I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight (18 page)

This "them" shit has got to go. I really feel sorry for the population of Rhea County. Their ignorance, prejudice and hatred is merely a symptom of the ignancy epidemic that is sweeping the nation. It's
the plague all over again, but this time it's personal. What are they planning to do to rid the community of "them"? Or will they accept them, as long as they stay in the closet, get into false and unfulfilling marriages, have confused and broken families but maintain gender identity consistent with the social expectations of the status quo? Perhaps they would be begrudgingly tolerated if they gave terrific facials, but did wrist exercises to keep them from bothering the locals. Could you imagine if the situation were reversed? "I don't mind heterosexuals as long as they act gay in public."

who's a hypocrite?

I
heard about an article that was published in some newspaper that said that Madonna, Megan Mullally and me, being gay icons, are hypocrites because we be married, and that we have no credibility when we talk about how it's wrong that gay marriage isn't acknowledged by the government. I didn't read that shit. I gots mad ADD, for real, though. Plus, I got a reading disability. I'd rather write than read, talk than listen, which keeps me from reading that bullshit. Anyway, even though I don't exactly know what was said, I get the drift. Motherfucker, I told you I was a hypocrite. I don't give a shit. All you were doing was saying, "You know what? You can breathe air." I'm a hypocrite from way back. I took the Hippocratic oath with my fingers
crossed. State the obvious, if you want, nobody cares except for you and your mama.

But don't step up to me and say that I'm not able to speak out for the GLBT community, my queer family, to fight for equality for all, to point out the injustice in the world we live in, the demoralizing reality that the people we "voted" into office are telling us we are the same as perverts, bigamists, pedophiles, that I don't have the right to "soldier on" for the cause because I am not gay, because I'm married. I got married so I could
steal
the right that my GLBT brothers and sisters are denied. That's what I am: a gangsta. Why not? Fuck it. I will protest, call for justice, scream out my rage at this travesty, that we must pay taxes in a country that does not count us as human beings, that tells us don't ask, don't tell about our sexuality when we are willing to enlist in an army that would never win anything were it not for lesbians being on our side—and take what is rightly mine in the first place.

I love my husband, but my pager is blowing up with girls that are dying for me to come over and eat their pussy. HOW YOU LIKE ME NOW????!!!!! Ladies like to call me Daddy, and it's not because I had anything to do with their childhood.

I am not Madonna, nor am I Megan Mullally. They are famous, and out of my league. The only person that shit you wrote hurts is me. Madonna is in a different universe, otherworldly and untouchable. Madonna is like God, but she does yoga. Megan Mullally is on TV several times a day and makes more money than I am ever going to see. She and Madonna do an incredible amount for the GLBT
community, and their achievements are never going to be diminished by what some newspaper says. Their "Fame! I'm gonna live forever" buys them the power to influence society, and you can thank God (Madonna) for that. But they are celebrities who appear in magazines that don't have me in them, that never have anything about me in them, that think that I'm Lucy Liu, if I get photographed by accident. I am not famous. I just fucking work like a dog, live like everyone else, never have had a bodyguard or a personal shopper. I'm accessible to anyone and everyone. I ride the subway and eat at McDonald's. And I fucking do some work. The stuff I do, calling up gay teenagers to see how they livin', writing trannie kids to help them from feeling alone, hanging with little boys who know they are girls inside and who want to kill themselves, because it's hard to be that way when you live in the here and now—and they just might if they didn't have me around—is not high profile, doesn't attract the paparazzi, because real life isn't pretty, and neither am I. We're not pretty. We're fucking beautiful.

Lumping me with Madonna and Megan just makes me look like a shithead, which I am, but I don't like it when some newspaper says it. Other people can say it, but I don't like it when it comes from an even bigger shithead. Actually, it's sort of a shithead contest, because I don't even know what paper it was in or who wrote it or even what was written, so I think I win at being the biggest shithead of all.

Yeah, I won!

Why do I work intensely for the queer community—protest, demonstrate, endure being called a hypocrite, not give a shit and keep going like the Energizer Bunny?

Because love is love. Love is love. Love is love. Love is love. Motherfucker.

I have paintings in my bedroom, painted by a man I love more than anyone, a gay man, who depicted the death, the unfathomable loss, the cost of AIDS and homophobia and hatred, the most expensive cruelty, the debt that will never be repaid, the pain stretched out on canvas for all to see, the unbelievable tragedy he endured during the '70s and '80s that he couldn't even talk about, he could only paint it, because if you put words to it, that beat will fuck you up, and you will never dance again. I sleep underneath these works of art, beautiful not only because they are true, they are also born from grief that radiates fresh and hard from them even a quarter of a century later. They are the first things I see when I wake, the last thing I see before I go to sleep. I will never forget what unjust acts I witnessed as a child, against men and women who chose to be themselves. Who chose to love. Who loved. Who fucking loved. Their blood remains indelible, and even though it is not my own fucking personal blood I still feel the pain of the cut. And it hurts. Nobody will know how much it hurts me. A lot. That is all I can say.

I have hate, so much of it in me.

