I Confess…

I have family and friends who are Catholic, Mormon, Jewish, Muslim, Fundamentalist, and Agnostic. What do they have in common? They are all wonderful…

So what is the problem? After all, this is the country of religious freedom. This is the country with separation of church and state. Why does there have to be one “right way”?

There are all kinds of faith, and kinds of ways of having faith.

And implying that someones faith is somehow false because it is different than yours is hurtful in the most personal way.

Faith is supposed to be used to inspire. My mother inspires me each time I’m home and she bows her head to give thanks. I see in her a lifetime of faith in God, and a lifetime of love for me. Those LDS mission boys inspire me each time I pass them on the street – young, beaming and full of hope. Their way may not be mine, but I try to take something positive from all those around me. Even with our differences, we’re all working towards the same goal.

Do not let those who have personal agendas prevent you from having beautiful relationships with those who might see and believe a bit differently than you do. Do not let them make the world darker. Do not let them tell you that your faith is hollow. Do not let them take your faith – whatever it may be – from you.

A Perfect Boy…

I wanted to be the perfect boy.
A perfect boy would do exactly as asked.
A perfect boy would be loved by everyone around him because he was so perfect. But the journey to being loved had nothing to do with being that perfect boy…

Tossing Glitter…

Bergdorf Glitter

Blow, Gabriel, Blow…

Tossing Glitter… Hat Full Of Stars

Photo by Walter Kurtz

Feeling authentic… Being committed… Loving life together…
Thankful…

Love Letters…Margaret

This has always been my favorite photo of Jeff with his mom. There she is, in her swimsuit with the yellow checks. She loved yellow. Jeff is wearing his trademark hat and that little orange lifejacket. With his legs outstretched in delight, they are both looking at the camera with expressions of pure joy. They always looked like that when they were with each other — complete joy in each other’s presence. And through the years, whenever they were together, they looked exactly like this photo.
Jeff’s mother wasn’t a confrontational person. She didn’t like conflict and wanted things to always be light and easy-going. The first time we met, I could see she had a lot of questions about me. I knew she was trying to figure out my place in Jeff’s life and what that would mean. But true to form, she wasn’t going to ask. I found my way into connecting with her when I did her hair. The way to a woman’s heart is to make her happy with her hair. Margaret loved the way I did hers.
When she realized I was in Jeff’s life to stay, we fell into an in-laws-like relationship. It was clear that I was a kind of daughter-in-law to her. And everyone knows about how mothers-in-law treat their daughters-in-law, even when they love them. “You do keep a clean house, ” she would mutter as she inspected the washing machine. “You should think about wiping down the inside of the washer too.” But she would also give me a big kiss on my lips and say ‘”thank you for taking care of my son.” I know a lot of daughters-in-law who would love to hear those words just once.
After more than 27 years I recognize that every attribute of Jeff’s that I adore comes from his mom. His strength, his love of animals, his amazing sense of humor, his compassion. He learned all of it from Margaret – it all comes from her.
About a year before she passed, we were visiting one weekend, and she and Jeff were sitting close together in their favorite recliners. I was watching TV, but the two of them were chatting softly and doing what they always did when together — enjoying each other’s company. They had many similar mannerisms and when together, those mannerisms became more pronounced. Suddenly, out the clear blue, Margaret asked Jeff “How long have you and Eddie been together now?” We never talked about the trajectory of our relationship or the passage of time together. There was a pause and Jeff answered, “about 25 years”. Margaret nodded and said ‘that’s what I thought’. Nothing else needed to be said.
As the years go by with Jeff, I’m grateful to his mother for making him the man that he is — the man I love. I keep the outside of the washer sparkling and he wipes down the inside.

Tossing Glitter…

Dolly and Loretta’s first Madison Avenue visit…

Tossing Glitter…

I’ve always had this thing about beautiful soulful eyes… Tossing Glitter in Paris with performance artist Marina Abramovic…

Letting Go (Excerpt from Coming Out Of Indiana)

