One of the worst days of my parents’ marriage came mere weeks into it, before I was even born, over a November pot roast dinner when my mother admitted – as she scooped mashed potatoes for my father – that she had just voted for JFK.

For my father, this was a more horrifying revelation than if my mother had yanked up her apron to reveal, say, a kangaroo pouch or footlong penis.

My father simply eased his chair back, according to family lore, left the table and “went for a drive.”

My father is a lifelong Republican.

I come from a family of lifelong Republicans.

The elephant is as much a part of our DNA as astigmatism and a wicked arch.

Like singles today who seek others with similar interests – SWM seeks SWF, NS, loves dogs and kids, not into water sports – my father intentionally sought out someone who shared his political interests as a way to successfully keep the GOP family spawn swimming conservatively upstream.

My father returned home that election night to massive defeat – both on the homefront and national scene – but he coped by turning my mother into a stereotype: She had voted for JFK because she was a young woman, immature, pliable, and Kennedy was rugged, attractive, manly. My mother had been deceived by the media, by TV, by looks over substance, but that this was an aberration.

Unfortunately for my father, my mother has always been a free thinker, and I believe something altered our family genes that November election-eve when my mother voted for Kennedy’s rugged good looks over Nixon’s sweat-drenched body because – like an experiment gone bad – I was later produced, like The Fly, and I turned out to be, horror of horrors, not only a Democrat but also a boy who liked meat other than pot roast.

"I voted for JFK, because I will always believe in hope, in dreams, in miracles," my mother told me when I was still too young to understand what she was saying.

Still, I was able to understand from an early age that I took after my mother both politically and sexually, and network TV – the “great evil,” as my dad often called it – was my initial gauge.

My mother and I not only used to get inexplicably turned on watching Hal Linden and Kevin Dobson play “Simon Says” during “Battle of the Network Stars,” but we also used to become inexplicably incensed listening to my father curse Walter Cronkite and his “liberal tendencies,” decades before that phrase had become a heralded conservative battlecry.

“Why don’t you just switch the channel?” my mom would often say to my father when he watched the CBS Evening News.

“Watch someone else.”

“I need to keep an eye on Cronkite,” he would say, before adding, “And Nixon doesn’t take any fucking prisoners.”

He would then sometimes shake his head in admiration.

“That doesn’t even make sense,” my mom would answer, turning to head into the kitchen.

My dad viewed politics as he did any sport, be it football, or boxing: He expected it to be ruthless and dirty, bloody and unpredictable. In fact, he screamed at the TV more watching the nightly news than he did Friday Night Boxing or Sunday football.

In addition to the favorites phrases my dad used to yell at my brother and me, such as “Get your ass out of bed!”, “Clean your plate!” and “What’re you doing in that bathroom?”, my father also had a stockpile of catchphrases he loved to bombard on newscasters and Democratic politicians, such as “term limits,” “welfare state,” “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps,” and “that damn Ted Kennedy.”

I understood where my father was coming from, though. My family was self-made. We were, as cliche as it may sound, “pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps” type folks. My grandfathers labored in mines and rock fields, they sold vaccuums, my grandmothers sewed, they worked like no one else I’ve ever known just so they could have the American dream: A home, a car, a better life for their children.

And the lifetime of dirt they collected under their nails meant their families wouldn’t have to dig and claw as hard just to make it through life. My mother and father were the first to graduate college in their families.

Ultimately, the older I got, I ended up following my father's advice and turning away from my mother's: To win in politics, and life, I thought, you not only had to fight the odds and be determined, but you, more than anything else, had to be ruthless.

As a result, this is the philosophy I brought to school. Determined not only to make my father proud but also to conquer the popular crowd, I ran for political office.

When I stumped for student council, I ran against a girl who was undoubtedly smarter and significantly better qualified, as well as prettier and more popular.

She deserved to win.

