Cute Clothes, Comfort Zones and Jesus

               I’ve been asked to serve as a fashion consultant this week and I am excited.  I was approached by someone at my church to assist in something called a ‘Glam Closet’ and you know I was intrigued.  It is for the Trans Pride celebration in Orange County.  I’m as surprised as you are as this is something far, far outside my comfort zone.  But I am reminded those who don’t leave their comfort zones, never grow and I am all about growth, y’all.

                I never knew a transgendered person before I moved to Long Beach back in February.  I have long held a particular grudge against this part of the LGBT continuum as I blamed them for making society think all gays are weird.  Drag Queens and those people who dress in leather were bad enough but those were costumes, not day-to-day reality.  I’m just trying to be honest.

I have never been outwardly rude to anyone and I have mentioned this opinion to very few, but deep in my heart of hearts I was not supportive and didn’t want to talk about it.  Transgendered people, I simply did not get as I have never had any issues with my gender identity. But it isn’t my job to get it.

I wanted society to let me be me even if they didn’t understand it but hypocritically I never offered this same understanding to the transgendered community.  Prior to meeting the young man at church, my only information about this population was via Chaz Bono and I pitied him as I assumed the root of his identity crisis was mainly Cher was his mother.  I adore her as an entertainer; I don’t know if I would want her as a parent. 

I never gave my prejudices much thought, mostly because it wasn’t required.  My line of thinking was I don’t know any trans people, so who cares what I think about them.

My church family is studying a book series called “The Good and Beautiful God”.  The subtitle of the series is “Putting on the Character of Christ”.  I have been doing a lot of soul-searching and praying and trying to get myself more in line with the way God really is, not necessarily the way I was taught when I was growing up in the church.  And I’m not picking on Southern Baptists; many denominations give us false narratives about who God is and what He cares about and how He feels about certain populations in our society.  Baptists are just my frame of reference as I attended Southern Baptist churches from birth until 2009, including while I lived in Alaska, Ohio and Massachusetts.  There’s Southern Baptists all up and through this nation, people.

The transgendered man at my church is a happy person, smiling, laughing and just a joy to be around.  Full disclosure, I wasn’t truly aware he hadn’t always been a man when I first met him.  I never really engaged with him and his wife but I also didn’t avoid them either.  We’ve chatted outside church but never really had an actual in-depth conversation.  Several weeks ago he asked me if I could help a friend of his who had just come out of the closet and was in need of a makeover.  Makeover?!   Yes, please!  I am all about helping someone look their best.

One of my spiritual gifts is encouragement.  I love to build someone up to ensure they feel a part of a group of which I am a member.  Knowing what it’s like to always be the new person and what it’s like to feel ostracized, I always make sure I speak to those to whom no one else speaks.  And while I have very specific, vocalized opinions about fashion, I would never tell someone their outfit was unacceptable.  If I am asked for my input I am honest but I try to temper it with kindness.  I’m not a mean person.  But if someone is soliciting my opinion, well you know how much I love to share, right?

I have been paring down my wardrobe of late, shedding items I don’t wear and was looking for some place to donate them as I want to spread the wealth and Goodwill and Salvation Army have already benefitted from my significant downsizing. 

Just last week, I was trying to figure out a way to put a face to a population as this is how I have learned to let go of my prejudices.  I'm glad he approached me because when he told me the activities were part of the Trans Pride Event on July 30 in Orange County, I had to smile.  What a happy coincidence, you might say.  Coincidence is when God doesn't take credit for maneuvering us to right where we need to be.  I told him I would be honored to help men and women learn how to develop their style and properly dress for their chosen gender and body shape and also learn their colors.  My church is also sponsoring an outreach booth at the event.  I am proud of the way we are showing God’s love in Southern California.

One thing I have learned through my spiritual journey is my opinion about a topic should have no effect on my goal of being kind to one of God’s children.  I don’t have to understand the transgendered community to show them God's love.   I don’t have the right to tell them what to feel or whom to love.  Those things are between them and God; they’re not my business.

