I heard about an article that was written in some newspaper that said that Madonna, Megan Mullally and me, being gay icons, are hypocrites because we be married and that we have no credibility when we talk about how it is wrong that gay marriage isn’t acknowledged by the government. I didn’t read that shit or nothing. I gots mad ADD, for real though. Plus, I got a reading disability. I’d rather write than read, talk than listen, which disables me from reading that bullshit. Anyway, even though I don’t exactly know what was said, I get the drift. Motherfucker, I told you I was a hypocrite. I don’t give a shit. All you were doing was saying – “You know what? You can breathe air.” I am a hypocrite from way back. I took the Hippocratic Oath with my fingers crossed. State the obvious if you want, nobody cares except for you and your mama.
But don’t step up to me and say that I am not able to speak out for the GLBT community, my queer family, to fight for equality for all, to point out the injustice in the world we live in, the demoralizing reality that the people we ‘voted’ into office are telling us we are the same as pedophiles, perverts, bigamists, that I cannot have the right to soldier on for the cause because I am not ‘gay’ or because I am married. I got married so I could steal the rights that my GLBT brothers and sisters are denied. That is what I am. A gangsta. Why not? Fuck it. I will protest, call out for justice, scream and cry my rage at this travesty, that we must pay taxes to a country which does not count us as human beings, that tell us to not ask or tell about our sexuality when we are willing to give up our lives to enlist in the armies that would not win anything if lesbians were not on our side – and take what is rightly mine in the first place.
I love my husband, but my pager is blowing up with girls that are dying for me to come over and eat their pussy. HOW YOU LIKE ME NOW????!!!!! Ladies like to call me Daddy, and it is not because I had anything to do with their childhood.
I am not Madonna, nor am I Megan Mullally. They are famous and out of my league. The only person the shit you wrote hurts is me. Madonna is in a different universe, untouchable and otherworldly. Madonna is like God, but she does yoga. Megan Mullally is on TV several times a day and makes more money than I am ever going to see. They do an incredible amount for the GLBT community and their achievements are never going to be diminished by what you say. Their “Fame – I’m gonna live forever..” buys them the power to influence society, and thank God (Madonna) for that. But they are celebrities in magazines that don’t have me in them, that never have anything about me in them, that think that I am Lucy Liu if I get photographed by accident. I am not famous. I just fucking work like a dog, live like everyone else, never had a bodyguard or a personal shopper. I am accessible to anyone and everyone. I ride the subway and eat at McDonald’s. And I fucking do some work. The stuff I do, calling up gay teenagers to see how they livin’, writing trannie kids to help them from feeling alone – and hanging with little boys who know they are girls inside, and who want to kill themselves – because it is hard to be that way when you live here and now – and they just might if they didn’t have me around – is not high profile, doesn’t attract the paparazzi, because real life isn’t pretty, and neither am I. We are not pretty. We are fucking beautiful.
Lumping me in with Madonna and Megan just makes me look like a shithead, which I am, but I don’t like it when you say it. Other people can, but I don’t like it when it comes from an even bigger shithead. Actually, it is sort of a shithead contest, because I don’t even know what paper it was or who wrote it or what was written, so I think I win at being the biggest shithead.
Yay. I won!
Why do I work intensely for the queer community, demonstrate, protest, endure being called a hypocrite, not give a shit and keep going like the Energizer Bunny?
Because love is love. Love is love. Love is love. Love is love. Motherfucker.
I have paintings in my bedroom, painted by a man I love more than anyone, a gay man, who depicted the death, the unfathomable loss, the cost of AIDS and homophobia and hatred, the most expensive cruelty, the debt that will never be repaid, the pain stretched out on canvas for all to see, the unbelievable tragedy he endured during the 70s and 80s that he couldn’t even talk about, he could only paint it, because if you put words to it, that beat will fuck you up, and you will never dance again. I sleep underneath these works of art, beautiful not only because they are true, they are also born from grief that radiates fresh and hard from them even a quarter of a century later. They are the first things I see when I wake, the last thing I see before I go to sleep. I will never forget what unjust acts I witnessed as a child, against men and women who chose to be themselves. Who chose to love. Who loved. Who fucking loved. Their blood remains indelible, and even though it is not my own fucking personal blood, I still feel the pain of the cut. And it hurts. Nobody will know how much it hurts me. A lot. That is all I can say.
I have hate, so much of it in me.
I roll with my girls down the street, with the windows down all the way, blasting Tupac, and I cry my eyes out at the loss of him. He says ‘faggot’ and ‘bitch’ and ‘ho’ and all the shit that is supposed to piss me off, but I don’t care, because I don’t hear that. All I get is his velvety sweet angel voice, now silent, spittin’ gorgeous genius rhymes about racism, rage, sadness, the thug life that claimed so many lives of those he loved, and that eventually claimed him – ironically, not by the foes he had in the street, but by the forces in the music industry that made him an icon.
I wear a gold pendant on a long chain of the Patron Saint of Border Crossing. I respect him and so I do not say his name, I just give him my heart and strength. I am not an immigrant. I was born here, and I don’t speak Spanish. But when I think about how these innocent people die of thirst or hunger or exposure or police brutality, get killed trying to get over here, who pray to this saint in hopes that they will stay alive to see America, I bow my head in silence with them. The pendant hangs heavy on my neck, as I try to mentally send the border crossers food and water, blankets and hope, to protect them from hundreds of miles away. I don’t know if that shit works. I just want it to. Sometimes, I think that it does.
I have so much hate that it has turned into love.
What is so wrong with that article that I didn’t read, is that it divides a community that is already so divided it needs the division symbol. SHOW YOUR WORK!!!!! You need an extra sheet of paper fool????!!! This type of journalism and finger pointing is straight up cannibalism and is what is going to keep the right wing powerful. While we eat ourselves from the inside out and rot like a cancer, Bush is going to be preparing for his next term in office. Hasn’t he done enough? Aren’t we fucked up enough as it is now? Why are we asking for four more years of punishment? So that we can have the spokesperson for us be ‘not too hot, not too cold, but just right?’ Fuck that Goldilocks shit. And that is not a racist slur. It is this type of liberal need for ‘specificity’ and ‘political correctness’ that is going to turn this country into a totalitarian regime. That we offend each other so easily is the worst crime we commit against ourselves. Let it go. Let the bullshit go for now and we will fight over it later – AFTER we win the fucking election. What the fuck is wrong? Fuck it. There are parts of the conservative party that despise the other parts, fucking hate them more than we hate each other, yet they stand together, because they know it is the only way for them to win. The religious right is banded together with groups that sicken each other, believe everyone but them are going to hell, carry antibacterial gels with them whenever they have to shake hands, but they form a union because they know that the only chance they have to take over the government is if they play Red Rover. Doesn’t it make you mad that they are fucking smarter than we are? Doesn’t it make you hate so much that it turns into love?
I am not that smart, I got no attention span, never got an education. I am not real familiar with religion, read the Bible, but forgot most of it. Don’t know much about, well, knowledge, but I have sincerity. Like Elvis Costello, my aim is true. When I am saying that we have to learn to love each other, I really believe it. I back my words with my sincerity, my whole heart. If I ever meet you – the person that wrote that fucked up article that I did not read, I am going to hug you, because no matter what, you are my people, and I love you. I might smack you, but I still love you.