The posters of my contestant showed her looking like a supermodel in her cheerleading uniform. Mine said simply, “Win with Wade.” Her campaign manager – a fellow cheerleader – was obviously more savvy and astute, more in tune with what the electorate wanted, than was my campaign manager, a girl who played piccolo and dreamed of being a mechanical engineer.

But the best, most qualified candidates, I had learned, didn’t always come out on top.

“Nixon doesn’t take any fucking prisoners,” my father told me as my election neared.

So I began by defacing a few of my competitor’s posters, drawing mustaches on her face, and hair across the chest of her cheerleading uniform with a black El Marko.

On some of her posters, I penciled this important question across her chest: “Do you want a boob representing you?”

I spread rumors that she was failing Algebra, and I started handling my own media outreach, which included hanging some rather disturbing but attention-grabbing posters that featured baby seals being beaten, with the following slogan: “Wade Will Club The Competition!”

When it came time for my final skit in front of the student body, I pulled a few of the most popular kids from every grade and had them do asinine things, promising them everything from more pizza parties to soda in the lunchroom.

And it worked.

I won.

That night, my mom strolled into my bedroom before dinner. I expected her to congratulate me on my upset win. Instead, she told me that she knew what I had done to win.

Down to defacing the posters.

“Ethics,” she told me, “is what you do when no one is looking.”

I took this to heart the next fall when I ran for class office. I spoke about improving the school lunches and doing away with study hall, so we could add much-needed advanced classes. Not exactly the issues rural high school kids care much about. As a result, I lost to a hot guy who made his final speech while cloaked in a mesh football practice half-jersey. He asked the class, while pointing at me with a flexed arm, “I mean, come on, who would you rather have representing you? Me or him?”
I mean, I was ready to blow him after his 5-second speech.

Fast-forward a few decades to 2000, the trainwreck that was Bush vs. Gore.

Ethics.

The best candidates didn’t always win.

Politics, as my dad had taught me, was brutal and ruthless, indeed.

This election (and the 2004 election) became watershed moments in my life. I felt, as a gay man, ostracized from our nation, hated, bullied, just like the boys who used to spit on my partner, Gary, in school.

I also knew I had once won using the same disgusting tactics.

During these eight years, my family stopped debating politics for the first time in our lives. Even through the good and bad, the natural ebb and flow, the checks and balances of our political system, no matter how bitterly my father and I had debated over candidates and issues, we always did so with a sense of love and respect, almost like two tiger cubs playing.

But during these years, when I would visit, or we would chat on the phone, we focused solely on the weather or sports.

My father, I knew, firmly believed in Bush, his views on morality and “family values.” Missouri would – along with so many other states – go on not only to support Bush but also to vote in favor of an unneeded definition of marriage in its constitution. I would see “umarried couples” banned from adopting and fostering children. Winning in politics, it seemed, meant dividing and angering the electorate.

And this hurt me, hurt me so deeply as to live a stinging void in my chest every time I would visit or hang up the phone.

And then in the fall of 2008, when I was visiting, my mom fixed the ultimate meal of irony: Pot roast and mashed potatoes.

It was a tense visit. Gary had been campaigning tirelessly for Obama. Both of us once again felt that this was not simply an election but a referendum on our lives. Electing Obama could change our nation forever. It would provide hope to any person who ever felt ostracized, different. Yet I knew my father had long admired McCain, his tenacity and fight, his heroism.

The only sounds that night at dinner were nervous knives cutting too deeply, scratching the plates, a spine-tingling scream none of us could voice.

“Dad, this has been a nasty election. Too nasty, don’t you think?” I asked, trying to bridge our gap.

“Damn right!” my dad bellowed. “And it needs to get nastier. McCain and Palin need to take those liberals to the ropes!”

I had felt the same thing at one time, when Obama fell behind in the polls, screaming at the TV for him to get nasty, to get dirty, to not simply deface some posters and air some negative commercials but literally to gut his competition.