What is my business, you ask?  To quote Jesus, the first and greatest commandments are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself.  Period.  There aren’t addendums, codicils, postscripts or caveats, y’all.  It is an imperative sentence.  It is a command.

Everybody needs to know God loves them and everybody needs a cute outfit. 

And that’s all I’m saying for now.

The Persnickety State of Jones

                In response to what they considered inept and indifferent leadership among the Confederate officers at the Battle of Vicksburg and afterwards, a group of men from Jones County led by Newton Knight left the Confederate Army and subsequently seceded from the Confederacy.  They renamed their county the State of Jones and refused to further participate in a war they did not support and into which they had been involuntarily drafted.

                When I came across this bit of information, I was intrigued.  There are those who feel the Civil War was an act of treason by the South.  There are those in the South who believe the war was about States’ Rights, not slavery.  I will not bore you with my opinion; however, I wonder what I would’ve done had I been alive then.

                My maternal grandfather’s family was from Mississippi, moving to Louisiana only after losing most of their fortune during the Depression as they had prosperous cotton farmers.  According to family lore theirs had been among the wealthiest families in the state.  If true, this would have had a major impact on my opinions and stances about the war.

                As in many wars before, wealthier men could pay someone to serve for them, unless they were trying to establish credentials for political reasons.  Those who agreed to serve were automatically given officer rank and were therefore not in the most immediate danger as they were not necessarily among those on the front line.  There were officers who fought bravely beside their men, but it wasn’t necessarily a requirement.

                I have never been a coward, but I do find it difficult to feign energetic support for a fight I didn’t start or truly believe in.   I don’t know what my feelings about the war would have been if I were living in Mississippi in 1864; however, knowing me, I imagine they would have been very different from those of my family and neighbors.  “Just your average Joe” has never been a descriptor for your humble narrator.  However, if family money were involved, I may have kept my opinions to myself.  One of the few advantages of a lack of any facsimile of an inheritance is the absence of anxiety attached to being disinherited due to disagreements over matters political, spiritual, food/animal-related or otherwise.

                I have made my life’s stance to only fight when I feel passionately about something and/or I feel I have a chance of winning.  This has caused me to engage in fisticuffs only on three occasions in my 44 years on Earth; once in junior high, once in high school and once in 1996, the year of my delayed rebellion.  Well fisticuffs aren’t the best descriptor.  What do you call pushing and/or throwing someone really, really hard?  Throwing something out a window is called defenestration, but there were no windows so I am unsure of the proper verbiage. 

               I assure you I did not pick these fights.  I don't want to fight...I want to sing!  Not really, but my bark is much worse than my bite.  Like most people I see at The Wal-Mart, my bite has few, if any, teeth.  And to be honest, I don’t have much of a bark these days, unless you drive too slow or treat service people poorly in my presence.

I have learned how to feign enthusiasm for something about which I am not jazzed, but it is difficult.  And for this reason alone, I feel as if I might have joined those frisky Jones Countians in their stance.  This attitude of independence still lingers amongst the denizens of the geographic area just north of Hattiesburg. 

Case in point, when the junior colleges in Mississippi decided to change their names to community colleges in 1988, Jones County refused.  They were known as JCJC (Jones County Junior College) and did not want to alter the flow of their acronym.  And to this day they remain JCJC.  I guess the spirit of old Newt still lingers in the Piney Woods. 

And that’s all I’m saying for now.

The Repercussions of Vocabulary

                The first time I remember purposefully making a statement solely to gauge the reaction was in 1979 or so.  My family and I were traversing the Louisiana highways somewhere in the vicinity of Ferriday, home of those musical cousins Mickey Gilley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Jimmy Swaggart.  We may or may not have been lost.  As my mother’s brain was the precursor to Siri, I feel fairly certain she knew exactly where we were.  I however, did not and felt the timing was right to use a new phrase I had recently learned.  “God’s Green Earth”.  I don’t remember from whom I heard it or the context of why it was uttered, but I had a need to use it, y’all. 

