You’ll Always Be A Hillbilly

“You can use those big words and live in the city, but you’ll always be a hillbilly.” I laughed so hard I almost wet myself. My second oldest brother, Brian, said these words to me several years ago. I look back fondly on this statement and still smirk, though my body has mercifully lost its urge to pee.

Yes, I will always be a hillbilly. I cannot change where I come from, nor have I ever wanted to. I often say I come from a place where people sometimes say don’t in place of doesn’t and ain’t instead of isn’t. They also use words like barrellassin’, as in, “he came barrellassin’ down the road and almost tipped the whole truck over rounding the curve. Thank God the snow plow wasn’t on its way up the road too. What a dumbass!”

I’m not from the American South, but I am from one of the northernmost counties of Appalachia, so I suppose some cultural similarities abound. My county of origin is poor, mostly white, and rural. Stereotypes also abound. That the county is a place full of hillbillies is one of them. And as stereotypes go, there are likely numerous examples one could find to “prove” them true. It’s not hard to find the faults you seek in others. But this piece isn’t about stereotypes. It’s about home.

I pedal my bike up the street and stop. If I’m still, I can hear it. The oceanic rustle of a soft breeze through maple leaves. I can smell the mixed scent of lilac, fresh rain, and mud. Sometimes, if the wind shifts just right, a catch of manure sneaks into the mix. I can feel the surge of excitement and endless possibility swell in my chest. It’s springtime in upstate New York, afterall. Summer will soon follow, and if you haven’t seen summer in the Catskills or Finger Lakes, you’re missing a whole vocabulary of ways to describe beauty.

I can feel cold wind and a blazing sun, both boring into my skin. I, too, can be two opposing things at the same time.

I pedal toward home, and when I turn the corner, I see a line of cars. It’s Sunday. Mom made dinner and invited my older siblings, their spouses, and my nieces and nephews. My feet pick up the pace. I want to get home.

When I enter the house, I can feel it. So. Much. Love. “Here comes Wilma!” my sister says. My brother bops my head and pulls me into a warm bear hug. Nieces and nephews are excited to play. No judgment and So. Much. Love. If that’s a hillbilly, I don’t mind always being one.

A hillbilly with a predilection for the city. I can be two opposite things at the same time.

Going Home

Now the city’s just a prison without fences

His job is just a routine he can’t stand

And at night he dreams of wide open spaces

Fresh dirt between his toes and on his hands.

Alabama Clay, Garth Brooks

I’m a long way from hayfield walks and front porch musings. That time of my life seems like someone else’s. As I reminisce on those ancient days, it’s like finding vestiges of some foreign, long-ago existence during an archeological dig.

I feel pulled to that long-ago existence. The pull, the longing to go back home is visceral. I feel it in my bones. Can place be etched in our DNA? My grandmother’s porch, the hayfield hikes, woolly bear covered roads like the wrinkle under my left eye, the color of my hair, and the protruding of my ribs, all indelible marks on the body of my soul making me who I am and who I am supposed to be.

I want to go back home. Back to the beginning. Being home is when everything around you feels right and whole. Home is upstate New York: wide open spaces, fresh air, friendly people, and enough dirt to grow a small orchard and some blueberry bushes. That’s my dream.

Like the lyric, I feel imprisoned by a city that’s too boxed-in in the most important ways: space, mindset, values, community, and possibility. You have to be right in the right ways.

In my 20’s and 30’s, I bought into the thinking that I had to have the right career, the right politics, the right look, the right salary, the right whatever-is-en-vogue at the moment. This mindset traps a lot of people, and for me at least, cleaved me away from myself. I chased things that truly meant nothing to me and strived for things I really didn’t want.

For a long time, I loved the city. I loved city living. How convenient to be able to walk anywhere and to have a Target, grocery store, or cafe within a 2 mile radius of any place I lived. And now, I don’t give a f@*% about any of that. I want something else, and it ain’t nothing like what’s here.

My values haven’t shifted. They’ve always been there; unchanging and true. I had to consider other ways of being before I trusted my own, original way of being. It may have taken a while, but the certainty and confidence with which I now walk toward my goals is priceless. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks or does because I’m on the road back to myself, my family, and all the unquantifiable, inexplicably marvelous things life, the earth, and the universe have yet to show me…and I am so happily and gratefully ready for it.

Listen to the story told by the reed, of being separated. “Since I was cut from the reed bed, I have made this crying sound. Anyone apart from someone he loves understands what I say. Anyone pulled from a source longs to go back.”
The Reed Flute’s Song, Rumi

Ways of Knowing (aka The HQ 70s)

“I knew it!” exclaimed Kelly, my best friend since first grade. “We’ve just been waiting for you to say something. (She’s now implicated my family in this cover up). We’re sitting on her bed in our shared apartment, the morning sun blazing through sheer white curtains accentuating and celebrating this glorious day. After all, it’s not everyday one gets to confess their fabulosity. It’s spring semester of our senior year as undergrads. I just told her that I’m gay.