But I thought of my mother.

Ethics were what you did when no one was looking.

“You have to vote for Obama,” I said, suddenly, without warning, staring directly at my father. “Missouri is a battleground state. You have to do it for me. For your son.”

Knives screamed.

“Dad?”

“How about this weather?” my dad said, ignoring the Republican elephant in the room. “It’s been so rainy.”

I fought back tears and gummed some potatoes.

I did not talk with my parents until yesterday afternoon, before Obama had clinched the presidency. My mom called, and it was a gentle conversation, as we tip-toed through the thorns, both of us knowing what was to come in future years: The strain, the silence, the occasional yet unspoken tension at family dinners.

But our talk was heartfelt and necessary.

And then, in a whisper, she confided in me that she had voted for Obama. “He ran such a classy, ethical campaign. I mean, for me to walk into a booth in rural Missouri and, as a woman …”

And here, she stopped, not crying really, but weeping, bawling, her words coming out like ghosts that were being exorcised.

“… be able to vote for a black man … it means so much.”

She took a deep breath, and calmed herself.

“You know, I always wanted to be a doctor, and it just wasn’t what women did when I was growing up,” my mother, the nurse, told me. “And you … to have lived a lie for so long because you didn’t feel worthy, to not be able to marry the one you love. I know so many others have suffered so much more, but each of us had a dream … and then each of us had to put that dream away … this election is the first step in changing that cycle.”

And, like she had done her whole life, even a half a century ago, before I was born, my mother – the ER nurse, the ICU nurse, the hospice nurse who gave her life to others – gathered her strength, walked up a flight of stairs at her polling booth, and voted for those who dream.

My mother did this, you see, in the midst of battling cancer, in the midst of motherlodes of chemotherapy.

Ethics.

What did my mother do when no one was looking?

She pulled a lever for hope, for her son, and continued to be the greatest ethics teacher of my life.

I was happy to learn from a reader that "The Customer Is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles," the fabulous essay collection about working in retail is now a Powell's Bestseller (and staff selection). In fact, it's been as high as #4 on their list. Kudos to editor Jeff Martin who worked his hoo-hoo off to compile an illustrious group of writers and humorists to share their funny and poignant stories. I can barely keep myself sane, grounded and on track, much less a stable of writers.

Some great essays are included ... check it out, I think you'll enjoy. I mean, who hasn't worked in retail, and who doesn't have a horror story (I'm a former Husky's kid who found himself working at Sears in college ... Hello, Irony! And I have friends who shall remain unnamed who used to pee in their ice cream store's pickle barrel, and put their press-on nails in the ice cream cones of annoying customers). Yes we were immature, but wouldn't it be great if we occasionally allowed ourselves as adults to revel in such childish payback?

Here's what Powell's says about the book:

Powells.com Staff Pick

What a delightful collection of true-life tales! Jeff Martin has gathered together writers and humorists of all stripes to offer a gold mine of cringe-inducing stories about life in the retail world. What writer hasn't spent a few years behind the counter of the local mall, bookstore, or record store? From the absurd to the poignant, The Customer Is Always Wrong will show you retail from the inside.

Congrats, Jeff!

Sarah Palin broke with her running mate, Sen. John McCain, yesterday in an interview, saying she supports a Constitutional amendment on gay marriage.

You knew it was just a matter of time before this issue came up, and her real views came out. Ironically, however, I think Gov. Palin is asserting this issue now, late in the campaign, less to shore up the conservative Christian base, which is already shored up, but to set herself up as a viable presidential candidate in four -- though more likely eight -- years.

Still, these are the issues that candidates continue to focus on in times of crisis, the issues that divide us, the ones with which we have been consumed while the real problems are ignored?

And I feel sorry for Sarah Palin's good gay friend, who "chose" to be the way she is ... now, that's a great friend, in kind of the same way that Dick Cheney is a great father.

