Learning How To Use Minimal Literalism

**Saipan Writer asks if I have quit blogging. The last two months have gotten away from me, and I think I had decided to stop paying attention to the blog. But she asked, so I'm going to see if I can take this to the end of this year.**

When I was in fifth grade, my class moved into a huge classroom in the basement of the building. This was the first year that my grade, which had been in two classrooms, was combined into one for homeroom and then split into two for classes. This wasn't such a big deal to me; not only was it only my second year at CSH, I was already so alienated from my classmates that where I was in the class made no difference to me.


My desk was halfway back, next to a support column. I found the wall next to me rather comforting, and sometimes leaned against it instead of the back of my chair. The desks were the kinds with lids, in which you stored your stuff. At that time I had just started keeping a journal, and I would slyly pull it out of my desk and lie it inside the workbook or other notebook in which we were supposed to be working. Or I would just write in it while the teacher lectured.


One day one of my teachers busted me for not paying attention in class. She came to my desk and asked for the journal. I gave it to her, because I had to, and she explained she would give it back to me the next day. Then she sent me to the Principal's office on the second floor.


Because the school was in a former mansion, the first floor was marble, with a wide curving stairway with a wide balustrade. It was almost like those you see in old movies, only bigger. This floor was guarded by a elderly nun whose job was to sit at a desk and yell at girls who ran or shouted in the main hall. I had come up from the basement and had just started up the main stairs to the second floor when I ran into the Principal.


I don't remember where I told her I was going during class time. I sure didn't tell her that I'd been sent to see her because I was writing in my journal instead of paying attention in class. We chatted and then I continued up the stairs and she continued down them.

After I walked to the third floor I went back to my classroom in the basement. The teacher asked if I had seen the principal. I said yes. The teacher sent me back to my desk.


The next day, the teacher returned my journal to me. I wondered if she'd read it and, if so, if she would say anything to me about it. There was a lot of "I hate this school" and "I hate So-n-So and So-n-So is such a b----" in it. She did not say anything to me about the journal, but she said that she'd spoken to the Principal and while it was very clever of me to say "yes" when she'd asked if I had seen the Principal, the teacher and I both knew that wasn't what she meant.


Then she sent me back to the Principal's office, telling me that I had to come back with a note saying she had seen me and talked with me about my behavior.

My First Dyke March

June 2001:


Pride was approaching and I thought I should participate. Shobi-wan and I had participated in the Pride Parade in Portland, and I had marched in the Portland and Seattle Pride Parades in the flag corps of the Rose City Gay Freedom Band (a story to be told later), but San Francisco is a lot bigger, a lot crazier, and a lot more formal than the Portland parade was when Shobi-wan and I went.


The Dyke March is traditionally anti-establishment, eschewing corporate sponsorship and march permit applications, but always follows the same route the evening before the Pride Parade. I thought it would be good to go a women's event, and who knows, maybe I would actually talk to someone. I had just recently started attending the Bi Women's Group and hadn't made real friends there yet, so I had to go alone. Which I told myself would be okay; there would be 50,000 people there and I could blend into some group.


I stood on a small rise in the center of the park, looking over thousands of women of all ages, colors, shapes, in costume or without clothing, on blankets drinking and snacking, making out, sunbathing, dancing, cheering, and greeting others with "Happy Pride!" I watched everything with some trepidation, wishing I knew some people so I could join the eating, drinking, dancing, cheering, and maybe even the making out.


A woman came up on the rise next to me, shading her hand while she was looking for her friends (this is so much easier now that texting is a common feature on cell phones!). She told me she was from Minnesota, and I said I was from here. She asked me, "How many times have you been to the Dyke March?" and I replied, "This is my first time."


"Your first time? What kind of a Dyke are you?" she teased.


"About half of one," I smiled.

I Know, A Lot of People Are Doing This

But are they doing this?




Or this?

And Earth Is Ablaze / And Ocean Aglow

Someone I know in the wedding business told a story about a bride who had finally realized that she was getting too wound up about every uncontrollable detail of the wedding: The weather, a baby crying during the ceremony, what if the limo got a flat tire? As the wedding approached, someone else involved in the wedding plans received an email from this bride asking if the wedding site's event planner could please arrange for a pod of Orcas and dolphins to swim by at the end of the ceremony? It took a minute, but that this request was a joke did dawn on everyone.


