"The delightful and dreary sides of gay life. The views and experiences of a thirty something guy trying to navigate his way through life. Sometimes funny, sometimes serious, but always entertaining."
It’s not often that you get the opportunity to spend an evening in the company of royalty. And this past weekend I had just such an opportunity. Hubby and I were invited to sixtieth birthday dinner party at the Queens’ house and as a result of hierarchy, for a brief four hours, I was demoted to the royal status of Princess. But I didn’t mind my royal demotion as the guest list was far too impressive for me to be bothered by it. After all how many people get the chance to be in the company of a Dutch Baroness, a lesbian couple who has been together for well over 6 decades and other gay couples who have been together longer than I am old? It truly was a fabulous evening and a night that I once again got to appreciate how far we have come in terms of gay rights.
Last Friday night hubby, I and the matriarch of the family were invited to the birthday dinner of hubby’s uncle’s life partner. Like all queer event’s the guest list was well thought out, the house immaculately decorated with elaborate bouquets of freshly picked flowers from their French style garden. The large dinner table was dressed to perfection with the good China and silverware being proudly displayed in such a manner that it would have made any ambassador’s wife green with envy. Upon arrival and as the customary introductions were made I soon came to the realization that this evening was going to be very interesting one.
You see, amongst the quests was a Dutch Baroness. Dressed in a little black number which perfectly showcased her beautiful legs and with her stately shoulders draped with a shawl that accentuating a striking and expensive looking necklace, she had an air of mystique about her. She came to South Africa 25 years ago, leaving her family behind in a town called Enschede which borders with Germany. It became apparent that her relationship with her family was tense and she had rejected her royal heritage. She was curiously stingy with details and even though, on the surface, she had a bounty of tails to tell about her past, I did get the sense that she was guarding some sort of secret.
As luck would have it I was seated next to the Baroness during dinner and I was determined to learn her secret. The only problem was I could only understand about half of what she was saying. She would shift between languages with such ease I came to realize that she thought she was continuously speaking the same language, but she wasn’t. She would start a conversation in Dutch, move to English, then to French and end in German. With my Dutch and French being as rusty as a dirty old nail I struggled, but with great effort I still tried to follow and interrogate her best I could.
Never in my live had I met a woman of Nobel heritage with such a potty mouth. The breath of her curse word repertoire far exceeded my own and she even taught me a new Dutch curse word – “neuken”. Suffice to say I was immediately impressed and liked her a whole lot more! The only curse word she didn’t like and had an enormous problem if used by women of any age is “cunt”. She explained that she just can’t understand why women would speak badly of their own women parts in such a distasteful way. And I have to agree she did make an excellent point! But the Baroness wasn’t the only interesting person at the party; there was also the other queer royalty.
I cannot imagine what it must have been like to be gay in the 1930’s and 1940’s. It was a very different world back then and far less tolerant. Yet, there were gay folk who managed to find life partners and live full productive and happy lives, albeit in secret. One such couple was seated across from me, a lesbian couple in their mid to late eighties who have been together just over 60 years. They met in their early twenties, fell in love and have been together ever since. The only children they have ever had were their dogs, one of which escorted them to this dinner. Speaking to them was like going back in time.
They and another couple, who have been together 25 years, reminisced over a time where being gay was illegal, how they had to meet in secret and how getting married always seemed like a dream they thought would be forever unattainable. They spoke about how the police raided suspected gay parties, barged into houses of their gay friends and to the extend they sometimes had to go to conceal their relationships. As we spoke I noticed a glimmer of envy in their eyes, as I could tell they looked at us, the younger generation, and wonder if we realized how profoundly lucky we are. I could see in the older lady’s eyes that she wondered if we would use our freedom and opportunities wisely. After all we, the younger generation, have achieved our freedom and the civil rights we have today due to the battles they started fighting when we were only a twinkle in our parents’ eyes.
There are days that I forget how lucky I am. Lucky that I can be openly gay. Lucky that I could marry the man I love. Lucky that we can have children and lucky that my human rights are acknowledged and protected. Some days I forget that not all generations were so fortunate, and some days I forget that in other countries in the world there are gay folk who still live in fear and in secret. It is nice to sometimes just receiving a small dose of a reality check that puts your life in perspective. In this case it was fully achieved by our gay Royalty. They lived with discrimination, intolerance and ignorance and yet they survived. They have been together many decades and they are still in love.
