Domestically Disturbed

“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.”
-from The Importance of Being Earnest

I know it’s a little highbrow for me to open with an Oscar Wilde quote, but that line has been running through my head all afternoon. I’m standing in the kitchen preparing a casserole for tonight’s dinner, in honor of Preppy’s parents visiting from Mississippi. It’s their first viewing of the house, which of course required a week’s worth of scrubbing, rearranging, dusting…and now cooking.
As I stand at the stove in my apron, stirring the sauce for baked mac and cheese, the image of my mother tending to company settles in my mind. My sister and I always go batty trying to convince Mama to just SIT DOWN when we visit, but she just acts like she can’t hear us and keeps right on cooking. Now I’m doing the same thing. I wonder what Wilde would say.
I’m down to my last few days before I leave town and begin rehearsals for the play I’ll be touring around the country, officially marking the death of Topher the Househusband. The last few months of domesticity have been really informative for me- I’ve discovered I have no actual capacity for it. Don’t get me wrong- I can wash, I can fold, I’m a perfectly competent cook. Cleaning requires no talent beyond the basic willingness to do it.

You can train a slow-witted child to scrub bathroom grout, it’s not what one would even call a skill.
Here’s the damn issue: I’ll throw all this energy into going to the grocery, preparing a lovely meal, doing the dishes, and I get the proper brownie points for my labors. But the next day, you have to eat AGAIN. Sometimes TWICE. So you gotta cook more food. And then there are more dishes. I don’t know why nobody ever explained that vicious cycle to me, but it’s a real drag. Same with laundry. I’m convinced my fiancé is somehow wearing four complete outfits a day without me noticing, because there’s no rational explanation for the turnaround on our wash rotation.
Since Preppy gets up and goes to work daily, he naturally assumes that I’ll be performing my domestic tasks every day. But there’s a key difference- Preppy has a boss. If he doesn’t do his job, someone will fire him pretty quickly. If I leave laundry piled up while I write plays and watch baby animals on YouTube, I don’t have a supervisor lurking around my office busting my balls about it. Well, except for Preppy, when he comes home. So then it’s like my future husband is my boss, and that shit never works out because everybody secretly can’t stand their boss. It’s what makes the world go ‘round.
And worse, for reasons I can’t explain, Preppy can clean the entire house and fold three loads of laundry (including fitted sheets) in the time it takes me to scrub the toilet. I have no idea how he does it. But then he stands there in the sparkly kitchen and asks sincerely why the hell these things take me so long. And I want to answer that I would clean faster if I didn’t keep getting distracted by the voices in my head, but I have yet to figure out how to say that without sounding crazy.
Is this a gender thing?

When Wilde said no man becomes like his mother, did he mean no man succeeds in becoming his mother, despite his best efforts? Is the ability to multi-task household and career management something only women can do? Or, more likely, am I just prone to sloth and easily distracted? Oh well. I suppose some things are meant to be a mystery.
On the plus side, I’ve grown very skilled with gravy and sauces lately, which is a skill I can use in the future. That’s what Autumn 2008 was for me. My book came out, I did a lot of laundry, and I learned how to make gravy.
Two days later, I head to The Springer Opera House in Columbus. I’ll be living on the top floor for the duration of rehearsals, which thrills me to no end. Living in a hundred year-old opera house! I wanna take to wearing a half-face mask while I play the pipe organ and roaming through the catacombs late at night. Surely they have catacombs.

If I grow weary of that, I can head up to the street to the local gay bar, apparently called Club Questions. Don’t you love the names of gay bars in smaller cities? No offense to Blake’s, Mary’s, or Oscar’s, but gimme a gay bar name with some story behind it, like Boneshakers, Rumors, or Please Don’t Tell My Wife I’m Here.
Upon my arrival, the stage manager gives me a tour of the Opera House. It feels good to be back at work in a theatre, doing what I do best, or at least do better than laundry. We round a corner and face a wall of fame featuring all the legendary performers who trod the historic stage- everyone from Ma Rainey to Burt Reynolds. And, on his first American tour, Oscar Wilde. I stop and stare at his photo. The smug dandy stares back at me, smirking. It’s like he somehow knows about the day I accidentally set a loaf of French bread on fire.
Alright, Oscar. This man couldn’t become his mother, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. I’ll hang up my apron and get back to work now.

