Q&A

Cape Counselor wonders: Is there a reality beyond here?

Dear Counselor- Absolutely.
Sometimes, when I read these questions, I find myself picking apart every word, not unlike politicians who labor over every bit of language in a bill or in a constitutional amendment. If I’m not careful, I can soon overthink a question so much that it becomes unanswerable; again, not unlike Capitol Hill. The word in your question which concerned me the most is the word “beyond”. To me, that sounds as if we have this reality, here, now; and there is another reality or multiple realities waiting sequentially, afterward. There are actually a myriad of different realities which exist all at the same time. There are both Big Reasons and Small Reasons for that.
The Big Reasons for the existence of multiple realities is that we don’t actually live in a Universe, but a Multiverse. One of my favorite authors of all time, Sir Terry Pratchett, writes about the concept often, and refers to it as the “pants-leg” theory of reality. The idea is that in the Multiverse, every possibility of every day, every action, reaction made or taken, consciously or unconsciously, plays out in its own universe, each one splitting off of the other like the legs on a pair of trousers.
For example, when you were at the Shop-Rite last week and the guy behind the deli counter asked you if you wanted Boar’s Head or Shop-Rite brand cold cuts, you answered him “Boar’s Head” even though you wanted the cheaper brand, because there were people standing around and you were afraid you’d look like a cheapskate. Well, at the very same time, you also answered “store brand, please”, and that version of you split off into an entirely different universe, a universe where you saved 14¢ a pound on low-sodium ham.
So imagine, all these realities, each one playing out and splitting apart into infinitely more realities, all coexisting and getting along just fine. We just sort of pick a path to follow along the way.
The Small Reasons mostly stem from the fact that the concept of “reality” itself is flawed. What we think of as “reality” is completely subjective, something we make up for ourselves day after day in order to make sense and order out of the world around us.
Take, for example, the recent World Series. Imagine two fans at the ball park that night: a Red Sox fan, and a Cardinals fan.
Red Sox win. The crowd goes crazy. A historic night in Beantown.
Now ask the two fans to describe the night. You will get two radically different answers, and both of them would be 100% accurate. The Red Sox fan will undoubtedly use a lot of words like “awesome” and “amazing” and “wicked pissah”, while the Cardinals fan will use words like “disappointing”, “humiliating”, and “nearly got beat up in the parking lot”.
Two realities existing side by side.
So, you see, there do exist other realities “beyond” our own. But just remember, in another dimension, quite nearby, I answered your question with an “Absolutely not.”

Big Lil writes: I would like to hear your thoughts and memories on the first sisters in the name of love!!!
Dear Lil- Wow, now that was a long, long, time ago. If I remember correctly, it was probably around 1989 or 1990, before AIDS really received much in the way of funding. What is now the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod was then the Provincetown AIDS Support Group, and they helped people with AIDS and what we then called ARC with medical support, food, “buddies”, and other staples of human dignity. It was pretty much up to us as a community to fund the Support Group, and in Provincetown in the early 1990s that could only mean one thing: throw on a dress and put on a show! So that’s what we did.
The theme that night was self-explanatory: “Sisters are Doin’ It for Themselves”. The venue was set: the Post Office Cabaret. The core group was myself and the other ScreamGirls, Lila and Svetlana, and Dixie and Blanche and the Reverend Brooks; and of course yourself, my dear, our illustrious Mistress of Ceremonies.
We put out feelers among all the waiters, bartenders, shopgirls, and other riff-raff of Provincetown to come on down and do a number. It was so long ago, they had to bring their music on a cassette! It’s been so long, it’s hard to remember everyone who performed, but aside from the people I’ve mentioned, I seem to remember Eve, (yes, that Eve) doing a number, along with Kevin Driskell (aka Baby Strange), Queen Marcia and others. I seem to remember that there was no dressing room, (or if there was it was all yours), so all the queens were changing in the back of the room between their various numbers, right behind the back row of the audience.
The crowd went wild that night. Here were the rank-and-file, the heavy lifters of the Provincetown economy, even back then. The people who showed up for work every day, ran up and down those stairs at the Lobster Pot, blended those Strawberry Margaritas at Café Blasé. They were up on the stage, in a dress two sizes too small which they had just bought at the thrift store earlier that day; and they were in the audience, giving away hundreds of hard-earned dollars to the cause, one dollar tip at a time. It was awesome.
I don’t remember how much money we raised that night. Probably less than $2000. Of course, $2000 went a lot further back then. But it was something. We were doing what we could. We were Doing Good and Looking Fabulous. Sisters. In the Name of Love.


