Dealing with AT&T has been a total waste of time and an infuriating experience. I am filled with nothing but disgust for them as a corporate entity and for their employees as irresponsible people who seem to make a habit of arrogantly wasting the time of their customers and causing unnecessary hardship. If I didn't have a contract, (and if I wasn't a beta tester for Apple App. developers) I'd have been long gone by now, iPhone be damned.
Luckily, it's that time of year when there is a lot of free entertainment to enjoy, namely, parties at friends' houses. I kept my promise to myself (made a couple of weeks ago) to go to the party being held at the home of a friend of my father's. My father was gay, and most of the people at the party were gay, although there were some of us "breeders" there. (Actually, I've never bred, so I guess I don't fit into either category. I'm just an a-sexual. You can call me Pat.)
Anyway, anybody who knows anything knows that there is NO better party than that involving a significant number of gay people. Why is this? I'll tell you why.
First of all, gay people are, like me and my twin brother, Charlie Brown, downtrodden people. That is to say, they are an oppressed group. Misunderstood. Unfairly judged. Condemned by the ultra-religious. Most of them have developed the very appropriate response of laughing at the society that behaves toward them in this way, and if they didn't develop a great sense of humor and stick together, they wouldn't be able to stand living in this world.
For that reason, I have always gotten along wonderfully with gay folk, and although I've stayed on the straight side in my intimate relationships, I'm definitely one of those people with ambiguous sexuality.
I had never been to the house where the party was, but I had no trouble finding it. All I had to do was follow the trail of parked cars for blocks along the road leading to the house. What a party!
It wasn't that it was all wild and crazy or anything. In fact, I would say most of the attendees were pretty conservative-behaving folk (not talking politics, here). There were families with their grown kids (no young-uns) and one very pregnant gal, gay couples, single folk like me, drag queens (who were not in drag at the party, but clearly, these were guys who could put Burlesque to shame!) and just a great mix of everybody, all getting along great, most of them drinking from the spirited punch bowl as opposed to the un-spirited punch bowl. (If you're an atheist and drink out of the spirited punch bowl, does that mean you're not an atheist anymore? Hmm... the irony.)
It was supposed to be mainly a formal affair I suppose, but I didn't get that memo and many others didn't either, so I didn't feel too bad. Of course, anyone who knows me knows that I rarely show up anywhere wearing anything but blue jeans. For my grandfather's wedding, I DID put on a pair of slacks, but even that didn't feel right to me.
It was a huge house, with every room so packed I'm sure the fire marshal would have been concerned, but it made it kind of fun to try and navigate the maze of people to get to the food. And OH THE FOOD! I definitely made the right decision by not eating anything all day - the food was like BUTTAH!
Speaking of BUTTAH, there is a Barbara Streisand room in this house. Or, perhaps I should say, there is a Streisand museum. Quite impressive. Metal pigs are better than no pigs. (You'd have to read Streisand's latest book to understand what that means.)
I mingled around and discovered that some total strangers who were in town for the holidays and at the party with their daughter and her hubster who live in town were from a part of Florida where I used to live and work, so we chatted about all of the cool technology and NASA and how nobody really understands just how many jobs NASA creates indirectly when the space program is active, especially when it comes to subcontractors. (Wow, that was one long run-on sentence! No A+ for me with this blog.)
I spent some time with a dear friend of mine and my dad's, Nick. Sometime I'll have to tell you why Nick is so special to me. He's special to me in a way that nobody else ever can be, and not just because he's a gay man with a movie-star-looking twin sister!
As the party died down and people started to leave, the host (one of three, actually) came and spent some time chatting with me. We talked about our lives a bit and discussed how, even though he's a conservative, he tends to have a lot of libertarian views. (Most people are probably middle-of-the-road libertarians and don't know it.) Yes, I know that I need to explain what I mean by middle-of-the-road libertarian, but not now.
Not long before I was about to leave, a guy who looked very familiar joined our conversation for a moment to say how much he'd enjoyed the party. He was with his mother, who had been walking around earlier saying "Outta my way, fool!" to whomever was blocking her path. Gotta love her for that! I thought she looked familiar, too.
