Great Balls of Blue Fire!

Everyone has a fart story. One of these days, I will get off of my procrastinatin' butt and go around asking for people's fart stories so that I can get it published as a compilation (one of my "better" get-rich-quick schemes, I'm sorry to say).

I used to think that lighting your passed gas on fire was just a myth, one of those urban legends or something. Chris G. proved that it was true, in the boys' dressing room of the theme park gig we were working, in Japan.

He offered to demonstrate for us, which in itself was funny to the other male dancers, so we were already laughing. He may have thought our laughter meant that we weren't taking him seriously. He changed into his spandex swimsuit briefs, "because, you know, you can accidentally burn skin and/or hair while setting your flatulence a-flame," as Chris had previously learned, the hard way.

Chris grabbed a book of matches from our bathroom and sat himself down on the floor, trying to balance himself in an awkward sitting position with his legs in the air, and with his hands free to strike a match. Our dressing room had no windows, so with the door shut and the lights turned out, it was pitch black. We waited in the dark, anticipating the assault to both ears and nostrils.

Unexpectedly, blue flames flared up in the pitch black, near the floor. The flames were freakin' blue. We all lost it, completely, tears streaming from our eyes and stomachs cramping up from laughing too hard. So, this is what was meant by "LMAO ROTF" (I had to have that explained to me, this year).

If you ever need an honest-to-goodness gut-wrenching laugh, especially to help cure the blues, get a willing friend to light her or his flatulence ablaze--bathing suit, optional.

Everyone has a fart story. What's your fart story?

Don't Throw Me Away

We are such a disposable society. There are even disposable cell phones, now. But I worry that we treat people as disposable, too, especially those closest to us.

Certainly, most of us know what it's like to feel dispensable at our jobs. We are too easily replaced, and there is always a new crop of younger people waiting in the wings, willing to take over our sometimes crappy jobs for us, for the same crappy pay--or less.

I have felt dispensable as a restaurant server, for far too many years. And in between restaurant jobs, I have felt not completely indispensable as a dancer. When working on cruise ships, it was easy to understand the point of view that we were rather dime-a-dozen, as live entertainment.

Break-ups and divorce seem to be the most difficult situations in which people are disposed of, thrown away. I have never been married, but being dumped from a relationship can sure feel like being tossed out as so much crumpled-up used tissue. That's when feeling disposable, replaceable, can hurt the most.

I think about my father divorcing my mother, and my brother divorcing his wife. Neither of the women had wanted the divorce. Both had wanted to stay in their respective marriages, to keep trying . . . It felt to me as if they had both been thrown away by the men in my family, especially when both my father and brother each married for a second time.

I am just as guilty as the next person, though, when it comes to disposing of former friendships from my life, justifying the feeling that too much negativity was not worth any further effort. I felt it was necessary to throw away the emotional damage.

Is the problem overpopulation? If there were fewer people on the planet, would we value the individuals around us more? It reminds me of how shocked I felt when I first heard that perhaps war was a necessary evil for population control.

I like my life, love it, actually, most of the time, but without gettin' all "It's a Wonderful Life" sappy (which I have never seen, but that's a crime for another post), I doubt that the world would be very different without me living in it. Everything that I've done, so far, could have been taken care of by another person, in my life time. Personal friendships, however, that's a category more difficult to be so cavalier about.

As long as I am occupying space on this planet, though, I feel obligated to make the effort to value the people around me, and to respect them enough to see them as not so disposable. I'm not saying that I always manage to do so, but I try to remind myself of that, now and then.

Besides, "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone."

Family Affair Hair

Is it me, or is Billy Ray Cyrus' new do looking more and more like that of his daughter's television character, Hannah Montana?


Maybe they both get their hair done by the same stylist. I guess anything was better than that Achy-breaky mullet.

Kathy's Hair, Part 2

Kathy had had her hair cut short in high school, partly because of me. Or maybe it was all because of me. It happened during the summer after my junior year in high school. I was seventeen, then, Kathy was sixteen.

I was visiting her house one afternoon, to celebrate the start of summer vacation. At the end of my visit, that day, we had had our first kiss in her garage. I had felt as if she cornered me.
She probably had just gotten tired of waiting for me to make the first move, ever since we had met at the beginning of the school year, nine months earlier. She had claimed, later, that she hadn't wanted the neighbor kids, across the street, to see us kissing.

I don't think I called her after that, I'm not sure.

What I do remember is going to a school's-out party, that weekend, and seeing Michelle there, with an eye-catching new haircut. Yeah, I definitely didn't call Kathy. I started calling Michelle, after that night's party.

Michelle was polite, and she allowed me to pursue her a bit, but it didn't last.

I hadn't seen Kathy all summer, until right before school started again. I was out walking the dog when she drove by. She stopped her car and I saw that she had gotten a very cute, pixie-short haircut. We were able to resume our friendship before the beginning of my senior year.

Six years after that summer, at the age of 23, when I had already survived the throes of coming out, Kathy and I were cuddling on my apartment couch. I was looking at her dark hair, which had been grown long, again, for a while, by then, when a question suddenly occurred to me.