                Testing the waters, I cried out in a plaintive voice, “Where on God’s Green Earth are we?”  Rest assured my mother was less than impressed with my question.  My sister looked at me with a mixture of condescension and pity.  Truthfully, she looked at most everyone in this manner, so her reaction was not a part of the equation.  My mother’s reaction was one with which I was familiar.  And it wasn’t good.  I swear I thought ‘taking the Lord’s name in vain’ was something altogether different.

                The look she gave triggered a memory which caused me to involuntarily shudder.  As a child I wasn’t particularly ill-behaved.  I do, however, remember making several serious errors in judgment.  The one that always pops to mind was when I was a lad in 1977 and was enjoying the summer twixt first and second grade.  My sister and I have shared a reliable relationship since childhood.  I loved her always; she did not particularly care for me until she became a mother. 

                We were living in the last of our three houses (Front Street) our gypsy family rented in Winnfield, Louisiana.  I remember being psychologically injured in a grievous way; she may have insulted my Lego house or merely told me I was stupid.  My typical response was to tell my Mother.  For some unknown reason I took leave of my senses and decided to handle this situation myself.  Having no physical advantage, I used the only tool in my arsenal, my vocabulary.  I felt I was superior to her in this respect, as I was a member of the Gifted and Talented class, people.  It’s true.

                Her reaction to my response immediately offered proof I had chosen poorly.  I won’t repeat what I said but it stopped my sister dead in her tracks.  She immediately recovered, smiled maliciously and said, “oooh, you’re gonna get it!”  Unfortunately the voice that allowed me to lead cheers in college without a megaphone caused the words to reverberate down the hall to the kitchen where my mother was cooking and singing.  She stopped suddenly and asked in a tone signifying doom, “Dustin Terryll Thompson, what did you just say?”  My first response was “My name is Dustin?” 

                You see I had never seen my name written down and had been called Dusty for all seven of my years on the planet.  I never knew my actual name was Dustin.  I relished the new-found knowledge.  Additional knowledge gained that day was what Lava Soap (with pumice) tastes like as Mother decided on a creative punishment for a creative turn of phrase.

                Lava Soap was what my father used to get the hard to remove grease and dirt off his hands after work.  Never have my teeth felt so shiny and gritty and free from all verbiage which is considered vulgar and unacceptable by one Catherine Waynette Thornton Thompson.  I guess it made sense.  The colorful phrase was one The Dad had used on a number of occasions.  Needless to say the words I uttered never crossed my lips again, even when stuck in traffic in DC or Los Angeles.  Synonyms for some of those words, maybe, but definitely not those particular words.

                And that’s all I’m saying for now.

Accidental Rodeo Champion

             I have ridden many horses in my life; never once voluntarily and almost always with a, let’s just say, interesting result.  One horse in particular factored into two episodes forever burned in my memory, pushing home the reality that I was, for all practical purposes, the East Texas equivalent of Dill from To Kill A  Mockingbird.

Throughout my childhood, I was included in all manner of things based solely on the belief that my inherent testosterone would push me, like any other good ol’ boy, toward activities both death-defying and ill-conceived.  Case in point, sometime in what had to have been 1983, it was determined that we would ride in the Grand Entry of the Bogata, TX Rodeo. 

For those of you who don’t know, the Grand Entry is an opportunity for those who own horses and cowboy finery to non-competitively ride around the rodeo arena while smiling and waving to those who paid for said horses and finery.  The steed selected to ferry me about was named Ginger and I sat gingerly atop her pretending I wasn’t scared or planning an escape.  Truthfully, the only thing stopping me from fleeing was a fear of heights.  What? You get on a horse when you’re 4 foot nothing and you tell me how far you think it is to the ground.

 I sat atop this mare, swathed in ill-fitting attire, resigned to my fate, aglow with perspiration, looking like an overgrown Gerber baby in a cowboy hat and vest, waiting for the start of this procession toward what I assumed would be death by trampling.

An upside for someone bereft of the instincts to control an animal is horses are communal by nature and will travel in herds given the opportunity.  I found no major issues simply sitting in place, demonstrating how to wave with my eyes as I was not about to take either hand off the saddle horn, gripping it as tightly as the frog does the stork’s neck in the “Never Give Up” cartoon.  And we made it around the one allotted loop with no issues and I was home free or so I thought. 

