As I Lay Frying Read online

  And as much as I hated seventh grade (feeling different, not knowing why,) I hated writing that stupid first assignment “What I did on my summer vacation” even more. Why would I want to write about my best friend discovering dumb boy-girl parties and ignoring me the entire month of August? Or my parents desperately buying me “pretty” school clothes and making me take ballet. That was humiliating.

  So when I sat down to write a column this August I was struck momentarily queasy—but then I had this delicious fantasy. What if I could stand up in front of my old homeroom class and tell them what I did on my vacation this summer.

  Cool. I know just what I’d say.

  First, my spouse (that would be the woman I’ve lived with for 14 years) and I spent weekends in delightful Rehoboth Beach, part of a tremendously supportive community.

  In fact, we’re among the many people helping to host Sundance this year. It’s the biggest party of the year, where thousands of folks get together to dance, dine, and support the Sussex County AIDS Committee and CAMP Rehoboth. Lots of our friends—make that our big, friendly, everyone-welcome clique—will be there, no Pink Lady satin jackets or varsity sweaters required. Do I sound bitter? Sorry.

  And this is just one of the many fantastic boy-boy, girl-girl, boy-girl parties this town throws each season. Bet you never thought I’d be having the time of my life partying!

  And I have to tell you about my very functional family, too. It sure makes liars out of the grown-ups who told us “you can pick your friends but not your relatives.” Gay people can select both.

  We have the luxury of having friends who are our families. And we’re forever celebrating somebody’s 15th, or 20th anniversary. These may not be legal marriages—yet—but many of us seem to have a knack for this commitment gig.

  Oh wait! I almost forgot my biggest news. Remember how you thought me hopeless for not having a single Barbie? Or called me queer for going to football games instead of practicing for motherhood by babysitting?

  Well, it turned out okay anyway. My spouse and I are thrilled with our new son. No, I did not just have a baby at my age. But my mate and I informally adopted our-son-the-actor (imagine me, a Jewish Mother after all) as he turned twenty-something. We got an intelligent, thoughtful son without going through diapers, tonsils, carpools, rthodontics or tuition. And he likes our generation’s Broadway musicals.

  We met our young actor two years ago, but he just recently asked to meet some of our friends, saying he thought—but wasn’t sure—he might be gay.

  So we loaned him books, talked a bit, and arranged for him to visit us in Rehoboth. At the bookstore, the manager took lots of time finding him just the right books to introduce him to our community. Then friends escorted the wide-eyed novice to Poodle Beach, where the scenery was great and rude kids didn’t kick sand in people’s faces. There were a few children around, but they were the well-behaved offspring of gay couples.

  By Saturday night at dinner our son started to look very comfortable, but we were still wary. Though we hoped for the best, we knew he might still turn out to be straight. I mean either you are or you aren’t. It’s not like there’s a choice.

  Whatever happened though, we promised to be non-judgmental...not that we wouldn’t be a little wistful about the many wonderful parts of the gay culture he’d never get to experience.

  But by Sunday brunch, over mimosas and Steven Sondheim music, it became clear we had a gay son and our actor had two mommies. And for the rest of the summer, the three of us have been entertaining straight and gay friends visiting Rehoboth, using the TVs mute button to bleep out the Republican Convention and enjoying the unseasonably delightful weather.

  And that’s how I spent my summer vacation. (I hope I get an A+.)

  September 1996

  TRUTH, JUSTICE AND THE DEGENERES WAY

  Until I heard about Ellen I was perfectly content spending my summer without TV or newspapers. Being the village idiot was quite relaxing, actually.

  I’m no longer a newspaper, magazine and TV news junkie. Bonnie’s jaw dropped last week when she heard I cancelled the weekend Washington Post. I was sick of paying for a bag of newsprint that went from the driveway to the recycling bin without ever passing my eyeballs.

  Get this. The only newspaper headline I read all last week was “Anna Nicole Smith’s Boobs Explode.” And I only saw the tabloid by accident (as if anybody would read that stuff on purpose) in the checkout line at the grocery.

