136. Processing my Weekend(s)

So… I am writing this during the last day of my mom’s visit (Easter Monday), during practically my only time alone I’ve had this long weekend. Seriously – aside from the shower, and sleep – it has been literally every waking moment with my mother this past 4 days and it is exhausting. Well, there was the 5 minutes after a minor fight yesterday when she said she was going for a walk – which couldn’t have been what she did because well, it was only 5 minutes. Right now she is actually on a walk, so I might get half an hour. I am very much looking forward to tomorrow night after work when I can finally relax in my own home.

I am still after all these years, trying to find a successful strategy to make her visits as painless as possible. This time, for the first time in years, my place was cleaned to her satisfaction – which is remarkable because I once hired a maid to come in before she came to give the place a thorough cleaning and she still found stuff to criticize that time. It turns out, though, that the problem with her being satisfied with the cleanliness is that instead of furiously cleaning the place, she furiously goes through my stuff. She was up much earlier than me on Saturday morning and I awoke to find all this stuff I had quite consciously hidden away for her arrival all laid out on my dining room table – poems I had written, bank statements, books she doesn’t approve of, etc… it was maddening.

The poetry part was the most frustrating not only because she is a mother and thinks it’s the most brilliant stuff in the world (which, while fine in it’s own way, just gets silly after a while), but because she really does want to understand me and so proceeded to try and dissect them line by line and word by word and demand that I explain to her the exact circumstances under which these poems were written and the step by step process of writing them. It was irritating. And while I appreciate the fact that she does want to know me better, it’s frustrating because she refuses to accept the me that she sees, thinking that there is some hidden me or some me that I am supposed to be but am not allowing myself to be right now. She constantly refers back to things that I said or liked when I was a child (ie: Laura Ashley wallpaper for my bedroom) and trying to insist that they are proof that I am only pretending now, instead of allowing for the possibility that a person can change over time, or even that styles can change over time (the Laura Ashley Wallpaper being a case in point.) She also refuses to accept anything I tell her about myself – ie: I’m an introvert… she allows that I might have ‘more introverted tendencies’ than her, but insists that I am, in actuality, an extrovert just like her.

We have discussed my sexuality over and over again this visit and I have been as honest with her as I think is humanly possible. She asked me if I had seen the video she sent and I told her I had, and then wanted to discuss the whole ‘intimate friendships with people of the same sex as a cure for homosexuality’ thing… once again insisting that I can’t possibly have any intimate friendships, which drives me crazy. As proof for this, she cited the fact that I don’t have anyone who could drop everything and go on a trip with me… which… well, do most people have friends like that? And to be frank, I’m actually fairly positive that if I wanted to, I could get someone to go on a trip with me, I have just never tried it. She also thinks I need more single friends (it is true that most of my friends are married, it’s a symptom of being in my 30s, I think) and found me a bunch of groups online for ‘straight single women’ or Christian singles. And then, of course, there have been her not so subtle hints that I need to change churches. She hasn’t liked my church for years, partially because it is not charismatic (at least, not enough for her liking) but mostly because she decided a while back that everyone there hates her. This is based on things like the time she went there when I wasn’t there and my pastor didn’t recognize her and greet her like an old friend. Concrete evidence like that.

What else was there… oh, once again, she digs way back into my past, talking about how when I was little I always said ‘when I grow up I’m going to get married and have 3 babies’, so obviously that is what I am destined to do. Oh, and at one point she asked me if I ever had any significant dreams, and I couldn’t really remember any except one I had from when I was very little about being attacked by dinosaurs and throwing them away but they would just keep coming. It took her a few days, but she has now decided that that dream is about my ‘struggle’.

Oh, and today she told me “I just want to affirm your femininity’, going on to say that I am very sensitive and I love children and have many feminine traits so there is no way I can be… you know (she didn’t say the word). Apparently lesbians are made of stone and hate children… at least, that is the inference.

(Just to fill you all in the when and where of the writing of this, my mom has returned from her walk and is now lying down so I have a few more minutes alone… of course, she returned from her walk and ‘asked’ if she could stay another night… one of those loaded questions to which there is only one appropriate answer. She could tell I wanted to say no, even asked me if I was sure, but… well, maybe I’m a coward, but I don’t know that there is any way to say no to her that won’t result in a fight that could last for ages.)

There was also the gem of a conversation that basically boils down to her theory that I am gay because I’m overweight. She explained that when I lose weight I’ll suddenly start to get attention from men and that will make me straight. She followed this with the ‘affirmation’ that I’m not bad looking… with the word ‘bad’ stretched out like a rubber band. She really needs to stop commenting on my appearance at all because her attempts at compliments always come out as insults.

(Again, in keeping with the theme of letting you know when I’m writing this, this next part is a full week after that last paragraph, my mother is back in Toronto – finally – and I have been to Toronto and back – without her knowing – for my friend’s bridal shower)

She asked me where I stand, and I said, quite truthfully, that I am still on the fence. She quickly grabbed onto that, thinking that I meant that I was on the fence about being gay, and I corrected her on that, explaining that I meant on the fence between celibacy for life or a gay relationship (to which she responded “I don’t want you to have a gay relationship…”, which was not a surprise). Maddeningly she cannot accept that celibacy is at all an okay choice, seeing it as giving up or a sign of depression or something. There was a lot of talk about my having given up hope, and how that was unhealthy… but of course, the hope she means is hope of becoming straight, meeting and marrying a man. And I suppose, she’s right. I still believe in an omnipotent God who could do that if He so desired, but I have long since stopped believing that He was going to make me straight, or even that that is what He wants for me. Believing that left me feeling unloved and abandoned by God, which I tried to explain to her, and she says she understands, but I don’t think she does. Our theology differs in a very fundamental way… I don’t know how to say this in a way that doesn’t seem condescending or demeaning, but her belief in God seems almost limiting to me. She believes she knows and can predict what God will do, and if God does not do what she thought He would then it is because we have not behaved according to the formula she believes He has given. There is no room for mystery or perhaps even misunderstanding or misinterpretation of what God may or may not want… or of God being so much bigger than we can possibly understand.

As I mentioned, I did go to Toronto this weekend for this bridal shower… and didn’t tell my mom because the bridal shower is for my friend who is marrying her female fiancée – ie: a gay marriage. My mom tried to call me on Saturday and couldn’t get a hold of me (because I wasn’t there) and by Sunday afternoon (seriously, one day!) she was very worried. (She actually called my Dad in Bermuda… which makes no sense. Why would he have any more information than she does?) When I got home from Toronto, late Sunday night, there was a series of increasingly panicked messages on my machine and so I called her back, thinking she must have been worried for my safety, but when I did manage to get a hold of her (on Monday) she informed me that she was worried that I was away with my girlfriend or something. So… she doesn’t believe me that I’m not with anyone right now, which… well, I don’t know what to make of that.

But in brighter news, the shower was a blast… I got to see my friend in her wedding dress and I came very near to crying. It’s beautiful. She looks like a fairy princess. And I’m slightly smitten now with an actual lesbian… who speaks English… this is big for me. A little frightening, but she’s taken so that dulls the fear. The girl in question is the bride’s cousin, who I had met before when she was 13 or 14, but now she’s 25 and gay and doing her PhD in Montreal (ie: an hour and a half away from me). Crushing on an actual gay girl is new for me and like I said, a little unnerving. But well… nothing will likely come of it. She’s all wrong for me (I think… I have no idea what’s right for me, to be honest… my expertise in this area is extremely limited), but we are supposed to get together to buy shoes for the wedding at some point, and I’m alarmingly excited (and terrified) by that upcoming event.

Anyway… this post has gone on forever and probably needs to be posted before I add something more to it.

135. Just because I felt like it...

So, I don’t really have much to say right now. Honestly, my life is so very dull… very full, but not full of things that I think would be interesting for you to hear about. My job continues to go well, which is nice. Having a job you actually look forward to is a real rarity, I think, so I try not to take that for granted. The kids are a constant source of joy (and occasional frustration… and disgust… the stomach flu that is making its way through our numbers has resulted in some very extreme unpleasantness that I won’t go into here except to say that God knew what He was about when He made kids cute, because otherwise there is no way we would be able to handle some of what goes on with their little bodies.)

