Grandma’s Spring Cookbook

Spring break is finally over, and I’m working like mad to finish my story for tonight’s Experimental Forms class. In fact, it’s almost done, but I only worry because I have to work until 3 p.m., and then I have Screenwriting at 5:30 p.m. I hope I have enough time to make the final edits I want to make.

The story is based on my grandma’s cookbook, which she wrote out, handwritten, for all her children; in December, my mom made my sister and me a copy for Christmas. It’s probably one of the most meaningful things in my possession. Without the Experimental Forms class, I might never have written this story. This is but one reason I am glad I chose the M.F.A. program I did.

Over break, I stayed in Baltimore (except for a couple of trips to the Bowie area). I worked on Monday and Tuesday (but only half-time), and I saw Justin on Monday night and Friday night. We saw Alice in Underland…er…Alice in Wonderland on Friday. In 3-D. It was a beautiful movie and a pretty good story, for the most part. I know some people expected more, but I was actually okay with what I got.

I watched The Office and 30 Rock the other day, online. I never have time to watch them when they air on Thursdays. Anyway, I found The Office funnier than it has been most of this season, even if there were a couple of cringeworthy moments (***SPOILER************Dwight choked Kevin? Seriously?************END SPOILER***).  There were a couple of good Michael scenes, which I was surprised about, because I haven’t liked Michael at all this season. There was also some “inconsistent” behavior and dialogue from some characters (I’m talking to you, Phyllis), but my Experimental Forms and Fiction teacher (he teaches both classes) makes a good point: People are inconsistent. So, I was mostly okay with it, especially when Phyllis called Michael “numbnuts,” and then immediately changed her tone. She knew that wasn’t her, and for that, I loved this moment. My favorite line of the episode: As Dwight stood in the middle of the local dump, he said, “This place has gone to hell.” How meta of him.

30 Rock was brilliant, as has been the case for a while now. Truth be told, I like it better than The Office, these days. I don’t have time to elaborate right now, though.

Last night, I watched the latest episode of Spartacus: Blood and Sand, and it was pretty good but not quite up to par with the best episodes of the season. Even so, for a show that started off in terrible shape, I’m impressed and delighted with how far it’s come.

Finally, I also continued a recent endeavor last night: re-watching the original FOX/SciFi series Sliders (1995 to 2000). I watched the season two opener before I went to bed last night, and I must say, it was one of my favorite episodes of the series and had perhaps one of the best endings of any series. Ever. Plus, I don’t remember having seen it before! I can’t believe I missed this the first time around, if that’s the case. Thank you Netflix for reconnecting me to Sliders!

I guess I’d better go now. Unfortunately, I’m finding that work is the most lucrative time to blog, for me. It forces me to write quickly. Maybe that takes away from content, but every once in a while, I’ll do a blog on my own time.

Those are the ones to wait for. Maybe next time…

Happy Thanksgiving!

I know it’s early, but I wanted to put up a Thanksgiving entry, because I probably won’t have access to a computer again until Friday. I’m going to Pennsylvania to spend Thanksgiving with Hélène and Arturo at Penn State, and I leave tomorrow morning/afternoon.

I’ll post something more substantial soon. I’ve already got a potential blog topic for next time: e-publishing!

Until then, Happy Thanksgiving! Don’t get trampled on Black Friday! 😉

UPDATE: Sorry I never got around to talking about e-publishing. I still plan on doing it at some point, though!

We Like Boys

Wow. My writing exercise for this week was to do a structural repetition, in which something a character or narrator says or does is repeated or echoed, perhaps in a different context, by different people, or on a different scale. Mine started out boring, but it transformed as I was writing it, from a story about two sexually-charged daughters and their mother into a story about a mother who was raped when she was younger and a son (hers) who is coming out of the closet. Still not very original, but I like it so much better than what I started with. I call it

In 1984, Suzy Salinger had been a rambunctious 16-year-old, but not really one to get herself into trouble. Nevertheless, she had gotten into trouble on that particular November afternoon when she had finally stood up to her mom about dating.

“What can I say, mother?” she had said. “Boys just like me!” And then she had smirked and received a slap across the face and instructions to go to her room. Furious, she had sneaked out her bedroom window that night, for the first time ever, to meet up with an older boy who had said he liked her. And that night, he had raped her.

Twice.

Thinking back on this night, Suzy now began a dialogue with her 15-year-old son, Chad, about respecting women and dating. If things went well, she might even bring up sex. And things did go well because Chad swore he had the utmost respect for women and didn’t think he was ready to date anyone yet, male or female.

“Excuse me?” Suzy said, and picked at her ear. “What did you say?”

“Mom…I like boys. Maybe even…just boys.” Chad looked at his feet, and Suzy saw his face turn crimson.

Shocked as she was, she knew this was 2009, when being gay was almost okay. She worried that rejecting his sexuality now would make her lose him forever, and besides, she was a pretty cool mom, wasn’t she? She could handle this. Nevertheless, she couldn’t help but cry a little; she had to grieve the loss of that heterosexual life she had subconsciously envisioned for him all these years. A beautiful wife. Two-point-five naturally conceived children. Low chances of contracting HIV. An aversion to that shitty pop music—Beyoncé, she remembered—and to the color pink, which even she, a woman, a straight woman, hated with a passion.

But wait. Now she was being unfair and buying into stereotypes. Chad was still Chad, and this wasn’t going to change his personality and tastes. At least, she didn’t think so. She stepped closer to him and put both hands on his head, one on each side. She tilted his face up toward hers and kissed his forehead.