I mentioned to the man that he looked familiar to me, and he said I looked familiar to him as well. (It wasn't an attempted pickup line, as he's gay.) He asked me my name, and when I told him the unmistakable look of recognition washed over his face. This was none other than Robert, whom I had gone to high school with and who showed me his grown son (!) who was also at the party. We exchanged phone numbers, and I marveled at how, for the umpteenth time this year, I'm reconnecting with people I haven't seen in 25 years!
We had both gone to Sunday school together at 4th Presbyterian, where my father played the organ for some time as well. How many times I remember taking my blue jeans with me to that church as a kid so I could change from that icky dress into my holy (literally, not figuratively) jeans. And the delicious cherry tomatoes that my brother and I would pick and take home that grew in the parking lot between cracks in the asphalt. Where does the time go? And Jane, an older woman who went there, ended up sobbing uncontrollably on my shoulder at my father's funeral years later, she being one of many people who were extremely distraught over my father's death at such a young age that they couldn't help but break down as we received guests after the funeral, (it was US comforting THEM, at times) and David, about 20 years my senior and whom I had a HUGE crush on when I was five, who's father had been the pastor of 4th church years earlier, saying "Jane, JANE! Come on, Jane." as he tried to steer her away to allow the line of hundreds of people to progress and pay their respects. My father really was a dear person, and the hundreds (as in possibly 500+ standing room only) of people who showed up at his funeral shocked me, although I suppose looking back it shouldn't have.
My dad's friend Paul relayed the story to me of how, 26 years ago, my father had played the piano at his holiday party and, even though he was worried that my dad wasn't up to it (he had brain cancer and would die months later) and was probably wearing himself out as he kept playing, once my father started playing the piano he just couldn't stop. Gotta love that good old O.C.D. for keeping us going and going and going!
As I prepared to leave, the guy in charge of the coats couldn't find mine. There was one that looked very similar to mine in the dim light, but mine was nowhere to be found. We decided that whomever the one that looked similar to mine belonged to must have mistaken mine for his, which is easy to do in dim light and considering that most of the folks in attendance had had a few dips into the spirited punch bowl.
We asked around and nobody claimed that the coat that looked similar to mine was theirs, so I decided I'd wear that one home (it was very cold outside and I had about a block to walk to get to my car) and left my name and number in the guest book so they could call me if anyone called later saying they'd taken home the wrong coat. (A good idea would have been for everyone to put a slip of paper in their right pocket with their name on it.)
I put the coat on and discovered that there was a can of Skoal in one of the pockets. (I'm using Skoal as a generic term.) Somebody cracked a joke that "you can take the jacket but you can't chew the Skoal". I jokingly whined "Oh MAAAAAAAAN!" Then someone said "Ok, well, you can, but you can't swallow." to which I replied "Don't worry. I'm not a swallower." (Heh.) Only at a party like that could you say such a thing and not shock anyone.
So, when I got home, I found the (most likely male-owned) coat to be, as is typical of a guy's coat, kind of dirty and smelly and not as warm as mine had been, even though it's a fairly nice coat and appears to be suede like mine was. Mine was practically new and had more pockets and smelled much nicer. (And it didn't have holes in the pockets inside, or Skoal in the pockets.)
So, it seems as though I have a mystery on my hands - who has my coat? Who's coat do I have? If I spent day and night searching high and low, I might find out the answers to those questions, but even if the owner of my coat turned out to be a really handsome, wealthy prince, he'd most likely be gay. What's a girl to do?
I suppose the one bright spot to all of this is that, because I just have that cloud that seems to follow me around wherever I go, I actually had the foresight to make sure I did NOT put my keys in the pocket of my coat, but in my jeans pocket instead. It's that anxiety disorder that causes me to say "What if?" all the time that caused me to think on the way in "What if somebody takes my coat by mistake? I wouldn't want to lose my car keys, too!" The fact that I try not to take my anxiety and "What if?" thinking to the extreme is what kept me from putting my name on a piece of paper and pinning it to the coat. Maybe I'll rethink that and pull out all the stops and go extreme from now on.