When we approached the exit, Ginger, preening starlet that she was, decided to turn and follow the horses that were just entering the arena.  And so we made a second sweep in front of the crowd, then a third.  Finally, by the fourth go-round, someone had apparently notified the people that you notify in these types of situations and the esteemed Rodeo Queen, Darlene Brooks, wearing a white hat and tiara, appeared at my side, took the reins and led us out of the arena, to the cheers of the crowd.  It could have been laughter.  They sound the same, don’t they?

And I was hoping any further equine events would fade into the background.  But as is the case in mi familia, I was to be disappointed.  Whether the purpose of this exercise was the pursuit of fun or the outcome of heat-induced insanity, I was again riding astride the preening Ginger.  “Getting back up on the horse” is something my people seem to do with ease; me not so much.  However, I thought this could be a good thing as during my first encounter with Ginger, we had simply pranced in a circle.  This I could handle.  And we were moseying along just fine when something happened.  I later learned the cinch had broken and the belt began to slap her stomach.  Well she took to running full tilt, y’all, and I didn’t know what to do except panic full tilt.

Suddenly she stopped running and began to buck like the University of Wyoming mascot (look it up) causing me to grip the saddle as I was determined to stay astride my mount, like a proper cowboy.  Full disclosure, I had done a quick cost benefit analysis and believed the possibility of flying with the saddle seemed a better option than almost certain death via trampling.

And I proceeded to let loose a scream so loud and piercing and long that the neighbors for several miles thought it was a test of the emergency broadcast system.  After what seemed like an hour (but was probably 10 seconds), I and the saddle flew over her head and landed with a resounding thud on the parched, cracked ground.  My emergency broadcast scream transitioned immediately into silence as all the breath had been knocked out of my Ocean Pacific-clad lungs.

The response from my Uncle Ronald was, “Woah, Dusty, I think you rode her for more’n 8 seconds!  We shoulda put you in the rodeo!”  

I’ve been a cowboy from way back, y’all.  And that’s all I’m saying for now.

Caitlyn Jenner! My Opinion!! Additional Exclamation Points!!!

             This post is from 2015.  I never did watch an episode of her show. I assume it was cancelled.

               

               Recently I have been asked by a number of people what I think about Caitlyn Jenner.  My response is "I don’t know" and I’m not being flip.  She is a new character in the zeitgeist and I'll reserve judgment about her life choices as I am trying to be supportive of the T in the LGBT continuum.  But there are other choices with which I have concern. Throughout this whole transition, I think people are missing something extremely important; Caitlyn may have felt like a woman for many years but I can assure you she did not feel like a ‘Caitlyn’.  Women from her era (she was born in 1949) were typically named Linda, Mary, Patricia, Barbara or Susan.  In some parts of the country they may have been named Eunice, Ethel, Agnes and even Thelma Lou, if you lived in Mayberry.  What they wouldn’t have been named is Caitlyn.   

                The moniker with which you are foisted upon the world has a lot to do with how the world responds to you.  There have been many articles of late discussing those with more ‘American’ names receiving a more positive response on job applications and resumes.  It is sad, but it is true.  It is also a wake-up call for those parents who want to name their children something like McClavity, Apple or D’@ngel*que.  At least Apple will have Speed of Sound money to fall back on if she can’t get a job working for her mother at Goop, if this is in fact a real website and I haven’t mistaken one of The Onion’s satirical essays as a news report.

                There has been much discussion of whether or not Caitlyn is brave and I agree being your authentic self is brave if indeed who you are is not the average person’s cup of tea.  And you may disagree.  But I don’t think anyone can argue it is an extreme act of bravery for a 65 year-old woman, who is not Helen Mirren, to appear on the cover of a national magazine in what can only be described as a lycra onesie.  And let’s not forget about the hairstyle she chose.  What’s brave is selecting a “reality-show-opening-credits-montage” hairstyle for your cover model debut.  I can assure you the G in the LGBT acronym have been discussing this at length.

