HAPPY AND CHEERFUL AND GAY

My father was a musician.

Named Bruce.

So perhaps it is evident that I would be raised without an abundance of homophobic tendencies.

Or was it simply innocence, naivety, or sheer blindness on my part - because it never ever occurred to me that certain people might be gay?

We had a neighbor to the west of our house, a Mr. Porter.

He taught high school Spanish somewhere in southeast Los Angeles. He kept his yard very tidy, was never upset when a ball batted or thrown or kicked from our backyard ended up in his. We could use his driveway to practice our skate-boarder or roller-skating techniques (mainly how fast you could speed down the sloping concrete and still make the 90 degree turn at the bottom onto the sidewalk) with nary a complaint.

And it wasn't until years later, when my own dad mentioned the regular flow of young single Hispanic males in and out of Mr. Porter's home that it even occurred to me that he might be a homosexual.

Frank was a salesman in Michigan at a music store where my dad taught.

He had beautiful flowing black hair (I have always had a thing for men with long hair), the perfect beard, and Frank could talk to anyone who passed the store entrance with just a fleeting thought of purchasing a piano or organ into walking out with a delivery contract for a full-size grand or a theatre-size Lowry.

It was only when he died of AIDS in 1981 that I realized he probably was gay (this was back when AIDS was still very much only a homosexual disease).

I had a supervisor at a job in Maryland, Toni, who had underwent a radical double mastectomy in her early thirties. She and Beth, another supervisor, bought a house together while I was at that job, and once again, it never registered that they might be a 'couple' that way.

Why do I mention all of this?

Because it doesn't matter if someone eats buttered popcorn with sugar, sitting on their own couch, watching their DVD of "Pride and Prejudice" with two panting dogs for company.

It isn't important if a person will sleep with only 400+ thread count cotton sheets on their bed, memory-foam pillows, and Shabby Chic comforters.

If you like to wear black ankle socks with your white tennis shoes, you might not be photographed in Vanity Fair (is the magazine still around? anyone know?), but why should you be censored in general public in any manner?

Should laws be proposed to keep you from wearing black ankle socks? Even in the privacy of your own home?

I become more annoyed than is healthy with people who get frantic about gay marriage slash relationships slash eligibility for health insurance coverage under their partner's employment.

Number one - since it seems like the great majority of these anxious individuals call themselves "Christians," is it just a convenient lapse of memory that the whole "not judging others" bit is forgotten? When were they called to be judges and juries of private lives?

And number two - why the hell aren't they more frightened or terrified of all the child molesters? Sexual predators? Abusive spouses?

Talk about a threat to the basic family unit - that previous paragraph list scares me, at least, a lot more than the gay couple that lives at the end of the road, peacefully, happily, and can always be counted on to bring the largest salad to the community pot-luck dinners.

Thanks. I just needed to vent.

BIRTH OF A NATION

I'm named after my grandmother. My maternal grandmother died three days after my mom's birth, and my paternal grandfather was killed in an automobile crash when my father was fourteen. I did meet my maternal grandfather one time when he came out from Michigan for a visit to California, but Grandma Hope was the one I grew up with.


For quite a few years she lived in a cute little apartment above a garage, with a toy poodle named Suzy and a couple of parakeets. There was always two bowls of candy - one just peppermints, and the other usually some sort of See's chocolate. She had grown a vine which was approximately 8.3 miles long and draped over most of the furniture.


And, of course, an organ.


I was raised with pianos. And I mean a lot of pianos. The only time I can recall not having multiple pianos in our house was the one year we lived in an apartment on the second floor. Otherwise, we usually had at least one grand, two uprights and usually some studio models.


My dad taught piano, and clarinet, and saxophone, and string bass.... in fact, I can't remember much that he didn't teach and play except perhaps the sitar and harp.


But the organ wasn't part of our environment. I may have been mistaken, but the give and take, the actual touch of a keyboard, was somewhat missing from the old organ keyboards. The electronic keyboards of today are miraculous with their feel, but the old organs were pretty stiff and sticky.


However, my grandmother always had an organ. And had played the organ professionally. And you will LOVE what she played for.


Silent movies.


Her accompanying was five billion times better than the silly organ they put on television with silent movies. It was emotional, it was climactic, it was scary, it was comedic - all as necessary to go with the plot and the action.


And of course all you had to do was ask her to play for you.