47 in 46: Lola

The year was 1970, and what I still consider to be one of the most brilliantly written “shock rock” songs of all time – not to mention a shoo-in to the possible future soundtrack for the life of a certain youngish hero not yet realized – was released unto an unassuming public. 

My tale today is based upon this, a little ditty penned by members of the better Beatles, The Kinks.

I hope you enjoy…

Mommy always looks pretty.

And sometimes, sometimes we have special dinners. Dress up dinners. Mommy makes something that tastes really good, but maybe is not so good-looking, cuz she turns down all the lights and makes us eat with candles on.

Daddy likes nights like this cuz he gets to get dressed up in his brown sports coat with big wide lapels, and his tie that’s even wider and looks like yucky mustard, and all his clothes look like they’re made of heavy plastic. Something-ester is what he calls it. He sez it’s the fabric of the future. It hurts me whenever I wear it. I don’t like it.

I hope he’s wrong about the future.

Mommy gets dressed up real pretty on these nights, these special dinner nights. She makes a big scene of it too. After setting the table and getting us boys all seated (daddy seats himself), mommy runs to the back of the house to get out of her kitchen clothes and to get on her pretty stuff. She even has pretty shoes and shiny things that clip on her ears. Just for the dinner, I swear!

Coming down the hall really slow, daddy whoop-oohs and ahhhs as mommy gets to the table. I’m hungry mommy, hurry up!  I think he maybe even pulls the chair out for her. Maybe, I can’t remember. I do know that daddy won’t let us eat until we all tell mommy how pretty she is. I’m hungry, but mommy is pretty anyways. Daddy gets too pushy sometimes like that.

Mommy was walking in the hall, and I could see her pretty shoes poke out from her dress, every time she put one forward. Her dress is really pretty, it’s so long it touches the floor, and it’s all white, except for the brown and black shapes that someone drew all over it, and mommy musta got it on sale, cuz there’s no sleeves on it, but it does have a tight collar around the neck. She calls it a mock turtle’s neck, but I don’t understand what that means. There is no turtle’s neck anywhere on her dress, I looked. Mommy’s dress is sorta tight, and I think it’s that something-ester thing again, but hers is soft and silky, very silky. I like it when I have mommy’s dress in my fingers. It feels good. Daddy sez the dress hugs her. I don’t know how a dress can do that without hurting after a while.

I touch mommy’s dress when she’s not looking sometimes. I go into her bedroom and just touch her things. They’re all soft. Not like daddies and mine. Not hard plastic. Mommy’s stuff is nice. And it fits her too. Us boys look like robots in boxes when we wear our ester-something stuff, but mommy always looks like, like, well, like water moving, like she floats.

Mommy always looks pretty.

I want to too. I want to look pretty. Daddy sez that boys can’t be pretty. Boys are just hanb-sum, he sez. I don’t wanna be hanb-sum, I wanna be pretty. I wanna wear the ester that doesn’t hurt. I wanna have people ooh and ahhh me too.

Daddy gets too pushy like that, so I sometimes sneak into mommy’s room when no one knows, so I can look pretty too. No one knows, so it think it’s OK, and I fold everything up real good and put it back when I’m done. But folding lady underwear is really hard, and I think I broke her stocking once, cuz my toenail made a big line in it. I even close the door so that no one can see.

I don’t think Jesus can look through doors.

At least I hope not, cuz daddy and mommy sez that that sort of thing is a sin. That boys are supposed to be boys, and girls are supposed to be girls, and we’re all supposed to make babies, but only after we get married forever and ever, and God don’t like anyone who gets that screwed up. People go to h-e-double-l for screwing things up, that’s what mommy and daddy’s church sez. That’s what school sez too. And school is run by nuns. Nuns are married to Jesus. They got rings to prove it and everything, so they must know what they’re talking about.

I don’t think Jesus marries very nice women.

Maybe that’s why He’s so upset and sending screw ups to h-e-double-l all the time. I don’t know. But I hope He can’t peek through the door, because I don’t want to be a screw up and go to h-e-double-l. I don’t want to go there, and I don’t want Him to hate me.  I didn’t do anything wrong, I swear Jesus. But I do wanna wear the good feeling something-ester. I wanna feel like water moving, and I don’t wanna look just hanb-sum, and I wanna feel special, and whoop-ooh’d and ahh’d, and look pretty…

Just like mommy always does.

This is NOT a President’s Day Post

In fact, it’s not really a post at all actually, but rather, a recent facebook status update I made. One that I feel should be thrown into a larger web of the social media. One that, with a singular simple addition of a word (and more than a whole slew of singular edits), I feel will work pretty danged well for this week’s Trifecta Writing Challenge:

FUNK (noun)  3 :  SLUMP  <an economic funk>  <the team went into a funk>

While struggling to swallow my latest fit of depression tonight at work, I met a mom who had really nice kids, and pretty sweet tats. As these things transpire, in conversation I found out that each tattoo represented one of the children. As she explained each in turn, I learned that the child whom I thought the most mature (a birthday boy JUST turned twelve who simply HAD to have Minecraft merch to celebrate properly), was born with autism. But it was his sister who stole my heart and gave me hope, in that at no more than 10 years old, she knew that she was transgender – a knowledge held since six years of age according to the mom. To date, she is the youngest transgender person I believe I have ever met.

While mom shared with me that her daughter was treated very poorly by her classmates and the school, the girl that stood before me was still a happy, well-adjusted kid. One who knew and was comfortable with whom she was, and (from my vantage point) well-loved by her family. Including her baby brother, whom she could not carry correctly, even had he come with instructions sewn in. Seeing them all (four kids and one mom with pretty sweet tats) woke me up out of my self-imposed pity-party over my current (and hopefully temporary) funk, to the idea that there are still a LOT of really good people out there. People who love without condition. People who would rather build each other up, then tear each other down. People who can, willingly I would assume, love something much bigger than only themselves.

I’m glad that that mom, her kids, and her sweet tats came in tonight. I’m glad to know that they exist out there. This world is five people better off as a result.

•••

Admittedly, the song chosen today has absolutely not one singular thing to do with the post, but honestly, how many challenges come along that provide you with the *perfect* cue to end with this gem?

Love Is Stronger…

“We meet no ordinary people in our lives.”

~ C.S. Lewis

Transgender Day of Remembrance 2013 – Please click image for more information.

I believe that we find ourselves feeling the need to perform annually, rituals such as the Transgender Day of Remembrance, only because we continue to allow ourselves to live in a world where it is literally easier to take a God-given human life, than it is to permit them to simply live their own.

We find it easier to live in ignorance and hate, than we do in the Truth and Love.

Listen, I’ve no idea who I truly am today, but I do know that people – good people – have been brutally slaughtered, simply because they were not afraid of being who they knew they were. That is wrong, and that has to stop. And that has to stop now.

Love IS stronger than death. Isn’t it about time that we proved that idea to be true?

•••

“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth — only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair.”

~ C.S. Lewis