So I spent a few hours pushing my mother through the mall today, after her ortho appointment (“Just keep it in the boot and come back in a month.”
She didn’t like the women’s department in JC Penny. Too much sparkly stuff.
“Well this is the season for sparkles,” I said. “Don’t you want to shine in the long dark nights, keeping light and hope in the world?”
“No,” she plainly answered.
Ah, yes, well, that is one more place where she and I differ.
Got to see the documentary about the Cockettes today, the legendary troupe of artistes who sparkled, shine and shimmied past gender in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. Even their audience was in the act, open and playful.
So much to not like there; the anarchy, the drugs, the over the top self-indulgence.
But so much to love there, too; the celebration, the joy, the exuberance, the play, the Eros, the love.
I’m not in love with much of the aesthetic, but then again, I identify with Fayette, one of the born female members, much more than with the gay guys. She was just going for the glamour, past the expectations of being just a woman.
And now the holidays start, with a trek into the North Country for a thanksgiving celebration held around my brother’s daughter.
Will there be celebration, joy, exuberance, play, Eros & love as part of the celebration? Judging from long experience, I would say not.
You know, I often wonder if the last pastor who went chill on me did so because I said I wanted porn star lips. If so, that’s hilarious, because I haven’t had relations with anyone in a decade now, and before then my love love was so sparse to be negligible.
Maybe it would have been better to say I want Univision lips, like those bold and dramatic latin performers who smoke up the screen no matter what they do.
In any case, I know it wouldn’t have been useful to talk about the Cockettes, so many gone now after the scourge of AIDS in the 1980s, even though each and every one of them understood the spiritual power of a set of false lashes, understood that sparkling may be the best way we can celebrate the gifts we got from our creator.
It’s another holiday season where I feel the need to keep my light in a sack, or more accurately in jeans, polo shirt & fleece quarter-zip.
The season that celebrates the birth of light in the darkness will be dark for ne,
And just the thought of that makes me sad.
Hard to sparkle when you are sad.
Callan 