During the dark days of slavery (or, as it is now more commonly referred to, the Paula Deen Good Times Hour), black people were often considered 3/5 of a human being. (This notion was later scientifically disproven by dividing the number of zeroes in Oprah Winfrey’s bank account by the number in the Klu Klux Klan’s.) Once America finally realized that Black people were a full 5/5 of a human being, it was, perhaps, only a matter of time before they came to the same conclusion about gay folk.

I just didn’t think it would be this soon.

Wednesday, the Supreme Court voted in favor of gay marriage rights, which essentially granted us gay folk that extra 2/5. And I don’t know about you, but I was simply not prepared to deal with having an extra 40% of myself.

I’m a handful as it is – anal, workaholic, a tad materialistic, pushy in a politely passive-aggressive way – you know, kinda crazy around the edges. So another 2/5 just seems like overkill.

Yet, much like when you have a genie wish granted, or Jesus owes you a favor, I feel somehow obligated to make the most of this extra piece of personhood.

I just have no idea where to start.

For guidance, I looked to see what Black people did with theirs. Generally speaking, they seem to have gone to college, redefined basketball, invented hip-hop, popularized junk in the trunk, and taken over running the free world.

That’s fairly impressive. Of course, that took 150 years or so. So maybe I don’t need to wow everyone with my 2/5 right off the bat. Maybe I can just start small.

I’m thinking one fifth should go to self-esteem. I did, after all, spend the better part of a decade trying to pray the gay away. Then another decade trying to drink it away. (Of the two, I’d recommend the latter.) Having the kind of self-esteem that comes from being allowed to participate in the same rituals as straight Americans will definitely be a good use of this 20%. It could even result in some future accomplishments, like a gay hip-hop album (Straight Outta Castro) or a new version of basketball where gay guys drink cocktails and describe the outfits they would wear to play it.

The final fifth could go to forgiveness – of the people who, at this moment, are mourning the loss of traditional marriage and fearing the devastation of the family unit. I may be forced to continue forgiving them for a while, since the evidence of social change doesn’t appear overnight. But what the heck, this is bonus personhood. I can afford it.

And eventually, they’ll see that, like the Suffrage movement, and the Civil Rights movement, when everyone thinks the sky is falling, it’s really just this amazing American land – filled with a rainbow of humanity that glistens with diversity – rising up to meet it.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think those are 2/5 very well spent.

My partner, Sandy, who works from home, was out of town when I texted him with a helpful suggestion.

Just got a postcard from the DWP saying that they’re shutting off the power for God knows what reason. Probably to remind us what having no power is like before they raise our rates. You should consider staying overnight at the condo in Palm Springs and working there on Wednesday. Then you can drive home once the power’s back on.

He was, of course, quite grateful, and I silently checked myself for stigmata as I embraced my Christ-like qualities of compassion and thoughtfulness. Who needs to do an AIDS Ride or volunteer in the Peace Corps, I thought. I just notified my partner that the power was gonna be out.

As Wednesday commenced, I paused periodically to revel in the Smell Me nature of my sensitivity to others’ needs. Until I got a text from Sandy.

YOU ARE A PIECE OF WORK.

A piece of God’s greatest handiwork, I assumed he meant. Tall, and smart, and filled with virtuous qualities like selflessness and humility. I dialed his cell.

“Did you read the card from the DWP?” he said when he answered.

“Of course,” I replied defensively, almost mystically intuiting a shift in tone away from gratitude. “It said 8:00-3:30 on Wednesday. In bold type.”

“That’s right,” he replied. “8:00-3:30 on Wednesday. IN PALM SPRINGS. Where I AM.”

We own a little condo in Palm Springs that we rent out, mostly to delightful Canadian retirees who flee British Columbia in the winter to escape the Santa’s Workshop-like conditions up there. The DWP postcard, which came to our LA address, was for that condo. I had sent him TO the power outage instead of away from it.

“You’re always reminding me,” he barked, “what an amazing combination of creativity and organizational ability you have.”

“That is not true!” I yelled, inadvertently overlooking the advertising awards, book reviews and valuable suggestions on how to live his life more efficiently that I occasionally leave on the kitchen counter.

“You might wanna rethink the organizational part.”

He reminded me of the time that I got lost on the Paris metro and had to wait for him to come find me because I couldn’t decipher the maps. He reminded me of the time that he asked me to pick him up from the airport and I did, dutifully driving to Burbank airport at the appointed time. Except he was at LAX.

“Clearly,” I sniffed, “the scale is just tipping a little more towards creativity these days. I am, after all, a writer.”