　
Manhattan Minister’s Wife asks: If you could be any animal what would it be?
Dear Manhattan- This seems like it would be an easy question to answer, but in fact it is not. This is probably due, at least partially, to my tendency to overthink these things sometimes. But the truth is, I’m am really not sure what type of animal I would prefer to be. There are up-sides and down-sides to every answer.
At first, I thought about the Koala. Mark and I went to a Koala preserve near Melbourne when we were in Australia. They are unbelievably cute and cuddly-looking. They also sleep 20 hours a day, which is something I’ve aspired to for most of my life. But then I remembered that they ate only one food their entire life: eucalyptus. I tried hard to imagine my entire lifetime eating nothing other than leaves that taste like cough drops. So I guess Koala is out.
It seems rather unimaginative, but I’m going to have to go with what I know on this one, and answer “a dog”. They are the animal with which I have the most empathy and the closest relationships. But even this answer comes with qualifications. I’ve always said that dogs either have it really good in this world, or really bad. I’ve seen the numerous strays on the streets of places like Athens and Puerto Rico, and their lives are hard, hungry, and mostly short. So, I would like to narrow my answer down somewhat.
I would like to be a dog. Preferably a mutt. I want to have floppy ears and a dopey grin. I want to live with a family who loves me. Families can consist of just one human or many. I want to spend most of my day napping on a couch or in a sunny spot just below the picture window. I want there to be at least one member of my human circle who lets me get away with almost anything. I want to be fed and kept warm in the winter. I will work for my keep, even if working means pulling a sled through hundreds of miles in the snow, or if it only means loving you and protecting you from the mailman.
Yeah, that sounds good.

Golden Oldie wonders: Fleetwood Mac or Peter Frampton?
Dear Golden- Interesting question. Somewhat thought-provoking, as it is somewhat out of context. I mean, Fleetwood Mac or Peter Frampton what, exactly? Which one would I rather have playing a Bar Mitzvah? (Fleetwood Mac) Or a “Happy Divorce!” party for a 50-something woman? (Peter Frampton)
Or possibly, who would win in a Celebrity Death Match? Clearly Fleetwood Mac would win, not only because they totally outnumber Frampton, but they have Stevie Nicks, who wears boots all summer long. She can stand on Frampton’s head and spin around in those boots, all the while chanting a very potent Welsh Wiccan curse upon him. Sayonara, Peter Frampton.
But, let’s narrow it down to one album apiece in order to level the playing field.
Frampton has “Frampton Comes Alive”, which must have been in the collection of every teenager alive in 1976. I remember two things about that album. One thing was that because of the stage lighting, the picture of Peter Frampton on the cover looked like he had pink hair. The other thing was that my brother liked to play his stereo in the morning when he was getting ready for school. So every once in a while I would be woken up to Peter Frampton talking into his guitar strings on “Do You Feel Like We Do” or “Show Me the Way”, and at the time this was not an experience which I enjoyed.
Fleetwood Mac gets “Rumours”, which is clearly one of the classic albums of all time. There is arguably not a bad song on the entire album, and every single track has gone on to be a classic or a hit. My memories of “Rumours” stem from my earliest days on my own, when I had my first real apartment. I left the nest quite young, I was barely 18 which would have made it about 1980. I remember listening to “Rumours” on cassette on my Walkman, riding the bus from my job in Harborplace to my apartment on University Parkway in Baltimore. I remember listening to “Second Hand News” - “won’t you lay me down in the tall grass and let me do my stuff?” - with the volume turned way up so it sounded as if Fleetwood Mac was playing right inside my head. Back then, the music leaked out of those old headphones like crazy, so I’m sure the entire bus was listening to it, too. I enjoyed it, anyway.
Plus, they have Stevie Nicks, who wears boots all summer long.
So, based on all that, my answer is Fleetwood Mac.

