VENT

MORE CATCHING UP - BOOK TOUR TO NYC

2009-05-03T11:55:00.000-07:00

I was in New York March 27 - April 3, 09.

Here is a photo from the reading at Barnes and Noble on 82nd and Broadway March 30:

After the reading with some of my Shock of the Funny cohorts-

Leanne, Jim, and Deb:

At Gotham Comedy Club with:

Bob Montgomery, Jason Dudey, and David Pavloski

CATCHING UP - OUTLAUGH 09/LAKE TAHOE

2009-05-03T11:34:00.000-07:00

Been so busy lately that it's taken awhile to catch up.

Outlaugh 2009 was held in 3 cities simultaneously. One of those cities was Lake Tahoe.

Here are some photos:

Joel and I on the the lake cruise boat March 6.

Roy Cruz, Sandra Valls, Scott Silverman and me before

the second evening's show.

Signing books.

Snow on the Lake.

There are more photos I'll add later from Tahoe and the

other two Outlaugh 09 Cities.

For Those Who Take Offense at Gays Comparing Themselves To Blacks - A Book Recommendation

2009-02-21T21:29:00.000-08:00

Read a book you probably haven't heard of with the un-sexy title, "The Marrow of Tradition," by Charles W. Chesnutt - written in 1902.

It's actually a very entertaining page-turner set in turn-of-the-century North Carolina about the events leading up to a historic race riot that occurred in 1898. It's character-driven, highly involving, and several times the parallels to what gays are facing today are impossible to ignore.

The attitude of the reconstructionist white townspeople toward the newly freed black population is truly the same as that of the hetero majority in 2009 toward gays today as we fight for our equality.

Chesnutt, himself, was only 1/16th black and could pass as white, but he chose to identify with his black ancestor and the plight of the black community as it began to fight for the dignity the majority takes for granted.

One of the arguments against gays today is that we can "pass" if we choose to, and therefore have all the rights as anyone else. That we have never suffered like the black race. That comparing our current fight for justice is an insult to the black civil rights cause. It is repugnant because we are so abhorrent and morally bereft.

Read the book and see those arguments reflected in the voices of the appalling, yet real, white reconstructionist southerners against their black neighbors.

Blacks, at the time, could be murdered for no reason at all, and with no consequences to the white murderers. Today, and throughout history, the same has been true for gays in much of the world.

Beyond the great parallels to our time, the book is just a thrilling read with one of the best final chapters I have read (next to Moby Dick). Maybe a bit melodramatic, but operatic and believable.

Chesnutt gave up fiction writing because he felt he had not achieved the recognition he deserved. Yet, here I am a century later finding his book a revelation.

Go figure! In this day of "how many hits" and "how many views" and what's hot and what's not every day changing, his experience and my reading his work merits some note.

Maybe my blog goes unnoticed and I don't spend every waking moment trying to promote it, but that doesn't diminish the fact I sit down to write something in it.

Chesnutt sought recognition, according to the introduction. He did everything he could to promote his work. His sales were ultimately weak, and after 3 books, he gave up fiction.

That was a mistake and a good lesson. Who knows where good writing can end up and what "eyes not yet born" may read it.

:-)

Change and Chickens

2008-11-05T08:33:00.000-08:00

Headlines today (Nov. 5, 2008) read: "Obama! Change has come to America!"

Yet, I'll always remember today as the day California voted NOT to recognize my already legal marriage and voted to add discrimination to its constitution.

The day that California voted to give farm chickens (prop. 2) extended rights to move freely outside of cages, but voted to take away the California Constitutional right of Gay and Lesbian Americans (prop. 8) to legally marry.

Friends and family tell me Joel and I will always be married in their eyes. I thank them for their attempt at consolation, and I am grateful for the growing percentage of Americans who see what Gay rights are about and who support our fight for equality.

But, today I am ashamed of my home state, and of my country.

Dear Mr. Obama: I hope your message of inspiration is truly inclusive of queer people. I want to share in the optimism, but at the moment, I am disgusted and do not.

This Bizarre Time

2008-10-25T10:44:00.000-07:00

I try to stay calm and focused during all of this "election/economy meltdown/hate the gays in California/too much media/normal life worries" hoopla.

Our wedding on October 3, 2008 was indeed a great day for both of us. From beginning to end. We had a small private ceremony performed by our dear friend George Barrett. My mom was able to attend despite her frail health.

Later, Joel and I spent the evening in downtown Los Angeles, at the symphony at the Disney Concert Hall, and after a great Japanese dinner.

We got our wedding certificate in the mail yesterday.

THANK YOU to all of the friends and colleagues who have sent us their congratulations and good words. We were quite surprised by the large amount of support we received from those who are close to us, and from those we work with. Quite a few people have donated money and time to the No On Prop 8 campaign in solidarity with Joel and I. There is reason for hope.

In 10 days, California will vote to decide if we get to stay married. We've raised money for the campaign. We've sent out the word to everyone we know to vote against the appalling Proposition 8.

