For Frying Out Loud (30 page)

In fact, for the first time in 40 years I experienced a Laundromat. Nothing has changed. I still had to search in the sofa for quarters to slide in the slots. Four decades later it's exactly the same, only this time, mercifully, I wasn't washing mini-skirts. (Oy, I'm having a college flashback, complete with Mateus wine and bellbottoms).

Then we drove several hours across middle of nowhere Maine, stopping for a good but greasy Italian sub in the town of Passagassawakeag. There's nothing I can say more amusing than the lunch menu in concert with the name of the town.

Finally! Our campsite in Wells, ME is the kind I'd always pictured. Large wooded sites, turned so your neighbor's rig is not in your face. Gorgeous. And there was a path to the water where Bonnie and I, along with Moxie and Paddy sat in Adirondack chairs, sipping Bacardi Sangria (black cherry soda for adults), overlooking a wide, rocky-coasted bay.

Then, tonight I simply fell in love with Camden, ME with its busy, beautiful harbor, historic buildings, shops and galleries I cannot afford and a mean bowl of clam chowder. Ahhhhhh.

AUGUST 3, I THINK

Okay, Uncle. We just came from the 63rd Annual Maine Lobster Festival in Rockland, ME. Crafts, artisans, music, snacks
from all the worst food groups, and lobster everything – shirts, hats, pajamas, recipes etc. Bonnie and I exited the giant Eating Tent having consumed four scrumptious lobsters between us. But I believe we have finally OD'd…somebody get me a hamburger, stat!

AUGUST 6

I see gay people! Rainbows abound in Ogunquit, Maine, our last stop on this whistle-stop tour. Another beautiful Maine town, but with a queer bent. Hooray!

Went fishing and Bonnie is irritated because I caught a fish and she didn't. I reminded her we should both be irritated since the resulting filet was pretty much a $108 McDonald's fish sandwich. But the boat ride was waaaay fun.

Heading home, with my book finished(!), a bus filled with souvenirs and newly purchased RV accessories we didn't know we needed, plus heads filled with plans for future trips. Look for our rig, The Bookmobile, coming soon to a town near you!

September 2010

THE TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGIN'…OR ARE THEY?

Recently, a lesbian friend showed me a photo she got from her married daughter. There were five Barbie Dolls on a blanket. Two pairs of Barbies lay tangled in hot embraces and the fifth, had outstretched arms, as if to say “What about me?” The display was staged by a four year old.

Now it goes to my point about change, that Mom didn't flinch and even added the text “Hmmmmm…I have no words.” Grandma just laughed.

That incident was followed the next day by an episode of
Rizzoli and Isles
, the new cop show with Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander solving brutal murders. In this case, a lesbian wearing a wedding ring was killed outside a Boston club. As the police do in most murder investigations, they suspected the spouse first. “Think it's the wife?” one cop said to the other. Only as far as I can tell, this was the first time mainstream TV has matter-of-factly included a same sex Massachusetts wife as a matter-of-fact suspect.

To solve the crime, Angie Harmon went undercover at the gay bar. What could have been a field day for snarky homophobic innuendo, simply wasn't. The scene was tasteful, hilarious, and the best part (spoiler alert, if you haven't watched this one yet), was the discovery that wifey did do it, so frankly, we're being treated just like everyone else…huzzah!

On the big screen change has come by way of Angelina Jolie in
Salt
. I know she's not playing for our team, but in this
frenetic spy film she does the same butch action hero stuff as any given James Bond. She leaps from windows, lands on moving vehicles and positively kicks butt. It's a lipstick lesbian fantasy if ever there was one, and that her behavior is acceptable to all speaks volumes about the new normal for the role of women, gay or otherwise.

We've come a long way, baby, judging by the way women were treated in the 60s and shown on TV's
Mad Men
, the drama about New York's Madison Avenue advertising business. We see agency execs gulp booze in the office and engage in rabid ogling of their secretaries. In that culture, women were grossly disrespected and consistently denied opportunity. Their simmering rage finally touched off the feminist bonfire.

And Angelina Joile in
Salt
is the apex of feminism.

“It doesn't get any more equal than that,” said one of six post-feminist lesbians sitting at my dining room table last week, recalling the quaint phrase “women's lib” and the forty-year evolution of women's rights.

“Remember those consciousness raising sessions – you know, where everybody got a mirror and looked at their own body parts?”

“Did that actually happen? I think it was a myth, like burning bras.”

“Well, Gloria Steinem must have done it.”

“My god, there's no way I could do that today, my body won't bend that way.”

“I'd need a forklift to get back up.”

“Can you see us all in the emergency room trying to explain what happened?”

I laughed so hard I had to leave the room and readers of a certain age know why.

The conversation then turned to the film
The Kids Are All Right
, starring Julianne Moore and Annette Bening.

Now Annette Bening is my one dispensation. If you are coupled, do you have a celebrity monogamy dispensation? My spouse of 28-plus years would wink and look the other
way if I had the chance to um…go out on a date with Annette Bening. Like that's gonna happen. But the dispensation has been offered and accepted, just in case hell should freeze over.

