Goodbye, Farrah

When I was in the fifth grade, Charlie's Angels burst into my world. I loved that show, and I bullied my mother every Wednesday evening to make sure we were home in time for me to see it.

That year Cary, Kenneth, and I began to play that we were the angels, with sixth grader Mike serving as our "Charlie." Cary was blonde and obviously played Farrah Fawcett's character; Kenneth and I fought over getting to be Jaclyn Smith. I won.

I had the magazines, the posters, and a shoebox full of Charlie's Angels cards. And years later in San Francisco, a group of us at Oracle made two hour-long episodes of Larry's Angels, a drag spoof about "three little girls who went to work for the world's large supplier of relational database software." In 1992 and 1993, it wasn't as easy to shoot and edit your own video as it is now. I've since transferred the movies from VHS to DVD, and as dated as they are, I still feel a bit of pride that we made them. And when the new Angels movies came out a few years ago, we were all amazed by how many lines were apparently lifted verbatim from our movies.

Somehow those "three little girls" have had a far bigger impact on my life than I'm sure my mother guessed back then. They gave me the first outlet for exploring my own sexuality, but they were also just fun to watch.

FARRAH FAWCETT died today after a long bout with cancer. She will be missed.