CommuniKate

My friend Sally had a special request for her birthday party – fondu! Get your sticks out, that pot of cheese soup is making a comeback. During the party, I noticed some scary double dipping. It’s the beginning of flu season, but I said nothing. Gals were yacking and dipping bread squares, meat cubes, veggies and I didn’t want to bring them down. I dipped my napkin once by mistake. I was waiting for the pot of chocolate at the end of the rainbow. More dipping of marshmellowish squares and fruit, though I would have been happy to pick the pot off the sterno flame, drop my head back and chug it.

How perfect that the day after the fondu fete, I would fly to Wisconsin, proud home of, you guessed it, the Cheesheads! I flew into Madison, Wisconsin and was picked up there by the director of the Young Theater at The University of Wisconsin, Whitewater campus. Ken Kohberger has produced me in Western Illinois and Keene, New Hampshire. We caught up as we drove through a beautiful fall landscape that reminded me of my upstate New York home. Minus the cheese.

That afternoon I met several LGBT student activists from Impulse, the LGBT student organization and the Pride Center. We chatted about their activism, coming out, campus tolerance and my ancient history. The audience at the show that night in their gorgeous theater was a lovely mix of students, subscription series patrons, faculty and LGBTers from all over Wisconsin. Never say anything less than a flat out rave for Bret Favre, former Green Bay Packers QB. We learn and grow.

The next day it was off to dear old Detroit for a show at the wonderful new LGBT Center in Ferndale, MI. The center is about a year old, a huge improvement over the former space and ably directed by Leslie Thompson. MI has the nation’s highest unemployment rate and is really hurting. Fundraising, a challenge any time, is especially difficult now. But the crowd crammed into the performance space at the center, after taking tours of the many wonderful floors of the building and we squeezed some more money out of them for the Center. I met more of the community of center-supporters at an after-party at a local brewery. I missed the cheese fondu, but met lots of long-time and new followers.

I just wrapped up a month of Super-Tuesdays at the Gotham Comedy Club here in New York. It’s been a month of bad to worse on Wall Street, so it was good to see people come out to the club for a few laughs. It was good to be together.

After twenty months and a billion dollars, it’s finally on to Election Day. My adrenal system is shot and I don’t think it’s all the fondu! Vote early! Not often. That would make those anti-Acorn nutjobs blow up. Be positive! And plan a Fondu Victory party! Think Yes-Vember. We can.

In between two of my monthlong October run of Super-Tuesday shows at the Gotham Comedy Club in New York, I happily headed off to Massachusetts. No not to get married, silly. For Women’s Week! After four glorious days of being in Provincetown, it is tough to get back to New York City. After being with all those thousands of lesbians, I do enjoy presuming that every woman I see here in NYC is a lesbian. We like to think the best of people.

It is probably just as well I left Ptown when I did. The weeping and wailing is upon the Red Sox land after they lost to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Does Sarah Palin’s pastor know about the devil thing?

I arrived in Ptown on Wednesday evening, just in time to stop in and meet LA producer, Andrea Meyerson’s gang of gals on a Women on a Roll field trip. They were dining at the glorious Red Inn overlooking the bay, dappled silver by a full moon. It was great to meet the LA gals and some of the wonderful new lesbian comics.

Thursday was my 184th Annual Kate Clinton touch football game at the park at the base of the Pilgrim Monument. We had a spirited game, no one was injured, though the next day a gimpy lesbian limped by, while her femme partner glowered at me. We had excellent color commentary by roving bands of lesbo-comics. They all used the bullhorn my girlfriend gave me for my birthday. She thinks of it as a sexual device.

We had a brief half-time show by NYC’s Dykes on Mikes and a visit from Michelle Clunie (Queer As Folk) and Erin Daniels (The L Word), stars of the locally produced play Last Summer at Bluefish Cove They were gracious, signed autographs and raised money for breast cancer awareness not only at our game but also at events throughout the weekend.

Though the weather turned unseasonably cold, the weekend was a giant warm success with shows and parties all over town. It was good to be together. It felt like circling up the wagons and hunkering down with friends around a campfire while all around us winds of financial stress and campaign uncertainty buffeted our tiny bivouac of comity.

I left, not necessarily rested, but refreshed and ready for the final push of the campaign, grateful I have a job in this economy and hopeful about the change to come.

Happy Vernal Equinox!

I come from a family of winkers. I swear if my family had been on the Titanic, the last thing I would have seen my Dad do as he sank beneath the cold, dark sea would have been one last wink and gone.

The wink could be quick and crisp, a nano-flick that moved few other facial muscles. It could be slow and tight, a cyclopean clench that suggested Bell’s Palsy. It had several speeds. It was intentional or automatic. It was a family facial semaphore with several meanings: “Good morning.” “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” “I’m just joshing you.” “We’re in this together.” It was by turns welcoming, mocking, denying, reassuring, or conspiratorial.

Like many family tics, we didn’t not notice it, until a friend visited for the weekend and asked after, “Why do you all wink at each other?” “We do?” “Are you kidding? All the time. Walking into a room. When someone else is talking. At first I thought your brother was flirting with me at dinner. He just wanted the mashed potatoes.”

Despite my long experience decoding winks, I just caught the very tail end of Sarah Palin’s v-p debate wink as one perfectly made-up eyelid rose again to the open position. “Did she just wink?” I asked. I had been momentarily distracted, not by daubing my Palin Bingo card [I did not win] but by turning to shush my galpal. As I turned back, I saw the vapor trail of what I knew was a wink. Damn!

Moderator Gwen Ifill, had been drudged all week as partisan because she’s writing a book about the new generation of black politicians. That was no reason to break her ankle. Ifill did her level best, though she did not ask one question about immigration or abortion. Could Palin have pulled another answer out of her energy package? Palin, the inexperienced Reaganette, attempted to “there-you-go-again” Biden’s experience and establish rapport not with the politicos out there on the east coast but with the mind-if-I-call-you-Joe-Six-Packs in Smallville, USA.

Like Biden, I also got choked up during the debate. Sadly the only moment of unanimity of the night was that both candidates oppose gay marriage. Apparently the B of LGBT stands for bipartisan, not bisexual. Palin practically wiped her hands and chirped tolerantly, “I’m so glad we agree on that Joe.” After all our LGBT support and hard work for the Obama-Biden ticket, it was sickening. Mind if I call you chicken, Joe?

What I find staggering is that, in the midst of wars and financial collapse, we are talking seriously and at all about McCain’s Folly. Sarah Palin is a folksy, well-trained, Wikipedia-deep, by-George-she’s-got-it, bush-to-nowhere. Fine for governor up there in Alaska, but not for vice-president down here on planet earth. She is way over her head. She will wink just before we all sink.