Some People

I’m visiting my sister Shannon in Mississippi for a few days, getting some quality sibling time in before I hit the road with my touring play next week. It’s always fun to throw my brother-in-law and me in the same room right before an election. Shannon has warned that if the conversation turns to Obama/McCain at any point, she will throw herself on a steak knife. This is a particular challenge since Sarah Palin announced this morning that, you betcha, she wants to write some discrimination into the U.S. Constitution, gosh darn it.

I am, thus far, holding my tongue on how much I’d like to see that folksy hokum harridan tarred and feathered.
My sister and I tend to bond over finding something on television and providing running commentary. A few Christmases back we stayed up ‘til sunrise watching “Love Can Build a Bridge: The Naomi Judd Story” on Lifetime Movie Network. The goddamn thing was a 4-hour miniseries. We couldn’t tear ourselves away, chiefly due to the fact that Wynonna appeared to be portrayed by a preoperative male-to-female transsexual who didn’t quite pass. I’m not saying there’s a thing in the world wrong with that, I’m just letting you know it sure as shit made for good TV.
Tonight the Learning Channel is doing a marathon of programs about people with peculiar medical maladies, much to our delight. We’ve already seen a man whose arms look like trees, and a middle-aged woman whose abdominal pains turned out to be the fetus of her unborn twin. These people are all mild-mannered, sympathetic folk who just want to return to a sense of normality. The viewer is expected to feel awful for them, and root for a happy ending.
And then there’s the story of Jose.

Jose’s facial birthmark somehow went haywire and now his head looks like the underside of an octopus. He is cared for daily by his beleaguered sister, who keeps encouraging him to give up his favorite hobby: Going to the town square every day and singing to himself until he draws a crowd, then standing up screaming at people, waving his arms. You see, unlike most of the subjects of these documentaries, Jose is an asshole. By all indications he was an asshole long before he looked like Dr. Zoidberg from “Futurama,” but now that he does it’s just brought out all of his worst qualities. Jose is never satisfied with anything- the quality of his cheese sandwiches, the comfort of a train ride, the speed of a guided tour of London, the options his doctors propose for removing his nine-pound facial growth. He bitches about EVERYTHING. This endears Jose to us all the more, because it serves as verification that no matter what horrors you may endure in life, you’re still you.
Back when I had cancer, I would see the same group of patients when I went in for treatment, and eventually got to know a few of them. Veronica was a mother of two who was really pissed about how chemotherapy cut into her busy schedule, and we connected on how inconvenienced we were by disease. The only bright spot we could find was that our treatment schedule let us watch “Starting Over”, which was like “The Real World” if all the roommates had been malcontented housewives. Toni Braxton’s sister was on the show at the time, and that girl was BITTER.
Anyhoo, our nemesis at the treatment center was this old man who had lost all is hair like most of us, but the top of his head looked like a carton of eggs. Nobody could figure out what caused it. If Egg Man made it to the waiting room before Veronica or me, he’d tune into a rerun of “Matlock” and position himself two feet from the TV. And if we tried to change the channel, he’d yell, “Hey, I was watching that!”
One morning I arrived, and Veronica was seated on the sofa, watching “Starting Over” with an expression of triumph. I asked where Egg Man was, she turned to me beaming.
“He died! The son of a bitch DIED!”
“Oh my God, Veronica!”
“Oh, don’t act upset. It’s survival of the fittest around here. Now sit down, Bitter Braxton’s writing a song about how much she hates her family!”
You don’t really see those depictions of life-threatening illness that often. When Meryl Streep played a cancer patient, or Neil Patrick Harris was dying in “Next Best Thing”, they were presented as noble figures whose disease gave them powerful insight from which the protagonists could benefit in some way. I’m sure those people exist, but damn it, not everybody is gonna go that route.

The truth for some people is, if you were a dick on a good day, you’ll really be one on your worst day.
Shannon and I are supporting Jose all the more because of that fact. It’s easy to get on board for the life of the blind paraplegic who saves abused greyhounds, or the nun who needs a kidney, but to look at an absolutely horrible person and hope they live to be nasty another day requires sincere compassion.
Which brings me back to keeping mum on Sarah Barracuda. We are days away from hopefully sending the whole Palin clan right back to Alaska. My vote has already been cast. So I will simply stare at the image of her on my television screen in much the same way I’m watching Jose wave his arms and scream in the town square: With a mix of horror and sadness, recognizing that some folks will be appalling no matter what, and hoping that someone out there can fix whatever the hell’s wrong with them.