Driving home that night I had allot to think about. I thought about the Baroness and the secret she hides and whether I will ever uncover her true past. I tried to imagine what my life would have been like had I lived in the 1940’s and whether my husband and I would have been strong enough, in that period, to sustain our relationship. I thought about how brave the two frail old ladies must have been to have been a relationship during a time it wasn’t accepted and I tried to imagine them 50 years younger. That evening I decided to never let a day go by without acknowledging and protecting all the blessing I have: my accepting family, friends, my marriage and my civil rights. Because far too often in life we take the small things for granted, and in life more times than not, it is the small things that matter!
There's nothing like a good old fashioned pool snog fest to make a point. Din [A] Tod, a German musician, recently released this music video for his song "Cold Star" and called it "an appeal for the acceptance of your own and other's sexual identity". A bit raunchy it may be, but it does bring the point home loud and clear. Watch for yourself.
When I was little there was a show on telly called ‘My Two Dads’ about a girl being raised by two gay men and I always wished I lived in that show. Ok, that and I would daydream that I was actually a princess who was swapped at birth and one day my ‘real’ parents would swoop down in a great big helicopter with two rotors and rescue me - on the despised school grounds naturally.
I also had a fabulously flamboyant gay uncle who would bring me fantastic gifts from all over the world that would send my imagination on a wild ride every time, I had my journey around the globe mapped out in an Atlas before I was 10. I LOVED spending time with him, listening to his tales from far and wide - I’m pretty sure he edited a lot of his stories to make them suitable for my young ears, especially the ones that were set in Bangkok, but still! So, clearly I was destined to be a fag hag, I didn’t stand a chance!
I’ve never really had a lesbian friend before. Well, I did in High School, but I didn’t know she was gay until I found out she was telling people I was her girlfriend, so technically that doesn’t count. Lezzie’s in the family, yes. But no actual friends.
Suddenly I found myself becoming a lettie bag and befriending one for the first time at my *cough* rather advanced age! A real lezzie. A dyke lezzie. I call Jonesey my Gentledyke. I don’t know whether she can fix cars or do plumbing but she is one of the few people who can hold her own in the Rabbit Hole almost as well as I can when it comes to alcohol consumption – that doesn’t make me a lesbian, it just means I have a cast iron liver... *ahem*
She’s quite a little lezzie but she has already leapt to my defence more than once. If my passport ever allows me to go to the kind of bar that brawls break out in on a regular basis I would happily pick her and her ‘Beast’ to have my back any day. Come to think of it, I would NEVER look for shit with them either. Beast looks fukken scary man, like she could break you in half with one hand tied behind her back! Rumour has it that she’s actually a very gentle soul but I wouldn’t try my luck.
Anyway, Jonesey and I get on so well that she has been welcomed into our jealously guarded inner circle of merry misfits BUT not so well that Himself will finally have that oh-so-clichéd fantasy fulfilled of seeing me with another woman. I just don’t see the point of lesbian sex, I mean, what do they do??
I’ve had many gay men as friends, some I’ve booted out of the closet, some are clinging to that door handle for dear life and some are Out and Proud but there are two who are especially dear to me.
One of my oldest friends is an absolutely fabulous drag queen known as Tarren with more than his fair share of gay beauty titles who is a hairdresser by day and a flamboyant queen by night. We always have a scream of a time in the Rabbit Hole – he also flirts shamelessly with my husband but fortunately Himself just takes it all in his stride. He’s actually one of the few drag queens I know who doesn’t lip-sync or wear a wig and lives his character, the only difference is that when he does a show he puts his slap on a LOT thicker. Tarr can sing anything from ABBA to Crash Test Dummies with perfect pitch and is blessed with a mane of beautifully coiffed long blonde hair, his brows are always perfectly plucked and his manicure and make-up immaculate. He can also be a total blonde... We were at Woolworths one day buying a few bottles of pink Veuve Cliquot bubbly for his birthday celebrations and as we were walking out of the store he turns to me with a look of undiluted horror on his face and says ‘Gawd ange, that’s fucken expensive for Woollies champagne!’ I was on the floor!!
