personal essay week 4 - caught shining

the waiter set my plate down

"thank you" as i'm contemplating

what the fuck i ordered

i rotate the plate to see if this

creature

is more manageable from another angle

mom is smiling secretly

she reveals that

she knows

she is okay with everything

like i knew she would be

but over lunch because of one

silly mistake my sister made?

while she's sipping brown ale and

i'm trying to figure out

how to bite into my sandwich

funny because nothing has happened

we are just doing what we have been doing

plus talking

it's just a proposal

i am insistent.

mom says

"my january baby's growing up

my little girl's in love"

but she's always been

such a silly woman

and hopelessly romantic

so i don't know how to act around my family

they have never known something so big about me

i am so good at keeping hidden

and when this was right in front of them

did they see?

No.

it took a little nudge from a poem

that accidentally got left in their line of vision

not even my mistake

because i know how to wipe my tracks

as i'm running away backwards

so i'm on stage melting under bright lights

EXPOSED

performing a facsimile of my life

i have forgotten how i used to be

i have forgotten my act

i'm trying to seem normal as usual

i have forgotten how to be around her

and i know they can see it now

when i lay against her shoulder

i hope at least they have a memory of who they think i am

that they can reteach to me

so "hi mom!" here's a shoutout to my family

the nosy noisemakers discovering me in here

back again? who let you in?

we'll get a bouncer for this haven

-- my former self, March 2003

I have always given myself a hard time for writing about writing, even though sometimes it’s the only thing I have to say, and probably writing about writing is better than not writing at all. Maybe.


In middle school, I read constantly, and in high school, I wrote constantly. In 2001, my best friend and I started a poetry blog together, which evolved into a writing and art blog with 36 members before fizzling out in 2008, long after Brittany and I were officially BFFs no more.


In general, my focus is terrible. I know a little about a lot, and I’ve quit nearly everything I’ve started. But for a few years, my blog -- writing, reading, web-master-ing -- gave me purpose. Confidence, even. And community! Something I’d been craving, and still crave. This group knew all my truths (even if they were told slant) thanks to my feral free verse. I had no training; I was a runaway train.


These things come back to haunt you, don’t they, the train loops back around the track. My younger sister, also a writer, artist, and steadfast member of the blog, accidentally left the website open one day over spring break in 2003. Of all the damn poems she could have read (we had hundreds of posts by now) my mom found a love poem I had penned just a few days before: “i am wearing your jacket / because it smells like you” etc etc you get the jist.


Mama invited me out to lunch at Boscos, the only local brewpub at that time. I should’ve known something was up, since it was just the two of us, but the thought didn’t cross my mind. I wore the aforementioned jacket, as I had done every single day of spring break, feeling cozy and brave all at once. After the monstrosity that was my sandwich arrived, Mama let loose that she had read the poem.


"My little girl's in love!" Her eyes sparkled over the beer glass.

"We're just talking, we haven't decided if we want to do anything or just be friends. Nothing happened."

"Okay, okay... I just can't believe it, my little January Baby is all grown up."

"Nothing happened!" I picked at my sandwich.

"Well... I just want you to know that I love you and support you, whatever you do. And it’s okay to be gay.”

"I'm not gay, I'm bi."

"But are you more attracted to men or women?"

"Neither! I’m… I'm right.. in the middle." I tried to show her with my hands. 50/50.

“But I want you to know that being gay is not easy, it can make life harder. There's a whole different set of problems..."



This was the extent of her speech. Whether or not she said it out loud, she implied that, if I were really “in the middle” I could choose to only date men, and that would make my life a lot simpler, safer, and happier.


Of course, as soon as we got home, I scratched out yet another poem about the discovery of the first poem, the subsequent conversation, and the acknowledgement that my safe space was no longer private. But even that poem is not the whole story. It doesn’t mention those difficult parts of the conversation, or that even as she verbalized that she was okay with my choices, she implied that they were somehow wrong or would end up hurting me. It doesn’t even mention that I was wearing the jacket and how embarrassing that felt, in the too-big booth at Boscos. It was not a vessel of pride now, but shame.


