I Am Not Here

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I was born in a small town on the Tennessee/Kentucky border, just a few miles from the Mississippi, and spent my youth fighting to get out. I wanted education and experience I couldn't find in a very rural town of 13,000, 2 hours from the nearest real city. And I had a budding sense that I wasn't like other people, at least not like most in small towns.

The sense of "otherness" followed me to a larger town where I went to a private, religiously affiliated university. And on to an even larger place in Texas, to a larger private, religiously affiliated graduate school. Although I received a good education, each place stifled me. My storehouse of knowledge grew, but my soul languished.

Then I discovered Austin, quite by accident. My last girlfriend drove me there to catch a plane home for a short holiday. We stayed overnight with her other best friend, who took us to a gay bar. It was the first time I had ever seen "normal" gay people, ones who weren't the stereotypes I had never wanted to be. And even at the height of the AIDS hysteria, no one was being harassed. They were standing outside a nightclub waiting to get inside, talking about bike racing and their latest 10 mile ride.

It was a revelation to me. I could be who I was, as I was, around people who didn't really care one way or another. I had never experienced that before.

I came screaming out of the closet shortly there-after, found my first boyfriend, broke up with him in Portugal, and met my first husband not long after. We couldn't live openly in Waco, TX, and Austin had been in my sight for a while.

It's the only truly civilized city in Texas. We moved here after a few weekend trips that seduced him, too. He wanted to move to Dallas, but I knew that when he saw Austin, he wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

When he died 4 years later, I was afforded all the rights and respect of a spouse, even though we had no formal relationship or paperwork. I told them who I was and what our relationship was at the emergency room, and they sent me to a private waiting room and then sent a counselor to help me. The situation was that bad.

In Austin, at that time, they listened to me when I told them to cut off life support the next day. His father and older sister were there, but couldn't or didn't say a word. I held his hand while he died and said "Good night, sweet Prince. And bands of angels sing you to your rest." The nurses started crying, too. Then they shuffled me out so they could take care of their business. "We need to finish taking care of him now," they said. "And we're so sorry for your loss."

I guess nurses in the CCU get used to that over time, but they didn't treat me any differently than I expect they would treat anyone else.

My boss was the first to show up at my house with food. I told her I was taking two weeks off, and she said to take what I needed. Since he worked at home, Rich had struck up a friendship with the lady that owned the house next door. She came by with food. I ended up with so much food, I had to give it away.

Now I'm an old married man again. We've been together since 2000, living in sin some would say, but not many around here. We live openly without being obnoxious about it. In fact, we have the boring life I dreamed of as a boy in Tennessee.

We have a nice apartment in a nice neighborhood. I have a long-standing and fairly-secure job where I have never talked specifically about my sexual orientation to many people, but one where it is taken with a grain of salt. It's the least important thing about me, and they seem to recognize that.

Austin doesn't have a gay ghetto. When I was doing the real estate thing, clients from other parts of the state or country told me that they wanted to live in the "gay neighborhood". I just told them that Austin didn't have one. We're everywhere. Just pick where you want to live and settle in.

Our neighborhood is a mixture of retired rich people and younger ones buying their houses as they die or get packed off to nursing homes. We have a natural foods grocery across the street, full of good produce and meat, and old people with oxygen tanks who don't like the mega-stores any more than I do. We have more in common than we have different.

I've finally found my home. I found it when I moved to Austin many years ago. Room to breathe. Room to be free. Room to just be me.

Free at last. Free at last. Thank God I'm free, at last.

Are We There Yet?

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Activist Citizen

This is an email I sent to my 2 Senators and 1 so-called Representative, and also to a man who used to represent me in Congress, one who has more honor and integrity than the other three put together:



Dear Congressman Doggett,

You're not my direct Representative right now, but you used to be. And you're the one sane voice from Austin that speaks for all of us, whether we can vote for you or not.

Having said that, I strongly urge you to oppose any legislation that uses tax dollars to prop up Fannie Mae and/or Freddie Mac. While I have lived responsibly and not taken on debt I cannot service, others have done so, irresponsibly. I cannot afford to buy a house, so I haven't. I don't want to be paying for someone else's bad choices.

Please do not make the mistake of allowing individuals and large corporations to believe that the government will bail them out whenever they make bad choices.

I have sent this same message to both Texas Senators and the Congressman who claims to represent me. I don't have a lot of faith in any of them doing the right thing, so I'm writing you also.

I've met you a couple of times, as well as your lovely wife. You wouldn't remember me, but I remember you. You're shorter than I would have thought, but have a stature that is long missing from both Texas and national politics. I'm hoping you'll stand up for me in this matter.

Sincerely,

Faith and Flags

Every time about this year, I ponder the nature of patriotism: what it means and how it is expressed. With July 4th popping up in about 3 hours, it’s on my mind. And I keep coming back to the same conclusions, year after year.

Like religion and faith, patriotism is more about what one does than what one professes. The true measure of a person’s beliefs are more accurately gauged by action than by words or rituals, whether that means going to Mass or reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

A man’s faith is only as deep as his acts. If he professes to love his fellow man, yet demonizes those different from him, he is a liar. His faith is hollow and meaningless.

1 Corinthians 13:1 puts it like this: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”

Charity is not just giving money. It’s living with people you may or may not understand and letting them live their lives they way that they understand. It is a gift, plain and simple.

The human instinct is to distrust differentness. We have an innate proclivity to marginalize those who are different from us, whether it’s a Christian marginalizing a Hindu or a Hindu marginalizing a Christian. We are hard-wired, I think, to distrust what we don’t understand.

Overcoming that instinct often takes an act of faith. Even if that is the simple recognition that some differences don’t matter that much.

It is a gift, as surely as a donation to the Salvation Army.

The same goes for patriotism.

Although there are those who would like to reduce patriotism to reciting the “Pledge” and wearing lapel pins, they are “sounding brass” and “tinkling cymbals”. I like my version of patriotism better.

It’s one where people enjoy great freedom. The freedom to agree or dissent, and know that those freedoms are protected by law. One where people can live their lives in peace, even though they might be different. One where the right to be different is legally sanctioned.

I don’t need a horn section or cymbals to provide that.

I love my country in spite of it, sometimes. It’s like my little sister who just can’t seem to get her act together at the age of 37. She screws up, but still I love her. She’s my baby sis.

I’m not real happy right now about the country and the direction it’s going, but we will have a peaceful transfer of power in a few months.

With any luck, it will be a distinguished-looking black man that takes the Oath of Office.

Keep fingers crossed.