What I Did On My Summer Vacation - 2006

So I took a month off. Suffer.

August has never been good to me. Since I was diagnosed in '98, every August - like clockwork, I've taken a dive. There were the August Kidney Stones, the August Mystery Fevers, the August Bell's Palsy, and the August "Hey Your Bone Marrow Stopped Working!". Ides of March, my ass.

Since last me met, I've been nipples-deep in church work (singing, playing the piano, etc.). I've also been re-discovering the joy of snake handling. No, we're not THAT kind of Pentecostal. We just have THOSE kinds of people. They don't handle vipers. They are vipers.

It thrills my religified soul to know that mean queens must have learned their craft at the knee of a slithering saint. We may or may not all descend from the same pond. But we all look alike when the lighting is right. As the great philosopher once said, "People are people. So why should it be (that) you and I should get along so awfully?"

I have had phone calls concerned that I had been kidnapped by Exodus, International and was being made to bake cookies for Promise Keepers events. One worried that I had slipped into self-loathing and had traded my chaps for a polyester leisure suit and a tendency to vocalize vowels where none belonged. "In the name-uh, of-uh JESUS-uh." I assured him my diction was unchanged from when last we spoke. G.W. sent out feelers wondering if I would stump with him in the mid-terms to turn out the anti-gay vote.

So we have no mistaking: I still love Jesus. And I still love men. It helps, of course, that outside of Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), I can picture Jesus as a man. The neutering of the deities, however logical and well-intentioned, never did sit well with me. Somewhere in the back of my mind it stuck with me that if they'll cut God's balls off, they wouldn't blink when it came to my own. I like my testicles. They're not terribly useful. But I've grown accustomed to the way my pants hang.

In my absence from this space, I still wrote. I had a letter to the editor of the Kansas City Star published (I'm convinced this is how Hemingway got his start). It was apropos of Fred Phelps and summarizes an early post on this blog. I exchanged emails with an editor from The Advocate (yes, that one) about republishing an interview we did for HIV-Plus Magazine. It may appear in The Advocate soon. Or he may have been hitting on me. Who knows? Today, I wrote another letter to the editor in response to one of those Bush Administration Form Letters every newspaper publishes. They hear from me often now. They'll either give me a column or cancel my subscription.

So yes, I'm alive. Yes, I've been getting laid. Yes, I'm still in church (because God knows there aren't enough heterosexuals to fill all the music posts in all the churches). We appreciate your concern. And we thank you for your support.