Fried & True

by Fay Jacobs

  Gingerly, I shared the absurd news of our “good fortune” with my spouse. She was appalled—both by the untimely circumstances and the realization that we’d have to hostess Shelley’s “memorial” the following Sunday, immediately after the real memorial service for Anyda on Saturday. It was so horrible it was hilarious, may I not burn in hell for saying so.

  After we got through a spectacular spell of guilty laughter, I sent out e-mail invitations to Society Members about our upcoming Shelley Winters brunch. Then, I tried to put the whole sordid mess out of my mind. After all there were two truly sad occasions to attend within the next seven days, the first of which was the following morning.

  That’s when things got dicey. I was eating a canapé, following a very touching and incredibly sad service for a member of our community, when a Society pal whispers, “Congratulations on Shelley,” in my ear. “Not here…” I murmured, expecting lightning to strike.

  Then another very close friend of the wonderful person we were memorializing also referred to my win and I had to put my hand over his mouth—but not before persons in the vicinity heard the word “congratulations.”

  “Congratulations for what?” somebody asked as I broke out in a sweat knowing that over MY dead body would the words “Dead Pool” come out of my mouth at this particular time and place.

  Avoiding the question, and sending the evil eye to a quartet of people who seemed poised to spill the beans, I fled, to mill about the room, paying my real respects to the family.

  Although there were at least ten society members at the service, I dared not look at any of them. In fact, every time I saw somebody approaching with a twinkle in their eye, I’d hide behind the potted palms. It was all I could do to keep my decorum until I got out to the car, where, sad to say, I disgusted myself by exploding into howls of laughter.

  Returning home, I went about my business, deciding what to prepare, purchase, or plan for Saturday’s real memorial service and Sunday’s incongruously fake one. Frankly, it wasn’t hard. In both instances we’d celebrate lives well lived, and use ample booze and good food to get us through.

  As for the authentic memorial service, we capped a crushingly sad week, with a true celebration of a literary life very well lived.

  We sent Shelley Winters off gloriously, too. I hung her Washington Post obituary over the fireplace, decorated the house with photos from Shelley’s Oscar nods for Diary of Anne Frank, and A Patch of Blue, played Poseidon on the DVD and enjoyed the time with our friends. One person arrived with a patch of blue material on her sweater and three yokels showed up dressed as if they’d been in the drink from the Poseidon. We all had a good laugh. A lot of good laughs. Especially me, being quite glad that the sad, bad week was history.

  So we all anted up our dues for the next round of the celebrity Dead Pool and I collected my winnings—some of which I’d already spent on the brunch. To assuage some guilt, the rest went to pay bills. But however much I won in the pool, the money was, of course, totally inconsequential compared to the way the friends we lost that week had enriched our lives. And it probably goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that both of our dearly departed would have been tickled by the abject absurdity of this whole irreverent dead pool business.

  Timing is everything. Live, love, laugh.

  March 2006

  LETTERS FROM CAMP REHOBOTH

  FILM AT 11

  Ok, I’m scared.

  Some days it’s hard to get out of bed I’m so terrified. I’d have a fight or flight response but I don’t know who to slap or where to run. It starts when the clock radio goes off in the morning and doesn’t stop until I fall asleep watching CFN: the cable fear network.

  Come on, don’t pretend you haven’t noticed. We are all in terrible, terrible danger from thousands of hideous, well…things. These amorphous THINGS are all on the way, all about to happen, imminent, pending, coming soon to kitchen, powder room, neighborhood, city, or sneeze near you. Be afraid, be very afraid.

  These kinds of warnings used to herald horror movies, but now they announce our daily life. From tsunamis to color coded security alerts, bird flu to bacteria, we’re just sitting ducks. And those ducks are looking for flu shots.

  For a while I took all the warnings, if not seriously, at least like bona fide news. But now it’s clear that, with only a few exceptions, (like the polar cap melting, which NO ONE is taking seriously) these scare tactics are designed only to boost network market share. We’re being scared silly for ratings.