In other news… there isn’t much other news. Oh, except my mom sent me a video to ‘watch and consider’ of an ex-gay preacher named Sy Rogers. So I did… it was frustrating, but nothing I hadn’t heard before. Oh, except for his claim to be an ex-transsexual… which I don’t think is a correct identification. His explanation for how he started on the road to transition sounded nothing like what I’ve heard/read from other trans people – how they always knew they were the wrong gender, how their bodies felt wrong, etc… he spoke of making a decision at some point in his twenties that he had failed at being a man so he would try being a woman. Which doesn’t sound at all like what I imagine a real trans person would say. Plus, his explanation of how God ‘saved’ him from this also didn’t ring true. He went to go for the operation and was told he had to live as a woman for 2 years, so he did, and at some point in that two years he had a revelation that this was wrong, that he should not transition… which to me only proves that he was not, in fact, really trans – that is, in fact, the reason that the doctors make you live as a woman for two years… to make sure you are certain about this life altering operation. This is not evidence of a miracle to me, this is evidence of the wisdom of the system.

The video did give me an explanation for a recent conversation my mom and I had had in which she was quite insistent that I did not have any intimate friendships. No matter what I said, she would not accept the fact that my friendships were in any way sufficient. And she went on to say that I need to have ‘an intimate conversation with a friend every single day’. It was bizarre, and kind of insulting. At the time I chalked it up to a regular theme with my mother… that my life is inadequate. She has never been a fan of any of my friends that I have at the moment. It is not as big a deal now, but it was a huge deal when I lived with her. She always wanted me to be friends with people she chose for me. Or oddly enough, if I moved on from a friend (mainly due to simply growing apart) she would suddenly start trying to get me to be friends with them again instead of whoever I was friends with then. It was very frustrating. Still is, but mostly now because it is simply part of her criticism of my life. Oh, but here’s where the video came in. Sy Rogers explains in this video that his ‘cure’ for his homosexuality came mainly as a result of intimate friendships with men. Hence the weird and sort of prescriptive nature of my mom’s most recent criticism of my relationships.

Anyway, this is a very hastily thrown together blog post. I just felt like writing one and so… I did.

134. Mom, Can I go to an Orgy?

So, I’m sick. I’ve got this stupid sinus thing going on, which means I can’t breath through my nose, which has the lovely side-effect of making it impossible for me to sleep for more than 4 hours (the length of time any given drugs I take will last). So I’m up right now, waiting for my drugs (Advil Cold and Sinus) to kick in to I can go back to bed. Thought I’d make that time productive and tell you all a story.

Besides, I want to get my last post off of the top of my page because according to Statcounter someone from Ottawa read that one, and while it is entirely possible that that person could be a stranger, I’m kind of afraid that it is someone I know. I’m not at all sure who, but well… it scares me.

So, here’s the background to the story. At the GCN Conference (Gay Christian Network Conference for those who are still catching up) I went out with a group of friends for a "bloggers dinner, which was awesome, and over dinner I told this story and was informed I needed to blog it. It has very little to do with the regular theme of my blog, but it’s funny so here you go.

When I was 13 years old and lived in Winnipeg my mom signed me up to join the YMHA. ‘Don’t you mean the YMCA?’ you ask. Well, no… I mean the YMHA, the Young Men’s Hebrew Association. ‘Oh, I didn’t know you were Jewish,’ you say. Well, I’m not. My mom got a job there and discovered it was a much cleaner, nicer facility than the YMCA and so that’s where I went. I had already spent most of life being the only black person at any given place (especially in Winnipeg… that that city is so white it can hurt your eyes), and now I had the experience of being the only Gentile. It was rather fascinating – I’ll get to the story in a minute. It was the first place I ever encountered anti-Semitism… in a very strange way. A group of girls in the dance class I took there cornered me one day after class to ask me why Christians hated Jews, something I had never heard of (sparked an interesting conversation the next day at my private Christian school – “Do we hate Jews? They said we hate them, but I didn’t know that…”). It was actually a kind of frightening experience. They literally surrounded me and while they weren’t yelling, their voices were quite forceful as they asked me why Christians thought various specific anti-Semitic ideas that I had honestly never heard before that moment. In retrospect, it was probably very therapeutic for those girls to be in the majority for once, although I ‘m not sure I helped heal any cultural wounds with my incredibly intelligent answers of “What? …who thinks that? …why would anyone say that? …that doesn’t make any sense... I don’t know… I have no idea… “

Anyway, back to my story. There was a girl in that dance class named Meeka. Meeka was… well, she was unusual to say the least. She was loud and forceful. You couldn't help but notice her wherever she went. And she just said whatever came into her mind. I think she might have been where I learned the world ‘lesbian’ (before her, I lived in fear of being a ‘homosexual’, not a lesbian). I have a very clear memory of her telling us one time in the locker room that her life’s ambition was to 'grow up and be a lesbian', following which she looked at me (or at my chest specifically) and said “Nice tits.” Most of us changed in the bathroom stalls after that.

One day, after dance class Meeka approached me in the locker room to ask me the following question. “Hey, I’m having an orgy in a couple of weeks. Do you want to come?”

Now to explain my response, I need to go back and explain a little more of my experience at the YMHA. Being the only Gentile there meant that I was constantly encountering things I didn’t know or understand. And when I first began going there I was like a sponge, always asking questions, but after a while I began to feel like an idiot. It felt like every few minutes someone said something I didn’t understand or had never heard of before, and so I stopped asking. Most things would get explained or elaborated on eventually. So, when Meeka asked me to go to an orgy (a word I had never heard of before) I assumed that ‘orgy’ was some sort of Jewish event or tradition, and so the conversation went like this:

“Hey, I’m having an orgy in a couple of weeks. Do you want to come?”

“I don’t know, I have to ask my mom.”

Meeka just stared at me for a few moments, and then backed away.

I went home and thank all that is good and holy had the forethought to look up the word ‘orgy’ in the dictionary before asking my mom and was duly shocked. Needless to say, I did not ask my mom. The next week, after dance class, Meeka asked me if I was going to attend the aforementioned orgy, and I responded with a very emphatic “No!” She was mad, which was not a good thing to be on the receiving end of because she was a tour de force, but I stood strong and refused. She stormed off. A few minutes later another girl from our dance class quietly approached me and whispered “Did you say no to Meeka?” I nodded. She took a deep breath, “Really? Good… I don’t want to go either, but I was scared to say no.” She steeled herself and walked over to Meeka, and as she did, another girl came by. “I heard you say no to Meeka. You’re not going to go?” I shook my head. She turned and looked at Meeka across the room, who was now looking very angry as she talked to the first girl. “Okay… good. I don’t want to go either.” She walked across to join the angry conversation. One by one, all the girls she had invited came and asked me if I had said no, and when I confirmed this, they all went over and told Meeka they weren’t going. Even one of the boys she had invited found me when we came out of the locker room to make sure they had heard correctly – someone had said ‘no’ to Meeka – before going over to her and declining her invite.


From what I heard, she still ended up having sex with one of the guys she had invited, but it was not the big orgy she had envisioned. She didn’t really talk to me after that. But I will point out that the other girls were nicer to me.

And that’s the story of how I ruined an orgy.

133. Insert Title Here

I was recently reminded by a good friend that I haven’t blogged in a while. I didn’t even debrief after the GCN conference (which was awesome, by the way…). But as I’ve said in pretty much every one of my more recent blog posts, my life has become rather full. Working with preschoolers full time, fun as it may be, kind of takes it out of you, you know?

But I still have thoughts… I just haven’t written them down. So, I’m going to attempt to now.

The conference was great, I may write more on it later… but I’m not going to make any promises. What I’ll elaborate on here is one of the more significant things the conference left me with. Community. It felt so good to be in Christian community again. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but here it is again. I’ve sort of checked out of my church of late. Being at the conference, being among Christians, worshiping in community… it all felt like a drink of cool water after a long walk through the desert. The gay thing was kind of secondary. The last night we had a ‘sharing time’ and one of the things I shared was that I was feeling convicted for having abandoned my community. That God was reminding me that the Christian life was never meant to be lived in isolation. And I meant it. But… confession time… I haven’t done a thing about it. Oh, all I have to do is start going to church again, but I didn’t do it today (it’s Sunday as I write this) and I didn’t do it last week… or the week before that…). It’s hard to motivate myself to go and be among people who I feel I have to hide myself from. And I’m not just talking about the people who don’t know I’m gay… even the ones who do know don’t really want to know, you know? They don’t want to talk about it, they think I should be over it by now (I had one person actually say that to me… oh, not exactly in those words, but that was the gist). I don’t mean they think I should be straight by now (although some of them certainly think I should be trying for that), I mean they think I should be done thinking about it by now, I should have moved on to other things.