“Well why didn’t anyone tell me?” I respond, half jokingly, half seriously.

The thing is, I knew. The kind of knowing that’s so close to your face you can’t see it, but the reality is that it’s still there. The kind of knowing so inextricably wound in your DNA, it’s an absolute truth. Undeniable. Fate. A destination no matter how far off the path one roves, one will eventual land right where they were meant to be.

I knew it.

There are pictures of me shirtless in the summer (I must be around seven), just out of the pool, excitedly and with carefree, non-self-conscious abandon blowing out birthday candles as I’m joined around the table by a bunch of neighborhood boys, including my brother. I wanted to swim like them (shirtless), and I did. I wanted to be the quarterback when we played football, and I did. I wanted to be the dad when we built playhouses out of leaves, and I did.

Another photo. In this one, I’m dressed up like an old man, trucker hat, toy guitar, and a flannel. My friends are enmeshed in a fantasy world, playing roles they know are make believe. But for me, this is not make believe. This is me practicing for my future life in the real world. I’m trying on the role claimed by everything in me, encoded in my blood, my nature, and secretly shucking off the one everyone assumes I will take up.

Then there are the memories of the inner worlds I created for myself. One where I was a boy driving a girl around, who I am undoubtedly imagining is my wife, in the maroon jeep Power Wheels my little brother and I shared. Another, I’m Garth Brooks going to school wearing my belt like I watched him wearing his: the extra piece of the strap not placed into the keeper loop but left unkept. Just like him. No one knew I was miming one of my childhood heroes, but I knew. My inner world was expanding, exploring, gently pointing the compass toward coming home to myself.

I majored in English as an undergraduate, so naturally, I’m drawn to books, book stores, cafe’s, the experiences of others like and unlike me…and…libraries. I found myself hanging around the HQ section of the college library for inordinate amounts of time. One day, it occured to me, “Wait. I spend a lot of time in this section. I go out of my way to take any class that even hints toward Queer Theory. Oh, my God. I’m queer!” I’m not sure if outside that campus library that any clouds parted to make way for wondrous beams of light and the archetypal rainbow, but a shroud was lifted somewhere inside me. I could glimpse a future of fulfillment. I could see myself becoming a full, I-make-my-life-what-I-want-it human. I could see myself openly having a wife (how much more exciting can it get than that?). I felt relief and a new sense of power over my own being. I thought to myself, “maybe I can and will be happy.”

I knew, but I finally came out to myself in the library. The library: where anyone can explore millions of ways of being, millions of ways of knowing. The library: where I found my one, unique way of being…of knowing knowing.

Yes, I do tell this joke: It took a thousand books and a library for me to pry myself out of the closet.

How very

me.

Suddenly Stumbling into Some Bad Lighting…aka: Getting Older

It happens to everyone, and if it hasn’t happened to you yet, it will. You’re out on the dance floor, shaking a little sauce all over that marley tile (move those hips!), cuttin’ that proverbial carpet (I know, I know, it’s rug…but I like the alliteration here…poetic license, I guess), when someone says, “can I take your picture for our social media page?”

“Sure!” you say lighting up with the quickness of a bioluminescent insect during summer time because foresight is shortsighted, especially when you’re feeling good.

You dance the night away. You get down, get down, get down, get down…

Then it happens, your 39 year old self sees it, and it’s scary. That photo you were so all right with posing for yesterday is not so much what you’re alright with today. Your bioluminescence has faded much like your hair color. You ask yourself, “when did I get so gray?” You reason with yourself, “I must have suddenly stumbled into some bad lighting that evening. It had to be the flash and all those fluorescent lights accentuating ANYTHING WHITE!” as you shake your head in disbelief.

The you is me I’m writing about here. The reality is I’ve enjoyed getting older. I like myself more. I know myself more. I care less about things that don’t matter. I laugh more. I connect more. I experience joy like I never have before. I feel more youthful than I did in my youth. I worry less. I eat less pizza (God, that one’s hard). I try to like tea.

You get it, there are absolute upsides to aging. Just tell my hair it needs to get it together.

This summer I got interested in positive psychology, so I took a class on Coursera taught by Martin Seligman, who is considered the originator of the field. In one of the classes he acknowledges that while age brings decline in physical and mental abilities, particularly around speed, there is at least one area where people excel as they age (due to several factors I won’t mention here): originality, also known as creativity. For someone who consumes creative works and aspires to make them, aging might just be what I should’ve wished for after all.

