Pep Talk

If you can still hold your head up high, then hold your head up high. Just. Like. That.

See? It’s going to be okay.

It’s going to be okay.

Everything’s going to be okay, Katy.

If you can take a step forward now, then take a step forward now. Just. Like. That.

These changes that you’re going through, they are hard but they are long overdue. You know this. You’ve known this. You’ve always had to be forced into changing, but it’s always been for the best, hasn’t it? Hasn’t it? 

Now maybe now would be the time to run through relevant clichés. No, not clichés. I mean Truisms. Say these to yourself when the hurt starts: The world will keep on turning… For everything (turn, turn, turn) there is a season (turn, turn, turn)… The only thing we have to fear is fear itself… And maybe, um… I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me.

Queer

This is true.

I was two months shy of 18 when the Supreme Court did its thing in Lawrence v. Texas.

June the twenty-sixth, 2003. Boom! – and just like that, gay was legal. Just like that, we were criminals no more.

And I remember it was a Thursday, and when the story broke, it was a big deal here in Houston. This was because the case had started out right here in town before going all the way up to the United States Supreme Court. I got onto a city bus and I headed down to City Hall, where a whole lot of gay people had gathered out back to celebrate.

We had taken down the Empire. Gay was legal. We were criminals no more.

Evicting Dr. Clitoris

In my lifetime, I have stayed in all kinds of places. I have slept all sorts of ways.

Like in drain pipes & abandoned sheds. Beneath the overhang at the local Denny’s. Like curled up in a downtown alley, where your alarm clock is the morning garbage truck slamming the dumpster you’re sleeping behind. Like a begged-for three hours’ shut-eye on a friend’s loveseat just to get kicked out after two.

I’ve snoozed in homeless shelters where they’ll steal the shoes right off your feet as you sleep, so you’re best off crushing your footwear beneath the bedposts for the night. I’ve slept business hours in the reference section at the Houston Public Library, which comes with free air conditioning, a water fountain, a toilet, & a sink.

There have been the park benches & there have been the city buses – places where you hope to enter REM before they come & chase you off.

You learn to sleep on the go, eventually.

Skusting.

“Skusting.”

Belloq, who was formerly known as “Indiana Jones”  in these pages, says “skusting”  when what she means is “disgusting.”  I find this to be an endearing quality, even though by now she has used the phrase roughly half a dozen times tonight.

In Belloq’s defense, it is completely appropriate given the circumstances of our date. The food in this restaurant we’re in? It’s disgusting!

It is not as though we were not given fair warning, either. We have eaten here on four of our five dates so far, and each time, found the food even worse than the time before. By now, it has sort of become “our place”  by default, which is unfortunate and does not bode well for the relationship. Meanwhile, defying all odds, the food just keeps on getting worse and worse.

Tonight, we are here later than we normally are. What this means is that the dinner hour chef has already gone home for the night and some third rate apprentice is minding the stove top. Much to the surprise of Belloq and me, the apprentice’s cooking is somehow even worse than the chef’s.

This cooking is not merely awful; it’s an endurance test. It’s the kind of bad that cannot possibly be by accident. I am telling you: This kind of bad has gotta be intentional.