Do-Over

It’s my buddy George’s birthday, and we’re delivering his artwork to a gallery show. I haven’t seen him as much lately, because we don’t live near each other anymore, and we’ve both been busy as hookers at a Shriner’s convention. Playing delivery boy will be the extent of my present to him, demonstrating that the most valuable gift you can give is your time. That’s convenient, because it’s all I can afford. I’m also making him pay for gas.
“Wow,” says George. “What a birthday. Can I buy myself lunch, too?”
“That’s a splendid idea! I want barbecue. I mean, if you do. It’s your birthday, so we’ll do want you want… You want barbecue, right?”
“That’ll be fine, darling,” he says.
I navigate through yet another maze of traffic cones and road band-aids, grunting in frustration.
“Didn’t they just re-pave this like three months ago? Why’re they doing it again?”
“It’s the utility companies. They don’t talk to each other when they have to do repair work, so you gotta rip it up once for gas, once for power, once for pot holes… I may have the details wrong but it’s basically lack of communication.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“Funny story. You remember the one time I rode on a motorcycle with a trick?”
“When you got back to his place and it turned out he had a slave? Didn’t he chain you up?”
“It was straps, not chains. Anyway, he was in road construction, and he explained it all.”
“When? While he and his slave were taking turns whipping you?”
“The slave didn’t GET to whip me, Topher. God, you’re so naïve. And no, this was later, over coffee and eggs, while we were all talking about work.”
“Coffee and chitchat? Not how you picture an S&M fantasy.”
“Oh, it never is. People don’t consider how much fucking energy it takes to discipline someone. Eventually you just want a glass of water and some rest.”
There’s a lot of truth in that. I’m sure that even people who have entire basements dedicated to their myriad fetishes still hang up the latex once in a while to pile on the couch and watch Desperate Housewives. It’s all about pacing yourself, I suppose.
After lunch, we share a piece of cake, and I wish George a happy 28th birthday.
“Twenty-seventh,” he corrects.
“No,” I reply. “You and I are always the same age for two months, and I’m turning twenty-nine in December. You’re twenty-eight. Happy birthday.”
“I am aware of my birth date, Topher. But this year sucked, and I deserve a second shot. So I’m doing twenty-seven again.”
“You can’t do that! I turn thirty next year! You’re not hanging out in the twenties while I face that crap on my own!”
“Darling, I guarantee Mandy will stall out at thirty for a few years. She can keep you company.”
This is so unfair. My older sister has already started telling people she’s younger than me. Just you wait- five years from now I’ll be the only one of my friends over thirty, wondering how the heck it happened. Besides, if you’re going to the trouble of a do-over, twenty-seven seems like a waste of effort. I’d redo twenty-one, which was just a shit heap of a year for me. My boyfriend wasn’t old enough to join me at a bar, so I spent that birthday drinking my first legal beer in our living room. It really set the tone for the whole year, which had me in chemotherapy a few months later. I totally deserve another twenty-one.
My grandfather went into a nursing home on my thirteenth birthday. I was supposed to have a roller-skating party, but my parents weren’t able to do it. Feeling ignored and abandoned, with that level of self-centeredness you only have at thirteen, I made myself a cake and ate the whole thing. I was fat, hopelessly in love with a boy in my class, teased mercilessly every day by Will Albee (who is now in prison, I never tire of mentioning,) and my wish was for my life to magically be completely different than it was.

Thirteen sucked. Damn it, give me that year back.
In two weeks, I’ll hit the road with the touring production of a play. According to my schedule, we’ll be spending my birthday in beautiful Washington, North Carolina. I don’t know anybody around there, and my fiancée and friends will be back in Atlanta. Apparently my options for celebration locales are limited to Bill’s Hot Dogs off Main Street, or a nearby fossil museum, but I'm doing my best to remain optimistic. Every birthday holds the possibility of being the best one yet.
The more I think about it, that’s my strongest argument against a do-over. If you barely survived the last year, your birthday can be a resetting of the clock- a chance to refresh perspective and attack life with renewed vigor.

