Quotes and Poems: Day 33

Quote:

Hope Is The Only Thing Stronger Than Fear.

Poem:

Dear Gaybashers

BY JILL MCDONOUGH

The night we got bashed we told Rusty how

they drove up, yelled QUEER, threw a hot dog, sped off.

Rusty: Now, is that gaybashing? Or

are they just calling you queer? Good point.

Josey pitied the fools: who buys a perfectly good pack of wieners

and drives around San Francisco chucking them at gays?

And who speeds off? Missing the point, the pleasure of the bash?

Dear bashers, you should have seen the hot dog hit my neck,

the scarf Josey sewed from antique silk kimonos: so gay. You

missed laughing at us, us confused, your raw hot dog on the ground.

Josey and Rusty and Bob make fun of the gaybashers, and I

wash my scarf in the sink. I use Woolite. We worry

about insurance, interest rates. Not hot dogs thrown from F-150s,

homophobic freaks. After the bashing, we used the ATM

in the sex shop next to Annie's Social Club, smiled at the kind

owner, his handlebar mustache. Astrud Gilberto sang tall and tan

and young and lovely, the girl from Ipanema... and the dildos

gleamed from the walls, a hundred cheerful colors. In San Francisco

it rains hot dogs, pity-the-fool. Ass-sized penguins, cock after cock in

azure acrylic, butterscotch glass, anyone's flesh-tone, chrome.