By Grant McGee
The
rainbow is a sign of peace.
That’s
the way I understood it. I don’t know
where I first encountered that idea, maybe in Sunday school and the story of
Noah and the ark and the Great Flood in Genesis in The Good Book.
When
The Flood was all done The Good Lord put a rainbow in the sky and said, “Okay
little dudes, I’m not gonna flood y’all out any more. Every time you see a rainbow that’s a sign of
my promise of this to you.”
That’s
kinda-sorta what He said anyway.
The Good Book has the actual quote,
probably sprinkled with some “thees” and “thous” and “doths” but no “little
dudes” or “y’all.”
So if I
display a rainbow it’s me saying, “Peace, dudes.”
But somewhere
along the way the rainbow got co-opted by a group, a movement.
Right
from the get-go let me just put this on the table for you: Your lifestyle is your business. And if you live the kind of lifestyle where
you’re hangin’ with someone of the same sex and you want to hold hands in
public, live together, you want to change your sex, stuff like that, well, rock
on.
I
believe we shouldn’t be assholes to each other and I believe we should be happy
in our lives.
Sadly, there are a lot of assholes
who have a need to figuratively and literally beat up on others. They have demons in their own lives they don’t
have the guts to confront so they take it out on others. So my message of “Can’t We All Just Get Along?”
is lost on them.
I got
to thinking about this after seeing that some bakery is selling “Pride Tarts”
in honor of Gay Pride Month or, ‘scuse me, “LGBT Pride Month.” They were pastries done in bright frosting
the colors of the rainbow.
I did
not feel the need to seek one out and indulge in “Pride Tarts” to support “Pride
Month.”
Besides, I have diabetes and have
to watch my carb intake.
Anyone
who knows me knows I’m a big believer in the philosophy of “Can’t We All Just
Get Along?”
I liked
what my late buddy Kent had to say about ostentatious displays of lifestyle, no
matter what that lifestyle is: “You don’t
see me walk to a room, stand in the doorway, put my hands on my hips and
announce to the room, ‘Hi, I’m Kent, I’m straight.’”
I have
a dear cousin, Pat, who is a lesbian. She
and I were once roomies at a groovy apartment at a golf-course apartment
complex in south Florida. She would
often come home from bars with different guys in tow and they would retreat to
her part of the apartment to…ahem… “play.”
Then one day I got this call from
my mom: “Pat’s come out as a
lesbian! Did you know she was a lesbian?”
“No mom,” I said. “When I knew her she was always with a
guy. So she’s changed her mind about
partners. It’s still Cousin Pat.”
There was silence on the line.
“Mom,” I said. “It’s not the end of the world.”
“Margie thinks it is,” she said.
Margie is my mom’s little
sister. Of course when someone’s in
their 70’s and 80’s “little sister” might not be the right moniker.
“I’m surprised,” I said. “Tell Aunt Margie to tell Cousin Pat she
loves her. Dang, mom, it’s her daughter. So what if she’s a lesbian.”
I know of a young woman who lives
the closeted lifestyle, she’s lesbian.
But to much of the world…read that as the world that swirls around her
mother and father…she’s still appears single, telling them “I just haven’t
found ‘Mr. Right.’”
I feel sorry for her.
I believe people should be happy in
their lives, happy and open.
But back to the rainbow, those
rainbow-frosted tarts, peace and all that….
I totally missed the memo in which
it was declared that the rainbow had been taken over by the LGBT Movement.
I have missed a lot of memos in my
time: The one that said “Oriental” was
no longer allowed as a descriptor of all things from Asia, the new word is “Asian.” Nor was I told that as an Anglo-American I
was not allowed to use the word “tat” to describe a tangle in my hair, that
word is for use by African-Americans only…not that I can talk about tangles in
my hair anymore as I don’t have that much hair left. And even though the great Outlaw Country
singers Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson had once used the term “shuck and
jive” in a song of theirs, it was declared racially insensitive for me to say
the same.
So imagine my surprise when I
learned that the rainbow decal on my car no longer meant “Peace,” it had been
co-opted as a symbol of something else entirely.
So there I was, driving around The
Great American Southwest with my “Rainbow of Peace” decal in the back window of
my Subaru two-door sedan.
I got the news of the change back
in 1997. I was manager at a radio
station in Arizona and we had hired a new guy to play country music in the
mornings. He called himself “Big D” and
was moving in from the great state of Minnesota. I was to meet him one Saturday at the radio
station at the end of his long trip southward.
Big D rolled in to the parking lot
of the radio station in his pickup truck and got out. We shook hands, exchanged greetings and such.
“Can I ask you a question?” asked
Big D.
“Yeah, of course,” I said. I never understood why folks said that, “Can
I ask you a question.” My mom always
said, “Just ask the question.”
Anyway…
“Are you gay?” asked Big D.
I laughed.
“What?” I said. “Where did that come from? Was it something I said? Is it my hair?”
“No,” he said. “It’s just that you have a rainbow in the
back window of your car.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a sign of peace.”
“Not where I come from. It’s a sign that you’re gay.”
“Well how about that,” I said.
“I mean I’m okay about it if you’re
gay, I’m just wondering. I worked with a
gay dude in a machine shop. Seemed like
a normal guy. So I’m okay if you’re gay.”
“I’m not gay,” I said. “There’s been more than a few times in my
life I’ve had crushes on women who turned out to be lesbians but that’s another
story.”
This is actually true.
More times than I can recall in my
single life my heart would just go all a-flutter over some gal only for me to
discover that she and I were from different “tribes.”
“I think it’s ‘cos you’s lookin’
for a cowgirl,” said my buddy Wayne in his Texas drawl, waxing philosophically
and therapeutically one eastern New Mexico day many years ago. “Lots of times there’s only a fence line of
difference twixt a cowgirl and a lesbian.
And you’s lookin’ for a cowgirl in the city. That ain’t no place to find a cowgirl. Now out here, there’s plenty of cowgirls.”
Made sense to me.
And it was a lot cheaper than
trying to figure that mystery out with a hundred-dollar-an-hour therapist.
Anyway…back to the Arizona story…
After my “crushes on lesbians”
comment, Big D just stared at me for a moment.
A big, dumb, blank stare. He
furrowed his brow. I could tell right
away my attempt at getting a chuckle out of this guy was a dud.
“Why would you have a crush on a
lesbian?” he asked.
“Never mind, dude,” I said.
After that I would be driving
around southern Arizona and see the rainbow in my back window and wonder…
Should I take it down?
I ended up leaving it in my window
until it faded away.
It was my rainbow too.
Nobody ever said anything else
about it anyway.
So here’s to The Rainbow and
whatever it means to you.
And…
Peace, y’all.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment