highway. We had bicycles somewhere. Hopefully nearby. Our numbers multiplied through the night. Where had all these people come from? I bled from road rash on...
Read MoreThe horizon filled steadily with smoke, and I put my arm around your shoulders and walked into the afternoon with something akin to joy. You, my best running mate. My most diabolical partner. Nobody. Anywhere. Stands a chance against us. Seven years. You tell the most terrible puns. Leave laundry wet in the dryer for days on end. Drop shoes in walkways. Leave tap water running. Seven years of risotto and coffee. Of riotous...
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