I was talking with one of my dearest friends about this right after the conference and I actually ended up in tears as I explained some of this to her, and I ended up saying something to her that I hadn’t said to anyone before (or since)… but I think I’m going to write down here. I say ‘think’ because I’m nervous about it, nervous to put this on my blog when so many of my friends know about my blog. But pretty much none of them read it anymore… which is kind of what I was crying about. Oh, not that I expect them to keep up with my blog (especially now that I hardly write anymore… but to be fair most of them stopped reading probably about 2 or 3 years ago) but… okay, how to explain this. I suppose the easiest thing to do is to just say it plainly. I’m hurt. My friends hurt me. Not by reacting badly to my coming out, or by anything they said or did… but by what they didn’t do. It sounds so selfish as I write it out, but it’s what I feel. I feel like I have had to do this whole thing alone. No one would come along side me and try and ‘think this out’ with me. I leant people books, printed off papers, and while some of them were read, no one really gave them a second thought. Most of them had already made up their minds what they thought (Side X with a dash of Side B to make it palatable) and, well, you can’t have a real conversation or actual productive discussion with someone who is not going to concede that they might be wrong. And it’s not like I thought they were wrong, I just needed to be able to think the whole thing through as clearly and honestly as I can, and that means looking at both sides with as open a mind as possible. I tried to engage people in the conversation, and without going into it too much, there is one person who I was extremely hopeful about because of how they presented themselves to me when we first discussed the issue, but nothing ever came of it. It hurts. And as I mentioned before, the Bible study I led sort of pushed me over the edge… it was so nice to talk to people about this whole thing, people who were (or seemed to be) willing to look at things from both sides and acknowledge possibilities, and wanted to look at things in depth. But they did it for one week. (well, two actually, but I wasn’t there the second week) There is no reason for them to dwell on it, they aren’t gay, it isn’t their life. And afterwards it felt like a slap in the face to go back to being all by myself again.

The thing is, I get it. I don’t really expect straight people to spend their time thinking about what life is like for gay Christians, and working out how the Bible pertains to us and how we live our lives. But… well, I really hoped someone – a friend, some friends – would do this with me, and no one really did. And it hurt. And I’ve withdrawn.

Funny thing is, I think my friend may have mentioned our conversation to another mutual friend of ours, because I got an email from them the other day asking to get together and to borrow the DVD I brought back with me from the GCN conference – “Through My Eyes” (I can’t find a link to a trailer or anything, it’s a DVD of kids/young adults just talking about what it is like to be gay and Christian) – which kind of felt like it came out of nowhere, so… I don’t know. Maybe things will change now. Who knows. I find I’m kind of gun shy now. I don’t really talk about it with my friends at all anymore, because I don’t want to feel that feeling of being alone. I don’t hide, and I’m not at all careful about my pronouns (not that I’m dating or anything, but still… pronouns happen), but I don’t bring up what I’m thinking about in this vein at all.

Maybe actually having written this out will help. Maybe I’ll go to church on Sunday. Maybe things will change. Maybe I should actually do something to make them change.

132. A Good Week

Once again, it’s been a while. But I’ve had a good week so I thought I’d tell you about it.

It began on Saturday (last Saturday) when I went to this weird sort of conference thing on very little sleep and because of that was unable to conform to normal socially acceptable behaviour… by which I mean that there was a very attractive girl there that I couldn’t seem to stop myself from staring at. The amount of times I had to actually verbally tell myself to move my eyes so I didn’t seem creepy is a little embarrassing, but I was just so tired I wasn’t really aware of what I was doing. The staring wasn’t the good part though… the good part happened at the end of the day when I was heading to the refreshment table to see if there was anyway I could mainline caffeine (I was seriously fading) and she grabbed my arm as I passed her and asked for my email address. I sort of stared at her, because it well… it didn’t make any sense. We hadn’t spoken more than 2 sentences to each other, we weren’t sitting near each other… I sort of had the feeling I was imagining it. But I wasn’t. I’m still not sure why she did that, and I don’t know if she is gay or not. I’ve written her and haven’t heard back yet… but still. It’s likely that absolutely nothing will come of that, but it was nice just the same.

Oh, and then there was Thursday, where I did my planet craft with my afternoon kids (basically painted styrofoam balls, glitter and sequins, nothing too elaborate, but a very exciting craft nonetheless. They look awesome hanging in the room). It’s a very messy craft and definitely needed extra hands to stop things from turning into chaos… so I asked the mom from the morning group that I happen to have a bit of a crush on to help out. Actually, it’s not as creepy as all that, she had asked me if she could ever come in and volunteer in the afternoon, and this opportunity presented itself. The fact that I happen to enjoy her is simply accidental. But it was a good afternoon, we get along very well. I’m hoping this crush goes the way of all my straight girl crushes and simply dissipates, leaving a friendship behind it. Because aside from her hotness (and adding to it, I’m sure) I think she’s awesome and it would cool to hang out with her.

Anyone who knows me personally who is reading this blog is probably wondering why I left out the most exciting thing that happened this week… and well, it’s just that I was saving the best for last. I went to see Ani DiFranco on Tuesday! She played in Montreal, so I took Tuesday afternoon off so I could go early and line up… and that’s what I did. And I ended up in the front row, front and center. It was absolutely incredible. I’m still on a high from it. It was a phenomenal show. I’ve been gushing about it for days. And I came home and I’ve been watching my Ani DVDs to keep it all going. And all this Ani input has had the effect it always does on me, my creative juices have started flowing and I’ve written the first poem that I’ve written in years. I mentioned a long while back that maybe I’d post some of my poetry and so I’ve decided to post this one. It’s in its infancy though… barely edited so be gentle with it, okay?

It’s sunny and warm
With a sweet kiss of a breeze
Leaves are turning into
Rainbows on trees.
I’m slow dancing with myself
But I don’t know how to lead
I’d follow your moves,
But you’re not dancing with me
So I spin in slow circles
Enjoying the movement
Not thinking of tomorrow
Or getting pulled into the current

or getting stuck in the sediment
mired in the regiment
of my daily multivitamin
and not letting other people in


…it’s a wondrous scary place I’m in.
…the dangerous side of contentment

Now is like aspartame
Initially sweet
With an aftertaste of fear
That keeps the edge on my teeth


I keep promising myself
Something better tomorrow
But tomorrow keeps turning back into today
But today ain’t so bad
So I keep letting it slide
Though I know nothing is going to get better that way

The sun in the air
And the leaves on the trees
Keep lulling me into
A dreamless sleep
And I’m happy for now
Cause it’s more than I need
But I am aware
That this feeling won’t keep

Anyway, that’s that. I’ll leave you with another Ani clip… some real poetic genius. I rediscovered this song of hers about a month ago. She has so many albums and so many songs that I’m always rediscovering something of hers. This isn’t a clip from the show I saw, but this is what she closed the Montreal show with. So… enjoy what I enjoyed.

131. Life

It turns out that having a full time job, going to the gym 3 times a week and taking guitar lessons means I don’t blog very much. Sorry.

So… I’ll fill you in on my life a bit now.

Work: I love my job. It’s exhausting, and occasionally emotionally draining, but so incredibly rewarding… and fun. Aside from some minor personality issues with my coworkers, and the relatively low pay, it’s honestly a perfect job. And the personality issues mostly just roll off my back. I play every day, and get hugs and kisses every day, and told that I’m loved/awesome/funny/supercool or other such wonderful affirming things by children who don’t lie every day. As I said, it can sometimes be emotionally draining. The preschool I teach at is a Head Start preschool, meaning that the vast majority of our kids come from low income families, several of them actually come from a nearby emergency housing shelter… all of these things combine to mean that many of the kids come from less than ideal home situations to say the very least. Today, for example, one of our little pieces of precious showed up with bruises on her face that suspiciously resembled a hand print, and when asked what happened her response was “Mommy”… it’s hard not to cry sometimes.

In other completely non-serious work related news, my crush on Hot Mom shows no sign of waning. I’ve gotten to know her more, because her son is in my group, and her awesomeness has not helped the situation. It’s just a crush though, no need to worry about the state of my heart.

Life in General: Well… as I mentioned, I’m going to the gym 3 times a week, working with a personal trainer that was a (somewhat insulting) gift from my mother. It’s rough work, but I actually have come to somewhat enjoy it… or perhaps just not hate it. There are results, I feel healthier and stronger, and well… I am getting smaller, very slowly, but it’s happening.