The majority of financial support in favor of Prop. 8 (against us) comes from The Mormon Church and The Catholic Church. Funny how they don't fund referendums to criminalize divorce - a real threat to "family" and children, or to bring back slavery or for husbands to "own" women as property (other "literal" words of God from Leviticus).

There was a great letter to the editor in the L.A. Times recently from a man who suggested there should be a referendum on a future California ballot for Californians to vote whether Christians should be allowed to marry.

You can't say there isn't any passion these days. Go to www.noonprop8.org, and donate time or money or both as soon as you can!

Dark Ages Continue

2008-10-02T19:59:00.000-07:00

I tuned in to the Palin-Biden "debate." When they reached the part about gay marriage and repeated over and over how they didn't support it whatsoever, nor did their running mates, over and over repeated it, and then the moderator commented, "At least that's something you both agree on," and the two VP candidates both smugly nodded and grinned at each other...

I switched off the set. I'm not interested in watching any more of their debate.

I'm getting married tomorrow morning, and I've been enjoying the preparation the last couple of days. It's pathetic to listen to that shit. You think the Democrats are evolving, and it's still "back of the bus" "second class" "cotton field" bullshit. I would love it if the candidates and their spouses were told that their marriages weren't worthy of the word. That's what they deserve and then maybe they might get it.

They can take their "market research" and "actual religious viewpoint" bigotry and shove it up their heterosexual asses. Fuck 'em. I'm glad the next generation gets it.

Tomorrow is a very cool day for me. And it's just as meaningful and important for me as anyone else on this sorry world. Probably more so.

I'm Getting Married

2008-09-04T21:50:00.000-07:00

On October 3, after 23 years together, I am marrying Joel Freedman. It is the first marriage for each of us. I am 49 and Joel is 55.

On November 4, it is possible that California Proposition 8 might nullify our marriage.

Sick, huh? Especially when you read the elegant ruling May 15, 08 on the matter by the California Supreme Court.

I mean, it’s weird for both Joel and I to be getting married in the first place. We were raised and conditioned like most gay kids and gay adults to accept that marriage did not apply to us. We weren’t real men. There was something wrong with us that people were trying their best to tolerate, and others were not and decided to label us simply “sick” and “aberrations.”

The previous generation is dying out and with them, their ignorant views of gays and lesbians. However, their influence and conditioning on the current generation, and on Joel and I as well, still lingers in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Ie. the “civil union” bullshit being peddled by so-called straight progressives and political candidates which is really just another form of “back of the bus” lip service.

On the one hand, marriage for Joel and I feels right. We are grown men and we love each other and have lived together and cared for each other for 23 years. We are no less men than our straight friends. We are just as strong, just as brave, and just as smart (okay, a significant amount more so, who am I kidding :-) )We deserve everything other American adults deserve.

On the other hand, marriage has that “heterosexual feel” to it. Contrary to what conservatives claim about marriage being solely for procreation, marriage originally was created for a man’s “ownership” of a woman and her property.

Yes, raising children was part of the marriage ideal, but not required for straights and they were not deprived of their marriage rights if they didn’t produce children.

The romantic notion of marriage is a relatively recent development from the nineteenth century.

I wish gays and lesbians could create our own “bonding ceremony” that was recognized as equal by state and federal U.S. law. An original ritual that would somehow mean more than just acquiring what the straights have, and many times buying into the traditions the straights follow. An original tradition that the straights would try to usurp from us like they do our music and our fashions.

Maybe in time, we will develop something like that.

However, I understand that we need our equal rights first. Marriage is a contract. It is also a cultural stamp of approval of a relationship. And we are fighting for the equality of our relationship and of ourselves as men.

Joel and I deserve that stamp. Our relationship is just as dynamic and dignified as Barack and Michelle’s or any one else’s. If anything, ours is more resilient and our marriage would help America take a much needed step (one of many much needed these days) to evolve.

I’m proud to marry Joel in October!

Gay Boy

2008-06-17T15:37:00.000-07:00

Walking from a photo processing store in a strip mall, just now, at 3 in the afternoon on a gorgeous sunny June day, I passed two skateboarders. They were kids about 13 or so, I guess. One of them skateboarded right up to me and I waited for him to go around me. As I passed them, I heard the taller one say something like "...the gay boy?..." and then the taller boy said to me, "Hey sir, he just called you a gay boy."

Grin. What? I am 48 years old. I wasn't wearing bright colors or strong cologne. I don't swish when I walk. I don't color my hair. I looked like an old surfer dude, frankly, with dark glasses.

Looking in the mirror when I got home, the only thing I could see that might have been an unintentional signal to the adolescent was a thin silver chain around my neck with a key hanging from it which could look from a distance like one of the symbols for "male" that you see intertwined with a second symbol to mean "gay men."

I don't wear the key because of that resemblance, in fact, I had never noticed it before.

