one man’s wife is another woman’s jesus

on Friday night

we saw a brilliant play

about a German man

who constructed his

life as a version

of a German woman

openly and obviously and constantly

cross dressing in a plain grey outfit

with queen anne heels and a single

strand of simple pearls.

He/She lived this

transformation with modest

and understated humility

straight forwardly and

apparently unashamed.

and drew as little attention

as possible for a man in a dress

moving about whilst unobtrusively

shouting out his own

quite different truth at a whisper’s volume:

“I AM MY OWN WIFE”

On Saturday we attended the

golden jubilee of a lovely woman,

friend of my family of origin, celebrating

her fifty years as a nun. There was

a mass with modest pomp and

ceremony: three celebrants

in long robes and scarves and shiny

fabrics moved about on quite a different stage,

while various honored guests spoke

tributes to a life of dedication and service:

well deserved accolades for a truly fine person.

but looking at the decked out priests

I couldn’t help but be reminded of the German

man from the night before.

He had survived and lived a vexed

but somehow charmed life:

having quite possibly

killed his sadistically abusive father,

he suffered a German prison, then Nazi rule,

then the devastation of war, and then

the East German Stasi’s snooping regime.

during these times he created

his own little furniture

and furnishings museum, and

maintained  an underground gay bar

cum pleasure den.

Later he endured the perils of a hero’s adulation

as well as  the scandal of renunciation

for quite likely being a collaborator

with successive oppressors. He was

either a nurturing best friend or guileless betrayer

or both at once together.

He was a survivor undoubtedly and undeniably,

but little else is absolutely certain

about the person known as

Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a magnificent

artifice of his own making.

On Saturday, no one mentioned the old saw

about the sister having been married to Jesus,

but it seemed to me to hang in the air all about:

a metaphor as imposing as an important truth,

or, quite likely, posing as an important truth.

And so, also for me, the strange incongruity of men

in Renaissance outfits speaking, singing

and leading us in prayer in 2010 seemed an

ironic reminder of my previous night’s entertainment.

More guys in girlish outfits quite plainly and ornately

living lives constructed and adorned from shiny whole cloth.

Living lives of genuine authenticity and real accomplishment

and kindness and generosity, but fabricated,

none the less, and built upon a story and roles

that had now lately become somehow dreadfully suspect.

along with the infallibly silly pontifications of a

hierarchy who could no longer ask the audience

to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

I don’t go to church much anymore.

Though I did plenty as a boy.

I was crazy bout the smells and bells

and loved the costumes and the organ’s

rousing tones. I was quite devout till

stepping away in young adulthood,

never to return to church again except to

occasionally honor folks

marrying or getting baptized or buried.

But Church can still transport me, if however briefly,

to that time when the staging on the altar moved me utterly

and meant so much because I believed the actors and the

script and the directions and the magical moments

to be true. Which, of course, they were. In a certain

manner of magnificent artifice.

Which in itself could be survival

for as long as the construction holds.

Paul Bukovec 2010