"Hey. Did you cut your hair that summer because I had gone all gaga over Michelle when she cut hers?"

"Man!" Kathy exclaimed. "It took you long enough!"

Straight or gay, it doesn't matter--men are just inevitably dense around women, sometimes, I guess.

Kathy's Hair, Part 1

It's funny what the cutting off of hair can symbolize, especially for women.

BFF and soul mate, Kathy, had felt abandoned when I had gone back out on another cruise ship job, years ago, shortly after when I had just come home from a previous
gig. Her now-husband was attending graduate school, out of state, at that time.

Kathy was romanced briefly by Dude Man, that year, when both her now-husband and I were gone. Dude Man even trimmed her hair, turning her long tresses into a cute, playful bob. It was impressive work for a heterosexual man with no formal cosmetology training. I even met Dude Man, and he did not set my gaydar beeping off the slightest bit.

Shortly after being given a new do by Dude Man, however, Kathy moved out of state to be with her now-husband while he finished graduate school. In the winter, I received photos of her with an even shorter haircut. She had gotten a very boyish style, much like Demi Moore's in the movie "Ghost."

After that winter, when I saw Kathy in person, she explained that she had felt she had to cut her again, as a way of "cutting Dude Man off," and out of her life, in order to leave him behind for good.

Kathy's hair has not ever been that short, again, since that time, more than a dozen years ago.

And . . . I'm Off!

It's been a "literary week," to borrow some phrasing from friend and novelist, Noel Alumit.

This past Sunday:
I helped out at the West Hollywood Book Fair, as a volunteer. I got to listen to Noel speak on two different panels.

I love books. I love being around where they are sold, the way some people love being in shoe stores. I cannot enter a bookstore I happen to be passing by, major chain or independent, and not find something that I just have to have, whether it be frivolous or classic, or something in between.

I bought Mickel Angelo Paris's novel, "The West Hollywood Story," mostly because he's half Asian/half caucasian, like me, and I'm narcissistic enough to fork out some cash for that reason alone.

Last night:
I attended the first class meeting for an Introduction to Fiction Writing workshop, taught by--yes!--Noel Alumit (I tend to stalk those that I admire). I was a-swirl with joy and expectation. The first meeting alone was everything I had hoped it would be. It's going to be a busy and great ten weeks, this course. Mr. Alumit must have given us a good first work out--I was starving after class.

Tomorrow night:
I'll attend a book signing and meet Alex Sanchez, one of my newest favorite authors.
His latest novel is titled, "The God Box," and deals with the identity conflict of homosexuality and a Christian upbringing. This is my book. Thank you, Mr. Sanchez.

BFF Kathy thinks that I'm going to try to seduce Alex Sanchez, when I meet him in person.

You don't know me.

Okay, so, she's the person who knows me best in this world. As long as I end up with an autographed copy of his new book in hand, that will be sufficient . . . for the time being.

A Shocking Discovery

I accidentally peed in an electrical outlet, when I was seven, and bolts of electricity shot out of it (out of the outlet, that is).

Here's how it happened:

Mom was in the hospital with number four, the last of us siblings. As the oldest, it had become routine, by then, for me to spend the night with various babysitters whenever Mom was in the hospital and having a baby. Dad would keep working, during the day, and be with Mom in the evenings.

One night we had to stay at Mrs. Herschel's. I liked visiting the Herschel family. They had lived in Spain and had a boy, Georgie, who was about my brother's age. Georgie had different and interesting toys and books.

They also had a single bathroom that you would get locked into if you shut the door completely, all the way. It only took one time of getting locked in there for me to vow that I would never, ever use their bathroom again.

Of course, in the middle of the night, I needed to use the toilet. Too risky, though, to enter the inevitable trap that was their bathroom. And no way was I peeing with a bathroom door open. Even at seven, privacy was not optional. I decided to innocently pee in a dark corner of the bedroom that I and my younger siblings were sleeping in. I was sure no one would ever notice.

I crawled back into bed, relieved, and relieved that the dilemma had been so easily solved.

I was rudely jolted out of bed by a terrifying noise. It was like the sound of an angry, syncopated car horn, but ominously metallic, and yet kind of bouncey-rubbery at the same time. Bolts of bright orange-yellow electricity were shooting out of the wall and over my two year old sister sleeping on a floor mattress. I panicked at the thought that she might catch on fire.

"Mrs. Herschel! Mrs. Herschel! The house is catching on fire!" I ran, screaming to her bedroom, to wake her up.

Another bolt of electricity shot out in front of her as she tried to enter the bedroom. After a few minutes, the outlet fizzled and sputtered before becoming completely silent.

When I got back to Mrs. Herschel's house after school, that day, she told me that "the men" had come to check the outlet and that they had fixed it. There was a black, smokey burn staining the corner of the wooden cabinet closest to the outlet.

"They said that something wet had gotten there," she informed me.

"Well, how did that happen?" I asked, trying to put the most guilt-free tone in my voice.

I have known, ever since then, to never get anything wet near anything electrical.