Bink and Mr. Bink got married about six months before Zirpu and I did, in a beautiful back yard on an island in Washington State. It was a large wedding party, with seven attendants on each side - my impression was that Mr. Bink was attended by his former crew teammates, while Bink was attended by women who had been or would be part of her life for many years.


Bink had asked me to read something during the ceremony, but I didn't have a copy of the William Jay Smith poem until Zirpu and I arrived. We had taken a ferry to the island and booked a room in an inn "downtown"; during the afternoon before the wedding I sat on the balcony overlooking the Sound and quick-memorized the words. This is a technique I use that only holds the words in my head for a few hours, but it would allow me to look up and out at the gathered folks while reading.


"Now touch the air softly,
Step gently, One, two. . .
I'll love you till roses are robin's-egg blue;
I'll love you till gravel
Is eaten for bread,
And lemons are orange,
And lavender's red."


Though it was late September, the day was as warm as midsummer, a lot warmer than any of us off-islanders had expected. Bink had jokingly said that she hoped a rainbow would appear over the wedding, but it was a clear day with only a few white clouds in the sky. Immediately after the ceremony, the minister asked all of us guests to remain seated as the photographer wanted to get some photos of the wedding party standing on the deck behind us (so they would be facing the water as well). We all watched as the newlyweds and their friends walked up the aisle to the deck and while the photographer got everyone placed.


I heard a mutter and then another, and looked out toward the water. The timing couldn't have been better: Not only was it after the ceremony, but it was at the moment when the newlyweds were facing the water. Not a rainbow, as Bink had joked about, but a pod of Orcas was swimming through the nearby channel.

The Anchor of My Collection

As graduation from college approached, my housemates and I started going through our stuff, throwing things out, packing clothes, rolling up posters, deciding whether this paper or that was worthy of storing in our parents' homes as we started to live our lives away from the cocoon of undergrad. Our House was a mess as we pulled things from cupboards and drawers and threw them into boxes between studying for finals and attending end-of-year events.


One of those events was the Senior Art Show. Phil had majored in Art and he had three pieces in the show: A silkscreen of three cattle skulls; a painting of a general store somewhere in Colorado; and a ceramic curving sculpture with a face at the top. I had watched Phil experiment with the curve, seeing how sharp he could make a curve in flat clay without its breaking while being fired. We had spent late nights in the Ceramics Building, talking, while he threw pots and built sculptures and I reveled in the scent of clean mud. As a result, I felt a friendly possession toward this piece, and at the show jokingly asked Phil if I could have it. He said I could have it for $1500, and showed me the sticker on the description tag.


The deadline for moving out of Our House got closer and closer and each of us had to decide what we were going to keep and what we weren't. I saved most of my papers - I'd majored in writing, so the largest output of my undergraduate education was on typewritten and dot-matrixed sheets. Phil, however, had focused on ceramics and had a large number of fragile pieces that he did not wish to ship. He belatedly realized that he should have been taking pieces home with him at the end of each academic year. His cousin agreed to allow him to pack her station wagon with his art and take it back with her to Colorado. Phil shipped all of his clothes and some of the drawings and paintings, and planned the packing of his car with geometric precision. After several tries, Phil couldn't figure out how to fit the large and oddly-shaped black and silver sculpture into the car.


I wasn't moving back to San Francisco, so I offered to hold this piece for him. He didn't know if he would be staying in Colorado or moving to Seattle after his post-graduation European trip, but we both knew that if he decided on the former we could still get this piece to Colorado when we weren't so pressed for time. I took the sculpture to the place I would be staying until Shobi-wan and I got an apartment, and Phil continued to pack his car.


I have since carefully wrapped this sculpture in a quilt and moved it nine times, across a couple of state lines. About a year after Phil died and while his brother was in graduate school in New York, I realized that I had indeed taken possession of the sculpture without paying Phil a cent. A few years after that I sent a photo of the sculpture to Marko with a letter saying that I consider this piece a long-term loan from him, and as soon as he wants it, it will go back to him. Marko called me when he got the letter, exclaiming that he had wondered what had happened to this piece.


I have it, and every time I look at it, I think of those nights watching Phil build it, the smell of clean mud, and the $1500 I never paid him for the anchor of my art collection.

