Treating Myself

Today was a day of doing good things for myself. I feel good about that.

First I went to my doctor for an appointment that was long overdue. I am now on my way to solving a medical issue that has been bothering me for some time.
Then I took a pleasant stroll through the quirky and lovable Japantown Mall on the way home, and treated myself to lunch at Isobune (translation: "canal boat"), the original sushi boat restaurant. The sushi floats past you, downstream, and you have to catch it before it's gone. I had forgotten how good their sushi is, and what a treat it is to eat there.
I stopped at the ice cream parlor on the way out for a scoop of Green Tea Ice Cream, and sat in the Peace Plaza eating it and watching the happy people go by.
It struck me just how long it's been since I've wandered through Japantown... something I used to do all the time when I first moved to San Francisco. I was reminded of my wonderful ex, Dr. Robot, who was in love with that place and all things quirky & Japanese. It was she who took me to my first sushi restaurant years and years ago.
On the bus ride home, I spotted a really high-quality dress dummy & stand sitting on the sidewalk a few blocks from my penthouse. So I pulled the cord, got off the bus immediately, grabbed the dummy and carried it home. It's beautiful, it's adjustable, it's French, and it's in perfect condition. In the old days, it's the kind of thing I would have given to W as a gift, to see her face light up: "Look what I found for you, sweetie"! But those days are gone, and I'm keeping it as a treat to myself. Fuck her. I dressed the form up in my newest fuchsia stretchy club dress. It fits like a charm. I have ideas of using this beautiful thing to finally learn how to sew!

Podcasting

I have seen the future and it is this:
Podcasting gives voice to amateurs
Homespun shows find big audience
I want to start Podcasting through this blog soon. I already have all the tools. Watch this space for my words spoken in my own voice!

What This Blog Is And Isn't

It may appear, based on the dates, that I have been writing in this blog for months.
That is actually not the case.
I actually created this blog just a few days ago, uploading some things I had written over the last several months, and backdating them. I'll be adding to those archives as time goes on.
The main purpose of this blog is to post things I have written (letters, eulogies, etc...) that are meaningful to me, and for me to explore new ideas and thoughts based on things I see, read and learn about world around me.
This is not going to be a daily diary of what's happening in my interpersonal relationships. I don't intend to write much about the people in my life, and I certainly don't want to use this as a space to either "trash" people I know, or to talk about their personal business without their knowledge. If I do mention specific friends, my promise is that I will keep the tone positive, and I will never write about anyone without first informing them. Plus...if someone requests that I not write about them, I will respect their wishes.
There is one big exception to these rules, however: I feel no qualms writing about one specific person, W, only because she has continually violated my requests not to write about me in her own blog. Some of what you see written here is my response and defense against her, and my method of processing and healing from my painful dealings with her. Those particular posts are a helpful form of therapy.
One more thing... everyone is allowed to comment here, whether they love me or hate me, and everyone is welcome to read my blog.

Healing (World According to Garp II)

Garp's mother was a nurse, and so there's a whole thread of healing that runs through her life. All the women who hang around her estate are there because they're healing wounds in some way... whether they're rape victims, transsexuals, or what have you. It's like an outpatient hospital for the emotionally damaged.

Garp and his wife, Helen, are in a bad car crash that's caused partially because she was having an affair with one of her students (long story). One of their sons is killed, the other loses an eye.
Garp and Helen are both damaged physically and emotionally. They recover at the mother's estate. Garp just can't let it go, so he doesn't speak to Helen and continues to do mean things to her (I'm sad to say this sounds familiar).
Here's the dialogue:

After Garp tries to slam Helen's hands in a piano:
Helen speaking to Garp: “What the hell’s a matter with you? You think you’re the only one around here with a broken heart? Is that what you think? Well you’re not. Look around you. This house is full of them. And mine is one.”

Garp walking on the beach with his mother:
Mother speaking to Garp: “I’ll tell you honestly son. I think you’ve been behaving very badly. I’ve been watching you and I’ve been talking to Helen. What happened happened. Your blaming her isn’t going to change that. She’s hurt and you’re hurt. And you just keep pouring salt on the wounds. That’s no way for the son of a nurse to behave. Heal yourself, dammit! And help her heal herself, before it’s too late for both of you.”

