Grace Cathedral

“Suggested donation $10,” the box solicits through its slit of a mouth. I stuff a 10 in there, just to shut it up, and enter the sanctuary.

My mind is a mass of arrows pointing inward: I’m such a career woman in my sweater with shoulder pads! And it cushions the strap of my bag. Double-duty fashion. These pews are like Victorian British women – so stoic and stiff. I’m going to sit on one of them. Is it sacrilegious that I’m coming to this church only because Vince Guaraldi once performed here? Not nearly as sacrilegious as that gay man taking a picture of his boyfriend praying. Are they joking or serious? Am I enraged or envious?

But the arrows multiply and overlap and fade – like the opening credits of Charade – and I am silent. Silent under these canopies of stone, these glowing embers of stained glass.

Organ chords emerge, as if from the earth’s core. The choir enters. “Shield the joyous,” they sing. Every voice is a ribbon, swirling through the room, encircling hearts and suspending them. Suddenly a small crowd of tears gathers in my eyes, confused, overcome; we all look to the altar. God? What would you have me be? What would you have me do?

But I close my eyes, and the crowd disperses. Go home now. There’s nothing to see here.

It’s Always Friday Night

I’m listening to the phone with my left ear when it whispers in my right ear.

Pssssssst.

That wet worst-kept secret we normally do in a toilet? There’s a guy doing it off a balcony. Just out of range, thank every god of every religion. I tell my phone companion; he isn’t offended: ”Of course, I’ve done it before. Stroll to the edge, check for pedestrians, unzip the pants, look at the moon and take a leak.”

“I’ve never done it.”

I haven’t.

But I have pissed on a Staten Island street corner. It was 3am. No one was around. Urgent burn dissolving into dreamy relief.

“Are you enjoying yourself this evening?” I ask.

“Oh, hmmm, well…” his voice sounds like a feather boa, coquettish, ticklish.

The cold makes my muscles marble, then makes them throb. I wish I was indoors, drinking with him. Or just indoors. Or just drinking. Alcohol is a good criminal defense lawyer that represents us to ourselves as misunderstood, well-intentioned, promising. We are just fine, we have always been fine, we will always be fine. It’s a life sentence.

“I worry about you,” I say.

“Don’t worry, pray.”

“All right.”

To the Birthday Girl

“Hello, friend.” She says, and suddenly her soul reaches into mine, gropes around for the naked mole rat of insecurity, snatches it with swift tenderness, bathes it, dabs it with cologne, and wraps it in a fur coat before returning it.

This is a customary greeting, and yet I can’t recover from it any quicker now than from the first time I met her. So I look into her eyes, like those of a vintage Italian Barbie, only infinitely more beautiful and friendly. They’re always mid-wink – perhaps her eyelids are trying to shield me from the blinding light within. (Isn’t that an inedible sentiment.) Or maybe she just smiles a lot.

“Everyone was hoping you’d get here soon,” she says, squeezing my arm like she’s taking my blood pressure. We’re in front of her friends, many of whom I wouldn’t like if she didn’t like them. She is transfixed by them, as though they are beautiful phenomena. I find myself appreciating people through her. I turn to ask her a question but she is gone. I look around the room. There she is. By the front door, introducing herself to someone. They’re lucky, I think. We all are.

Irate

“I think I have a talent for living. Perhaps I’m trying to make the most of something small for want of something better, but I think a true talent for living has the quality of creation, and if that’s the talent I was meant to have, I’m awfully glad I have it. I’d rather live a first-rate life than paint a second-rate picture.” -Samuel Taylor, Sabrina Fair

I read this line and the letters are clothes warm from the dryer, clinging and comforting: You can have a first-rate life. Then they are little jurors, pointing their serifs at me, with inquiry and suspicion: Why can’t you paint a second-rate picture? Then they are little forks in the road, poking and insisting, You can only do one.