The guitar lessons were my birthday present to myself. I really wanted to take guitar lessons when I was little, and I asked my mom, but she was really stuck on piano… and trombone. I had to take trombone lessons for years, Torture. But the guitar lessons are fun. I have callouses on my fingertips, which makes me feel all rock-and-roll… although the fact that the first song I figured out how to play on my own is “Listen to the Water” – a kids’ song we sing at the preschool a lot… so not so much rock and roll.

So… my life is going good. I’m on a bit of a happy cloud right now because I just found out that one of my heroes – Ani Difranco – is going to be playing in Montreal in a month, and I just got tickets! And this time I’m going to get good seats. Last time I saw her, I ended up way at the back and I’m short so I couldn’t see a thing – well, beyond the backs of the people in front of me. At one point the guy beside me turned and said something to the effect of “I bet you wish you were wearing heels, eh?”, I responded truthfully “I’m wearing 3 inch platforms!” Yeah, I’m short. It’s first come first serve for seating, so I’ll be getting there early… I’m going to be right up front. At least, that’s the plan.

Oh, and I’m planning on going the GCN conference again this year. I’ve already started scouting out tickets… quite excited about it.

So, yeah… making plans. I know I’ll be here at least until the summer, despite the fact that the guy whose job I took at the preschool (I didn’t take it from him, he moved to the UAE) is trying to get me to come and teach with him for the next term. Turns out the school he’s at is short of teachers. I did say I would follow him if he and his wife recommended it, but I don’t want to leave my job until I’ve been there for at least a year… besides, as I said, I’m really enjoying it. Honestly, if it paid more I might even consider remaining in the country for a few years! It’s not that I am money hungry or anything, I just need to pay off my mortgage as quickly as possible… it feels like a weight around my neck. Once it’s paid off I can teach anywhere… fulfill my dream of going to the developing world and teaching there again.

Gay stuff: Honestly, not much going on on this front. I had all kids of blog related thoughts, but work and life seems to have pushed them aside in my brain. I am on a mailing list for a local group for queer women, but thus far there have been no events… However, there is one planned for November 8th, so hopefully I can meet some people there. I know this is not Korea, and I shouldn’t expect it to be anything like Korea, but well… I sort of have this expectation (that was born in Korea) that if I can just get my foot in the door of the dyke community here then I’ll suddenly have this whole new network of people and events. We’ll see what happens after November 8th. So far, as far as I can see, only myself and the organizer have agreed to go… it’s just a gathering at a local desert place, so it’s pretty low key, which is fine by me.

Oh, I did just come out to another of my Christian friends. A friend I was particularly nervous about coming out to because she’s pretty conservative, and also pretty direct. I didn’t give her much chance to respond… I didn’t mean to do this, I was just nervous, but I sort of blurted it out at the end of a phone conversation. She really didn’t know what to say, except that it didn’t change anything in our relationship, which is cool. Maybe we’ll talk about it more another time. Who knows.

Well, that’s it… that’s my life. Not too interesting, but full. And fun. And satisfying.

I'll leave you with a taste of what I'm going to get in about a month... this is my favourite song off of Ani's lastes album... at least, it's my favourite right now. that will probably change in a day or so. Enjoy.

130. Vote

It may not feel as important as the American election, but it's election day in Canada today and it is important, so if you are Canadian and you are reading this... go vote. And if you are American and reading this well... go and vote in, like a month from now or whenever your election is. And if you're from somewhere else, well, vote when you can. I just voted in my pajamas... the voting station is in the lobby of my building and I'm hope sick today (actually, I had taken today off as one of my holiday days, but it turns out I'm very sick... can you switch a holiday day for a sick day? Probably not, eh? That should be an issue for our politicians!)

Okay, I'm going to stop now and wrap myself up in a blanket and try not to sneeze my brains out. Happy belated Canadian Thanksgiving and remember -- Vote!

129. Books...

That has got to be the worst title I've used yet... Oh well.

My life goes on, and it's been full and busy and I do have blog thoughts to share, but my mom is coming to visit tomorrow so my thoughts are to preparing for her arrival. "If that's so," you ask, "then why are you blogging?"

Good question.

I'm procrastinating. And in procrastinating, I found this on Quasifictional, so I thought I'd play along.

The rules are as follows:


*Look at the list of books and bold those we have read.
*Italicize those we intend to read.
*Underline the books we LOVE.
*Put an asterisk (*) next to those that you hated.


So, here goes.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (loved everything but the end, which felt too... neat or something)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (Of course.)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (I've tried several times to read this book because it's a classic, but I get so bored every time I give up a few chapters in. LOVE the old movie with Katherine Hepburn though)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I agree with Michelle... how is this one book?]
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (don't want to say I "loved" this one, but I did really enjoy it)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (an interesting read where there was not one single character that I liked, but I still wanted to know what happened to them... A sign of good writing I think)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll [And Through the Looking Glass too!]
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy *
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (If I could underline these twice I would... these are my favourite books. Ever.)
34 Emma - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (Why is this on the list twice?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (Only read the one chapter that so many people insisted would 'change my life'... but even that one chapter was bad. How did this book become so successful?)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I'm not going to tag anyone specific, cause... well, I'm done procrastinating now. But, if you read this you can consider yourself tagged, okay? Have fun!

128. Happiness

In celebration of the world not ending today, I thought I’d post some happy things… starting with this video of Ellen’s wedding footage which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.



In other lesbian wedding news, one of my best friends (and only remaining friend from high school) who has been with her girlfriend for at least 8 years is finally getting married. I have been waiting for this announcement for years – honestly, every time she called me, some part of me hoped it would be ‘the call’. Which meant that I actually guessed before she got the words out when ‘the call’ finally happened. And I cried and squealed like a girl. And then she told me that I am a co-maid-of-honour, which made me cry even more. Heh, just typing that out made me get all teary. The wedding won’t be until next summer, and it’s clear on the other side of the country, so I don’t know how many maid-of-honour type duties I can actually perform, but I will do my best.

Not much else going on in my life. I’m working, and working out, a little play now and then too – oooh, I just bought a new HD tv, which will be fun when I eventually get HD cable (right now, it’s just acting like a regular TV with a lot of potential). Work is good, life is good. And one of my best friends is getting married. I’m happy.

And the world didn’t get sucked into a black hole, so that’s good too.

127. The Olympics and The Pharisees

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been watching the Olympics like a junkie. I don’t normally care at all about sports, but for some reason I really get into the Olympics. I find it much easier to care about for national teams than for sports franchises, and even easier to care about individual athletes than for teams. I find myself deeply caring about these people I didn’t know existed 2 weeks ago and probably won’t remember in 2 weeks from now. People like Jessica Zelinka, who didn’t make it to the medals, but still was amazing in her field… and I don’t mind saying is kind of a hottie!

Or Carol Huynh who won gold in women’s wrestling (and is a hottie as well… I swear I’m not all about the hottie athletes, it’s just that they tend to be hotties), and totally made me cry by crying at the medal ceremony… I should tell you that I cry at almost every medal ceremony I watch though, no matter what country, and especially if the athletes cry. It just gets to me. It’s just more intense when it’s Canada, you know?


It’s not even all about cheering for Canada, though. I’ve totally gotten into the hype around Usain Bolt, and love the fact that Jamaicans are sweeping the track events (finally!). And one of my favourite moments involved a Russian pole vaulter… I actually jumped out of my seat when Yelena Isinbayeva beat her own world record after already having won the gold medal… it was awesome. They played it over and over again on the Canadian coverage, which led to a question I must ask, but I doubt any of you can answer in a way that will make me feel better. Every time the showed the coverage of that amazing moment I had to watch it because it was just amazing, and on about the sixth time I suddenly noticed what she was wearing. It may seem hard to believe, but I just hadn't seen it until then, and then all of a sudden I was like "hey, why can I see her ass?" So here is my question… why are most of the female athletes naked?

Okay, so they’re not naked, but why are so many of them (who aren’t actually swimming) in basically bathing suits (the swimmers are actually more clothed than the rest of the female athletes). I'd already stopped watching beach volleyball in a sort of boycott (them men wear shorts and tank tops, the women wear bikini's), but up until that moment I had thought that beach volleyball was the only sport doing that, but then I started noticing the rest of the female athletes seemed to be wearing bikinis as well, and it's just weird. And kind of offensive. Well, not kind of… it’s totally offensive.

