"I don't remember if that's what I said, but if that's what I said...I stand by it."

-Mitt Romney

Standing in the middle of a tapestry of glitter and swirling neon, the floor beneath me shook my insides like the beginning of a earthquake. My entire body rattled. I remember holding on to my drink as 40 or 50 sweaty bodies bumped and gyrated past me, all wreaking of booze and sweat and amil-nitrate. It was somewhere in the late 1970's and the hottest club in town was The Bistro on the North side of Chicago. I had sneaked in between the Drag Queen Cher, and the lesbian in the military hat. I was barely 18 at the time, and decked out in my favorite teal cocktail dress and my brand new, uber-painful, bright yellow pumps. I planted myself on the edge of the dance floor, sipping my vodka tonic and watching the crowd throw their entire beings into this new music that was changing the world:

Disco.

It came very quickly, and at it's peak; was shocking, melodic, and trans-formative. The New York club kids discovered it and as it crept from out of the shadows of the underworld of the gay nightlife, it spawned an era of some of the most trivial, mindless and spectacular music I'd ever heard. I was growing up and finding my voice hidden under years of shame and guilt, and the music of my teens was doing the same.

As I stood tapping my foot, a song came on, and the entire room collectively threw their arms up the in the air, and it seemed all at once, everyone on the room took, one, long collective snort. If it wasn't nailed down, it was going up our noses. And then this voice poured out over the speakers, and I stopped tapping, and looked up. I'm not really sure why, I doubt very seriously if the female singer was apt to appear above my head, but there was something in her voice that popped my head towards the Universe. It was very rare that a voice of that quality had been attached to a disco song. Although the disco era had been around for a while, we were still, as a generation, finding our way through it, and since it came from our community, we were still alarmed when it proclaimed. When it shouted. When it explored and changed something. We were still getting used to Us, at the time.

Her name was Donna Summer, and the song was "Dim all The Lights", the first tune she wrote solo. I knew her previous hits, "Bad Girls", "Last Dance", and the strangely erotic "Love to Love You, Baby" (a song that happened entirely by accident).



Apparently, Summer was supposed to be the stand-in voice. The song, which was Donna's idea, was overtly sexual in nature and when producer/friend Giorgio Moroder requested Donna add some moans and groans to the track, the Diva was reticent. She decided to record the track as a demo for another singer, just to see if they could sell it. Eventually the song went certified gold, and sold over 500,000 copies in the US, with Summer as lead vocal, and newly crowned Queen of Disco.





Another of Summer's greatest hits was recorded by the ginormous gifts of La Minnelli, in one of my favorite clips of all time. Liza's career was on fire back then, and everything she did exploded like a house full of dynamite. I don't know if this was really the best idea for her, but it sure makes for one hell of a video. This, for me, actually says more about Donna Summer than it does about Liza Minnelli. Summer's songs became a part of the decade. It defined not only who we were, but what we were feeling at the time. And everyone wanted in on it.

Disco was Gay Music.

Disco was Our music.

Disco was developed and molded and supported by our community, and we laid claim to it. We possessed it and used it as a mouth piece and a bridge. We spoke through it and spoke around it. And as it gained steam, everyone was dancing to it. Everyone in every club with every kind of history, embraced our music and heard our voices and lived, if only for a brief moment, in the middle of our lives. It stood for us, and we knew it. And when mainstream society began to bring it into their houses, when men started to take disco lessons in order to get laid:

We Were Heard.





And Donna Summer was the most popular Queen we had. This was an artist with an incredible gift. A gift that went beyond the pulsating machinery that eventually became the music business. She wrote, she produced, and above all: she sang. Summer, who was never really comfortable with the "Queen of Disco" moniker the world gave her, was really an R&B singer. You can hear it in her music. In the simplest of tunes, even the most modest of melodies become thrilling monuments, or wailing masterpieces when sung by Donna. This is a woman who cared about what moved her. And that was always, always music.

And then, in the 1980's, the plague came and our people began to die. One by one, year by year, and person by person. People in their twenties, from the artists to scientists, began shriveling away and dying. And then Summer became a born again Christian and was accused of saying that AIDS was God's punishment on gay people.

Her career never fully recovered.

She denied the accusation for years afterward, and with time, the wounds healed, and we took her back. Let's be honest, we missed her.





I don't know that Donna was the greatest performer we ever had. I don't know that she was the most charismatic, ingenious and imaginative artist of the 70's. Certainly there was competition to be had. I always felt that Donna was a Singer. Simply that. A singer who never tried to be anything else. She wanted to write and she wanted to sing. There was music that lived deep in her, and even though some of her live performances seem a bit stilted or uneasy, it was all about her instrument. Summer never thought of herself as Meryl Streep. She loved to sing, and that's all she wanted to do. And she did it like no other pop singer of her generation.