So anyway, I have to learn to be happy with the fact that, while I lost a great coat, I saved several hundred dollars by not having to have keys made for the car. (The key has a chip in it, so you can't just get a copy made for a buck at the store.) It's a small victory, but I'll take what I can get at this point.
So there you have it. My redneck (Skoal-in-pocket) Cinderalla story, with a bit of Charlie Brown mixed in.
Good grief.
A.
For that reason, I have always gotten along wonderfully with gay folk, and although I've stayed on the straight side in my intimate relationships, I'm definitely one of those people with ambiguous sexuality.
I had never been to the house where the party was, but I had no trouble finding it. All I had to do was follow the trail of parked cars for blocks along the road leading to the house. What a party!
It wasn't that it was all wild and crazy or anything. In fact, I would say most of the attendees were pretty conservative-behaving folk (not talking politics, here). There were families with their grown kids (no young-uns) and one very pregnant gal, gay couples, single folk like me, drag queens (who were not in drag at the party, but clearly, these were guys who could put Burlesque to shame!) and just a great mix of everybody, all getting along great, most of them drinking from the spirited punch bowl as opposed to the un-spirited punch bowl. (If you're an atheist and drink out of the spirited punch bowl, does that mean you're not an atheist anymore? Hmm... the irony.)
It was supposed to be mainly a formal affair I suppose, but I didn't get that memo and many others didn't either, so I didn't feel too bad. Of course, anyone who knows me knows that I rarely show up anywhere wearing anything but blue jeans. For my grandfather's wedding, I DID put on a pair of slacks, but even that didn't feel right to me.
It was a huge house, with every room so packed I'm sure the fire marshal would have been concerned, but it made it kind of fun to try and navigate the maze of people to get to the food. And OH THE FOOD! I definitely made the right decision by not eating anything all day - the food was like BUTTAH!
Speaking of BUTTAH, there is a Barbara Streisand room in this house. Or, perhaps I should say, there is a Streisand museum. Quite impressive. Metal pigs are better than no pigs. (You'd have to read Streisand's latest book to understand what that means.)
I mingled around and discovered that some total strangers who were in town for the holidays and at the party with their daughter and her hubster who live in town were from a part of Florida where I used to live and work, so we chatted about all of the cool technology and NASA and how nobody really understands just how many jobs NASA creates indirectly when the space program is active, especially when it comes to subcontractors. (Wow, that was one long run-on sentence! No A+ for me with this blog.)
I spent some time with a dear friend of mine and my dad's, Nick. Sometime I'll have to tell you why Nick is so special to me. He's special to me in a way that nobody else ever can be, and not just because he's a gay man with a movie-star-looking twin sister!
As the party died down and people started to leave, the host (one of three, actually) came and spent some time chatting with me. We talked about our lives a bit and discussed how, even though he's a conservative, he tends to have a lot of libertarian views. (Most people are probably middle-of-the-road libertarians and don't know it.) Yes, I know that I need to explain what I mean by middle-of-the-road libertarian, but not now.
Not long before I was about to leave, a guy who looked very familiar joined our conversation for a moment to say how much he'd enjoyed the party. He was with his mother, who had been walking around earlier saying "Outta my way, fool!" to whomever was blocking her path. Gotta love her for that! I thought she looked familiar, too.
I mentioned to the man that he looked familiar to me, and he said I looked familiar to him as well. (It wasn't an attempted pickup line, as he's gay.) He asked me my name, and when I told him the unmistakable look of recognition washed over his face. This was none other than Robert, whom I had gone to high school with and who showed me his grown son (!) who was also at the party. We exchanged phone numbers, and I marveled at how, for the umpteenth time this year, I'm reconnecting with people I haven't seen in 25 years!
