Today’s my TV — Totally Vaccinated — Day, two weeks after I got my second Pfizer COVID-19 shot, the point when, authorities think, the vaccine is fully effective.
So this morning I ventured out in the neighborhood alone, for the first time in 13 months. With a (penguin) face mask, and using a walker (I’m still working on learning to walk again on my own), and only for a block (I still have the dyspnea problem from well before pandemic time — I had to stop two times along the way to catch my breath — and I’m going through a bad osteoarthritis patch, so most of my joints screamed) — but the hell with all that, it felt wonderful, like a fresh start.
I was wearing my GAY AS F
CK t-shirt, but it was cool, so the tee was under a flannel shirt. And on that flannel shirt I had proudly pinned my badge:
(#1)
On the other ornamental elements of my ensemble:
From my 5/25/20 posting “Pandemic gifts”, the penguin face mask:
(#2)
And from my 6/18/20 posting “Exulting in Pride”, the t-shirt:
(#3)
All sorts of sociocultural messages to be read here.
Then there’s the flannel shirt. From my 12/28/20 posting “The flannel guys”, with a photo of me and Steven Levine, both in flannel shirts:
You can now find on Twitter plaintive cries about how hard it is to distinguish lumberjack/cowboy/country flannel from gay flannel — [cries] from straight guys trying to protect their flannel fantasies from the faggy stuff.
Steven and I are both gay, but in this photo we’re wearing guy flannel, not gay flannel. Yes, yes, I know, it’s hard to keep up with all of this.