Mibes: How could I forget? You really haven't been in touch since. I mean I know you sometimes think about me, but it was was back in 2019 when we last went to breakfast.
Me: I'm sorry.
Mibes: Hey make it up to me by showing up a bit more often. We are good for each other, you know.
Me: I know. And i will. And now I'm going to remember that 2019 conversation. As I recall, it went exactly like this..
Mibes: Wait, are you sure. You wrote it and then just saved it. You didn't have the nerve to push publish.
Me: I think I did but then had second thoughts. But I'm ok with it now...
Mibes: You can't unring a bell.
Me: True. So ring a ding ding...
Mibes: I think I hear it, but to me it sounds more like the buzz of a barber's clippers.
Me: You're close...
Mibes: Oooh, nice new buzz.
Me: Thanks it was getting shaggy.
Mibes: So glad to see you again. Howya been?
Me: I been up. I've been down. How bout you?
Mibes: Not like Barry Manilow trying to get the feeling again, I hope.
Me: No more like being Mormon and bisexual and feeling, well, mixed feelings about the policy reversal. But first, how are you?
Mibes: Well you know, I don't get out much unless you're blogging about our fictional conversations. So, like you, I've had some great and not so great experiences. But I'm OK, so let's talk about your mixed feelings. What are they?
Me: Glad, sad, mad.
Mibes: Hmm. Maybe the makings of a limerick. A Bi-man just became glad.
Me: But his leaders made him mad.
Me: A full reversal
Mibes: With a rehearsal
Me: But suicides made him sad.
Mibes: Needs some work.
Me: Or just abandonment.
Mibes: Better to abandon a bad limerick than 140,000 gay Mormons.
Me: But it was worse than abandonment. It was erasure and condemnation, mixed with murder and malevolence. Where'd you get 140,000?
Mibes: From Peggy Fletcher Stack, here. That's not the number of gay Mormons.
Me: No, but it's related to the Policy of Exclusion.
Mibes: And a bunch of other factors, no doubt. But numbers aside
Just made it up. But isn't murder a bit overboard?
Me: Well I felt thrown overboard. And all the suicides. They've got blood on their hands.
Mibes: Sounds like something you read, but not really your own thoughts.
Me: Ok, you're right, I'm riffing away with my anger.
Mibes: But it's not just anger. You said you have mixed feelings.
Me: True. So here's some of that mix. I feel affirmed as well as angry. Blessed but blue. Depressed and elated, glad and guilty, hopeful and happy yet still sometimes hopeless, joyful and jaundiced, love and loss, melancholy and misunderstood and yet more understood than before the announcement.
Mibes: You're still playing with your alphabetical lists. Good sign.
Me: You got it. So poised and pleased but also poisoned. Queer and quiet, qualified and questioning. Relieved and resigned, strong and stymied, tougher but still troubled. Undone, unimpressed and unrepresented, but better understood. Violated and vilified, yet also strangely virtuous, verified and valuable. Worthy and well-regarded, yet withered, wilted and washed away.
Mibes: That's quite a mix. So having said or written, or written and said all those things, how are you feeling now?
Me: Better understood, at least by you.
Mibes: I try to understand and sometimes I do. But I don't have to try to love you, I just do.
Me: It's a beautiful thing.
Mibes: So how you feeling about the brethren?
Me: Someone encouraged. But it's not just the brethren. It's that they're listening more to women leaders, and gay leaders.
Mibes: You sound like you know this.
Me: I want it to be true.
Mibes: So where do you go from here?
Me: I've got a blog entry to finish. Laundry to get out of the washer and into the dryer. How about you?
Mibes: I'm hoping to see you here more often.
Me: Me too.
Mibes: I'll keep you in my prayers.
Me: I sometimes forget you're a man of prayers.
Mibes: wishin' hopin' thinking' and prayin'
Me: Dusty Springfield
Mibes: 1964
(Breakfast in the Castro is an ongoing conversation between the fictional Mibes and the real me. Mibes, which rhymes with bribes, sprouted out of MBS or My Better Self, but has since developed a personality of his own.)
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