nashville

I’m in Nashville. For work. Staying at this monstrosity of a hotel and convention center that is The Gaylord Opryland.

Surreal doesn’t even begin to sum it up. From the little private balcony outside my room, I can look down on a waterfall and dozens of species of greenery, a simulated rain forest dotted with white-clothed restaurant tables. To the other side is a swamp, replete with cypress stumps and Spanish moss. Plump, brightly clad families with bouncy, sugar-happy kids pay to take boat rides around the food court. Nine acres of man-made nature co-existing in harmony with gift shops, steak houses and Chick-Fil-A, all encapsulated beneath a giant dome of glass. Climate-controlled and not a mosquito in sight. A biosphere for the fucked up state of the human race.

And heading meaningfully towards the conference center along the Garden Walkway are the corporate-logo-crested-golf-shirt-and-khaki-pants-wearing-laptop-toting conference attendees. Of which I am one. Oh lord, of which I am one. I head straight to the usability lab, where I take refuge in my flimsy purpose for being here, and from whence I reemerge ten hours later, head spinning, stomach aching, wondering what the hell I’m doing in a conference center wearing a golf shirt two sizes too big.

But if the Opryland Conference Center exists in Nashville, so does my blog-buddy and ethernet poetess, Annie. Whom I have finally gotten to meet in person.

Last night Annie picked me up and took me far away from this lush hell on earth. She transported me to The Lipstick Lounge, Nashville’s strangely classy local gay bar, where we ate burgers and drank beer and played very bad pool in a cozy upstairs room amidst vintage photos of heroic women. Where we got fawned over by beautiful boys that had no intention of taking us home. “Gay boys are so affirming,” Annie said. It’s true. And so are gay girls. I felt affirmed. Downstairs Tuesday Night Karaoke was in full swing. The ladies were getting rowdy. We sat down at a corner table of assorted gay and straight girls and boys and watched beautiful people sing karaoke extraordinarily well. Everybody clapped and yelled. Everybody loved everybody. Everybody was so damn cool. I was beside myself with happiness. I was mesmerized. Another beer down the hatch and Annie got up on stage and sang Debbie Gibson in a sultry alto. I sat in the corner — the shy, straight girl in black — and grinned till my cheeks hurt. I could have stayed in this little world forever.

I want to be gay and live in Nashville, I said to Annie, in the car heading back to my hotel. I was only half kidding. I think what I meant was, I want to be real.

Back in the contrived elegance of the Opryland Cascades Lobby, I sat down in an armchair and tried to call Dennis. No answer, just a message, he’s in Denver tonight, staying with his brother.

I’m plunged into dissonance. I don’t want to go back up to my hotel room with its sterile, scratchy hotel sheets. I don’t want to put my corporate golf shirt and khakis back on tomorrow. I don’t want to go back to my corporate job. I don’t want to go to work every day just so I can someday pay for an overpriced mortgage for a house in the suburbs that I don’t even want. If I knew what I wanted to do, I’d throw the towel at the corporate wall and go off and do it. But I don’t. I don’t yet. I only know that I want to be real. I want to be cool. I want to be affirmed. I want to be someone that people like to be around.

I think I’m on the precipice. Teetering. A fall might do me some good.