On flannel and gratitude and Annie Oakley

Our youngest has a role in this year’s high school musical. They are performing “Annie Get Your Gun” this spring.

Yesterday afternoon, I took him to a couple of local thrift stores to look for a pair of cowboy boots. We found a pair that fit on sale for $14. Yeehaw!

I am letting him borrow a western-styled flannel shirt to wear in the play.

“Do you have a shirt my friend Sandy can borrow?” he asks.

As I am sorting through a pile of flannel looking for a shirt for his friend, I am struck by the volume of my collection.

Sometimes we take for granted all that we have. The roof over our heads, our overstocked pantry and freezer. The ability to buy a new shirt whenever and just because and flannel!

Even though we ended up going the thrift store route for the cowboy boots, we have the means to buy our kids new boots for a play, a suit jacket for chorus, tools for vo-tech.

Not everyone is so lucky.

“If any other kids need flannel shirts, let me know,” I tell him.

“Ok, I’ll tell the play director to let everyone know,” he says.

When W comes home that night we laugh.

We can’t wait to hear what he told the director of the play.

“My butch mother has flannel shirts for everyone!”

So stereotypical but so true.

Flannel, it’s for butches. It’s for young thespians and gunslingers and lumberjacks. Everyone, really.

So, yeah, it’s good to be butch. It’s good to share. And it’s good to remember to be grateful for all that we have.

* * *

What are you grateful for today?

What Fun Home taught me about being gay

When I was coming out 10 plus years ago, I was pretty sure I was doing it all wrong. Not so much the coming out part, but the being gay part.

Looking for guidance, I sent letters and e-mails to a variety of “accessible” celebrity lesbians. And Barney Frank. By “accessible,” I mean the rung below the power lesbians. The writers and activists who I thought might actually write me back. I asked everyone to identify the single most important thing that a gay person can do to further empower the community.

Alison Bechdel

I wrote to cartoonist Alison Bechdel, among other mildly famous lesbians. Back then, she was best known for her Dykes to Watch Out For comic strip. The magic that is Bechdel’s graphic memoir Fun Home wouldn’t happen until 2006.

I can’t find Bechdel’s response, but I remember her sending one.

Everyone pretty much gave the same answer. Be yourself. Be out. It wasn’t the sexy revelation that I was looking for.

W and I often talk about how her experience as a gay person is different than mine. When I walk down the street with my short hair and cargo pants and baseball cap, it’s a political act. I’m out for the world to see in all of my boy/girl glory. Not so much for W. Unless I’m with her.

Flip to last Saturday and W and I are in New York City watching Fun Home the musical on Broadway.

Ring of Keys

I’ve heard the butch anthem “Ring of Keys” perhaps a hundred times.

But sitting there in the theater when the luncheonette doorbell rings and Sydney Lucas belts out “Ring of Keys,” I had an epiphany. I had been doing it right all along. With my short hair, dungarees and my lace-up boots.

Because that’s the best thing any of us can do. Be yourself. Be out.

It takes courage. And practice.

But if I can do it, anyone can.

I’ll blog some more on Fun Home, but wanted to get these thoughts down before they left me.

Butch books

I am obsessed with Fun Home.

Like I’m changing my major to Fun Home.

I’m talking about the graphic memoir by the brilliant Allison Bechdel and the hit Broadway musical based on the book.

I tell W I’m a Fun Homie.

She grimaces.

But buys us tickets for our anniversary next month.

And sometimes sings Ring of Keys in the shower.

I bought Fun Home in 2007 from Giovanni’s Room, a gay bookstore in Philadelphia.

I just finished re-reading it in anticipation of the play.  I was sad like I always am when I finish a good book.

I started thinking about what to read next.  But when you’re a butch lesbian, how do you top Fun Home?

And that’s when I read that Leslie Steinberg’s groundbreaking Stone Butch Blues is being made available for download to celebrate Leslie’s Sept. 1 birthday.  Click here to download your free copy.

So, I will be reading Stone Butch Blues tonight.  And thinking about Leslie Feinberg and Allison Bechdel and all the other butch writers who have made it a little easier for the rest of us to be ourselves.

* * *

What are you reading?

Broadway and drag queens

As they say in Kinky Boots …

Ladies, gentlemen and those who have yet to make up their minds …

W and I have returned from our jaunt to the Big Apple.  Barely.  We almost died on more than one occasion riding in NYC taxi cabs.  Or “yellow cars of death,” as I like to call them.

Highlights include some really good pizza, Ellen’s Stardust Diner where the waiters and waitresses serve burgers and Cokes and belt out Broadway tunes, and the glory that is the Broadway musical Kinky Boots.  W and I had third row seats, so we were right at boot level.

If you don’t know the Kinky Boots story, it’s about a drag queen who saves a shoe factory on the verge of bankruptcy.  But more than that, it’s a gender-bender of a tale about accepting others and loving yourself.  And drag queens.

So, with that, I’d thought I’d share the six-step program from Kinky Boots:

• One: Pursue the truth.
• Two: Learn something new.
• Three: Accept yourself and you’ll accept others too!
• Four: Let love shine.
• Five: Let pride be your guide.
• Six: Change the world when you change your mind!  Just be.  Who you wanna be.  Never let them tell you who you oughta be.  Just be.  With dignity.  Celebrate yourself triumphantly.  You’ll see.  It’s beautiful.  You’ll see.  It’s beautiful.