Tuesday, February 16, 2010 | by nathan

No, You Hang Up!

The past weekend took me so wholly by surprise that I can’t even be sure it happened. My friend Dylan, whom I conscripted into the armies of the homosexual in 2001 – thereby earning my toaster – flew into Oklahoma City on Thursday night. Dylan, a native North Carolinian, has now made four visits to Oklahoma, each time prompting his fellow Triangle-dwellers to check him for a fever and surreptitiously slip him travel brochures for places where normal people take vacations. Places like Daytona Beach and Provincetown. Places that have brochures. We don’t have brochures.

Without explaining how I earned a place in the Drunken Idiot Hall of Fame this weekend (we forgot to eat all day on Friday), I will just say that while Dylan was ostensibly in town to see me, he really came because K.C. Clifford was holding a two-day musical extravaganza to celebrate the upcoming release of her album Orchid.

COMMERCIAL BREAK: Orchid is an incredible album and you should all make plans to purchase it when it hits the streets for realsies on March 2. 

Without subjecting you all to a litany of specifics, I will just say that this weekend was a nice little slice of life. Two or three years ago I thought, vaguely, that the friends I had at that time, the ones I’d managed not to scare away, were the friends I’d always have. And to be honest, that was fine with me. After all, it was getting to come home to friends like Jayson and Laurie, or any of the assorted tribe of family and friends I’ve known for nearly two decades, that made moving back to Oklahoma not only bearable, but the best possible thing for me. And it was having people like Dylan out there, in the world, that helped me to remember that friendship is reaching out, that it sometimes requires a bit of effort, and that it’s almost always worth it. 

But I’d thought, my whole life, that I wasn’t good at making friends. Believe it or not, I’m a little shy around people I don’t know, and as I got into my late twenties I began to think that I’d settle into my mild little case of social anxiety disorder.

I’m not sure what happened. What I do know is that in the last few years Brian and I have met and befriended some incredible people. And this weekend, when I wrapped up the second draft of my novel, I realized that it’s largely about male friendship, which is something I despaired of ever having. Don’t get me wrong – I am honored to call some very, very amazing ladies my friends. But as a young man I actually feared making friends with guys. They were rough and always bigger than me. Girls were safer, easier, nicer. I have some awesome male friends, but those friendships always came at a great cost of comfort, and a great expenditure of emotional energy.

But friendships with men now – I can’t explain why, but over the last few years it’s become easy. I’ve gravitated toward it, whereas before I all but actively avoided it. I don’t want to get too weird about it, but I will just say that I have some very cool, very kickass, very creative male friends, and I am supremely grateful for them. And I’m very, very grateful that all my friends – male and female alike – are the kind of people who can put up with, and help me laugh at, my dumb empty-stomach-drunk antics at the Blue Door Friday night, who consistently encourage me in my writing and my work, and who help this world to be a safe place for me. I’m grateful.

Monday, January 11, 2010 | by nathan

Gay Unclehood

These are two of my dearest people, J&L. One week from tomorrow they’re finding out whether their child, who we’ve been calling Baby Flynn, but who I’ve now decided to call POTUS Donette (thanks to last week’s episode of This American Life and the small donuts that L gets to eat and I don’t, at least not if I want to keep buying my clothes at normal-sized-people stores and not from special catalogs*), is a boy or a girl. POTUS Donette is scheduled to grace us with his/her presence around June 13th. Also scheduled to enter the world that week are no fewer than FIVE OTHER BABIES of people I know, provided no one in my life is baking up a set of twins. Seriously, I know five women who are set to pop in the week between June 12 and June 19. That in addition to two in February, two in July and at least one in August, fercryinoutloud.

The fact is, I just can’t wait to play gay uncle to POTUS Donette and all these other chilrens. I imagine my gay uncling style to be somewhat of a blend of Chef from South Park and Dumbledore, or maybe Giles from Buffy. The two kids currently in the world to whom I’m unofficial gay uncle are pretty loved and doted on, if not a little too young to appreciate it yet. I can’t wait until they all get a little bit older and start coming to me for advice, especially when they’ve pulled some kind of stunt that’s eerily reminiscent of the stuff their parents were up to in high school. Then I can send them home with my copy of our high school yearbook and they can be all, "YOU WON’T LET ME GET MY EARS PIERCED BUT YOU USED TO WEAR YOUR HAIR LIKE THAT? GAWL!"**

* Seriously, we went over there the other night and there was a bag of chocolate Donettes sitting on their coffee table, CALLING MY NAME, and I managed to restrain myself for a full four hours. I deserve some kind of medal for that shit.

** If the price of this maneuver is having to pay for these kids’ college tuition, I consider that to be more than a bargain.

Thursday, December 24, 2009 | by nathan

Snowstorm on Cleveland Street

Okay, I don’t actually live on Cleveland Street. But:

1) the main character in my favorite Christmas movie did, and

2) my neighborhood is called Cleveland, so.

Anyway. A Christmas Carol from (a) Cleveland Street:

Silent Night:

Windswept night:

We are trapped:

In the worst snowstorm anyone in Oklahoma has ever seen:

And it took Brian five and a half hours to get home from work:

But he’s home safe now, and we have power and warmth, and we’re going to my mom’s house in the morning, instead of tonight. Praying for everyone stuck or broken down or car-wrecked out in the snow this evening. And the snow makes our house look pretty with all the lights on.

