As expected, leaving the State Department was nearly as painful as getting in.  Surprisingly though, there wasn’t a lot of hoopla over my identification badge or security clearance, one signature and I just sort of faded off into the afternoon.  I still feel raw, ripped away, and there’s not enough whiskey to soothe the jagged edges.  In the meantime, please settle for my letter of resignation. 

First, a preface.  You already know I resigned in part because of the unchanging policies regarding partners.  In fact, my anger is directed more at the U.S. Government as a whole and the people who vote against such things than at the State Department itself.  Yes, small measures could be taken, but the bottom line?  The constant challenges and hurdles thrown up by our own government are discriminatory and the State Department is just an accessory.  I left rather than fight it out, but I think it’s a shame that, except for a cursory glance, my required resignation letter will go unread.  So here it is for you, to make me feel that someone has heard me.  Ahh, the sweet smell of freedom.  Points for sticking around.

June 10, 2008

Dear Secretary Rice:

It is with the deepest regret that I submit my resignation from the Foreign Service.   I have greatly enjoyed serving my country and the Department for ten years as a Foreign Service Officer.  During this time I served as a General Services Officer in both Sao Paulo and Maputo, as the Ethiopia Desk Officer, on the INR Watch, and as a Deputy Coordinator teaching A-100 for incoming Foreign Service Generalists.  However, I cannot in good conscience continue to subject my same-sex partner to discriminatory security, health, language, employment, training, travel and housing policies.

I would remain a Foreign Service Officer if I were confident that the Member of Household (MOH) policy would improve and offer support for my family.  However, the discrimination inherent in the current Department of State MOH policy makes my continued service impossible.  It is time the Department catch up to the private sector where the majority of Fortune 500 companies have domestic partnership benefits that that value employees and welcome their families.  Particularly in a climate of increasing numbers of unaccompanied and dangerous posts, it is unconscionable that the Department has chosen to disregard opportunities where forward looking leadership and vision would have made an immeasurable difference in my partner’s everyday life.

Thank you for the opportunity to spend ten years in service to the United States.  I have met so many wonderful people and along the way my colleagues have become my closest friends.   Despite the treatment of my family as second class citizenry, I will treasure my memories of public service with the Department.

We spent Saturday cleaning out our storage shed.  Fortunately, it’s an indoor room on the second floor of a public storage warehouse so there were no bugs or dust tornadoes.  This tells you a bit about my childhood; one disastrous chore was to clean out the family shed located in the desert backyard and festooned with black widows, scorpions, webs of death, rattlesnakes and choking, 115 degree clouds of cactus needle filled air.  Like Indiana Jones, I pulled boxes from shelves with my fingertips, cringing and ducking as swooping vampire bats swelled out around my head.  Well, I never saw any bats, but you get the idea.  But enough about the ways in which my parents tried to kill me, D. and I survived cleaning out our storage.

I think this is a true test of a relationship.  Much like successfully driving cross country last November, surviving the storage in stifling heat tells me we can withstand anything.  Sure there’s an occasional “you’re doing it wrong” but for the most part, it was smooth.  Dragging box after box into cars and then into the house involved braving a creaky early Soviet-style elevator, swim-worthy humidity, various sets of stairs and all the aches and pains that come with being lazy adults whose idea of a workout involves more sheets and a mattress than actual fitness equipment. 

With luck, the rest of our move will continue at the same pace.  We’re dragging it out over the course of a month, so we’ll have plenty of time to test it.  But here’s to a good start!

Funny how you get attached to people.  It’s not the attachment so much I think is funny, but the how of it.  The “I like you just this way and don’t ever change”ness of it.  I like to think I’m flexible, and appreciate people for who they are, not just their current state, but I realize that isn’t totally true.  You want a for instance, don’t you? I’ll indulge, you, but only if you promise not to call me shallow in the comments.  Promise?  In your head, fine, but not out loud. 

