To Find The Things He Isn't

When I was a kid I would make paper angels and snowflakes.  You know how you start with a sheet of paper and fold it up and cut away the pieces that aren't an angel or that unique snowflake?  Each cut seems random but when you finish and unfold it you have this perfect thing.  That is what I think The Universe is doing for me.  It seems random.  It seems pointless.  But what it is doing is showing me the pieces that aren't going to be in that unique snowflake of an angel that is waiting for me.  He won't lie to me.  Snip.  He won't want someone other than me.  Snip.  He won't judge me for my past.  Snip.  He won't be scared that I love quickly and deeply.  Snip.  He won't leave.  Snip.  And eventually it will unfold and all the cuts will be worth it.

To Live In That Moment

There is a moment just after a rainstorm where everything feels different.  More alive somehow.  The air is cooler and so thick that time seems to slow down slightly.  The blue of the sky is brighter and clearer, the greens and yellows of the grass are more vivid and deep, the greys and browns of the earth are richer and fuller. All bathed in the afterglow of new life.  The smells of man are washed away and replaced with new life and electricity.  This is how I feel when I see you.  This is how I feel when we take our turns at question and answer.  Like a rainstorm has just passed and everything is finally different.  More real somehow.  The world is softer and so fleeting that I hope time slows down.  The flow more free and easy, the words more truthful and heartfelt, the promises more solid and lasting.  All bathed in the ease of understanding.  The hurts of the past are washed away and replaced with new hope and fire.  There is a moment just after a skipped beat where everything feels different.

To try not to lose my when's

I have always been Charlie Brown.  I've said this before, multiple times I think in my previous blog and in this one, but I feel him slipping away.  I have always naturally had more when's than most people but lately they have all but wiped out by the silent killer that is if.  I always naturally said "When I get married" or "When I go to New York i'll.." or "When things get better..." but somehow all of those when's have been replaced by if.  I know most would say it is just a natural part of growing up and accepting the reality of the world.  When's are just a child's imaginary friend while if's are an adult's reality.  Maybe everyone has a finite amount of when's at birth and I didn't ration mine well and I have run out.  All I know is that I miss knowing that Lucy won't pull the ball away.  I miss knowing that tomorrow is going to be a good day.  I miss Charlie and my when's.

To speak about the quiet...

Until recently I was undecided if I wanted to share this on here until the book is done and published but I feel it is important so...here it is...

"It was so quiet….

I could hear mom gently sobbing and my dad quietly point one word, “No”, as he shook his head at the ground.

I had just told my parent’s that I had fallen in love and that is what I remember.  It was so….quiet.  Yes, there were many more things discussed in that half hour.  Mostly Religion, which is usually the case in this situation.  That I was committing an abomination and how that is clear in The Bible.  I countered their singular argument the only reasonable way, with a grenade of knowledge from the very same book.  I asked my dad how all of those “abominations” that they have committed in their past or, in some cases, that they commit daily are somehow okay and my allowing myself to be the person God made me, the person I did such a good job of hiding from the world, is somehow worthy of my death.  How being that person that God made had lead me to a group of people who loved me by choice and one man who wanted to create a life with me.  My mom asked some health questions that most people would ask.  I mean I still can’t give blood because I had same sex relations.  If a large organization like that hasn’t set the facts straight, how can I expect my mom to know the level of risk?  I answered her questions and told them I was still the same person they raised me to be.  I have the same morals and values that they instilled in me.  I told them that being gay isn’t WHO I am that it is just part of what I am.  I reiterated that nothing had changed and that I was just finally letting them meet the person that they raised and not the patch-worked puppet shield that I had been carrying for as long as I could remember.  I asked them to think back to when I was in school and to remember how unhappy I always seemed.  To remember how, even with friends, I would frequently slink back to the back of the group and only occasionally burst  into the front to show I was one of the pack…just like them.  I asked them to compare that to the last 2 years of my life.  A life where I have a family of people who love me because they genuinely want to be in my life and care what that life is.  A life where I smile casually and laugh off cue and cry when I am sad regardless of who might see.  A life where I don’t go to bed at night angry for what I felt during the day.  A life where I didn’t see who God made me as a burden that I have to hide.  I finally had a life that I got to live…not a show that I had to put on.

