The view from Texas.

I've been in El Paso for two days for my mother's book release party -- two days of festivities. It's been enjoyable but man has it set me up like never before to remember why I *really* moved away from here. It *wasn't* to be closer to the labs, or further upriver, or to live like Don Schraeder. It *was* to find myself and live *my own* life in a place where I might just do that, somehow or another, yet remain a day's travel away from my aging parents.

I hate this part of Texas. Its pull is far too strong on me. But I can't live here. Can't. Impossible.

Coming in was a trip. Last song on KUNM as I lost the signal south of Socorro, around milepost 135 Southbound on I-25: "Keep it Gay" from "The Producers". Left Albuquerque right after closing up Foxes. Around sunrise smelled the chamisa -- smell literally rising from the earth. Saw the sun rise twice thanks to the shifting Organ Mountains. Rainbow in the rearview mirror in a giant pink raincloud off in the distance. Then the air in the distance in front of me turns brown. You hit the dairies. The mountains that used to be your freinds disappear scraped away under batallions of heavy machinery. The air reeks of manure and spoiled milk. You know El Paso's just around the corner, and that any semblance of sanity's about to fade faster in the rearview mirror than the rainbow.

Good thing I get to head north out of town tomorrow.

Gave a ride to the book signing to Mrs. White, elderly black lady from the deep south who's spent most of her life here. Next door neighbour to my grandmother, she's known my mother longer than anyone else alive. She'd been to a prayer breakfast earlier in the day. Remember this is a dearly beloved human being from my early childhood who hasn't seen me probably since my grandmother's funeral when I was seventeen. I have nothing against this woman and respect her through and through.

She's still a homophobe.

"So what do you do in Albuquerque?"

"Uhm. I work. In a, work, in a bar. I'm the, eh, doorwh, uh, doorman. I don't serve drinks to people. I just keep them safe."

Really I should have known to prepare for this. I sound like one of the disreputable Austrian characters in "The 3rd Man" who literally can't lie to save his life in English.

Bad enough that I work in a bar. Bad enough I *stock* beer at the end of the night. I'm already stumbling over myself to justify what I do to her. Never mind it's an honest and even honourable living; it's just too, too complex to go into *why*. But she doesn't seem to jump down my throat, maybe because I am intensely aware of alcohol's evils and not the least bit unconflicted about working with it.

I don't even consider telling her it's a gay bar. There are some places, some times when it's just plain old totally irrelevant. I kinda suspect she's an old school baptist, though. Judgmental yeah but not near like the moral majority crowd. Still, bad enough I work with liquor, period.

I don't have time to parse her theology, though, because she starts right in on the girlfreind routine. You know: have I got one, oh really, why not, after all I'm so handsome, and all that. This caught me way off guard. Good god, I haven't been through that particular wringer in years. Past a certain age, most people stop asking. I've long since passed that age.

In her case she hasn't seen me in so long she thinks it's perfectly OK to ask. Actually she's pretty gracious about it I suppose, though the sooner it ceases entirely to be an acceptable topic of conversation between older and younger people -- at least based on the assumption of an exclusively heterosexual relationship -- the happier I will be. (Only Mrs. Rivera, my high school librarian, *ever* managed to ask me essentially the same question really well, in a completely gender neutral way, which put her in my permanent good graces, as though she weren't already.)

I *hate* this conversation. I've had it so many times it drives me crazy and I associate it always and exclusively with people of a certain age living in a certain part of town in a certain sort of world. It's also usually women who initiate the conversation. First off it's assumed the only possible kind of adult relationship is between a man and a woman. Nothing else is even remotely possible. "Yeah, I know I'm pretty desirable, thanks, 'cause I've got guys crawlin' all over me most nights I work" is an *impossible* answer, though it would be a wholly honest one. Secondly the fact of my not having ever had such a heteroexclusive relationship reduces me effectively to the status of an overgrown child. Suddenly I'm being talked down to. Great. Thirdly I'm complimented on my being "elusive", or "clever", or on having "escaped", which has more than a little tinge of judgment to it -- the implication clearly being that either I'm being extremely promiscuous with women or I'm -- well, some things are utterly unspeakable.

Yeah, I guess I did escape. Thanks.

That's about all I can do -- let her take the conversation's reins and just react completely honestly if monosylabically, answering "yes" to *my* sense of the word "escape" knowing she means something *completely* different. My dear lady, you've no idea what I *did* escape from. Surely not some pretty young girl intent on marriage. If I suggested it was more like what you escaped from when you came from the deep south, you would take deep offense, and so I won't even suggest it. Forgive my silence. You can never know exactly what it was for me to escape, because in this very awkward situation, you, dear lady, whom I otherwise love and respect, are the opressor. You never can know that I'm never, ever going back to where I was. Pardon me as I smile and nod; I've little other choice, there's nothing to be gained that I can tell by coming out to you right here and now. Horrify you at what I am and spoil my mother's book signing? Thank you, but no, I just "escaped". So believe what you will of me, others have thought far, far worse, believe me. At least I didn't leave a bunch of little kids in my wake, and for that alone, you really can not judge me, and while I do choose to believe you're Christian enough to understand that on some very basic level, it's just not a risk I can take with you right now. And when it comes to calculating and assessing risk, let's just say I've got something of a knack at it.

The irony is that I'm literally "out" to the whole state of New Mexico. All the little towns that I go through I go through as one of the faggots from Albuquerque who buys at local businesses and tips well and damn it you may not like him but don't bug him and he'll come back through a couple of months from now I'm sure and spend some more money and tell his freinds besides. But I cross over that state line and plop! Right back into the closet. The fine lady getting a ride from me has no idea what the golden equal sign on the square violet field on the back of my car means; though she probably does have some notions about men who lie with men, but what those might be I don't want to know.

Actually, I do know. Honestly, I just don't want to deal with it.

Selective invisibility: one of most unique tools we've got in our bag of tricks, by which we do survive. I haven't had to use it in what feels now like a long damn time. Nice to know that I still can. But honestly it kinda makes me sick. And overshadowed my whole trip down here. I've been in an ugly mood since then.

Then again -- well, honey, you might say I sort of *do* have a girlfreind, Foxes being the kind of bar that it is, after all -- but I don't know if she really counts in your book, 'cause, well, see, we do things differently in Albuquerque, though I suppose that's between her and me, besides which -- well, you know I'd really better not go giving away *her* secrets, right? Of *course* you understand.

(Which is to say: of course you don't 'til *you've* walked down the street like that.)

My god I'm livin' in the fifties. Backlash time.

Two days in Texas. Glad I get to taste it now and then. Just a reminder why I'm livin' where I am. Someday if I ever save up my money and get out of the family situation so help me I'll go back to the West Coast.

My mother's trying to arrange a lunch with Lobsang, our Tibetan freind, tomorrow so I may or may not stay here through lunchtime. I'll stay for that but really truly want to leave. Didn't even get to see David this time around. He's in bad shape over some creep at the Center who pulled a similar stunt to the one I've described here. Oh well.

Come out of Texas, freinds. Albuquerque ain't perfect but it sure beats Texas. Maybe there are enclaves in places like Houston but you know I've never seen 'em which I guess is how they manage to survive. Get out, come out of Texas. I can't force you. You have to do it on your own. It's so destructive, sometimes, just to stay.