                I suppose it is appropriate as she will now star in a reality show which is a spin-off of another reality show which is the spin-off of a sex tape which was (and let’s be honest) a spin-off of the OJ Simpson murder trial, and possibly Moesha, being that Ray J is Brandy’s brother.  And we shouldn’t be surprised America has rallied around someone who is desperately clinging to the periphery of our attention span, which is exuberantly ill-informed, inconsistently forgiving and sticky with a mixture of melted Popsicle and nacho cheese.

                Is it really brave to face the world from a position of wealth and material comfort?  I wonder how brave Caitlyn would have been if she had to go to work at Carl’s Jr., or serve as the nursing supervisor at an assisted living facility or work in a bank?  Is it brave when you are lauded for being you and awarded financially for your transition?  Most trans people, from what I understand, just want to be themselves and blend into the vibrant fabric of this country.  It doesn’t mean that we can’t applaud her for helping the national conversation about a topic both uncomfortable and timely.

                I am not someone who is interested in knowing the ins-and-outs of Caitlyn’s life and I will certainly not watch her new show.  I will also not remember her name is Caitlyn because she does not look like a Caitlyn.  Maybe I would remember it if she changed her name to Marilyn or Olivia or Lauren or even Priscilla.

                And that’s all I’m saying for now.

Memory, Magnolias and Making a Fool of Myself

                If you’ll indulge me for a moment, I’ll share with you a tale of shame and woe.  Well, not really, but it sure was embarrassing after the fact.

                In 2009, I had just relocated from Lowell, Massachusetts back to Washington, DC (very specifically Alexandria, Virginia) and was at the Pentagon City Borders Book Store.  As I love a bargain, quite naturally I was perusing the discounted books near the cash registers when I saw a middle-aged or slightly older lady who I immediately recognized.  And despite a better than average memory, I could not in that instant remember her name or from where I knew her. However, being a true Southern gentleman I smiled at her and proceeded to do what my friend Jackie Collins (not the author) calls ‘Magnolia Mouthing’.  This is when you are trying to butter someone up or cover up the fact that can’t remember who someone is, so your accent gets thickah and thickah like a magnolia blossom has fallen out of your mouth.  Where your sugahs and darlins takeover your vocabulary and you just talk ‘em right to death so they can’t get a word in edgewise.  In other words, you’re trying to Out-Scarlet, Miss O’Hara herself.

                I proceeded to Magnolia Mouth this poor woman with an, “Oh gosh, it’s so good to see you; how  you been?  How’s your fam’ly?  Are you lookin’ foah a great book?  I can recommend sumthin’.  Fannie Flagg?  Eudora?  That fussy ol' Faulkner?  How’s life treatin’ you honey?  You look just wuuunderful.  I’ll be sure to remember you to my fam’ly, if you say Hey to yours for me.  Gotta go.  Huuuuugs!”   She looked somewhat startled and slightly panic-stricken as I hurried away.  I just assumed she was as shocked to see me in the nation’s capital as I was to see her.

And I did that because at no point in the entire conversation could I remember who she was and I didn’t need her to ask me something that I wouldn’t know.  I didn’t want to be embarrassed and didn’t want her to be embarrassed thinking I didn’t know who she was.  My mother wouldn’t necessarily have appreciated what I did, but I think she would have approved of my intentions.

                So, I buy my discount books and I’m sitting on the subway headed home when somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain a neuron fired and straight to the front of my mind flew an image of this same woman with a headline above it.  In that moment I realized I had just verbally accosted Harriet Miers, who, if you remember, was White House Counsel under Dubya Bush and was the Supreme Court nominee who withdrew her own nomination after a public outcry.

                Did I mention I have never met this woman at any point during my time in DC?  Yep.  I’m that guy.  And so, to my Southern brethren and sistrethen, I apologize for the Miers’ family of Northern Virginia firmly believing that all Southerners are insane; polite, but insane.  Although, if we’re being honest, that’s not too far from the truth.

                But that’s all I’m saying for now, huuuny.

