More Out Coming

 Here's some data about an important quality that Will and I shared.  While both of us worked hard on what we enjoyed and what we were specifically assigned, both of us also didn't feel compelled to do "extra" work on assignments we didn't enjoy.  So we stayed married even at a time when most people would have divorced - in part because of lethargy.

This old fact occurred to me this morning as I thought about how often people need to "come out" if they don't fit the profile.  But why?  Why is "coming out" important? 

I realized last week that I don't even know what label to use anymore. One of my Exploring Faith Matters students in talking about the feminist reading they had for last night mentioned the "13 different genders" and then said something about how challenging it must be to wake up and decide every morning.  Hahahaha...but she doesn't know yet that I'm whatever I am.

Do I have to be politically correct when I label myself?

So, here's a little poem I wrote a couple of weeks ago in response to the prompt, "Write about an object that was important to you in the past.

JACKET

 

It doesn’t smell like leather when I pull it from the closet.

Its black has become gray or brown in spots.

 

The five steel zippers with their stainless teeth

have lost none of their bite.  I slide hands down

 

satin lined sleeves and zip them tight. My fingers find

no holes in the pockets. The epaulets and studs still

 

speak a style once built for combat. Years left of wear.

But not for me.  The decades since San Francisco

 

took me as the man I thought I was have widened hips and belly. 

Age and life in Oregon have softened hunter’s eyes.

 

So I bundle my old armor into bubble wrap and box

and post it to a thrift store on that street in that City

 

where I bought it: the city where I left my heart,

where every gesture had a meaning back in the day

when freedom was in the air there,

when I wore my keys dangling on my left hip,

when I wore a black bandana in my rear pocket,

before I’d ever heard of body dysmorphia.

 

And after our visits to the city, when we returned to Idaho 

smelling it reminded me of that purchase at Hard On Leathers.

 

Wearing it in those days (before the Plague made

my natal gender safer than my chosen one) I felt protected.

 

Safe in black leather and black jeans, I stalked the streets,

my head on a swivel, my eyes dead except in the safety

 

of the Castro or Noe Valley:  a short, plump chick

costumed in Tom of Finland gear. So long ago.

 

Remembering the young queer I once was, I put a paperback

of John Rechy’s The Sexual Outlaw into the inside pocket

 

and UPS past proof of my pirate phallus to Polk Street Thrift

making peace with the living and the dead.