Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

selfy-stuff

I Got You, Babe.

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Today Gina sent me a link to what is – in my humble opinion – the most awesome vintage video clip I have ever seen on the internet. Behold:

Aside from the utter comedy of the nun costume and feather bustiere, it’s indicative of most glam-era Bowie in that underneath all of the glamour he’s so obscenely, effortlessly talented. Yet, he was promoting himself as a character to keep the attention on his artifice and not of the technical merits of his performance.

It makes me wonder: was my glam phase artifice as well, and if so what was I using it to obscure?

Or, alternately, did I just look hot in vinyl pants?

Loving

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There were kittens in our yard, but now there are not.

You were going to get a whole post about the joys of kittens and the joys of pet fostering, with a smattering of Bob Barkerisms, but we returned from work to find said kittens and accompanying momma gone from the yard.

So, no wacky kitten pictures with captions in stilted lolzcatian English.

Honestly, I’m only mentioning it now so that in five years I can recall when it was we found the kittens in our yard.

So, for historical reference, the apparent close of the kitten incident happens to coincide with the first day of legal same-sex marriages in California.

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Just as I am a feminist, I am an advocate for civil rights for everyone, and that includes the GBLT community. I honestly don’t understand how anyone can not be an advocate and an activist for both, because each movement is rooted in a simple concept: equality for all.

As we celebrate the landmark California Supreme Court decision and the many beautiful unions that it will yield, I was also reminded today of another beautiful union – this one fifty years old.

The union in question was of Mildred and Richard Loving, two Virginia small-town sweethearts who in 1958 found themselves pregnant and decided to wed in neighboring Washington, D.C.

Back in Virginia, five weeks after their wedding the couple found themselves on the receiving end of an unfriendly visit from the local Sheriff’s department because they were in violation of the state’s Racial Integrity Act.

Richard Loving was white; his bride Mildred was black.

The Racial Integrity Act made their marriage – and, for that matter, any marriage between a white person and someone of another race – a felony.

This post isn’t meant to be a history lesson- you can read other sources detailing the Loving’s arrest, or their subsequent exodus from Virginia under threat of imprisonment, and how – nine years later on June 12, 1967 – the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the Racial Integrity Act in their landmark Loving v. Virginia decision.

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I know most people (maybe even you, reading now) see the Lovings’ story in black and white – literally and figuratively. However, laws like the Racial Integrity Act were leveraged against couples of any interracial combination across the country. If it weren’t for the Loving’s and the unanimous SCOTUS decision their case garnered, interracial marriages might never have become as visible and accepted in mainstream American society. (And, similar laws lingered on the books for decades until the last one was repealed in Alabama in 2000.)

If those same laws were prevalent today it might not be legal for me to marry Elise. And, it certainly would have been illegal for her parents – one white, the other Chinese – to marry and have children.

Consider that for a moment.

All of these years I’ve been one blessed white male in the multi-ethnic sea of America. I never experienced any personal discrimination to cause me to believe in feminism or civil rights, but I believe in them because equality should be for everyone, without strings attached.

Little did I know at age five, or age twelve, or age twenty-two that my blessed life would benefit from the battles waged before me in the most meaningful way possible – because they cleared the way for me to have and hold the love of my life.

Could you imagine denying us legal recognition of our happiness just for something as trivial as the colors of our skin?

Your answer, I suspect, is “no.”

Then, consider that as of today one of my co-best-ladies and one of my dearest friends can only legally marry each other in two states in the country, solely because they are both women.

Why is it that we can all imagine denying them legal recognition of their happiness just for something as trivial as their gender?

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In my mind, the two are the same – the two couples, the two imagined denials, and the two inevitable, ineffable sets of basic human rights.

Just as I advocated for those rights before I ever knew they would effect my life so directly, I will continue to advocate for them even after my marriage is legally recognized – because everyone should have the same rights as Elise and I, regardless of race or gender.

That’s feminism. That’s civil rights. That’s equality.

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As I write this post there is a tiny dent in the dish of cat food we put out in the yard, hoping to lure back momma and her four stray kittens.

And, at the same time thousands of Californians have had the imagined denials cleared from their path to a legally recognized life of loving.

Choosing Your Family, and Cheers

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(This is the toast I gave yesterday at my mother’s wedding, prefaced by my extemporaneous introduction of “I’m Peter, and I’ll be your toaster.”)

Every family begins as a unit. The family you find yourself born into; the family you are given.

From there, how you define your family is up to life, to circumstance, to chance, and to you.

Whoever else we may have begun with, there was no questions that E—– and I were a unit – a matched pair, mother and son, adventurer and sidekick, driver and navigator, friend and peer.