For more, here's the link:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081021/ap_on_el_pr/palin_gay_marriage;_ylt=AgJB7KUODa0cIqcVV5.RdO4b.3QA

A while back, I was asked to contribute to an essay collection with a wonderful concept: Authors writing about their experiences working in retail.

The book, entitled "The Customer Is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles," will publish October 1 from Counterpoint/Soft Skull Press, a smaller, independent press. I contributed to the book not only because it featured a wonderful concept and great group of contributing writers (T Cooper, Colson Whitehead, Po Bronson), but it was also my understanding that a portion of the proceeds would go toward helping independent bookstores, an incredible cause, to say the least (contributors, btw, received no advance and will receive no royalties).

I was asked to contribute by editor Jeff Martin, who is (steady yourself here for the biggest irony of all), a bookstore clerk in Oklahoma. Jeff contacted me because he had read my first memoir, AMERICA'S BOY, and was taken with my experience working in retail at Sears. As a child, I was a Winnie-the-Pooh clothing model, before ballooning into a Husky's kid and college student, whose first real job came, more irony here, working at Sears. In AMERICA'S BOY, I wrote about how I told my supervisor at Sears -- after witnessing an endless army of effeminate chubby boys march through the Husky's corridor crying -- that I truly felt a therapist should be stationed in the section along with a clerk. My suggestion was not heeded.

For "The Customer Is Always Wrong," I wrote an essay entitled, "Sears, Sbarro's, Sayonara," which told the full story about my returning to Sears, the Husky Hell of my youth, as a self-hating, not-yet-out-of-the-closet college kid who only wanted a summer job in order to stay at my frat house and earn enough cash to buy Ramen noodles and cases of Meisterbrau. The point of the story was to provide a nostalgic trip down the '80s retail lane (Units, the Go-Go's, Orange Julius) and cast a light on my shocking lack of self-esteem. I was a catty, bitter bastard at the time, and I was an awful employee (I didn't lay away the layaway, I pulled down the tops of mannequins to reveal their plastic breasts to shocked shoppers, I was rude to customers). But the main point of the essay was that I although I was incredibly immature I learned a great many lessons from my retail experience, which I still carry with me today. In the end, I was fired ... and I deserved to be. That was a hard, but necessary lesson, to learn early in life. And, ironically (yes, more irony), all of that coalesced into my second memoir, CONFESSIONS OF A PREP SCHOOL MOMMY HANDLER. Ahhh, self-esteem ... or the lack thereof.

I was thrilled to get an e-mail yesterday from a friend in Boston alerting me to the fact that the Boston Herald had done a piece on the essay collection. It deserved the attention, I thought.

"Just brace yourself for the bit about you ... " she wrote gingerly.

I slugged my coffee, and braced.

Darren Garnick, aka "The Working Stiff," who, it seems, writes a business-y, working-man's column for the paper, remarked about the book (and me), "Thus, there is no shortage of whining about customers, co-workers and bosses - some of it totally unjustified. Sears exile Wade Rouse seems surprised he was terminated for scaring a young child for knocking dresses off a rack and getting candy-smeared fingerprints on the clothing. Given they weren’t his dresses, why not outsource the outrage to a manager?"

I must say that after I screamed, like Sarge in Beetle Bailey, "YOU @#$!*^!", I managed to chuckle.

First, what he writes is true ... it happened. And, I still think, it's funny as hell. Have you ever re-hung hundreds of little girls' dresses, fluffing the ruffles, re-ballooning the arms, knocking out the wrinkles, only to have a little girl with M&M fingers run through like a tornado knocking them all off and soiling them? While her mom chuckles at her "energy"?

And, btw, I was 19 and hungover. So I did hide in a rounder and screamed "Stop it, little girl!" before she and her mom pointed out "the bad man" to my manager. I was, of course, let go. But my boss told me, and I will never forget, that I was a good person, but a terrible employee. He told me to grow up, to find myself, to take pride in myself and what I did. Cliches, right? But I listened. And I did. And I still try to do that, every day.