Anyway... the only sport I actually find I can’t watch is women’s gymnastics, they all just look so young and I get too nervous. Honestly, my stomach does backflips, it’s just too much pressure for anyone so young.

Okay, so that’s all that… and not at all what I intend to blog about right now, but I’ve been watching so much Olympics its just on my mind… I’ve been having Olympic dreams.

What I really wanted to blog about was something that was brought to mind by the sermon on Sunday. My pastor was speaking on Matthew 15, and the pharisees. (I feel I should point out that what I am about to write is not what the sermon was about. It was in fact a very convicting sermon that has stayed with me all week, but it did bring up some blog relevant thoughts so, here they are.) He began with something I’ve heard from many a pastor from many a pulpit. Basically, the idea being that the pharisees were legalists who took God’s laws and took them too far. They were so afraid of breaking any of the commandments that they made their own commandments around God’s commandments. For example (and I have no personal research to back this up, it’s just something my pastor said, but I’ve heard things like this from other pastors too), adultery is against God’s laws, so the Pharisees thought about this and figured that the length of time it would take to commit adultery with a woman was equal to the length of time it would take a man to run around a tree three times (really? That’s kind of… sad) so they made a law saying that no man could be alone with a woman who was not his wife for longer than it would take him to run around a tree three times. This sort of thing is often used by modern Christians as an example of what life is like without grace, how this sort of belief and life actually diminishes who God is and what He has done for us. Of course, this got me thinking about the way many Christians think about gay Christians. The sin that they worry about me committing is having sex with a woman, so they expect me to build wide fences around that sin that include obvious things like not dating a woman, but also some not so obvious things (and honestly damn near impossible things) like not allowing myself to become attracted to woman, or even notice when I find a woman attractive. It has actually been suggested to me that I disengage from pop culture because of all of the images that I should avoid. (Should avoid? Because seeing attractive women is bad for me somehow, I guess.)

There was also discussion in the sermon of the point that Jesus makes about how it is not what goes into the body that makes you unclean, it’s what comes out of the body that makes you unclean… and this got me thinking about some of the weird things that are asked of gay people by those ex-gay groups… how part of their “therapy” often involves gender conditioning (I’m making that term up, I don’t know what to call it), teaching women to wear makeup and men to play sports, basically femming up the dykes and butching up the gays. It’s dumb, and backwards… according to Christ Himself. And it's not like I agree with what these ex-gay groups try and do at all, it's just... it's a backwards idea.

But back to the original point. Now, I’m not saying that Christ then gives us a license to tread the line of sin, I do know that He actually made the standard even higher – the sin of adultery extends to lust and the sin of murder extends to hate – but as I’ve discussed before on this blog on multiple occasions, there is a huge difference between lust and attraction, and while I don’t claim to be completely free from the former, it does frustrate me that so many people assume that any sort of gay attraction must be lust. Asking gay Christians to build these fences around sin (that are much wider than the same ones asked of straight single Christians) is asking us to live like the Pharisees.

In completely seperate news, tomorrow is "crazy hair day" at the preschool where I teach, and seeing as how this coming weekend is Pride here, I decided to make my hair a pride rainbow... and I took a picture of it that I'm going to post here. Oh, don't worry, I'm still an anonymous coward, you won't see my face, but hey, enjoy my hair.

126. Mamma Mia

I was trying to figure out a way to tell this story without making the title of the movie involved obvious, but I can’t figure out how to do it so… yeah, I saw Mamma Mia the other night with a friend, and something happened that bothered me and I just wanted to get it off my chest. My issue is that people who know me and read this would immediately be able to tell who this story is about, but honestly, almost no one who knows me personally reads this blog anymore, so I think I may be safe. Besides, I just need to vent and maybe get some opinions from some of you as to whether or not I’m over reacting.

I’m also going to have to spoil a minor plot point, something I usually never do, but let’s face it, if you’re going to see Mamma Mia, you are not going to see it for the intricacies of the ‘plot’. You are going because you, like everyone else in the Western World, either secretly or proudly love ABBA. So, I don’t feel too guilty.

So yeah, I saw Mamma Mia with someone who I consider a dear friend. Before the movie started she told me about an interview she had seen with Colin Firth where he had been quite reluctant to talk about his role in Mamma Mia, almost embarrassed by it, and had said it was the scariest thing he had ever done. Now, I suppose I should tell you my interpretation of this, which is that he is nervous about his singing and dancing skills. Every Hollywood actor I’ve ever heard of doing a musical has said that doing a musical was the scariest thing they’d ever done, so I didn’t really see this statement by Colin Firth as anything unusual. And having seen the live show, I was pretty sure that what he was embarrassed about would involve sparkly spandex and disco dance moves. Besides, I don’t actually believe that he is embarrassed by his role in Mamma Mia, I think he was just being self-depreciating. Of course, this could just be my bias. I admit to having an irrational love for Colin Firth due to the fact that he played Darcy in the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice (not the crappy Hollywood version that came out a few years back, but the good 5 hour one). He was so good in that that I think I’d forgive him almost anything.

Anyway, so the movie goes on and it’s all fun and ABBA and then, towards the end of the movie (spoiler alert!) it is revealed that Colin Firth’s character is gay, and my friend beside me bursts out laughing and leans over to me and says “No wonder he’s embarrassed by this role”.

Now, this is a friend who knows me well, and who knows I’m gay. We’ve talked about it, we’ve cried about it, we’ve prayed about it… and she says this to me. I was shocked. The movie continues and then, at the end Colin Firth comes out in the aforementioned sparkly spandex and dances along to some ABBA, and I turn to her and I say “I think this, if anything, is what embarrassed him.”

The movie ends, and everyone is smiling and humming Dancing Queen, and she again says “No wonder he wanted to distance himself from that role, eh?” and I decided to give her a chance to maybe revise her opinion so I said “Well, yeah, I mean, no one looks good in sparkly spandex, and let’s face it, while I love him, he’s not the best dancer or singer, is he?”

Her reply? “Yeah, and turning out to be gay… no wonder he was so embarrassed.”

I should have said something, I know… I’m a coward. I was angry, but I hate conflict. And I don’t think I could have replied in a nice way in my angry state. She knows me, she knows I’m gay and she twice implied that being gay was something to be ashamed of. I tried to give her an out, but she wouldn’t take it. And I admit it, I was hurt. She’s my friend and I love her and by saying someone would be ashamed of playing a gay role, it sort of implies that she would be ashamed of me, or at the very least that I should be ashamed of myself.

I drove her home and silently stewed (well, not so silently, we actually managed to have a very nice conversation in the car while my mind was doing back flips), thinking things like “Do you seriously think that Colin Firth would not have known his character was gay before he took the role? And if he didn’t want to play gay he could have just said no, I mean, he’s Colin Firth, he can afford to let a role or two pass by…” and “How could you possibly say that to me? Twice?” Instead of telling her how I felt like a grown up I started injecting my gayness into the conversation. She mentioned My Fair Lady and I mentioned my long-time crush on Audrey Hepburn, which I think made her uncomfortable so she started talking about Kathryn Hepburn which… well, that’s a no brainer… I had a huge crush on her too – she looked so hot in all her pant suits! Kathryn Hepburn was the epitome of classy-sexy, but I digress. Anyway, I did that a few times, just wanting her to know that I was not ashamed, that I didn’t think there was anything to be ashamed of. And then we were at her door and she went home and that was that.

Later on, I was thinking about it, and suddenly I realized I understood the ‘pride’ movement very clearly. (Which is kind of appropriate considering that Pride in Ottawa is this coming weekend.) It’s a reaction to enforced shame. This is probably obvious to most of you, and I suppose if I’d thought about it I’d have come up with that myself, but I hadn’t really thought about it until the other night, when I experienced it for myself so directly. Seriously, in the car on the way back from her place I found myself thinking things like “I’m going to tell everyone that she knows that I’m gay so that she knows I’m not ashamed or embarrassed.”

I don’t know if anger is the right response, but it is better than shame. I remember the first time I reacted in anger to something racist that happened to me… it’s hard to imagine now, but prior to that, I’d reacted as if somehow I had done something wrong by being the wrong colour, that it was my fault that I wasn’t white, that I had something to be embarrassed about because of my race. I don’t know what turned the switch for me, but in university something happened as a result of my race and my response was basically rage. When I calmed down, I realized what a huge step that was, I was no longer ashamed of who I was and that was a good thing.