I roll with my girls down the street, with the windows down all the way, blasting Tupac, and I cry my eyes out at the loss of him. He says "faggot" and "bitch" and "ho" and all the shit that is supposed to piss me off, but I don't care because I don't hear that. All I get is his velvety sweet angel voice, now silent, spittin' gorgeous genius rhymes about racism, rage, sadness, the thug life that claimed so many lives of
those he loved, and that eventually claimed him—ironically, not by the foes he had in the street but by the forces in the music industry that made him an icon.

I wear a gold pendant on a long chain of the patron saint of border crossing. I respect him and so I do not say his name, I just give him my heart and strength. I am not an immigrant. I was born here, and I don't speak Spanish. But when I think about how these innocent people die of thirst or exposure or police brutality, get killed trying to get over here, who pray to this saint hoping they will live to see America, I bow my head in silence with them. The pendant hangs heavy on my neck, as I try to mentally send those border crossers water, blankets and hope, to protect them from hundreds of miles away. I don't know if that shit works. I just want it to. Sometimes, I think that it does.

I have so much hate that it has turned into love.

What is so wrong with that newspaper article that I didn't read is that it divides a community that is already so divided it needs the division symbol. SHOW YOUR WORK!!!!! You need an extra sheet of paper, fool????!!! This type of journalism and finger pointing is straight-up cannibalism, and it's what's going to keep the right wing powerful. While we ate ourselves from the inside out and rotted like a cancer, Bush prepared for his next term in office. Hadn't he done enough? Weren't we fucked up enough already? Why were we asking for four more years of punishment? So that we can have our spokesperson be "not too hot, not too cold, but just right"? Fuck that Goldilocks shit. And that's not a racist slur. This need of liberals for
"specificity" and "political correctness" is going to turn this country into a totalitarian regime. That we offend one another so easily is the worst crime we commit against ourselves. Let it go. Let the bullshit go for now and we'll fight over it later—
after
we win a fucking election. What the fuck is wrong? Fuck it. There are parts of the conservative party that despise the other parts, fucking hate them more than we hate each other, yet they stand together, because they know it is the only way for them to win. The religious right is banded together with groups that sicken one another, that believe everyone but them is going to hell, that carry antibacterial gels with them whenever they have to shake hands, but they are united because they know that the only chance they have to take over the government is if they play Red Rover. Doesn't it make you mad that they are fucking smarter than we are? Doesn't it make you hate so much that it turns into love?

I'm not that smart. I got no attention span, never got an education. I am not real familiar with religion. I've read the Bible, but forgot most of it. Don't know much about, well, knowledge, but I'm sincere. Like Elvis Costello, my aim is true. When I say that we have to learn to love one another, I really believe it. I back my words with my sincerity, my whole heart. If I ever meet you, the person who wrote that fucked-up article that I didn't read, I'm going to hug you, because, no matter what, you are my people and I love you. I might smack you, but I still love you.

WHAT WOULD BOWIE DO?

"strange, there's so much religion in the world, but only enough to make us fight over who is right, not enough to make us love one another,"

B
lessed are the meek
, for they shall inherit the earth."

So if we play our consensually agreed-upon societal roles, deny our voice and acquiesce to a kind of resigned powerlessness, let the powerful have their way, support the exploitation of our rights and raise no voice in opposition, then we, the meek, shall inherit the world.

Then, by default, since the powers that be no longer have to be concerned with the meek, they can strike out against one another, and violently self-destruct, leaving us with an empty shell of a world, bombed out, like a burned-out house with broken windows about to collapse in on itself. What kind of inheritance is that? It's a pitiful dowry, a worthless and dusty heirloom that nobody wants. What good does it do to inherit the earth when the earth is no longer worth inheriting?

The hotly argued Bible is inconsistent, and Holy Scripture has been invoked in a number of ways to affect the political landscape,
co-opting the Word of God as a kind of propaganda. I believe "Blessed are the meek" has been used to silence the voices of the meek, the outsiders, the visionaries, who don't have the strength to come forward with their new ideas. The verse calms the masses; lets them think that since they're meek, they'll indeed inherit the earth, because Jesus told them so; lets them calmly believe that they need do nothing; lets them watch their reality shows in peace.

But I don't believe that is what Jesus meant. The meek will inherit the earth, but not because of their inherent meekness; it's because they've been persecuted and struck down for so long that they've had to defend themselves, they forfeit their meekness and become accidental warriors in the process. The meek are ready to become the new army of the world. And even though they'll be at odds with themselves over not wishing to see blood in the streets, they'll be quick to fight and get it over with, to ensure as few lives as possible are lost. The meek must become the brutal forces they despise in order to inherit what is rightly theirs.

We shall inherit the earth, because the Bible tells us so.

S
trange, there's so much religion in the world, but only enough to make us fight over who is right, not enough to make us love one another.

M
any years ago, in a galaxy far, far away, my grandfather was converted to Christianity. He decided to open his home to refugee children,
and to dedicate his life and everything in it to God. My father's family became like a Pacific Rim version of the DeBolts. Remember them? Remember why they had nineteen children? Because they wanted to help everybody. That's what my family was about. I know that my father truly resented my grandfather for adopting all those kids, and our family reunions are on the unmanageable side.