The hope is always that your best times still lie ahead of you.
Because just like we learned from George’s long-ago S&M trick: sometimes you’ll get whipped, sometimes you’ll get coffee and eggs. Occasionally both. But the only way to find out is to learn your lessons and be open to possibility, and keep looking ahead.

As I See It

Preppy was digging through his closet, pulling out pants he hasn’t worn in about a year. I watched from the bed as he performed a sequence of stripteases, shimmying into a series of slacks. After three months of portion control and refusing all foodstuffs after eight in the evening, he’d slimmed down to his old pants. This made him positively giddy, greeting garments like old friends.
“Hello pinstripe pants!” he said, clutching the trousers to his face like he was in a fabric softener commercial.

Then he was back in the laundry basket, foraging. “Where are my Gap khakis? You know the ones, flat front, made me look like I have an ass?”
“Look in my closet. Top shelf.”
He went to my closet and grabbed the khakis, then paused to consider the stack of pants and pulled a few more.
“Hey!” I said. “You gave those to me!”
“No,” Preppy retorted. “You stole those from me.”
“See, that’s your problem, mister. In my version, you’re loving and generous. In your version, I’m just a petty thief. That proves I’m a nicer person than you.”
“You are a thief and a liar, and I’m taking back my damn pants.”
It’s moments like that when I fully comprehend the difference between my fiancée’s worldview and my own. He has an obnoxious tendency to remember events exactly as they happened. I am not encumbered by this trait. I will rewrite history without pause, casting myself in the role of the hero or victim as the story requires. My entire family does this, and most of my friends. My best gal Slutty Mandy and I will share an anecdote, and Preppy will politely wait until we’ve finished before quietly correcting a few major details that have been altered for the purpose of good storytelling. We’ll express legitimate surprise, saying, “Wow, is THAT what happened?”
Among my relatives, there’ll be nine or ten different versions of a single event, depending on whom you ask. God forbid a group of us ever witness a crime. They’d declare a mistrial after my Aunt Merry Ellen told the court all about the perpetrator’s earrings, and I recalled with fair certainty that the victim had been reading a copy of my book.
But if I’m a notoriously unreliable witness, Preppy is just as bad, despite his own sincere intentions. Because as long as I’ve known the man, he’s been pretty much blind. I’ve tried dropping hints about how sexy he’d look in glasses, but he doesn’t bite. With Hillary Clinton-level stubborn ferocity, he insists he sees just fine. And then he squints at his computer screen like Mr. Magoo. The color of our master bathroom has been a subject of heated debate between us for almost a year. I, along with everyone who has ever entered our house, say it’s green. Preppy declares it’s gray.

Because he can’t see.
While I was never so deluded to think that I would end up with a man who shares my love of rewriting history, sometimes even as it’s happening, there are still moments that leave me stunned by how different our vision of the world really is. Yesterday we had a little Extreme Makeover of our house, turning the den into my office because I wanted better light and more room. Then Preppy took over my former office, finally giving him a room of his own to do work, or get the hell away from me when the situation warrants. I spent the day setting up my new room, and he did the same. Late last night, we presented the results of our labors.
My old office had been transformed. To fully appreciate this, you have to understand that before Preppy was Preppy, he was Hippie. Hippie followed Phish on tour, selling burritos and handmade stash bags to the unwashed masses. Hippie wore tie-dyed everything and spent his days blissfully spinning around like Stevie Nicks. But that was a long time ago, so I don't judge.

I used to wear vinyl pants in public. We all have history.
What I didn’t realize was, under Preppy’s sweater vest-clad, hardworking exterior, Hippie was in deep hibernation, waiting to stage his return. And Hippie woke up in a big way, with posters on the wall, record player back in business, and a tapestry-covered sofa for lounging. There may have been a lava lamp involved. If there wasn’t, there should’ve been. I stifled my gut reaction, because I could see how delighted he was.
“Well,” I said. “How about this!”
“You hate it,” he said.
“I don’t… hate it. It’s very… young. It’s a happy room. A happy hippie room.”
“God, it’s been killing me having all this stuff in the attic. And now I can just come home, put on my records, and relax. This is awesome! You know when Lori and Coralie come to visit we’re just gonna spend all our time in here.”
This was likely true. Most of Preppy’s closest friends are former hippies themselves, now with careers and mortgages to maintain. But when they come to our house, they can step into the time capsule and remember the best parts of another time. And that’s important to have. As Preppy went over to arrange the Fraggle Rock dolls and Grateful Dead bears on his shelf with a spring in his step, I softened to the notion.

