Gay, Gay, Gay, Gay, Gay, Gay, Gay!

I don't know much about the gay lifestyle here in Maine. I couldn't tell you where the great gay bars or saucy meeting places are. I couldn't tell you about festivals, shows, or parades that celebrate Maine's LGBT population. I don't have a link to that world here--which, yes, distresses me a lot--but after this weekend, I can tell you this: there's definitely a gay undercurrent zipping through this state, or at least its southern coast.

I realized this as my mother and I picked our way through a large Christmas store in downtown Portland. My mother and I are both fools for Christmas decorations, and there is absolutely no time during a year that we aren't game for shopping for ornaments, garlands, trees, or holiday-themed place settings. So, while her boyfriend and her boyfriend's son sat in a bar down the street, my mother and I spent some serious time oohing and ahhing at Christmas villages, hand-painted Russian Matryoshkas, and a variety of lobster and moose-themed ornaments. Then we came to the last room of ornaments. There, lined up in neat rows that took up nearly an entire wall, were mermaid ornaments.

It's important to know why I saw the flicker of glittery tails and was immediately drawn to the wall. For a large period of my childhood, I was obsessed with the movie The Little Mermaid. I was so obsessed with Ariel and her life under the sea, I spent a considerable amount of time fantasizing that I was a mermaid, that I was able to float and twirl among sea anemones and schools of fish. Sometimes I would go so far as to pretend I was a mermaid for a whole day, and if my parents called me to, say, come into the kitchen and eat my dinner, I'd make my way lazily down the hall, arms stroking, hair tossing, voice singing Ariel's trademark songs.

I've always been into mermaids--probably more than one girl should be, especially considering mermaids aren't real. But still, this explains why I got so excited, why I squealed a little bit when I saw that wall of mermaids. I stepped over the wall to check them out--there were tons!--and that's when I stopped, gasped, and clapped a hand over my mouth. These mermaids weren't what I'd originally thought (mermaid ornaments depicting human careers and situations); instead, they were just slutty. And gay. Gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay.

"Look at this!" I hissed at my mother. I plucked one of the mermaids off the wall and balanced it in my palm. It was the best thing I'd ever seen. The ornament was big--larger than my hand--and heavy. These mermaids and their glittery tails were made of real substantial stuff. Slutty, slutty stuff. Their tails were arched in various positions that insinuated sex; they were wearing outfits that should only be seen in the bedroom; and they always had liquor in their hands. A martini, a margarita, a flute of champagne--each mermaid looked like a Vegas hooker who was two drinks away from giving a freebie to that cute guy over by the slots.

"These mermaids are prostitutes!" I said, and my mother and I laughed and poked at each of the skanky sea creatures and their tiny glasses of booze. But none of the girls could even come close to the beauty, the brilliance, and the hilarity of the mermen. I'd never seen such blatantly gay Christmas ornaments before, and, needless to say, I loved them. I wanted to buy every single one of them and start a tradition of having a small themed tree devoted only to these ornaments and their sparkly awesomeness. Just picture it:

It would be the best themed Christmas tree ever. Start shopping.

In Addition to the Chocolate Moose, There Was Also This Beachy Goodness

Amanda and Jason's visit as about more than just seeing some water and a chocolate moose. It was also about forcing Amanda to try lobster (she did, and liked it), about sunning ourselves on several beaches, about staring up at the flashing eye of a few lighthouses, about posing in front of the things I make every visitor stand in front of (giant L.L. Bean boot, giant Freeport Indian, and any moose--stuffed or otherwise--that we can find), about stuffing ourselves to the point of bursting, about reminiscing over college days--the days when Amanda and I had just met, the days when I looked at Keith's friend Jason, who was having trouble with some blond whippet he was dating at the time, and said, Huh. I wonder if I can find him a woman.

Well, check and mate. We did all that. We did all that and then some.

Sprung

Amy left Wednesday night. She'd been here for a week, and that was a week full of loveliness. I don't know if there is a phrase I can turn to accurately capture how nice it was to have a girlfriend in town. When I came home from work, Amy was there watching What Not to Wear, and I would sit next to her and begin very important discussions like how we could get Clinton to make out with us if ever the situation presented itself to us. Do you know how nice that is? Do you know how nice it is to see someone else have to fan themselves off after Clinton has said something witty about Crocs or Mom Jeans or Shoulder Pads? It's just not as fun when you have to do that by yourself.

What Not to Wear wasn't the only thing that graced the television when Amy was in town. There was one night when we--tired, lazy--decided to pour wine and flick through the channels. We landed on an episode of The Dog Whisperer. And when that episode was over another was on. So we watched that. And we watched the next one, too. By the end we felt one with the animal kingdom. We were walking around the apartment (and, days later, around Maine and Massachusetts) hissing tsssst! at anyone or anything that looked at us wrong.

Of course, watching television wasn't all we did. We toured extensively. This was just the right time for Amy to visit. Maine is suddenly leaning toward lovely again. Everything is melted. It is warm. People are smiling. The number of curse words I utter each day have decreased substantially. Things are looking up all over the state, and so we took advantage of it. We went to Freeport, to Popham Beach, to Bath, to Portland. We even hopped The Downeaster and went to Boston for the day last weekend. We drank cosmos and margaritas. We drank wine. We mixed orange vodka with pomegranate pop and raspberry-lime ginger-ale and Loganberry (official name: The Cowboy Daddy). We posed, too. We posed by lighthouses and moose and historical statues and bronze ducks. We posed by Indians and boots. We posed in the rain, in the wind, in the sun. We hammed it up all over New England.

The whole trip felt just like spring should: kicky, free, happy. It felt the exact opposite of the last few months, which have been gloomy, painful, and sour.

When we were at lunch one afternoon, Amy and I overheard a bunch of gossipy old ladies tut-tutting over how awful, how wretched, how foul this winter had been. Amy spooned more soup into her mouth and raised her eyebrows. "Was it really that bad?" she asked me. What she wanted to know was this: was it as bad as Buffalo Winter?

Well, it wasn't. There weren't days when I couldn't see a foot out the window to the street beyond. There weren't days when I was convinced I had somehow woken up in some wintry ring of hell. But there was snow. And there was always drama. The weathermen would get on the TV and prepare us, warn us, caution us, and everyone would get worked up for what turned out to be nothing. And when it did snow--really snow--it came in big, consistent gobs. It would go away in a day or two, then it would come back again. It was a constant here-gone-here-gone-here-gone that drove me crazy. And living on a narrow road that arcs over a surprising hill in a quiet section of town is different than living on a well-traveled country road during the winter months. My road here was hell, there was no snow removal, the banks towered high and then spilled over into the road, making it even narrower, even harder to navigate. It was demoralizing. I longed for a driveway of my own, for the comforting rumble of the snowplows making their passes at the country road, for space for the snow to move, to fall, to not build toward the sky, blotting it out, making the dark winter sky even gloomier.

But all that is over for now. Now nothing matters. The sun is out, the breeze is blowing in the salty smell of ocean, and I had a good week that reminded me of what's important in life. And no matter how many times this semester I thought What the hell is happening? or Kill me now! or Are you for real? I know that it's all going to be okay now. I'm very close to a summer spent touring to Mexico, Canada, Buffalo, and Michigan. Just a few more weeks. Just a few, few more weeks.

And until then, here are pictures from Amy's visit and our mini-New England vacation.


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