Why Spock Is My Hero

No and I watched Star Trek just about every night, looking for the rarely-shown episodes and our favorite episodes. My favorite character was Spock: He was the smartest person on the ship, observed everything and carefully drew correct conclusions, and loyal to friends (and to the Federation). Most interesting to me, he didn't have feelings. As I got older I saw that Spock did have feelings, but successfully repressed them except when drunk or in the midst of hormone-related upset, or, much later, in a movie.


When I was a kid I wanted to be like Spock. I also was (and am still) an observer, weighing risks and benefits before making decisions. I imagined myself to be a pretty smart person. I think I'm pretty loyal - maybe not as loyal as No, but loyal. However, the thing I envied most in Spock was his ability to control his feelings: He was never sad, rarely angry, and never had hurt feelings. He was always secure in the decisions he made. He knew he was right.


I especially felt this when I was in grammar school. Many of the kids were cruel, so I thought that if I could be the smartest one in the class, I would know I was better than they were, regardless of what the mean kids thought of me. If they knew what a good friend I could be, the kids who were neither my bullies nor my friends would be my friends and I wouldn't be alone in the class. If I could control my feelings, nothing anyone said or did to me would upset me, make me cry, or write "F---HEADS!!!" repeatedly in my binder in big, blocky, letters.


When I was in twelfth grade I had to take a speech class. One of the assignments was that each of us had to make a speech about someone who was our hero. I wrote and spoke about Spock: I admired his knowledge and logic, his ability to know what to do in every moment, and how he never allowed personal feelings to get in the way of making a decision or executing a decision. Spock was a good friend to Kirk, despite the difference in their characters, and to McCoy, despite the impression of disdain that McCoy constantly had for Spock, and I liked that about him too. I described how I'd taught myself to lift one eyebrow in that classic puzzled Spock look.


After I'd given my speech, Mr. S. told the class that we were supposed to talk about real people, because fictional people can't be heroes.

A Trip To Laugh About

My right arm was injured (not broken) three weeks ago which has impacted my ability to write and type. I apologize for the extra-long delay, kind reader.


In the spring of 1991, one of Shobi-wan's former housemates was getting married in a lodge somewhere outside Portland, and we were invited. It was spring break (Shobi-wan was a student) so we decided that we would attend the wedding and go camping for a couple nights afterward, first in Tillamook and then in Cannon Beach. As you might imagine, our packing was rather schizophrenic - nice clothes for the wedding, tent and sleeping bags for the camping. Everything was piled up in the kitchen, and we made many trips up and down the stairs to pack The Tub, my first Honda Civic (a station wagon, still my favorite car).


Just before crossing the bridge from Vancouver, WA, to Portland, OR, I asked Shobi-wan to grab me a handful of Hershey's Kisses for sustenance for the rest of the trip to the wedding site. She twisted around in her seat and reached back for the blue cooler (which I still have), but not feeling it with her hand, she turned fully around and said, "Did you put the cooler in the back?" I said, "It should be up against the seats," meaning right behind the front seats. She said, "It's not here."


In that moment, I realized I also hadn't put the shoes I was going to wear with my dress at the wedding. I guess I somehow knew that the shoes had been sitting on top of the cooler, which I could visualize still sitting on the floor in the kitchen. We were in the perfect place for this realization, as we were at the end of the bridge, from which there is an exit to the Jantzen Beach Mall, set up as close to the border between sales tax-less Oregon and sales tax-full Washington as possible. So I zipped off the exit, parked the car, and Shobi-wan and I dashed into a Payless Shoes. We had about an hour to get from Jantzen Beach to the wedding site and to change our clothes, and we didn't know where we were going (and I always tried to allow 30 minutes for getting lost, particularly on the fringes of Portland, in those days). I bought the second pair of flats I tried on, for $12.


The first night of our camping trip we spent next to the Tillamook River. We went to the Tillamook Cheese Factory and that night the rain poured down. When we got to Cannon Beach, the feet of our sleeping bags were damp and the tent was soaked through, having been rolled up wet. We also learned that the Tillamook River had flooded that day. We piled all the stuff in the front seats and slept in the back of the car. Shobi-wan is adorably small, and we were able to lie down stretched out lengthwise, only cramped a little side-to-side.


We had great fun on this trip, laughing even when we made tea in a pot that hadn't been cleaned very well from the previous night's canned chili. Unlike some adventures I had when I was young, this one was funny while it was happening as well as being funny years later.