God Shopping

VAGINAL STATUS: Holy

This is my theory about how religion works: You go to the showroom and you pick one out.

Since no one knows the whole truth about the Bigness, we all conjure a version that suits our needs. It seems that trust in a larger Plan/ner is a basic human drive, and faith meets emotional and social needs as well as spiritual ones. I do believe faith generally helps people, that it’s good for us. But whether inspired or delusional every culture through all of history has come up with divine explanations to make meaning. Though some individuals always opt out of these explanations, building a cosmology is among the first tasks any emerging civilization completes; forming communal belief systems is what we DO.

So find the one that fits you. You want something reliable, not too flashy and not too expensive? Most American Protestant sects will help you out, I had a shine for Methodists. Need something to accommodate a big family? Mormons offer the mini-van of religions. Looking for an infinite number of chances to wreck and try again? Hinduism. Something fast and flashy for the social climber? Scientology. You want a classic, populist vehicle with a very strict instruction manual in 6,793 languages? You are a Catholic, my friend.

Most folks seek a religion that has a standard Home Culture feature and a built-in Family Tradition attachment. We almost always choose to be whatever our parents were, or upgrade into something that is at least a recognizable cousin. This is sensible and has a noble purity to it. We learn about the Bigness as children through the filter our People offer us, and that lens will always have the same magic to you that your threadbare Blankie does. We seek guidance and comfort from our Creator with a child’s heart. In hard times, in grief, in tenderness, in pain, we connect to the Spirit most sincerely through the first prayers we knew.

My Mama agreed (walking me to work the other morning) that we’re making it all up, though her Christian tradition is centrally important to her and she’s never driven anything else. She says it‘s important to feel connected to her roots and her family, and the hymns are special to her. Plus she likes the focal picture she has of God and Jesus, they seem like kind and protective caretakers.

But it is a choice, of course. And – just to stretch a metaphor a little bit more -- plenty of us do find that the vehicle our family used doesn’t go where we need to travel. Some folks really do start from scratch, lay out all the contenders, try the rites and read the scriptures of several faiths. For lots of us, though, we get called toward a faith by some need that our family’s tradition did not meet.

I needed a religion that was about women, because that’s the primary way I filter the world. I chose the path most attached to the untold history of women, a celebration of female power dark and graceful and holy, practiced by women for millennia in service to their communities, a faith that values transformation, justice, balance, healing, and compassion. Something earthy, sexy, shameless, pulsing and POWERful.

So that’s how I became a Witch.

But I’m in a mixed marriage, doncha know. Princess has chosen herself a path over this past year or two, and it’s a lovely group of people who I think are very good for her. She’d never have believed it her old self, but she’s in total NRE* about a RELIGION.
And the winner iiiiiiiiiisssssssssssssss:

Independent Catholic!

It’s gay Catholic, in practice, how hot is that? They are dead fucking serious about reclaiming the traditions and she is soaking up the holy revolution of it, it lights her up. She feels finally at home. It’s lovely.

She’s decided to get baptized.
And that’s another post.

*NRE = New Relationship Energy...common term among poly folks that acknowledges the time when you first get together with someone/thing new and you are kinda psycho because of how into them you are. You are sweet and annoying, no way around it. Just FYI.

Where Ya Been?

It's so sad, I don't even have a dozen posts yet and I can't keep up with my blog! I expect my rate to dwindle over time, sure. I have good "starting energy", a euphemism that means I get really quite obsessive about new projects until I abruptly quit mid-sentence, mid-puzzle, mid-skein, mid-chopping, whathaveu. So that will likely happen again, I fear. My couple-of-posts-a-week goal will become links-once-a-month, and that will be that. I mean, probably. We all have infinite capacity for change (I am a social worker, it's the mantra of my profession), but let's do just acknowledge my habits and their near inevitability.