We had both gone to Sunday school together at 4th Presbyterian, where my father played the organ for some time as well. How many times I remember taking my blue jeans with me to that church as a kid so I could change from that icky dress into my holy (literally, not figuratively) jeans. And the delicious cherry tomatoes that my brother and I would pick and take home that grew in the parking lot between cracks in the asphalt. Where does the time go? And Jane, an older woman who went there, ended up sobbing uncontrollably on my shoulder at my father's funeral years later, she being one of many people who were extremely distraught over my father's death at such a young age that they couldn't help but break down as we received guests after the funeral, (it was US comforting THEM, at times) and David, about 20 years my senior and whom I had a HUGE crush on when I was five, who's father had been the pastor of 4th church years earlier, saying "Jane, JANE! Come on, Jane." as he tried to steer her away to allow the line of hundreds of people to progress and pay their respects. My father really was a dear person, and the hundreds (as in possibly 500+ standing room only) of people who showed up at his funeral shocked me, although I suppose looking back it shouldn't have.
My dad's friend Paul relayed the story to me of how, 26 years ago, my father had played the piano at his holiday party and, even though he was worried that my dad wasn't up to it (he had brain cancer and would die months later) and was probably wearing himself out as he kept playing, once my father started playing the piano he just couldn't stop. Gotta love that good old O.C.D. for keeping us going and going and going!
As I prepared to leave, the guy in charge of the coats couldn't find mine. There was one that looked very similar to mine in the dim light, but mine was nowhere to be found. We decided that whomever the one that looked similar to mine belonged to must have mistaken mine for his, which is easy to do in dim light and considering that most of the folks in attendance had had a few dips into the spirited punch bowl.
We asked around and nobody claimed that the coat that looked similar to mine was theirs, so I decided I'd wear that one home (it was very cold outside and I had about a block to walk to get to my car) and left my name and number in the guest book so they could call me if anyone called later saying they'd taken home the wrong coat. (A good idea would have been for everyone to put a slip of paper in their right pocket with their name on it.)
I put the coat on and discovered that there was a can of Skoal in one of the pockets. (I'm using Skoal as a generic term.) Somebody cracked a joke that "you can take the jacket but you can't chew the Skoal". I jokingly whined "Oh MAAAAAAAAN!" Then someone said "Ok, well, you can, but you can't swallow." to which I replied "Don't worry. I'm not a swallower." (Heh.) Only at a party like that could you say such a thing and not shock anyone.
So, when I got home, I found the (most likely male-owned) coat to be, as is typical of a guy's coat, kind of dirty and smelly and not as warm as mine had been, even though it's a fairly nice coat and appears to be suede like mine was. Mine was practically new and had more pockets and smelled much nicer. (And it didn't have holes in the pockets inside, or Skoal in the pockets.)
So, it seems as though I have a mystery on my hands - who has my coat? Who's coat do I have? If I spent day and night searching high and low, I might find out the answers to those questions, but even if the owner of my coat turned out to be a really handsome, wealthy prince, he'd most likely be gay. What's a girl to do?
I suppose the one bright spot to all of this is that, because I just have that cloud that seems to follow me around wherever I go, I actually had the foresight to make sure I did NOT put my keys in the pocket of my coat, but in my jeans pocket instead. It's that anxiety disorder that causes me to say "What if?" all the time that caused me to think on the way in "What if somebody takes my coat by mistake? I wouldn't want to lose my car keys, too!" The fact that I try not to take my anxiety and "What if?" thinking to the extreme is what kept me from putting my name on a piece of paper and pinning it to the coat. Maybe I'll rethink that and pull out all the stops and go extreme from now on.
So anyway, I have to learn to be happy with the fact that, while I lost a great coat, I saved several hundred dollars by not having to have keys made for the car. (The key has a chip in it, so you can't just get a copy made for a buck at the store.) It's a small victory, but I'll take what I can get at this point.
So there you have it. My redneck (Skoal-in-pocket) Cinderalla story, with a bit of Charlie Brown mixed in.
Good grief.
A.
1 comment:
Salaam Angie,
Gotta love you for this one.
Happy New Year
Dr Omar Zaid
http://zaid-pub.iii4s.org/
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