Fifty things about me...

Okay, so it's been about a month since my last post; it's time to update the blog, as my adopted nephew told me last week. I haven't published one of these lists yet, so here it is.

Fifty things about me:

1. I drank charcoal lighter fluid as a child.
2. I drank Ivory soap as a child.
3. These “accidents” happened because my parents grilled a lot and I mistook the soap and charcoal lighter fluid bottles for the water bottle they used to put out the fire when the grilling was done.
4. As a child, I nearly died from chicken pox.
5. As a child, I nearly died from meningitis.
6. When I was three, I was given a plate that had all the presidents of the U.S. on it up to that date, with Kennedy in the middle of it. I couldn’t read yet, but I could name every president on the plate, complete with middle initials.
7. I was totally in love with a boyhood friend when I was three. We used to kiss all the time.
8. My parents moved from that town when I was five, and moved back when I was thirteen.
9. The first thing I did when we moved back was to look up my boyhood friend. I telephone him just to say “hi.”
10. I went to his house the next day. We talked for a little while but never discussed anything that happened when we were kids.
11. He pulled me into his closet and we French-kissed for more than an hour.
12. I was caught in bed with the girl next door when I was five. Naked. I still haven’t figured out why that happened.
13. I was five and was showing off on my swingset in our backyard thirty minutes before we were to leave for my sister’s high school graduation. I cut my cheek open on the see-saw, which required a trip to the emergency room 30 minutes away. When we got back to the high school, we walked into the auditorium and two people walked across the stage before my sister walked across.
14. My mother called it ‘the luckiest day of my life.’ I didn’t feel so lucky with ten stitches in my face. It took me a few years before I realized what she meant.
15. I love butter.
16. As a child, when my family went out to eat, I would eat the butter pats right off the paper with nothing else.
17. The waitresses in that restaurant thought that was cute and used to bring me a small dish with five pats of butter in it that was just for me. Another dish of five pats was for everyone else at the table.
18. When I was eight, I had a total crush on Bobby Kennedy.
19. My family happened to be watching the news conference at the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles on television the night of June 5, 1968. I watched in horror as he was shot leaving the hotel.
20. I was molested by my uncle when I was nine years old, whom I had had a crush on for years. It was so revolting to me that I am surprised I still turned out to be gay.
21. When I was eleven, I had a total crush on the son of a woman my mom worked with. He was a dead ringer for Kurt Russell, whom I adored in The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes.
22. I attended a school for gifted children when I was in the sixth grade.
23. On my 13th birthday, I had eight boys over for a sleepover. We “camped out” in a big Coleman tent I got for my birthday.
24. There was a circle-jerk. Cards were played. The losers had to run around the house naked three times.
25. The hottest two guys at the party were the losers.
26. As a prank, those same two guys did their own private circle-jerk…on my pillow…while I was in the house.
27. I didn’t notice that anything was there and wound up with boy-biz on my face and in my hair.
28. I slept very happily that night.
29. When I was ten, I had a total crush on my cousin, who was a long-haul truck driver. I fantasized about sleeping next to him in the bed behind the cab of his truck.
30. When I was twelve, he came to our house on his way home to his house, which was in the next state. He asked if I wanted to ride in the truck with him to my aunt and uncle’s house. I said ‘yes’. We stopped overnight and slept behind the cab of his truck. I cuddled with him. It was platonic. But I still liked it.
31. When I was twenty-four, I found out he was gay. No wonder I liked him so much.
32. I first came out when I was 20 to a couple I barely knew, whom I met in a store where I worked.
33. I met them because I had a bit of a crush on one of them and wrote him a letter.
34. Turned out he was already taken.
35. I am still very close friends with them 25 years later, and they are still together.
36. I am friends with several gay couples who have been together for more than 25 years.
37. The best drag queens and drag shows are in Florida and Texas. They aren’t just men in dresses.
38. I have never liked beer.
39. I am highly allergic to mosquito bites. One bite on me can swell to 4 inches across.
40. My favorite pie is lemon meringue. And nobody makes it better than my mom.
41. I love pies, but don’t like restaurant pies. It’s homemade or nothing.
42. I love the color purple (and I don't mean the movie).
43. I am a chocoholic.
44. A very finicky chocoholic.
45. I love to sing.
46. I have a thing for Jewish men.
47. I have never had sex with an African American man, but have always wanted to.
48. I have never had sex with an uncut man, but have always wanted to.
49. I once had sex with a guy who kept calling me anonymously after he waited on me in a store and thought I was hot.
50. He turned out to be stunningly gorgeous.