FUNdraisers

Last February, a guest looked out the window into our backyard, gestured at the deep plum-colored leaves of the smoke tree, and said of our garden, You have winter interest.

No I answered we have year-round disinterest.

Really, I have nothing against nature. I also have nothing against brain surgery. I just don't feel particularly motivated devoting my free time to either of those pursuits.

But Saturday morning, we were up early, to get out of our preferred bed (queen-size, flannel sheets, with a light toping of purring cats) to clear out the less-favored garden beds.

Because these hipsters

needed some place to put these bulbs.
All 1001 of them.

Bulbs, I mean, not hipsters. There isn't enough irony even in my yard for 1001 hipsters.

The hipsters were a volunteer gardening phalanx under the astute leadership of inimitable Indie Rocker Sarah Dougher. Who knew Riot Grrrrls had such Grrrrn thumbs?

Apparently they are the only ones who do. At least the only ones in our yard on Saturday.


How did the earth outside my home come to this bulbous state? Let's just say it all started when I had a gay old time at a charity auction.

Which you might think would have taught me a lesson about the dangers of charity auctions. But no.

Because like a perennial that blooms anew, just hours after the last hipster furrowed the final tulip, Cheez and I were out at ... another charity auction.

A really bitchin' one.

Although I must say, whoever made the call on the cupcake to salami ratio at the buffet table deserves to have his sausage sliced by a ravenous coven of hormonal harpies.

Still, the booze was flowing, even after the last lick of coconut icing was long gone.

Drink early, bid often, I advised a fellow guest, just to show I knew how things work in this world.

I'm afraid I'll drink too much, she confessed, and end up taking home something awful.

We've all done that, I reminded her. Better to do it at a charity art auction than at a bar.

At least if you get drunk and bring home something from an art auction that you don't really want, you can give it away.

If you get drunk at a bar and end up bringing home something you don't want, then give it away, it probably means you're headed for an uncomfortable swab and a course of doxycycline. Not to mention an angry call from anyone (everyone?) you gave it to.

There was no live auction at the Bitch Magazine fundraiser, which meant it was harder to get into heady bidding danger. But I still managed.

Mostly because I really wanted this fabulous pro-drag mockery of matrimony, an original drawing to watch out for by Alison Bechdel.

And so did my friends Daniel and Matt.

I bid.

Matt bid.

I waited until two minutes before the silent auction ended, then snuck back into the room and bid again.

Daniel marched in after me and bid.

I began writing my name under his while he was still filling in his email address, writing just slowly enough so that I finished after him, precisely as the Mistress of Ceremonies counted down the closing of that section of the auction.

Then I made a big nasty X along the rest of the bid form and cackled It's mine, all mine, like I was a 44 year-old bridesmaid beating back every other single woman at the reception to catch the bouquet.

I felt a little bad about how I trounced Daniel, who is a very sweet person and dear friend.

But then again, they don't call it Thoughtful and Polite Magazine, now do they?

Besides, I'd already done my virtuous deed for the day. Or the week, really.

Because that's how long it took me to make 12, count 'em 12, original drawings to donate to the auction.

They sold in sets of 4. (Click on each image to see it in its full glory)

Set 1: Great Moments in Feminist Pop Culture

Set 2: Great Moments in Feminist World History


Set 3 (and the high seller): Great Moments in Feminist US History

Ed Emberley and Angela Davis - Surely there's some joke in their about the COINTELPRO planting false fingerprints to frame the panthers.

But by the end of the evening, I'd had a touch too much vodka to make it.

Cheez had even more gin than I did vodka. And thus he was the winning bidder on something every queerer than the Mary Transvestite Moore number that I snagged.

Who is the first homo couple most kids know?

Think back to your earliest childhood exposure to "that lifestyle."

Even before the Birkenstocked Peppermint Patty and her BDSM buddy Marcy (how does Patty get Marcy to call her sir?) put something "funny" into your funny pages.

I'm talking pretty in preschool.

Who knew Sesame Street ran through Chelsea?

Or that Cheez and I bore such an uncanny resemblance to its inhabitants?
Or that Bert, Ernie, Mary Tyler Moore, Cheez, and me, Macaronimaniac, could live so happily ever after, just waiting for our bulbs to bloom?