And it was so quiet….through all of it.  That is what I remember.  That and the voice that interrupted me when I told them that this in no way changed my plans for the future.  I was still planning on getting married, and having a home, and kids, and that they would have their grandbabies.  But before I could finish the final word, the voice sliced through the air with the only thing I didn’t expect.  I had prepared to weigh out sins with my dad.  I had prepared to teach my mom a sex ed class.  I had prepared to show them how hard I had tried for years, sacrificing my own happiness, to try to be what I knew they wanted me to be.  I had prepared to make them see the damage that that one lie to myself would do to the whole family that they wanted me to have. And  yes, even though I knew it was very unlikely, I had even prepared to let an “I love you, a thank you for raising me strong enough to be who I am, and a goodbye” fall on refusing ears.  But this voice that came from my father was cold and sharp and calculated.  It was not the man that loved every animal he saw, cried with me when my dog died in my arms, and never argued about where we ate when we went out to dinner.  I don’t know who this man was but he said to me, ‘Don’t have children.”

My entire face melted with the world around me as I asked him, “What?”

He kept his eyes on me and said, “Don’t have children, you’ll just mess them up.”

And it was so quiet….  I rallied to regain my balance in the slosh of the world and said, “I’m not messed up.  Two gay parent’s don’t necessarily make a gay child just like two straight parent’s don’t necessarily make a straight child, and even if my children ALL turn out to be gay, they will be good people.  God gives us the challenges we don’t think we can handle to show us that we can.  Apparently you needed to learn this one twice.”  And only a few days past the one year anniversary of the day that my little brother had told our parent’s that he was an abomination, I had just told them that I was their second chance from God to see the truth.  We are the blessing that they just have to be willing to see and accept it.

Then I got up and told them I loved them.  My mother asked who knew and I told her that most everyone already knew.  Jjust like in my childhood, I had tried to spare them the pain longer than I should have because I knew how it would hurt them and they had taught me never to hurt people without reason.  I had my reason with this man so I told them.  I told her that if anyone in the family had questions or concerns to tell them to call me and I would tell them exactly what I had just said.  My mom continued to cry as I left through the door and walked to my car.  I am still not sure what sat in my dad’s chair in the corner of the living room, but it sat there for as long as I could see it as I was backing out of the driveway.  I don’t know if it was grief, or anger, or regret, or guilt, or hate but whatever it was…it changed him…and for the first time in all those years with my dad…that is the first time I only saw a man.  A man that I never wanted to be and who only happened to be my father.

I went to my new home with the man I loved and, in a daze, told him what had happened with my parent’s that evening. That night we laid in bed with our dogs, Inkblot and Julian, cuddled up between us as I kept crying and he kept saying that it could have been much worse over and over again. And he was right, it really could have been, so many have it much worse than it ever could have been for me.  But as I cried myself to sleep that night, surrounded by the love of MY family; I could feel the void where my center of gravity once had been before the voice ripped it away, and I clung to those three warm bodies like they were my only anchor to this world…

And

It was so quiet…."

I think it is important that I say that I don't think my father is a bad man.  I don't think my mother is a bad woman.  I just think that sometimes great people do bad things in the name of a good idea.

To Feel it All

There are worse things in this world than going unnoticed.  In fact, I have made a home of unnoticed.  My low-key lean-to of inconspicuous.  No there are far worst things than being shielded from the barbs of the social rose.  One particular thorn sticks deeper and drips a green ichor that colors the eyes long before it breaks the skin of it's victim.  This barbed beauty has a name but you will never know it's sound from their lips as they pass you noticed, but unengaged.  The sweet sound of laughter draws you closer but the distance between you and the bud is stubborn.  With much effort you may eventually near the intoxicating mass of merriment but as your head spins you find yourself vacantly detached from the group though you are within reach.  Unnoticed is sometimes an accidental gift while exclusion is always a deliberate slight.  Yes, unnoticed is preferred to excluded.