You see, I no longer really think of myself as gay. I'm just a guy, a man. But there it was, and for a nagging moment I wondered about all the people I encounter in a day, the guy at the photo shop, my neighbor at the back gate of our apartment building. For a questionable bit of time it occurred to me that they might not always see me as just a guy and a man like them.

WTF?

So, I distract myself from thinking about it. But the insightful reminder is there. Always.

I chose not to respond to the kids. The remark wasn't very bold. I thought a few yards down the sidewalk, I could turn around and say, "Hey, thanks for the compliment!" but that would just make me part of their contorted little world.

I did turn around after a few paces because I found myself amused and surprised. They were nowhere to be seen.

The remark carried an unexpected sting. "Gay Boy" was a venomous hate mantra that I heard constantly as a kid and which beat my self-esteem down to nothing.

Of course, 35 years later, I am pretty secure with myself etc etc, so I am surprised at my vulnerability.

First of all, there's nothing wrong with "looking gay." Since I have gray in my hair and most straight guys my age (let's be honest) look like they're pregnant from beer and cheese, and I stay trim from swimming, maybe just the strangeness of seeing a slim older man makes me "look gay."

I don't know.

There's something more. Today is the first day of legalized gay marriages here in Los Angeles. There really is a feeling of justice, if even on a superficial level. There is a sense, at least to me, that gay people might really achieve equality and be fully equal with the heteros in the eyes of society.

I grin again. Maybe one day. "Gay Boy" is still a number one taunt by the adolescent set. I suppose it hit an ancient self-esteem destruction trigger in me that I had learned to avoid and ignore all these years.

And, naturally, as we all know, the kid who spoke out to me today probably couldn't deal with his own feeling of homosexual attraction, or else, why bother with me at all? And that's pretty sad, isn't it? A self-hating gay adolescent. Let's not forget how many gay kids there are like that still out there.

I mean, would these kids say to a woman, "Ma'am, he just called you a slut?" That probably still happens, too. Or the racial epithets to someone of color.

Really, kids might have said the same thing to Thomas Jefferson when he passed by.

Big Deal.

But for a little more than a few moments this afternoon, time folded in on itself and nothing was different.

What's In A Name?

2007-11-16T23:33:00.000-08:00

I was born "Mike Gay."

Where did this name came from? Where the hell?? It wasn't my real name, I learned when I was 30.

My great grandfather Gayzinski on my father's side brought his family from Lithuanian Russia at the turn of the century to escape serving in the army and shortened his name, Gayzinski, to Gay so as not to be identified by the Russian police.

My father's mother's family were the Barons, Pennsylvania coal miners from Czech Bohemia. One of the Baron girls had been murdered but she was a cousin somewhere and I never found out who she was.

On my mother's side, my mother's mother (E. May Dixson) came from Canada. She ran away from home at 14 due to some unspeakable family tragedy that she would never divulge. Andrew Dixson was from England and his wife Annie came from Ireland. If that was the correct spelling then I can trace back another generation but it fades into mist at that point.

And then, there are the Birdseyes.

My mother's father's side of the family is meticulously documented back to the 1100s. The oddly famous Birdseye family. Clarence Birdseye (the patentor of the frozen food process) was my mother's uncle and he became world-famous.

For years at holidays meals, his daughter Eleanor and her husband Lemar joined my mother and I for turkey or what-have-you.

Turns out, the inventor's father, my great-grandfather Clarence Birdseye Sr., was a convicted felon, a lawyer who was convicted for conspiracy and fraud, and spent 2 years (1920-1922) at Western State Penitentiary in Pennsylvania. He was there in '21 during the worst prison riot and prison fire in U.S. history up till that time. I have his mug shot!

His father was Lucien Birdseye, who in the 19th century, ran a law firm on Wall Street in Manhattan, and served as a judge and was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, although wasn't accepted.

His father (my great great great grandfather) was Victory Birdseye. He served two terms in Congress and met the presidents Madison and Monroe.

On and on, back further and further. Most of the men Yale graduates. Many deacons, lawyers, and published writers. One of the women, Ellen Birdseye Wheaton, was an abolitionist and her home was a stop on the underground railroad. Her diary from the 1850s is an amazing account of daily life in Syracuse New York. She died at 42.

Both of her grandfathers were captains in the Revolutionary War. Beach Tomlinson and James Beebee. Beebee knew George Washington at Valley Forge, and carried a bullet in his shoulder from the war for the rest of his life.

Amazing. Even further back, my (11 greats) grandfather was William Bradford, the Governor of Plymouth Colony, and another was Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island. Yet another was Jesse DeForest, a Frenchman who died trying to found a religious colony in the Amazon.

Who might have been gay? We have more than a thousand people traced, so it stands to reason 100 were probably gay. There is a woman named Hepsibah, "Hepsi" for short, who never married. Who knows? Everybody had 10-12 kids so there are thousands of descendants today.

Which brings me back to What's in a Name?

Of all the ancestors, I am the one that lives in a time where I can be openly gay and demand recognition as a human being equal to straights.

That's cool. But did they really have to name me "Gay" on top of it all?

Mike Player