Late one June night a Lesbian couple cast behind a veil of secrecy, decided to no longer hide their love from the rest of the world. These two champions, hard fisted… fanny-pack in hand would no longer allow themselves to keep extremely large collections of plastic trolls, faux-skin blankets with lions and machetes locked away in the bowels behind their vaginas. This night, a night with flannel shirts tied around their waists signaled freedom, it was a night my father would know true lesbian justice; a night my father or even I for that matter would never forget.
My father and I haven’t always had the best relationship, and to be honest, it’s his fault. Regardless of our differences, my empathy goes out to any man who is dealt the harsh blow of a lesbian or gay lover who has lied to their straight counterpart. That being said, who doesn’t see this coming? Was my father blind or just lying to himself for their entire relationship? Woman or not, if you’re wearing flannel and listening to Michael Bolton, you’re gay. One might even wear a tie-died shirt underneath the flannel, just to show their rebellion against men. I’m not saying all lesbians are like this, just most I’ve seen. Lorene was perhaps the most stereotypical lesbian. She rarely used deodorant, wore tie-die and flannel together. Only wore jeans or cargo-shorts, always had a black or neon yellow fanny pack on, loved trips to home depot, and listened to power ballads. People, I don’t have to make this stuff up, god gave me enough material for many, many blogs. Lesbians are cool, despite all of the draw-backs; they are more widely accepted then gay men. Gay men get every card except the “make-out in public” card. This has been reserved for lesbians; every other gay-card goes to gay men: The power to raise property value, fashion sense, diplomacy, art work, teaching, and especially the military. Lesbians also share all of these traits, but it’s the gay men who always get credit. Hey, I’m not the one who makes the rules, I’m just pointing out the obvious. So be nicer to the over-weight soft-ball players with spiky hair and cut off jogging shorts standing next to you in line for that Angelina Jolie movie – they don’t get enough credit!
It was unknown to me that Sherry had been standing outside our single-wide cram-packed trailer, listening to my parents fighting and my begging for them to stay together. Lorene showed up one night, under the influence of snorting extreme toxins (the vag). For those who aren’t aware, The Vag is extremely dangerous and explosive, use with caution, actually don’t use at all for it is very flammable from what I’ve heard, and by “heard” I obviously mean “Imagined.” My father and Lorene were fighting about everything he knew the whole time and how unfair it was for her to leave him alone with us. I remember begging them to stay together, why couldn’t sherry stay with us and sleep on the couch? I tried to mediate, desperately hoping they would stay together. To this they both laughed and it seemed it was the only thing they both could immediately agree against. I still don’t see the problem with it; it works for Mormons all the time.
My younger brother Brandon was Lorene’s biological son, when he would visit Lorene we asked to go see her as well. After a while it seemed as though we had three families. Our immediate family consisted of my dad with his side and support, my mother and her side, and Lorene and Sherry. Lorene and Sherry didn’t really have a supportive family. Sherry’s children were about as stable as the attack on Hiroshima after dropping the Atomic bomb. I had seen Sherry before, the night Lorene was leaving with her things but never officially had the displeasure of shaking her hand. Her son was about 13 when I was 9. His name was Michael and apparently had a bit of a problem with his mother. One afternoon he locked himself in his room in their town-home. Sherry, determined to get into the room, grabbed a latter and proceeded to climb up to his two story window. Bad move. Michael immediately started throwing bricks at her, which, now that I’m a bit older I wonder why bricks would be in his room in the first place. It seems that it took a lot more than that to keep sherry from climbing up that window. Inside his room was a table top burner with a full pot of boiling water in it. Again, sherry was in a bad spot. Michael Myers then put on his scary mask and dumped the pot of boiling water on top of his mother’s head, scalding her and putting her in intensive care for a week. Now, one has to ask themselves how true could this story actually be, after all… it was my five year old brother cluing me in on everything. Regardless, with this information in hand, I was prepared to see a woman resembling Freddy Krueger when the encounter would actually take place.
Sherry worked at an Arby’s on 1st street directly across from the new K-Mart. Lorene took us there for lunch one afternoon so we could meet her. She was a thin, wide white woman, Irish looking, with an Arby’s cap on. She was polite and even gave us free Arby’s melts. Who says Lesbians aren’t nice? I don’t! One problem, I couldn’t touch her and after noticing the puss draining from the side of her head, an Arby’s melt didn’t seem too appetizing. Apparently some form of violence happened between her and another person. She had tons of make-up on, wrong shade, to cover up her burn marks that seemed to be only accented by the make-up. This was my perception growing up of un-educated people who decided to have children. Then and there I knew college was my only route, I could never end up like my father or Lorene, and especially not Sherry. I lost contact with Lorene over the years, even Brandon rarely sees his mother. She lives off of the government now; never actually working a day in her life now receives disability. The last time I saw her she was staying at a Ramada Inn, as I walked in I saw four empty pill bottles in a fanny-pack, an angel appeared to Loren and told her I was welcome to come in. Afterwards we shared a meaningful conversation about how she was being interviewed for the position of the chief of police for the Abilene police department.
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