"can i help you, sir?"

Harrison recently wrote something over on How to Be Butch about Rachel Maddow’s high school picture. I know, it’s old news by now, but it’s had me thinking for a while about how I view and share myself. I tend to see my life as pre-butch and post-butch, which could also be known as The Period of Great Enlightment II (the first PoGE being the time in my life after I realized I was gay). And when it comes to that pre-butch part of my life, I am very protective of it.

It’s so strange for me to look back at my earlier years.   I don’t really count the childhood years, because it’s natural to look somewhat different from that stage of life. But when I see photos of myself as a young adult, it’s more than just seeing me when I had that bad 80s haircut. I feel so detached, as if I’m seeing a picture of someone vaguely familiar or someone who just resembles me in some respects. It doesn’t look or feel like the Younger Me, so much so that sometimes my old pictures barely register on my scale of recognition.

It’s tough to put my finger on any one thing that makes me so reluctant to share that part of my life with anyone. I’m not ashamed of anything I did, and for the most part I liked who I was. I’m proud of the path I took to discover who I am and what I believe, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. It’s just a little painful to realize how lost and uncomfortable I was back then, without a real identity. I think most of us go through that at some point, though – my confusion was just gender-related.

In an effort to give myself some authentic writing therapy, I present Exhibits A and B of Younger Me*: Continue reading

I’ve been thinking a lot about family history lately, and that got me thinking about my grandma. She is really the only grandparent I had a relationship with; both of my grandfathers died before I was born, and my maternal grandmother passed when I was three. That left my father’s mother, and believe me when I say this: she was amazing.

She was born in a small town in southern Utah, and she lived in that part of the state for most of her life. She raised a bunch of kids – both her own and various neighborhood kids – through The Great Depression. She and my grandpa were hard core, doing everything themselves: hunting, gardening, sewing, canning, etc. She did a lot of that on her own while my grandpa was off working, too. She was a believer in hard work, kept promises and baseball.

She is the reason I am a die-hard Chicago Cubs fan today; she watched the Cubs back in the day when the Cubs and the Braves were the only baseball teams on television (because Chicago and Atlanta had their own television networks). Up until the day she went into the hospital, she watched any game she could find. I can’t tell you how many times the family would be gathered around, eating or talking, and my grandma would get up and announce: “I have a game to watch.” With that, she’d go to her room, turn on the television, close the blinds, and shut the door. We could still go in – we just couldn’t interrupt the game.

She passed away when she was 96, just over ten years ago. Continue reading

I was sitting in the chair getting my hair cut last weekend, when I heard someone yell, “G!” (And yes, I have many friends who actually call me that.) I looked up, and it was my friend K, who has been my friend since my freshman year in college, a.k.a. a LONG time ago. She came over for a few moments to say hi, then left to chaperon her young daughter’s hair cut.

When my stylist asked me who she was, it took me a minute to really answer. Yes, that’s K, we were teammates when I was a freshman and she was a sophomore, but she is also the first REAL LIVE lesbian I ever met.

Going to a mostly Mormon high school didn’t help that. There was the One Lesbian in school that everyone knew about, and there were coaches I suspected were gay, but I didn’t really know any until I met K. And honestly? She scared the hell out of me, mostly because she was so … unfamiliar. I had to room with her on my very first road trip, and I didn’t know what to expect. Was she going to hit on me? Watch me dress? Factor in the religious part where I’d been warned about people like her, and you have a whole mess going on in my head. Not to mention plenty of my own internal homophobic thoughts, but that’s another post altogether.

As our basketball season went on, I got to know her better, and you know what? I just loved her. She was smart, charismatic, and funny. We would cut up during practice, on road trips, team meetings, or any other time we had the opportunity. One of my favorite moments happened after one of our games, when she cracked us all up by telling a teammate, “Tonya, I saw your boyfriend, and he is CUTE for a guy!”

She became K the good friend, not K the Lesbian, and that was huge for me because I was having my own issues as I questioned my life and sexuality. I began to see that she was a normal person who had normal highs and lows, which was such an eye-opener. I was so sad at the end of that year when she left, but in a time when I was feeling so much guilt, the lesson learned was valuable: I was okay, just the way I was.

I saw her a few years later at the gay bar, and she flipped out. She couldn’t believe that a) I was gay and b) that I didn’t come out until AFTER we played ball, because as she said, “We could have had so much fun together!” I got back in touch with her when I moved back to Utah; I was running into a coffee shop, and she was sitting there with her partner on the patio. She hasn’t aged a DAY, so I recognized her immediately. I look a lot different than the last time she saw me, so it took her a minute. But since then we’ve gone out to dinner, played tennis, and kept in touch.

I stopped on the way out of the salon to give her a hug and plan our next get-together. I realized not just how much she means to me, but what she represents to me. She cleared the path for me in a lot of ways, and I’ll forever be grateful for that.

Are there any people in your life who paved the way for you? Did you have any gay mentors, so to speak?

One of my good friends, W, sent me a message on Facebook to tell me he’d lost my blog address, and could I send it to him again? No biggie, except the blog address he USED to have was to my old blog. My old blog was lovely, but it was pretty flat. It featured a lot of “Hey, look at this YouTube video!” sort of stuff. I talked about my family a bit, and I talked about relationships a bit (I’d originally started the blog to help me cope with the horrible ending of a long-term relationship). But it didn’t have much depth, and it didn’t have much of me.

I wanted to give him the address to this blog, but I suddenly got a little nervous. This blog is personal. It talks about my identity in ways I’ve never discussed with some of the friends I have in my life. I knew he’d be supportive; he’s a dear, dear friend. One of the best, really. And it’s not that I didn’t think he’d understand, at least to some extent; he and I have been friends for several years now. We played in a band together, we suffered many a hangover together after a late night at the gay bar, and we just generally caused a ruckus together wherever we went. He’s one of those soulmate friends, you know?

But talking about my gender is a little frustrating for me sometimes, at least when it comes to my in-person friends. Continue reading

That title sounds like the start of a therapy session, doesn’t it.

I wasn’t going to write anything in particular for Mother’s Day this year. I mean, I wrote about it last year, which kind of helped with reflecting on how my relationship has changed with my mom over the past 365 days or so. But it’s still frustrating. It wasn’t that long ago that she asked me, despite my coming out 11 years ago, if I’d change my mind about being gay if I met Mr. Right.

I spent several hours with her yesterday, since today she was going to my sister’s house for dinner. I took her some calla lilies and a hanging flower basket for her garden, then took her out to lunch. We went on a scavenger hunt for a waffle iron, and she helped me find one. I got her some Ben & Jerry’s, since she told me a few weeks ago that she’d never tried it. I helped her set up a Gmail account and showed her how to organize her photos on her laptop. We talked about her recent health issues, about the funny things my dad does, about my siblings … but at no point in that five hours did she ask me one thing about my life. Not about work, about friends, and of course not about anything, you know, gay. It’s sad, because I feel like she only gets a percentage of me. And who knows, maybe that’s what she wants – the percentage that is easy to handle.

***

So today, I didn’t feel like I had a lot to say. But then I read my buddy Jude’s post about her mom, and it kind of got me thinking. Even though I haven’t had the best relationship with my mom, I know there are things I have learned from her. Continue reading