Anyway, that’s what happened. It upset me, and I’m not sure if I’m over reacting, so feel free to chime in.

Oh, and Mamma Mia is fun, you should see it.

125. Bermuda, Etc...

So, what can I tell you… a lot has happened since my last post. I’ve been to Bermuda and back, I’ve gotten a job, I’ve come out to my sisters… all good things. So, where shall I begin?

I’ll begin with Bermuda. That is where I was born, and where most of my family, including my two sisters and my father, are. I hadn’t been back there in about 5 years. And I hadn’t seen my sisters in 6 years (they had been living in St. Lucia when I last returned to Bermuda). I can’t even begin to tell you how good it was to see them. According to my Dad, we made everyone at the arrivals gate cry… which isn’t too hard to believe considering all three of us burst into tears at the sight of each other and couldn’t stop holding each other and crying. It was amazing to me how we picked up immediately. I had expected things to be a bit awkward, but it wasn’t. It just felt so natural. I guess it’s a sister thing. I have to admit that I do envy the bond they have between them, but I’ll take what I can get. Just thinking about them, my heart begins to feel a little fuller… I love them so much.

Other than the wonderfulness that is my sisters, I had a marvellous time in Bermuda (well… except for the fact that my mother crashed the party – once she heard I was going she decided to go at the same time as me, which would have been fine except she kept showing up where I was, and injecting herself into my sister/daddy/bonding time. It was a little irritating.) It was wonderful to reconnect with my family down there, and honestly, just being there feels good. Oh, I’m Canadian, there’s no doubt about that… but seeing the stars there at night… they seem bigger and clearer than anywhere else in the world. My first night there, I got out of the car and looked up and started to cry. And falling asleep to the singing of the treefrogs… turns out nothing puts me to sleep faster than that. And the ocean. I miss the ocean so much. Turns out, I’m Bermudian too.


I had no intention of coming out to my sisters. I had seriously considered having ‘the talk’ with my dad, but my mother’s presence quashed that plan. But I was out with the older of my younger sisters one afternoon and we just got into a conversation that lent itself to coming out. And it was so easy and wonderful. And she, of course, was like “so, do you have a girlfriend?” and then basically ‘why the hell not?”. After that, I knew I had to tell my youngest sister, and so I did so the next day, although I had to do it with my mother there. It was one of the more frustrating conversations I’ve had. Nothing to do with my sister, it’s just that we had to have the conversation in between my mother’s comings and goings. We were at a beach, and my mother would go for a little swim and me and my sister would get to talk privately before she would swim back to us. And her response was much like my other sister. She said something to the effect of “So, I don’t get a brother-in-law, I get a sister-in-law… okay.” She also said she wasn’t surprised, she’d actually wondered if I was gay before, but dismissed the idea because I’m “so religious”.

It was such a relief to have them know. I didn’t realize until I’d told them how much the secret had bothered me, how afraid I was that they would be embarrassed or ashamed. A huge weight I didn’t even know was there has been lifted off my shoulders.

In other news, the job I mentioned in my last post is now mine, as expected. Even though I knew I was likely to get the job, I was still excited when I heard the news. So, now I am a full time employee and am therefore stationary for at least a year, which is kind of scary, but I’ll survive.

In yet more blog related news, I think I’ve come to a conclusion… or a tentative conclusion… or possibly at game plan, I’m not sure what to call it, but something has happened. I didn’t realize how much of a decision I had made until church on Sunday. At the end of the service, I found myself looking around and tearing up as I thought about how things may change for me there soon. And then, of course, I was shocked at what I had just thought, even though the thought is nothing new. But the emotions I felt were so vivid, I realized that this is a reality now. I don’t feel confident enough to say I’m Side A or anything that definitive, but I don’t think I can think about this theoretically anymore. Which I know I’ve said before, so I can’t promise any results or anything, but I actually have begun to try and get my feet wet. I found a local organization for queer women online and I’ve already been to one event. Basically I’m trying to meet some women and see what happens. As I said to my sisters, I do feel kind of guilty about this because it is a sort of ‘experiment’ on my part (though not the usual kind of lesbian experimentation that you hear about)… I feel bad about possibly entering into a relationship with a woman who was dead serious while I’m totally tentative about the idea of even dating, but as my ever wise younger sisters pointed out, there’s no reason to tell everyone all my business right away. After all, no relationship is guaranteed to end in lifelong commitment, in fact, the vast majority of them don’t. So… we’ll see. I still feel guilty about it though… I’ve been told by people in the know I have guilt issues of near Catholic proportions.

I’ll leave you with one more video… this one of my kids at the preschool. I’ve blurred the image, because I don’t think I should be putting images of these kids on the internet, but this video is just too precious not to share. July was ‘Canada month’ (July 1st being Canada Day), so we sang Oh Canada with the kids almost every day… and they quickly learned to love the song. In fact, it is now a regular favourite that they often request to sing during circle time. The thing is, while they are extraordinarily enthusiastic, they are not necessarily lyrically accurate… it is so precious. So, in the spirit of the patriotism that this Olympic season brings with it, and the spirit of eternal adorableness that kids bring with them, enjoy…

124. Life Stuff

So, my life may be about to change quite a bit… or rather, to not change. “The heck ya mean?” you say… well, I had planned to be heading back to Korea at the end of the summer, but events have transpired that will likely result in me taking on a full time position at the preschool where I’ve been supply teaching. Oh, I still plan to go overseas at some point, but should this job pan out (and it likely will… parents even started lobbying for me to get the position once they knew there was one available – one of the hot moms among them, which made me grin for about an hour when I heard about it) I will be stationary for at least another year. It’s weird.

It will be good, though. I do love working there. I’ve even been known to go in on days when I was not getting paid just because I missed it. Missed conversations like the one I had today with a little girl I will call Sarah:

Sarah: (after a boy handed her a napkin): Thank you. Boys help girls sometimes if they are good.

Me: (a little dismayed): And girls help boys too.

Sarah: (head tilted, thinking): Yes… like, maybe, help him find his bowtie if he loses it.

That conversation is doubly funny (and a little bit scary) if you realize the girl in question is three and a half years old. Where on earth did she come up with that?

Anyway, in completely unrelated news, I thought I’d share a video blog I found on one of my favourite websites, AfterEllen.com. This video features Jay Baker, who I heard speak at the GCN Conference last New Years. He is such a kind and genuine guy, I felt really blessed to hear him speak. This video is brief, but maybe it will bless you too.

Lesbian video from AfterEllen.com

123. Something to Make You Smile

Just a little something I stumbled upon today while going through my google reader that brought a huge grin to my face. I do love Feist. And Sesame Street.



Part of me now wants to be famous just so I can guest spot on Sesame Street. I mean, she holds hands with Telly! ...I'm so jealous!

Hat Tip to Dorothy Surrenders.

122. Integrity

I want to write a post but I really don’t feel like bothering to write it well or attempt to make it interesting at all. And seeing as how this is my blog, I think I’ll do just that.

Tonight I went to a Eucharist for gay Christians in Ottawa held by an organization called Integrity. It was held in a small Anglican church on a street I didn’t know existed until today. It was nice, very liturgical. The gospel reading was the same one we did at my church this morning, which I thought was funny, although that could be simply due to the liturgical calendar. There were about 25 people there, and I was by far the youngest person in the room. There was one woman who I originally thought might be a few years older than me, but when we spoke afterwards she made reference to her two children who are in their twenties so… not so much. I think I’ll go again, though, at least once, maybe in the fall, after the traditional cottage season is over… just to try and meet as many of the members as possible.

So, yeah… it was nice, but… well, there doesn’t appear to be a community of gay Christians in this city who are of a more evangelical bend. It’s not that I have a problem with Anglican churches, or people of a not-so-evangelical tradition, but to be honest, they have a sort of a problem with me. Or with my beliefs I guess. It’s understandable, I suppose, I mean, this was a group of older gay people who had likely heard all the messages and been really hurt by evangelical churches. But their bias was undeniable. When the woman who I had thought was close to my age mentioned that she was from an evangelical church, the expression on the faces of the women she was speaking to was very clear. One of the ladies there also spoke of one of her aunts who was “God forgive her, a born again Christian”… a sentiment I’m used to hearing from non-Christians, but not from Christians. (I’ve a whole separate rant on the term ‘born again’ and what it has come to mean to the world at large that I won’t get into here). Oh, and when that same woman (from the evangelical church) made an offhand suggestion that perhaps we could get groups from other churches, not just Anglicans, together, it was met with a sort of confused silence that I admit I didn’t really understand. Someone turned to me and asked me what I thought, and I said quite effusively that I thought it was a wonderful idea, if in fact we could find groups from other denominations that were open to gay Christians that would be fantastic, and I mentioned GCN as an example of a group of believers from different denominational backgrounds who are able to worship together, but well, the subject was rather quickly changed.

