For Frying Out Loud (8 page)

December 2007

WHERE ARE THE DYKES ON BIKES?

For too many years, when gay men and lesbians appeared on the nightly news, their lives were illustrated by woefully archaic film clips of seedy gay bars or semi-naked parade revelers.

Even through the late 1990s and early part of this century (gee, that sounds so, well, OLD!) it used to amaze me that journalists could yammer about pending employment legislation or “don't ask, don't tell” while showing film clips of drag queens in hot pink beehive hairdos and spiked heels. And of course, for variety they could always pull out film of police hovering in protective rubber gloves and riot gear.

The press is lazy. I know. I used to be in television. Producers used old file stuff, or B Roll in the industry vernacular, and ran with it, ad nauseum. Emphasis on nauseum.

But lo and behold, after a particularly vicious cycle of video images surrounding headlines about gays in the military, hate crimes, the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment and same-sex unions, television news has started to clean up its act.

We are now getting glimpses of actual, identifiable gay men and lesbians saying sensible things into the camera or being filmed in the (gasp) sunlight.

In fact, over the past few years, LGBT images have become more, dare I say, wholesome? With every passing day, TV news, interview shows and sitcoms feature the everyday lives of the not rich and not famous homosexuals.

Finally, television news images flash of gay men burping babies, mid-life lesbians in bridal lace and re-runs of those five fabulous gentlemen from
Queer Eye
giving grooming tips to disheveled straight guys. For a while, every time we turned on the tube we saw a gay and smiling Episcopal Bishop. It
was
a religious experience.

These days, the gay community makes it especially easy for the slothful media. Our most recent pride parades became
bona fide wedding marches. Dykes on Bikes morphed into Brides on Rides. The largest, most flamboyant contingents included Gay Men with Strollers and the Metropolitan Community Church. As for the police, they traded rubber gloves and billy clubs for rainbow flags waving from police car antennae.

Sure, there was still plenty of drag and drama, but the most astoundingly radical marchers included married same-sex couples – Ward and Ward Cleavers waving oversized marriage licenses. For once, PFLAG included fathers of the brides. It's about time our image improved and our gay community was recognized for its own everyday diversity. Yippee!

But wait. Does all this gay multiplicity wreck havoc with our traditional and I think, special gay culture? Our new TV image may, to borrow a well-worn phrase, “look like Gay America,” but does it now exclude the drag queen heroes and social renegades that gave rise to the Stonewall revolution? Have gay images been blended into a media food processor and come out as a middle – American smoothie?

There's no question that this homogenized version of the homo community is an image whose time has come. We exist in as many assorted, remarkable, dreary, wacko, and exhilarating subcultures as the straight community…we've got our fringe and they've got theirs. The only difference is that our fringe comes with lots of, well, fringe. And spangles. And leather. And softball players. And feathers.

While the very real images of everyday gays are critical to our ongoing legal battles for state by state equality, I hope they don't result in a disappearing act for our entire GLBT culture. As we fight for the right to marry, adopt, inherit and achieve the equality we are due as Americans, we should make certain that our vibrant community keeps its celebrated options open.

After all, there are plenty of gay men and lesbians who don't want to marry, raise a family, buy a minivan or be portrayed as (yawn) average. And there are LGBT folks who
do
want those things but who also enjoy standing along a parade
route cheering for buff disco bunnies and topless women on motorcycles. I remember a group of women from New England what called themselves The Moving Violations. Hah! Truly, there are many facets of gaydom and it's the mix that makes us special.

We cannot marginalize the fabulous drag queens and brave bull dykes who not only wrote our history but forged our path – cajoling, prying and booting the rest of us out of the closet.

Along with our fight for the inalienable right to life, liberty, partner benefits and the pursuit of happiness, we have to protect our inalienable right to rebellion and our very own special culture. It's our tradition, part of our heritage and our roots.

So for all the progress, I still sometimes long to turn on the TV and see a grainy shot of a half-nekked gal with a Harley between her legs. I hope the networks still humor us once in awhile.

January 2008

OH COME ALL YE FRUITCAKES

This holiday season took the cake (that which wasn't in my mouth) for the most calorie-laden, liquor guzzling, refluxinducing stretch of bad gustatory behavior I have ever been a party to. Or to a party. Dozens of them.

I'm not complaining. Rehoboth is such a geographically small spot and there are so many community events it's possible to enjoy several in a day.

