A Confession of Sorts

To the Woman I Almost Hit with My Car and Then Proceeded to Bawl out in the Montrose Kroger Parking Lot:

Good afternoon, and I am an asshole.

Now, don’t go taking that the wrong way. This is not an apology. I think it is important that I state right up front here and now that what I did was reasonable – maybe even understated! – given the circumstances. You are a royal fool. Assuming you are indeed licensed to operate that monstrosity I witnessed you “driving” (I use the term loosely), you are my best evidence yet that the licensing authorities of this state are incompetent nincompoops.

So I say that I am an asshole but I do not concede that to be a very bad thing.

The line between assholiness
and greatness can be hazy.

If I could change anything about what I did in the parking lot, it would be the part where I yelled out my window at your young female spawn, “Little girl, you are going to wind up an orphan because Mommy cares more about texting than where she is going.” The poor thing looked so heartbroken and four is too too young to learn you’re being raised by the dullest knife in the drawer.

That was an asshole thing for me to do.

(Assholish? Assholian? Assholic?)

I have always been this way. This weekend, when not busy cussing out mothers and daughters in grocery store parking lots, I have been digitalizing my youth. Recording old VHS tapes onto DVD for posterity, that is.

Born This Way?!

If one more person says to me that I cannot help the way I am, we are going to have a problem.

If one more person tells me this, I am going to do something I will probably live to regret. But then I’ll only end up getting arrested and with my luck, I’ll have a defense attorney who tells the jury, “Do not send Katy to prison! After all, she cannot help the way she is! She was… [drumroll, high hat, Ba-Ba-DUM!] BORN THIS WAY!”

Like there was this one time. It was me, and it was Jack, and that guy with the cauliflower ear who wouldn’t drive you to the airport, and Rufus, and Eggplant and the Glob. I’m not sure who else was there, but Cauliflower Ear Guy was definitely doing the driving.

We were in the van. Plenty of room.

I remember this because Cauliflower Ear Guy kept turning around, all the way around in his seat so he could look me in the eyes when he talked and I thought we were going to run a red light. But we did not run a red light, which only goes to prove that either God loves morons or some lights in Houston never turn red.

And I was drunk or I was stoned, or most probably both, so I did not pay attention to how we got onto the subject. But then there I was, in the van, and he was turned around in his seat looking me in the eyes and he said, “But Katy! You owe it to the com-mun-ity! You have a talent for words, so you have to explain to the rest of the world how we are BORN THIS WAY!”

That’s when I asked to be dropped off right there and then, even though we were all the way down Richmond and Greenbriar and I didn’t have my phone. Well, I didn’t so much ask to be dropped off as I shouted, “I don’t need some Hyde Park queer telling me how I was born! Release me from this Sodomy Wagon this very instant, or so help me…blah blah blah.”

 They got the general idea.

There is a cultural meme that has gone pandemic in recent years, and it states that gaity, lesbiality, and trans-whatcha-got-ism is genetic. That Daddy stood too close to a microwave the night of that hot date with Momma and hoakum, stoke’em and bam! Instant beautiful bouncing Cher fan.

Somehow or other, this whole “BORN THIS WAY” thing is supposed to make everybody else cease and desist in their joke-telling and their institutionalized-discrimination-ing. No one will be nervous around me in the showers at the gym if only I can show that this is what them lawyers like to call an “immutable characteristic.” As though the genetic argument ever worked for American blacks or the fatties or… I don’t know… Canadian “Star Trek” fans.

What I always tell people – and what I would have told Cauliflower Ear Guy that day if I had not been too drunk or too stoned or most probably both – is that it’s not just that the “BORN THIS WAY” mantra is never going to work on the Sarah Palins and Trent Lotts and Benedict XVIs of the world. It’s that it’s insulting, to boot!

Here is the thing: It took me better than a decade, multiple therapists, thousands of diary pages, several debilitating habits, a couple suicide attempts and a couple dozen fist fights to decide what worked for me in my human relationships. I have enough mental and physical scars on me because of it to make THREE whole Katy suits.

Now you’re going to waltz on in here and tell me we could have skipped right to the climactic reveal with a Q-Tip, some saliva, and a high-powered microscope?

You are denying me the importance of my life experience. Hell, you’re practically negating the whole concept of free will.

Pull this goddamned van over this instant, Cauliflower Boy; you and me are going at it, mano a dyko.

If – and they always like this phrase – you people do not stop this nonsense and stop it straightaway, then you will leave me no choice but to declare my undying love for my bedpost and demand recognition of my relationship based on my genetic predisposition. “Yes, you see this gene sequence right here – A, T, G, G, C, A? – we see that all the time in bedpost lovers…”

The DNA Mafia
claims credit again.

And sure, I’d have to put up with all sorts of crap, because Leviticus 12:69 clearly and unambiguously states, “Behold, I am the Lord thy God, and I say unto thee that thou shalt love thy bedpost but thou shalt not LOVE thy bedpost (if thou knowest what thy God means), for it is an abomination and would force thy God to smite thee heartily.”

