The Total Femme

The Dog:

He is a Cairn terrier,  just shy of one year. My Beau identifies with him greatly, and is always pointing out how intelligent, handsome, and fabulous he is. She urges us all to treat him with the great respect and awe due to his ancient and honorable lineage. “Ah, laddie,” she’ll say to him, “show me the glory of the Cairn!” and he will absolutely do his best. But here’s the thing: it’s hard to be dignified and embody the glory of the Cairn with the wind in your noble beard when everyone keeps calling you “Tootle Pants.”

Seth:

Our eldest, almost 14. He is currently in Florida about to enter the maw of hell (aka Disneyworld) with his brother and our youngest, Owen (11), his other mom (my ex), and her partner. And all the evil cousins, who have unsavory energy drink habits and ADHD. My crew left early this morning, and I’ve been waiting to hear from them. When I got back from walking the (noble, dignified, glorious) dog just now, there was a message on the machine from Seth saying, “Hi Mom, I’m just calling to say we got home safely, I mean to the hotel, I mean motel, I mean Holiday Inn.” You know you’re doing something right when your baby can quote “Rapper’s Delight” at the drop of a hat. You’re so bad, Seth!

The Upcoming Nuptuals:

This is alternately stressful/overwhelming and exhilarating, but my Beau and I will be wed come June. One question I have is, why does everything cost $1000? I think that’s a really good question. But anyway, we’re doing the best we can with our limited funds, and we are hopeful that the day will be meaningful and lovely and a damn good time. We also hope to have some food and some drink and I really, really hope to be wearing a dress (I’m still looking).

We’ve been working on our vows, and I started looking at handfasting rituals online to get some ideas. Here is something I found special for lesbians:

Alone, awesome, complete within Herself, the Goddess, She whose name cannot be spoken, floated in the abyss of the outer darkness, before the beginning of all things. And as She looked into the curved mirror of black space, She saw by her own light her radiant reflection, and fell in love with it. She drew it forth by the power that was in Her and made love to Herself, and called Her ‘Miria, the Wonderful’.

Need I say that this doesn’t work for my Mister and me? In other words (speaking strictly for myself because it’s my blog and I can gag if I want to): EWWWW!

And there you have it, folks, that’s the news from the Other Lake, where all the dogs are fly, all the femmes are foxy, all the butches do the bump, and all the children like hot butter on their breakfast toast.

The regular reader of this blog (and you know who you are) will perhaps recall that I have been going several times a week to read to Owen’s 5th grade class (On the Rug). I sit in a chair and the kids gather on the rug at the back of the class, a lucky few claiming one of the 3 milk crates on which perch 3 flowered pillows. We just finished Mistress Masham’s Repose by T.H. White, and have now started The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander.

Yesterday, their teacher mentioned that some of them had had a bit of a struggle with some of the vocabulary, references, plot, etc., of Mistress Masham’s Repose, so I asked them some questions and we processed a bit. At one point, I said, “Well, is there anything else about the book that you want to ask, anything that’s been keeping you up at night?” and one brave soul asked me what bloaters are (one of the characters is very fond of bloaters). My feeling is that bloaters are blood sausages, although I guess I’m not entirely certain, and we talked about sausages and how some folks use the entire animal, including the blood, and that you can cook blood, etc.

To my left, on one of the milk crates and within close proximity to my knee, was sitting a young man who has quite a bit of fairy dust sprinkled over him. He was wearing madras Bermuda shorts, a nice polo shirt, and was otherwise impeccably groomed. Another young man, an athlete sporting no fairy dust that I can detect, was on the floor at his feet, leaning back comfortably while Fairy Dust played with his hair. As we discussed bloaters, Fairy Dust shivered and, with an expressive moue, said softly, “Now that’s going to keep me up at night!” I laughed and patted his arm – seriously, it was probably the cutest thing I’d seen all week, and I have a puppy!

This morning, I told my Beau about the latest On the Rug scene, and later I got to thinking about Fairy Dust with his fingers combing through Sporty’s hair, both happy as little clams. I got to wondering about this generation of kids growing up. Might it be possible that there will be a coterie of straight guys who are openly and happily friends with gay guys, just the way there have been fag hags forever? Might these male fag hags appreciate and learn from fags the way female fag hags have forever? I’m not talking about a gay boy being in the closet so he can pal around with a straight boy, I mean that the gay boy is out, the straight boy knows he’s out, it’s not a forbidden topic, and it’s part of their friendship for each other. Of course, there would be problems of falling in love, being confused about platonic love and romantic love and etc., but there are always those problems – there certainly are with female fag hags, even on the fag’s side. To me, it is a lovely idea that there could be a genuine and open friendship between gay and straight boys as a matter of course and not just because he’s my cousin or my brother or whatever and we never talk about it. Just thinking about those two boys on the rug gives me hope.