To miss that point I so clearly make in my essay baffled me. As did the sentence, "Given they weren’t his dresses, why not outsource the outrage to a manager?"

Outsource my outrage? Hello! ... it was the '80s. I mean, I took business classes. We didn't even use those terms back then.

Still, I respect everyone's opinion. To some, the '80s seems lightyears aways.

But one of the things I learned in retail (and from my mom) was that respect goes both ways: Customer to clerk, clerk to customer, person to person. I still try and treat every clerk I encounter with respect, because I remember how I acted. I still stand up for baristas who get abused, still re-fold any sweaters at Banana Republic I hold up to my torso.

We were all young at one time. We all did jackass things. And then we grew up. Or pretend to, at least.

Which is why I must admit that, even at 43, I know I would still crouch my bad back down in the middle of a rounder and scare the bejesus out of that little girl all over again.

Talk about a lesson she probably never forgot.

For the entire Boston Herald article, please go to:
http://www.bostonherald.com/business/general/view/2009_09_17_Customer_is_wrong:_But_there_s_whiners_on_both_sides_of_counter

So, a large part of any writer's life is shilling his work.

Or it should be anyway.

I hate it when I hear writers say, "That's not what an artist should do. I'm above that."

Well, I ain't. And I don't know many writers who are. You have to be willing to tell readers about your work. You have to spend time letting readers get to know you, on a personal basis. You have to sell yourself, and your wares.

Some shilling can be very glamorous; some is shit. I've appeared on a lot of radio shows at 6 a.m. where some dumbass morning DJ from some station with KISS in the title asks me, over and over, why I don't like, and I quote, "to bang chicks."

"'Cause my equipment's not wired that way," I once responded.

"Well, then, somethin's wrong wich'ur equipment."

Mass hysteria ensues from the "Morning Zoo."

I've also been on a number of TV shows, mostly local city shows, like "Hello, Topeka!" or "Good Morning, Butte!" But I'm willing to do it, because I believe in my work, and, I have to admit, I always have a good time. I think these shows give a good pulse of the city. And I like to mimic the local accent when I leave. It's an obsession.

So, I appeared this morning on "Take Five," a live, local morning entertainment show on the ABC affiliate in Grand Rapids, MI. And it was a blast ... a really good show.

But, for the second time in my life, something happened while I was waiting in the green room to go on air.

Background: Before any live show airs, all the sound guys come back to mic the guests up (clip goes on the waistband, wire runs up your shirt and you clip mic on lapel). Since the mics are always black, I usually wear black, so it blends. Then the producer comes in and ask if anyone has questions, which no one ever does, because you don't want to sound like a jackass.

I had mainlined a Starbucks, so I did have a question. I wanted to know where a bathroom was, but it was too late, since I was the second segment, so I prayed to June Allyson that I wouldn't piss myself on live TV.

So, today, before the sound guys leave, they turn and survey the room. They look directly past me, at two other men sitting toward the back, and ask, "Which one of you is Dr. MacGruder?"

I look at them, blinking. I have to ask.

"Umm, so how come neither of you thought to ask if I was the doctor?"

And the guys look at me, from head to toe, and I can read their minds: "No doctor gonna stack his hair two feet high, wear a skintight black BR lycra shit and a choker with a silver hoop, mmmmkay?"

Got me.

But I like to look pretty on TV.

And I think it's up to an author to AT LEAST resemble their author shot. I hate when I go to a signing, and I discover the photo was taken just after D-Day, and I'm like, "Hello? You don't look anything like Jude Law."

Which is why I guess I should be flattered that the only time I was ever mistaken for another guest was when a producer walked into the green room, tapped my shoulder as I was applying my lip shimmer and asked: "Bethany?"

I turned. Although my hair was in another stratosphere, and I was wearing a skintight blouse, I was not the 17-year-old champion fire baton twirler.

