Son of a Witch

Sequels, sophomore albums, getting back together - is anything better the second time around? OK, OK, I can think of a few things (day old pizza). Since I liked the book Wicked so much, picking up and reading Gregory McGuire's sequel, Son of a Witch, seemed like a no brainer. The book tells the tale of Liir, Elphaba's maybe son, as he flashes back the years since the famed meltdown. If there was some allegorical lesson to be learned (as with Wicked), I missed it. And unlike the majority of his other books, Mr. McGuire had no cheeky fairy tale to twist to keep things interesting for a reader who would think "hmmph, is that the real story?"

Frankly, I should have taken a cue from the fact that I never really enjoyed any of the other books that Mr. McGuire wrote except for Wicked. So I'm not really surprised that I plowed through this one just to get it done with. I guess I just thought the same thing that we all think when dealing with the second time around - this time, things will be different.

Countdown to the Gay Games - the Closet

Week 10 - 13

I don't exactly know which is worse: falling off of my running schedule or not blogging about falling off my running schedule. It has been a few weeks since I posted about my progress. In my defense, I had to travel to the west coast for work and then to Florida for fun. I've been winding down my old job, trying to start my new job, looking for a house, selling a house, and gearing up to move in with the BF. Life is stressful.

Which brings me to the mea culpa point of this post. I am not a runner. Sure, I have been putting my best foot forward and training for this 26.2 mile hike. But I had a moment when packing my bags for my respective trips when I could have put my tennis shoes in the carry on. Knowing that I was supposed to run 16 miles on that Saturday, I could have planned ahead. And I didn't. A runner, a tried and true, straight to the heart, nothing else matters runner would have taken out the extra pair of skinny jeans and flip flops. I didn't pass the test. I feel like "runner" is something in my proverbial closet - a person that I would like to be but that at present doesn't jive with the rest of my life, someone that I am not completely ready to commit to. Yet this marathon is something that I have to do, something that I want to do even though I am fairly sure that I will give it up after raceday.

I've often wondered about the lives of gay republicans and gay people who serve in the military. I think it is easy for people to question how a gay person could put one part of their life aside in order to pursue another side. In many circles we villify gay republicans as traitors or "sleeping with the enemy". We wonder how gay men and women can serve our country in a military that doesn't really want them to be honest about who they are. We condemn them for having their own closet.

The closet does not discriminate. Certainly, we have co-opted the phrase to deal with sexuality but certainly the reference could refer to anything we are not necessarily willing to indulge, support, discover, or own. I surmise that on a daily basis we all put something of ourselves in the closet or the back burner. So who is to say that there are openly gay people who closet their Republican conservative side, secretly agreeing with prolife, school prayer, and tax cuts for the rich but never saying so aloud for fear of being red-bashed. And if the call of duty to serve our country is so great, then who am I to ask a gay person to put that dedication in the closet in order to come out of another one. Which is not to say that I think one should not advocate for change in either situation.

Our gay personas can often overwhelm the rest of our lives. Like the runner in me who tries to gain a foothold in the busy, stressed out, would rather drive a car, life that I lead, we try to balance who we need to be, who we want to be. And we all need to be cut a little bit of slack with respect to who we should be.

And that includes running schedules and poor blogging.