After a bad break-up, it can be hard to feel connected to anything. After my very first relationship with a man ended, I worked to fling myself into my job selling make-up at the Lazarus Department Store. At least that was something rewarding that I could do well. That is, I could do most of it well. Recording my sales and accounting for the stock we needed to re-order was impossible. Though I liked the fun part of selling make-up, I couldn’t be bothered with logging sales. Do you think Way Bandy has to write down every shade of lip-liner he goes through when he’s making up models for the cover of Vogue? I was at Lazarus to do beautiful things. There wasn’t a fucking thing beautiful about sifting through crinkled lists of color codes and back orders. It felt like a homework assignment that would never be finished. I’d lose track of sales, putting off my counts for so long that I’d be unable to make sense of the inventory sheets.
Mary, the other sales associate, would try to help me whenever she saw me attempting to fill out forms. “Let’s start small,” she’d say. “We’ll count the lipsticks.” Eventually I’d always end up throwing my hands in the air.
“I give up! It’s impossible!” When I finally left, they said it took six months just to straighten out my inventory. Regardless of my inventory woes, the job offered me a comfortable balance of artistry and service. I felt like I was helping to make women more beautiful and they appreciated me for it.
Lazarus gave each makeup artist her own set of sable brushes. I wanted to treat mine the same way I treated my spare albums, and my bridal doll from Ma-Maw. Of course I couldn’t jut keep the brushes in their original packaging. These were the tools I needed to use everyday. I compromised. I treated the brushes like religious objects, never letting them out of my sight and never letting loaning them out to less careful associates who had misplaced their allotment. I stored the brushes in their sleeves, only putting them away after they’d been thoroughly cleaned between makeovers. After hundreds of smoky eyes and heightened cheekbones, my brushes still looked like new.
For all of my clumsiness with the conventional tools that my father thought every man ought to know their way around, I was quite skilled with my brushes. My success at Lazarus, however, had as much to do with my ability to talk to the women having their colors done as it did with applying make-up. The women loved me. Women have always loved me. I feel that my ability to find something beautiful in every woman lay at the core of this. It didn’t matter what size or shape they were, I was able to find their best features and accentuate them. It almost became a game where I would get such satisfaction out of finding the beauty that each one of them had hidden away.
One girl more than any of the others impressed upon me what it meant to appreciate undiscovered beauty. The evening Joyce approached me at the counter she couldn’t look me in the eye. She stared down at the floor while she talked as if not looking at me would actually protect her from being seen. “I don’t have the first clue where to begin with makeup,” she confessed. “Can you help me?” The admission was a hushed voice in a high register emanating from beneath a man’s hunting jacket that disguised her shape. Other women would practically melt onto the glass countertop when perusing the lines from all of the different manufacturers, but Joyce stood about a foot away from the edge of the counter, anchored to the gleaming aisle in a pair of well-worn work boots. “I work in a turkey processing plant,” she said. “So, it doesn’t really matter what I look like, but I just thought…”
“Of course it matters,” I said, before she could come up with an excuse. She smiled her name, “I’m Joyce.” I reached across the counter to grab her hand and guide her over to my chair.
“I’m Eddie,” I said. I gently put the fingertips of my right hand under her chin to tilt her head up toward me. When I did, I found the deepest, most soulful pair of eyes looking back. Eyes were my specialty, so I got excited about her potential. I used a brown pencil to meticulously line and smudge, line and smudge, until I’d created enough depth. The technique was Way’s, but I’d done it so often that it felt like my own.
When I was satisfied, I presented her with one of the mirrors we kept on the countertop. She held it up to her face and screamed. She put the mirror down so she could catch the tears as she started to cry. “Don’t cry, don’t cry!” I pleaded. “You’ll fuck up your eyes!” She stopped crying just long enough to let a giggle escape and then she smiled through the tears that I had begun blotting from her cheeks.
“How is this possible?” she asked. “These are my eyes?” she said, incredulously. “And with your big hands! How’d you do it with those big hands?” It was a valid question. Her face had disappeared behind my hands each time I used one to steady her and one to apply the cosmetics. Somehow, it just worked. I held the eye pencil exactly as I would hold my writing pencil as a boy. The same technique that infuriated my father had helped me flourish as a make-up artist.

The Boy Who Loved Glitter…

He loved the smell of his mother’s hairspray and her hands making piecrust…

He loved Dorothy and her amazing ruby slippers…

He loved sitting on a church pew next to ma-maw with a song book in his lap and her high heels dangling from his feet…

He loved Melanie Daniels and her green Edith Head suit…

He loved the James girls that lived across the street in Oakland City who taught him how to roll hair with Dippity Dew and sponge rollers…

He loved the glistening jewel in Cher’s navel…

He loved every dog, cat, goat, cow, horse and chicken that ever graced the farm he lived on and the sound of his papaw’s laugh..

He loved holding his baby brother and sister…

And when he grew up he hoped to fall in love and grow old with the man of his dreams…

For every boy who loves glitter and for every girl who feels different…

Be authentic…

Be proud and be happy…

Embrace the person you were born to be..

Be set free…

Everything looks better with a little glitter…

Tossing Glitter…

Goat, our admittedly unimaginative name… When it’s authentic and unconditional… You remember and love forever…