Answer Me These Questions... Five?

After some delay, I've finally answered the five questions meme-type-thing the charming Tiger Yogi sent me. I just know you've all been waiting with bated breath...

1) Where did you and Mrs. Da Nator meet?

We met at work. We both worked at the same organization, in different departments. I worked on the website, and she did customer care. One day she emailed me telling me she was new there, and she had some questions about the website. Little did I know this was all a ruse, as she’d seen me around and thought I was cute! I had no idea she had asked about me and made up questions so she could meet me in my office.

She showed up with a big smile, a freedom ring necklace that she kept obviously toying with, and a story about how a male customer who had been asking her out was “barking up the wrong tree.” Not being completely stupid, I gathered that she was trying to tell me she was gay. We became friends, but for months afterwards my friends and I referred to her as “tree girl.” Did I mention she hates it when I tell this story?

Anyway, I was going through some bullshit about not believing in love and trying to have a purely sexual relationship with an ex of mine, but over months our friendship grew better and stronger, and eventually I saw the light. By that time I was having regular panic attacks, so Buddha bless Mrs. Nator for putting up with me. Finally, I understood that we were truly in love and stopped waiting for something to come down from the sky and smite me for that. (It could have just been because she’s so good in the sack.)

Anyway, we’ve been inseparable ever since. We’re going on seven official years, come November, and so far nary an itch.

Note to The Powers That Be: This is NOT your cue to smite us.

2) When did you discover that you were an animal communicator?

Let’s see if I can make a long story short (which goes against every fibre of my being). I went through a very traumatic period where my much beloved cat was sick. I exhausted every “normal” option, but couldn’t decided if/when to euthanize her. A friend of mine suggested I try a session with an animal communicator, and while I was extremely skeptical, I figured I hadn’t much to lose, beyond forty or fifty bucks.

The session actually helped me a lot. I still wasn’t sure I believed in it, but it help me to decide it was time to put my cat friend to sleep. After the pain of that, I did some research on AC, casually but curiously.

Coincidentally, or perhaps by some stroke of fate, a couple weeks later a documentary on AC with Dawn Hayman, a well-known communicator came on our local PBS station. I watched it, and was fascinated. Mrs. Nator took note of this and decided I must go to a class with Dawn, even if we could barely afford it. Not that long thereafter, I found myself at Spring Farm Cares, communicating with rescued animals.

It still took me a long time to believe it, but some of the stuff that I got just blew me away. It was especially interesting when members of the group would exchange photos of our pets at home and then tell our partners in the exercise what we were getting. My accuracy rate was very high. It was wonderful and extremely disorienting at the same time, as if reality had shifted.

It took me months of practicing, results, reading and other classes to feel it was real and I was really doing it. Actually, as you may have been reading, my faith in AC has not been strong of late, so it’s good to remember that. I really appreciate you asking this question, because it’s important for me to face what I feel now about AC and why it’s changed. I can’t deny all the evidence of it over the years, and yet I’m afraid of it. To be continued…

3) When did you first know that you were a lesbian?

Lord, that’s a tough one. I can tell you I was a practicing lesbian from a very young age – maybe six or seven. However, when I was caught with my best friend as a child (somehow we always knew to keep what we did secret), I was convinced that what we’d been doing was a “normal phase,” but just that: a phase in heterosexual development, and a shameful one at that.

I pretty much suppressed my sexuality for years after that. I generally thought sex, and my body, pretty gross. I knew something was different about me, and that I preferred girls to boys, but then I figured most young and teenage girls were involved in drama with each other. Of course, since lesbians weren’t something you saw or heard of in daily life, I’m not even sure I knew they existed, in any tangible sense. I remember only a brief, sudden rush of excitement and embarrassment when I was fourteen or so and my brother brought home a VHS tape of The Hunger. As for many children of the eighties, seeing Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon make out was a seminal (heh) moment. But I couldn’t even fully grok it, what with my father sitting right behind me as I watched it!

So, it wasn’t until college that I finally got it. By the time I was seventeen, I’d been going clubbing in NYC and made lots of fabulous gay boyfriends, but I still didn’t even really get what lesbians were, or even hear much about them. It wasn’t until one of my freshman year roommates informed us that she was gay that something clicked. I began to pick her brain about everything, and eventually started meeting new people, identifying as bisexual, then, over time and with experience, understanding I was a lesbian.

Interestingly enough, as I came out, she decided she was actually straight and literally moved into the closet (our dorm room had a huge walk-in, were she moved her bed and dresser). She was an odd one, but thank you, Daphne, wherever you are, or who knows how long it would have taken me to figure it out. On the other hand, I might have been spared all the hideous drama of being an officer of an extremely dysfunctional LGBT student group, but that’s another story.

It’s amazing to look at kids today and think how different it is. Sometimes I wish I could have known and been out much younger. Of course, nowadays it seems like all the young women are actually coming out as transgender, so maybe I’d have a mangina or pumpable penis by now. It’s all a matter of perspective.

4) Would you live anywhere else but the NYC area?

I’ve asked myself that question many a time. It’s hard to say, because I’ve been here so long and it’s such a part of my identity, but I do tire of it, at times. Let’s say, if the time and feeling were right, yes. I mean, heck, I’ve already got fantasies about at least having a vacation condo in Hawai’i.

5) (Lame one) What is your favorite meal?

Well, I’m going to be lame on the answer, too, and say that I don’t really have “favourites” of anything. Life has too many variables and I am too mood-driven to settle on one thing forever. However, I will tell you the meal I have most often: breakfast, specifically cereal. I could eat cereal 24 hours a day. That is perhaps the one and only thing that I and Jerry Seinfeld have in common.

Thanks for the questions, TY! Now, I won’t tag anyone, but if any of you want questions, let me know, and I’ll make up some for you…