Travelin' prayer

Hey Lord, won'tcha look around tonight
Find where my baby's gonna be
Hey Lord, won'tcha look out for him tonight
'Cause he's so far away from me
Hey Lord, won'tcha look out for him tonight
Make sure everythin's gonna be alright
Until he's home and here with me...

So, The Guy is getting on a Greyhound tonight at 11:30 CT to make the 15-plus hour ride to Toledo. He'll be at the station early, but that doesn't mean there aren't at least two more chances (St. Louis and Dayton) to have the "leave the driving to us" folks screwing up travel.

Years ago, I heard Billy Joel's Travelin' Prayer on his Piano Man CD (well, to be honest, I heard it on the LP...). I've always had a love for that song, but never thought I'd ever want to be singing it myself. Let alone singing it for a man, who's as eager to see me as I am for him...

I'm singin' it now, though.

Prayers for traveling mercies and a blessed weekend would be welcome. This will be the first time my family has seen me with anyone - let alone a man - in years. So we have an early Thanksgiving dinner and lots of turkey-foot (a dominos strategy game) to play on Saturday with both sisters and their husbands. It will be interesting...

So here, for "C", is my prayer tonight...


And - hopefully - tomorrow night's torch-song...

What have you done today....?

What have you done today to make you feel proud?

This week marks National Coming Out Day, October 11th. That makes it an appropriate time for me to coming out from under my gay blogging rock, and step back into the sunshine. There will be more, but this is a baby-step back out of the darkness...

This YouTube video is both a tribute to the Showtime series Queer As Folk and a showcase for Heather Small's great anthem, "Proud." The first time I heard the song was the remix version in the very last scene of the last season of QAF. Judging from the output on YouTube, it has become a gay pride anthem since it came out - though the original video was more focused on racial pride than not.

I have to admit that, while QAF embodied much that was near-pornographic, and was hardly the best model of gay life for much of the gay community, it was also one of the first "mainstream" depictions of gay culture that I'd ever seen. It was one of the first really clear cracks in the wall of my denial. After all, how many straight men are willing to admit they've even watched a scene from Queer As Folk, let alone owning an entire season's DVDs?

So as we start this week, I offer you Heather Small's "ballad" version of this great song, along with this 5 season retrospective from a ground-breaking cable TV series...


I look into the window of my mind
Reflections of the fears I know I've left behind
I step out of the ordinary
I can feel my soul ascending
I'm on my way
Can't stop me now
And you can do the same
Chorus
What have you done today to make you feel proud?
(It's never too late to try)
What have you done today to make you feel proud?
You can be so many people
If you make that break for freedom
What have you done today to make you feel proud?

Still so many answers I don't know
I realize that to question is how we grow
So I step out of the ordinary
I can feel my soul ascending
I'm on my way
Can't stop me now
And you can do the same
(Chorus)