[I started this posting a few days ago, but was balked from moving ahead by bad juju in both Facebook and WordPress. The curses magically lifted on 9/9. So I’m back on task now, but it’s 9/11 (25th anniversary) and apparently I’m going to be weeping non-stop all day, while I plug away at my work. Life lurches on]
Yet another birthday present for me, small but touching: two small enamel lapel pins: one in the form of a flag, one a plain rectangle (both are just an inch across):
(#1) The flag pin
(#2) The rectangle pin
Both of them from the program director Manalee Shukla here at Avant (a friend I’ve posted about several times, because we share a pleasure in the culture of her native land, India, and because she appreciates my injecting a note of gay spice into the Avant experience (meanwhile, I’ve warned her that her two bicultural kids are about to finish a transformation into entirely American boys; I have plenty of sociolinguistic stories from personal experience as well as the literature — all that professional preparation turns out to be genuinely useful in daily life).
Gay indicators. The lapel pins come from the world of gay indicators, clothing and accessories that quietly index gayness, but do not speak its name — like my shirts with a Pride rainbow logo on them. (As it happens, when I wrote those words, I was wearing a tank top with a Pride rainbow logo on it. As I write these words today (on yet another fiercely hot day), I’m in a tank top with a Pride heart logo on it; I have a collection)
A more substantial item of clothing of this sort:
(#3) The Classic Rainbow Embroidered Tee (from Gay Pride Apparel)
Verbal meat axes. Frank talk, using unvarnished labels. The love that shouts its name: GAY, QUEER, FAGGOT / FAG, HOMO. What to make of clothing like this:
(#4) Too assaultive? (shirt from the Got Funny? site); well, I’ve ordered one of these shirts
In my previous life I wore pretty much anything on the streets of Palo Alto and in my condo community; entertaining some people, making others a bit nervous (maybe giving them a learning experience), and convincing still others that I was someone they didn’t want to mess with. But now I’m in a closed community that sees the shared space as their private household.
So gay indicators are ok (they can be ignored, or treated as cute quirks). But the meat axes will be seen as vulgar assaults, threatening the social order, as offensive as FUCK. And then I’m in trouble, because I am GAY, QUEER, FAG, HOMO. I explain to people I’m outrageous but entirely unthreatening (though I understand that’s hard to believe). Now my patience is running out, and I’m inclined to don one of my FAGGOT t-shirts — I have several — to wear around Avant. And let the dogs of fury rage.
(Yeah, yeah, let slip the dogs of war. But that’s Mark Antony; this is me.)
Things that get in under the radar. I do wear my big GAYGUIN shirt everywhere. It has a really cute penguin on it, which pretty much neutralizes the gay.
I also wear my two big DEI shirts, with their rainbow-colored explanations of diversity, equity, and inclusion. They get favorable notice from both staff and residents at Avant — but in my experience so far, only from women. For all I know, the men understand DEI to be, as our overlord Grabpussy maintains, discriminatory Communist indoctrination.
Birthday gifts. That’s where this posting started, and there are in fact still more to report (later, not now), broadening to include some very sweet offerings just thanking me for being the sort of person I am. Giving me roses while I yet live. (Though I should remind you of everyone’s inclination — mine too — to paint themselves in a good light)
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