  So I started a tally. The following are real headlines, TV graphics or things somber anchor people warned us about this week alone:

  Killer Bird Flu: Just a breath away!

  Tsunami: It could happen here!

  Radon: A killer in your basement!

  Is Delmarva prepared for a Category 5? (Ya think?)

  Startling new report! Killer infections for people already on antibiotics!

  Honey bees turn killer! (Somebody should check a Thesaurus for a synonym for “killer.”).

  Antibacterial soaps: Are we being scammed?

  Are YOU ready for a chemical attack? (Okay. How the hell do I get ready for a chemical attack? I’d look stupid eating a bagel in a hazmat suit).

  Is nuclear waste driving by your neighborhood? (By itself?)

  Panic at sea! Dozens missing from cruise ships! (Not gay cruises. Nobody jumps those ships for fear people will dish about them.)

  Mobile phones and radiation: Are you talking yourself to death? (No, but Rush Limbaugh might be. Although it has nothing to do with his phone).

  And, of course, daily we get the ubiquitous Health Scare Over (pick one) pesticides, Mad Cow Disease, Ebola Fever, Flesh-Eating Bacteria, Anthrax, and this year’s winner and new champion, Avian Flu.

  Remember SARS? China had a run on doctor’s masks and people walked around with brassiere cups covering their noses and mouths? That was scary. But what the hell happened to that doomsday plague?

  It’s enough to give me a headache but thanks to the recent Headache drug health scare I can’t remember which pills won’t kill me. As far as I’m concerned, the only true health scare is whether we can afford, or even get health insurance anymore. Our elected officials should be fixing that scary mess rather than rearranging the deckchairs on the titanic snafu that is our current congressional agenda.

  Now that I’ve got that off my chest (Mammograms: Is the machine at your hospital safe?), I’m trying to figure out how to relax while everyone’s yelling duck and cover, the sky is falling. All the media covers is stuff that COULD happen, rather than what actually IS happening.

  Washington Post superstars Woodward and Bernstein have a theory about the death of investigative journalism. They say it takes too long. It’s boring. It took months of picking through garbage, badgering secretaries and meeting with furtive moles in parking garages to bring down Nixon. With the current ratings race, nobody has that kind of time. I think they’re on to something.

  Why should talking heads investigate anything at all when they can just shout specious warnings. Identity theft! Computer Viruses! Brokeback Mountain!

  But the granddaddy boondoggle of the warning wars is the daily debunking of food, vitamin, and diet claims.

  This week we were warned that oatmeal, estrogen and calcium, CANNOT protect your arteries, heart and bones after all. This was good for my health because I’d been guilty about not chowing down on Tums, fiber, and hormones. I feel better now.

  But not much. I keep embracing diet advice only to have it change faster than you can say low carb lasagna. One week we’re warned fat is bad, next it’s good; pasta is good, then it’s bad; You say tomato, I say tomahto. Alcohol causes cancer but helps the heart. The heart causes angst that’s bad for the immune system. And nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee.

  For all the dire predictions, when the media had a legitimate reason to warn us they failed. There was no orange alert warning us Dick Cheney had a gun.

  Amid all th
e shrieking admonitions I’m still sure of only two things—semi-sweet chocolate and red wine have been declared good for your health. I’m not listening to another medical warning past that.

  And if I’m forced to be terrified by the media day and night I should do something to calm my blood pressure.

  Pour me a Pinot Noir with a snickers chaser.

  April 2006

  LETTERS FROM CAMP REHOBOTH

  TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES

  Indulge me please, as I need to have a rather serious conversation here. I’ve stewed about this topic since last fall in Provincetown and it’s been increasingly on my mind since I began watching the Logo network. If you don’t now have the incredible luxury of watching Gay-TV 24/7 on Logo, I wish you all access to this cable channel in the near future. It’s a blast.

  Among Logo’s pleasures, guilty and otherwise, is the show TransGeneration. It’s a documentary about several college students who, leaving the physical and emotional confines of home, become ensconced on campus, find others like them, and begin transitioning from their natal gender to the one which they feel they rightly claim.

