For Frying Out Loud (12 page)

July 2008

ADDING INSULT TO INJURY

I felt like Yogi Bear, hibernating. Bonnie had knee surgery June 12 and I spent a week in the house, telecommuting and playing nurse.

I loved the hibernating, For an inveterate flit like me, generally juggling dozens of tasks in multiple places, you'd think being homebound would be akin to life without parole. No, I loved it so much it scared me. Truly not leaving the house for six days except to get the mail made me very, very content.

And I actually got a lot of work done between my medical rounds and watching coverage of California's gay weddings. Frankly, the reporting was shockingly positive.

Watching 80-somethings Phyllis Lyons and Del Martin be legally wed in the U.S. – and then seeing their smiling faces, in a photo 6-inches square, on Page One of the
News Journal
capped it. How I wish my mentors, Anyda and Muriel were still alive to bask in this. They became a couple two years before Phyllis and Del.

While the respectful coverage was a delight, it masked a scary new tactic of the homophobic right – they are being nice. And saying things like, “We congratulate the marrying couples, but our fight is against activist judges.” Yeah, right.

The positive coverage contrasted completely with our surgery day in Philly. First, we arrived at the hospital armed with a weighty folder containing every notarized piece of paper we owned, attempting to prove our spousehood. Second, Bonnie had to answer the insulting ritual question, “married, single or divorced?”

“Partnered,” Bonnie said. The clerk smiled. A decade ago it would have been an accusatory look. Snail progress.

We arrived at the hospital at 6 a.m., for 6:45 surgery, only to discover that the private hospital was missing a key piece of paper from the Veteran's Administration granting permission
for the operation. My mate is a vet and due to our nation's health care crisis, the VA is her only health insurance option. Thank God for that safety net. But…there are issues.

Bonnie was already hooked up to the IV, wearing the little surgical hat, and surrounded by a flock of medical personnel, and we were on hold – both in the OR and on the phone with the VA.

“Just go over there and get what they need, Fay,” the patient said. “It's only a few blocks away.”

“Wait,” said a nurse. “You better take your documents, and maybe we should sign something telling them you're allowed to get the information. You know the HIPPA privacy rules.”

“Oh, right, we're not legally married. Crap.” Whereupon no less than six doctors and nurses, all held up by the snafu, scribbled on a note pleading for me to be considered worthy of the patient information.

With a giant plastic bag filled with Bonnie's clothes and our voluminous legal dossier slung over my shoulder, I raced to the lobby and hopped a cab to the VA hospital. I will spare you the details, but I was shuttled around to three offices and on hold with several non-compliant people as I frantically pictured a gaggle of expensive health care workers loitering by Bonnie's gurney. At one point I was on hold from the lobby to the business office, listening to an educational tape about the seven signs of a heart attack and I was having eight of them.

Finally somebody agreed to call Bonnie's surgeon and set things right. Heart pounding, I ran back downstairs and saw a shuttle bus. “Does that go by Penn Presbyterian?” I asked.

“Yep. It's for the vets. Are you a vet?”

“I'm the spouse of a vet.”

“What's his name?”

“It's a her.” Shit. What was I thinking? Toto, we're NOT in Rehoboth.

“Then you can't be no spouse.”

Bet me. I may or may not have said a very bad word, swung my big plastic trash sack over my shoulder and, channeling Lily Tomlin's bag lady, marched out the door and huffed and puffed
uphill six blocks to return to the operatory.

Amazingly, the surgery finally happened a scant seven hours late, all went well and we headed home the next day.

Just let me say this about the past week. There's a reason I work in public relations, not health care. I tried to be a good nurse, really I did, but it just isn't in my skill set.

Bonnie came home with a 36-inch leg brace to prevent knee bends and the thing is held together with a thousand strips of industrial strength Velcro. You have to be the Incredible Hulk to unstick it (which, I might become after spending a week as Clara Barton) and when you do get the Velcro open it instantly sticks to everything in the vicinity.

I've spent whole days peeling it off rugs, furniture, and pajamas. One time Moxie got up in Bonnie's recliner when the thing was undone and we thought she'd be spending the next few weeks dragging a schnauzer around by his beard. I stepped on a Velcro strip in my socks and took the appliance with me like toilet paper on a shoe.

Then there was the dressing to change and the blood thinning injections, not to mention the matzoh ball soup to prepare. I don't know whether this house was more like
House, ER
or
Nip/Tuck
(me taking a nip of Grey Goose after tucking the patient into bed), but somehow we did all right.

I survived the nursing rotation, Bonnie started getting back on her feet, and no schnauzers were injured in the making of this column. Well, except for a little fur flying when we snipped it off the Velcro from hell.

But in our hibernation, as we watched the evening news and its giddy coverage of same-sex couples tying the knot on the West Coast, I unpacked our thick file of papers notarizing our coupledom. And I still had the scribbled emergency letter to the VA, signed by Dr. Kildare and his entire surgical team.