If you have a career, a relationship, travel – there’s no time for anything else. If you write, perform, create – there’s no money for anything else. So I’m working part-time and writing part-time and the whole thing is a very tall and poorly constructed wedding cake with too many layers – leaning this way and that. How can I keep it together. Who’s going to eat it. I’m not even married.

Just last night, on a family video, I saw this fiendish red-faced red-headed boy, flailing a naked Barbie by the hair. He was intimate with his imagination. Barbie was an actress in his film, a backup singer in his concert, a character in his novel. He made it look so easy. I wanted to be him again.

Who are you, Emily Sue?

You are the creator and caretaker of fantasies.

The children know this; they cling to the bottom of your feet like wet grass, wanting to go where you go. You take them to England, Austria, Neverland. Everyone is expected to bring something unique but equal. No one is left out unless they choose to leave.

I miss you while you’re gone. I begin to feel like Hayley Mills in The Parent Trap. Do I have a sister, or is it all split screen gimmickry? How much longer can we be separated and be complete? When is our next late night phone call?

At the end of the journey, you and the children produce an animated scrapbook. We, the family, friends, neighbors, acquaintances, gather around and laugh, stare, gasp, sigh. We didn’t know it would be like this. We didn’t. Why did we doubt your loyalty, or sanity? You’ve been somewhere. You’ve become something. And we missed it again. Or maybe we just saw the best moments.

Engender

I stand at the bathroom mirror, the portal of narcissism, too embarrassed to enter. Where are my enablers? The foundation. the clothes. The curling iron. The hairspray. The eyebrow pencil. They hover over me, and when they are done, I am hidden, but I am here. Now I can go there.

They’re all eyes. Eyes that are scanners running across my barcode. Scan. No beep. Scan. No beep. They’ll have to enter it manually. They ask: “So. What are you?”

I smile. “Glam Rock Peter Pan.”

“Oh.”

“Or Prince as a Pirate.”

“Hm.”

“Or a character from Velvet Goldmine.“

I bag and carry myself away. No merchandise in the public restroom! But I go in. I am not doing this to impress people. I am doing this to impress that person, now standing on the other side of the portal. That person who looks like me, but so much more lovely. I mistake myself for them. We are Annie Lennox at the end of the “Who’s That Girl?” music video: opposite sex symbiosis. Male and Female He created them. Male and Female I combined them.

This is not a costume. It’s a confession.

I don’t need your lust. I don’t need your love.

All I need is His indwelling. All I need is this instant.

In the iris of imagination.

Give us this day our daily gluten-free bread

I wish there was a way to vacuum undesirable ingredients right out of food. I would pick gluten, dairy, sugar. I suppose other people would pick fat, calories, carbohydrates. I suppose other people would pick people. We have a lot more undesirable ingredients than food. Laziness, stupidity, craziness. We would all benefit from a vacuuming, especially me, which is what I’m actually, astonishingly, always, talking about.

When you do your self-deprecating before dinner, this is what it sounds like.

I shouldn’t call it dinner; I should call it breaklundinn. Because it is all 3 meals in 1. Not really the same amount of calories, or food, but it’s the only meal I eat. I should say I only eat dinner. But that sounds so simple. Or anorexic. Or prejudiced against breakfast and lunch. I am none of these things, dear brothers and sisters! None. I am poor and pretentious: I can’t afford to eat healthy food 3 times a day, but I refuse to eat unhealthy food 3 times a day. So, here I am. Rock you like a hurricane.

This is another in a series of spiritual grilled cheese sandwiches.

–Burn the outside to melt the inside? Well I won’t get laid for that metaphor.

Leaving half of my material possessions on the curb was the first. Glorious lamps, pillows, posters, chairs – locking arms with one another, glaring at me: you can’t do this to us. And then, when a woman stopped her car and picked them up: you’ll regret this, but we won’t. We’re going to the University of Chicago. We’re going to get a bachelor’s degree. Unlike you. All right, they didn’t say all that, they didn’t say anything; the woman picking the stuff up said she was going to give it to her daughter, who was starting at the University of Chicago.