He’s so camp that he’s my secret weapon to weed out the undercover homophobes in my life – and he loves playing that game with me. There are few things that amuse me more than dragging him along to a stuffy family gathering and watching people pretend to be cool with him and the whole gay thing because they know they’ll get a bitch slap from me if they don’t play nice. Hey - anything to get through those things, a secret stash of Bloody Mary fixings in my handbag doesn’t always do the trick you know.
My sister-in-law is one of those unfortunate souls who have zero social IQ as well as being a 45 year old spinster with the emotions and mannerisms of a 10 year old - I’m talking cutesy hair clips, matching plastic jewellery, the whole shebang. I have a very strong suspicion that she’s a lesbian who hasn’t cottoned on to the fact yet, but anyway, that’s a story for another day. She’s always desperately wanted to have gay friends and from the moment she laid eyes on the fabulousity that is Miss Tarren she has stuck to his side like shit to a wool blanket whenever we’re all together and I swear he can smell her desperation. He takes an almost cruel delight in saying things to her that he knows will shock her, yet the poor clueless cow keeps coming back for more. She made the grave mistake one night of telling him she does Scottish Dancing once a week and has been for years.
Now, she’s a rather uhm... big girl with the grace of a Sumo wrestler and I don’t think Tarren could resist the temptation of seeing her bouncing around the Rabbit Hole so he asked her to demonstrate. Encouraging comments like ‘Oh ange, you’re so light on your feet’ and ‘It’s just like skipping, show me again’ had the rest of us rushing outside like a herd of buffalo before we fell apart in front of her. After the demonstration he turned to me and said ‘Fuck ange, I hope those classes she’s been taking are free!’ Tarr is such a bitch (and I love it) but before you judge you need to know that Himself’s sister has given me all kinds of hell in the 25 years I’ve known her, so it was time for some light revenge. He’s also got a potty mouth that would make a sailor blush and I wouldn’t want him to be any other way...
I’ve also learnt the hard way NEVER to look when he thrusts his cell phone in my face and says ‘Oooooh Ange! Look here!’ Let’s just say that he’s really into Bears and I’ve seen more hairy asses and ball bags than any woman ever should!
That brings me to my gay husband Hawtentawt. From the moment we first laid eyes on each other something clicked and the Terrible Twins were born! We can gossip without saying a word to each other, a look is all it takes. Unfortunately sometimes those looks cause snorts and chortles and all sorts of sound effects that get us into trouble at the worst times.
Himself and Hawts get on like a house on fire and over weekends we’re the Three Musketeers - we cook, drink, talk shit, party and generally get up to no good together. Hawts doesn’t look gay at all and is very proud of that fact – girlies are checking him out constantly, if only the poor things knew he prefers cock! Himself calls him ‘a straight man’s moffie’ and they take the piss out of each other constantly – but let anyone else say anything negative about either of them and all hell breaks loose!
Unfortunately Hawts doesn’t get on that well with Tarren - he says he’s gay because he likes MEN, not FAIRIES! I don’t have the heart to tell Tarr this, although personally I think it’s because Hawts doesn’t want to share his fag hag! Lolz...
I’ll never forget the day Hawts met my in-laws for the first time. Nobody and I mean nobody who’s ever met them can wrap their heads around the fact that Himself is related to that lot – they’re just so... uhm... left of centre. Anyway, it was Christmas day a couple of years ago, we were all doing the handing out presents bit and Hawts was sitting sort of behind everyone with a very bemused look on his face observing the curious interactions taking place. Remember I mentioned my sister-in-laws emotional age? Well, one of the gifts we bought her was a battery operated cup that mixes your hot chocolate for you. Very cutesy. My mother-in-law took one look at the wrapped box and the batteries we put in the gift bag and said, completely deadpan, ‘I hope that’s not a Dildat’. I was in absolute pieces, I couldn’t even look at Hawts and he made a very discreet and quick exit from the room. Hawts can also be a real bitch – he found a Chrissie hat somewhere that said ‘Ho Ho Ho’ on it and gave it to my sis-in-law to wear, telling her how good it looked on her. Poor cow had us take a picture and made it her Facebook profile pic!