Hell, according to the front desk guy at the VA, for my civil rights I didn't have to go to the back of the bus, I couldn't even get on the bus. Which tells me we have a long way to go.

Code Blue, voters. And stat.

August 2008

I WILL NOT BE ERASED

Lots of people, most recently gay conservative (oy, an oxymoron) Andrew Sullivan, have been speculating about the death of gay culture.

I say, not so fast.

Yes, it's true, as Sullivan reports about Provincetown, “No one bats an eye if two men walk down the street holding hands, or if a lesbian couple pecks each other on the cheek, or if a drag queen dressed as Cher careens down the main strip on a motor scooter….”

It could be Rehoboth.

So too, like in Rehoboth, does Sullivan report that the “realestate boom has made Provincetown far more expensive than it ever was, slowly excluding poorer and younger visitors and residents…beautiful, renovated houses are slowly outnumbering beach shacks…the number of children of gay couples has soared…bar life is not nearly as central to socializing as it once was. Men and women gather on the beach, drink coffee on the front porch of a store, or meet at the Film Festival.”

It could certainly be Rehoboth. It's also true that our separate and formerly underground gay culture did develop, in most part, to combat, mask and soothe the twentieth century attacks against us.

That being said, the vicious attack part may not be so evident anymore in Provincetown or Rehoboth, but how about Oklahoma? I saw a lunatic Oklahoma County Commissioner candidate on TV showing off his official campaign mailing piece – a homophobic comic book showing gays as pedophiles (spelled wrong in the piece by the way) and Satan affiliated with his opponent's campaign. The candidate defended his despicable homophobia with the calm righteousness of a defender of tax policy.

Also this week I heard about the latest Bush administration
boondoggle. They have instructed the tabulators for the 2010 census to take the forms of couples who self-identify as being in gay marriages and
change
them to read “unmarried partners.” That includes legal gay marriages from California and Massachusetts. I don't know about you, but I will not be erased.

But it was last week, at the Blue Moon Restaurant, when I realized our gay culture will be everlasting. I was there, a lone lesbian in a sea of guys (further cementing my odd reputation as an honorary gay man) to see comic actor Leslie Jordan do his hilarious and amazingly poignant one man show.

I knew that folks of my generation related to Jordan's tales of surviving youth as an effeminate young man and transitioning from suffocating shame to celebratory pride – but I was surprised that so many younger men in the crowd laughed so easily and applauded so enthusiastically with recognition.

Jordan himself, noting his work with The Trevor Project in L.A., referred to our continuing need to have safe places for teens and young adults who are being attacked, shunned or in despair because society has told them to be ashamed of themselves.

Heck, it's not just young people. All over the country, even here in Sussex County, some gay men and women expect less of their lives and less of themselves because they have been instilled with shame and internal homophobia.

As long as youngsters are still being ostracized because they are presumed gay, and as long as teens are attacked, physically or emotionally for being gay, and as long as jobs and lives are at stake unless gays remain closeted, there will be a need for gay culture – a safe family, a safe place to be and a special culture of our own.

This is why CAMP Rehoboth is so important to our community. Sure, some of us, in our, ahem, maturity are less inclined to stay up to the wee hours dancing at the July 4th LOVE Dance. We may not need the library of LGBT books or spend quite as much time as we did in the courtyard, but
whether we know if or not, we still need it. Whether people who have NEVER participated in a CAMP event know it or not, they benefit from CAMP's existence, too.

CAMP is the reason we can be comfortable in this town and its vigilance is the reason Rehoboth will continue to welcome all kinds of families. CAMP's police sensitivity training helps our summer officers be more comfortable interacting with our community; CAMP's support of the women's golf league has helped more than one golfer tell me that joining the league made her feel part of the community; CAMP's advocacy for LGBT citizens is the reason local and state governments respect us as a constituency; the welcoming atmosphere created by CAMP has helped a variety of religious organizations, nonprofits and clubs open their doors to the gay community. Oh, and CAMP's successful publication has gays and non-gays alike advertising and reading.

Speaking of diversity, our favorite female impersonator, Christopher Peterson, in his show has an audience also made up of gays and non-gays. But everyone is enjoying our culture, our icons, our stereotypes, and our jokes on our terms.

This weekend, at the Convention Center, we will enjoy the CAMP Follies, celebrating our culture. We will be poking fun at headlines that affect us, incidents that make us mad, politicians who hate us, and more. And it's our culture to satirize.

Yes, it would be great to think that some day being gay will be a non-issue. But if that day ever comes, our glorious gay culture will remain alive and well. We may not need it for protection anymore, but the fact remains that we're here, we're queer and we understand each other. Our gay culture is not what makes us queer, but it's what makes us queers smile.

We will not be erased and we will not erase our gay culture. Count on it.