Calculate a trio of buffets times two and a half weekend days, times four weekends in the season, and the magnitude of cookies, eggnog, red and green M&Ms, spiral hams, and Swedish meatballs I consumed is staggering. Don we now our big apparel.

In our house, the holidays started with Hanukkah Matzoh Balls and potato latkes to launch the December bloat period. Fast away the old gas passes, fa la la la la, la la la la. On Thanksgiving weekend we bought a recumbent exercise bike, vowing to start our regimen immediately to keep pace with Christmas cookies.

The first thing Bonnie did after plugging the thing into the wall was trip over it, breaking two toes. Exercise out, comfort food in.

As for me, I view exercise like drinking – not something to be done alone. Bring on the figgy pudding.

So there were cocktail parties, Wine tastings, Christmas dinners, and Harry & David goodies. See the grazing fool before us. Fa la la etc.

And of all the wretched holiday excess I subjected myself to this season, a pair of events, like my thighs, loom large.

One Sunday we enjoyed a fantastic brunch at a friend's home with Mimosas at noon, Mimosas and entrees at 3:30, and more Mimosas well into the evening. Following this alcohol marathon, I'm proud to report no hangover at all from the eight
hour champagne binge. I did however have a raging case of Acid Reflux from the f-ing orange juice. It's a sad commentary about aging.

A second memorable holiday event was the Apple Pie Throw Down. Not being a Food Network foodie, I figured we were going to throw apple pie down our throats, not unlike the rest of our seasonal meals.

Turns out a Throw Down is a pie baking contest. At a party of about 25 people, four contestants took the challenge. As someone not domestically partnered with a baker, I was included among the judges.

Lobbying us, Baker and the Sous Chefs performed a cheerleading routine. A second baker noted her rich familial history among pastry chefs. Still another bragged she hadn't baked a pie in two decades (would that be humble pie?). The fourth claimed home field advantage.

All to no avail, of course, as the pies had been whisked from their makers and labeled alphabetically for a blind taste test. Wine withstanding, some judges were blinder than others.

To universal shock and awe, the winner was the person who had not had her paws in pie dough since 1988 and whose culinary repertoire consists of assembling field greens. In fact, there was suggestion of a vast right wing conspiracy, finally debunked, suggesting grocery store collaboration.

Following the pie throwing came New Year's Eve (O'er the fields we go, eating all the way) and more gluttony. Should old intentions be forgot and never brought to mind? Just how many Tums can a person take without calcifying? 10? 9? 8? 7?

Happy New Year! Let's drink a cup of Maalox please and sing of Auld Lang Syne.

Bonnie and I resolved just about the same thing everyone else in town resolved: back to sensible food and drink consumption. For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn. We hope.

And our vow was strengthened last week when were up in Philadelphia. Leaving an appointment, we stepped in front of
a bank of elevators, pushed the DOWN button and waited. Soon, the wide doors opened to reveal several people already aboard. We stepped in.

As the doors closed, a booming recorded voice warned: “The elevator is now full.”

Now
THAT
was humiliating.

I'll get back to the stationary bike and lean cuisine after we get back from the cruise we are about to take. Of course, that's right before Valentine's Day, followed by the Chinese New Year buffet and then the Rehoboth Chocolate Festival and let's face it, I should really have my jaw wired shut. The only Throw Down I should enter is if it's my fork.

Well, the season of excess is over. Thumpety Thump Thump o'er the bills we go.

February 2008

ANCHORS AWEIGH, IT'S GAY

I do not work for Olivia (the all-women travel company) and this article is not being written at the behest of Olivia Cruises. In fact, it's an article I would have bet my Schnauzers I'd never write.

And that's because I was stupid.

All these years I wrongly thought that an all-gay cruise was great for red state closeted gals and others without the freedom to live like we do here in Gayberry RFD. Fun, yes, but Olivia cruises cost more than “regular” cruises to the same ports, since Olivia is the middle-womyn. I mega-stupidly dismissed it as a luxury I didn't need.

Wrong, The Earth is flat wrong. You can't put a man on the moon wrong. George Bush wrong.
That
wrong.

So why did I go? Fifty-two Rehoboth area women were already signed up and we got a last minute half-price deal, plus a discount for an obstructed view stateroom. “Do you mind a life boat blocking your view?” asked the sales rep. “Um, let's see, the ocean this way, and 1800 women are the other way. I can see the ocean at home.”

So from the minute I walked up the gangplank onto the gigunda ship docked in Ft. Lauderdale, I started learning just how criminally insane I had been.

