Dec 24, Knoxville TN.  2020 is slowly fading into the white of the snow blinded horizon, and a fleet of grounded flights never to get home in time for Christmas.  It's not the kind of year that is terriby condusive to celebration anyway.  No parties, no carolers on the streets, no gifts and no family and friends.  It's hard on every and anyone.

So I'm in Knoxville TN in a Hampton Inn, watching Christmas rom coms and eating cookies I shouldn't.

Jan 6, 2021, Raleigh, NC.  Cold.  

VOICES

Wichita, Kansas, today.

I've always had the uncanny ability to shut my eyes and imagine the sounds and shadows of years gone by.  The echoes of laughter and crackling of long skirts in the hallways of Versailles... the crunch of leaves beneath the feet of Indian tribes tracking in the forests of the northeast... the muffle of faded conversation and rolling wheels on the prairies of the American west.  I figure it's the gift of an active imagination, though some time ago a friend of mine referred to me as "spooky" in that way.  I suspect she probably was herself.

I'm in Wichita on a windy fall day, picturing all the signs of modern life around me gone, tumbleweeds blowing across the fields, and little else to see for miles.  I figure it's a gift, as sometimes it is the only thing I can hear or see on the lonelier days of travel.  Being a flight attendant is far more solitary than most people imagine, and especially in covid days when so many places are shut down, and at times there is nothing more than my gift to rely upon to keep me company on long layovers.  The whistling sound is haunting when there is nothing else to break it's consistency.  I heard it last on a hilltop in Montana where there was an iron fence surrounding a plot of land with only a few gravestones on it bent and crooked with time.  Some plastic flowers placed by someone in the past several years, now dirty from the dust shifted by the wind and deposited there.  Again, as I looked around, there was nothing but my imagination to create life.

I haven't written in a long time.  I think that wind stole my voice for a while.  It was so much louder than what I had to say.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/117336311/frank-parish

THROUGH OTHER EYES

Over the years several people have suggested that I write my life story.  Seems like a common thread... so many of my peers also have stories to tell, as or more colorful than my own, but all interwoven threads.  I always thought that maybe it wasn't such a good idea since I am not good with criticsm.  It's part of the reason I took an exit left of the nightlife world to embrace what an old boyfriend referred to, as provincial.

Never could have children, so much of what would have made me "provincial" went out the window in that bucket of dreams.  But I wanted to return to a simpler life anyway, and still am working toward a cottage on a small farm away from the city.  Not to abandon all that I've known, but to enhance that which will make me happy.  Also a common thread... many of us have already done that with an eye to the fact that we have already led such full lives that there is little to look back and say, "wish I had done that".  We did.

But still, the idea of writing it all down has taken several decades to germinate, and now I find that I am finally writing it down.  But I've noticed that I seem to be writing my life story through the stories of those around me.  So is it a presumption of who I am through their eyes?  Or who they are through my own?  Or some combination of both?

Maybe the point of it all, is just to write it down.  I'll think about it later.  xoxo

DNA Density Files

Sometimes I have my voice, sometimes I don't.  This time it's been building up, episodes of constant questions and hypotheses, but no starting point, no end.  It all starts with my peculiar ideas about humans, nature, time...

It has always been stated that we use only 10% of our brains.  So what is up with the other 90%?  Storage.  Terabytes of endless storage, memories of the people before us, images that do not dissolve but show up in dreams and ideas, the concept of time being connected to creation a mere myth to make us feel less alone.  But I don't think we are.  All that storage, connected to our DNA instead... everything that has come before us, right there for the picking.

When we are young, you don't really access your storage... so much outside influence, so much impressing upon our active brain to give us a "life" of solvency, risk, adventure, stability -- the terms we use to identify who we are and where our lives will take us.  As you get older and there is less outside life affecting the inside life, I think the storage unit becomes more accessible if you let it.

In a few words, our DNA becomes more fluid in giving us the clues to what makes us tick.

It wasn't until I was in my 50s, that I began to recognize the telltale clues as to who I was, and it is still giving me bits and pieces to put together.  It wasn't until my 50s that I began to understand why certain places resonated with me more than others... why I chose the men I dated throughout my life, why some habits exist and others that made no sense and have become relevant to the bigger picture.  I think that all the clues are right in front of us, but we choose to believe what we've been told is the story of humankind, because that is the way it has always been.  But if you use Achem's Razor, it clearly tells us that as much as we want to believe Darwinism, or Religion, that is is much simpler than that.  Something intervened.

Just an idea... a concept based on things I've read, seen, learned over the years -- could be totally wrong, but this is the reason we all need to communicate more.  To share ideas, thoughts, concepts, instead of looking for where we disagree and then condemning others for differing opinions.  I do not believe in blame, I believe in fixing problems and finding common grounds.

