I'm watching a play with some friends in an amphitheater in a city park--is it "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with the sexes reversed? Looks like it--a man falls in love with a deer. Well, a doe-headed woman in a paper maché mask, sad-eyed, huge-eared, fur-faced. The audience laughs at the absurdity of a man attracted to this hairy thing.

But since I find the doe more soulful than any of the human actresses, and sexier too, the scene's not absurd for me, but moving. And sad. Imagine being the deer-girl, hearing a whole crowd laugh at me, judging me ugly, subhuman, unlovable!

But my sadness isn't just sympathy. Loneliness too. I'm the only one not laughing. Longing! I'm as different from these howling creatures as a real deer incognito among the monkeys.

My friend Dave noticed me wince; misconstruing my feelings, he teases me: "You are so GAY!" Guess he thinks I want that guy. I couldn't be pining for a deer, of course! That's impossible. So I must like men.

I feel sadder. Dave's right, in a way--my queerness isn't gay, but it has exactly the same effect--I stand apart, feel differently, forcing me to question what the crowd takes for granted. That's the essence of queer! But as gays gain acceptance they'll lose the insights of loneliness.

I won't. Lucky me.

But how can I find love when I'm wired too queer for queers?

At intermission, I get a shot at an answer...

Through the arch at the back of the seating, up a little ramp with a railing, a line forms to meet The Psychic. A short girl in a gypsy dress seated at a card table. A long line to see her, though--word is she's infallible.

As Dave and I near the head of the line, the intermission's ending. She starts zipping through querents, not waiting for them to frame their question--just answers their hovering unspoken issues! And people gasp in shock--she's nailing them.

As we reach her--the very last in line--she's already packing up her Tarot and folding her tablecloth. The oracle just glances at Dave and me, and says, infallibly:

"Your friend thinks you're so GAY!" And walks away.

Whoa. Proven true, but a rare thing to say. She's proved she's psychic all right! Just unhelpful. I wanted to know how to find a girlfriend. Or doefriend. Whatever.

As Act Two starts, the cast urges us out of our seats, out the amphitheater over coarse gravel walks toward a lawn. I realize I'm near-naked, though nobody seems to care. But I do: with only one shoe on, the sharp gravel hurts my bare sole.

I think of my friend Christine, who recently told me of her great experiment--going barefoot year-round in the modern world--voluntary queerness. So far she's lost weight, turned graceful and catlike... and unable to fly! Southwest Air wouldn't let her on their plane because she lacked shoes. I understand their fear she's a terrorist. Her non-shoes might explode!

"Maybe", I think, "I should toughen up and get used to naked soles..."

NOTES NEXT MORNING

• Open-air, gender-bent "Midsummer Night's Dream": last year Woman's Will, an all-female troupe, did play Dream in a local park.
• Furry orientation, deer-woman: 1: that production's female Bottom (oops, no pun there!) 2: I've been sculpting a troupe of centauroid dancers--the All-Barbie Centaur Dance Ensemble!--fusing two Barbies to make each dancer. Today I posed two dolls I plan to make into a rather delicate deerlike centaur.
• Queerness: a New Yorker editorial pointed out homophobia's now an old folk's disease.
• My furry orientation keeps me lonely but also aware: literal and true. It isn't your sexual orientation itself that makes you queer, but the insights you get as an outsider...
• The psychic's answer: as I'm typing out these dream notes, my friend Catshall calls. She says "At your party last week, when you first showed your Barbie centaurs, I was in the room when you were downstairs. A stranger came in and stared at this herd of female nudes for half an hour. Then she asked me "Wow, isn't the artist GAY!?""

  I burst out laughing. Okay, dream explained... by someone last week!

  
• The psychic: for me this is a red flag--when my dream mentions psychics or ESP, often the next day brings evidence the dream was predictive. So when Catshall called next morning, I wasn't shocked, just amused. Very polite of my dreams! Test it yourself--maybe it'll work for you too.
• I want help finding a girlfriend, not further proof ESP can be real: true. After a thousand predictive, telepathic or clairvoyant dreams (well, 956 flagged as such in my journals, to be exact; I wouldn't want to exaggerate) I don't need more convincing.
• Sole/soul: this pun's constant in my dreams--see Video Wolves for example. Most of these dreams have the same theme--my sole's bare and tender, limiting how much I can do without getting bruised or burned. Others have shoes--or callused soles.
• ACTION: Accept that my queerness is lonely but gives me insight too.
• ACTION: Go barefoot more! It's working for Christine.
• ACTION: And bare my soul more too, despite the short-term pain till I toughen up. I can't really hide my queerness anyway--Dave saw it, even if he mistook it for gay. But how do I express my queerness so straight girls don't make Dave's mistake? I'm tired of being mistaken for gay. For merely gay.

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