I found these photos that I had posted on Facebook not long after I'd finished redoing the place to the level of about 85%. While I never got to have a housewarming party, I DID have numerous late-night impromptu hangouts. Some were in the living room. Most were in my Behr "Flirt Alert Semi-gloss" red kitchen. I've lived a lot of places in my life. I've moved cross-country 12 times since 1994. This kitchen is still my favorite kitchen. I loved this kitchen because most of my good memories of hanging out with my grandparents took place in this kitchen, and that was a tradition that I somehow managed to keep going. I'll miss it.
But I'm pretty sure the old gal is going to a good family. It was with great pleasure I snubbed the ridiculously-high-with-ridiculously-high-"seller costs"-to-match offers from white slumlords and take the modestly above-market offer from a young Latinx family with children. I wanted my house to go to a family that probably had trouble getting one in the racist-as-hell real estate market. The houses next door and across the street have kids about the same age as the Hernandez kids. And with the three other Latinx families that moved into the neighborhood over the weekend, the Hernandez family will be in good company. I did struggle with choosing which family I wanted to sell to, because several families put in good offers.
Chandra is a rock star of a realtor. Really. She's a visual artist and photographer, and throws the absolute best New Year's Eve parties in Tulsa. Not that I ever had the chance to attend one, but my friend Ryan had, and his reviews were always five stars. If I'm ever able to back to Tulsa, one thing I'll make it back for is one of Chandra's epic parties. I knew Chandra through Ryan; in fact, he'd recommend me to her. Which was good, because Handyman J struggled to finish the house on time. Chandra was able to procure the experts that we needed to get that stuff fixed. It took until the day before the listing for my handyman to finish painting the exterior of the house. Then the listing got posted and the house sold within two days. What's more, Chandra was diagnosed with ADHD two days before she came to see me about selling my house, and we built a lot of rapport about that common trait. That Chandra was able to pull her end of the deal this quickly is absolutely amazing. Like I told you, Chandra's a rockstar.
I'm already working on my memoirs. This summer may be incredibly rough going geographically, but by September, I'll be fully relocated and both of my summer jobs will finally kick in. It will take a while to get from now to closing on the house, but it looks like the basic elements of my Maude-esque life are starting to pull together. The only thing left is for some outrageous, out-of-the-blue opportunity to fall in my lap and I'll be all set. I feel like an adventure isn't too far off in the future, because if one doesn't come along, I'll just drive around till I find it.
The past few weeks with my brother and nephew have been really good. The trauma-demons have been slain or rendered comatose. In their absence comes a shedding of regret, surrendering of sadness and resentment, and a reclaiming of personal agency. I'm in a much better place mentally and emotionally than I have been for a while, and although the cloudy near-future is anxiety-inducingly hazy, I know that it'll all be over in a few months. I'm about to be in a really great place for the first time in years!
The only things I have left is absolute rage and determined scorn for the fascists who are threatening the families, homes, careers, and lives of me and people like me, in an attempt to drive out us of their sacred little white, straight, Christian, bigot midst. And when I say me and people like me, I'm not just talking about the LGBTQI+ communities all over America. I'm talking about the innocent Jewish people being doxed on a large scale in Boston by actual goddamn Nazis whilst the Proud Boys marched through the city the weekend before July 4th. Any folks who are being marked for extermination by America's homegrown fascists are now my people, as far as I'm concerned, because at the end of the day, those fascist fuckers are coming for us all. We're all going to have to fight for all of us if we're going to survive. Hell, when Saudi freaking Arabia is more progressive with LGBTQI+ rights than the USA, you know we're living in the worst timeline here.
One of the saddest and most infuriating things about what is happening in Boston is that it would actually be pretty easy to counter the doing and make a gigantic dent in the white supremacist network. In fact, if that blow had happened before the Proud Boys marched, they wouldn't have been able to pull it off. Getting them back in their cage is the tough part. In all honesty, if the right kinds of people had the right kinds of expertise, a resource network, a devastating trickster streak, and a willingness to do it even if it means sticking their necks out a bit, it could happen. I hope it does, sooner rather than later. For all of our sakes.