So that is my rant for the day.  My DNA density files.  It's a theory.

WHEN GAY PRIDE DAY WAS MY FAVORITE HOLIDAY

Throughout the 80s, there was one day every year that was filled with nothing but love and friendship.  I usually spent it on Phoebe Zeeman's roof which was the best party in town.  We would play music and Phoebe would supply endless amounts of food and we'd have cocktails and laugh and hug and celebrate a day meant for our beloved friends.  

MY LAST GAY PRIDE DAY

Over time, we lost many, at first rapidly.  And then a slow trickle until those with HIV no longer automatically became symptomatic.  It was a hard loss that felt intimate, as it seemed as if it was only happening to those we loved.  Afternoons spent in the sun drinking wine were replaced by visits to the hospital.  Parties were replaced by memorial services.

During that time, I slowly became more involved with my work and eventually married and became more and more a member of the straight world.  No longer was Wigstock in my backyard.  Gay Pride parades were less attended.  No more sunday night gay parties at the clubs.

I kept all my friendships which only grew stronger over time, especially as the numbers had diminished to a precious clan of those of us who had lived through the silent war.  Daily conversations were replaced by weekly, by monthly, sometimes by yearly, without skipping a beat.

In the early 2000s my husband and I started a non-gender bath and body line, and naturally, our launch party was at Beige - Eric Conrad and Edwige Belmore's Tuesday night party.  During that time, more friendships were forged with gay men and women, and for a short period of a few years, their numbers swelled in my phone book.  The party was back. Sunday nights were spent at Lincoln's, where a group of us had dinner and watched Sex in the City.  I was often the in house chef, and loved serving food to a room of happy campers.  My friend Boden was chief in charge of taking me out to the clubs when my husband knew I needed a night of dancing with the boys.  Steph became the brother I had sorely missed.  Until he one day returned home to Berlin when his modeling contracts ran out.

That time ended as adulthood once again pulled us all away into our various relationships and responsibilities.

I remember Gay Pride Day every year as it seems to fall right around the weekend of my husband's birthday.  The day is often spent with family and birthday cakes, once again another year no longer spent at the joyous parade, or Phoebe's roof, having the love fest that we once all so adored.  

It's been many years since we celebrated together, a happy family of artists and writers, designers and photographers, misfits and miscreants.  It is still my favorite holiday.

IN MEMORIAM. [2 of the many friends lost to AIDS.  I miss them still.]

SCOTT MACPHEE

HAOUI MONTAUG

THE SKY IS WIDE OPEN

People are flying again.

It was inevitable, that we'd all finally get so sick of staying indoors, that we'd fly anywhere.  Some states are still on lockdown, or at least relatively so, and some countries still have mandatory 2 week lockdown for all visitors, but masks on, some wearing gloves, planes are filling up with anxious flyers, desperate to see something besides their own 4 walls.

Who can blame them.  The sky is wide open...

NO END.

We keep talking about when we are on the other side of this - when it will end - when we will be able to go back to a new normal.

Truth.  There will be no great delineation between today and tomorrow.  We will never feel an official “end”, even though clearly there are powers that be who want to say it is over.  There will be no “over”.  Things will very slowly change.  An opening here, and opening there.  Perhaps only temporarily as the virus re-attacks in a different strain at some point.  Or many different strains.  [Icelandic scientists identified 40 versions of corona virus, and that was weeks ago.]. 

It’s only my opinion, but I think we need to recreate our own sense of what life will be for us.  Not just for tomorrow, but for now.  

People are cooking who have never cooked.  Most of all, people are baking.  There is a huge comfort in baking, and it isn’t an easy thing.  But everywhere you look online there are recipes and photos of baked goods.  People are gardening.  If you have a space in which to grow something, do.  Whether vegetables and herbs to eat, or flowers for the bees, grow something.  People are adopting dogs.  I hope they keep them.  They become family.  They depend entirely on us for food, exercise, love.  Mostly love.  Some people are moving out of the cities.  I asked a moving van driver the other day if people were moving in or moving out of NYC.  He said there are a few moving in, mostly moving out.  And mostly putting things in storage.  That was telling…

There will be pros and cons, no different from any other time in history.  But this is just a time in history. Our grandparents lived through 2 world wars, the Spanish flu, the depression, the dustbowl, the Korean War and Vietnam.  That should put a few things in perspective.  

Right now we have the luxury of time.  Picture yourself with nothing left.  What would you do, where would you go, what would you have to say about it?  It’s an exercise in self discovery.  I’d bet my dwindling 401K that a lot of our decisions will be based in autonomy.  And maybe it’s about time.