Sleep in Heavenly Peace. Amen.

I hope your Christmas and New Year are happy, safe, and filled with delight and wonder.

Monday, November 30, 2009 | by nathan

Son and Father

I hope you had a great holiday; I did. A gaggle of our extended family gathered at my mom’s house in south Oklahoma City on Thanksgiving, where we wrangled dogs and children, planned mischief for the Christmas season, and frequently teased my grandmother, who is on a Caribbean cruise right now, about which bikini she was going to wear on the beach in Jamaica. When she told us – with no lack of certainty – that she wouldn’t be wearing a bikini, we said OH I GET IT GRANDMA, WINK WINK WINK. Then she tried to act like she didn’t think it was funny, but she did. We’re on to you, Pearl.

All that aside, this photo is my favorite of all the ones I took on Thanksgiving day. It’s my little brother, John, and my dad. I love these two guys, and my entire family, more than life itself, and I’m glad to have captured this.

Thursday, September 3, 2009 | by nathan

Big Brother

This is my two-year-old buddy Cooper, he of the famous animal noises, at last year’s State Fair of Oklahoma. Today Cooper’s little sister Camryn is being born, and I’ve taken the day off work to get to know her and watch as the two of them become acquainted. I love this family like my own and am excited to see it grow.

Sunday, August 9, 2009 | by nathan

Welcome To The Barnyard

Cooper’s Animal Sounds from Okay City Nate on Vimeo.

Captured the other night at my brother’s birthday party. He’s been doing this for several months and I wanted to make sure to get it before he stops being such a willing little monkey and performing for all his parents’ adult friends.

Monday, July 13, 2009 | by nathan

Teaser

Internet, somehow my Sunday lasted 25 hours, and the only sleep I got during it was on flights, which totally does not count as real sleep, and I’ve been back at work all day trying to catch up. The trip was incredible, the west of Ireland MIGHT be Heaven and they’re just keeping it a huge secret from all us scrubs in America, and getting back was a disaster of such epic proportions that I will be on the phone to my friendly Delta representative, and there will be shouting. In the meantime, these are my buddies Jayson & Laurie, whom I dragged all over Eire, and who have just this afternoon landed in Prague, Czech Republic, where they went after we came home. So keep them in your thoughts as they continue their adventures in Bohemia. I’ll be coming to you with photos and story very, very soon.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009 | by nathan

Story Of Our Own*

My dad came up this weekend for Father’s Day, bringing with him an old photo album.

His mother gave him this photo album for Christmas in 1978, less than two months before she died in February 1979. I was born in July 1980 and have spent my life hearing stories about my dad’s mom, Clara Mae, and have always been disappointed that I never got to meet her. The fact that she and I never met, and yet that I always felt very close to her, is part of what fueled my belief in Heaven from a very, very early age, because though we never met I always felt she was near, and that someday I’d get to see her.

This is Clara Mae:

That’s her and my grandfather, Joe Nathan, my namesake. He died just before I turned 6 years old.

This is my dad. He grew up in Hackett, Arkansas:

Though to be honest, if I’d been handed this photograph, I might have thought it was my younger brother:

Ohhhhhh, he’s gonna kick my ass for putting that photograph on the internet. So, to be fair, here’s this:

That would be me. That photo actually appears on one side of my new freelance business cards, because, apparently, I have lost my mind.

Boy, this blog post ended up in a different place than it started out in.

So, Joe Nathan, the guy I’m named after? This is a photo of his grandparents and their children.

I love the 19th-century metadata at the bottom of the photo; I might never have known that this was taken in Grangeville, Idaho, at the Elite Studio. The handsomely mustachioed man is Joel T. Gunter, who is Joe Nathan’s grandfather (my older brother is named Joel as well). His wife was Minta Dolan; she was one-half Cherokee but her last name is an Irish one. I knew I had some Irish in me. Joel was born March 29, 1861 and died in 1943. Minta was born on September 26, 1862 and died in 1930. They were married November 20, 1881.

The tall boy in the back is Nathan, like me; we have the same first and last name, and he passed his name on to his son, who then passed it on to me. Nathan was born on January 3, 1883 and died January 14, 1938, when my dad, his grandson, was not yet 3 years old. Also, do you know what’s weird? I have always been FASCINATED by Idaho, and have wanted to visit there since I was small. I never have, but now that I have this connection I have even more reason to.

Ever since my dad let me keep the photo album for a few days to get some of these pictures scanned I’ve become utterly fascinated by my family’s history. Just in the 36 or so hours since Father’s Day I have come across a wealth – a fecundity – of information about my roots, and I’m going to be posting a little more about it as the days roll on. It’s really fascinating stuff, and I’d love to hear any of my readers’ family histories in the comments. Come on, people, I know you’ve got some good stuff in those genes! Let it out!

*Post title comes from a great new song by K.C. Clifford that she wrote for this film.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009 | by nathan

Nothing To Fear

We spent Mother’s Day at my grandma’s house, cooking out burgers and helping her to get some work done around her yard. Brian and I hung birdhouses and planted flowers. My cousin Markus found a turtle, and we waited patiently for it to come out of its shell and say hey, but it never did.

Monday, April 13, 2009 | by nathan

This Photo Makes Me Smile