I’m trying to figure out where it all started…
And I’m a bit rusty here… this is he first new post I’ve actually written in a while… usually I like to take mundane things in my life, like, say, riding the bus, and try to turn the story into something funny to read. With the whole my mom getting sick and then dying thing nothing much seemed funny and I couldn’t craft a witty sentence for crap so most of my writing ended up being depressing therapeutic stuff that *I* didn’t even want to read once I was done writing it. I am many things but emo is SO not one of them.
But I haven’t felt like that for a while now… and I’ve actually written a few funny things although they’ve pretty much just been e-mails to people.
But… well… there’s some STUFF… I thought it was going to start with the gun but things usually END with a gun so I’ll start with Saturday.
Saturday we drove from Elk Grove to Bakersfield. Which meant driving down Hwy 99, through the valley. Coming from the bay area we always take I-5 when we make the trek to Bakersfield so I hadn’t been down 99 since probably the early 90’s when I was in college.
It has changed a bit. There’s more STUFF there and they’ve raised the speed limit to 65. But the thing that REALLY caught my attention was the oh, 12 or so billboards spread over 100 or so miles, all identical, that read,“I DIED FOR YOUR SINS – JESUS” against a purple background with, below that, some website that was too small to make out. Probably www.youaresogoingtohell.com or something.
And it just rubbed me the wrong way. And here’s the thing. If the billboards had read, “JESUS DIED FOR YOUR SINS” it wouldn’t have bothered me at all. I mean, I grew UP in Bakersfield and I am used to having religion and politics aimed at me via signs along the highway. For years it was “ABORTION STOPS A BEATING HEART” with a tasteful graphic. But this was like Jesus was down here on vacation and had some free time and some paint and was like, “you know what, those bastards are breaking the speed limit and taking my name in vain while listening to songs about fornicating! Something must be done!” and pasted these things up himself. And it reminded me of Sam Kinison’s bit about Jesus flipping through the bible going, “where the hell did I say build a waterslide?”
Being raised Christian for 18 years I am fairly familiar with the bible and I never got the feeling what Jesus was really going for was an IN YOUR FACE type of message. But Christianity and Church seem to have changed a lot in the last 20 years too. I never had a Purity ring, they didn't exist. Nor did WWJD merchandise. Jesus hadn't actually signed his big merchandising contract back then. And the first time homosexuality was mentioned in my church at home I was 25… and I was shocked to hear it then because NO sex of any kind, not even admonishments not to HAVE it, had ever been mentioned. We got taught the gospels and the sex lectures AND politics were left to our parents. Not anymore. I still don't think my church is throwing Father Daughter Purity Parties or anything (and I have to say if they had been having those when I was a teenager I think my dad would have been more mortified than I would have been) but sex and politics have definitely made their way onto the agenda and into the sermons.
Which is fine because it isn’t MY church. I don’t go to church anymore except when I go home to Bakersfield to visit my dad because it makes him happy. But it does serve as a kind of reminder of how much things have changed since I was a kid there.
Happily for me irony is never far away. The Jesus Guilt billboards gave way, as we entered Bakersfield to 302-Dave billboards. Dave is a realtor who happens to have been Tommy's first boyfriend and he is a huge fag. Like the kind of guy that even gay people CALL a fag. While in the closet professionally, he's totally "out" in Bakersfield's generally underground gay community (how else would he ever find the tasty teenage boys he loves to munch?) but in day to day life he has highlighted hair and a great smile full of perfectly capped teeth and the old ladies love him. So it went from "I died for your Sins – Jesus" to "I can sell your house while tea-bagging your husband – Dave". Which cheered me no end. Jesus died so Dave could teabag with impunity! Everyone wins!
Oh and of course the front page of the paper while I was IN Bakersfield was covered with the story of the county clerk’s heroic effort to keep the gays from getting married by proclaiming that the office could no longer afford to marry ANYONE. If you wanted to get married at the Bakersfield courthouse you better have done it by last Friday because as of right now you are out of luck. The paper included a copy of the threatening letter one of the county supervisors sent to all the other county employees backing her up, saying everyone ELSE had better back her up and that if they didn’t he wouldn’t rest until he got their asses fired. And then he stated that gay marriage was THE most important issue facing our country today. I had to read it three times. I was like,“Really? Not the economy or terrorism or crime?” Nope, the scariest thing in the world is gays getting married.
I don't really think I need to write a lengthy paragraph about how I don't understand how gay people getting married affects anyone negatively, much less how anyone can find it scarier than 9/11. I have a button that says "if you're against gay marriage don't marry one" and to me that pretty much covers it. There are reasons I no longer live in Bakersfield. The heat is only one of them.
Anyway onto the GUNS and stuff.
So the atmosphere at my dad's church was just one more factor that added in to my general feelings of unease. And I have a lot of them. I've never fully recovered from the last few elections with that graphic of the US broken into Blue and Red States. Blue on the edges, Red in the middle. Us. Them.
And it has only gotten worse.