Shortly after we met I was diagnosed with a brain tumour and where most ‘new’ friends would’ve run screaming for the hills not daring to look back in case they turned into a pillar of salt, Hawts was there for me. I mean THERE for me. Loooooong story but it involved countless hours of hand holding, doctor’s visits, hospital visits, blood, tears, laughter, head shaving, 70 metal staples, a Bride of Frankenstein lookalike, a titanium plate, home visits, gallons and gallons of ice-cream, Will and Grace, Queer as Folk, movies, flowers, pyjamas, wigs, prescription drugs, weed and tattoo parlours. After the amount of morphine injections and Vitamin B shots he’s given me he also knows the layout of my ass far better than he should.
Since our friendship started we’ve both had more than our share of the shit pile life can sometimes be and that’s why we make a point of having as much fun as possible. We’re both Piscean so luckily we have a healthy dose of black humour – we need that as we both suffer from ‘foot in mouth disease’ too. We sit for hours discussing who is banned from our funerals and we both know where our respective hidden stash is we don’t want anyone to come across when we die, especially our mothers! We have agreed under pain of haunting each other to uphold our pinkie swear promises regarding these incredibly important issues.
Last year we talked Hawts’ ex into coming to Gay Pride 2010 in Johannesburg with us. Being a Medical Professional *said in respectfully hushed tones* who comes from a much respected and well known line of Doctors, Doc doesn’t ever really let his hair down and it was his very first Gay Pride. I found that hard to believe until I saw the way he carried on that day – we practically had to carry him to the car when we wanted to leave and he was protesting all the way. He was a great sport and in all the time I’ve known him I’ve never seen him let loose the way he did that day, like a kid in a candy store! On pain of death I had to promise not to put any pics of him without his carnival mask on in my Facebook album.
By the time we got there we were already quite well lubricated, having bubbly for breakfast gives one quite a good buzz – especially if you skip the food part. We chose drinks instead of food all day and were like energizer bunnies on speed. On the way home to the ‘after party’ where our friends and Himself were waiting for us Doc spent most of the journey hanging out of the sun roof flying the massive gay flag we’d brought with us in one hand, drink in the other and lustily singing along to ‘Alejandro’. We were all full of beans, bragging about how we were going to ‘rock the house’ when we got there. By 7 o’clock we were all passed out cold and the party went on just fine without our glitteringly entertaining company, so that didn’t exactly pan out the way we’d planned... erm...
Three weeks later an official letter was delivered to Doc’s practice and his receptionist opened it to be confronted with a pic taken by a camera on the N1 of Doc’s Range Rover happily speeding away with the Gay Flag flying proudly out of the sunroof. As I explained to him it could’ve been much worse, at least the picture isn’t of him hanging out of the sunroof too, topless with his black painted lips and nails!
Hawts is single and has been for ages but after the last 2 dates I nagged him into going on I don’t think any will be happening again for a while – the one guy apparently had a ‘bulging eyeball’ and the other one ‘funny fingers’. Gawd, he is SO full of shit!! I really wish he would get himself a partner but clearly any prospective candidate would have to be thoroughly checked out first PLUS he would have to fit in with the merry misfits – quite a tall order.
I really have the best of both worlds and feel very blessed with the gorgeous men I have in my life who wrap me in cotton wool. A Husband AND a Gusband I adore who will do anything for me. Hawts does everything with me that Himself isn’t into and Himself does the rest. How lucky am I bitches??
So, to all the fugly homophobes out there I flip a big fat cow’s hoof and say fuck you all. You don’t know what you’re missing. Either that, or you DO know and you’re terrified you come rocketing out of the closet by accident. Pierre wrote a post for my blog a few weeks back entitled ‘Beware the Sodomites Want to Recruit You’. As far as I’m concerned the Sodomites are more than welcome to take over the world, they’re much more fun than most straight people anyway. As for recruiting me – I’m not too sure about that, I love a good dick as much as any gay man and could never give it up and become a lettie! ;-)
Till next time Butterflies....
