Is East Texas Anti-Gay?

Way up north of Houston, in the town nearest our lakehouse, you know, the people out here don’t look like the people where I come from.

Elbows look different, for starters. Out here, elbows are… well, they’re recessed, I guess you could say. Like there will be a great hangover of skin from the upper arm and a great hangover of skin from the lower arm, and then an elbow that resides somewhere down between the two, as though in a crevice. It’s not even seen, this elbow, only it has to be there, right? I mean, the arms do bend, even here.

Then there’s the hair. The women’s all look straight out of John Waters films, and the men all wear ball caps so you can’t tell what’s going on. And the eyeglasses are bigger: huge, to the point where maybe they used to be windshields on old Dodge trucks. And there are floral housedresses and there are belt buckles and there are people named Shirley and Gladys and Ruby Lee.

They are amazing!

Dana says the elbows can be explained by gravy and by pancake syrup, which she informs me are the two primary staples of a country diet.

Dana’s a lot smarter than I am (and she is from Oklahoma) so I have no reason to doubt her about this.

I Talk to God (and God Talks to Me)

Day 458 of my spiritual and physical ascent of the mountain.

Today was a wonderful day! Today was a fruitful day! I awoke before the sun in the small alcove I have discovered on the sheer north face of the mountain.

I say I “awoke”  but strictly speaking, this is not entirely accurate. I find that in these last days of my ascent, I rarely enter into anything that could be called “sleep”. As I have sublimated my will to the divine will, my state of contemplative prayer has deepened accordingly.

So I don’t really sleep now so much as I enter a deeper level of contemplation.

I eat only whatever grass or other foliage I can find, supplemented by small insects or even an occasional rodent or two. But this far up the mountain, flora and fauna grow scarce.

The Skinned Knee Blues

Now, Rachel, she walked on up to us, moping along with skinned knees. Stiff-leg staggering like a Frankenstein, flapping her hands to stay balanced or else stay away the pain, I can’t tell. I don’t know.

And she said moms, I can’t wear pants today and moms, I can’t wear jeans ‘cos… skinned knees.

From where I was sitting, there was not a single drop of blood… or at least none that I could see. Maybe two little matching shiny spots, you know, like where the skin kinda got rubbed away?  Maybe, if I turned my head just so, maybe… Well, it was nothing to call the paramedics over.

But still she was holding back the tears and none too well. And then the color, it drained right out of Dana’s face, and I could see what way things were headed, so I swept up the girl in my arms and I rushed her into the bathroom like she’d come to us with her arm severed or with a sucking chest wound and massive head trauma, instead of just with these… skinned knees.