“I was going to talk about sex after all that, but you caught me off-guard,” she said, and smiled. She looked into his eyes, and he smiled back. “I liked boys too when I was your age, of course, and I need to tell you where that got me one night because you need to know what boys can do. And why you don’t have a dad.” She swallowed hard, and then continued: “First of all, you need to remember that you have the right to say no, and it always, absolutely means no. Okay?”

Then Suzy and her gay son sat down to have a serious talk about sex. And boys. And to her great surprise, it was the best conversation they’d ever had.

No on 1 in Maine!

I just wanted to post this to help get the word out: Today is the LAST day to contribute to the No on 1 campaign that will fight to save marriage equality in Maine. Early voting on Proposition 1 starts tomorrow, and if things don’t turn out the way the current polls are going, marriage equality will be striken from yet another state. Even now, though, the lead is not by much, so please contribute if you can, to get more support out there; and if you can’t contribute, at least pass the word, and tell people to vote no on Prop 1 if they live in Maine.

None of this is about religion; it’s about the American ideals set forth in the Constitution, which says that we are all equal. And in much the same way that we have come to accept African Americans as part of that, and other groups, we can accept our GLBT brothers and sisters as well. There’s really no difference, and it’s no one’s business how GLBT community members live their lives anyway. They deserve the right to be happy and care for one another. Just let people marry who they want because it won’t harm you one bit. It really won’t.

I couldn’t give much, but even $25 adds up when a lot of people send it. 😉

Here is how the money will be spent: http://gay.americablog.com/2009/10/moneybomb-for-maine-help-us-hit-11.html

And here is a link to contribute: http://www.actblue.com/page/americablogsupportsmainemarriage

In D.C. – The National Equality March

As I said in my previous post, I went to Washington D.C. this weekend with my friend Lori to march for GLBT equality. And it was amazing.

Going in, I had no idea what to expect. I didn’t know how many people would be there or how they would be reacting. I didn’t know what the police would be like or how such a march would be coordinated. Would it be chaotic? A riot? Would I have to fight to stay on my feet and avoid being trampled to death? How easy would it be to stay with my group of four (myself and three others)?

I was pleasantly surprised when my group got downtown. I saw facets and sights I hadn’t really seen, or in some cases considered, before this weekend. I saw groups of people on the Metro carrying colorful signs (and some were colorful in the literary sense of the word; but I’ll leave them to your imagination). 😉 Lesbians leaning on their partners’ shoulders, gay men with their arms around one another. On the Metro! In the streets! It seemed so simple and felt like it should have always been that way.

However, it’s not always that way. People are afraid to be who they are, for fear of persecution, but today was our day, the day for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders, and GLBT supporters to come out in droves and give one another the courage to be who we all are. The courage to fight for rights we have so long wanted but never been able to have. And for some of us, the courage to fight for rights we don’t necessarily need for ourselves but know others deserve, rights that have long been denied (and for no good reason).

When the march got underway, I found most of the answers to my questions rather quickly. It was anything but a riot. It was a little chaotic because there were so many people, but that was the only reason. Police were cooperating. They were there to help us, protect us, and it felt wonderful to have that support. While we had been crowded pretty close together before the march started, once we were walking, we could spread out nicely. There was no real danger of being trampled, thankfully. Christmas shoppers could learn a thing or two from this group of queers and queer supporters. 🙂

When we finally got to the Capitol building, two young men spoke; I think both of them were teenagers, still in high school or maybe just out of high school. One was straight, and the other was gay. Both young men spoke with an eloquence I could never dream of having, especially at such a young age. Even now, I envy them. I envy their courage to speak to hundreds of thousands of people—but more importantly, I envy their courage to speak up on something as important and dividing as GLBT issues. I couldn’t have done it at their respective ages. I’m still not sure I could today.

We also listened to speeches by the organizers of the event, a particularly powerful one by the head organizer. Cynthia Nixon, an award-winning actress perhaps best known for her role as Miranda on Sex and the City, even showed up to march and gave a rousing oratory on fighting for equality and on her own struggle to marry her partner of almost five years. Judy Shepard, mother of hate crime victim Matthew Shepard, spoke to us as she has spoken to many GLBT/supporters over the years. Lady Gaga marched (and may have performed, but if she did, I wasn’t there by that point). Kristin Chenoweth tweeted that she marched as well; I would have loved to have seen her and congratulated her on her well deserved Emmy.

After I left the rally, I checked Twitter on my iPhone because I hadn’t been able to get an Internet connection during the rally. Preliminary guesses put the crowd at 100,000 to 150,000, most likely more. When I saw this, I remembered a moment about thirty minutes into the rally when someone announced that we were still seven blocks deep, even with all the people that had already arrived on the Capitol mall. Seven blocks deep, thirty minutes into the rally! Insane.

Thinking back on the day, I am not in the least surprised that the openness continued throughout the day; even on Metro ride back, people were holding each other. Safety in numbers, perhaps, and there were plenty of those to go around today. But I wonder…tomorrow, will D.C. show any signs of GLBT life? Will there be a man holding his partner in public? A woman? Will GLBT America go back into the closet tomorrow, or will it stay out and continue the fight? Perhaps one of the most memorable and poignant moments from today comes to mind now: to get into the rally, many of us had to climb, literally, over a stone wall.

If that isn’t symbolic, I don’t know what is. The National Equality March was a new kind of Stonewall, a protest for a newer generation; and I hope the feeling lasts months, if not years. Or forever.

GLBT America (and the world) deserves it.