GeeGee Curtained xOx
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It's Raining Men - This is for you Hurricane Irene!
Lady Gaga's new music video Yoü And I was released this week and once again it doesn't disappoint. Gaga also makes for a rather handsome guy as well, if I do say so myself, and a Mermaid if you are into that kinda thing. Check out the music video.
Recently I discovered a hilarious online web series called Web Therapy. It made all my funny bones tickle. So, seeing as I am a tad strapped for time in the blogging department at the moment I decided to share it with you all. The freakishly talented Meryl Streep and Lisa Kudrow had me in stitches. So enjoy!
We love Lady Gaga and some very creative folks out there love Mother Monster so much that they create the most amazing parodies of her music videos.Here is a must see parody preformed by "Weird Al" Yankovic.This is his take of Born this Way.Enjoy!
Oh. My. God. Apparently there is a cure for homosexuality and it is to be found in Ghana! Who knew, nobody informed Queer HQ and I sure didn’t get the memo! The Presbyterian Church of Ghana (PCG) apparently is to establish therapy centres for homosexual “victims” to undergo counselling, rehabilitation and some good old fashioned let’s “Pray the Gay Away”. According to the PCG homosexuality is spreading there like the herpes and they have taken it upon themselves to curb the infection rate with their unique cure. How utterly noble of them, don’t you think? With my homosexuality threatened with a possible cure, and my fagalicious ass quivering with excitement at the prospect of some steamy homosexual therapy, I could not help but wonder just how exactly the PCG plans on rehabilitating the Queers of Ghana.
Firstly as an experienced professional practicing homosexual I must say I never felt like a victim of my sexual preference. Sure there was that time that I had to concede that I no longer fitted into my sexy leather pants and had to accept that my six-pack was a distant memory. And even though I did cry like an emotionally disturbed child whilst wiggling around on my bedroom floor still trying to force myself into those pretty tight pants, still I did not feel like a victim - I just felt fat! Sure, after that experience I joined the gym and for months was tortured with endless hours of cardio training, lifting weights and running like a gerbil on the treadmill, but not once did I feel like a victim of my homosexuality. So why do the PCG believe homosexuals are victims?
Well, to label people as victims of homosexuality and suffering because of it creates the impression that queers need saving. After all if there is nothing wrong with a group of people why try to fuck with their lives? The only thing that is truly causing suffering for the queers in this world is the utter ignorance and intolerance of people whose target audiences are the uneducated masses resulting in us being forced to suffer their stupidity. I mean really, do you think it is fun for us walking around in our well planned and immaculately accessorised outfit and it not be celebrated. Instead, many queers in countries like Ghana are too afraid to express themselves with their clothes and are burdened with having to tone down their appearance and go into hiding in plain sight. God forbid you look gay in Ghana! But for the queers in Ghana the PCG professes to have a cure, a cure that will miraculously alleviate the symptoms of homosexuality. So what would that cure be?
Apparently the PCG will cure homosexuality with the establishment of therapy centres. Oh my... what a well thought out plan. We all know how effective therapy is in converting homosexuals now don’t we. I am a living walking example of the fact that therapy is as likely to make a gay guy straight as it is to make a straight guy gay. Sure you get the odd porn star that is gay-for-pay, the prison inmate that indulges in a spot of prostate thumping, but being gay is so much more than just sex. Something the PCG clearly do not understand. No amount of therapy will take away a gay person’s attraction to the same sex, it will only repress it. Nor will trying to pray the gay away succeed in producing a well adjusted happy heterosexual, it will only result in a self-hating, deeply fearful and inhibited person who will end up pretending to be something he/she is not. As for rehabilitating homosexuals don’t get me started...
