On the MAX on the way to PDX after visiting Portland for a friend’s wedding.
Meshugna Gay Man (about in his 40s/50s): Well, they were right. It cooled down into the 70s. It was in the 80s/90s last week.
LT: Yeah, it’s nice.
MGM: You know, I grew up in South Georgia. It’s just humid there.
LT: I know. I grew up in North Florida.
MGM: I grew up in Thomasville. It’s about 25-30 miles from Tallahasssee.
LT: Oh, yeah? I grew up in Tallahassee!
MGM: I called home on Mother’s Day and they said it was 100 and asked if I missed home. I said I was home.
Postscript to MGM conversation: He really didn’t seem to register that I grew up in Tallahassee and know Thomasville well. He talked about his cousins who are gay and how their mother thinks they’re dead. And her daughter can’t have kids. The aunt probably won’t have anyone to take care of her when she grows older and her husband passes. The cousins own a wedding/flower business in Tallahassee. MGM thinks something is different about the South than it was in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s — ignorance has increased. [In my head I thought, "Well ignorance has always been there. But when you go to a place like Portland you feel better about humanity, even if diversity is slim.]
MGM may have been a “transient” but he spoke some kind of “truth” to me. He was honest and friendly and thoroughly Southern.
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Story found in a journal from several years ago.
We were bored and really unmotivated to get what we needed done for the yearbook junior year of high school. So we took a break to play a cat and mouse-chase-you-are-it-ha-ha game through the halls of the three story, 150-year-old brick building high school that was more our home away from home. We were in teams of two running around on all three floors. Old buildings make lots of “settling” noises. My friend and I had a tub of ice cream in our hands when we heard a noise. It was at the other end of the hallway. So we ran back to the end of the hallway where the journalism room was located, laughing so hard — the kind of laughing that takes energy from every muscle of your body. As we grew closer to the classroom I was screaming that I had to to the bathroom and couldn’t contain it any longer. I had done an almost unmentionable thing — well embarrassing for sure — ESPECIALLY for a 16-year-old. I made my friend promise that she would go downstairs to her car and get her extra change of clothes that was there and I was change into them and then come back into the journalism room like nothing happened. She would tell NO ONE of “the incident.” She gets the clothes, I change, walk back into the room and one of my other classmates asks me: “How you doing, P-Trex?”
