My status update from facebook:
yes, of course, everybody dies a little more each day, but sometimes I can watch it dance across my face, see it stare back from my eyes. today, I realized something about myself as I watch a retail clerk try oh-so hard to be polite as she stared at my nose-ring. I realized that I choose to wear the ring as a means to give others a more harmless reason to discriminate against me than being gay or having HIV. I dread the day that my meds show up on my face; I hope I have the strength for those looks then, because I barely have it now…
To elaborate: Watching the struggle on that clerk’s face in deciding if she could manage to be courteous to a courteous person with a ring through his nose, it hit me very hard and very clearly why I so completely wear the damned thing everywhere these days: I would much rather be singled out for such an arbitrary reason as a visual aesthetic than for something so basic as my being gay or living with HIV. It is clever, I think, but perhaps also dismissive of my potential. Perhaps it is too easy of a distraction.
But I get so tired these days. The Midwest has become exhausting, even with the folks I know here that I adore.
Coming out of a visit to SF makes it all a bit more difficult. This trip was nice in that I didn’t have the horrible withdraws of the first two visits, as if I understood that I get future visits; I get to come back as a routine part of my life. That was a nice realization. But also, now being back for a few days, I feel the raised level of frustration and am hyper-aware of my surroundings and how the random people react to me.
Oh! An added surprise: my oldest sister was visiting a southern Missouri production facility for her job, and I got to have dinner with her before her flight home. We had Chipotle, for her first time. On the way to meet her, I briefly debated about removing my nose-ring; it is still something I do whenever I go home to visit with my family, mostly for my parents, even though everybody (except maybe my father) knows that the piercings exist. I didn’t want to take it out; I think it is time for my oldest sister to get me ‘as-is’, especially on my turf, as it were.
I got a simple, “Oh! Look at you and the stuff on your face.” It was perfect her, and a moment later, it never happened and we were on to a full-tilt, fast-paced catch-up conversation. Nice.
Oh! And the high-point of my otherwise crappy (from work) day…? My other sister, the mother-of-two-turned-power-lesbian-with-chihuahuas…? She posted to my facebook update with the following: You get the strength from those of us who love you and will always have your back and struggle to resist the urge to beat them up for it!
I do love my siblings…
gryphon's hole 