I Need a Minute - delivered at the memorial service for Peggy Rose Johnson

It is so nice to be among so many folks all gathered to celebrate and honor Peggy’s remarkable life. She deserves no less. I have lots of stories of life with Peggy and I want to share the glimpse of her that I got to see. I just hope you’ll bear with me because before I do that I need a minute. A moment to catch my breath. A moment to grieve the loss of her physical presence. A moment to rage at cancer. A moment to curse the healthcare system. A moment to acknowledge and accept that something has in fact ended. That something seismic has shifted. I don’t think it will be along minute but I do need a minute.

Don’t misunderstand. I know that our collective memories can sustain us. I know that spirit is real and some say eternal. I truly believe that the gift of Peggy’s love and being allowed to love her is not diminished with her passing. And I know that there will be joy again. After all, the bible says “Weeping may endure for a night but joy comes in the morning”. The truth is that, for me, morning has not yet dawned. So I need this minute to say goodbye to my sister. To release the grief and find the heart to choose joy again.

I need a minute to say out loud how much I will miss her grace, her wit, her intellect, her style, her heart, her warmth, her easy affection, her artistry, her steadfastness, her love. The way she called me "Valerina" and I’d call her "Peggylita" in reply; and then, we’d laugh a loud knowing laugh. I will miss that. I will also miss her independence, her resourcefulness, her sass, her protectiveness. Hell, I’ll even miss her stubbornness and her walkabouts. Do you know about those? Well, Peggy would disappear for long periods. We learned to hold her loosely, that holding too tightly bristled her. “Has anyone heard from Peggy? ” has been a part of nearly every conversation that my sisters and I have had for more that 20 years.

It is ironic that oh so private Peggy had her private world broken open by her fight to survive. She had to do lots of learning to trust others - to let us all in. And the sisterhood wrapped around her tightly and held her up. On May 28th,  I knew that Peggy had passed away without being called. I knew because my phone was silent that morning. No call. No text. There was no report on how her night went, no itinerary for her day, no planning for her care, no rally for prayer. There was silence. And then, quite frankly, there were no words-there are no words.

So, I’ll need a minute. A moment to remember being on stage with Peggy. And how she danced to Black Butterfly in the opening of SHE SPEAKS wearing the infamous black catsuit. Or that time when Johnnie Gamble forgot his lines during our production of HOME and shooed us off the stage. Peggy and I stood backstage looking at each other incredulously wondering what the hell to do. Eventually, we found our way. We always found our way.

I'll need a minute to remember walking along the highline in NYC talking futures and being old ladies on a beach somewhere with someone young and cute bringing us cocktails. A moment to remember that first Girls' Night and how we brought up the sun, spent from sharing. And remembering every Girls' Night thereafter as we loved each other into our respective womanhoods.

Ellen once wrote that Peggy was "the kind of woman who couldn’t cross a threshold without making an entrance". Make no mistake. Peggy knew the power of her presence and she wielded it like a weapon with both boldness and compassion. I’ll need a moment for remembering that compassion too.

 Recently, I posted a reading about death on facebook. I posted it because it felt like something Peggy would have said. It was written by Henry Scott-Holland in 1910.

"Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened everything is just as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life we shared so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference in your tone. Wear no false air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a neglible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner. All is well."

This piece is so spot on that I hear it now in Peggy’s voice. And I reply: "I love you my beautiful sister, Peggy Rose. I hear you. And I will do my best but all is not yet well with me. I need a minute."

Originally presented on Saturday, May 17, at Rainbow Expansion Unit: Parts 1 and 2, our second event in THE ANGELS PROJECT, co-produced as part of Washington Ensemble Theatre’s Six Pack Series and Velocity Dance Center‘s Speakeasy Series.

My Two Closets

by Valerie Curtis-Newton

Before I get started. By show of hands, how many of you have ever seen that South Park episode in which Tom Cruise won’t come out of the closet? I love that one. Hilarious, right? And something a lot of us can relate to. Closets. We all have them, right? I mean identity closets. Everybody has at least one and everyone claims to want out. There is even a website called “Empty Closets: Coming out resources and a safe place to chat".

Like the closets we put our clothes in – identity closets seem to fall into two categories. They are either super organized, California closets neatly arranged and color-coded or they are like the exploding closets in cartoons. Bursting at the seams in a total jumble. Think about every comedy you’ve ever seen where the closet door gets opened and ton of crap comes crashing down on you. I think most of us hope that we can manage to get one of those California closets but end up standing in a ton of crap.

Me, I‘ve done a lot of closet stuffing in my life. You know how they say that when you finally figure out that you’re queer everything in your past makes a kind of sense? It was sort of like that for me. Not that all of the clues weren’t there in the open all the time. I know now that I have been bi-sexual since before I had words for it. I mean… I wore chukka boots and a skully hat for two years. Hell, I played softball for Christ sakes. But I also liked shopping and makeup and flirting with boys. (And pining over girls.) So, my closet stuffing started pretty early. When you’re a bi-sexual, Christian, you spend a lot time trying to figure out where is safe, where you fit in, where your tribe is.