We’re at that baby age, but we’re not producing any babies.  Maybe it’s the extra uterous we’re working with, but I think it’s more that our priorities have stacked up differently than we expected. In the past month or two, people whose blogs I’ve enjoyed for a few years have gotten pregnant.  All of a sudden, what used to be discussions that I could relate to are now filled with ultrasound photos.  Frankly, I’ve found it uninteresting at best.  The simple solution is to stop reading, and so I have, even when I so enjoyed what that person had to say previously.  Getting pregnant has changed their focus so notably, they are no longer interesting or relatable.  I compare this to a newspaper columnist who has undergone a major life change.  Maybe the tone changes, or the content.  But the change prompts a shift that loses readers.  Pregnancy does it to bloggers. 

I know I lost some of you in the preceding paragraph.  Babies are beautiful creatures.  I just can’t relate since I’m not a mother.  Everyone has the right to guide their subject matter.  Infatuation with pregnancy passes.  Blogs are not the person, just a facet.  I’m shallow.  Fine, you can say it. 

I actually like a lot of people with babies, both in writing and in person.  I just don’t like when it changes someone so significantly, we can no longer relate.  I think it happens most often when someone’s identity is tied up in the change - in the case of children, being pregnant, being a mother, and so forth.  People with a diversity of interests seem to handle such a change in passing, without becoming the change.  It isn’t a bad thing to become a new person, it’s just, I much prefer when the new person still has elements of the old one. 

I know I’ll lose readers when I leave the Foreign Service.  I’ll be a different person, and like the newspaper columnist, will have lost that something that brings people interested in reading about the Service.  Fundamentally though, I’m still talking about the same things.  It’s harder in person - when people you enjoy grow in a different direction, making coffee chats uncomfortable and, in the end, impossible.  Lately, it’s the babies that have been doing it, but soon I expect it will be the job change, a different city, a new way of life.  Will it be me that people drift from or the other way around? 

Points for sticking close.

When I’m stressed out, my shoulder clenches up, distracting me from what I’m doing and eliciting a sharp hissing intake of breath that could be loosely translated as oh my god, what is that piercing pain dividing my soul?  I’ve tried everything to get it to stop - even a visit to the doctor (”Don’t wear your bag on that side,” the normally rational physician said.  As if the tiny purse I carry twice a month might be rending my shoulder in two.)  Advil takes the edge off, but after awhile, I’ll have to take out a loan to afford my habit.  My former therapist asked me what weight I was carrying on my shoulders.  She was big on associating physical ailments with mental ones.  Your teeth ache?  What tough issue have you been chewing on lately?  Your knee hurts?  What big hurdle have you been jumping/climbing?  Your big toe throbs?  You must be tiptoeing around something.  The acupuncturist wanted to create a healing circle and the massage therapist said they were contraction knots.  Ever the intrepid searcher, the internet told me the technical term was “trigger points.”  As an aside, trigger points?  Seriously?

Could be my hair trigger nerves, that’s for sure.  Hair trigger because the slightest hint of stress sends my shoulder into one tight knot of sharp pain.  And that sets me on edge.  Could be that the piles of stress associated with changing jobs, moving to a new city, preparing to live without D for two months and wondering if I’ll be able to afford to live, period, are setting me a tad on edge.  Stressed?  Why? 

This leaves me with a couple of choices.  Cultivate a Hunchback of Notre Dame sashay (check).  Abuse unholy amounts of ibuprofen (check).  Adopt the dry needle method of poking trigger points into submission (um, ow?).  Or occasionally hit the gravy boat for some anti-anxiety pills.  What?  You don’t have a gravy boat?  Well, leftover prescription drugs hang out in our gravy boat (safely in their bottles people, until they expire.  It’s not like we’re using the gravy boat to slowly tranquilize the guests.  We have our scintillating conversation for that.) 

The gravy boat houses the anti-anxiety pills that make transcending creaking wooden stairs possible.  After being on a collapsing deck, the slightest creak paralyzes me into a cold, shaking, sweat.  It’s getting much better, but you can imagine the stifled laughter D. has to hold back when something makes a loud noise, I jump and the simultaneously grab my shoulder (hi, trigger points) in excruciating pain.  Good times, folks, good times.  But, aside from managing the PTSD, I’ve found the pills have an alternate purpose.  Judiciously applied, they have made this transition possible, without leaving me stranded drowning in a pitiful pool of inaction, sadness, anticipation and fear.

