purplerabbit

Finally got to see Brokeback Mountain (with my two beautiful queer men,

airshipjones). Sad. Well done movie. And too many reminders of the world I grew up in. I sometimes joke that I grew up in Oklahoma and lived to tell the tale - just. Sometimes it really feels that way. I understand what a risk those men took in loving even as much as they allowed themselves. It was not a world made for anyone different.

Last night I watched The Outsiders with

cyan_blue and

uncledark. They had never seen the movie before and I hadn't watched it in a long time. Hard to watch. Hard to let myself remember. I lived it. My first lover, Jackie, was a "hood" (same as "greaser" in the film) and we still called the rich kids "Socs." The only thing to do on weekends for teens in Moore, Oklahoma was to drive up and down 12th Street (between Sonic Drive-In and A&W Drve-In), go to the Skyview drive-in movie, or drive out to the lake or a park and get drunk (usually on Coors Beer, Mad Dog 20/20 or some other cheep shit). And get into fights. And folks wondered why I didn't fit in and didn't much care to. I tried all of the above now and then but was always bored out of my mind. I was an outcast from both sides.

I was an out-spoken pacifist (during Viet Nam), Sci-Fi book-reading girl-who-didn't-know-her-place or how to act like it. I use to tell people that if there was such as thing as hell, it could not be worse than the redneck suburb of Moore. I was openly feminist and non-monogamous in a place where the Madonna/Whore divide was not just theory. The only guy from my high school I actually went out with while in school, dropped me a few weeks later to take his "real girlfriend" to the cast party of the play we were in. After all, he only slept with me on a dare and to teach me what happens to sluts. All because I dared to flirt with him. Most other folks at school saw me as a sex-less brain. (Straight-A student who won journalism awards.)

I actually learned to meditate young. Why? Because the boredom drove me crazy. I would escape into my story worlds most of the time. And when I ran out of those, I just went "nowhere" so that I didn't have to think any more. Sex, for me at that time, was just another way to escape. For a while I didn't have to think -- I just let me body take over. It was my drug of choice.

The only time I ever found love was with other geeks. And even then the world took it's toll. I was the only one with a "good" home-life. My dad was institutionalized and we didn't always have enough food let alone anything else for my three sisters and I, but at least our mother loved us. The world seemed so impossibly drab, mean and lonely most of the time. No wonder we loved science fiction and fantasy. We ran away to Starbase meetings, SF conventions and played D&D. Anything to get away from that place. Anything to have someone who saw us and loved us for what we were.

I know some people are happy in places like that. More power to you! I never was. I spent most of my childhood feeling like an "alien" lost on the wrong planet. Stranger in a Strange Land -- damn, I understood that. We called them Mundanes, my son calls them Muggles -- and I was surrounded by them. I remember aching loneliness that felt like it would swallow me.

I thank the universe that there were times when I was able to connect with others like me for a time. And I am immensely grateful for my loving mother. I am amazed at my good fortune to have two such wonderful husbands and a fantastic community of friends, lovers and family.

So my reaction to both movies is empathy and relief. I am very aware that it is a miracle that I made it through and away.