I raced to the record store and bought the album that contained that fabulous song I'd heard Summer sing that night at The Bistro. I played it until my parent'e ears bled. I had no idea truly what I was listening to at the time, or how important she'd become, or how huge it really was that she shared her gift with the rest of the world. Before we were shoved back in the closet in the mid eighties, before were shunned again, and blamed again, and pushed back again, for one brief, glitzy, gorgeous, polished, boozed-up, cocaine ridden, sex crazed decade, our music was funneled through the magnificent vocals of one woman. Donna Summer, whether she liked it or not, was the embodiment of the new Gay Movement, and she did it all with class and style, and a voice that was unmistakably hers.




There are very few singers with this much history in their back pocket, and it's a shame her voice was silenced at the tip of her second act. She will be missed.

She was indeed; an Accidental Revolutionary. And I thank her.

"I believe I owe the gay community an apology for my study making unproven claims of the efficacy of reparative therapy. I also apologize to any gay person who wasted time and energy undergoing some form of reparative therapy because they believed that I had proven that reparative therapy works with some 'highly motivated' individuals."

- Dr. Robert Spitzer, who organized and began the “Ex Gay” movement.




Dr. Spitzer,

Quite frankly, your apology means little to nothing to the hundreds of thousands of gay people you murdered. The ones who went through shock therapy, a torture device in which young men were strapped to a chair with electric wires attached to their scrotum as pictures of naked men and women passed in front of them. If they reacted in any way that resulted in "homosexual behavior" they were given a shock to their testicles.

Or how about the women who were used as human pin cushions drawing vile after vile of blood putting some in anemic comas?

Or how about the gay people you frightened so severely, that they eventually ended up killing themselves? Because of the fear you instilled in the general populous, gay people were labeled: "mentally ill", or "sex fiends". And who can get a job, or an apartment, or find love when their a known sex criminal?

So your apology sir, means nothing. Your apology needs to be dumped in a river and sunk to the bottom with an anvil tied to it's feet. You're a murderer and should be legally and morally charged as one. And by the way, as your apology drowns in the muck and scum of a filthy pool of distilled water surrounded by old moss and dead plants, do us all a favor:

Tie the anvil to your own feet, and jump in after it.

Sincerely,

Alexandra Billings
(Transgender and happy, in spite of your lies)

Sometimes the interweb is glorious place. I have no idea who this is but one of my good friends posted it on my Facebook page and I’ve watched it now almost 10 times in a row. It’s the last week of school and I really should be studying something interesting, but I simply can’t stop watching this guy.

I can’t find any information on him except that he has a You Tube channel, which is truly hilarious and he’s promised to make a video a day until the end of the world…in Mayan Terms.

I really hope he keeps that promise.

People ask me constantly about Viewpoints and what it is and what it means, and all I have to do now, is point them to this video. It’s almost a step by step instructional, without the annoying Suzanne Sommers commentary.

Every character is defined and means something. There aren’t two people who are the same and yet, everything he’s doing is ALL him. At no time does he pretend he’s someone else. He doesn’t ty and fool us in any way. Viewpoints isn’t about Becoming Another Person (a term I absolutely hate), it’s about releasing what’s already in you. It’s about surrendering completely to what’s happening to you and going forward into the next thing. Much less complicated, and much less bull-shitty.

Watch his Gestures and his Shapes. His hands devour the air. They scratch when he’s Hattie, they beat the floor when he’s Tomei, and when he’s Dench, they command the room…and his neck-towel. The Shapes he makes with his body are uncanny: if there was no sound whatsoever, you could tell simply by the shape of his body who he was. There’s that hilarious Linda Hunt Limp, and that brilliant Patty Duke crunch, and when he goes into Jennifer Hudson, everything happens to him. His entire being is involved.

This is an actor who is taken away to another place. He allows himself to be transported by his dreams and his imagination. He combines a technical skill with dream-like precision and it all combines to separate each and every character he portrays. This is an artist who knows how to find his joy and surrender without having to think and dissect and talk about stuff. He isn’t Acting these women, he IS these women.

And I need to meet him.

Recently, a North Carolina Pastor by the name of Sean Harris got into some trouble when a video surfaced of one of his many sermons on gay people and being gay. In this, most likely the Greatest Hits Section, the Pastor tells his followers to:

"...give them a little punch..."

and that if a boy is:

"...doing the limp wrist, you walk right up to them and Crack that wrist!"