  Instead of poring over Newsweek, I’ve been sitting on the pier, dog in lap, with the both of us staring at chorus lines of Herons and Cormorants drying their wings.

  But it was the Ellen DeGeneres thing that finally got to me. My urge to break my self-imposed media blackout became overpowering the day somebody at the beach asked what I thought of the big news about Ellen. “What news?” I whimpered.

  “What news? What news?” she gushed, implying I’d been under a rock when the emergency broadcast network announced nuclear war. “The stuff in the Post yesterday. About Ellen’s character coming out on her TV show.”

  Whoa.

  How could I find out more? A band of renters were laying siege to my condo, holding my television hostage.

  As Bonnie and I headed back to our media-free boat I sought a plan. Entertainment Tonight will have it and I’ll be saved,” I muttered.

  “Yeah. Where are you going to watch it?” Bonnie said, “our investment television is occupied.” Investment TV? It occurred to me that Bonnie had a more practical view of our condo than I had. But I had to get the scoop on Ellen.

  I fed the dog, changed out of my beach attire and then, quite casually said, “I’m going to K-Mart. Want to go?”

  “To buy a television?” she said. “No thanks.” We’ve been together so long my brain waves must come in through her dental work. Too bad she couldn’t bring in Entertainment Tonight on her wisdom teeth.

  After promising to look for hardware too, we went to K-Mart and bought assorted screws, bits, and miracle waxers plus a 13” television.

  Back at the boat, we got nothing but static. So we opened the forward hatch and telescoped the rabbit ear antenna up on deck, turning the vessel into My Favorite Martian.

  “Did it ever occur to you that one hundred percent of people in Rehoboth have cable for a reason?” Bonnie said. Not until that moment.

  We found three channels with images resembling the reception you get on HBO when you don’t subscribe to it. And none of the squiggles showed us perky Mary Hart and Entertainment Tonight.

  We did manage to watch five blurry minutes of Jersey Shore news, (“Leading off tonight, romance comes to a farmer’s prized bovine...”) until we required No-Doze. Failure. Then I thought about the Internet.

  To this point, I’ve viewed this new technology with a suspicion reserved for electric nose hair clippers and vegematics. I use my office account mainly for stuffy research and the occasional “Dear Senator Helms” diatribe.

  The internet for news? Forget it. I’m a print journalist. The Internet will never work. You can’t take it into the bathroom with you. But suddenly it made sense. I could sign on and search for truth, justice and the DeGeneres way.

  I clicked a menu on my laptop and searched. Sure enough, I found a dozen Hollywood gossip sites. How long has this been going on?

  It seems that no less than TV Guide had floated a trial balloon from the producers that maybe, just maybe, the character of Ellen Morgan would come out of the closet as a lesbian by the end of the season.

  There it was, in black and white. Blue and green, actually. What’s more, I was invited to post my opinion on a message board set up just to discuss Ellen’s future. “Will she or won’t she?”

  For the next few hours I scanned Ellengrams on several different Ellen boards. And you know what? There are some incredibly glib and articulate people posting messages day and night. Folks who wrote “by allowing millions of viewers who already know Ellen as a friend to see her come out will be
a huge step forward for us all,” and “Ellen: You go girl...I’m a 65 year old heterosexual woman and I think you are terrific. There are gay people in life, why not on TV?” Or the short note “like Ellen’s coming out would be news. Anybody notice that poster of k.d. lang over her bed in her apartment?”

  Sure, there were morons. Like the woman who wrote “I’m a church-going mom of three and we watch Ellen all the time. Showing her in her true homosexuality light will make me turn the TV off and stop watching.” I want to know what a homosexuality light is and where I can order one.

  To the imbecile who wrote, “Homos aren’t normal. How do you procreate? Homos are ruining society,” an internet watcher answered. “It’s heterosexuals who are producin homosexual offspring. Should we blame them?”

  Next, we saw a message noting “I’m sick and tired of a lifestyle I don’t agree with being shoved down my face. Our kids will turn gay if there’s a gay character. This is terrible.”

  Before I could type a reply, another message appeared. “Hey, we all didn’t turn black when Bill Cosby was the first black TV star in I Spy.”