Now, I seem to be highlighting the negatives, and I don’t mean to do that. The service was nice, the music was absolutely beautiful and taking communion amidst a group where I felt fully accepted felt wonderful. Oh, and one of the ladies there made a phenomenal pumpkin bread… so that was a bonus! So yeah, I’ll likely go again, although I don’t exactly feel up to marching with them in the pride parade (something that was discussed tonight). And that’s not so much about my not wanting to march and be public as it is about my not being sure about belonging to this group – and, if I’m perfectly honest, a lot of that is the age thing. I know that’s superficial, but well… that’s the honest truth.

Skipping back a bit, I thought I’d give a brief description of the affirming church I went to a few Sundays back, the one with evangelical in the name. It was also very liturgical… more liturgical than any service I think I’ve ever been to, honestly. Half of the prayers were sung! (That was kind of cool, actually.) It was nice as well, if a little… fluffy. I know that sounds really weird, but the sermon was basically “Jesus is nice”. And while I totally agree; that’s just kind of… fluffy. There was nothing particularly ‘gay’ about the service, most of the people there appeared to be straight to me. The only thing I noticed was a poster in the lobby advertising a conference where Kelly Fryer was speaking (she’s a lesbian Lutheran minister who spoke at the GCN conference I went to), but that was about it. Again, I think I’ll probably visit one more time at least. The only problem is that it is a fairly small church, so my presence was very obvious, which makes me kind of nervous. But I’ll just deal with that, I guess.

So yeah, that’s the end of my very functional, but not so interesting or well written post. Sorry.

121. Psalms

If you’ve been following along, (which I doubt), you are no doubt wondering if I went to the affirming church last Sunday, and if so, how it went… but to be honest, I don’t feel like talking about that right now. I’ll talk about that later, maybe… for now I’ll just say it was rather uneventful, and move on to what’s really on my mind.

The Psalms really comfort me. I’m sure I’m not the only one. David’s honesty is just so human. I’m working through a bit of rage right now. Something profoundly horrible happened to someone I love and, well… I’m angry. I’m having trouble sleeping, and when I do, I dream of decapitations and eviscerations. I’ve come up with some very creative ways to kill a man. I know that as a Christian love and forgiveness are key… but so is honesty. And, as I said, I’m comforted by the Psalms, which were written by David – a man “after God’s own heart”.

Psalm 58:6-11

Break the teeth in their mouths, O God;
tear out, O LORD, the fangs of the lions!

Let them vanish like water that flows away;
when they draw the bow, let their arrows be blunted.

Like a slug melting away as it moves along,
like a stillborn child, may they not see the sun.

Before your pots can feel the heat of the thorns—
whether they be green or dry—the wicked will be swept away.

The righteous will be glad when they are avenged,
when they bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked.

Then men will say,
"Surely the righteous still are rewarded;
surely there is a God who judges the earth."

120. I hate Walmart

I hate Walmart. It’s just so big, and full of people and stuff. I mean, seriously, why is there so much stuff? I went because I was looking for something specific that I couldn’t find anywhere else – and they didn’t even have it. I sifted through all their mounds of stuff and it wasn’t even there.

So, for my recovery from my traumatic Walmart experience, I came home and watched Canadian Idol, and was very relieved to see one of my early favourites has gotten through to the voting portion of the show, so no one had better call me next Monday between 9 and 11, because I’ll likely be voting over and over again like a complete loser. I’m telling you, I get totally sucked in by this show.

In other blog-related news, I’m thinking about visiting another church on Sunday. I’d done a search for gay friendly churches in my city a few years back and only found the one I ended up going to, which, while very friendly, is not at all my type of church. This time, I found a website with a list of about 8 different churches in the area, so I’m thinking I’m going to give one of them (that happens to be about 8 minutes drive from me) a shot on Sunday. I’m a little nervous about it, because I mentioned the name of the church to a friend today and her response was “Oh, yeah… that’s one of the liberal churches”, which was disappointing, because the church has the word “evangelical” right in its name. And it’s not like I have anything against the word ‘liberal’, it’s just that when my friend said that, I knew what she meant was “oh, yeah, that’s not a Bible-believing church”. I know it shouldn’t matter what she thinks, I just would have liked it to not be so easily classified in her brain – you know, “of course they’re gay friendly, they don’t really believe the Bible”.

My book club met on Sunday night, and my pastor’s wife is in my book club. She had recently returned from some sort of district conference or something like that… actually, I don’t think it could have been a district thing because she was in Florida, but it was an official Wesleyan thingy… where they were discussing official Wesleyan doctrine. The thing we got talking about (that had nothing to do with the book we did this month, which was a graphic novel called Watchmen by Alan Moore) was the issue of alcohol. My pastor’s wife, along with pretty much everyone from my church, is part of a group that is trying to get the official doctrine of the Wesleyan church changed so that Wesleyans are allowed to drink. This might not seem like a big deal, or even that important an issue, but it actually does affect things at our church. Being in a city with lots of people from different cultures, especially French Canadians, for whom drinking wine with dinner is a matter of tradition, it means that there are many people who love our church, who attend regularly and are involved who would like to be in areas of leadership or ministry, but in order to do so they would have to give up part of their culture. And while it is really not that big a deal, I mean, it’s just wine, it’s also really silly to say that you can’t have a glass of wine with dinner if you want to be on the board at our church. Anyway, back to the discussion (which I swear is blog relevant, just wait, I’m getting to a point), she talked about how frustrating it was because the people who were arguing against her were taking the position that they were the “Bible believers” and she and her faction were the ‘liberals’. The language they used, the tone of their voices, the way they interacted with them… it all said “we believe that we have the truth, and that you are wrong, and you are attempting to dilute our truth, and we feel threatened.”. She was so frustrated by the dismissive way she and her opinions were treated that I’m surprised to hear she didn’t start an incident down there (I love my pastor’s wife – she is not a demure and self-effacing woman like so many pastor’s wives are, she’s quite feisty).

So, I sat there, listening to her express her frustration, and I couldn’t help but think about what I’d written before, about the dismissive way most Christians look at the Side A arguments… they assume, even before they’ve heard them, that they are perversions of Scripture, they refuse to engage the arguments on their actual merits, they assume a defensive posture of “You’re wrong. I don’t really care what you say, you’re just wrong.” It makes any attempt at conversation in this arena very near impossible. I’m still trying to figure this out.

Anyway, in light of this whole thought process, and in light of my possible visit to a gay friendly church, I thought I’d share a video I found by lesbian singer, Sara Em… it’s her song to the church.

119. Pride

So, I'm blogging again, so quickly after my last post. Strange, I know. But I just wanted to show off a bit, and this is the best venue I could find for that.

But first I must confess something. I watch the Idol shows... and I like them. Oh, I think Randy's a idiot and Paula's a drunk... and Simon... well, he's Simon. But I enjoy watching people sing, and I do get caught up in the whole 'realizing your dream' thing. I'm a sucker, I know.

Now, most of my readers are American, so you may not know this, but up here in Canada we have Canadian Idol. I actually have a friend who made it fairly far in the audition rounds... not quite to the voting stage, but almost. It's the same format, same theme song... it's basically the same show with different (better, more coherent) judges -- most notably our version of Randy Jackson who is able to convey his opinions week after week without a single fist pump, "dawg" or "keeping it real". I want to hug him every week for that alone.

So, yeah, it's basically the same, but with a uniquely Canadian flavour. There is not nearly as much making fun of people, and when it happens, it pretty much always seems that the people being made fun of are in on the joke. The judges are honest, but kind (usually), and those who don't make it are almost universally polite about it. It's much more enjoyable to watch.

But never was the difference between the two shows more apparent to me than on Tuesday night. A young, high school student who is in the process of transitioning from male to female came in to audition, and the show dealt with it with such respect, I actually teared up in my living room. The amount of times I've seen people who don't fit into our gender norms go in to audition for American Idol and basically be made into a punchline... it makes me angry every single time. But here, on our version of the show, they actually made her a hero. They didn't pretend that the issue didn't exist, in fact, they highlighted it. I was so proud... proud of Ryan Mawla for having the courage to audition, proud of Canadian Idol for treating her with respect, proud of CTV for airing it... yeah... proud. You can watch it for yourself... I can't find a clip of just her audition, but she starts about 2 minutes into this clip.



