Thursday 5/24: we left at 4pm in order to arrive in Cleveland at 3:30am on Friday – but of course Amtrak is Amtrak & instead we got in around 5am.
Friday 5/25: Diane was kind enough not only to pick us up at the train station, but to wait the extra time since Amtrak was late. She gave us a driving tour of Cleveland on the way to her place, including a drive through a very cool park. Having grown up on all the stereotypes of how awful Cleveland is, both me & Betty were quite surprised. After arriving at Diane’s – who gave us not just a room but a floor of her house to stay in, we saw a stray orange tabby in the yard – kind of like a good luck omen, for us.
Loganberry Books is a great bookstore; the kind of wish we had near me. Plenty of space to read, huge collections of used books, and yes, I bought a lovely copy of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s A Few Figs from Thistles since it was one I didn’t own yet (& because it’s where First Fig comes from: My candle burns at both ends/ it will not last the night/ but oh my foes and ah my friends/ it gives a lovely light!) Betty bought another gigantic scifi anthology, the ones by Duzois, which she collects. & Yes, we do both know the point of a book tour is to sell books & not to buy them. We had a few nice chats with people who came – who certainly got our undivided attention – and found out most of the t-girls in that neck of the woods to to Akron on Saturday nights instead these days. Frankly, we’d traveled so far already that driving to Akron was just too much. I figured we were doing enough that if any of them wanted to meet me, they could.
Two women came in while we were there who’d read She’s Not the Man I Married to be a book about a married woman who was having an affair with a woman, and I thought that was a great idea for a novel – too bad I already used the title!
Friday night we met with Concerned Lutherans (or Lutherans Concerned) which was a nice mix of people, a potluck, with two pastors present. I thought Betty might have a heart attack, since she hadn’t been in any kind of church building in something like 20 years. Both pastors were kind and smart, and quite a few couples gathered for this one. We also got to meet the elusive Mrs. Diane, who of course is pretty and kind and smart, just as we expected.
Saturday 5/26: Saturday we had the reading at Borders which turned out to not be a reading but rather a book signing; they had a table and chairs and a pile of books and announced that I had entered the building over the store’s speakers. That’s an odd feeling, to be sure: the only other time I’ve heard my name over the loudspeakers was when I was separated from my parents on a shopping trip as a very small child. I told a book to someone’s Aunt Phyllis as it was her birthday and she wanted something that would mark the day.
We met a couple who came out to lunch with us, with Diane, at an Irish pub called Claddagh. Forgive my ignorance, but this was the oddest place I’ve ever been in. New York, as some of you might know, is full of Irish pubs, but Claddagh was a chain restaurant, kind of “Irish pub for tourists.” Bizarre. But lunch was good, as was the conversation.
We napped, and read, and read and napped, and checked email, and later that evening Diane took us to a Mexican restaurant, where Betty was very impressed with the mole.
Sunday 5/27: On Sunday, we met with a group at the UCC. After a Pride planning committee meeting (in a church!), we talked to the group about trans issues (in a church!). It was one of the prettiest meeting rooms I’ve ever been in; rose-colored with dark wooden furniture. Like a poet’s room. We got a lot of good questions and a lot of good stories and the very new couple who we’d met at yesterday’s lunch spoke up about what it takes to feel welcome as a trans couple, as did one local who found herself a new congregation to join. I was really overwhelmed with exactly how welcoming they were; Betty and I, having grown up in what you might call the more severe versions of Christianity (Seventh Day Adventism and Catholicism, respectively), had never experienced anything like it.
& Later that day we got to see Diane dance, at a club called Bounce, where there was yet another gathering, and this one too drew quite a few couples, one in particular who I’ve “known” online since 2000. Not only that, but they took a great photo of us – especially lovely as we didn’t bring our camera. It was great night, and I could have stayed for hours longer than we did. I am a night owl, after all, but Diane & Betty both looked tuckered out, so off we went.
(more when I get to it!)