To sometimes let the cracks crack

Lately I feel that every moment of everyday is spent trying to keep my inner turmoil from forcing its way through my plaster smile of a dam.  A sea of tired, boiling with anger and frothing with worry is constantly smashing against the backside of the smile blocking the man made bottle-neck of a channel.  I can feel the gentle grin degrading into clenched, grinding teeth as each day races on.  Every dam with a forceful flow behind it must have.a vent.  A place where the power of the ocean building can escape.  Theater and writing were always those vents for me.  Responsibility and opinions of others have recently sealed over those vents leaving me with a sea of daily torment behind a quickly deteriorating friendly face.  I will pick and claw and dig and pull at the patches until I can once again remember how to smile again rather than just push my teeth together to hold back the flood.

The Remnants of The Cage

One of the things I remember missing most about working with my theme park family is the smells.  Every morning I was greeted by the smell of coffee, pop tarts in the toaster, maybe a wisp of marshmallow dust from someone's breakfast cereal, antibacterial spray, the familiar blend of roughly a hundred people's specific personal scents as they arrived in the morning.....but 5 days a week.... above all this....above the essence of our morning....above the uncertainty of the day...there was the strong smell of turkey bacon and pancake syrup.  Above the spinning of life's weather-vane was our unwavering Alcurtis.  That smell, for me at least, meant that I would laugh that day.  That I would dance a little harder and enjoy it.  That, at some point, he would look at me in the way that only he had and make me feel uncomfortable on the outside but leave me feeling just a little sexier than before.  That I would most likely be forced to think about where I stand and why I stand there at some point; I would lose the discussion in the end, but I would also have a better understanding of my beliefs.  (These beliefs could range anywhere from religion, to politics, to why we need revivals of musicals, to why we remake movies, to why the sky is blue(which in the end he could prove to you that it is, in fact, not blue))

Yesterday Alcurtis left us.
Yesterday I lost a brother to the ether.
Yesterday I saw hundreds of hearts break simultaneously.
Yesterday we celebrated and we mourned.

Today....  Today people keep asking me if I am okay.  Today people keep asking me if I need anything.  I have been unable to formulate an answer so those texts have gone unanswered.  Until now.

No.  I am not okay.  I am pissed off.  I am angry that Alcurtis felt he had to go through this alone.  I am angry that the "I love you's" and calling him family didn't convey my willingness to take on any burden.  I am angry that he wouldn't swallow his pride along with those pills rather than refusing the whole lot.  I am angry that he put so much weight on Jen for the last year knowing she would honor his wishes and keep whatever she saw or might speculate private.  I am angry he weighed her down even more when the truth came to light and he made her shoulder that secret alone, even shortly.  I am angry because over the past year I have doubted my importance in my inner circle, only to find out that 2/5th of it was literally fighting for a life in secret.  I am angry he placed his Tapestry thread in her hands and made her decide the length.  I am angry that his family mistook the cage he was trapped in for their loved one.  I am angry that he suffered 4 days longer than was necessary because they needed time.  I am angry that I watched people I care about more than most in this world be sideswiped by this surprise, then find hope, then lose hope, and then say goodbye daily.  I am angry that I am angry.

With all of that anger you would think that I wouldn't have room for any other emotions but somehow I do.  I am sad.  Almost unbearably so.  Sad for all the reasons I am angry.  Sad for a hundred more reasons that crop up around me when I linger too long. And happy.  And proud.  Oh so proud.  And grateful.  I have mountains of grateful in me right now.  But what shadows all of that for me at this exact moment?  The cage he left after he broke free of it.  Now I know that it may seem insensitive to call it that but that is what my heart knows it was when I saw it.  He was unable to move it and unable to leave it.

I was only in the room for maybe 15-20 seconds but when I close my eyes...that is what I see and have seen since that moment.  When I stumbled into sleep last night I found myself back in that room looking at the cold, aged, jagged bars that held my brother a short time ago.  I know that image will fade in time but this is about what I am feeling now...and a large part of me is feeling guilt.  I should have spoken up sooner about forcing him to go to a doctor.  I should have voiced my opinion to the family in regards to keeping him in his cage.  I should have told him I loved him more.  I shouldn't have allowed him to hide when I came over.  For those things...I'm sorry Curtie.

But you don't have to worry about any of that.....
Because there is the painful happy truth....
Alcurtis is free....
And the smell of turkey bacon and pancake syrup just means...breakfast.