Post #23

I have just finished my fifth novel. You will be disappointed, though. It has nothing to do with rubber pants. Don't get me wrong--I love rubber pants. But where will we find rubber pants our size?

I should clarify, by the way, that by "finished" I don't really mean "finished." I mean I have completed rough drafts of five novels now. Only one of them has undergone enough revision to make it anywhere close to publishable, and even then my thesis committee had major issues with it.

But still, it's nice to feel like I've done something.

And I promise my next post will go to great extents to point out what a loser I really am because, believe me, I'm as tired of the bragging as you are.

Another Update

This afternoon I was covering the children's desk while the children's staff had their meeting, as I am in the habit of doing on Tuesdays. And one of the staffmembers comes up to me and says, "Master Fob, I haven't read your Dialogue articles yet, but my daughter's friend asked if I know a Master Fob who works at the library and he said he really liked your articles." Then she leaned in close and whispered, "Is it true?" Assuming that the unstated antecedent of "it" was either "your personal essay" or "the fact that you are gay" and not "this rumor I heard that you eat live rats" or "the Church of Scientology," I said, "Yes." She smiled and said, "Well, I think you are a great guy."

Then later, once I was back on my side of the library and a while after I saw another children's librarian take Dialogue from the shelf, that first children's librarian came to my desk, a bit red-eyed, and said, "Master Fob, all I have to say is that you are one of the neatest people I know."

And now I feel like I'm bragging, and that sort of cheapens her kind compliment. Sorry. The moral of this story is not meant to be that Master Fob is a cool person, but that Master Fob has some pretty cool friends.

The Time Machine

I don't like to think of myself as a follower and I promise I usually discard chain emails without forwarding them, clapping my hands three times, or touching my nose with my big toe, but Editorgirl did it and my curiosity has been piqued.

Here are the instructions:

1. Delve into your blog.
2. Find the twenty-third post.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

Here's mine:
"But where will we find rubber pants our size?"

Huh. Whodathunkit?

Proud Father

S-Boogie sings along to "Killing Me Softly." Very clearly. This is a two-year-old. She can barely say, "I want some more cereal, please," (and the "please" only with coercion) but she can sing, "Killing me softly with his song / With his song / Telling my whole life with his words."

Today I am a success.

My First Review (sort of)

From the Association for Mormon Letters mailing list (which I've only been checking again recently to see if they're talking about me):

Date: 2005-09-24 20:01 -600
To: aml-list
Subject: Re: [AML] Double Standards in Homosexuality (was Review: COX, LatterDays)
Did y'all read the articles on this topic in the new Dialogue? First one is a personal memoir of surprising candor by a young man telling about his same-sex feelings and how he decided to get married anyway. Then two experts write a response, and the overall feel is that they don't think--the first one, anyway--his marriage will survive, because he's a 5 on the 1-6 straight-gay scale, and the first guy doesn't think anyone at 5 or 6 should marry hetero-ly, but if they're more middle-of-the-scale bisexual then they may have a decent shot at long-term success (well, it's not that simplistic, but that's the bottom line I took out of it). Then the young man writes a last piece.

Quite a provocative quartet of articles that overall raise your compassion, if you're able to get your hands on them. I snuggled with my wife within the hour after reading them, and I found myself wondering in extremis what it would be like for people that far right on the scale to try to make a hetero marriage work. The main literary tie-in here is the great honesty and well-wrought details--his find in the park is haunting--of the young man's memoir portion.

Hee hee.

Confidential

I just got a long letter from my mom in response to the essays in Dialogue. She had read the first essay ("Getting Out"), but she had not read the responses written by psychologist-types, nor had she read my response to them. Her letter was mostly detailing the thoughts she had while reading the essays, and some additional thoughts about what a wonderful person I am and how she feels bad because she wasn't a better mom. (For the record, I'd say she did a good job, especially considering her circumstances.) And then, toward the end of the letter, was a bit of rather shocking (to me, anyway) information:

My bishop had told her, three years before I did, that I "thought I might be homosexual." Apparently, he needed to tell her in order to get her approval before referring me to a counselor at LDS Social Services.

I am annoyed. Philosophically, more than anything. One assumes that when one tells something of this nature (or anything of any nature) to an ecclesiastical leader that one does so in strict confidence. I don't care that I was seventeen at the time and it was my mom he spoke with. Surely there are kids who go to their church leaders specifically because they don't want to talk to their parents. What if I hadn't told her because I knew she was a violent homophobe and I feared for my life? No, this wasn't the case--I hadn't told her because I didn't feel comfortable telling pretty much anyone at that point, and more than anything I didn't want to add one more thing to her list of worries--but still whether and when to tell her should have been my decision. If he needed to tell her in order to refer me, he should have said that was the case and asked for my permission to do so.

It's a moot point. When I didn't say anything about it after a while she assumed it had been a passing phase. And I did tell her, eventually, so it doesn't change anything now. And even if I were angry enough to call the guy up and yell at him or try to get him excommunicated or sue him or something ridiculous like that, he died seven years ago. And now that you know he's dead, I feel obligated to say that, overall, he was a nice guy. He was.

Despite the fact that, the first time I tried to tell him I was gay, his solution was for me to join the football team.

I Should Complain More Often

Today one of my good friends at work told me she read my essays last night. She really liked them, and told me I'm very brave. We talked for quite a while about the essays and how even though she's not gay, as a 30-year-old single woman, she relates to a lot of the things I talk about, like the fear of never having something that at least part of you really wants. I was flattered and happy to know that she cared enough to read it.

AND "Take It Easy" by the Fugees premiered tonight on an NYC radio show. The file I just downloaded is taped off the show so it's not a high-quality recording, but it's very tingly to hear Lauryn, Clef, and Pras all on the same song, and even more to hear L flowing over a strong hip-hop beat, after a few years of hearing her mostly singing on unplugged-style acoustic tracks. And she sounds happy, which is cool because she's seemed kind of grumpy and stand-offish for a couple years now.

And now I can go to bed with a smile on my face. After I figure out a lesson plan for tomorrow morning.