But I digress.

The Kids Are All Right
, is an honest depiction of a very contemporary long-term lesbian relationship. Annette and Julianne play characters who love each other but are navigating a rough patch. Their son seeks out his sperm donor father and the story turns hilarious and insightful, examining a marriage being tested, tried and ultimately (well, I won't say…).

What's fun, and very encouraging, is that author-director Lisa Cholodenko did not shy away from showing a dysfunctional gay family, thereby proving exactly how equal we can be to a family suffering heterosexual dysfunction.

But my favorite clue that the film signals change is that Cholodenko was not afraid to piss off lesbian audiences (I am side-stepping a spoiler here) by having the plot take a turn lots of people might have wished it hadn't. That being said, Julianne Moore's final speech is so magical, and the performances so stunning and fun (way to go, Annette!), the film works for many, many satisfying reasons.

All this being said, I closed my eyes the other night, hopeful that things are improvinig for gay people, with the country coming around (albeit slowly) to the concept of equality for all, including gay marriage equality.

What was I thinking? By morning, I learned that teabagging, gay baiting, coven-joining, reparative therapy-endorsing right-wing nut bag Christine O'Donnell had won the Republican Nomination to run for the Senate in Delaware. I wanted to hurl. Not only do her politics and ethics offend me (she's been illegally living on campaign funds) but as an editor I'm aghast – she makes up words. Today's was “factuous,” as in “those claims are not factuous.” Yesterday she said “The United States is the free-est place in the country.” And she thinks we're not worthy?

In bad news to worse, a local Aryan Nation organization (yes, there is one here) marched for White Power on the shore this weekend.

So I'm trying to hang onto the two steps forward, one step back theory to keep my sanity, but it's tough. I close my eyes and fanatisize Angelina Jolie swooping down on those hate-filled Aryan marchers and kicking the living daylights out of them. And while she's busy, maybe
Rizolli and Isles
can get Christine O'Donnell into an interrogation room to confess about the root of her raging homophobia.

And oh yeah, while all that's going on, maybe Annette Bening and I can sneak away for a martini.

I can dream, can't I?

Afterword

Hello, readers. A lot has happened since this book was first published.

My four books
As I Lay Frying, Fried & True, For Frying Out Loud
, and
Time Fries
were all originally published by A&M Books, a successor to the legendary Naiad Press. Readers of a certain age may recall that Naiad was formed in 1974, by four courageous lesbians. Two of the women—Anyda Marchant, a lesbian novelist who wrote under the name Sarah Aldridge, and her partner and editor Muriel Crawford—lived in Rehoboth Beach.

Naiad Press was the first and became, in its day, the most successful lesbian publishing company in the world. Of course, in the 70s you couldn't even buy a lesbian novel in a bookstore. You had to mail order and it arrived like pornography in a plain brown wrapper. That's how it was marketed—we'll send it to you and nobody has to know. No wonder it took us so long to feel any pride.

In 1995, Anyda and Muriel left Naiad Press and, though by this time in their eighties, founded A&M Books of Rehoboth. It was Anyda who suggested I compile my published newspaper columns into my first book. Anyda and Muriel were brave women and fierce feminists. They were Rehoboth's Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. They loved each other, publishing and Scotch whisky, not necessarily in that order. When Anyda and Muriel, a couple for 57 years, both passed away in 2005, I became owner of A&M Books. And I tried, the best I could, to live up to their example—in literature and cocktails.

It was great fun but not easy running a small independent publishing house—literally; it was my house. The shed was the Rehoboth book depository, my spouse was fulfillment manager, and my Schnauzer worked security.

Now, after a decade as a publisher, I am thrilled to have merged A&M Books with the wonderful publisher Bywater Books. The entire
Frying
series has been given new life in
beautifully produced editions, along with another A&M book called
The Carousel
by Stefani Deoul. And most importantly, Anyda and Muriel, the original publishers will continue to be celebrated as the true pioneers they were.

And, for a retiree, my life is suddenly going in all kinds of surprising new directions and I'm having a blast. I still live in Rehoboth Beach, still write my columns, and still have wacky experiences that are worth the story I can tell. The march toward equality alone has been worth reams of paper and barrels of ink.

With running a publishing house off my plate, I was free to do the second most exciting thing that has happened to me. At age 60-something, I have a whole new career. I'm touring with my oral memoir
Aging Gracelessly: 50 Shades of Fay. Reviewers
have called the reading “sit-down comedy” as I tell some fun stories from my books and chart our LGBT march from the closeted outlaw days to marriage equality. As I write this I am headed to The Big Apple and the Duplex Cabaret Theatre on Christopher Street in NYC. For this lapsed New Yorker it will be a huge thrill.

So please, check out all of my new Bywater Books editions and come see
50 Shades of Fay
if I show up in a venue near you.

And remember, nothing is ever so horrible if it's worth the story you can tell!

Fay Jacobs

April, 2016

Rehoboth Beach, DE