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Showing results for tags 'high school'.
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Womanless Wedding, South Carolina, 1980s I came across this page in my high school yearbook this weekend. I was working on a post for my tumblr blog dedicated to a friend of mine from high school. I broke open the yearbook to find the note he’d left for me and in the process came across this wedding affair memorialized forever in its pages. I have no recollection of this event whatsoever. (Though I do remember my father competing in a Womanless Beauty Pageant when I was 7, but that's a whole other story.) Reviewing the yearbook article now, I can’t help being curious. Curious as in, “What the hell is this all about?” Of course I see from the caption that it was a fundraiser for a new football field. But why this particular event? Why this and not a bake sale or a car wash? What is the thinking behind a Womanless Wedding in South Carolina? Why would people in the socially conservative Bible Belt hold a Womanless Wedding as a fundraiser? What is the charm? What allure does it hold for the participants, for those buying a ticket to the event? I ran the alliteration through yahoo thinking I may find some history to this specific event or others like it. I was surprised to find that these things are still going on. All of the links I found featured Womenless Weddings as fundraisers, often church fundraisers, in the southern United States. Quite simply, I don’t get it. I have spent so much of my life thinking about gender, struggling to understand it, and yet I despair of ever grasping its nuances. A Womanless Wedding with RuPaul’s drag queens…that I could understand. A Womanless Wedding with the Tri-Ess crossdressers…that I could understand. A Womanless Wedding in which the participants and guests are largely and fundamentally soical conservatives flummoxes me. I realize I was not born with the innate understanding of gender that most people seem to apply to life. I learned gender by rote, repetition, careful observation, and yet my understanding is still only elementary. Thus I struggle to identify the proper context for this pasttime. It seems these began as camp performances by military men in the 1800s. Entertainment back in the day. So is this just carrying tradition forward? Is it no more than good fun, a jolly time? Or is it a mocking, scurrilous performance in the same vein as a blackface minstrel show? Evidently the Womanless Wedding skits were quite popular in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Given that timeframe, it seems unlikely that the purpose is to mock homosexuality. We simply weren’t in the social consciousness the way we are today. Is it a jab at women, creating these caricatures of femininity? As they are largely performed today as church fundraisers, it seems unlikely they are poking fun at marriage or even weddings. Maybe I’m searching for meaning where there’s none to be found. Maybe the men are simply having fun at their own expense, lampooning the rigid masculinity of their daily lives and temporarily freeing themselves of it. Far be it for me to declare gender play the exclusive realm of the queer community. Maybe it's not the cross gendering that confuses me so much as it is the communities where these are found. Conservative enclaves, not known for their liberalism, exceedingly rigid in their expectations of men and women, sponser most of these Womenless Weddings. Maybe I just need to attend one of these to understand.
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I went to lunch recently with a old school friend I hadn't seen in years. Same old story, lost touch over years, went to a High School Reunion, reacquainted ourselfs, and planned a lunch date to catch up, that got post poned like 10 times. A year later we finally get our busy schedules in line and met for a very good lunch. I told him that I had something to tell him. "He said sure what is it." " Well, I have schizophrenia! Been sick for the past 15 years, but doing well these days." I got the look....by now I know the look. Most are usually running scenarios in their head while your saying this, like you should be in a bell tower somewhere picking off people with a rifle. Or in a robe slobbering all over yourself talking in code, or wearing a tin foil hat so the government cant steal your thoughts. Others are scanning the table to check to see if all the knives and forks are accounted for. I gave him the whole run down how it started, how it took 5 years to get stable and how my life is doing now... good I might add. He did rather well I thought, and only had a few questions. The the next thing, he says, "Well I got something I'd like to tell you." He totally trumps my little disease with his..."I'm HIV+, and have been since 1991." Now I had the look of holy crabcakes, and he had the look of is he going to freak out or be cool with it. It was kinda like in wrestling when you think you have someone in a full nelson and your yelling at them to submit, cause there's no way in hell they are going to get out of this, then BAM, the next thing you know, your on your face with your arm pinned back, and your loosing the match. Holy Cow..he let me go on and on about my crybaby crap and he has this bomb. I think I handled it well and we talked for a long time. I don't think he had ever met anyone with schizophrenia, and I have never had any one tell me they had HIV. Its a small town...so it was kinda surreal to say the least. We both have diseases with lots of stigma associated with them. I texted him later to let him know we would keep in touch, and we needed to schedule another lunch or dinner very soon.. He agreed. Sorry, its something personal, but I didn't have anyone else I could to share this with.
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Wanted to start an open discussion about the story, in case anyone wanted to talk about it. I also wanted to thank everyone for the fantastic comments and support that I've received so far. [sharedmedia=stories:stories:5199] And here's my cat tax, if you're into that sort of thing:
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- die catfish die
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Here is an interesting article about the issue of being a ‘nerd’ in Middle and High School. It mostly focuses on ‘smart’ kids, but I suspect this holds partially true to Gay kids too. http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
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Hi guys, I just wanted to create a discussion thread for my story A Knight To Remember. It's a love story focused on a high school senior named Ian Ferri, who goes after the boy of his dreams, but has a hell of a hard time figuring out how to even find him, since he'd only ever seen him in an Instagram post one of his friends commented on... Hopefully you guys find the story funny and engaging. I wanted to write a romance that FEELS like an adventure story, without all the crazy plots twists or wild storylines. Hopefully I'm accomplishing that. This story was largely inspired by the following works: Oh Radio Tell Me Everything You Know - Nifty Crosscurrents - GA How I Got Carter - GA All three of those stories influenced my writing, and I hope - and feel strongly - that those of you that really like those books, will like mine as well. Anyway, hopefully some of you guys have comments/questions/concerns or perhaps just want to vent about one of the characters. I'd be happy to hear it all.
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Welcome to the spot where you can discuss the story 'The Field of Love' Well, I've started my second story. I hope you all like it!
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