Presbyfruit

Pride07/Church Ladies

Apparently, Mrs. Fruit and I look like church ladies.  It became clear to us as the day progressed at PrideFest, that our fellow fruits were under the misapprenhension that we were nice little gay-loving church ladies.  Mrs. Fruit and I joke that we look and dress like middle-aged moms.  I think that's why so many men stopped by and the women were more guarded, as lesbians are wont to be around straight women.  When we realized this, we started hanging on each other and telling people we're queer.  Presbyterian and wearing lipstick, but QUEER as two-dollar bills.

Rebecca Wight

When I was home from college for my 21st birthday, I was eating breakfast with my dad when he read a blurb to me that ran on the AP wire and was reprinted in the Charleston paper.  It was about 2 women who were shot while hiking on the Appalachian Trail in a neighboring state.  One of the women died. He said to me, "I bet those two are fairies."

Indeed,  they were lesbians.  And I was acquainted with one of them.  She was also a graduate student at Virginia Tech and was heavily involved in the Women's Studies program.  I never actually met her, although I had partied with her sister, and knew her when I saw her. 

The man who shot her and her partner said that the women having sex in front of him, while he spied on them from behind a tree, provoked  him into shooting them.  This ridiculous defense didn't work and he was convicted.  I can't remember the sentence.  The survivor of the shooting, Claudia Brenner,  wrote a book about her experiences:  Eight Bullets: One Woman's Story of Surviving Anti-Gay Violence.

I live not far from where Rebecca Wight was killed but didn't realize this until a few years after I moved here.   I've hiked in that area many times.  I was thinking about her when Mrs. Fruit and I went hiking several weeks ago.  And again this morning, when I was reading about the revised Hate Crimes Bill that will be taken up by the Senate soon.  I heard some guy on Pastor Nicholl's radio show say that the bill will make it a hate crime for Bible-believing Christians to preach against homosexuality, or some such nonsense.  But the bill punishes violent actions, not violent thought or speech.

Note about Lady Bird

I told Mrs. Fruit that I thought Mrs. Johnson looked kinda hot in the photos the papers ran today.  She looked at me in horror and said, "She's 94!"  I had meant the pictures of her as a younger woman, of course.  I'm not into Great-Grandmas.

When Mrs. Fruit and I first got together we were mistaken twice for mother and daughter, even though we're only 2 and a half years apart.  At the time (8 and a half years ago), I looked a good bit younger and she looked (and acted) her age.  I vowed that the next time it happened, I would say to the person that we were born in the same presidential administration and he was a one-termer plus change.  I'm such a nerd.  It never happened again, though.