Bitter Pill to Swallow

I'm an abalone kind of person.

It's a family meme. My parents pulled me out of sixth grade for a half a year so we could tour the country. I like trying new foods, and we found a lovely little bistro in San Francisco that was selling abalone sandwiches. It. Was. AMAZING! Tasted like the best oysters EVER, melted in your mouth, not too much breading, just the best.

About a week or so later we were up the coast, another place that had abalone sandwiches, I ordered... and regretted my choice. Dry, overcooked, chewy rubber. Tasted like salty breading.

So now we have what we call “abalone situations” - where you said / thought one thing before an incident, and its opposite when a profound incident happened to you. Usually it means when something is really amazing and then it's awful, but it can also mean the reverse.

(I would call them “Rocky Mountain Oyster moments," but Mom refuses to even acknowledge that that food exists on the same planet with her. She refuses to admit I ever ate them. She expressly forbid me to try them when we were in Colorado on that same trip. I got to try them in Texas many decades later, marveling at their taste and texture. Mom denies that day ever happened, like it's been erased from the calendar. I tried them again in Kansas, and bleaugh. Mom also denied that day ever happened. Mom was on neither of those RM ”Oyster” trips. Right. “Abalone moment” it will stay.)

Why all this lead-up with food and not books?

Because talking about food is much easier than talking about being a homophobic jerkwad when I was younger.

Conservative area, conservative family, conservative church. It was inevitable, I suppose, but that doesn't excuse it. Luckily it wasn't a stupid “that's anathema to what God wants” mentality, but more of a “that really squicks me out and pass the brain bleach please” thought process.

But my gaydar is reversed, broken, and stuck in second gear. I can't tell orientation unless there's a suspicious rainbow theme playing about their accessories, and these events happened way before it was safer to be LGTBQIA+ in public. Of course every single person I ever crushed on turned out to be gay later. There was one holdout from my childhood... then he wrote a letter to my mom. Even one of my high school bullies confessed it was because she was crushing on me, and couldn't admit it to herself.

I always was a one-man type woman. It took decades for the word “demisexual” to appear in my lexicon, and now suddenly a whole lot of my thinking and reasoning make sense.

So when I read Mercedes Lackey's Magic's Pawn for the first time, it hit me with all the force of a clue-by-four wrapped in cut velvet. You know, to make a pretty pattern on your cheek when you realize you've been whacked in the jaw so hard you'll need a good dentist to stop laughing and re-wire the pieces back together.

Here's the quote:

"This I think I have learned: where there is love, the form does not matter, and the gods are pleased. This I have observed: what occurs in nature, comes by the hand of nature, and if the gods did not approve, it would not be there. I give you these things as food for your heart and mind.”

If the mic drop had existed in the late eighties, it would have landed on my gobsmacked head.

That was the piece I was missing.

I'm a natural-born biologist. If you've read my other writings, you've probably seen that my mom read me National Geographics while I was in the womb. My house is the one where all the wounded animals go to be fixed, and as I type, the dozen or so caterpillars in the habitats are munching away contentedly. Or contemplating the nature of change as they nestle in their chrysalises. The bio degree I earned in college, along with knowing my way around the labs at night like the critter-mad person I am, made me what I am today.

If it's a part of nature, it's natural. Q.E.D. Don't get me started about penguins, clown fish, echidnas, hyenas, and chickens.

It was an overnight change. The world itself hadn't transformed, and the idea still squicks me out. But reading that book, over and over like the old friend it is, made a profound impact on who I am and how I treat others. I now live my life by three rules: consenting, adult, and discreet. “Discreet” is the only one with wiggle room, because my version of modesty begins only where the rest of the world's ends. I may not want to see some of it, but hey, lookie there, good ol' Nature provided me with a joint at the neck, so I can just look away.

Apparently I was already good with that one. Remember that I said my gaydar was broken? On the same trip I mentioned at the beginning, to San Fran, my parents stopped at a beach. I hopped out, aiming for the closest access point to the water and sand, to look for shells. Mom called me back in a panic. What? There's a beach, it's right freaking there, let's go! Nope, beach is closed, we gotta go now! I stomped back to the car in a seriously foul mood. I knew the beach was open! There were no chains or gates on the access points! Only years later, when I did not let it go, did she confess that she freaked out watching a pair of cute gay lovers kissing passionately, and “didn't want to deal with the questions I'd have.” Really, Mom? Really? I was still in the “ew kissing, yuck” stage, and wouldn't have cared if it was kid-kissing-pet-lizard action, ALL kissing was YUCK. I didn't even see them, I was too busy aiming for the sand and ocean. All that fuss over nothing. Humans aren't important to me when I'm on a beach, unless it's to avoid running into them.

Growing up AFAB but with very masculine traits (my obvious PCOS has never been diagnosed, but yeah, I got it), the whole Pride community is now very much on my radar. I am hyper-aware whom is what preferred designation in town, in my friend circle, in my greater community. Why? Because I see them/me as broken by society, and while I may have no need to patch them up like they're wounded, they very much need safe spaces to heal.

If they appear in my life, I'll do my best for them.

All because of that book. Otherwise, I would have run away like I did when I was in school, and ignore their suffering. Or worse, think to myself that it was justified. Unnatural.

And, with the great Marion Zimmer Bradley, all I can say is, “Damn you, Misty!” And hope I can be as good an author of enjoyable, profound, deep, self-reflecting stories.

I'm on my fourth copy of Magic's Pawn, because I've worn out the others with sheer love and lending them out. I'm Taleydras at heart, and dangit I want my bond bird to appear! (Never mind that an osprey went soaring right over my head two days ago. Never mind that I'm foster mama to three habitats full of proto-flutters. Never mind that we accidentally scared a baby bunny hiding a foot away from us tonight. Never mind that I've seen some of the rarest creatures in North America in my travels.)

Oh, and my old church? Now has a gay pastor. That I grew up with, in the youth group. He drove me nuts as a kid, wanted to strangle him, the pesky bleep. I apologized to him when he came to visit me in the hospital, brought back from the edge of congestive heart failure with only a few hours of lifespan to go without assistance. It shouldn't have taken me that long.

The world turns, and some things get better with time and concerted effort.