He also tell them that if their daughters start to:

"...act a little too butch, you reel them in. You say Oh no sweetie. Your'e not going to act like that. You'[re going to walk like a girl, talk like a girl, and Smell like a girl..."

The offensiveness is almost to absurd to even discuss, and when you add to the fact that he's talking about children, it crawls deep into a hole I can't even begin to imagine. This man is more likely mentally ill that anything else. I'd say that without any equivocation, except the fact that once he was found out, once this video went viral and the world stood up and took notice, and he was bombarded with e mails from all over the world, he then apologized. Truly mentally ill people don't always know that what they've done provokes responses. They simply act, and then it's over. But this man knows he goofed. He assumed he was speaking solely to the people who obey, trust and believe in him, and what happened was, outside of his cocoon, the world at large got a peak into the dangerous and otherwise insane world of Pastor Harris and his twisted version of morality.

This was unexpected.

And a person who actually suffers from an actual illness would keep on the track they started. They'd simply look at what happened, and then continue to move forward. Mr. Harris however, has been pummeled with judgment.

Watch his apology. He takes responsibility only for getting caught, and nothing else. He denies enticing violence on LGBT kids, when in fact, that was at the heart of his speech.

Maybe what I mean by mentally ill, is in actuality: Mentally Sad.

The people walking out aren't walking out because they're insulted. The people walking out, are walking out to prove a point. They knew what Savage was about, where he stood, and everything he's saying in this lecture, is what he's been saying on national television for the last decade. So they arrived knowing what they were in for. They were simply waiting for the right time to make their televised point. Just sitting through his story, through his text and waiting, coiled and ready, to walk out of the room. Visible and noticed.

And just so we're clear: If we're going to follow the Bible and have it be the only religious book that guides us ethically, morally and spiritually, then we have to get together on exactly what the rules are.

And I mean, exactly.

At the end of this video he asks us to share this with our friends.

So...that's what I'm doing.

Here you go, friends.

As I stood in the middle of the parking lot, I could hear the blood rushing in my ears. Pulsing. Throbbing. I’d never heard anything like it. I was twitching and rubbing my hands together and there was a fear in me that shook me to my core. The sun was white hot, and even though I was bare foot, my feet were sweating and itchy. I was 14 years old, and I was waiting patiently for Paul Baruka, the bulky, be-freckled sworn enemy of mine throughout the sixth grade. In a matter of minutes, more and more people began to gather around me and form a large circle, as if we were getting ready for some sort of ritual. A kind of offering. A sacrifice.

That day, I’d been in the lunch room, along with the 75 other screeching adolescents, sitting at a table with my one pal Carmen, and his sports buddies, eating and laughing and trying my best to do what I thought boys were supposed to do. I could never quite figure out what it was I was actually supposed to be doing. How I was supposed to act. My voice, my walk, my thoughts, my dreams, my love for Judy Garland: nothing I did ever seemed to go very well. I was wrong all the way around, and I could never really figure out how to fix it. How to be right. And admittedly, there was a small corner of me that wept for the kids who’d never been privy to Garland’s “Carnegie Hall” album. They always seemed a bit empty in the eyes for me.

By the age of thirteen, I’d already been slapped, pushed, slammed into walls and lockers, chased, spat on, and called every name from “Fag” to “Freak”. The abuse was strangely normal by now, and when it didn’t happen, on those days when I was left alone, I caught myself constantly looking over my shoulder, waiting for something to happen. I’d hold my breath as I walked down the hall, I’d clench my books to my chest so hard, I’d lose my breath. Befriending Carmen, who was one of the athletes at Jane Addams Jr, High, was the best thing that could have happened to me. Although he couldn’t follow me around every minute of every day, the times when he stuck by me, I was ten feet tall. He was my pal, and the bullies knew it.

And so, as we sat in the small corner of our lunch table, a tall, lanky boy who was all neck and arms, slithered up to me and kneeled down to whisper in my left ear:

“Paul Baruka’s going to kill you today after school.”

And he left.

Paul Baruka was usually in charge of the nightmare that became my Jr. High years, and eventually followed me into High School. Paul was mean looking and had huge fists and a voice that cracked when he spoke. Paul Baruka hated me and he made sure I knew it.

“What did that guy say, Scott?” Carmen said leaning in to me.

“He said Paul Baruka was going to kill me today after school. He said, Kill Me.” I repeated it because I believed it. I believed he was actually going to kill me. “I mean, if he was going to actually kill me, don’t you think he’d do it right now instead of waiting until after school? It sounds so punctual.”