But one area in which I think THEM is much smarter then us? They’re armed. Them have Guns. (Yes, we’ve finally arrived at guns). If the election destroyed my belief that we were one country, indivisible, then Hurricane Katrina annihilated any belief I had left that if I ever needed help the government would be there. People were dying and Condoleeza Rice was shopping for Prada shoes and political bickering kept any aid from getting there until it was much much too late.
Actual fear set in when I found out I wasn’t even really seeing the “news” on the news. I was under the impression that, after a rocky start, things were under control in New Orleans until I went over to the house of a friend who had Satellite and spent a chilling few hours watching the BBC and finding out just how bad and NOT under control it was. According to the news everyone was having a sing along in the astrodome when really people were still DYING.
(Side note -- if you haven't seen "When the Levees Broke" by Spike Lee you should rent it. It isn't fun to watch but it answered a lot of my questions about what the fuck happened down there)
So you’ve got the government letting people die AND somehow keeping that a secret, at least for a while, from the public. SCARY FUCKING SHIT. When I moved to San Francisco two years ago it was with the absolute belief that if my house falls down on me during an earthquake I will lay here until I bleed out or run out of supplies. I absolutely believe that if something catasrophc happens I am on my own. There are theories that since there are a lot of RICH people here, unlike New Orleans, that we wouldn’t just be left to rot but I don’t believe it. I think if things get bad enough money won’t even matter. Not to mention the fact that genius San Franciscans have been so incredibly vocal about how ANTI-MILITARY they are that the military probably won’t feel particularly motivated too come in and save our spoiled white ignorant asses anyway.
And of course the religious folk won’t be rushing in to help us either since it will be our fault it happened in the first place. It will be God punishing us for celebrating gay marriage and having all the best hairdressers and decorators.
So I carry that fear with me everywhere. Most of the time it is crouched quietly in the back of my mind and I’m not even consciously aware of it. But has been cautiously watching the prices of everything rise. And rise s’more. And then rise even higher. And wonder where the breaking point is. And wonder if it the breaking point is one of those things where you can’t see it until it is too late.
The tiny part of me not calcified into pure cynicism really hopes that Obama can win the election (and yes, I checked where he stands on guns and rumor is his wife owns two of them) and that he somehow is able to turn things around, make them better. But I'm not banking on it. I have this bad feeling, way down in my stomach, that there are a lot of old white men out there in those red states who maybe haven't voted in 30 years but they'll be damned if they'll let a black man be president. And when they talk about it they won't be using the term "black man" either. There are people out there wearing "If Obama is elected to we still call it the White House?" buttons. And there are a lot MORE people out there who think those buttons are funny. I understand racism even less than I understand homophobia but I have an idea how prevalent it still really is. I have a friend inAlabama. I hear things.
What I am determined about is that if there is some major disaster and something horrible does happen to John and I it won't be because I was ignorant and naïve. It won't be because I didn't stock up on a few weeks worth of food and water. And it won't be because some asshole who didn't stock up on food breaks in, kills my ass and takes mine. And even though I am a democrat (although much less of a liberal than I was before I moved here -- getting hassled very day by homeless people really tends to eat away at your sympathy for them) I grew up in Bakersfield and my daddy is from Texas! Which means that my DNA is pro-NRA. Which means that my DNA is pro-NRA. And I like Texas. Men open doors for you and call you ma'am, the food is awesome (assuming you're a carnivore) and they NEVER put fruity crap in the iced tea.
Which is why I'm getting a gun. (No, not because everyone keeps trying to feed me raspberry iced tea, although that does REALLY piss me off) And since this is San Francisco, I probably won’t even have to shoot anyone. I’m sure most of my anti-military neighbors are also anti-gun and are probably unarmed. A cocked gun and a helpful suggestion of “try the people down the street, perhaps?” might just be enough. And if it isn’t well, I’m going to take all the classes too so if I really DO have to shoot someone I won’t falter and I won’t miss. They say you should never own a gun unless you could really use it. I could. I don’t want to shoot anyone. I think it would be horribly traumatic. And messy. But could I? If someone was trying to hurt John or myself? Absolutely without hesitation.
Which leaves me with the question: Do you think if I put a NRA card next to the PFLAG card in my wallet the whole thing will catch fire? What if I put my ACLU card between them? Will my purse explode?
And when I do buy a gun does that mean I’m one of them instead of one of us? Because I also understand, for the first time in 37 years why the 2nd amendment is there. I’ve heard arguments against gun ownership that go something like “the founding fathers never meant for us to own guns for self-defense… it was so we could form militias and protect ourselves against our government and that doesn’t apply anymore.”
Really? I’m not so sure about that.
UPDATE: I meant to post this last week and then things got a bit crazy but then this happened:
June 26, 2008
WASHINGTON -- Americans have a right to keep a gun at home for self-defense, the Supreme Court ruled today in striking down part of a handgun ban in the District of Columbia.
By a 5-4 vote, the court concluded that the 2nd Amendment and its famous right "to keep and bear arms" protects the gun rights of individuals, rather than just a state's right to maintain a militia.
BOOYA.
