Hello, my name is Trevor and I’m an enabler and a co-dependent.

Like most inconvenient truths, it has taken me some time to realize this. I blame my mother. Not in a Maury Povich sort of way, mind you. The simple fact is she’s an enabler as well, and I’m my mother’s son. She’s married men who are not only addicts, but are utterly emotionally unavailable to her, and for this very reason I have avoided any serious attempts at dating for the past four years and counting. Because I’m the very same way.
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Filed by Trevor at 11:24 pm under Fightin' Words, Love
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Bil told me he has been waiting for me to respond to the court ruling legalizing marriage for gays and lesbians in California, so after a week, here I am. I certainly don’t wish my silence to be misconstrued as apathy toward the subject matter; rather, it’s difficult to articulate exactly what I’m feeling right now. But I’ll try.

Right. So about last Thursday. Half of the TVs where I work during the day are tuned to CNN, and when I saw the initial reports about gay marriage being legalized in a certain part of the world, the location was ambiguous (the sound is muted, so all I had to go on were the banners), so I assumed it was another European country that had made the ruling. In fact, I was in the middle of my usual speech about how California, while not explicitly legalizing gay marriage, has the most liberal domestic partnership laws in the nation, when it became clear that it was, in fact, my home state that had overturned the ban on gay marriage passed in 2000. But I didn’t cheer. Maybe I should have. Instead, I stood with my hand over my mouth and wondered why the hell I ever left to begin with.
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Filed by Trevor at 11:22 pm under Politics, Activism, Love
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California Supreme Court overturns gay marriage ban

The good news is piling up fast around here. Case in point: California courts declared that a ban on gay marriage is illegal. This post comes a couple days after the actual news, and I can’t really say anything poetic about it all, even though I want to, but you must understand that this makes me really happy. Super-happy. Not because I’m gay and unmarried (I am neither), but it’s kind of a point of shame for me that our country still thinks that gay folks are second-class citizens. Other countries have legalized it. We haven’t. In fact, in some of our states here in the USA, marriage between a man and a man or a woman and a woman is constitutionally forbidden. That means permanently no-no. And while I am not a member of the oppressed party, the oppression appalls me.

So, when I heard that my home state has decided that discrimination of this sort is – yes – unconstitutional, I felt a massive surge of pride run through my veins. I felt the same pride about Massachusetts, because I lived there for one year. But one year does not compare to the 23 years I spent living in California. That’s 23 times more joy and relief and hopefulness for the future that I’m getting right now. Rock on, California!

Unfortunately, I also cannot help but remain somewhat cynical. I know our country pretty well, and I think there will be some trouble down the road because of this (this being an election year and all). And there has been a rather strong response from both sides of the debate. But I’m not going to bother with all that just yet. Fuck it all for now. For now, I’m just going to enjoy it. Hooray, progress!

Filed by Bil at 8:58 pm under Social Issues, Gay Agenda, Politics, Activism, Love
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Ten years ago today was the my first encounter — the first of several subsequent encounters — with suicide. In fact, by this time he was already dead, long since scooped up from the drainage canal behind his house where he’d taken his life with his father’s automatic. But I didn’t know it yet. That phone call would come later on the next day, a Friday, after I had driven my battered car fresh from an uninsured accident six days prior up to my best friend’s house to get the weekend started right.

Once a year I call his parents. It’s also the only way I can remember my sister’s birthday. He would be 23 today.
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Filed by Trevor at 5:05 am under Love
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It’s true. Devon is my personal dresser. She doesn’t actually put my clothes on me, but she tells me what to wear. Not because I pay her, and not because she wants me to be happy. For the most part there are two motivating factors for making me wear the clothes that I wear: 1) she does not want to be embarrassed by me; and 2) she derives pleasure from watching me embarrass myself.
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Filed by Bil at 8:32 pm under General, Love
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It’s been too long since I ventured back onto the web in all my text and glory, and I’d say it’s time I got back to it.

The main reason I’ve been so absent is not a lack of personal time, no, but more a notable lack of a person. A good friend of mine passed away quite unexpectedly a few weeks ago, and I’ve been reserving my “next post since then” for her. But it’s hard. You can really only do it once, they say, and I wanted to get it right. I don’t want to make light of it, but I also don’t want to weigh everyone down with sap and pretense.

Because the fact of the matter, as I have come to realize, is that writing a post about someone who’s passed away for the sake of that person is bullshit. It’s never for their sake, it’s always for the writer’s sake; for one thing, the person who has passed away – well – has passed away. For another, it’s therapeutic or soothing to the writer to express feelings; and honestly, when I go to someone else’s blog, I don’t really care how they were feeling when they posted a paragraph.
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Filed by Bil at 10:00 pm under Love
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We’ll start with the shoes.

I don’t really have that much to say about my shoes, other than it had been over a year since I had my own (functioning) pair of Converse All-Stars, but thanks to a Christmas miracle, I am once again strapped in canvas and rubber, burning down highways and ready to kick ass at a moment’s notice. Life is a thousand times better. These shoes will make 2008 SO much better. This pair especially, the first after a dark age in my life, will not only get me around, they will serve as a symbol that my spirit is running strong. When there is a roadblock, they will make a brief squeak on the floor and we’ll all just pick right up again, fast as before. In fact, these shoes will probably help me fly. Literally.

And speaking of Christmas miracles, several orphans in Chicago had a VERY merry Christmas this year thanks to my place of work and a little bit of war – penny wars, to be exact. Much of the credit of the success goes to my team, I might add.
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Filed by Bil at 9:53 pm under Fightin' Words, Love, Humanism
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Is Love,
as we’ve been taught —
suspending all Logic and Reason
for Its sake.

While Forgiveness
seeps into the voids:
blanket amnesty
for all manner of Truth.

So now I appeal
to a Higher Power —
that which can suspend Love
for the sake of Reason.

Filed by Trevor at 2:18 am under Love
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“Hark, the herald angels sing — but as for us, my dear, I can’t recall a single thing we’re celebrating this year.” Jenny Owen Youngs, “Things We Don’t Need Anymore”

I was walking home through the park adjacent to my apartment at about midnight last night, trying (and failing) not to look like a total goofball as I tried to keep myself from slipping, and I noticed a woman about my age sitting on a bench. I thought that was a little strange, given the hour and the temperature, but I didn’t think anything of it. Initially I flashed her a non-threatening grin, but as I kept walking, I noticed that she was crying. I stopped and turned around, asking her if she was all right. She popped her headphones out and turned her head.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” she asked.
I repeated my question, “Are you all right?”
She laughed a little. “Yeah, I’m OK.”
I smiled sympathetically and turned to continue on my way.
“You’re a good person for stopping. Happy holidays,” she said.
I turned back around. “Of course, sweetheart.”

But I’m not a good person. My first instinct was to reach for my cell phone, like I do whenever I’m in the Loop and have to pass through the gauntlet of Greenpeace activists, or with those religious nutcases handing out pamphlets on Belmont. And now I feel like a total shit. I’m genuinely concerned; I want to go back.

I wish God existed so she could forgive me.
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Filed by Trevor at 1:11 pm under Social Issues, Love, Depression
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It’s the early-morning reveille,
a stack of letters never sent –
folded neatly, stored with care –
a half-depleted stash of votives,
a table burgeoning to bursting.

It’s a bottomless reservoir of patience
for all manner of injury –
my armor,
my savior,
my energy.

Filed by Trevor at 12:58 am under Love
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