But anyway, this is not that. I been a BUSY beaver, yes yes! Here's what's up with me: the Charm City Kitty Club (www.charmcitykittyclub.com) (and can I just take a second to be annoyed that making a link in html is not working for me? Just cut and paste already, bitches) show is this weekend -- we have three a year and those weeks are always pretty up-for-three-days crazy. Princess would like to especially invite all you folks (the three or four Clevelanders that read this) to join us -- she directed the "Pussycat Players" (the skits we do in between the performers we bring in and showcase) this time and she is busting her buttons with kinda bashful pride.

So there's that. I'm in the show (well, my voice is), I'm "in charge" (total figurehead) of our Merch Team and am selling the folkses my own crafts, I'm baking cookies for the bake sale, making props, finding costumes, frantically emailing details, on and on and on, it eats life in the crunch time.
And, happily, I'm helping to get our house together (though, let's be honest, it's 15% my work and 85% Princess') because one of those three fine Clevelanders IS coming down to see the show. It's Sparkle (Hi Sparkle!), Princess' BFF and a very close friend to me as well -- I can't can't CAN'T wait to spend some time with him, he's a mensch.

Aside from Kitty Club, CubeCity is swinging into its busy fundraising season and eating us all alive along the way. I'm coordinating our department's cook-off day. This is a-lot-by-a-mile more work than that little sentence would convey. It's on Monday. The day after Kitty Show weekend. I'm making sure we have enough crockpots (5), Foreman grills (4) and blenders (3) to get the job of feeding our floor tempting treats to raise cash accomplished. It's basically a details-and-chatter job, not the sort I'm suited to at all, and it's at a time when the JOB part of my job is pretty heavy as well. But, obviously, I'm sorta proud of myself as well, it will be a swell event and I'll get a lot of feel-good strokes off of it.

I'm also doing this and that -- house parties and play parties, day trips and head trips, busy and dizzy, helping and counseling and teaching and settling, the flotsam of laundry and jetsam of bills...you know, life. I don't have a weekend with a free day until after Halloween.

I'm overstimulated and grateful and, today, really pleased with how beat my drum in the world. I'll see ya when I see ya, ok?

Our Little Bundle of Joy

Starla and Princess are busting proud to announce a new addition to our little family – BETSY. Betsy is a beautiful, precocious, red and yellow Magna Excitor dirt bike. She weighed in at 43 pounds (she’s a big girl!), with 24” wheels, and was purchased at a yard sale in Remington yesterday for $100. We are ready to make a place for her in our home and take on the responsibility of caring for this precious tot with special needs (it’d be a good idea to get the brakes replaced pretty soon). Best of all, her quick-release seat height adjuster makes it simple for both of us (6 inches apart) to ride comfortably in a snap. We couldn’t be more delighted with our little one! We plan to throw ourselves a Bicycle Shower soon, invitations to follow.
This happy delivery rights a sad chapter from earlier this year. Princess had been longing for a new bike since her beloved dirt-spewing sweetheart from college days was kidnapped shortly after our move to Baltimore. The thieves took her from us while she was chained to a signpost outside our apartment. They were a determined crew. Though the signpost had no sign and they could have simply lifted the bike up over the top, they decided to take the hard way and actually removed the pole from the cement. Really, there was a big crater in the sidewalk, the post was on the ground, and the bike was gone for good.

But our tragedies did not end with that loss. Princess asked for a bike for Christmas from my folks last year, knowing that it was too big a gift to ask for – sort of a joke, like asking for tickets to Panama. I wanted so much for her to have it. It was a big gift, and more than I could afford by tremendous much, but still it seemed such a reasonable dream. My mama, bless her sweet, loving heart, really wanted to help me get it for her. I think it was her goal to try and help Princess have a really special Christmas – it’s the sort of holiday my family excels at making jolly, and Princess’ people aren’t quite that kind of Rockwell family – and she wanted Princess to feel welcomed in our family and loved real hard.
So I saved up as much as I could and got about half. My wonderful mama saved too. She secretly put aside a little extra and a little extra extra, made me promise not to tell Sissty how much she spent on Princess so she wouldn’t be mad, and together we raised $250 for Princess’ dream. I made a special envelope for the money. Dad got her a gift certificate for Dick’s so she could get a helmet and a lock, too.