Seligman goes on to tell a story about a musician named Itzhak Perlman, a famous violinist, who once broke a string while playing Beethoven. He apparently played the piece so beautifully with only three strings that he was given a standing ovation. Perlman stopped the applause to say, “sometimes the job of the artist is to see how much music we can make with what we have left.”

I’m not an artist, but I do believe that our lives are a piece of artwork we make our own. So, I plan to keep on dancing, (and being photographed), creating, and getting old with all the hair (gray or otherwise) and vitality I have left. In the end, I will have created and owned a masterpiece that I hope influences those I love (nieces and nephews…are you reading this?). To all of you: Brian, Stacey, Rebecca, Eddie, Shayne, Victoria, Cassondra, Alex, and Ashley, Crue, Lena, and Everleigh: never be afraid to…back it up, move it forward, and shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it until you soul is full and your hair is grayer than mine, bad lighting be damned! Craft that work of art we call life with all the good, love, passion, compassion, hope, faith, and humility you have in you. Leave nothing on that marley tiled floor. I LOVE YOU!

A Tear in the Fabric of the Real

How do I write about the death of my brother? It’s been 7 years, and I still cannot find the words to describe the emotions I feel. A lot of people use “numb” but that isn’t accurate. I do feel, but I cannot name what it is that I feel. Some people say a hole is left when someone we care about dies. This is getting closer to what I feel, but it must be a black hole, sucking out oxygen to some vast, dark, unknowable place to perhaps just sit there innocuously or to seep slowly like a gas leak waiting to explode. Grief…where does it go? What does it do?

When I was an undergraduate, my Shakespeare professor said something about death that I will never forget. He said it long before I lost so many people I love, but it both struck and stuck with me. It’s possible my brain knew long before I did that these words would be helpful, and they have repeated in my mind ever since. He said, “death is like a tear in the fabric of the real” or some similar approximation because as I sit here looking the phrase up online, I do not find this exact phrase but other ones that I like less. Maybe I misremembered; maybe I just can’t find the originator. It doesn’t matter because this is the closest I can come to describing how it feels.

I patch up the fabric with memories. I spindle away by trying to live more like him everyday: sensitive, caring, loving, funny, goofy, silly, just plain fun. Someone worth knowing and hard not to love.

My brother was sensitive.

My brother was giving.

My brother is an inspiration.

My brother is a mentor.

My brother is a magnificent uncle, brother, friend, and son.

My brother was a trendsetter: fashion, music, etc.

My brother is my best friend, only eleven months younger than me. Irish twins. He was the better of the twins.

Empty Boxes (A Song for Him)

Empty boxes line the hallway

Someone has come

To take your space

Everything feels hollow

Everything is strange

Cracks along the floorboards are

Bigger than before

Cobwebs in the corners

Have lost their allure

And I can’t remember what I’m here for

All things move

And all things change

And days will pass

Have they forgotten your name?

And all things move

And all things change

But this old heart

Will always be the same

And it will carry your name

A closet full of unworn clothes

We settled your estate

The memories you left on the front porch as recent as yesterday

Bring pain too great to face

Still A little light shines in

An unchanged broken heart

All things move

And all things change

And days will pass

Have they forgotten your name?

All things move

And all things change

But this old heart

Will always be the same

It will carry your name

Nearly Hit by a Bus…(I Mean Bicyclist) on the Mean Streets of Philadelphia

Have you ever been nearly hit by a bus? Well, me neither (although I was nearly side swiped by the side mirror of a large tour bus at Broad and Montgomery while waiting to cross an intersection, but that’s a story for another time).

Anyway, I’ll tell you something that has happened. I was once nearly hit by a bicyclist while stepping out of a bus.

Then, I went on about my day like nothing happened.

This, I have found is a common phenomenon not unique to me. All of us face instances during each of our days that could have ended in such tragedy, such trauma that we miss by only a fraction of a second. But, I’m getting ahead of myself and this story. So let me begin again.

My almost collision happened on the corner of Broad and Walnut in the city of Philadelphia. It was a steel-gray, cold morning and the streets themselves were as bleary-eyed as the commuters on the 27 SEPTA bus. Everyone seemed sleepy, their winter attire strewn and hanging from their slumbering bodies.

My mind was as misty as the morning as thoughts dripped off like dew. So, it isn’t shocking that by the time I recognized my stop at Broad and Walnut, I had to gather my stringy winter attire, pull the “please stop the bus” cord, stumble over my own backpack and the feet of others, and (of course) balance my cup of coffee all while feigning a calm-and-cool-as-a-cucumber persona because when you are on city public transportation you have to; lest you want to receive eye-rolls indicating what an obnoxious, inexperienced and entirely uncool idiot you are.

