Gulity Pleasure Confessions

This is a great exercise.
Write down your list of guilty pleasures and/or things that you don't normally confess outloud.
Have fun and have no shame.

Today's list, in no particular order

1- I love Bon Jovi, the man. The band is just ok.
2- I'm addicted to "Classical Stretch" on PBS.
3-Modern Gothic romance novels.
4-Disneyland, I could just live there.
5-Hollyoaks, the 90210 of the BBC.
6-Blogging.
7-Googling ex-boyfriends.
8-Using the Gateway exit on 24 before the tunnel to get ahead by one minute.
9-Reading bad magazines at the pool.
10-Ned's Declassified on Nick

I Need A Gay Boyfriend

Normally grocery shopping doesn't inspire me to think much more than "what the f*** am I gonna make for dinner" and "do we need toilet paper?" Today was a different story.

At Safeway, buying supplies for our brand new kitty, Hershey, as I lifted up the 25 pound bag of kitty litter from the bottom of my cart and grunted it onto the conveyor, the Safeway checker said, and I quote, "Wow! Look at those big guns! You go girl!"

Two thoughts flooded into my mind. The first, coming from the front part of my brain called the lowselfesteemum thought, " he's just being nice to the chubby old lady." So I said to him, "yeah, there's a little life left in the old guns," and he immediately reproached me. "Oh my god, what are you like 40? You look great, and I don't get tips so I don't have to say that."

The second thought that rushed into my mind was "he's gay!" (Now, I'll put up the obligatory disclaimer and say if you don't like homosexual stereotypes, please click away.) My favorite person of the day had a perfectly pressed Safeway shirt, he was well coiffed, his manicured hands made me want to put my jagged-nailed hands in my pockets and here comes the worst stereotype of all, his voice was gay. He was gay, all the way.

After I thanked him for his compliment and he smiled a pie at me, I immediately felt blue. I was reminded that in the past, I always had a gay boyfriend. Yes, I'll admit it, I was a fag hag and proud of it. I'm here, I like queers, get used to it. Having this lovely young man, in his high pitched, fab voice declare that I was fab made me want to adopt him. Or at least look up my old friends who were always fun, warm, open, gushing with their compliments, into adventure and always sincere.

I miss my gay boyfriends. They've either moved away or moved on as friends do, especially when the straight ones get married and have kids and move to the suburbs like yours truly. One even passed away from the dreaded A. But that's another blog.

Not long ago, at a dinner party with one of my lesbian friends I mentioned the same thing, that I missed my gay boyfriends. I said that somehow most of my lesbian friendships were somewhat intact and that I was no longer a fag hag, I was the opposite. I asked her, "what do you call straight women who have lesbians for pals?" and she shot back, "wannabes." I almost fell off my seat laughing. While your gay boyfriends make you feel fabulous, your gay girlfriends make you laugh with their bayonet humor.

Either way, friends are friends no matter what they do in bed and as Mr. Lennon said, in my life I've loved you all. Here's to my gay boyfriends from the past. Thanks for making me feel like a million bucks. I hoped I returned the compliments. May you have a cocktail in your hand and a....well let's leave it at that.

Summer Swimmingly

Ahhh, Summer.

The word alone whisks me back to the endless hours of time on the beach as a child. I can smell Coppertone (they should make a perfume of that stuff) and feel the crackling layer of salt on my skin. I see the buckets of shells I collected to display on my shelves. I hear my brother playing splash bomb in the waves. I taste the crunchy corn on the cob and crisp, cold watermelon. I feel the drool on my cheek as I wake up from a nap on my towel in the hot sand, ending a dream about catching fireflies.

I remember being allowed to watch tv during the late afternoon after a long day at the beach, a supreme treat in our household. Now that I am a mother I realize a) why my mother didn't want us watching too much tv, especially when the sun was up and b) why after a particularly trying day of constantly feeding us, slathering us in thick white sunscreen and keeping us from drowning, the tv was her savior. It's amazing how, even with those active days and my two brothers, I still managed to get bored to tears. And that is why, the rare late afternoon of watching "Bowling for Dollars" or "Dark Shadows" was pure bliss.

Childhood summers are like no other time in your life. Summer memories are endless and endlessly immortalized in songs, books, movies and art. I hesitate to write too much about them, as if I take these memories out of my mind, they will fly away. I want to keep those fireflies flying in my mind forever.

I hope I am creating those memories for my son as I hoped I did for my step-kids. I hope that he too, when he is grown up, gets the same happy longing for the dog days of summer. That he'll taste Daddy's barbecued chicken legs (the best in the world and this has been confirmed by many of my food snob friends), he'll smell the chlorine and salt water (alas we mainly swim in the pool at this point but we did manage a trip to San Diego and luckily Alameda beach is salty),
he'll feel his crunchy bathing suit from hours of swimming with his friends and feel the Northern California camping dirt from Burney Falls, Big Sur and the Russian River to name a few. He'll hear the crickets on a hot night with a distant owl hoot, hoot. But again, I hesitate to write too many of the memories down because they should be his memories, to keep in the back of his mind until it's time to bring them up.

That's when you know you've grown up. When summers turn into memories. When you're truly young it is impossible to think of things like this. Children are almost always in the present, god bless 'em.

And this thought is a reminder. To let summer happen for him and myself. Forget the overplanning and the need to "create memories" for him. Just let it happen. Let summer swim around us like warm salt water.

As I write this he is creating his world of the morning. Today it consists of hot wheels, a garbage truck and Spongebob's car. He is having fun and happy. His only plan today is to pick up his friend as we head to the pool. And to eat the local cherries from the farmer's market for snack at the pool. And have a seed spitting contest. And to work on his cannon ball dive. And to beg me for nickelodeon and popcorn when we get back.

Ahhh...summer, it's going swimmingly.