I need to heal myself.

The World According to Garp

I watched this in bed tonight with Litttle Girl. What an excellent movie. I can't believe it's been since high school that I've seen it. I "get it" a lot more now. It makes me want to go out and read the book.

Lots of stuff to think about radical feminism, gender studies, sexuality, mother-son relations, transgenderism and emotional healing in this movie.
I remember my mother taking me to a sneak preview of this movie at SMU when I was 9 years old and in third grade. But we walked out not too long into it, because she felt there was too much sex in it. She complained about actors (Robin Williams) who made adult-audience films after making kids films (his first was Popeye). I guess she had thought that with Robin Williams in it that it would be a kid-friendly comedy or something.
I remember being fascinated with the transsexual character Roberta, played by John Lithgow. Looking back now, it turns out the role won him a best supporting actor nomination. And now that I've met plenty of trans-women, I can see that Lithgow played the role so spot-on perfect. I've met middle-aged trannies just like her! He must have done his research well.

The World According... is the story of T.S. Garp, raised by an overprotective mother who wanted a child but didn't want a man in her life (hmmm... sound familiar???), so she sleeps with a dying WWII solder who's in a coma in order to get pregnant. Other than this one instance, she's very anti-sex and anti-lust, and views these as "male weaknesses" which men project onto women and women internalize. Garp is an aspiring writer who does a lot of daydreaming (sound familiar again?). But he ends up back in his mother's shadow when a publisher prints her autobiography, and it becomes a lightening-rod political manifesto of the feminist movement, a runaway best-seller, and huge crowds of women come out to hear her speak.
One thing that always struck me in the movie was the uneasy relationship Garp had with some of the radical feminists who surrounded his mother. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how much sympathy he had for the women's movement, no matter that he was her son, he was still a man, and therefore a suspect, outsider or enemy in their eyes.
Somehow, I'm reminded of Janice Raymond's ugly book "The Transsexual Empire", also from this period (the 70's), which basically accused all transsexuals of being fetishistic men who wanted to invade women's space and dominate it from within. It urged feminists to be suspicious of transsexuals and exclude them from women's space. The book was taken quite seriously for a while, and it's long-term effects can even be felt in some circles today such as the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. My feeling is that that book created unncessary divisivness and damage and hurt people for no reason.
The problem is that there's no room for fluidity in these world views. There's no room for nuance, for genderqueer, for anything outside binary gender, or even for differences in upbringing. There's only unchanging men and unchanging women, locked in battle, and both are painted with broad, garish brush strokes.
Examining my own feelings... even when I id'd as male, I always felt a lot of solidarity with women, and I used to feel guilt over having male privledge. I also used to feel guilt over pornography, because I bought into the argument that all pornography degrades women. This was back around my college days. Thank god I have a more a balanced world view now, in a sex-positive gender-fluid subculture, where I don't feel guilty about being myself.

Eulogy for my Grandfather

This is the eulogy I read at my grandfather's funeral service this evening.
My participation was kind of spontaneous - I woke up inspired in the middle of the night Friday, and wrote the whole thing in one sitting from about 2am-4am. It just poured out of me. I figured no one else was going to read one, so I took ownership.
I purposely tried to include my grandmother as much as possible, because the eulogy at her funeral was so terrible - the priest didn't know her and could barely speak English. I did not want a repeat of that, and I felt this was my opportunity to correct that, and add something personal and emotional to the funeral service.
Our family alternately laughed and cried. I feel proud of my words.

