i cannot write a poem tonight. more like this morning. i cannot sleep, eat, or smoke. I can only sit and think about the millions of changes I am both in the midst of and running head-first into. aside from my personal struggles, as complicated and tangled as they may be at the moment, i am in awe of my self in this world, in this country, right now.
for starters i am reflecting without mercy the decision of California to ban gay marriage. so much comes to mind, i simply must list with no direction. why california? who is so conservative in california that they are not affected by a single gay person on a daily basis. California? HEY FUCKER THAT'S OURS! and suddenly it isnt. the one place i was raised to believe would always act as a home to us is now closing its doors officially. i see now that perhaps the next decade or so will only lend itself to our comic and provocative use on television. This is sickening. I feel on some level that we are simply in a normal period, however. Call me lazy or spoiled by previous minority struggles, but in the 60s blacks were what gays are now as far as television and movies are concerned. Now we have a black president. Perhaps we are just in our 60s. Thank god we are even in the past century. Most other countries might as well still be in the middle ages.
We should have known from the start that this would not be easier than most struggles because all we wanted was rights to marriage, a seemingly personal establishment. I feel as though my generation of gays (the kids that came out thanks to the tireless work of every single generation of gays before us. thanks to shows like will and grace, queer as folk, singers like Christina and advocates like Rosie) had no idea what was happening, and only now is it clear. the simple fact that these issues are on ballots was astounding. The fact that our president has referred to us as "brothers and sisters" of the nation is something i still cannot bring myself to accept. nothing that good has ever happened. But our work is ahead of us. While the nation battles every other issue we need to fix with great haste and detailed mapping, our struggle will be no different.
I used to compare the bush years to the 60s, with emo kids and punk rockers replacing the hippie, and pot still running the show. Now i see the bush years were the 50s. repression and silence and hatred and stiffled voices. thats what the 50s says to me. The 60s say change. unheard of change. Anti-war, feminist, black power, student rights, supervised leadership change. Perhaps this giant dogpile of change will now echo in our times-in the next four years, but now that we have an entire administration on our side i feel as though it might go more along the lines of what i gather from the 90s. While i know nothing of the 50s and 60s i was a child in the 90s. Completely politically unaware and living in a small missouri town, I could not recall what any of the social happenings felt like, as i was out with trees and anthills. but perhaps this makes me a better candidate for what it felt like in the 90s. i remember the media arts, the faces, the moods, the words exchanged.
Earlier tonight when i could not sleep i watched clips from the tony's from the 90s. I have no idea how i stumbled on such an odd keyword search, but regardless i fell in love. I fell deep into a nostalgic love of what i remember to be a decade where the dumbest show on television was dawson's creek-a show which boasted a group of fairly decent young actors speaking lines of eloquence not yet heard within its genre. I miss that. I miss that a show with 'big words' and smart dialouge was made fun of for its simplicity. i miss just how sweetly everyone tried to be PC. i, of course, realize in hindsight that much of the attempts of the media to promote 'equality is cool!' and 'everyone wins when the world is colorblind!' came off as forced, corny, and did little work to open up actual dialouge...but the attempt at bettering society with basic ideas, no matter how missed, makes me miss the 90s.
But when i think about why the 90s offered what they did, i think about the clinton administration. the funding schools recieved for programs that filled my tiny redneck head with a million images of people of color-basically the only exposure i would have for many years-being close friends with people of other colors, and even with white people. My school taught me not to do drugs, to stay in school, to love everyone, to work hard, and to take care of the world. I was barely taught a minutes worth of patriotism or nationalism, and i left school with a sense of belonging-even as an outsider.
i hope that during the dawn of this new day in america's history we can expect the best case senario: a juxtaposition of both the 60s and the 90s. extreme change, overwhelming desire to fix as much as possible, and an administration that has the all the tools it needs to begin what looks to be a long job. It is now my hope that we can all follow suit and do whatever it takes to keep up with the times.
I am more than excited to live in our nation's capitol at this time. Not only is President Barack H. Obama a neighbor of mine, but everyone in DC is as blue as the sky. Gays, Latinos, and Blacks make up most of the DC faces I know. while my friends and family in missouri will celebrate in thier hard-to-find liberal circles, keeping far from the disgruntled republicans, i will be walking in the streets singing praises of the greatest time I will come to know as a young gay american.
i am truely lucky to be alive.
when I think back to the year precedding my arrival in DC i am astonished. i was living on my parent's couch hating the country, hating the president, hating my life, my situation, my entire world. I had no job, and with every job I got in my parent's town I was fired for revealing my status as a queer. i had no money, no idea what I was going to do, and no hope. I had just quit my job as a stripper only to drop out of college not once, but twice.
I was on my way to the naval recruiting office.
I am not taking a metro into my job in our nation's capitol everyday while i take on my education full force. I live under the ruling of a democratic, left centered government with the very first black president in history. My causes are relevant, my country is waking up, I am a city dweller in a place where people understand me. I am on a path to fulfillment, both spiritually and financially. I am in love. I am not in love because of a lack of options or a hope of what could happen. I am not in love because of a need for a second income. I am not in love for boredom, depression, or unwanted pregnancy. i am in love because i found someone whom I love.
I have that option in life now. I have a million options. I am soaking this shit up, because children will ask me about this time for the rest of my life. i saw Clinton impeached, I saw 9/11, i saw britney shave her head, i saw mellisa lose her hair, I saw Heath Ledger, I marched in protest, and i voted. i saw Barack obama, and I cried like a baby. I saw barack obama and I will see the next four years.
