I wanted to finish telling the story of our trip down. Let’s start
with the list of who was there (and by there I mean on the
bus):
Jennifer Chrisler, Executive Director of Family Pride; her spouse,
former Massachusetts State Senator Cheryl Jacques; their twins, Tim
and Tom; Cheryl’s parents, Norman and Eleanor; Cheryl’s brother,
Tom, and his friend, Brad; former Massachusetts State Senator
Jarrett Barrios, his partner Doug, and their two sons; Family Pride
staff members (Kent Peacock, A. Charlene Leach and I); Arielle
Rosen, Family Services Manager from the LA Gay and Lesbian Center; a lesbian
couple from Massachusetts, the names of which I can’t recall (don’t
worry, they told me they’d forget my names, too); and a group of
guys looking for a gay-friendly but not gay-crazy cruise (not
everyone on the r family
cruises is partnered with kids).
What a bunch! With all the political muscle on that bus you’d think
we talked shop the whole way down. No, no–that bus left far too
early in the morning for all that. As Arielle said to me, upon
seeing me for the first time since February when I trained families
through our OUTSpoken program
at the LAGLC, “In case you didn’t know, this is a sleeping bus.”
🙂
Well, it wasn’t quite that, but we did keep conversation light.
Until the tire blew, that is.
We all felt the tip and grind of the bus swaying over to the left,
into traffic. Luckily, the bus driver kept things straight (so to
speak). Tim, the more anxious of Jenn and Cheryl’s twins, yelled
out from the back, “Slow down! Slow down! The tire’s GOONNEE! SLOWW
DOWWWN!”
We pulled off at a Dunkin Donuts and waited for our rescue. It came
in the form of a slightly smaller, duplicate bus, with literally
just enough seats for the 21 of us. I called Sara Leckey, our
Development Associate and, as I mentioned last time, my new
roommate in Boston. She’d gone down to New York early to visit
friends again (she does that a lot) and hadn’t had to get up at the
crack of dawn like the rest of us, so I figured she deserved a
little teasing.
I told her that our bus’s engine had blown, that we definitely
weren’t making it to the cruise, and that she, alone, would have to
board and manage our many days of programming. She didn’t believe
me until Jenn grabbed the phone and took my lead, building the
story up. Jenn, of course, speaks with more authority than I do, so
when she started telling Sara the names of r family vacations staff
members Sara would have to seek out once she got on the boat, Sara
shifted gears–into panic mode.
Well, I got back the phone and told Sara I’d call her in a bit to
give her an update. Right now we’re just hoping to get out of the
Dunkin Donuts parking lot, I said. Fifteen minutes later I gave her
a call and asked, “Hey, Sara, is there such a thing as a July
Fool’s?” 😉
We’re shoving off again so I’m going to go check it out. It’s
always fun to feel the boat start to slip out of port, the horn’s
shaking the deck. More to come on this story later–it’s not quite
done!