Shark with a Shield asks: Vanilla or chocolate?
Dear Shield- No contest here. Chocolate.
Anyone who knows me knows that I am the textbook Chocoholic. I love just about anything sweet, but chocolate, well, takes the cake, as it were.
My earliest memories of chocolate are of Nestle’s Quik, in powder form. It was the only way Mom could get me to drink milk, and I still don’t like drinking white milk to this day. I have sunken to the depths of choco-addiction depravity. More than once I devoured an entire bag of Reese’s Cups Minis on the walk home from the bars at DuPont Circle to my apartment in Logan Circle in DC, a fifteen minute walk. The entire bag. And I could do it today. For much of the wretched six months I spent living in Key West, I was so broke that a Snickers Bar qualified as one meal of the day. Chocolate has seen me through good times, bad times, ups, downs, you name it.
I could quit at any time, I just don’t want to quit. So don’t ask me to, OK, man?
I’ll be fine. After a RingDing.

Cuz in Charlestown asks: If you could pluck a persons eyes out, turn the eyeballs 180 degrees and plunk them back in, would they view everything upside down?
Dear Cuz- Really?
More than anything, your question disturbs me. This is the scene which it evokes:
A seedy bar. A crappy old tube television plays the Weather Channel at one end of the bar with the sound off. An unused dart board hangs askew on one wall, and the harsh fluorescent light hanging over the pool table proclaims Miller the “champagne of beers”. Two men approach. One of them is short, unwashed, and fidgety, like a 4’11” Steve Buscemi with eyes bulging out of his head. The other is big, muscle-bound, and slow. He is both stupid and inexplicably hostile, a bad combination. He steps up to you, well inside your personal comfort zone, and as he does, you notice the food stains on his shirt and his breath smells like he hasn’t brushed his teeth in a month.
“Hey,” he says in a thick, thick-headed Cockney accent. You feel tiny drops of tobacco-colored spit hitting you in the face. “I’m gonna pluck out yer feckin’ eyeballs, turn ‘em around, and stick ‘em back into your feckin’ head!”
The little ferret-faced one laughs, a short burst of sound like a machine gun or an over-excited chipmunk. “Hey, Larry!” he says, sounding even more like Steve Buscemi than he looks. “Do ya suppose he’d see everything upside down? Huh? Huh? Do ya?” He laughs again, nervous squirrel.
What happens next?

Pensive in Provincetown asks: How are we remembered, and do we make a difference?
Dear Pensive- This is a very deep question. Two deep questions, actually, but it seems to me that the answer to both of them is the same, and that is that it is up to us. It is up to us how we are remembered, and it is up to us whether we make a difference.
Perhaps it would be a good exercise for all of us, some day when we are alone with our thoughts, one of those days when we’re feeling courageous enough to really look at our own lives for a few minutes, to ask ourselves that question. When you are safely ensconced in your pine box or your decorative urn, and people are sitting around drinking coffee out of paper cups and commenting on how moist the chicken salad is, what kind of stories do you want them to be telling about you? That you were an amazing mom? That you had the best music collection? That you overcame adversity with grace and humor? That you were smart, that you were funny, that you were fearless?
However you answer that question to yourself, then that’s probably where you need to be focusing your energy; a signpost on how you should probably be living your life.
As far as whether we make a difference, it is not so much up to us whether we make a difference as it is what kind of a difference we make. Our very existence in this world has already made a million differences in a million uncountable ways. (See “Butterfly Effect”) We can choose to make a difference for the better or for the worse by deciding, quite simply, to do the Right Thing or not to, whenever presented with the choice.
To me, it’s all about what I call Legacy. Legacy can be great wealth or great fame, but it doesn’t have to be. Whatever the humblest of us leaves behind is our Legacy. The way people remember you, or don’t; the difference you made, or didn’t; all those things. Your family, your Art, your footprint on the world. All these things are your Legacy, and it is never too soon to start working on leaving a good one.