I made it out down the steps and out the side door still fiddling with my personal items and trying frantically (but not too frantically) to perch my bag on my back. Ho hum, hum drum.

WHAT IS COMING AT YOU?, my brain said. I said, “huh?”

My eyes got huge and my body recoiled because, you know, biology and science. My sympathetic nervous system donned its superhero cape and swooped in to save the day. The biker whizzed by. I was frozen solid. In just milliseconds two lives (almost) collided, and it was life altering. Near death experiences often are.

From that moment on, I decided I should look both ways before stepping off buses. And, then I toddled off to work to carry on about my day.

Magnus Soapus

Picture this: yours truly in the shower. Never mind! Don’t picture that. Banish that picture from your mind forever, and imagine this: a person is in the shower doing all their showerly business, which includes singing Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” with unparalleled verve when all of a sudden a step to the left sends imagined person veering across the shower tile like a novice skier down an ice-packed Mt. Everest.

The incident happened, of course, at the most climactic point of the whole Gaga rendition: the chorus of this marvelous song, “I’m on the right track, b!$*&es, I was born this way!” On this particular occasion, the words came out more like, “I’m on the right track bee-ahhhhhhhh-ches! Holy shiznit on a Ritz cracker! What in the hell was that?!”

It was soap.

A small, white, tiny, slithery piece of life-flashing-before-your-eyes suds-bar. Who would have known this small, insignificant, useless, (and more-than-likely hairy) piece of human deodorizer had the ability to send a Homo sapien careening in their birthday suit to a small spidery corner in the shower holding on to whatever that birthday suit provides as “Oh, shit!” handles?

Well, there I was; I mean there imagined person was crouching blindly (the shampoo hadn’t been fully washed out of their hair), and clutching the shower floor for dear life wondering if it would be wise to attempt standing up.

After the soap slid back toward the drain, and the adrenaline subsided, and the brain overthrew its hijackers, stand up the imagined person did.

They stood up, rinsed the shampoo out of their hair, opened their bloodshot eyes, and declared with re-empowered verve (and Shoulder shakes, spirit fingers, and a bend-and-snap with a grand finale of make it rain gestures): “I’m STILL on the right track, bee-ah-ches, I was born this way!”

When life throws you slippery showers (as it so often does) and you fall into that spidery corner clutching your metaphorical birthday suit, remember “we’re all born superstars.” So stand back up, rinse that soap out of your eyes, and declare with ever more vigor just how strong and amazing you are (and throw a few hair flips in too!).

“Soap bubble” by Raphaël Quinet is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Feet, Anyone?

Have you ever looked down at your feet and thought, “Yep, I’m an animal”? I know! It happens to me all the time, too. I’ll be sitting at my desk typing away, thinking complex, consequential thoughts when abruptly I’ll look down to make sure I’m hitting the right key on the keyboard and suddenly, I catch a glimpse of one of those animalistic five digit extremities.

Have you ever looked down at your feet and thought, “Yep, I’m an animal”?

Then I have to break from writing to take a closer look. “Wow, toes are really weird,” I exclaim to myself. “Why do they bend that way unflexed?” I’ll pontificate. “Weird! Wait, let me have a closer look!” I’ll prop a foot up on the c-shaped coffee cart I keep pressed against my desk. Taking a look, I’ll realize I should probably cut and clean my toenails, and I’ll take an oath to myself to wash the bottoms more often; maybe I’ll even plan a pedicure every month.

I’ll start to Google toes. Pictures of phalanges (x-ray style) pop up and I’ll think, “Wow, they really do look quite bestial! Unbelievable.”

I’ll then get philosophical.

“Damn! I really am an animal.” No more important than any other, and certainly more related than I imagine on a day-to-day basis. Structurally, underneath the cover of human skin and denial, these phalanges look so close to some other paws I see regularly (and love). See photos below.

But, seriously, all it takes is a quick look down to remember exactly where I stand on the continuum of life on earth. I stand in a tiny, infinitesimal corner of a corner. I’m a part of many other parts; a sliver of a slice of a whole. And to me, this is a reassuring reminder of the constancy of the cycle through which we all will pass.

Finally, I conclude, “I should recycle more…and consume less…and save every freaking animal that needs saving.” Oh, and I’ll wash my feet more often, too.

When Everything Hurts

How do you function

When everything hurts

And it’s not just the sad things

That drive your heart in reverse?

It’s when the sky, so blue

and full of beauty

gives you a pleasant afternoon

but you ache – because of it.

It’s when sea-salt air

blows through your hair

and she whispers, “I love you”

and you love her too

You feel full and empty

Happy and blue

How do you function

When everything hurts

And it’s not just the sad things

That drive your heart in reverse?