Making Carmen laugh was one of the great joys of my life. And laughter was really the only defense I had. I’d never learned to fight and because my parents divorced when I was five, my father lived in California and my step father was rarely around. My brother thought I should be put away in a Gay camp, and my mother was busy teaching and drinking. Carmen was my only touch with the masculine world and the only guide I had.

He put his hand on my shoulder and said very softly:

“That aint gonna happen, pal.” And he flashed a smile. “I’ll go home with you today and make sure it doesn’t happen.”

But I knew this challenge. It was a gender war. This wasn’t something you avoided or postponed or ignored. This was a battle that I was ordered to show up at, and if I didn’t, it would merely be pushed back to another time. As much as I loved Carmen for his protection and as much as I wanted to run away or escape or make it disappear, or tell an adult, the more I knew none of that would make the slightest bit of difference. It was 1974 and Being a Boy meant Fighting a Boy. That was the rule.

The problem was: I Was Never Really A Boy.

So there I stood, as the crowd gathered, and as the sun got hotter, waiting for Paul Baruka and his freckles.

And finally, Paul emerged, red faced and thick, like a Gladiator who’d been out in the sun too long. I had no idea how this was supposed to go, nor did I know what to do, so I continued to stand and shake as the sun did the mambo on my face.

Paul threw his book in the dirt, and raised his clenched fists in front of his chest.

“Ready, Faggot?”

I wasn’t sure if that was an actual question or if it was one of those snappy Bully quips I was supposed to just take in, so I said nothing and repeated his gesture.

That was the last thing I remembered.

The next thing I knew I was spitting dirt and blood out of the corner of my mouth as I stared at 4 pairs of dirty Keds High Tops. I was lying on the left side of my face, and a tooth was dangling out of my mouth. I don’t know how it happened, but as I lay there, and the crowd dispersed with murmurs of “boring”, and “what a Homo” trailing off in the distance, I suddenly felt a familiar hand touch the small of my back. I turned my head, blinked a few times, and threw the rays of the hot sun, like some strange Hallmark movie, Carmen’s face loomed over my head. He reached behind me, and straightened me up. He then grabbed my books, my sad back pack, and the extra change that apparently flew out of my pocket, and hooked me onto his shoulders as I limped alongside him spitting blood and sand all the way home. We didn’t speak. We didn’t talk about what happened. We didn’t discuss it. Not ever. But from that day on, Carmen never let me walk home alone again.

The violence never stopped. In fact, it got bigger and larger and with heavier objects, and all of it happened in school, in front of teachers. Occasionally an adult would stop me and ask me what happened as I was covered in red paint or was trying to pull semi-cooked marshmallows out of my hair. But telling on Paul Baruka and his gang would only make things worse, and I knew that. At that time bullying was part of growing up.

I realize now, as I realized then, that the love affair I was having was one sided. I didn’t care. When I was with Carmen, I was free. I was protected. I was worthy and smart and pretty and I could do anything and I didn’t have to be afraid of the dragons on the way home. It was my first real love and I took my first real breath.

But there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of my people in the Transgender community who right now are standing in the middle of the parking lot waiting for a Paul Baruka to step in the middle of the circle with clenched fists and filled with rage, and there’s not a Carmen in sight. They’re alone. They’re abandoned and expected to participate in a ritual no one should be born into. They’re there and they’re real and they’re screaming to be heard. And there are people who hate them simply because they hate themselves, and some of them don’t make it and they’d rather die than have to face the center of that circle. It’s still happening, alive, awake and fierce.

And it needs to be stopped.

Friday April 20th is the National Day of Silence in honor of the LGBT kids who are still living in the middle of their own silence. You can get information here. Please pass the word.

And…to the ones still waiting in the center of the circle:

Keep your life intact. Nothing is worth leaving the planet for. You are worthy. You Are Enough. You are powerful. Know that. Feel that. Live in that. And the thing the bullies hate the most, the water that drowns them fastest, the bow and arrow that keeps them farthest away, is the honoring of your own voice. The acknowledgment of who you are. Tell someone. Find a teacher, a principal, a friend, a parent, a sibling, and tell someone. There are people who will hear you, receive you, come toward you, be with you. They’re there. I promise. But you have to speak. You have to breathe big and huge and let your voice out and say No and not give up and not give in and grab on to your hope and your magnificence. Please stay present. The Universe is waiting to hear you, and if you’re not here to proclaim who you are, there’s a tear in the plan, and other people suffer.

Don’t Be Silent. There’s a Carmen inside all of us.

Anything is possible.