Running Thoughts (2)

Dear family: why marriage matters to me
A gay son writes to his straight family members and friends about the pain of being treated like a second-class citizen

"Todd and I do want marriage rights, but not because we seek to destroy the institution of marriage, as many far-right religious groups would have you believe. We are not trying to advance a "gay agenda." For us, it has nothing to do with religion, as we can already have a religious ceremony. What we want is civil marriage. We want the civil rights that come with federal recognition."

John Caldwell
Advocate associate news editor

If you support equal rights for women, equal rights for minorities, or any civil rights legislation, you must also support gay marriage. This is not a moral or religious issue, sorry. It is an issue of civil rights.

NPR did a piece this evening on All Things Considered about George W. and his time in Alabama. It wasn't about his time served or not-served in the Alabama Air National Guard. Rather, it was about his time working on the senatorial campaign that was his ostensible reason for being in Alabama instead of Texas.

At any rate, one of the other guys who worked the campaign was interviewed about GWB, and he made the comment that Bush's standard "opening conversational gambit" wasn't about football or politics or the lovely weather, but was instead about the hard drinking he'd done the night before. Remember -- GWB was supposed to be about 25 at that time.

I find this hysterical. It underlines, once again, the frat boy attitude GWB exudes. I missed the very end of the piece, but the last part I heard was an account of GWB sharing anecdotes of getting off scot free while at Yale when caught by local authorities -- because his grandfather was a senator. Impressive. Start conversations by talking about how wasted you got last night, then tell a story about how, the last time you got so drunk, the cops didn't dare arrest you because Grandpappy was a senator!

I guess now that GWB doesn't drink, his conversation gambit must center on the foreign people he's bombed or maligned, or the mud he slung at his political opponent. Followed by that good-old boy laugh.

Meh. He makes me angry.

My husband and I are going to the opera tonight.

I like opera, I guess. Or, rather, I like music. But I'd prefer to see Handel's Messiah than a Wagner opera. Maybe part of that is because Handel wrote Messiah in English and I can understand it.

But I think part of it is also because, for me, the story can get in the way of the music in opera. Messiah and other oratoria (I think that's the right term) are not linear stories -- dramatic creations with a plot, etc. -- but are musical vignettes based on a central theme.

And I say that just as I remember that I really loved La Traviata. I think I remember from college, though, that La Traviata had sort of the same cultural cache when it was written as soap operas do now. In other words, it was not highly regarded. Am I correct? Someone step in and tell me if I am wrong—please.

Anyway, the point of this post wasn't really to go off on opera or my ambivalent views of it, but to underline the fact that this outing was my husband's idea. He loves opera, Wagner in particular. (Yes, we're seeing Wagner tonight.) His Christmas present from me was the entire Ring of the Nibelung—all 14 discs of it. And he was delighted.

Sometimes his love of opera bemuses me. I'm not entirely sure where he picked it up. He was in band in middle school, but I doubt playing French horn at 12 guarantees a lifelong love of music.

Whereas I was a theatre major, a four-year chorister in college, but I never managed to develop a passion for opera. Honestly, sometimes I can barely stand musical theatre. I'd rather go to the ballet—but that husband of mine just doesn't get dance.

And that's where I think my bemusement gets strongest. An opera whose words he cannot understand completely engrosses him, but toss a girl in a tutu and pointe shoes on stage and his mind goes blank. Dance is just another language of musical interpretation. Why do we each appreciate something different? And how can we meet in the middle?

My coworker and I have been nominated for the positions of "office heroes." We're about to start developing a project that has a 10-day turnaround! This, when our other projects are expected to have a 2-month turnaround. Similar scope, by the way.

I could be upset, freaked out, nervous, name it. But no! My reaction: FINALLY! It's been over a month, and this is seriously the first major assignment we've been given that has any real-world implications.

I hate to make generalizations about ivory-tower academia or about government bureaucracy, but my first thought each day is, "Typical. Think big thoughts, dream big dreams, but before you act—nitpick."

::::Sigh::::

I've been playing around (some) with CSS, and with color wheels. I present to you my redesign: green and purple! I know, it's sort of Mardi Gras-ish, but I'm seeing too many blogspot blogs with the pretty orange template. This one, this one is MINE.

I find myself dwelling on such momentous issues as "Should I capitalize the first word of a bullet point in good Web copy?" and "Do list items have ending punctuation, whether in individual items or at the end of the list?"

Is it wrong that I think it won't matter in the least? I don't care who my audience is, they won't notice. OK, if my audience has a professional editor in it's midst, that guy might notice. I'd be really surprised, though.

I think what bothers me most is the vehemence some people display when I suggest we abandon their conventions. Is placing a semi-colon at the end of each bulleted item really necessary? And if we were to abolish that practice, would the English language suddenly quicken in its deterioration?

To sum up, I am pretty sure these things are true:

• No one cares;
  
• Not even my boss;
  
• Certainly not our projected audience; and
  
• Definitely not me.
  

Now, doesn't that look silly?

George on Seinfeld is muttering about parking in a garage, how it's like paying for a prostitute. This is the one where he parallel parks but someone else tries to park head-in.

Sort of like girls' night. Everyone has their own method of doing something. George favors the parallel method, and the other guy favors head-in.

Girls' night -- I favor drink-drink-drink, eat-eat-eat, watch bad movies and comment on them. Other people favor sipping their wine while deconstructing other female friends or husbands or boyfriends.

Deconstructing other female friends is par for the course. I do, however, have a hard time deconstructing men (husbands/boyfriends) because mine is wonderful.