Lest you think I’m a drooling mess, I assure you, getting me to actually take the pill is a herculean feat.  But, it has been liberating to realize that there is a way to make what is practically impossible manageable, to take my multiplying, horrifying anxiety and tame it just enough to cope like I’m normal.  I don’t talk here much about the crazy, but still, it  comes around, pestering me when I least want it and burrowing into those trigger points until I pry it out with determination. 

That’s enough about my least attractive points, let’s hope being a librarian is easier.

There’s password protected post here.

We’re on our way to see our new house tomorrow. It’s a little like a blind date, of which I’ve had a couple.  One woman’s raucous laugh and heavy butch personality so clashed with my own that I might as well have walked in, thanked her for her time and walked out.  As it was, we had a lovely dinner, agreed to go our separate ways and occasionally exchanged happy greetings at the all night diner after closing hours at a club.  The other was a sweet person who might have been a successful date, had I not broken my ankle the evening before.  In the end, she was bound for Estonia and I was headed to Brazil and sweet or not, it’s hard to have fun with a broken leg. 

We’ve met this house before briefly.  So I suppose it’s more like a Missed Connections ad than anything else.  “You: Cute on the outside, slightly smelly inside, red and green bedrooms, gorgeous (and sexy!) skylight.  Me: Tired renter, also smelly.  Coffee, tea, me?”  The last time we saw her she was dingy and had a vague odor of eau de dog pee.  The master bedroom had been painted dark red and the spare room a fetching black-green.  The suspicious stain in the center of the carpet was addressed only briefly with a “We’ll take care of that.”  The realtor promised to return her to proper renting condition and so we signed a lease, hoping against hope that they actually gave her the bath she so desperately needed. 

In the end though, we have no idea what to expect when we walk through the door of our own house.  Like a blind date, if she’s unattractive or has a crass sense of humor, we’ll do what we can to civilize her and then ditch her in a year.  Hopefully, we’ll have the money to buy a house this time next year.  And believe me, when we go on that blind date, she had better be hot.

The National Anthem makes me cry.  It’s a good thing, a sentimental thing - I’m just an unbearable patriot in enough ways to make the 4th a veritable waterworks.  I tell you this only to tell you that I haven’t gotten teary even once today, despite hearing the anthem several times.  I suppose that it doesn’t help that I grew up in a town with a Main Street, a fourth of July parade, block parties, barbecues, sparklers, and fireworks.  Talk about a recipe for patriotism. 

In the Foreign Service, you frequently spend the 4th working, celebrating America’s independence with 200 of the Embassy’s closest friends.  One year, it was strictly black tie; California strawberries and champagne were served and a Marine sliced the red, white and blue cake with a long, shiny sword.  Another year, it was a steaming barbecue, with an African drum beat backing the Star Spangled Banner.  For me it has always been a time to break out the tissues, so that when the inevitable tears start to flow (part homesickness, part pride), I can rescue my eye make-up before my professional contacts start to stare.  Want to know more?  Digger has an accurate take on a working Fourth for government drones overseas here. 

For the first time in a long time, this 4th was a treat - a brunch, good friends and absolutely no stress (or tears).  I think I might be getting my life back.  Happy Independence Day.

For the last three years, I’ve had the opportunity to usher in more than a thousand new officers and for every group there was a time for introductions.  Hi, I’d say, I’m so happy you’re here.  And then, after some pleasantries, I’d tell them about my partner.  I felt like I always rushed through it so as not to give the impression that I was trying to turn them gay with merely the gaze of my eyes.  Before I could stand up there, I had to conquer the terrible butterflies while rehearsing the story again and again in my office, quietly, with the door shut, trying to muster non-gay-ray energy with which to meet their eyes.

I could have left that part out.  Or, I could have only mentioned D. when (and if) she came up.  There are all sorts of ways to keep your orientation quiet, should you wish.  But I made a conscious decision before I ever stood in front a group to lay it out there to take or to leave. 

I had some backlash, of course.  In one of the earliest groups, shortly after my introduction, I was assisting one person while another glared at me.  The glarer turned to me, and in a soft, harsh voice said, “Go ‘way.”  I assumed I must not have heard him and so I said, “Excuse me?” and he repeated, louder “Go ‘way!”  Since I hadn’t known this future diplomat for longer than 20 minutes and all he had heard about me was what I had said, I had to assume he was afraid the gay might rub off on him.  Another fine gentleman told me that the reason he had been avoiding me was that his wife had left him for another woman.  He was holding a grudge, he said.  Lovely, I thought, more promiscuous gays.