And now tonight, a newcomer in a small community of Christian queers. “Is there anything you want to tell us about yourself?” “The floral arrangements make me uncomfortable. What is that? Burgundy seaweed?” The restless ache that leaves our heart and tries to stay in another’s heart, only to find it full, and trudging back, a bitter homecoming.

There is a truck stop between who we are and who God wants us to be. We can take a shower, and have a meal, and then several years later realize we haven’t gone anywhere.

Morning Commute

You always see movies with characters who grab someone’s ringing phone and throw it out the window. I’ve wanted to do it so many times. It starts ringing and he can no longer be expected to listen, no matter how important the subject or person is. He just has to answer for whatever schmuckety Joe Schmo’s fucking calling his phone. And then the sock puppet antics, “Hi buddy! Boy it’s a beautiful day isn’t it?” Blah-bippity-blah-blah. Blah blah.

We were talking of some eternal tripe. I can’t remember; I can’t understand why anybody tries to remember anything anyway. I can remember all of it, actually:

I flipped down the passenger side mirror, took out a brush, and started blending my makeup. He was quiet. Then:

“Do you do that during the day?” He asked.

“No. But I’m sure if I did, someone would be judging me. Whatever I do, there will always be someone judging me.”

“But, you know there are social norms.”

“I think adapting to social norms is detrimental to one’s health.”

“But if you miss out on an opportunity because of this – “

“What opportunity? I’m not going to join the NRA, or a biker gang, or become a top athlete.”

I don’t expect him to like these potted flowers that line the street of my manhood. But I will not submit to anyone’s standards. I will not stretch and squint and smile and say, “oh yes I see.” No. No. Just as I am, without one plebeian compromise.

I cannot live for both of us, old man. Just myself. I swear to God. Just myself.

Dancing is Sex for Virgins

Certainly, wet dreams and masturbation might have more explicit similarity with intercourse, but they are also more explicitly selfish. Dancing involves partners, without body exposure, clean up, STD’s or emotional wreckage.

I like my sex public: at a stranger’s wedding reception. Wearing my lustful-but-formal tight black wool pants and tight white shirt with a tie so alive it could tie itself.

Brick House, Dancing Queen, Let’s Go Crazy, Billie Jean – the songs may be regular – like a prune-eating-fiber-supplement-taking geezer – but they are not shitty. Or maybe pop music is proof that you can polish a turd. I’ll keep eating it regardless. We are sweating and strutting our way to salvation. The crowd reactions are different – giggles, stares, smiles – but they are all the same: they wish they could be this wild.

Yet we are not enough for ourselves – no twist or thrust is fully satisfying. We cannot truly dance until we are without genitals, without gravity, without minds.

It’s only a few songs later when our humanity starts with its harrassment – unfortunately not sexual, just slumberous. Muscles slacken, hearts tap instead of pound. We are more attracted to a chair than the dance floor. Instead of sitting, we wave to people we don’t know, and sexily snicker and swagger to the elevator. We are out of there, and into the night – an early summer night – that sighs and presses its cool cocktail glass on our foreheads.

Roast

You, insecurity, you, ego, you, sexuality…you will not succeed. I have stories to tell, not syndromes to whine about. You will not succeed.

You may stand between me and my art and pick your nose and make candles out of your ear wax and blow spit bubbles – but I will not be embarrassed by your orifice exploration.

I will knock you over and my art and I will crash into one another “like a couple of taxis on Broadway,” a line which Thelma Ritter so simply delivers in Rear Window. You’re not even what you seem. You’re Satan wearing a sandwich sign, shaking your ass on the sidewalk, trying to get me to buy your bullshit. Not happening, hot stuff.

And I won’t be conned into becoming a critic instead of an artist. One requires observation, the other vulnerability. I know which one is worth it. Fuck off, flamer. It’s going to take more than a lack of money, lack of talent and lack of direction – start locating some more lack ofs.

Now I’m going to clean the apartment. If you think you’ve distracted me, devil’s cake, than you’re dumber than I thought. I just want to clean the apartment.