What will happen to the gay guys being cured of homosexuality if they fall of the proverbial straight wagon and right onto a penis? Will it be like the AA where there’s a 12 step program and meetings start with “Hallo, My Name is Pierre and I am a Homosexual. It’s been 3 months since I last sucked cock”. And if you do end up with a cock in your mouth will you lose your sobriety pin and have to phone your sponsor? Will they enforce laws further criminalizing homosexuality and threaten gay people into faking being straight? Uganda is again trying to push for the acceptance of their genocide bill, not only criminalizing homosexuality further but could even see homosexuality being punishable by death. Will Uganda also be interested in Ghana’s earth shattering, psychological breakthrough new gay cure? Well I would not hold my gay fairy assed breath. It is an idea dreamed up by an ignoramus that probably secretly yearns to get some dick up his anus. What is Africa coming to?
Sitting here on the Southernmost tip of Africa and looking up north, I am nothing less than ashamed of the continent on which I live and the way it treats its people. People are dying of famine in Somalia, there is civil unrest in Libya and I won’t even talk about Zimbabwe. HIV, poverty and violence are rampant and yet some countries choose to focus their attention on homosexuality. Like it’s the gays’ fault the economy has gone to shit, there are droughts, crime and that there are civil wars. But, like I have said so many times before, this will not stop certain organized religions and their morally corrupt benefactors to savagely exploits minority groups for their own evil gains. Unfortunately for us, the gays make for easy pickings on a continent that seems to lose more of its integrity each passing day. I am so not rushing out to buy a plane ticket to go to Ghana. I am perfectly content being gay and that’s not going away.
I never thought the words séance and I would ever end up in the same sentence on my blog, but is has. You see this past weekend hubby, I and two of our closest friends decided to make contact with the afterlife. It was not to be your typical Saturday night. Now, I am not completely new to the occult and I have attended a couple of exorcisms, hauntings and spiritual cleansings but never before did I attend a séance. So I was in for what promised to be an interesting experience. And an interesting experience it was.
For those of you who read my blog regularly will know I have shared a couple of homes with spirits who did not transition and lingered here on earth past their time. Some were friendly and others (like the guy in our current home) got up to some mischief. But never before did I attempt to make contact with them or had I any desire to communicate with them. I minded my own business and expected them to do the same. So when the subject matter of holding a séance came up, I was perplexed: On the one hand I was oddly curious but on the other hand I was strangely unsettled at the prospect of conjuring up a spirit that otherwise would have been at peace. But, at the end, curiosity won over my reservations.
Like most things in my life I rarely enter into a new experience if I haven’t Googled it, as I am not a big fan of surprises. You’d be amazed about how much literature there are on the Internet about ghosts and séances. Some websites clearly miss the plot and others do provide legitimate and credible advice. Having done my research and being satisfied that the four of us who would be preforming the séance will be safe the scene was set, and we were ready to communicate with the hereafter. Fortunately both my friends have successfully preformed séances before and their experience would come in handy.
A séance is not something you preform as a joke or as a party trick. Your faith must be strong and there is no room for cynicism. Spirits won’t tell you next week’s lotto numbers nor will they always tell you what you want to hear or what you ask. With this fresh in the back of our minds we started our séance. Sitting around a small table, candles lit and the smell of incense in the air we closed our eyes and proceeded to say the Lord’s Prayer. In a pensive and relaxed state of mind we asked to have a positive experience and that no bad spirits or spirits that harbour malevolence to come through. And with that the séance commenced.
This past week was the six year anniversary of my mother’s passing and one would think that I would have wanted to speak with her during our séance. After all I do miss her terribly and even though time does pass some wounds never heal. But I did not speak to my mom; instead we spoke to someone else who passed away more recently. It is a strange experience communicating with someone who has gone to the other side, at first making contact is strained and they appear disorientated, confused even. But their message does come through eventually. And this is what the voice from the hereafter wanted us to know.
“I’m dead... ...I’m OK... ...OK...” was the first message she gave us. She seemed at peace with her transition, but unbeknown to us she had a more poignant message for my friend. There was a letter she wrote and was adamant that my friend find it. She was not forthcoming about the content of the said letter but suffice to say the gist of the letter bare significance for her. The séance lasted about an hour, and two more spirits made an appearance. One had a sense of humour and was clearly bored and did not contribute much to our experience. The other was a man who acted a guide and should we hold a séance again, I trust that he will make another appearance. After an hour we were all pretty drained yet we felt exhilarated. There is a sense of comfort you get from knowing that once you leave this world that it is not the end.
