Back to Being an Outlaw, Subversive and Mouthy About It!
I have to admit, heading South by car this year, I peeled my “I’m With Her” sticker and Human Rights Campaign equal sign off my car. I guess I am feeling less safe and equal.
But sometimes there are surprises. While many motel breakfast bars featured FOX news along with the waffles and juice and there were plenty of Trump/Pence signs on cars whizzing by, there were glimmers of hope.
In Winston-Salem we stumbled upon a fantastic installation at the contemporary art museum. Artist Stacey Leigh Kirby was clearly pissed off by North Carolina’s HB2 Bathroom Bill – the one mandating that transgender persons use the bathroom matching their birth gender. This artist was so pissed off she put together an installation “commenting” on the bill in the family rest room at the museum.
In this artist’s vision, inches from the toilet stood a gender monitor’s desk, so a government official could determine an applicant’s birth gender and clear that person for toilet use. This hilarious and savage political commentary included a girly calendar on the wall and old-fashioned ink stamps to identify applicants—and stamp their paperwork either queer, homo, trans, lezbo, straight, etc. There was also a creepy full body chart, presumably to identify and denote reproductive equipment. The whole exhibit, in all its smarmy detail was as subversive as hell. I loved it! Let’s hear it for artistic resistance to the haters.
At lunch, on the outdoor patio of a fantastic place on St. Simons Island, GA, over our succulent local shrimp and hush puppies, we chatted with the folks at the next table about our puppies traveling with us. The dogs got along great, sniffing under the tables for dropped morsels. We learned we were chatting up a long-retired Marine and his wife. I was a tad apprehensive.
But upon hearing we were Delawareans, his first response was “Say hello to Joe Biden for us. He’s a good man.” We were quite relieved.
The waitress, overhearing our conversation, looked at us and whispered “Liked his boss, too.” I hate that folks now feel they have to whisper support for President Obama. Oh how our lives have turned upside down.
But on the other hand, I am so proud to be a card-carrying member of the ReSisterhood. I know that between the time I write these words in mid-February and the March publication of this column, dozens of outrageous edicts, comments, discriminatory actions will have filtered out of the White House— or Trump Tower, Mar-a-Lago, or whatever other sewer is being secured by tax-payer dollars.
My family, friends, wife, Schnauzer and I stand ready to resist, ready to fight back against whatever discrimination might come our way. Because I know that every day, in every way, we are in bigly trouble.
Fay Jacobs is the author of As I Lay Frying—a Rehoboth Beach Memoir; Fried & True—Tales from Rehoboth Beach, For Frying Out Loud—Rehoboth Beach Diaries, and Time Fries—Aging Gracelessly in Rehoboth Beach.