Later this week, we pile into the car to leave for our semi-annual three-day road trip. Our final destination is Tupelo, Mississippi. This year, we add a puppy to the chaos. And 75 books.
We first took this trip in March 2020, when no hotels were open and no traffic clogged the highways. We condensed the entire drive into a day and a half, stopping to pee in public park bathrooms. As quarantine let up, we have continued our semi-annual pilgrimages, albeit with less anxiety.
We travel by car because we’ll be gone for a good chunk of the summer. But also, now, because it’s our thing: The cultural distance between our Brooklyn home and our Tupelo home is large, and the time becomes a welcome opportunity to transition. We stop frequently, visiting playgrounds and museums. Last summer, we swung through the Unclaimed Baggage store in Scottsboro, Alabama.
I spend most of this ride wedged between two car seats, dispensing snacks and singing the same verse of whatever song has become Jude’s latest obsession. Spidey and his Amazing Friends. Ninja Kidz. This year, we’ll tuck copes of The Family Outing in the footwells, and stack them in the trunk. I’ve mapped a route that takes us through neighborhoods that are dense with Little Free Libraries.
Of course our road trip is one small part of my family’s little pride action. In the two weeks since my wife and I stood up a website and invited people to get involved, the response has been remarkable. So far, requests for copies of the The Family Outing have come from 33 States.
So far, requests for copies of the The Family Outing have come from 33 States!
I’ve learned there are people all over the country, from Columbia, TN to Niceville, FL, standing up free libraries by and for the queer community. I’ve directed the book to therapist’s offices in Provo, Utah and Austin, TX. I sent 15 copies of the book to a woman who takes a huge box of books—mine and others—on a road trip through Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma to visit family every summer.
Earlier this week, an 84-year-old woman in Tyler, Texas named Lou Anne Smoot told me the story of how she came out. She was 60. Lou Anne was raised Southern Baptist by parents who loved her dearly and wanted to protect her. She has written her own story down and doing so, she said: “I spent most of my life believing that being gay was some kind of moral failing and I did everything in my power to hide the fact that I was gay.”
Brenda knew she was gay as a very young child. It took work to hide. At points, it nearly cost her her life. But she had no role models, no idea that someone who looked and felt like she did could thrive in her community. That’s the power of our stories. It’s the power of coming out. We make it safer for the people who will follow us.
FIGHT YOUR OWN WARS, YOU KIKESUCKING ZIONIST ASS-WHORE . . . The United States government has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the American Israeli Political Action Committee.
Nobody is going to fight a war for Biden, he is dumber than Bush . . . Nobody is going to fight a war for that kikesucking Zionist ass-whore Nikki Haley . . .
The fat, bulbous curry nigger, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, was telling everyone how the army is full of bad racist white men, and now the Army is doing ads begging for more young white men?
What happened?
Even with a full-on declaration of war from Congress, and even if Gavin Jewsome could be cheated in by ZOG somehow, with Globohomo brigades going door-to-door looking to impress white American children into military service, they will be met with armed, well-trained opposition.
White people are done fighting wars for you kikesucking Zionist ass-whores . . . With the border wide open, open warfare at home within the USA is a certainty if a foreign war is declared.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/oh-how-fond-they-are-of-the-book