Personal Highlights of 2007

Okay, there's really only one. Sure, I got into Just for Laughs this year, making it possible for my parents to see me perform at an internationally acclaimed comedy festival (Who's an "accident" now, suckers?). Sure, I found true love. (At least I think it's true love; she has the password to my gmail account.) Yes, I debuted on television, garnering fans from as far afield as England and Ottawa. Yes, I made some great friends, with whom I shared holidays and fun nights and poutine-induced indigestion. Indeed, I traveled the southern U.S. of A. with the Dykes of Hazard Comedy Tour, learning way more than I wanted to know about Louisiana. (In the state of Louisiana, same-sex marriages are banned but marriages between cousins are a-okay!) Yes, I grasped the tiny fingers of more than a few tykes, helping them discover both the joy of upright mobility and the tragedy of taking a coffee table to the face. Any of these moments could have been the highlight of 2007, but one moment stands out for me in particular, one very private and personal moment: the day Jodie Foster came out of the closet.

On December 12, 2007, after fiercely guarding her private life for a decade and a half, Jodie Foster finally admitted what we've all known for a long time: she hasn't been in a really kick-ass movie since Silence of the Lambs. I mean, Contact, Panic Room and Flightplan were decent, but Maverick? Really? Anytime Mel Gibson is cast as a "wisecracking gambler," it's going to go from smug to worse. Jodie, Jodie, Jodie. You should have known better. In December, while receiving an award at the Women in Entertainment Power 100 breakfast in L.A., Jodie thanked "my beautiful Cydney" in her acceptance speech.

Jodie didn't actually come right out and say she was gay, but inferences can be made. With a name like "Cydney," the beautiful girl in question is one of three things:

1. A sexy cyborg built by a skinny, Pakistani geek at M.I.T.
2. A spoiled, Upper East Side 2-year-old on her way to a mommy-and-me hot yoga class.
3. A lesbian life partner.

I wager the latter, mostly because I can't see how a spoiled, Upper East Side 2-year-old or a cyborg could have helped Jodie Foster make it onto the Entertainment Power 100 list. That's the kind of milestone one needs some serious homo lovin' to achieve. Or at least some serious life-partnering. While Jodie was busy making movies, someone had to order the imported, Swedish, moose-milk cheese. Someone had to make sure the $750,000 Human Rights Campaign donation cleared. Someone had to schedule the Dead Sea mineral salt scrub spa treatment appointments and send Anne Sweeney a silk-wrapped, diamond-encrusted, organic mango basket. Someone had to polish the 14th century platinum gravy ladle.

Fine. Obviously, I have no idea what Jodie and Cydney's personal life looks like. I'm basing it on lives I've seen, but with more dolla dolla bills thrown into the mix. I also have no idea what dolla dolla bills look like, but I'm basing them on things I've seen thrown at boobs in rap videos.

So, how did lesbians react to the news? Some wept. Some celebrated. Some were like, "Whatevs. When's L-Word season 5 starting? That trans one is hot." I squealed with glee and then felt retroactively vindicated for 17% of my masturbatory fantasies since 1990.

Like many a budding lesbo, I knew Foster was gay before I knew I was gay. Heck, I knew Foster was gay before I even knew what gay WAS. How else can one explain the fact that I spent the whole summer I was 15-turning-16 renting every Jodie Foster movie ever made? I just knew. I knew. There was something kindred in the twinkle in her eye, the way she moved her mouth, the fact that she always looked uncomfortable in a period-piece dress. (Let this be my second and final reference to the film Maverick.) I even saw Bugsy Malone, an all-child gangster musical, in which Jodie plays Tallulah, the creepily flirtatious lead singer of Fat Sam's speakeasy. Lest you skip over the details of that previous sentence, which I will admit is jam-packed with information, let me recap. All-Child. Gangster. Musical. Those are three concepts you don't want to see mixed up in a movie any more than you'd want to see a movie sold as, say, an All-female Plumber Drama. Actually, wait a sec. I would see that. Jodie Foster, Judi Dench, and that trans one from the L-Word starring in an All-female Plumber Drama. Welcome to the other 83% of my masturbatory fantasies from now on.

Many people are criticizing Jodie for waiting so long to come out, but I'm not among them. Because of my careful viewing, I know that she actually came out during the filming of Nell. The thing is, everyone on the set assumed she was practicing the nonsense known as "Nellspeak." Watch for it. Every time Nell looks like an angel with spatial reasoning issues and a low I.Q., cooing "chick-a-bay" over and over, that's actually Foster trying desperately to communicate, "I am gay!" Chick-a-bay: I am gay. Chick-a-wee: I love pussy; I seriously do. No, seriously, I really, really do. I honestly and seriously really do. I love pussy. Seriously.

Apparently Foster met her partner on the set of Sommersby, which didn't surprise me at all. I knew it! I could sense their lesbian love blossoming; that's why I watched that movie eleven times. Or, wait. No. I watched that movie eleven times because Jodie wore her hair in long braids. It's all coming back to me now. Hell yeah, those braids. I challenge you to find any other hairstyle that's as cozy and down home and yet, at the same time, so sexily indicative of finger dexterity. You can't! Unless you count when people shave complex zigzags into the sides of their heads, but I, for one, am not generally attracted to 15-and-a-half-year-old boys. Unless I've mistaken them for lesbians. (Note to lesbians and teenage boys: stop wearing wife-beaters and Converse! You're confusing me.)

Jodie finally admitting that she's batting for Team Chick-a-wee was the absolute highlight of 2007 for me. Suspecting she was and yet unable to confirm it, I haven't been able to relax and enjoy any of her movies, at least in the way they were intended to be enjoyed. While Jodie's on screen, I can't help but whisper lewd comments like, "You trying to make contact? I'll show you where you can make contact. In my pants." Or: "You designed the flight plan? Well, I've got a plan for you to look into. In my pants." The Brave One was difficult to get through in this fashion, though. Expressions like, "You wanna see bloodshed? I've got some bloodshed. In my pants," and "Hey, I'll show you a murderous vigilante. In my pants," don't have as sexy a ring to them.

2007 will always be, for me, the year in which I achieved all of my life-until-now's major goals. I passionately pursued my life's calling, I expanded my capacity to love and be loved, and I found out, for sure, that Jodie Foster is a total, raging dyke. In fact, 2007 was so wonderful that it's given me high hopes for 2008. May this be the year in which I make a living doing one-woman shows, I continue to cultivate romantic and platonic love on a deep and intimate level, and Lisa Simpson grows up, turns real, comes out and marries me. Here's to 2008!