What the poem does say is that Elise and I were not actually romantic or dating.


~~~~~~~~~~


"It's a perfect day! A perfect day, Elise!"



I liked her as soon as I saw her. Comic book cover printed t-shirt and close cropped blond hair. I thought she would never see me but somehow she did, and my shuttered world blew open wide.



Theatre friends, gay BFF, cool-dork boyfriend (1 year older), and in the fall, a CAR. Decent-ish music tastes, but malleable enough for me to work with. Cruising immediately improved, which was good because that was pretty much all we did. Drove around town and stood around in various parking lots. What else is there, then? Suddenly somehow we had become a true GROUP, the first one we belonged to that we had chosen by ourselves. (At least that's how it was for me.)



It would go like this: Elise would already be with Kevin, so they would pick up Brock and Laylee in East Memphis, then head to midtown to get me, blast Violent Femmes on the way to the Media co-op for indie movie night, then stand around in the parking lot for 3 hours afterwards. They'd drop me off first, which made me sad but gave me time to start blogging before everyone else got home, at which point we would often continue hanging out virtually, via AIM. And we kept on going and growing.



Somehow Elise saw me and now: belonging, mobility, support, identity, self-seen-ness.



It wasn't long before I was smitten. Our group had developed a language of physical affection, dancing, and inside jokes that continued to grow our intimacy with each other. Our vulnerability allowed us to share mental health struggles and tap into half-conscious ideas about sexuality and gender and identity. Oh all the typical teenage things, really! But in this case, practically no one was straight, and if they were, they inhabited omega spaces in some other sense. (We later learned that our classmates called us "the emo kids" even though not one of us ever went through that black eyeliner stage. I decided they were just jealous that we were so full of love and having so much fun.)



Kevin and Elise broke up eventually, and I was there to support her, as I had through her previous break up. I was sleeping over nearly every weekend. Morgan Fox, our friend and mentor, gave us a copy of his first feature film, Three Minutes (Based Upon the Revolution of the Sun), after he found out we had been renting it from Black Lodge Video every single week. The movie is very DIY, very autobiographical, and very gay, and it gave us an opening and a language to start talking about our sexualities. Turns out, pretty much all of us were identifying as “bi” at the time. Elise and I watched Three Minutes while cuddling on the couch at her parents’ house. At play rehearsal, she'd lean into me and I'd stroke her hair. We had been talking about bisexuality for months and eventually started considering whether to let our relationship flow in a more romantic direction.



It was probably my idea, looking back. I was elated, walking on air. She went out of town for spring break but left her jacket at my house, and I didn't take it off for a week. And being what I was back then, I wrote a love poem and I posted it on my poetry blog, of which Elise was also a member. It was a missive, an arrow, supposed to make her swoon. It was an error.



After spring break, after the Boscos incident, I stopped wearing the jacket. Elise and I kept cuddling, but I felt different around my family now. Estranged, even though Mama said I wasn't doing anything wrong. (I wasn't, was I?)



One day Elise called me, so excited, she had just come from from Music Fest where she ran into her ex (GAG) and they ended up hanging out and having so much fun and they MADE OUT and isn't that the best?? I was floored. Had she not received any of my love arrows, in all those months? My sweets and songs. My hugs and hums. I probably pretended to be happy for her, though. I guess I had it wrong all along. I hid the hurt, but the damage was done. Six months later we had stopped speaking. A pitiful fizzle. And it would be years before I felt I had earned the right to call myself queer.

personal essay week 3 - postcards, unsent

daphne,
sometimes i hear your laugh, its ghost, and my whole body misses you.
i'm sorry i tried to kiss your nose. i hope you know.



you bastard,
you were never thursday. you are a goat, no you don't deserve that.
from now on, i will call you what you are: liar. pathetic. unforgiveable.
one day you will try to say my name and it will cut your silver tongue.
one day you will forget me entirely, while i will always work to undo you.