R.O.H. was born in Stuttgart, Germany in the spring of 1913… April 4th, to be exact.
If you stop to think about it... that’s a heck of a long time ago.
As a young child in the 1970’s, my grandparents seemed like ancient unchanging creatures, with fascinating stories stretching back in time, through the Eisenhower Era, World War Two, the Depression, and even World War One.
My mother and I moved in with my grandparents when I was 4 years old, and I got to hear a lot of those stories over the years. And now, 20-something years later, I have quite a few stories of my own… about them.
I grew up calling them M. and G.
And growing up in the 80’s, I’ve always tended to associate my grandparents with Ronald Reagan and Johnny Carson. They were both card-carrying Republicans, and I can’t even begin to count the number of times they fell asleep in front of the TV set, after making it through most, but hardly ever all, of the Tonight Show. Earlier in the evening, M. would have fixed them both hi-balls… a small but potent mixture of bourbon and sprite. She would stir them together with her finger. As a child, I asked for a sip once or twice to see what it tasted like. My 8-year old taste buds gave it the “thumbs down”.
During most of this era, Granddaddy was what he liked to call “semi-retired”, which I think means that he was done with working full-time, but he and Mema still enjoyed the old routine of having him out of the house.
He would come home from work at the end of the day, sometimes collecting stray golf balls from the front yard on his way inside.
On certain warm days, he would take me for sunset walks through the golf course across the street. There was a creek that ran across the course diagonally, and we would follow the water upstream to its source. And on a few magical June nights, once a year, there would be a grove of lightening-bugs halfway along the trail, and you could stand there surrounded by hundreds of small blinking lights… on and off, on and off. It was amazing.
On those nights, M. would have dinner ready for us when we got home, after a long day of hanging laundry in the back yard, sewing, and washing clothes.
Many would agree that, like many couples of their generation, it was really the dutiful wife who secretly ran the show behind the scenes, and did the lion’s share of keeping the household in order.
But they did a lot of things together. No matter what project he took on, she was always there assisting him and sometimes even taking over and doing it herself, regardless of whether it was fixing things, mowing the yard, or gardening – she loved her rose bushes.
And they used to do fun things together as well… cruises, trips to Europe, weekends in the Ozarks, swimming in the back yard pool, going to Cowboys games together, and the horse races. They loved to tell the story about how a certain horse nodded its head at M.. So she placed a bet on it… and she won big.

M. and G. didn’t really believe in ghosts or spirits or the supernatural or even in more scientifically provable things like… evolution. But G. did believe in the power of miracles. Many of us have probably heard the story of how he believed God cured his kidney stones one day while he was sitting in church praying. He loved to tell that story later in life. When it came to religion, he had a quintessentially German attitude toward following all the mundane rules and the regulations of the church, sometimes to a fault… but there was also a side of him that believed in the transcendent power of prayer and miracles.

Just like any couple, M. and G. did their fair share of bickering and arguing, much like an old broken record, but behind it all was a life-long love affair. There are other people here who are more qualified to tell you the story of how they met… I wasn’t there. But I do know that they dearly loved each other. And they shared their love with their two children, six grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren, as well as their siblings, nieces, nephews, cousins and friends. And I know that G. never got over M’s death a few years ago. He talked about her to both friends and strangers during these last few years… sometimes smiling; sometimes on the verge of tears. She was a very special woman. And she was very special to him.
I know that he wanted to be with her again. And now I believe they “are” together again.
And maybe, just maybe, Johnny Carson is up there with them too, giving them a joke monologue live and in person each night.
Hopefully, they’re staying awake through the show this time.

My Grandfather Died

I got a phone call this afternoon from my mother that my grandfather had just died.
It was very shocking, as he had not been in the hospital or sick. Granted he was 91, going on 92, but his doctors made it sound like he had years and years ahead of him.
He had some sort of attack in the hallway of the assisted living home where he was living, nobody knows whether it was a heart attack or stroke. My mother had just dropped him off from taking him to the eye doctor.
Apparently the last thing he did before dying was buy and sign my birthday card.
I'll be cancelling my birthday party, which was set for Friday, and instead I'll be flying to Dallas Thursday, the day after tomorrow. I didn't think I'd be back there so soon.
A little background in that my grandparents helped raise me and I was very close to them. My grandmother died a few years ago after a long painful battle with Alzheimer's.
I had meant to call my grandfather this week, as my birthday was coming up. I just kept saying that to my mother over and over again on the phone - I meant to call him this week.