It was a big deal. Princess was really happy, and I was really proud.

But we were so broke. We weren’t making it last winter, we were really struggling. The selfless embrace of those hard-won dollars, that dear, special, cherished gift – it got spent on the light bill. Broke my heart, it honestly makes me want to cry thinking of it again now.

So Betsy has arrived. And with her, the promise of that Gift of the Magi is made good. We called Mama to let her hear us laugh and coo at our Betsy-girl. Mama tells me lots of lesbians adopt babies from China (she wants me to know she's hip to the ways of my people). “Ride her in good health,” says Mama, the traditional wish that comes with every gift in our family. And the gift certificate is still intact, being useless to trade for food or phone minutes. A happy ending for us and for Betsy too.

She can jump a curb already, can you believe it? She’s getting so big!



One afternote – I did a little research on Magna Excitor bikes. Um, this wasn’t that great a deal, actually. The Magna Excitor is a department-store basic, and Target sells it new for about what we paid. It’s not fabulous quality, the parts may wear out on the quicker side. It’s also seen as a bit heavy and clunky by cyclists.

But you know what? Cyclists are often snobbish about their machines. The reviews from average riders are pretty good, actually. And she’s worth that amount of money to us, surely. We aren’t going for long-distance competitive rides, we just need an extra form of exercise and mid-distance transportation around town.

And Betsy is our sweet baby! She’s already brought us closer as a family. We won’t be sorry we adopted her, she’s PERFECT. Welcome Home, sweetheart!

The Lost Weekend

I had to make myself go, seriously, take myself by the ear and March! to yoga today.

I'm "cat-sitting" at Mouse (my BFF)’s house, which is really just an opportunity for me to indulge deeply in every sensual vice I can perform in solitary -- there are more than you might think, I've been fully wanton. No joke, I'm really doing a Lost Weekend style bender. So I feel lousy today, totally slothargetic and fuzzy-headed, as well as a fair portion of shame and self-loathing for my bad behavior.

This is very Starla. My meaning of "relax" has more to do with the type and amount of intoxicants I can consume (including food and T.V.) than with the gentle stretching/read a good book/take a hot bath model. And I do feel powerfully guilty afterward – that’s why I’m happiest to do this level of sobliteration when I can be unobserved. If I found out that this computer (the witness to my wicked binge) had a nanny-cam in it, I would curl up into a shame spiral and implode. My health is not really so good that I can abuse my body for several days without consequence any more. And it's totally lonely, this brand of decadent self-destruction. Also, honestly, I'm too old for this.

The guilt of getting what I wanted despite the fact that it doesn’t serve me reminds me of the first lover I had, a boy who was on the downlow from his official girlfriend (with me and the three other women he was seeing on the side). We’d have sex, and it was big fun, and then he’d go fetal and I’d spend an hour talking him through how guilty he felt for having fucked me.

I always wished he could just give over to the pleasure of it. If you’re going to do it -- and you know you are, you’re kinda built that way – at least have a good time while you’re in it. If you need to think about the choices you make in your life, so be it. Do some soul searching when you’re sober/have your clothes on. In the meantime, don’t fuck up the fun you’re having in the moment.

This shame, while completely warranted in my case, is a deeply WASP reaction.

But today I made myself go to yoga. Because ultimately I really do love myself. And I’m proud because I’ve missed a bunch of classes and it was hard to go. I find the yoga physically enjoyable, even, but I couldn’t face being in my body this morning. I used every trick I could to get myself motivated – I already paid for the class, the teacher (my friend Yogi) will be disappointed, Princess (my wife) will be worried about me, my blood sugar is high and I ate crazy shit for a few days so I’m going to lose my eyesight and my feet if I don’t go to yoga today, TO-DAY!!!!, on and on..I still almost said Fuck It and drove on past.

I told Yogi I was hungover. The other students and she were also pretty chill or tired, so she tailored the class to suit. Very slow, gentle, easy to stomach. I feel so much better.

Let that be a lesson to ye, young one!