  I get their struggle. Really understand it. And no, it’s not because I think I was born in the wrong body. Although one with a faster metabolism would have been nice.

  For my part, I was a total tomboy kid, a barely passable excuse for a straight woman through my twenties, and a liberated lesbian as I crept out of the closet wearing my current identity. I like women, I like being a woman, and I like being married to a woman.

  And despite wishing I could have been blessed with smaller pores, I feel right in MY skin. I cannot speak for others.

  Those others include the leading lady in the movie TransAmerica starring Felicity Huffman, who should have won the Oscar for her dead-on portrayal of a pre-op transsexual. There was not one single moment during the movie when I didn’t believe that this warm, funny, needy, determined person was becoming the woman she felt she was born to be.

  I get it. If a person is absolutely sure they were born the wrong gender I applaud the courageous decision to make things right. I am thankful modern medicine can assist them.

  These brave people choose to leave the “otherness” of gay life (although not all transsexuals identify as gay before their journey) for a life as the gender they believe they truly are—although, even with a more comfortable gender, the chance of facing “otherness” is still pretty high—but at least it’s “otherness” that feels more truthful to them.

  Which brings me to thoughts of a night at the Provincetown theatre last fall. Before the curtain went up, I noticed dozens of young people, looking very much like young boys, in ultra-masculine outfits, crew cut hair, with various stages of hairy upper lips and chins. They had been very obviously taking male hormones. I mean no woman can grow a beard like that until she’s at least 60. Seriously, though, who is prescribing hormones to these youngsters?

  Many of these kids held hands with very feminine dates. Several of these youngsters paired off together. It was quite clear that these were teenagers or early twenty-somethings living as, or transitioning to become, the opposite gender.

  So here’s my problem. Neither the gang at the theatre nor the kids on Logo’s TransGeneration were women transitioning to men or men transitioning to women. They were girls journeying toward boyhood and vice versa.

  Have they really lived enough life to know they are making the right decision? Okay, before you start excoriating me for being insensitive and/or clueless, let me say that I know that for many people there is no “decision” about it. There are cases of children as young as three years old clearly demonstrating that they have been born the wrong gender. So, too are there teens and adults for whom the path to transition seems like the right answer from the very first.

  But what if the recently uncloseted discussions, television shows, movies, magazine articles and books about transgenderism shine an overly bright spotlight on this subject? What if the 18-year old effeminate guy can’t imagine a future as a handsome gay man who can comfortably camp it up socially?

  What if the dearth of role models for butch lesbians has left some of them thinking that changing gender is the only answer? Would you want to live with the consequences of some decisions you made as a teen or twenty-year-old? Not I.

  When I was 18, I was determined to follow a high school boyfriend to college in a tiny, wintery, conservative town. What a bad idea that would have been. Thankfully, the school rejected me. When I was 23, I smugly said to my boss, “Give me the duties you hired me for or fire me!” Guess what happened.

  Hell, at age 24 I married an accordion player. What if I had to live with that the rest of my life?

  Take the skinny white kid with the goofy clothes and dreadlocks standing in front of me at Staples yesterday. He probably sees himself that way permanently. In ten years he might be in a three-piece suit hawking mutual funds. Or not. But his choice probably shouldn’t be etched in stone right now.

  I just think that for almost every path we take in life there’s an opportunity to veer off or turn around onto another road. I’m worried about these youngsters who are jumping on the Transgender Express, full speed ahead, toward a pretty irrevocable destination—without stopping at a lot of stations to experience options along the way.

  Am I alone here? Is my worry politically incorrect?

  I know that much counseling is required before hormones are prescribed and a great deal of time is spent evaluating and educating pre-op transsexuals before many of the required surgeries take place.

  But these transgender kids are getting their hormones from somewhere. In many cases, I bet counseling and safeguards don’t come with the drugs. All I’m saying is that I wish our strong young butch girls and our adorable nelly boys wouldn’t shoot themselves up, cut anything off or make any permanent changes until they have explored the richness of life’s choices.