To my own surprise, I started to see things his way.

But I’m still right about the bathroom.

I Approved This Message

I was at my friend Jennifer’s house, babysitting her kids. Jennifer’s son recently entered the world of politics, running for representative of his fifth grade class. In his stump speech before the classroom, he promised to be responsible and represent his fellow students to the best of his ability. His opponent then stood and pledged, if elected, his mother would bring McDonald’s French fries every Friday.

The landslide victory went to French Fry Fridays.
Jennifer’s son was stunned that such a cheap ploy, which his opponent’s mother would never honor anyway, cost him the election. I told him that this experience was actually excellent preparation for the real world.
I took advantage of early voting this week and cast my vote in the Presidential election. I am one of those slightly begrudging Hillary converts who have thrown my support behind Barack Obama because I do believe he’s got solid strategies for fixing the current national insanity. I even considered putting an Obama-Biden bumper sticker on my car, but those look so strange after the election’s over, and I don’t want dated catchphrases junking up my vehicle, whether it’s “Yes we can!” or “Where’s the Beef?”
My father is less concerned with such things, so he didn’t hesitate to slap a McCain/Palin logo on the back of his truck. He’s never shown such specific support of a candidate before. I actually don’t know who he voted for any previous presidential election, because we generally don’t discuss politics. But the McCain sticker, as far as I’m concerned, means he’s willing to defend the principles of their campaign. He’s also saying that these people speak to his values, which I wasn’t expecting. And I was really surprised by how much it hurt.

I feel like my parents are falling for promises of French Fry Fridays, and I don’t understand why.
So I wrote a letter.

Dear Mama and Daddy,
I am writing you because I need your help. I don’t need money (well, I guess I’ll always need money, but right now I’m not asking for it), and I’m not in trouble. What I’m asking for may seem very trivial, but this is one of the most important requests I will ever make, so please just hear me out.
I am asking you not to vote for Senator John McCain.
I do not deny that Senator McCain has dedicated his life to the service of our country, first in our armed forces, then in elected office. I believe his decision with his wife Cindy to adopt a child in need of a stable and loving home speaks well of his character. His continued financial support of his first wife’s medical expenses resulting from a car crash, even after their divorce, was a noble gesture.
Unfortunately, John McCain does not believe I should have the right to make any of those decisions in my own life. He does not believe I should have the right to serve openly in the armed forces. He believes that if a homosexual is willing to fight for their country, they should keep their identity a secret. And if the truth is discovered, they should be sent home. Members of our own family have fought in the current war and said the unit already knows without discussion which members are gay or lesbian. Picture how much more pride those soldiers would have in serving their country if they could keep a picture of their partner back home, as a reminder of who they’re fighting for.
McCain does not believe that I should have the opportunity to provide a safe and loving home for an adopted child. And I wouldn’t be making medical decisions on behalf of my spouse, because he doesn’t support any sort of government recognition of same-sex partnerships, and worked against it in his home state of Arizona. Do you believe that despite finding a healthy, loving relationship with a man you have come to know and care for, I should not deserve to have that legally recognized? Is my relationship less genuine in some way? Do you believe I could not care for a child?
Sarah Palin has stated her belief that homosexuality is a choice. You know me better than anyone. You know the challenges we have faced as a family as a result of living my life honestly. Do you agree with her? Do you believe who and how I love is a choice?
Do you believe that hate-crime legislation is unnecessary, even as men no different from myself are beaten or killed just for being who they are?
When I came out to you, you said your greatest fear was of the hatred and mistreatment I might face that would keep me from living a happy life. Well, that’s what’s happening. I am being relegated to second-class status, and if you put a McCain sticker on your bumper, or cast your ballot for him in November, you are endorsing that.
Please, please do not do that.
I hope in my lifetime to see a day when I can vote for a president based upon their economic strategies, or defense plan, but that’s not the case right now. One candidate believes in the authenticity of my life, and one does not. I do not have the luxury of choice. You are my parents, and I don’t think you have a choice either when it comes to what is right for your child. When I was growing up, I could count on you to defend me when someone tried to bully or belittle me. Will you do that again?
Asking you not to vote for John McCain is not me campaigning for you to support Barack Obama. I am asking you to have the courage to support me.
I love you so much.
Your Son