We existed as that unit for years, occasionally inviting others (who are here today) into our fold. L—, the first person to ever lay eyes on my face. A—–, hers the first babies I ever held. M— and me, holed up in a blizzard, lip-synching to MTV.

Through all of that E—– raised me to be an overachiever, and in my immediate family there were precious few. So, it was at first with trepidation and then with increasingly welcome relief that I re-met J— in our merry carpool to community college, me getting a jumpstart on the next step in my education and J— rekindling a seemingly insatiable desire for knowledge.

Nothing against E—–, who to this day has committed to memory the names of all of my favorite Thundercats, G. I. Joes, and rock bands, but that summer J— was something almost entirely new in my life: an adult peer who would follow my wandering conversations on any topic and through any debate, and who – if I may be disarmingly frank for just a moment – did not (and does not) hesitate to call me on my teenaged bullshit.

As I broke away from our unit to go to Drexel I began to find my own family, and I wondered what E—–would do with herself in my absence. But, I had no need to worry: she took a class in world religions, became a fitness instructor and a realtor, and finally purchased her own home.

I know many of these actions were inspired, supported, and appreciated by J—, because how can you help but be inspired by him? He has one of the most inquisitive minds I know, and he was one of the few people I knew with a GPA higher than my own.

L— said a very true thing to us on the way to us on the way to the ceremony this afternoon, only slightly undercut by the fact that she was wearing a glue-on-moustache at the time in her capacity as our chauffeur.

She said: She and E—– and A—- were sisters who found each other. Sisters by choice.

That concept is meaningful to me – family by choice – especially now, as Elise and I are creating a family unit of our own. Because, aside from common eyes and noses, what reason do we have to be connected to the family we are given? We have to find them, to choose each other, because the true members of your family are your sisters and brothers… your friends and lovers… by choice.

So, here’s to E—– and J—, B— and E—, M—-, D—-, L— and J–, Elise and I, and all of the other families we have chosen to be a part of, today celebrating with one voice the creation of a beautiful new unit: J— and E—–.

Cheers.

Personalist

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(In case you wanted to take a spin on the personality typing lazy susan in the comfort of your own office, the three internet tests I’ve found to be most similar and consistent to the actual Myers-Briggs are two Jungian type tests at Human Metrics and Similar Minds, and a shinier modern version at 41 Questions.)

Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in.

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When I am out and about as much as I have been lately – happy hours and concerts and open mics and all that – I become fussily self-involved and introverted in all of my off-hours.

I’ve never had to sustain my “on” state four or five nights a week before, and it’s definitely taking it’s toll on my personality, subsequently turning down my volume and contrast until I can adequately recharge.

This always catches people who don’t know me that well off guard – namely, my co-workers. In my corporate life there is a lazy susan of personality quizzes that spins back around every year or so, and each new set of peers are like, “really? introvert? are you sure?”

You can’t really afford to be an introvert while being an account manager, so I can understand their confusion. But, everyone else knows this about me: I need to balance personal and public, output and input. And, sometimes even when I’m the communications guru the off state can make an appearance. Word spreads pretty quickly that I am having an in-service day.

On the homefront my darling Elise is, curiously, trapped inside of the introversion – the girl in the bubble – forced to act as the shoulder-angel to complement the devil in me. To her credit, she knows the call and response pretty well now – communicate, commiserate, and castigate.

(i.e., first find out why I am fussily inwards facing, then agree whole-heartedly with why the rest of the world sucks, and then finally tell me to shut the hell up about it and lighten the fuck up.)

So, yes, we all know this about me by now, having read and re-read endless iterations of the cycle here over the years. Sometimes the ebb is measured in weeks; lately it’s more minute to minute. Round up friends to go on a bar crawl, turn off my phone the next day. Buy twenty new CDs, eschew them to write songs all weekend. Et cetera.

What we maybe didn’t know was that I have a similar web ebb (webbeb?), insomuch as when I’m all over MySpace promoting the band and Facebook keeping in touch with people and Gmail haggling with various wedding musicians, and The 61 hearing awesome new music and, oh, my job that involves keeping tabs on people in email all day … when I’m doing all of that I’m in my on state, and then I get home with the intent to blog and I am off and I’d rather just write eighteen emails to myself and work on my 20k word critical essay on Hedwig then chronicle what is what for the internet at large.

Which is, as per my wont, my excuse to say here comes a backlogged tonne of thoughts and links and mental flotsam that I need to flush out of my system so I can talk about actual timely topics like politics, and my wedding, and how my band fucking rocks.

(Which, by the by, it does, and did, just three hours ago. But, before we get to that, first the further digression…)