Since I'm posting clips from Canadian Idol, I might as well put up another favourite, just so I have these clips in one place. Here's Kalan Porter -- the winner of Season 1 -- singing one of the few "Christian pop hits" I actually like in the finals.



Anyway, I was just proud, and thought I'd tell y'all about it.

118. She's Alive!

So, I’ve been out of the world for a while. (Oh, and I just recently rewatched my Firefly and Serenity DVDs, hence the phrase “out of the world”… Browncoats will get it. The rest of you will not understand any of what I just typed out. Sorry. But it’s your own damn fault for not watching one of the best shows to ever be on television. Maybe if you had it would still be on the air. Anyway, back to my point…) I know I’ve been neglectful, and perhaps I should have given some notice when I realized I needed to take a break, but that would have required signing on and well… I needed a break. And actually, I think I’m still taking one, but for some reason I felt like writing today. I think I’ll just explain what’s been going on.

So… I took a break. Not intentionally, but I did. And I don’t just mean I took a break from this blog. I mean I took a BREAK. I just sort of stopped. Oh, I went to work, and shopped and ate and exercised. But mostly, I stopped. I stopped calling people, I stopped going to church, I just stopped. I think my brain was just tired. I wasn’t depressed, which was some people’s worry, I’ve been depressed before and this felt nothing like that. I just couldn’t see my way to doing anything that required any sort of brain power -- and for me, church is one of those things, and as a natural introvert (with honed extroverted skills) so do people. Let me tell you how disengaged I got. When I finally started coming out of my cave (again, not depressed, I promise you), it turned out that a lot of people had just assumed I’d left the country again. I had people asking me how Korea was, and if I was home for a holiday. Ridiculous. Me, I mean, not them. But I’m making my way slowly but surely back into the world. I went to church the past few weeks (well, not this past Sunday, I slept in), and I’ve started making an effort to call people and be more out and about. So I think my brain is revving back up, which is good.

It’s been a good break though. It’s not like I wasn’t seeing people. I was working practically every day (which is pretty good considering I supply at a preschool with a staff of 3 people… it’s kind of incredible how many hours they give me) and the kids are great and bring me so much joy… plus I get along awesomely with the other teachers, which makes for a fun work day. Seriously, think about it… I get paid to play with preschoolers and cool people. That’s pretty darn amazing. Add to that mix the 2 hot moms that I get to chat with/flirt with on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and you’ve got a happy girl. Oh, don’t worry, I know that they’re straight, and I’ve got not hopes or designs, it’s just a little adult sized fun in a child sized world. My coworkers like to tease me about them, which is just fine.

So, what made this break necessary? Well, I’m not sure, considering it just snuck up on me. I was over at one of my best friend’s place a few weeks ago talking about this, and she was asking me that question and my answer was to shrug my shoulders and go “…dunno..”, which scared her a lot because, as she put it, I’m “all about the thinking about the why of things” which is totally true, but part of my break was not thinking about anything even remotely serious, and whys are serious.

But, as I said, the old thinker is revving back up and so I’ve got some guesses now. The first is simple. Exhaustion. Mostly with, yes, the concept behind this blog. The gay Christian thing. I’ve been thinking about it all so hard for so long and I think it just got to be too much.

The second guess is not quite so simple, but it is something that I know is true, and I’ve got reason to suspect that it was the reason for the sudden shutting down of my brain. One of my biggest frustrations in all of this is that I feel really alone. Oh, believe me, this blog helps, your comments help, your blogs help, and websites like GayChristian.net help… knowing that there are people out there like me who are trying to figure things out makes it all so much more manageable. We really are communal creatures. But as much as these things help, they are not the same as real life, flesh and blood, friends. And that’s where I feel alone. Oh, I’ve got friends. Awesome friends, whom I cherish and who I believe value me too. I don’t mean this to be a slight on them. I mean this in a very specific way. I feel alone on this particular journey, I feel like I’m trying to figure this out alone. No one is doing this with me, no one is trying to figure this out with me. I’ve got my conservative Christian friends (and again, I’m using the word conservative in the most specific of ways, I’m meaning my friends who are Christians who are Side B, who believe I should be celibate), my one Side A straight Christian friend (well, the only one I know about, anyway), and my non Christian friends… and they all have their opinions, they all have already made up their minds. No one is willing or able to go back to the beginning and start thinking about this issue and be open to the possibility that they might, in fact, be wrong. And I quite honestly mean that on both sides, not just the pro-celibacy side. My non-Christian friends seem to be just waiting for me to get over my “hang-ups” and get on with the process of dating. I actually kind of ended a friendship a while back after one of these people sort of attacked me for remaining celibate, I spent an hour trying to defend a position I’m not sure of plus defend my personal choices and that was enough for me.

But to be perfectly honest, I don’t really expect that much from my non-Christian friends, at least in this area. I can’t really expect someone who doesn’t view the Bible as the Word of God to understand why what the Bible says is important to me, nor do I expect that they would comprehend how important my relationship with a Being they may or may not even believe in is. So, this is something I mostly find myself looking to my Christian friends for, and this is where I feel it the most. Because, for the most part – and let me be clear, this is just my perception, and it is only in this one specific area – I feel like they are kind of dismissive. They begin from a standpoint of “all homosexual behaviour is wrong”, and when I have tried to engage them in a discussion about some Side A arguments they sort of dismiss them out of hand. I remember one discussion with a particular person after bringing up a particular Side A point where my friend said “Well, that’s something I’d never thought of… that’s a really good argument. Of course, I disagree with it.” And when I asked why, the answer was “Well, because I believe homosexual behaviour is wrong.” I couldn’t get any other answer out of her, she had no reply to the specific point that was brought up, but she came in to the discussion with her opinion and that was that. I don’t think they would couch it in these terms, but they refuse to be moved from their conservative position, so any attempt to engage them in real conversation on this issue is kind of pointless. And that is so frustrating, because I do believe that life is meant to be lived in community, and I think that is more true about the Christian life, and I feel like I’m alone in this. I can’t talk to my liberal non-Christian friends about it because they can’t really engage me on the “Christian” part of the debate, (heh, one of my dearest non-Christian friends, many years ago when I was newly out and only talking to non-Christian friends about it because they were the only people I felt safe with, actually told me at one point that I needed to find Christians to talk to because she had ‘taken me as far as she could go’, she could only go so far with an academic understanding of my faith… that was kind of a turning point for me) and I can’t talk to my conservative Christian friends about it because they won’t engage me on the “gay” part of the debate.

I don’t blame them. I mean, I can’t expect this issue to be important to someone who’s not actually affected by it. They have their lives, their husbands, their wives, their kids, their schools, their jobs… this is hardly an important issue if you aren’t gay and Christian, I can’t expect them to actually devote the time and energy to starting from scratch with the reading and the research and the wrestling it out and being open to new possibilities and perspectives… that’s a lot to ask. But I can’t help but want it.

Now on to the crux of the matter. I think it was the Bible Study… which was awesome and fun, and I’m really proud of it and glad I did it. But I think it pushed me over the edge. Because, there I was, discussing this issue with people who were sincerely asking questions, and who were engaging both ends of this debate – the gay side and the Christian side, and it was awesome… and exactly what I have been wanting for such a long time. And then it was over. They went back to their lives and that was it. Actually, apparently the next Bible study was also on homosexuality – they listened to one of the Tony Campolo CDs I’d made. But, the thing is they could be done with it, they could put it aside having not come to any conclusions and be fine with it because it’s just not that important to them. It’s interesting, and they care, but they have their lives to lead and this is not a part of their lives. And it kind of hurt. Oh, I wasn’t crying or angry or anything. It’s just that feeling for a short time that feeling of wrestling this issue out in community with other believers who were willing to start from scratch… it felt so good, and when it was gone, I think I just crashed. Mentally, not emotionally. Well, maybe a little emotionally, but not in a depressed way. I just sort of lived off of the joy I got from the kids at work (and yes, the hot moms) and my coworkers, and let everything else (including this blog) just sort of fall away for a while. But I’m coming back slowly but surely. I probably won’t be very regular in my posting for a while. But I’m alive and well. And to anyone who’s still reading, thanks. It’s good to know you’re there.