With Men's Room signs covered with temporary letters marked Ladies, and the loudspeaker booming “Attention Women of Olivia,” the party commenced.

Mandatory life boat drill, Mai Tai cocktails, unpacking. Half the ship dined early and saw kd lang in the theatre, while the other half of us saw Margaret Cho first and dined afterward. Margaret Cho was hilarious but over-the-edge filthy. I don't know whether she would have been better before or after dinner. Both headliners dazzled and outshone the one entertainment I remember from a “regular” cruise – a man playing “Oklahoma” on a saw. No kidding.

On that first night, we celebrated Olivia's 35th Anniversary with a deck party. My eyes just drank it in – young hotties, older hotties, black, white, brown, abled, disabled, thin, not thin, singles, couples, drinkers, non-drinkers and a whole lotta Rehobos. I loved the music, laughing and sights – two women dancing in wheelchairs, lovers looking out to sea, partners rocking the dance floor, singles meeting and greeting, waaay gay waiters delivering Piña Coladas, inked and pierced dyklets holding hands and middle-aged mamas stealing Anne Murray kisses in the moonlight.

I don't know what hit me, but it was like walking into a ‘70s gay bar for the first time or seeing a hundred thousand revelers at my first pride march. Steeped in community, feeling freer than ever, I finally experienced what it must feel like to be straight in a straight world. On the Holland American Zuiderdam, radar was gaydar and the whole damn world was the L word.

The next morning, a day at sea, sealed the deal. Comics Kate Clinton and Karen Williams hosted a film about the 35 years of Olivia – not coincidentally, the history of the entire women's movement. We laughed, cheered, met the staff, heard from entertainers Cris Williamson and Holly Near, and applauded for Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer who took on the military after they asked and she told.

Bonnie, also a long-time skeptic, hopefully clutched her door prize ticket for the two-for-one cruises they would be giving away.

There were art auctions, spa treatments, hot tubs, casino madness, singles parties, couples massage, the requisite newly-wed, oldy-wed games, rainbow trivia in the lounge, barbecues on the deck and food, food, food, drink, drink, drink.

Sometimes we dined with our posse, sometimes with folks who started out as strangers. Every elevator ride, cluster of women in a shop, or folks in rows in front or behind us at the theatre provided “Where you from? What do you do?” opportunities.
Everybody smiled. Everybody had restless mouth syndrome.

While most of the fun took place on board, there were Caribbean ports.

Grand Turk is a small island with a lot of jewelry stores for tourists. But Bonnie convinced me to ride a dune buggy. I've been out of the closet over thirty years but that day I actually earned my dyke card. Bonnie (driving) and I (in my helmet and visor) took off speeding in the open frame buggy. Did I mention rain? We rode through puddles and ruts, getting splattered and speckled with clots of mud the size of chicken fingers. After two hours I looked like a Jackson Pollock canvas.

In Tortola we took a ferry to another island, Virgin Gorda, where we went swimming amid glorious boulders, caves, and rock formations. The surf was so rough (how rough was it?) that on my first foray into the ocean I got sucked up and surfed back onto the beach at 50 mph, flat on my ass. Of course, being a lesbian group, girls came shouting. “I'm a nurse! I'm a nurse, I'm a nurse!”

None needed. Even the injured pride was fun. And the water was paint chip blue.

We sampled legendary Pain Killer shots at Pusser's Saloon with a couple of young gals we met, for an evening of splendid cross-generational story swapping. Luckily, the ship's crew lined the way back to the boat, so we didn't stagger off the pier.

What would a gay cruise be without a theme night? Prior to launch our Rehoboth contingent learned of the Mad Hatter Party. Okay, we'd all need matching hats with a Rehoboth-like theme and which packed easily. One of us found perfectly silly, flat-packable fish hats. We also had matching t-shirts announcing Women of Rehoboth on the front and “what happens on the cruise, stays on the cruise” on the back. While I am telling tales here, my lips are sealed with the really juicy stuff.

Suffice it to say, that the 1746 other women on the boat took notice of the women of Rehoboth and they all now know of the fantastic gay resort on the Delaware coast. We posed for a
group photo out on deck one evening and did a 54-woman strong fish-hatted conga line in the disco on Mad Hatter Night.

I hated to dock back in Florida. We had a wonderful, wonderful time. We would have gotten our money's worth at more than twice the price. Olivia is in the hospitality business and they do it well. So there. I was so very wrong.

And if you call Olivia and book a cruise, be sure to bring Visine. There's only so much eye candy you can take without back up.