On the drive home from work the other day I caught a few minutes of a David Sedaris interview. I didn’t hear the whole thing, but what he said was something I learned in a memoir class many years ago: someone who you meet in real life is a person; someone who you write as text on a page is a character.
The other thing I took away is that if you’re a bitter, angry person when you are young, chances are good you’ll be a bitter, angry person when you’re old; and that the folks who are not bitter and angry are generous toward others.
On another, previous drive I listened to a pop-psychology book advertisement disguised as an author interview. The subject was “belonging” and the gist was that one could increase one’s happiness by actively increasing one’s sense of belonging… I think by hosting snack hours and book clubs. The interview didn’t explore strategies for when one is sidelined or ghosted, or at least hadn’t by the time I tuned the radio to the local classical station.
Tonight is a dance night. It’s occurring to me that due to the typical collision of events and familial obligations, tonight’s dance will most likely be this year’s sole Gay Pride Dance Night. Since Mark doesn’t care for dancing, this will be a night out with my hair (who will probably get a few date offers). I will have to take a disco nap.
I expect that there will be guys there snapping large, rainbow-hued fans emblazoned with words like “bitch,” “queen,” and “slay.” I will have to remind myself that I’m there to dance, and that I’m dancing in a Eugene bar with a Gothic Faerieworlds Festival vibe and not the New York City Eagle or even Perry’s on Pearl from a Eugene three decades ago (which, actually, means not having to go out dancing only to discover the venue is a drag show disguised as a dance). I will have to remind myself that it’s the Moon’s last quarter, and that the folks at the bar are less likely to be invoking a circle of blue flame, saluting cardinal directions, and drawing down the moon on the dance floor—especially not the go-go guys twerking on the stage area.
After pondering why I just don’t go to a more polished dance venue, I’ve concluded that I’m there to dance in enclave with other gay men and to take a moment to celebrate being an older, cis, white, gay, Neopagan man. How essentialist of me; and likely binary, too. At least I can dance without being judged.
After the dance, on the drive home, my hair and I will have to listen to Tom Cardy’s Transcendental Cha Cha Cha: “Slide to the left / witness perfection / slide to the right / nothing means anything. / (Or anything means nothing, I get them mixed up).”
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