"The ripple in your flag."

Can there please, please be a different story?

Jun 27, 2025

Maybe because it was a flag. Maybe because they were placed pretty much everywhere first to designate gay businesses, then every business wanting gay monies. It was supposed to express support for diversity, the colours of the rainbow (now, even more inclusive, the OG skipped a few hues), at best a designated safe spot: "Olly olly oxen free!"

Pantone colours for the Transgender Flag.

I must say, the prettiness of the Trans Flag, that colour palette so elemental, simple, soft.

“You’re IT!” “Un-HUH! You can’t get me here! This is home base.”

To touch a tree, foot on the bag, run, hide beneath the porch, the tall grasses

“HOME FREEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

You know why they’re pissed. The gays up and ruined their kid’s bible story, you know the one about God sending Noah a rainbow as a promise and a sign, that they would never flood the world again (“Raise the Rainbow Flag Gilligan! Sure thing, Skipper!”).

Sorry, is it he or they? Another reason why they’re dishevelled. God forbid you give them more than one choice.

O, that and marriage. The gays spoiled that too.

Man. The wife.

“No fair! No fair! You keep changing the rules!” “No I’m not, YOU are!”

Pretty much everything they ever needed to know learned on that playground. Who your friends are (for the hour anyway). The bullies. Boys. Girls. Mostly separate. The one’s who play fair, cheat when no one’s looking. Get caught.

Is it still cheating if no one cares? If no one notices the beaten, detained, killed?

“I didn’t see a thing. I won’t tell nobody. Promise.” BAM! Dead. Every Netflix film.

Disappeared. Silenced. No reason. A tyrant. A whim.

“It’s them. They’re the ones who don’t belong.”

They/them.

Once called, “The third sex.”

This they did exceedingly well.

Finding a turtle down by the crick, bringing it home, putting it in the empty wash basin in the basement til my mom told me it was time to take it back, let it go.

“You let those lightning bugs go now, you don’t want to wake up to a jar of dead bugs in the morning.”

“BIG SHOW TONIGHT! SPECIAL GUEST: MR. RECORDER!” and they would pre-tape the answers to the “live” questions on their reel-to-reel played for anybody who showed up in the living room.

“Julie, Julie, Julie do you love me?” !!! My youngest sister HATING this song. They dreamed of Bobby Sherman, all teeth, hair, and flairs (my Farrah Fawcett), being their friend (not David Soul, “too manly”).

Not Robin… (there already was one). They wanted to be “Little Batman.” And only we did things, Batman and me (WITHOUT Robin. Same with Johnny Quest).

What they didn’t know is they were always out. Loud. Couldn’t help it if their life depended on it. But, as long as nobody said anything… (most of all, them).

Fairy knew enough not to be “too.” Hilarious. (A BIG FAT “F” circled in pink).

They were supposed to be “fighting the good fight,” transitioning into being straight. “M.”

Can there please, please be a different story? (Pretty please?)

This one (that of the oppressed) is tired. The fight. The struggle. Lifetimes tired. Generations tired. The fact that we can still wade/write through it, “am I just repeating myself here?” preaching the gospel. There’s things definitely worth putting on repeat (“Your silence will not protect you.” Audre Lorde), but never let that get in the way of a fresh shuffle. New. Ground. (Gay plants!)

They’ve aged. But, still here for it. The Realness.

It’s just history repeating. White Christian Nationalists try to make more babies to catch up not slip into a “minority.”

My friend Mertz and their loving partner MaryBeth recently had a baby. Like them, Mertz immigrated from the States (me at the time of Reagan, them our current Old McDonald E-I-E-I-O and you thought Bush was bad but) I went to visit, meet the little one and o my I’m not a baby person, but this one (“what a doll!”) and they love my voice, most children do… there’s something recognizable to them, to everyone really, my whole life and that is the voice of a fairy.

Not everyone sees (or welcomes) fairies. (Children do.) Not even gays. Why “faggots are so afraid of faggots.” My fairy is “The Fairy of Delicates,” not the most masculine version of gay, or as my nephew said once they connected the dots, “You’re just like Jack on Will & Grace!” and while I love Jack and am so grateful to Sean Hayes they don’t think they’re anything like Jack (they’re wrong) but love the comparison. Being recognized as one of them.

Who is they now? Them? The Other? (remember that big Tom Tryon horror novel turned into creepy 70s film with John Ritter?).

Othering. The opposite of. Inclusion. The monied. Everyone else.

This othering is so other than me, maybe because I spent a lifetime seeing/seeking likes. Reflectors. Today, I’m just as “othered” by my aging. My obesity. My poverty, shifting disabilities.

Human stuff. The daily.

Poet Frank Bidart wrote a brilliant lil gem, Queer (actually, a much longer poem than I originally encountered) the opening stanza:

Lie to yourself about this and you will
forever lie about everything.
Everybody already knows everything
so you can
lie to them. That’s what they want.
But lie to yourself, what you will
lose is yourself. Then you
turn into them.

Turning into them. Yes, that’s what my enemies want [still/forever] more than anything (okay, face it, they really want us dead). No ripples to conformity. Nobody else but them.

I am the fold in your flag, not the flag, the ripple, flapping trans colours, snapping the wind.

And today, this day, I live. Other. Victor Victorious. Pride baby. Pride.

I close with recording of “Kiss Me” from my new chapbook, Softie.