  “You tell him!” I typed. Then I thought about saying something witty but rude to the person having the gay lifestyle shoved down his face, but figured the humor would elude him.

  The next message said “Letting Ellen out of the closet is uncalled for. Do what’s wright. Go to an uncensored cable channel. Teach our children some morales.”

  I say teach this person some grammar and spelling. Then some jerk added “I’ll never watch again if Ellen is to become lesbianism. Don’t tell me sexually orientation is born. They choose to be that way and its unnatural.”

  Lovely sentence construction. The next message said “why do homophobes spell so badly? Are they born that way or is it a choice?”

  I laughed until I cried.

  And so it went. Lots of messages, 90 percent positive. Some terrific dialogue is taking place; stuff that really may be educating and changing people’s attitudes. Meanwhile I have a message for the bad speller who wrote the fulminating epistle about the wicked gay lifestyle threatening all of society. Get a load of my wild gay lifestyle, bud: sitting at my laptop late at night, typing and laughing.

  As for Ellen, “You go, girl!”

  October 1996

  LADY OF SPAIN, I ABHOR YOU

  I missed the Jazz Festival last weekend.

  Now before you conclude that I don’t support Rehoboth’s very successful jazz weekend bringing big tourist bucks to our shops and restaurants, I have to be perfectly honest and come out of the closet. Yeah, yeah, I’ve been out with the gay thing, but this is much tougher.

  My ex-husband was an accordion player.

  And, along with his wedding and bar mitzvah gigs (if you’ve never heard Jeremiah was a Bullfrog, played on an accordion, you can’t really know the kind of hell I’m talking about), his hobby was playing jazz accordion. Apparently that’s not as oxy-moronic as it sounds. He was good enough on the squeeze box to play a gig at the White House, but frankly all that notoriety didn’t make me like his sound of music any better.

  To this day I go into anaphylactic shock if I hear Lady of Spain.

  My sordid past includes too many nights in smoky after-hours clubs listening to my very own Lawrence Welk pitch the melody to the bass player, who tossed it to the drummer, after which it disappeared altogether and I couldn’t go home until it came back.

  Thankfully, my days in the musician’s wife business ended almost 20 years ago (the accordion was minor among the irreconcilable differences), but I was left with permanent jazz damage. I admit it. I’m jazzphobic.

  Here’s how bad it is. Several years ago, Gary Larson drew a cartoon with the top half showing St. Peter saying “Welcome to Heaven, here’s your harp,” and the bottom quoting Satan’s “Welcome to Hell, here’s your accordion.” Within days, newspaper clippings of the cartoon started jamming my mailbox like letters to Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street. Most just said, “Thinking of You.”

  When I had my hysterectomy a friend sent a card that read “it you have to lose an organ…” Inside was a picture of an accordion.

  As for Jazz Festival, I might have enjoyed some of the acts, since I do like blues and Dixieland, but I wouldn’t dare wander blindly into a concert. If some earnest bass player was “taking it” I’d have to be air-lifted to the emergency room. I’d probably serve my time and be back on the street before the extemporaneous solo ended. I’ve seen people celebrate consecutive birthdays during a single drum solo.

  Instead of hiding in my condo all weekend, Bonnie kept me in Maryland for the jazz duration.

  We missed our gay news, so we went into a card shop/newsstand to pick up The Advocate. They had every magazine ever published. Along with Newsweek, Brides, Kiplingers and Field & Stream they had a tremendous selection of filth. Appalled as I was, it was like that horrible turnpike accident. You don’t want to look; can’t take your eyes off it.

  The rags were on display racks at about pre-teen height: Hustler, Busty, Big Butt, Small Tops (that one took me by surprise), Leg Show, (“Fabulous Foot Fetish edition”) and Pulsating Pink Pix.

  Disgusted, I retreated to the more mundane racks to pick up The Advocate and Out. You guessed it. There were no gay magazines in the store.

  Bonnie marched to the counter, asked if they had The Advocate and got an attitudinal “No” with the sanctimonious clerk pointing to a Bible display.

  “You have...” I glanced back to the displays, “World Class Ass Club, you have Nasty, and you won’t stock a gay news magazine?” I hollered from the doorway. “This is your idea of religion? Rump Runners?!!!”

  We headed back to the house without any gay newspaper. I should have known that staying home for a weekend would come to no good.

  Back home, we opened the front door and got hit with the smell of smoke. “My God! Something’s on fire!” Bonnie screamed, running around, sniffing and feeling the walls. “Grab the photo albums!” I yelled, racing back out to toss Max into the car.

  I passed Bonnie struggling down the stairs with a leaning tower of scrapbooks as I ran to grab the two kitchen phones—separate area codes—punched 911 on both, and, sandwiching my head, held the receivers to my ears.

  “Fire and Rescue” said one, then the other.

  “House fire!” I barked, summoning battalions from two counties.

  The smell worsened. Hearts pounding, we sniffed and searched like pigs seeking truffles. Then came the sirens. “Let’s get out,” I hollered, fearful of smoke inhalation, but noting it was getting smellier not smokier.

  Just as the fire truck and ambulance pulled up, with jurisdiction two in hot pursuit, I saw a trail of smoke from the dishwasher. Clawing the door open I found a smoldering lump of plastic, formerly a slotted spoon, hanging over the heating element like spew from Mt. St. Helens. Wrenching it free, I ran out the front door waving my steaming, smelly trophy.

  Now this pretty much stopped the squad of fully outfitted fire fighters running toward the house.

  “Sorry, sorry, never mind, it’s okay,” I hollered, waving my blackened Olympic Torch to the honking, flashing, throng— which included all our neighbors leaning out their front doors wondering what those crazy lesbians had done this time.

  With great fanfare, the lead firefighter picked up his walkie talkie and barked, “Attention!! Fried Tupperware. Fried Tupperware. All units back in service.”

  “Fried Tupperware” echoed a half dozen two-way radios, “Fried Tupperware. Over and Out.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said to the Fire Investigator.

  “Don’t be,” he said. “Happens all the time. Glad it wasn’t a fire. But lady, next time, just call one county and let us decide if we need a second alarm.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “At least we know our escape plan works.”

  So we liberated Max and the photo albums from the car, opened every window in the house to dissipate the stink, and eventually got through the r
est of the weekend.

  I missed the beach. Maybe next year the Jazz Fest ads could carry tiny disclaimers saying “Warning: this concert contains material which may be offensive to women formerly married to tuxedoed accordion players who insisted on playing inappropriate selections, like Age of Aquarius and I Can’t Get No Satisfaction on the squeeze box. Oy, I’m having a flashback....

  November 1996

  RAM-A-LAM-A-DING-DONG

  I used to think it was age. That 40-plus thing where you get downstairs to the kitchen and forget why. Or you find yourself digging through your desk for something but it’s anybody’s guess if you’ll know when you find it.

  “I’m going nuts,” I thought this morning, when I lost my credit card between the gas pump and the car. I had it in my hand after pumping, but by the time I got into the car it was gone. Like Houdini.

  There’s nothing as pathetic on a rainy morning as a woman in corporate drag, crawling under her car looking for Mr. Visa. He did not turn up.

  But in taking the compulsory actions to cover the disappearance, I realized just what’s wrong with us. Our brains are full.

  I have a friend who knows all the lyrics to every show tune ever written. Once, when she was launching into the mercifully obscure Jubilation T. Cornpone from the musical L’il Abner, I asked, “How do you remember all this crap?”

  “It’s where algebra should be,” she said.

  At that moment I discovered the concept of the finite brain. Kneeling in a gasoline puddle frantically pawing for my elusive Visa card, I recognized my problem as brain-RAM failure.

  My skull is so full it couldn’t process what happened to the little gray card in my hand. And what happened next proved why our brains are so overloaded.

  Soaking wet and defeated, I headed for the office where, as the first one in, I had to disarm the burglar alarm with code 20901 (not the real number) so I could get in to call Credit Card Central. After dialing the area code and number on the office phone system, I had to key in my department number 007 (not the real number) and personal code 911 (not the real number) so my office can track who’s calling numbers where somebody named Bambi answers.