She arrived a few minutes later.

In a glitter leotard.

I even thought, right before I went on, "I wonder how I would look on-air in a sparkly unitard?"

But I'll save that for The Today Show.

Labels: humor, TV, writers

My attempt to help save the world, one cultural tidbit at a time:

Sure Sign the World Is Coming to An End and Our Children Are Doomed-(From Publishers Marketplace) Star of MTV's reality show The Hills, Lauren Conrad's three-book YA series, inspired by her own journey, "about a girl who moves to LA and stars in a reality show," to Harper Children's.

Words & Phrases That Need to Come to an End in Order to Save my Sanity-
McCain: "My Friends ..."
Obama: "Lipstick"
Weather Channel: "Category" Whatever
My Partner, Gary: "Guuurrrrlll!"
Me: "Dillhole" ... as in, "You're a complete dillhole."

Suggested Names to Help Hurricanes with Their Poor PR Image:
Sassafras
Rihanna
Shiloh
Zac Efron

Sure Sign the World Is Coming to An End/Part 2-I have the exact same eyeglasses as Sarah Palin.

Like much of America, I was riveted by Sarah Palin's speech last night.

I expected her to knock it out of the park. And she did.

This is America. And what happens after a media figure is trampled, crushed and humiliated under the media's hot lights? They are redeemed.

Sarah Palin is, momentarily, redeemed.

And isn't it ironic that, in her moment of glory, she finally -- literally and figuratively -- let her hair down.

It was a bold move. It was a bold image.

Sarah standing there, in all her conservative sexiness, her hair finally down, the RNC delegates worked into a frenzy.

"I am woman, here me roar."

Image today too often defines people, defines politicians: Reagan's dyed Hollywood glory days 'do. JFK's sexy pompadour. Clinton's healthy greying mane. Hillary's transformation from hideous hair to powerful locks.




Until last night, Sarah Palin's up-do, with highlighted bangs, was the latest in a long line of strong Republican woman. See for yourself:






Wilma's updo and Barbara Bush pearls defined her as a Stone Age Republican, a woman who wore the loin cloth in the family, no matter what Fred said or did. Wilma was prehistoric Hillary, or Sarah. Your pick, depending on your party.

Oh, and who can forget Phyllis Schlafly's updo, under which hid more self-hatred than any hairdo in history. Anti-ERA. Anti-woman. Anti-anything that wasn't Wilma prehistoric.

And along came Sarah. And her hair.

Don't hate me. I know hair doesn't define a woman any more than -- dare I say it -- my sexuality defines me.

But we are a nation dead set on a course of division and hatred, based on how we look, or who we love.

Let me be clear: I am a Democrat. As a gay man, I feel I must vote with my heart, my emotion, my life. I (figuratively speaking) have been put under the media's hot lights the last eight years, just like Sarah has been the last few days, and, I, too, have been trampled, crushed and humiliated.

Ironically, I grew up in a Republican family (still so today) where the GOP was viewed as "government that stayed out of your wallet and your home." Well, they have lately taken residence in both.

Sarah Palin gave a rousing, populist speech. She let her hair down. In fact, I even felt like cheering a few times, despite the fact that this is a politician who is pro-gun, anti-choice, anti-gay. Despite the fact that this is a politician who governs by how she believes the rest of the world should behave, but has too many skeletons in her own closet.

And, hear me on this: Skeletons are OK.

That is life. Life is not -- as Republicans have made it seem these last eight years -- black or white. People are imperfect. Life is filled with varying shades of grey.

The hard thing to do is admit that. To tell the world, "Yes, I am a flawed human being. I make mistakes. We all do."

The hard thing to do is pay attention to those issues that truly matter -- the economy, the war, health care, respect for others -- and stop dividing our nation -- one state, one person, one vote at a time -- based on how we look, who we love, or, God forbid, how we wear our hair.