\Pride. It's that time of year. It's time to celebrate who we are and what we have achieved as a community. It's time to just let it all hang out ( some a little more than others and some maybe need to cover it up a little more ) . Either way, I am proud to be living during this amazing time of change in our community and to be able to shout it out to the world that I am here, very queer and screw you if you're not used it. I am proud of who I am, how I live, whom I love and of being able to write 'Fuck Bush' and 'Eat More Bush'. So Strap This On for Pride 2005:
The Top Ten Things That Make Me an Out, Loud and Proud Lesbian
10 ) Being able to buy a house in the northern suburbs as an openly gay couple with a Jewish realtor. I love that on all levels.
9 ) The welcoming neighbor in our suburban subdivision invites us to everything in the neighborhood including barbecues, Poker Night ( poke her, you say...don't mind if I do ) , and introduces us as partners. If anyone so much as flinches, she says in her very Chicago accent, 'What, you never met gay people before?' We love her and her studly Ed Harris look-alike construction-worker husband.
8 ) Working for Corporate America. I never thought that would be a good thing but they give Robin and I full medical, dental, and various other benefits. They also pay for our artificial insemination as we begin to start for a family!
7 ) I live in a country where not only can I get artificially inseminated, but I can order it over the internet. I phoned once. It was the least I could do considering the donor's effort.
6 ) Writing for a paper where I can criticize the backwards ass current administration that controls this country by use of scare tactics so that we don't focus on the fact that they're stealing our money and selling our jobs right out from under us and handing them over to those outside of this country just to ensure that the man will have enough to retire on.
5 ) Playing on the mixed couple's subdivisional softball team and realizing we're not the only ones that moved up here.
4 ) Proof that we truly are everywhere. We went to Target ( in Gurnee ) to get our best friends the season one of The L Word, and it was sold out. Hello, suburban ladies!
3 ) The simple act of kissing Robin good-bye every morning as she pulls out of the driveway. Did I mention our driveway is the local bus stop and that we're educating them all one by one? 'Mommy, those two ladies live in that house... ?'
2 ) The realization of how normal we truly are every time we meet new neighbors and after a few drinks on their part, hear their 'Hasbian' stories of that one time in college or how they used to be gay.
1 ) Twelve toe-curling orgasmic years with Robin, the red-headed goddess of my heart.
Lisa Rock can be reached at StrapThisOn@aol.com .