“Uh-huh,” he replied. “Well, unless there’s a National Book Award or Emmy statuette on the counter when I get home tomorrow, I’m thinking the scale is tipping a little more towards 72-hour-hold.”

Come visit me. I’ll be the one enjoying three luxurious days off with catered meals and free drugs.

As we sat waiting to board the plane, the most magical thing happened. I began to feel less like someone being chased by torch-wielding villagers. My fever subsided, and the risk of blowing chunks all over any number of Chinese businessmen began to vanish.

Whew, I thought. It must have just been food poisoning. (Mental note: reexamine the value of shopping in the “expiring today” section of Fresh & Easy.) Thank God, I prayed silently, that I’m not exposing scores of unsuspecting passengers to bird flu or malaria or whatever it was I thought I had.

But by the time we arrived in Kuala Lumpur 20 hours later, I was miserable again. Thus began a three day quest for public bathrooms that did not require me to squat over a hole in the floor in order to do my bidness.

By the time we arrived in Singapore, I was finally feeling a little more human.

“I can hardly wait,” I said breathlessly, “to get on the cruise!” I had snagged, for an insanely cheap price, rooms on the back corners of the ship with 250 square foot balconies, and I couldn’t wait to get out there and pose, a drink fairly blowing out of my hand, as others looked on from their inferior balconies with envy and despair.

And then I reached for my wallet.

Now, I have always considered myself a positive person. Someone who does not allow life’s little challenges to upset my emotional apple cart.

This is, unfortunately, a self-image apparently manufactured out of thin air, for on this day, I stood in the Changi airport, behaving markedly like a 12-year-old girl forced to miss the premiere of Twilight.

“I wish I was dead!”

“Really?” Sandy replied. “That’s how you’re gonna play this?”

“I’m sick, I have no wallet, this trip is ruined! Ruined, I tell you!”

Yes, I actually said it like that.

When we arrived at the cruise ship, I phoned the Hilton in Kuala Lumpur. They had found the wallet. But getting it back to me would be something else altogether. DHL clearly thought I was a member of Al Qaeda and informed the Hilton in no uncertain terms that there are rules about overnighting a wallet stuffed with ID, credit cards and cash from one second world country to another.

“This is awful!” I shrieked.

“Why?” Sandy replied. “You’re getting your wallet back.”

“Yeah, after we get home. How am I supposed to pay for stuff on this trip?”

“We’re on a cruise ship. It all gets charged to your onboard account. When we’re touring, I have credit cards. What’s the big deal?”

“The big deal is that I am not in control!”

You may not be surprised to learn that these were not words I meant to say aloud. There was a long and painful (for some of us) silence. But in that moment, as Sandy stood gazing at me with an irritatingly ironic smile, I realized how much of my self-esteem in our relationship is predicated on my being what I perceive as the Big Man. The one who takes charge, the one who makes things happen.

“So maybe,” he said calmly, “you can let go for a few days.”

And I was forced, over the next two weeks, to let him be the one in control. To let him take care of me. Which he did, of course, with aplomb.

And I realized that it’s kind of nice to be taken care of. Sure, I have to be a little more flexible. Sure, when I’m not calling every shot I can’t always get everything my way. But I get to feel loved.

I guess even the best life lessons, the most valuable moments, come at a price.

Of course, that price is much easier to pay when you have your wallet.

(Apologies for the six week silence! The cops kept catching up with me.)

It was 2 a.m. and I awoke with a start. Not the “wow, I shouldn’t have had that gallon of Diet Coke and a Midol before bed” kind of start. More like “Hey, two exits, no waiting, free Funyons on your way out!”

It was the night before we were to leave on an 18-day international vacation, and I was coming down with something. And I’d been looking forward to this trip for a year. Having never been to Asia, I was anticipating lots of profound cultural experiences: shortie kimonos, lots of Panda Express restaurants and poignant photos of me with poor people.

What I was getting, instead, was a violent case of the stomach flu.

“Pull it together!” my supportive and concerned partner Sandy yelled at me when I told him I didn’t feel well.

This was not a surprising response. He’s not actually quite as horrible and soulless as that sounds; he just has this ridiculous and totally unwarranted idea that I can be a bit of a hypochondriac.

Sure, I might take a Xanax before getting my teeth cleaned. Sure, one patch of dry skin and I’m at the Mayo Clinic website searching for rare skin cancers. But I was sick. And there was irrefutable evidence – the kind that makes you go, “Wow, I don’t remember eating corn.”

A couple of weeks earlier, Sandy had laughed at me when I said that I was gonna get a prophylactic course of Tamiflu from my doctor.