I remember when I was 12, I had these overwhelming simultaneous crushes on a boy named Michael Patterson and a girl named Aleta Crews. Michael Patterson was 12 too and lived in the house three down from mine on McGuire Air Force base. He had cocoa colored skin and the most beautiful hazel eyes. He was quiet and played sports and had bowlegs which for some reason really turned 12year-old me on. All the kids in the neighborhood would gather at the park or on the quad to play. Usually, it was kickball or sometimes touch football. Mostly because the boys wanted to feel the girls up during the game. I was the most athletic girl in the group. I could really throw a ball with the best of them. But I digress.

Anyway, I was crazy for Michael Patterson and he didn’t know that I was even alive. (Which I found completely hard to believe. Cause if I’m honest, I stalked the poor boy. I staked out his locker. I stood near him at lunch. I would watch him and his dad playing catch in the front yard from behind the curtains of my bedroom window.) One day, I was sitting on my porch waiting for him to come home from baseball practice with his dad. Eyeing him as he passed. Hoping against hope that he would say “Hi”. He just gave me the nod. You know the one. Who the hell ever invented the nod? I’d really like someone to explain it to me sometime. Anyway, on this one day, Michael Patterson’s dad, who always said “Hello” to me, stopped and said. “You really like my son huh?” I was completely embarrassed. Wishing the ground would swallow me up, I nodded.

Then he said, “Well, if you want him to like you, you need to stop throwing the ball so good.” I told you the clues were there. But I was 12. I didn’t know that throwing the ball so well made me ineligible for Michael Patterson’s affections. And now I had a real dilemma. You see, I had to throw the ball well because my second crush, Aleta Crew played… you guessed it: Softball.

Now, Aleta Crews was the exact opposite of Michael Patterson. She was older, 15, and tall and blonde. Like Scandinavian blonde and she played shortstop. Her double play move was a thing of beauty to behold. I’d watch her from the bench – not in an “I’d love to kiss you” kind of way, more in a “looking at you makes me smile” kind of way. I kept hoping she would smile back. But it was a lost cause – Aleta Crews had a boyfriend.

I never told anyone about my feelings for Aleta Crews. It didn’t seem right. But at night when I got home from practice – now this is a huge stepping out of the closet for me – I would sing show tunes – yes, show tunes – and put her name in them. My favorite was “Maria” from West Side Story. I would put the record on and sing at the top of my lungs “Aleta, I just met a girl named Aleta”. You laugh. Ok, but I can tell it is a laugh of recognition. You’re not fooling me. I know I’m not alone. Hey, I told you bi-sexual from the beginning.

As I got older the stuff in my bi-sexual closet changed. You see, I went from hiding my “I Like Girls” stuff to hiding my “I Like Boys” stuff when I discovered that Lesbians don’t like bisexuals. Some don’t even believe we exist – we’re apparently on the continuum on the path to lesbianism, or we are posers unwilling to give up heterosexual privilege. Promiscuous. Indecisive. Blah blah blah.

So as I moved into the Lesbian community I added the “I Like Boys” stuff to the “I Like Girls” stuff already in my cluttered identity closet. If there was a woman I wanted to date, it was sometimes easier not to mention the “I Like Boys” stuff too early. Always before sex but not usually on the first couple of dates.

How am I still in the bi-sexual closet? I think it’s because my wife and I have been together for 17 years, so folks make assumptions. I am with a woman in a monogamous relationship – that makes me a lesbian, right? No, actually it makes me faithful. Even my beloved struggled with this early on. When we first decided to be monogamous, she declared me a Lesbian – with more than a little relief. (If I were a lesbian, she wouldn’t have to break her pledge never to get involved with the dangerous, will-leave-you-for-a-man-one-day bisexual.) Anyway, when she clapped the L Word on me I said, “nope, still bi”. She said, “But you’re in a lesbian relationship so that makes you a lesbian.” So then, I had to break it down for her.

“Babe, I am a bi-sexual in a lesbian relationship. I live largely with in the lesbian community but I’m still bi-sexual.” The quizzical look on her face was kind of precious so I went on…. “You were in an interracial relationship for 4 years, right? Did that make you interracial? No, you were a black woman in an interracial relationship. Make sense.” She got it. Though I’m "out" to my wife and now all of you, most of time I just roll with the assumption that I’m a lesbian. After all there is nothing wrong with being a lesbian. I mean, there are way worst things to be than a lesbian…. like a Christian, for example.

DAMN, more stuff for the closet. Living in a time when the word Christian offends so people, this may be the toughest closet to navigate. A religious practice is supposed to bring you closer to God and the people, As an organized religion, Christianity is often strident and judgmental and flat-out mean. It’s no wonder that so many queer folks of faith are closeted. Church may just be the largest walk-in closet of them all. From pastors to deacons to choir directors to Sunday school teachers, church is full of queers.

It’s true of all churches to some degree but black church has it own special flair. Not just those men in yellow suits with matching shoes and hair fried died and laid the side. Or all those single women church secretaries with their – “roommates” – who sit together in the same pews next to each other for decades. I mean, come on, the gays are all up in the church. And why not, people go to church looking for their tribe. And many of us find it there. Often it’s no more dysfunctional than our families.

