52 New Friends

One of the joys of Mark’s life is the high rise condo he owns overlooking Tempe Town Lake.   It’s a small, one bedroom dwelling with clean lines, unbefitting to any clutter.   The building residents are friendly and familiar, making the tower a community.   The views are incredible, and if Mark leaves for an international traveling adventure, the space is virtually unchanged from the moment he closes the door to the moment he returns.   Mark loves the simplicity it gives his life.   It is his sanctuary. And for Mark, he finds genius in simplicity.   He likes to walk places when he has the opportunity.   He loves riding his bike and dining in quaint, local restaurants.   He loves music and cars.   A sticker to put on his wheels might be the thing that brings him an enormous amount of joy that day.   And he does feel a lot of joy in his life.   His motto is “Enjoy Life Daily” and often, he does.   Of course, no one can be ...

Ashton is a twin.   The pair couldn’t be more identical.   In fact, they are so identical one twin usually doesn’t survive.   The babies were taken from their mother’s womb at thirty-two weeks and the only differences between the two are the hormonal ones after birth…yet Ashton’s sister always knew there was something different about Ashton.   Ashton knew it too. The pair had a cookie-cutter childhood in Ahwatukee, Arizona, where the homes were new and the neighborhoods were filled with white, middle-class families.   The twins were honor students.   They went to church every Sunday.   Ashton had a particular affinity for art.   The twins chose to go to a Christian college in Spokane, Washington and it was during those years where this story gets really interesting.   Ashton’s sister identifies as a lesbian woman.   Ashton identifies as non-binary, which means that on a gender line where male is on one side and female is on ...

In celebration of making twenty-six new friends in six months, I decided to release a video on social media that a local news station had produced back in January featuring my ‘52 new friends’ project.   As I expected, I received messages from people who wanted to stick their hands up in support of the project.   Fred was one of the first to jump on board. I met him in a quaint little coffee shop in downtown Gilbert.   The shop, itself, was small but just outside was a yard full of mismatched seating and greenery.   It reminded me a bit of the time I had spent in Portland, Oregon.   And Fred seemed to blend right in with his walking shorts and his t-shirt featuring a local band.   We ordered our coffee and found a seat with some shade, in front of the misters.   It was still early in the day but certainly warm, as Arizona mornings tend to be.   Fred grew up in Vancouver, Washington, which is just on the other side of Portland making the amb...

Confession:   I’ve always wanted to be an actress.   I think it started in the high school drama club, the endorphins you get performing in front of a crowd that is fixated on your every movement and emotion.   I wasn’t particularly good at it.   I have a difficult time controlling my eyes and facial movements that react honestly, in the moment and often can’t be duplicated.   But I am fascinated by those who have that gift. So when a friend suggested I sit down with a real life actress, I leapt at the opportunity.   There were so many questions I had about people who live their lives portraying others.   I’d always had a notion that great actors must have, at some point in their lives, developed a skill for putting on a façade in their real life in order to escape that reality.   Debbie told me that wasn’t really the case.   Great acting is about putting on a coat of someone else’s back story to wear during the duration of the perform...

Do you affect the world?   Or does the world affect you? Last Saturday, Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Arizona hosted a LGBTQ Awareness seminar.   Since I’m a Big Sister, I was invited.   I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting but when I arrived, the majority of the attendees were men.   At the very beginning of the seminar, a man behind me asked, “Isn’t this all just a choice?”   I could immediately feel tensions rise around the room like an earthquake.   The facilitators and the audience had a lot to say, but there was one man at the far end of the table where I was sitting who calmly waited until everyone else said their peace.   When finally he was called on to speak, he turned to the man behind me and said, “I am biracial.   So in school when they passed out forms for you to check a box beside your ethnicity, I could neither check the box that said ‘white’ nor the box that said ‘black’ without denying some part of myself. ...