“Listen,” I told him, “it’s the height of the flu season and we’re gonna be in Asia for 18 days. If one of us gets sick, where will we find a good physician? Do you want some witch doctor waving a flaming wad of sage over you and chanting in a voice straight out of The Omen?”

He never catches anything, so naturally this seemed like insane reasoning to him.

“We’ll be on a cruise ship and staying in American hotels. We’re not gonna be floating on a raft down the Mekong Delta.”

“Better safe than sorry,” I had replied. And now, in this moment of illness, I smugly waved the box of Tamiflu in his face. “Who’s laughing now?”

I had no idea if Tamiflu worked on whatever I had, but I immediately began popping tablets like they were Sweet-tarts because I had to go to work. We weren’t leaving until midnight, and nothing says “fake sick day” like calling in sick on your last work day before a vacation.

Promptly around noon, after spending roughly ten hours on or near the toilet, I finally managed to drag my ass in to the office.

“Oh, my God, what happened to you?”

This from my friend Raquel, who typically suffers from some sort of ocular disorder that makes her think I’m handsome.

“Do I look bad?” I said, sweat running down my unshaven face, my clothes unkempt.

“You look like shit.” Raquel is Chilean, so she used a Spanish word, but I’m pretty sure that’s what she was going for.

“I have the flu,” I replied breathlessly, “or SARS.”

I managed to make it a couple of hours, until my boss asked me, for the sake of everyone else present, to get the hell out of the building.

When I arrived home, my in-laws were there, along with our friend Julie who was going to house-sit for us. Everyone was in a festive mood, which only made matters worse.

“Come have a glass of Merlot,” Mary, my mother-in-law said. She and I share a common interest in red wine for its health benefits, although rumor has it those benefits dull somewhat around glass number four.

“I’m just gonna take a little nap,” I said, stumbling down the hall to the bedroom.

“He thinks he’s sick,” Sandy explained.

“Dying is more like it!” I hollered, wondering if I should call for a priest. And convert to Catholicism.

I lay in bed, worrying about getting on a plane. I was clearly disease-ridden. Was it fair to expose my germs to the unknowing masses? But Sandy and his parents were so excited. I couldn’t let them down. I would have to man up.

Somehow, I managed to shower and endure the car ride to the airport, suffering in silence save for an occasional cry of discomfort to make sure everyone noticed my bravery. But as we shuffled through the security line, another, more terrifying thought occurred to me: we’re changing planes in Hong Kong. Hong Kong has those guys with temperature scanners. If you have a fever, they’ll quarantine you. I could be spending the next 3 days on a cot in the Hong Kong airport, being beaten by a Chinese guard.

Well, if that happens, I thought, I’ll film the whole thing on my cellphone and put it on YouTube. I’ll become a cause celebre. The state department will demand my release and when officials refuse, we’ll go to war with China.

That would at least make this whole barfy thing worthwhile.

TO BE CONTINUED…

My partner and I just returned from a trip to Asia that was, essentially, The Amazing Race without the shirtless Chippendales and prize money.

The idea for this trip started a year ago with my dad-in-law, who wanted to return to Vietnam where he’d served during the Vietnam war. Now, that sounds, in theory, like a very personal, almost mystical journey, one likely to bring a deep and profound sense of closure to a difficult chapter of his life.

But the rest of us – my partner, my mother-in-law and I – didn’t have much interest in reliving the Tet Offensive if there weren’t four-course meals and sparkly dancers involved. So instead of him taking a solo pilgrimage to Nah Trang, the four of us settled on a two-week cruise that began in Singapore, wound through Thailand and Vietnam, and ended up in Hong Kong.  And we added on a side trip to Kuala Lumpur, mostly because no one knows where it is and it sounds terribly exotic, as if we were visiting indigenous tribes that have never seen a Mr. Microphone or toilet paper.

We chose a cruise because, much like a Vegas hooker, we really like waking up someplace new every day. And we chose this particular cruise because we would be in each city on the itinerary for two days, instead of the usual 8-hour port stop you get on a ship that stops in New Orleans for Fat Tuesday. In as much was feasible in 48 hours, we wanted to soak up the culture, the local customs, and to begin to understand what it’s like to be Malaysian.  Or Singaporean. Or Thai. Or Vietnamese. Or Chinese.

None of this fazed us, of course. Seven cities across five countries in 18 days? Psssh. A no-brainer. We’ve done this kind of mad dash across Europe, Central America, Australia.

It’s all in a day’s vacation.

Unless you get the stomach flu. And lose your wallet.

TO BE CONTINUED…