You know, before moving here to Seattle – 20 years ago, I contemplated going to seminary. I’m really not supposed to come out like this but…It’s true. I diligently went to bible study, prayed, fasted, preached, spoke in tongues and holy danced in the aisles. Yep, all of that. You’re not supposed to do or say any of that if you’re a woman or queer. After all, religion these days reeks of patriarchy and misogyny and homophobia, right?

In the church’s closet, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is in full effect. The telling comes at a very high price. When I got involved with my wife and moved out of the closet at church, I lost a lot of friends from the “faith community”, folks who “loved the sinner” but hated the sin. Who could no longer come to our house or have us at theirs. It was tough.

The other shoe is that when I say that I’m a Christian in the gay community, my queer family sometimes moves away just as fast. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Then again what’s the point of running. I’m not a literalist or a fundamentalist. Yes, I believe in God. I believe in Christianity as a philosophy. I live in its contradictions and find comfort and wisdom and peace in it. In it’s mysticism, it’s rituals, it’s optimism, and it’s community. I believe in its call to be our highest, best selves. I believe in faith and kindness. But the fear of rejection in the church and in the world makes it too easy to stay silent. Overstuffing the closet.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a not great screenplay about a woman who leaves her husband for a woman and has a spiritual battle with her preacher father. In the penultimate scene of the script, as she is being driven out of church by her father’s preaching, she’s rescued by that “gay guy in the yellow suit" – the one brave "out" person in every church. He tells her, that God is with her; that God sent her to that place for a reason. He says, “In this moment, right now. You might feel lonely and beaten. But God is here for you. He brought us here to this place for a reason. Our being here means change can happen.” Change can happen. In the end, she finds the courage and peace to hold her place in the church as an "out" person.

So, that’s what I’m doing these days, trying to be brave enough to push open my closet doors. Out in the open is where all the good stuff is: all the laughter and the sharing, all the responsibility and the expectations, all the intimacy and the community. In the open is where all the love is. So, you know, maybe it’s not so awful when our closet doors burst open and the crap comes crashing down… And as crazy as it can look sometimes, here I am standing on my pile of crap: bisexual, Christian, and most importantly out.

Haiku #2

Haiku #2

Hair on borrowed time.

Fear woven into dreadlocks

Destined for the floor.

*on my cutting my hair

Baby Steps

Last year, I gave myself the project of writing a haiku a day.
This year, I am going to post them.

Haiku #1

fog, thick as concrete,

hangs shade on bright city lights.

trees dance a slow grind.

* on a foggy drive home

Videos | The New Republic

Videos | The New Republic As I go deeper onto my research into Childress' Trouble in mind, I stumbled upon heart-breaking gems like this...

Rick Warren

I can't begin to express my disappointment in the selection of Rick Warren to deliver Barack Obama's inaugural invocation. It is clearly his right and I understand and applaud the impulse to reach out to all of his constituents. If this were a commission on poverty or AIDS or global-warming, I would have no problem with being inclusive of Pastor Warren. But it isn't. It is a day of national unity. The inaugural is not the time to be political and the Warren invitation is political.

President-elect Obama has broken faith with his supporters. It is true that he should not be judged by Rick Warren's comments anymore than he should have been judged by Jeremiah Wright's. We should watch what he does. His actions are not exactly something to shout about. After his cabinet appointments- which don't include a member of the LGBT community, the announcement of the White House senior staff - which also doesn't include a member of the LGBT community, the inaugural plans - which don't include a meaningful role for the LGBT community and the patronizing handling of the very real dismay of the LGBT community, I'm not so inclined to shout that change is on the way. We are still second-class citizens with second-class rights and President-elect Obama's "fierce advocacy for the equality of gay and lesbian Americans" has thurfar amounted to little more than the empty rhetoric I never believed him capable of.

It was not just a sobering moment but also a personally hurtful one. I hope that my support was not misplaced. At this moment, I'm unconvinced that a President Obama will actually deliver the change we need.

check out Joe Solomonese's WA Post article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/18/AR2008121802788.html

Comfort and a call to move...

My friend, Staceyann Chinn wrote a poem (For Weeping Girl named Nina) that touched me today....Here is the part that really grabbed me:

"...woman/child
stop weeping/stop caterwauling/all that/endless bellyaching

is entirely un/necessary
what you need to do is claim your voice

your song/your story is all you have

so wield it/weapon like you have to sling it/blade and bloody
you cannot be afraid of it

fall

but get up
open your throat/your hands
your heart is nothing but an open thruway

drive/little girl/drive

let that wind dry your face
your fingers

your fears
feel the fury of your faith

fate ain't got nothing on you
water ain't nothing but water

swim/little girl/swim
put those pretty notes in a little brown bottle

and keep them
sailing to sea"

I have been lamenting the Prop 8 vote. The homophobia, the vitriol - even more the priviledge and callous indifference had me curling up inside. But I read this poem and it's ending seemed like more than a call to healing - it was a call to arms. This is a fight that I am ready and willing to engage. I will not be invisible. I will not be silent. It is past time to take up space, to find my voice, to roar. Thanks, Staceyann!