Our séance was a success and left me feeling at peace. It is not the kind of thing I would recommend just anybody do. You are not always sure who will come through and what message they may have for you. Knowing now that I can communicate with the hereafter will I in future want to talk to my mother? Who knows, there is always that possibility. But for now I am satisfied that she is in a good place and when the time comes and I am ready, she may have a message for me that I will be eager to hear. After all the voices from the hereafter speaks only to those who are willing and prepared to listen.
The FCKH8 campaign (of which I am a huge supporter) made this hilarious video listing their top 5 reasons to ban gay marriage. They do make some fabulous points.
There are times when the natural environment has it in for me. And Mother Nature, like most women I know, has moods. This past weekend Mother Nature and I had a little run in, that gave “it’s no skin of my nose” a whole different yet literal meaning.
Everyone is entitled to the odd “blond moment” and I had such a moment this past weekend. You see on Sunday I decided to do a spot of gardening. Why I felt this necessary escapes me. Our gardener did a mighty fine job the day before and there wasn’t really any need for it, but I indulged the urge regardless. As I was watering our flowers and admiring the odd butterfly, I noticed a branch that was half dead and had the potential of becoming an eyesore. So, I decided to cut it down. A simple enough exercise you might say, so what could go wrong?
Well, when cutting down a tree branch it is advisable not to stand underneath it when cutting it down - a simple logical deduction that escaped me. The branch did come down alright. It came down on my fucking nose. Proximity and gravity can be bitched! As it hit me, I had a very lucid moment and recall thinking that I knew God had a plan for my life and I wasn’t quite sure how this fitted into the bigger scheme of things. As the nerve endings’ pain signals didn’t have far to travel to my brain the pain was instantaneous. And as all head wounds do, my nose bled profusely. As hubby was helping to clean and plaster my nose, I came to the horrible realization - it was going to leave a scab. A big nasty SCAB on my very big nose! I have always joked that I wanted a nose job, but this was not what I had in mind.
Having an injury is one thing but having a self inflicted injury on the one prominent feature of my face for the entire world to see as a whole other story. So came Monday morning and having to go to work with a scab that seemed to be growing by the bloody hour, I did what any gay boy worth his tiara would do – I reached for the makeup. Anyone that has ever visited a Mac Cosmetic counter will confirm that base and concealer are designed around your specific skin tone and not around bruises and scabs. I don’t know where abused women shop for their makeup, and on Monday morning I sure wished I could call one of them.
Spending a good twenty minutes using the makeup I had, ladling concealer onto the scab as one would do with icing on a cake, I managed to lessen its visibility. Or at least that’s what I told myself and choose to believe. When I arrived at work I decided to go about my business and pretend that nothing was wrong. Well, just because you pretend nothing is wrong does not mean other people will pretend with you. As much as I had hoped nobody would notice the bloody mess on my nose, they did! Some colleagues were very courteous at restraining themselves from asking me about it, and others were not.
Being rather embarrassed of my blond moment and the resulting injury I eventually conceded defeat and decided to put the whole incident out there. After all I didn’t want my colleagues thinking I was in an abuse marriage with a husband not chivalrous enough to beat me on parts of my body where my clothes could hide the bruises. Sure they all had a good chuckle on my behalf and some probably even went home and told their spouses of the stupid thing the gay guy at work did, but at least the massive scab was explained. But work was not the only problem.
I have theory, every time I have an appointment with my orthodontist I arrive with some injury or ailment. The first time I saw her was after my cosmetic procedure and I looked like I was in a fight and had lost. The second time I arrived with an eye infection which looked like I had burst a vain in my right eye, and now the nose thing. Not once did she ask me about what had happened, but I am sure she wonders. Maybe there is a direct correlation between my orthodontist appointments and me getting hurt.
I will not be cutting down any more branches off trees for some time to come. For the next ten days or so I will have to walk around with a scab on my nose. I will not explain it to strangers at the crockery store line who look at me sympathetically, nor will I explain it to people at meetings. It’s embarrassing and I am so glad I do not have a job in television.