I had this same experience at a work happy hour this week. I went, because I enjoy my workplace and want to develop good relationships with my coworkers. As I got there, I was chatting with some of the other women about how cold the bar was. One said, "Last week it was fine in here. It's just like men -- one week they're fine, the next they screw you."

What am I, six weeks married, to say about that? Thankfully another coworker intervened, pointing to me and saying, "Not her. She's got a good one." But you'd hope that the wedding ring would tip people off.

Or maybe not. Lots of people who wear rings are unhappily married. Still, my perspective is that you can bitch about how rotten "all" men are if you're in friendly company. When you're around unknown variables (new coworkers, friends of friends, wives/girlfriends of friends, etc.), screaming your grievances -- or just muttering them -- may not be totally wise.

This leads to another annoyance I have.

It's the married thing. Some people have nothing but congratulations for us: "How wonderful! How long have you been married? How do you like married life?"

Others project...something...onto me: "Are you still on the honeymoon? Just wait, it all changes."

I actually resent that strangers -- or mere acquaintances -- presume to know enough about my relationship to qualify it. To pass judgment on it. To predict its demise -- or downfall, at least.

I work hard at my relationship -- not to make it "work" or to make it "perfect" but to recognize and adapt myself to the new demands and constraints of living every day with someone who I'll spend every other day of my life living with. And when perfect strangers, or coworkers, suggest that I just don't know enough about myself or my husband and that things will deteriorate rapidly, I get pissed.

I love my husband and he loves me. But we both know that love doesn't make the world go round. Respect figures prominently, as does care -- as does, yes, hard work. None of them preclude the others. A marriage is full of all them. Love, respect, care, and some work -- the kind of work that requires an individual to exercise respect, care, and love for someone else.

Marriage is the best thing that's happened to me; I adore my husband and he adores me. Respect the integrity of my marriage, and I'll respect you.

St. Paddy's Day is Wednesday, and I love St. Paddy's Day. I went to St. Patrick's Elementary School. The pastor of St. Patrick's Church happened to be Irish. We always, being little schoolchildren, gave up candy for Lent, and St. Patrick's Day almost always (always?) falls during Lent.

But the Monseigneur would come around on St. Patrick's Day, dressed like the good saint, and pass out candy and tell us all that, because St. Patrick was our patron saint, it was our feast day, and we all had a dispensation to break our Lenten discipline. That totally rocked!

I have carried this little tradition into my adult life, and since my husband's favorite holiday is ALSO St. Patrick's Day, we generally celebrate in fine form. This year, we both gave up red meat for Lent, so Wednesday is going to be a beef-fest -- we're already planning on a big Fuddrucker's lunch.

Addendum: Silver Thistle Pipe and Drum is one of the best things about St. Patrick's Day. If you're in Austin, go see them at Mother Egan's at 1:00 pm or at the Dog and Duck at 6:00 pm. Their website has their full schedule.

E! is showing this special -- the 101 reasons why the 90's rule.

Now, correct me if I am Rip Van Winkle and have been sleeping for 20 years, but weren't the 90's just a few years ago? Like, maybe, three???

So, should this special be on at all? Sure, it's chock full of nostalgia and laughs and some damn funny clips (Ross Perot maybe takes the cake), but it seems just a trifle soon to be deconstructing the 90's. I'm pretty sure 80's cover bands and "flashback lunches" didn't get hot until sometime in the mid-to-late 90's. We're still in the early-to-mid 00's (how do you say that? oughts?) and it's premature in my opinion.

Oh yeah, and I went blond yesterday. I swore I'd never be one of those brunettes who went blond because they think it looks better, but, well, it does. At least on me. Sad, and expensive, but true.

One more note -- Dave Navarro is one freaky lookin' dude. The skin below his eyes doesn't move. I'm not sure if he's had a few too many lifts or if he's got a private stash of Botox.

I love it when people are tacky in the best way. On QEftSG tonight, two of the gay guys totally made fun of the Nancy Kerrigan knee beating, and I about died. The best part was that the subject was an ice skater, as was his wife, and they were both on the floor laughing.

So not only were the gay guys tacky, the ice skaters were tacky, too! Laugh at others' misfortune....mwahahahahahahah!

Penguin Baseball. It rocks.

Dan Savage's latest Savage Love column. He also rocks.

My favorite reply in the above column? Here ya go:

Humans aren't the only animals that engage in homosexual activity, MM, and that's a well-documented fact. (Check out Bruce Bagemihl's Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, which discusses the homosexual lifestyles of orangutans, whales, warthogs, fruit bats, chaffinches, and more than 200 other animals.) And maybe you missed the recent story in The New York Times about two gay male penguins at the Bronx Zoo who adopted and cared for a penguin chick. So it would seem that the big difference between penguins and humans isn't that we practice homosexuality and penguins don't, MM, but that straight penguins aren't threatened by the existence of gay penguins. There is no penguin equivalent of the Traditional Values Coalition, no penguin Gary Bauer or Lou Sheldon, no penguin president trying to prevent us from loving each other and adopting chicks, and no straight penguins talking about sewing gay penguins' assholes shut.

Penguin Luv.

And something else good from that column:

Freedom to Marry -- make a donation!

So yes, my first week and two days of my new job have been sort of boring, and now I'm at the point of fishing for things to do with my time. But this is good for me—I'm forced to show initiative and go beyond the original task. Not that I don't usually do that, but now, going beyond the original task is often more difficult, takes more thought and care and that makes me feel very good about myself.

And I really like my office mates! The other people are wonderful as well...honestly, I can't say I dread going to work anymore, or dread feeling like I'm on the outside. It's a good feeling.

I guess I am full of good feeling right now—maybe because I went to the gym this morning.