I’m paraphrasing, I think…

The bedpost lovin’ thing would be great, though, because we’d get to have our own nightclubs and an annual parade, and the Reverend Fred Phelps wouldn’t know what hit him. Yeah…

Anyway, I had some sort of point in saying all of this, initially. I forget now…

Oh yeah: You can call me broken. Just don’t call me “BORN THIS WAY!!” And if one more person says to me that I cannot help the way I am, we are going to have a problem…

Old Lady Fight!

As you are no doubt aware by now, news of the death of 115-year old Eunice Sanborn last week has understandably sent much of the world into one hell of a desperate tailspin.

Things are looking pretty grim. Not because Eunice is dead – most of us didn’t know her, and even those of us who bought pot from her on occasion all found new sources by Wednesday – but rather because the Gerontology Research Group seems to be having some issues when it comes to naming her successor as “Oldest Fucking Person on the Planet.”

With Eunice gone, we’ve got no leader to show us the way into that good night.

Infamous usurper-thief, Besse Berry Cooper

And sure, you can say the establishment is throwing its weight behind Besse Berry Cooper of Georgia who, at a lousy 114 years old, probably can’t even remember William McKinley’s Presidential campaign. But let me tell you something: Besse won for TWO reasons and two reasons only: 1) the swimsuit competition (everybody knows Besse’s never been afraid of showing a little skin), and 2) the judges’ bias against socialism.

Yes, socialism. I know it’s the year 2011, but stay with me here.

For my money, the oldest human being on the planet right now is Juana Bautista de la Candelaria Rodriguez, who celebrated her 126^th birthday the other day with the traditional “snorting-cocaine-off-an-underage-hooker’s-ass” ritual.   Family members tell me it was extra coky this year.

The problem is that Juana lives in… (drum roll please)… Cuba. This naturally raises questions in some quarters regarding Cuba’s infamous “Age Reallocation Program” – begun by Fidel Castro in 1963 – and whether Juana has ever been a beneficiary.

Legally a kindergartner

And there are Cubans who say she has. Take Havana resident Miguel Prado, for instance. Prado claims he was born in 1947 and was justifiably shocked when his recent attempt to buy beer at a local market failed.

“The man behind the counter told me that I was legally six years old and too young to drink beer,” Prado told the Lesbians in My Soup news team. “When I complained, the man told me that Juana needed the years more than me, and we have to beat the evil imperialist, Besse Berry Cooper.”

Prado was then arrested for school truancy.

Obviously, this isn’t the first time that a socialist Age Reallocation Program – based on the idea of “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” – has raised international eyebrows. China caused a scandal just last year when the murderer of Ren Jiemei (born in 1937) was released because – under that nation’s Age Reallocation Program – the victim was deemed to be legally a fetus and her death a first-trimester abortion.  

But now, with no clear-cut successor to Eunice Sanborn yet named, things are getting hairier than the upper lip of a female supercenenarian.

On Friday, for instance, skirmishes broke out in Cairo between supporters of Besse Berry Cooper and those who believe Juana Bautista de la Candelaria Rodriguez has the stronger claim to being older than dirt.

Historian Lazarus Long tells Lesbians in My Soup that he sees parallels to the split between the Sunnis and Shia in the Muslim world, where disagreement over the proper line of succession led to a fracturing of the faith and a conflict that has lasted more than a thousand years.

Juana Bautista de la Candelaria Rodriguez does not agree. “I knew Abu Bakr,” she says, referring to the Sunnis’ 7^th century Caliph of Islam. “Abu Bakr was a friend of mine. And neither Besse Berry Cooper nor myself are an Abu Bakr.”

But this is all small consolation for the rest of us right now, as Besse’s lawyer, James Baker III, says it all may end up coming down to Juana’s extremely low-hanging chads.  

I would now like to formally apologize for that last joke. I promise you that next time, I’ll try a lot harder…

This is Katy Anders for “Lesbians in My Soup” news…

White History Month: A Needs Assessment

Yesterday kicked off another Black History Month, and that can only mean one thing: Today, there are a whole lot of white folks running around asking, “Why can’t we Caucasians have a history month of our very own?”

I think I’ve read about the need for White History Month three or four times on blogs this morning alone! Everyone seems very committed to the idea.

He has been waiting to party
for a long, long time.

Now, obviously, it’s always a beautiful thing to see so many people coming together for a cause greater than themselves. And in the case of White History Month, you know it’s a selfless act, because practically none of its public advocates is even taking credit for all their hard work. No siree-bob! Each year, they write long and thoughtful pieces and post them all over, on news sites, blogs, and bathroom walls anywhere and everywhere they can, but they always remember to credit their words to “Anonymous”…

And buddy, that is what you call selfless commitment!

Personally, I find it inspiring. So this year, I’m going to step up to the plate and rally the troops. I’m going to circle the wagons and mix my metaphors. I am going to put my good name and fair to middling reputation on the line.

Right here and right now, I – Katy Anders – hereby go on record and say to my fellow palefaces, “If white people finally come together, put our noses to the grindstone, and keep our eyes on the prize, this can be the decade when we achieve our greatest dream: to have 30 to 31 days to sit around and study history.”