Listen you kids, untie me or I’ll call your parents!

i cannot even deal with hawaii right now. or a thousand other depressing things in gay news right now. so how about instead i just share my own personal depressing story.

i never told my dad i was gay.

but given a “talk” he gave me, my mom must have. he didn’t take it well, to say the very least.  he still says things about setting me up with so and so’s son. which in a way is sort of sweet, but also kind of…annoying. actually, i think i’ll spare you the details of the talk. it was rather painful and to put it bluntly, things were said to a child that a parent probably should never, ever say. i learned a lot about my father that day. i learned that when we are hurt as children it can cause very serious damage that may be entirely irreversible. and that sexual abuse causes hatred (for others and self), homophobia, anger, and arrested development- to name a few.

but then sometimes i’ll have a moment with my dad that is like a little tiny slice of light. a wee glimmer of hope maybe. he called me up the other day and said, “i have a question for you. now don’t get mad.” oh god. here we go. “i sold a trailer to a couple of ladies today. lesbians. paiute indian. i want to buy them a candle, to put in the trailer. what flavor do they like?” i am smiling across hundreds of miles and say, “lesbians? or paiute indians?” “No!” says he. “lesbians.” right, right. of course. i recommend vanilla, cause who doesn’t like vanilla? and this, dear readers, is progress. this is my dad reaching out, in his own way and it may not seem like much, in fact it may even seem insensitive, but that would not be correct. my dad saw two ladies, two lesbians, probably coupled and he thought of me, and it was not devastating, it was not gross, in fact he wanted to give them a candle. a token.

so maybe hawaii has taken a step back and california and new york and… okay you get the point, but, BUT change is happening when my father, my very conservative father, a religious man- can call up his daughter and in his way, reach out a tiny bit.

and because there was another earthquake today and we need something to sardonically chuckle over:

thanks to slap upside the head, a very funny blogger, who writes about awesome things like why gays cause natural disasters such as earthquakes. logic. it’s beyond so many.