I had days where I thought that the constant coming out was more trouble than it was worth.  It was exhausting to lay it out there to every new group of people.  People who just stare back at you, taking it all in.  But I did it, regardless of the jitters and the constant throwing up feeling, because I was sure that someone in the class needed to see that I could stand up there, being gay and successful and happy, regardless of what others might think.  Occasionally, someone would thank me for making them feel welcome, but mostly, it was a silent effort.  If I opened the door for anyone, I never knew.

I’ve spent much of this week saying goodbye to these thousands.  Through email, in person and by phone, the thanks yous and good lucks have rolled in.  I’ve tried to respond personally, despite feeling sad but happy, overwhelmed and empty.  One email in particular made up for all the “Go ‘way”s and measured avoidance.  It spoke to exactly what I had tried to do, to make a space where someone who didn’t know if he or she would be accepted could stand knowing that there are other officers, successful, well-liked officers, who are also standing there.  That the Service has a place for us to be ourselves.  That thank you made up for laying myself open over and over for three years.

For all those mornings where I thought I might die if I had to come out to a group of judgemental strangers one more time, this email assured me that every last second was worth it.  There are points there, and they’re all mine.

What, Who, When: The Patron Saint of Liarsby Ann Patchett.  Published in 2003.

Why on Earth: My mother has been after me to read something by Ann Patchett for years.  It’s true, the “You should really read something by this Ann Patchett woman” refrain was a constant companion to our conversations, usually sung right after “Are you sure you should quit the Foreign Service?” and “Have you called your sister lately?”  Let it be said that when I finally did read something by that Patchett woman and told my mother about it, she said “Who?  I have no idea what you’re talking about really.  I don’t think I’ve ever read anything by her.”  This is one more brick in the crazy wall, people.

Well?: The Patron Saint of Liars stands on a tripod of perspectives.  A woman, her husband and her daughter take us in turns through a life built on the edges of a Catholic home for unwed pregnant girls that is outwardly quiet but inwardly broiling with restless energy and longing.  I echo so many of the sentiments of the lead character, her delight in driving as an escape, her restlessness, her focus on simplicity in order to distract from spilling, riotous emotion; yet, I don’t have the coldness and detachment she uses to temper her relationships. 

I do like the way each character seems to pick up the next third of the book rather than skipping from person to person.  The only book I’ve ever enjoyed that successfully skipped around was the Time Traveler’s Wife.  In this case, no perspective vertigo, only a simple snapshot of a family over a decade or so.  Mark one for that Patchett woman. 

For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t ask you if you were leaving your husband behind when you moved.

I just wanted to set the record straight there.  I mean, when you tell me that you’re moving for a new job, on a whim, for the sandy shores of Lake Straight, I don’t wonder if you’re going there alone.  Why would I?  You’re married.  You wear a ring on your finger.  I didn’t come to your ceremony, of course, so I didn’t witness your undying vows of love and adoration, but I still believe you when you tell me that you’re wed.  I expect that you want to spend every waking moment together, would die to be separated and would perish at the thought of one moment working apart from each other.  People, I believe you.

Since I’ve started telling folks that I’m moving, I’ve been dismayed that even my enlightened friends immediately ask “Is D. going with you?”  Why wouldn’t she come with me?  One of my co-workers points out through hilarious guffaws that it’s because us queer folk are promiscuous and it must be time for me to trade up.  He’s kidding, at least, he doesn’t think I’m promiscuous, a lone island in a sea of bed-hopping gay people. But the people to whom we sent wedding announcements, who sent us cards and gifts, who always ask after D. on the telephone, are asking if she’s coming with me.

Perhaps I’m being oversensitive.  I can’t afford to go out and get a whole set of friends.  But I wonder what they’re thinking.  Just because D. and I are are the same gender, there’s no permanency to our relationship?  From now on, anytime someone says, “Oh! Is D. coming with you?” I’m just going to insert the words “right way?” after their comment.  If I didn’t assume they meant the best, I’d be angry and that won’t do.  They’re supposed to be my friends.

Points for assuming, in this case.