my beautiful friend,
i wish i would have known sooner you were trans. i wish we could have undone each other long before you announced the news on social media. we could have been bathroom buddies, truth tellers, holders of hands. to celebrate scars is to remember our travels. maybe together we could have seen the seams fraying, the tip of my chrysalis unsilking. it's okay, i'm here now, welcome home.

personal essay, week 2

Frog prince twins sipping gin and snorting Torchy's. Mind meld magic in the grass outside the party. Sick so special man yr movie's really arty.

 We blew by SXSW. Full contrarian status, I refused the widely used abbreviation, "south-by," and ran around shouting for weeks,* "We're going to southbee! southbee!" Big business tech tycoon nightmare carnival took over the whole town. When I lived in Austin, I hated the whole racket -- the traffic, the tourists, the lines, the logos, the litter, the excess. Well of course I still hate it, so even though I was ecstatic that we had been invited, I was determined to fully embody anti-SXSW values whenever possible. I stayed up late making homemade paper business cards. I insisted our crew get matching jean jackets, the Ghost Fleet. 

 We trash talk, we lip lock, we jaywalk for miles. We dumpster, we long fur, we sweet meat and smiles.

 You know, of course, it turned out to be a lot of milling around, as is the case with so many conventions. We ate cole slaw sandwiches inside a massive, empty sound stage while the adults had barbecue. We became festival friends with a woman whose movie, in the “Midnights” category, was about a female necrophile. Before the premiere, we visited the new GOAT YOGA studio in same dang strip mall as the movie theatre. You can't make this shit up.** 

 While the world hurdled ever onward into the lie of neverending capitalist death show, I found myself surrounded by my best friends, my very favorite people, love bugs I've known for decades and buddies I’ve known only briefly, together, sharing visions, feeding on each other's passion, running from the juggernaut and WINNING. Day drunk, sun spilling in, what a ride. Somehow my favorite people, my best loves, all in one place at the same time. The overwhelm - the too muchness of it - the bigness of us made small by the drone. 

personal essay class - week one quick write

cramps grumpy crumpet. blaring bleating trumpet. sticky fickle carpet. yr never gonna stop it.

when t​he​ bell rings in there, ​swings in there, sings despair, try not to care but hey​ you​ over there,
you can't escape the ding ding ding ding crushing twisting cramping.

how about that now, how about you talk to her. what did she ever do to you!

like conjuring my inner critic, i will pluck you, uterus, out and set you up right here on the futon.
it's real hard to get them out.​

the bleeding never bothered me.
​you know i can't abide a lie!
middle school was murder, seats stained, jeans ruined, cruel laughter in the corners.

​this is so boring, i'm bored of myself.
are you writing or reading or even thinking? which one are you doing! pick forgodssake!
you got self conscious and that's okay. are you feeling too vulnerable today?
do we need to go in another direction?

​i didn't mean to pick on you.​ it is just the body of me that is talking right now, so it only made sense.
a sweet bright drop-

you can't stop the squiggles. little worm in there, nast. a lonely sequin on the doormat.
every day i nearly die, and so do you, and so do you.

yr world has really shrunk, huh. all there is, curled and contained. the bedroom. the kitchen.
the walls. the ceiling. the face of yr "honey."
​(​in tarot, the ​figure of the World​ is intersex - non-binary - in between - across - trans​)​
but what about the ant on my pants?
and waht about these fucking cramps?
if i have a body (and so far, i do) will nothing make it quiet?

the World isn't in there. it never was and never will be. the World is too vast and vibrant to be just this. the oven is not the cake. mammals think we are so brave.

don't worry, we're all still god, and so are you, and so are you. i am the white hot center of a web of love, and so are you, and so are you.

the center of me tunes its frequency to the center of Things. it's cool to vibe in, but don't linger. you can't! catch hold of the knot that brought you here and climb back toward it, back to bones and blood and oh, cramps. sing yr thanks to every moon + every womb but bless the ​earthworm, the slippershell​, anemone​. all things god and so are you and so are you​: a sweet bright drop.​