Problem Solving with Evil Ponies

               At work, we’ve been discussing root cause problem solving as the best way to improve our processes.  The concept is simple; asking those who do the work to give suggestions on how to better do the work.  My extended blue collar family would call this common sense.  I come from a long line of farmers, welders, carpenters and the like.  And they will tell you to ask a successful farmer about crop rotations, not the preacher.  Ask the preacher about Jesus, y’all; it’s the area of his expertise.           However, there was one time when my family did not follow its own rule with a result much like they should have anticipated.  Why they sent my ten year-old self, to feed Misty the (most evil) Shetland pony, alone is something that has never been fully explained. 

                It was an unsurprisingly hot August evening about an hour before dark, which is the key way to tell time in the country.  Dark is the dividing line between being able to see (working) and not being able to see (resting).  The children, me included, were slowly being rounded up for baths, supper and then bed as children in my family were not supposed to be seen or heard, y’all. While sitting on the back porch waiting my turn in the bath, I feel sure I was sitting idly as chubby, sweaty children are prone to do in the Louisiana heat.  My Uncle Ronald approached and instructed me to “go feed Misty”, the afore-mentioned Shetland pony, who at this point had not been deemed evil, just avoidable as I have never been a fan of riding horses, even on the carousel at the fair.  The carousel horse offered motion sickness; real horses offered a lack of control I found unacceptable.

                I feel sure my initial response, internally was, “Is he serious?”  My verbal response was, “Yes, sir” due to the fact that I was raised to not question those in authority and authority meant adults, anyone who was really tall and my sister, regardless of her age or height.  My unspoken thought as I walked as slowly as I dared in the direction of the barn was, “but it’s so dark and there’s no light out here.”  I have always been jittery under the cover of darkness especially on a farm that housed equipment, providing all manner of locations for evil in its many forms to hide and wait to “git ya” or so I had been told.

                I need to clarify that while I had grown up on my grandparents’ farm, it was during the summer and all major holidays.  I had been around animals but at that point the only previous independent interaction with them had been making sure I didn’t mix a monkey shirt with hippo pants in the Garanimals section of JC Penney, people.  Ownership of Hee-Haw overalls does not a farmhand make.

                Cut to me making my way across the yard with a gait that was an original choreography of actual trepidation and an attempt at bravery through posture.  I’ll bet Uncle Ronald wondered if I had to use the bathroom.  Upon my arrival at the pen, Misty pretended I wasn’t there; setting up her alibi, I would later realize.  I opened the gate, remembering to close it behind me as I had been taught and walked to the little room where the feed was housed.  I scooped out the feed using the old coffee can as we are not a family who spends good money buying kitchen implements for animal husbandry purposes.  I looked over my shoulder to assess the location of the pony in question and saw her standing there staring at me, malevolence filling her eyes as the sun faded along with my chances of escape. 

                I turned to ensure I left no stray kernels of feed and in that instanct Misty turned around and readied her malicious haunches so when I spun around to empty the can into the trough, she kicked me square in the stomach and made a sound that can only be described as a vindictive cackle while I fell head over heels into the dirt.  When I was able to catch my breath, she stood eating her feed from the ground near me.  I rose and Misty gazed at me with a look so filled with hate it almost took my breath, again.  Always one to go with my gut, which was now bruised, I fled the pen specifically not stopping to close the gate in the hopes that one of the monsters hiding amongst the equipment would take her in the night.

                Filled with the serendipitous athleticism that is often available to those in crisis, I raced back towards the house, holding my shirt over my head, pointing to my now-purpling stomach wound, screaming that I had been attacked.  Cut to various uncles and cousins having to chase a horse up and down the road all the while wondering “what is wrong with that boy?”  My poor, sainted mother gave me a hug, put me in the bath and, I feel sure, tried not to roll her eyes at her most dramatic child who from that moment forward was literally and figuratively marked, by a hoof print, as “the one who is not like the others”.  Or at least that’s how I remember it.

                To return to my original point, if you don’t ask the right people for input and don’t put the appropriate personnel to work to fix the problem, you will not get the result you want.  Root cause problem solving is something farmers have known all these years; long before Toyota wrote a book about it.

And that’s all I’m saying for now.