Red Dress 2016

Orlando

I learned about the news of the mass killing in a gay bar in Orlando in a text from my partner on Sunday morning. I had been out the night before with a friend and stayed at his house. I immediately got on Facebook and wrote, “Devastated and disgusted. I regret the day I came back to this hell hole country.” A bit dramatic in retrospect, but it is what I felt at that moment. When you live outside of gun culture for four years and then step back into it, it is jarring to say the least. I grew up around guns, I have fired guns, and I even owned a gun once. I don’t have a problem with guns, but I do have a problem with people who fetishize gun ownership. And I do have a problem with people being able to buy assault rifles like the one used to kill (mostly) gay Latinos on Sunday morning in Florida. Every time one of these events happens, we say something's gotta give. But as others have already pointed out, if killing little kids in an elementary school didn’t change anything about America’s gun access laws, then nothing ever will. It is insane.

The first time I set foot inside of a gay bar was the week before my seventeenth birthday. It was the summer of 1984. The moment I crossed the threshold, my world opened up. Every queer person I know, has a coming out song, mine is RELAX by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. To this day, when I hear that tune, I’m transported back to the Carousel in Knoxville, TN. Like most gay bars in smaller cities, the Carousel’s clientele was a literal cross section of the rainbow—dykes, daddies, lipstick lesbians, bears (we didn’t call them bears then though), drag queens, old queens, pretty boys, and muscle boys.

We danced. We drank. We hooked-up. We pretended our friends weren’t dying and life was beautiful.

Since that time 32 years ago, I can’t count the times I have been on a dance floor in a gay bar at 2AM in the morning, intoxicated on booze and house music, or high on e or poppers, rubbing against bodies, kissing. It is euphoria. That was the state the victims were in when the gunman opened fire, turning pure pleasure into terror in a microsecond. The safest place for them destroyed. They were supposed to be hit with laser beams, not bullets. 

Pulse.

Pride.

Central Waterfront

A Night to Remember

Puerto Vallarta

Make America Great Again

Make America Gay Again

Park City, UT

Sundance 2016

I must admit that I wasn’t particularly looking forward to going to Sundance this year. The timing of the festival happens to coincide with the add/drop period of the college I work at—a particular hellish two weeks that consumes a ridiculous amount of air space for everyone who works in Academic Affairs and Student Records, keeping us all on an insane roller-coaster ride for a fortnight. “What do you mean this class now only has four people in it? It was full yesterday!”

So, my lack of enthusiasm was about me not being able to let go. I find the festival overwhelming; the film selections alone hurt my brain. Getting from place to place is ridiculously challenging. Yes, there are free shuttles, but no grid = John has no fucking clue as to where he is going most of the time. The road system in Park City seems like interlocking figure eights turned on 45-degree angles with one side smushed in, err something. The streets are large enough to move entire armies through, I mean really large armies, but the sidewalks are barely wide enough for two people to pass one another. I get it. It’s a different way of being. Residents of Park City have the luxury of space, and if you have a motor vehicle, then you are good to go! But if you are a walker, well, then wha-wha. It is kind of like an endurance test of obstacle courses.

But the endurance test is Sundance for me. This was my second trip to the festival and both times turned out to be a lot more fun than I thought they were going to be. I came without tickets to specific films this weekend and last year’s trip. It added another layer to the endurance test: eWaitlisting or negotiating with other individuals to score tickets to particular movies. There’s a lot of standing around and there’s a lot of scurrying from place to place. There are no guarantees. It leaves a lot to chance.

This go around, chance turned out to be these five films: Antibirth, Mammal, Tickled, Jim:TheJames Foley Story, and Mapplethorpe:Look at the Pictures. Of the five, the documentary, Tickled was my favorite flick. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. It is on par with a story The Onion would publish, but in this case, even their satire can’t compete with the truth. You read a review here.

The other jewel at Sundance was an interactive piece called The Treachery of Sanctuary. Upon entering the exhibit, the viewer is confronted with a series of three screens and is instructed to move their hands and body. They then proceed to watch their silhouette transformed (first screen) and devoured (second screen) by birds (also in silhouette), and lastly reborn as the phoenix in the third screen. For me, it was an ephemeral Hitchcockian drama and I was the main character, who ended up dying in the second scene. It was humbling, and I was totally caught off guard. As I moved through the piece, I realized that it had been years since I was completely blown away by a work of art. I let go.

Everyone I know has a David Bowie Story, here's mine.

I woke up this morning to the news that David Bowie had passed away. I opened up Facebook and my feed was consumed by images of, and eulogies to the pop star. Everyone I know has a David Bowie story, here’s mine. 

My relationship to Bowie’s music is a bit complicated. I was never a die hard fan in the way that so many people around me were. Aside from all of the hits, whenever I would actually sit down and try to listen to an entire album, I would get bored. I wanted more. I wanted every composition to be as massive as the personae Bowie created and recreated for himself. The one exception is Scary Monsters. It is the only album I can listen to from beginning to end, and truly enjoy every song. It lives up to the hype. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love David Bowie’s music and his fly-your-freak-banner-high image. I’m just saying that I’m not sure that his music was as life changing for me as it was for others. That said, I can’t imagine getting out of high school alive without David Bowie, because he was life changing for the dearest friend of my life—a fellow misfit, who kept me stable and sane. Today, she wrote the following:

When I was 7 years old I saw David Bowie on TV- I was an awkward oddball little girl w/ vampire teeth, two different color eyes living in a conservative Southern Baptist community. I felt isolated and bored. Then I saw and heard BOWIE, my life changed . He gave me an anchor and hope for my own path of individuality. My 1st apartment I Xeroxed a bunch of images of BOWIE and wallpapered my hallway. For me like many of you, BOWIE was / is a light of incredible vision, courage & profound depth. I am just gutted, yet grateful to have been touched by his life course. A Golden Era is coming to an end. I LOVE YOU DAVID BOWIE. Thank you !!!!!!

The woman’s name who wrote that is Ariel, and I know without her, I wouldn’t be alive today. She is my hero and she changed my life.