  I don’t go to work these days wearing a Roy Rogers holster and I don’t come home to a man playing “Lady of Spain” on his instrument.

  May 2006

  LETTERS FROM CAMP REHOBOTH

  LANDSCAPING FOR DUMMIES…

  It’s Spring at Food Lion Estates. If I’d known just how much of my disposable income would go for mulch, I’d be writing from my condo instead.

  I didn’t know it was possible to go to Lowe’s three times in a day. I socialize more over shredded hardwood than cocktails. And it’s the same couples there every weekend. We’ve conducted entire friendships in the Garden Supplies check-out line.

  Have you seen the platoon of Subaru Outbacks in the parking lot? It’s becoming the standard vehicle for team lesbian (I love their ads: “Subaru: It’s not a choice, it’s the way we’re built.”). These cars are piled so high with mulch they hardly need the identifying rainbow stickers.

  So we’ve been landscaping. With a zeal formerly reserved for shoe shopping, I careened around the garden section acquiring all manner of variegated, compacted, dwarfed, pygmy holly things. I don’t know much about plants, but all their names sound like medical conditions.

  Of course, Bonnie always has to stop by the tool department. Now I’m not intentionally stoking the fires of stereotyping, but what is it about girls and their power tools? No matter how many battery-operated screwdrivers they have, they want new ones. I don’t think my mate will be truly happy until every electric socket in the house has some kind of re-chargeable, chuckless, 14 volt appliance hanging out of it.

  Meanwhile, back at the south forty, while I was in the house stretching the making of a couple of sandwiches into a full-time job, Bonnie got the new plants in the ground. Then she proceeded to connect a bunch of intentionally leaky soaker hoses (named, no doubt for their cost) around the planting beds. Oops, we were a couple of clasps short.

  So I was re-deployed to Lowes, where I realized I didn’t understand the project. Did I need male-female connectors, male-male connectors, female-female, female-to-male, male-to-female? It was like c
hoosing from the list of local support groups. Finally, I grabbed a pansexual assortment so the gender identity specialist at home could decide.

  Once those super soakers started splurting, we moved on. Lesbians, rev your engines. Step One: level the playing field. In order to install stones leading from the deck to the garage, Bonnie explained that we had to dig the Panama Canal along the house and transfer the resulting rubble twelve feet away.

  I found this somewhat ironic since once, back in Maryland, we did a project requiring adding a yard of dirt to our lawn. Being math-challenged, I pictured a yard of dirt as the height and width of a yard-stick. Fooly, fooly. A dump truck deposited Mt. St. Victoire on the driveway. I still remember frantically being called into service to help spread the soil before a monsoon came and washed $300 worth of dirt down the storm sewers and into Chesapeake Bay.

  So now, in a stunning example of what goes around comes around, Bonnie’s telling me we must dig up a yard of dirt from one place and shovel it over to another.

  “I’ll dig and toss,” she says. “You just tamp.”

  You know, when we used to have a boat, and needed to redistribute weight aboard, I was always sent to the bow as ballast. If you ask me, tamping is the same unskilled labor as ballast, only for landlubbers. I was instructed to march around on the newly dumped dirt, packing it down evenly.

  Dutifully I pounded the fresh dirt pile, knees high, arms swinging, getting into quite a rhythm. Bonnie decided this backyard Bolero looked like fun and soon the two of us were tamping and stomping in circles. The tired, thirsty Saturday morning herds diving past our house to the beach must have thought they were hallucinating. Was that Lucy and Ethel stomping grapes?

  Naturally, before we could set anything in stone over the mud pile, the rains came and continued for an entire week. Add two Schnauzers and God save the carpets.

  Three times a day we’d lure the dogs back in from the mosh pit, grab them up before their paws or snouts touched any carpet or wall and toss them into the tub. One memorable moment at Schnauzerhaven Day Spa came when we lathered and rinsed the filthy pooches, then focused on cleaning the tub. Sadly, since we’d used all our limbs just to get the boys into the house without touching anything, we’d neglected the teeny little task of closing the sliding glass door.