A Perfectly Awful End To A Perfectly Wonderful Day

It's a subzero night in Madison around 10 PM. I'm atop the Capitol Square - North ramp in my car ready to head home after a life spirit charging day of activism and celebration. I attempt to put the car into reverse. The shift selector won't move. A litle extra oomph and the selector moves with ease but no gears engage. I'm stomach-sinkingly aware this car isn't going to be heading anywhere.

The tow truck guy tells me its a broken transmission cable. The dealer tells me its under warranty. I wait. I wait some more. I'm in hetero gearhead land without a phrase book. "We'll get to it as soon as possible, Mr. Fitzpatrick," my service advisor tells me. I hope he's more efficient that my high school career advisor was.

"How long will it be until you can get a look at the vehicle, three hours?" The advisor remains mum. "Two hours?" I press. He scribbles "ASAP" across the top of the service order and hands it to the service manager.

I grab a ride back to my friends Dan & Charlie who were kind enough to put me up last night. I call my office to let them know I'm still breathing but won't be in. I down a bowl of Dan's Kashi GoLean and some warmed over coffee. I have Donald Trump hair, a rumpled suit, toxic breath and beard stubble savage enough to scar dry skin. I look like one of the half-dozen or so Bible baboons who tried to rain on the parade more than 400 grannies, gays and other moral giants who trekked up the hill to the State Capitol Janaury 27 to oppose the proposed constitutional amendment banning legal recognition of all non-marital unions.

I click on Bill Attewell's Wisconsin Gay News to see what coverage our state's openly-gay Drudge has dredged from the mainstream media. There isn't much, considering there were 5 TV stations, three radio networks and a half-dozen print reporters present at the press conference. The only gay media present was Quest, with four staffers. My writers stuff is due tonight. I have the 300+ pics in my camera and on disc. Look for some soon on this blog site and on Attewell's.

Also look for lots in-depth coverage in the next issue of Quest, due on the street February 2. Some of it will be funny, some of it will be surprising and some of it will make you want to grind your teeth.

But none of it will be published until I can get back to Green Bay, which I hope willl be sometime later today. I'm on Dan's Mac and I have neither SpellCheck nor formatting. IE and Safari don't support those blogger functions in Mac land. And I have no access to the PC only world of my ISP's ftp protocols. Trying to blog today is almost as difficult as explaining the complcated reality of same-sex committed relationships to the staff RepubliNazis, most of whom live exclusively in a black and white, sound-bite Bizarro world. Their logic is slogans. Their arguments fit on bumper stickers. And most of the uninformed Wisconsin citizenry supports them. Perhaps its more like my car problem. I can select different shifts of logic, I just can't get their brains to engage.