It’s midnight. For all that’s happened today and for all that I’ve been thinking about, I can’t for the life of me think of what to say. (There. That’s two sentences. Good job, Marcus.) Some days it’s easier to write than others. Okay, here we go. This morning I woke up feeling kind of junky, but now I think I feel better. Do other other people do this, go back and forth about whether or not they feel well? My body loves me, it loves me not. More and more I’m convinced that when it comes to our bodies, something is always working, something is always not working. We feel how we feel right here, right now.

For weeks I’ve been dreading this coming Wednesday. Because for weeks I’ve been fighting sinus stuff, and this Wednesday I have to work from sun up until after midnight. What if I feel miserable? I’ve been thinking over and over (and over) again. Then last week I started feeling better. (Whoopie!) Then two days ago I relapsed. (Boo.) Now I don’t know what’s going to happen. (Do we ever?) Yesterday I dreaded working all day today cleaning at a client’s, and yet it went fine. I was a little wiped out, but no where near exhausted or disgustingly sick. Indeed, I worked at my own pace and even enjoyed a book on tape as I scrubbed, dusted, swept, and mopped.

All that worry for nothing.

The book I listened to today was a juvenile fiction novel, but yesterday while raking leaves for my parents I finished listening to William Dameron’s The Lie: A Memoir of Two Marriages, Catfishing, and Coming Out. Talk about powerful. It’s about how the author, a gay man, maintained the illusion of being a straight man (by dating women, being married to a woman, having children, etc.) for decades. And whereas he obviously had to tell a lot of lies in order to keep his act up, he says it all started as a child when he first BELIEVED a lie, the notion that gay people aren’t worthy of love and a happy life.

I think about stuff like this a lot, about how lies complicate your life but the truth keeps it simple. I can’t speak for Dameron and have never been married (to a woman or a man), but I know what it’s like to be in the closet, and it’s full of lies and complications. You say, Oh, no, I like women. I just haven’t met the right one. You blow smoke up everyone else’s ass AND your own. All the while you’re trying to cover up your mannerisms and natural speech patterns. You lower your voice. You avert your eyes. Complicated. But when you’re honest, what’s to hide? You can be yourself. If anyone asks or you feel like sharing, you’ve got a one liner that goes, “I’m gay.” Even if someone says it’s not natural, you know it’s natural for you. Even if they say, “You’re going to hell,” it doesn’t change the facts. So you say, “Okay, I’m gay and I’m going to hell. Good. God knows SOMEONE needs to give that place a makeover.”

Simple.

I’m using being gay as an example, but this “lies are complicated, the truth is simple” formula can be applied to anything. Today at my client’s house there was a lot of clutter, and I caught myself thinking, They should be more organized (just like a fundamentalist might think, They should be more straight), the complicated part being that I then went down the rabbit hole of everything this person was doing “wrong” according the Gospel of Marcus. In short, I judged my neighbor (and forgot that their clutter was the reason I had a job today). But then I reminded myself that 1) it was their life, their house, and their clutter and 2) no one can be any more organized (or straight or kind or responsible) than they are in this moment. In the future, maybe. But not right here, right now. Right here, right now, we are as we are–organized, disorganized gay, straight, responsible, irresponsible, sick, not sick.

And that’s the simple truth, Ruth.