.dirtydesire.

It's National Coming Out Day

2006-10-11T14:28:00.000-04:00

Please, for the love of Gay, get your Queer on, and tell everyone you know, or just one person, that you're a big Homo! and i will, too!

Cee Vee

2006-10-10T09:22:00.000-04:00

last night, i spent more than two hours trying to figure out what is important about me and what, frankly, is not worth mentioning.

and i dont want to even mention the formatting. because i've really never had much grace, never had too much aptitude for presentation - always been inside a kinda dirty jeans wearing, inside my head being, coffee stains on my shirt having, spewing ideas in sort of a Beef Stew format. give me too many choices, and my chest starts to wheeze, and my skull starts to hurt.

did i should mention that I am applying to PhD programs?

so last night, with half an ear listening to The Bachelor: Rome, I was trying to make all sorts of decisions about my worthiness for the CV (curriculum vitae, for all you Latin Lovas) that i have to turn in with my application. and this Glorious Gay ponderment kept whizzing around my typing fingers:

"...525,600 minutes! 525,000 journeys to plan. 525,600 minutes - how can you measure the life of a woman or man?" (thank you, Jonathan Larson).

Right. How do I know what will be important, what will Grab! The! Reviewers! much less what format to put it in: does my Teaching Experience look more snappy in this blue descending-time-order tie, or is it more impressive if listed stoically in this Humanists' chunked-together-by-Institution-name sweater vest? moreover, do i call it 'Teaching Experience,' 'Adjunct Positions,' or 'Come Watch Me Stand Up In From Of Both Eager And Cranky Learners?'

I am terribly excited, really. I just hate to formality. and, as much as it hurts ever to admit, I hate the impending rejection (see previous post), and the sneaking suspicion that everyone else at the Academic Soiree secretly knows what organizational/intellectual/conversational Fork to use, and i'm just the first one in my family to go to University and, well, eating Beef Stew with my hands.

and i hate the uncanny aloneness that creeps up on me whenever try to achieve this thing that makes me orgasmicly thrilled to the gills, that Thinking Life. Until the Feminist Film Night that changed everything, I worked my academically very much in isolation, and that was something i was used to: the odd nerdy duck in my family, i would hole up in my room, writing poetry by candlelight. no, really. by candlelight. i mean, isn't that how Shakespeare did it? Isn't that how you do it? all dramatic and straining your Poet-Eyes, and painful and muses and stuff?

my Mom read a lot of Danielle Steele, when she wasn't obsessively cleaning the apartment, then the house. And my Dad read a lot of Tom Clancy, when he wasn't obsessively Fire Fighting to save money for said house. always work first, and words, always, but a distant second. so Thinker-Poets must write in secret, and in aloneness, and, certainly in the dark, because to do otherwise would be to waste good work energy.

but i don't want to separate work and play so much. and i want to exist, ultimately and ecstatically, in conversation.

recently rejected for publication

2006-10-09T16:24:00.000-04:00

a discretionary epistle

a recovering anxiety addict;
released with only a few new
found sense and a pen in my pocket,
sloughing off the desire to use my sword for stabbing.

to you, a massive missive, with a turn-cheek and squint-eye:

i don’t want to presume
you will attack me, darlin',
but sometimes without my trusty rusty
piercing-blade, and in the midst of my withdrawal,
i slip slide back,
try to employ my shield, and
snap
to a taut-muscle-sweaty-brow defensive stance -
in that, i see you as a noxious cloud
joined with the dense fog of foul strangers that betray,
with white-noisy betrayers bubbling in my head.

and, with them,
i could swear it, that
you will strike me,
and wound me,
and then disown me.
i hold up my flimsy shield,
try to ward off the thick mimetic,
lost in recovery,
and waiting, raw and addicted and with paper-thin protection , to stand your lash:
"Come On. Hit Me. I Deserve It."

quietly, to me from you, a mnemonic memo glides, across my guarded advance:

in smooth rhythm and soothing rhyme
you bassa danza with my newfound form,
whisper 'flagellation isn't all that sexy anymore,'

my breastplate clanking to the floor
drifting me, uncovered and breathless,
crosswise and upsidedown,
our gorgeous gangly arms akimbo in kind,
lapping the uncanny-sweet-lemon-drop dripping off your tongue.

then, despite and to honor
these under-armor-skin and bones,
tingly wakening from slumber,
tender and brittle
from lack of light and loving touch -
discovered, I present myself, tenderhearted, to you -

a sheepish wide-open knight,
a dis-devotee of defense and disrobed of pre-emptive chain-mail,
strong without all that metal,
I adore the passion of our vulnerable dance.

`````````````````

thus endeth the mope.

R.I.P

2006-10-05T12:48:00.000-04:00

Rest In Peace, dear, bad-ass Cleopatra Jones, a.k.a Tamara Dobson.

you don't know kung-fu hottness, until you've seen this.

and, yes, that is THE Shelly Winters, who was Nana Mary on Roseanne and, as far this working class qweeirdo is concerned, is one of the Best Shows of all Gay time. for, it is where i saw my first Lesbian Kiss, which somehow i internalized as a Good Thing, despite the stupid WARNING at the beginning about the 'adult nature' of the episode.

saved my life, i tell you.

actually, i think i will tell you. perhaps a short piece from The Chronicles of I.M.Butch. Stay tuned.

word watch

2006-10-03T08:25:00.000-04:00

here i am in Pennsylvania, and even the National News is talking about the school shootings in Amish Lancaster County.

Paradise, PA, as it were. and when i was the stock manager of a natural foods store in South Philly, the folks that brought us most of out Organic produce were from Paradise. and, right now, my thoughts are with them.

and this is the thing that is stuck in my mind the most. apparently, the murderous rampage-er told his wife that "he was acting out to achieve revenge for something that happened 20 years ago" according to CNN.com. anyway.

revenge.

the aformentioned quote is what the police said, but most newscasts are saying Charles Carl Roberts IV had a "grudge" from 20 years ago. seems a little dismissive, don't you think? i mean, grudges are always depicted as silly things. like, i may have a grudge against my 7th grade friend for sitting choosing to sit at the Popular kids table, instead of with me. pissed, yes. maybe i should work it out, yes. because it's not ok to hold a grudge, right. but, in most cases, we are expected to just get over it. no biggie.

grudge.

'Grudges' don't make people tie up young girls and shoot them execution style, do they? something for real serious truamatized this guy, and what ever it is, it deserves a more powerful term then grudge, i think. maybe.

but we can't seem to see people as simultaniously victims of really nasty horrible shit, who are also also perpetrators of really nasty, horrible shit on others. Andrea Yates is the first that comes to mind for me. she's either a cold-blooded murderer or guilty by reason of insanity, but neither description/verdict/decree of identity addresses domestic violence or post-partum depression as viable ideas under the Law. friggin' September 11th is another. it's all Guilty or mutually exclusively Innocent, or Good or mutually exclusively Bad. i bet if we approached things more Venn Diagram-like, we would get a much clearer map of when the hell is going on.

and to my mind, the repressed always returns, no question - when, where, and how is the matter we need to be concerned with. it doesn't amatter what happened to Charles Carl Roberts IV. It is a matter of how he got to a place where murder/abusing others is the only way to reconcile it. And when some caring person sees others' in pain, and is brave enough to intervene, it creates a safe place for everyone who has been victimized to bare witness. and they might just be able to purge their anguish through spewing words, rather than create more pain with their spewing bullets.

football = no showmance

2006-10-02T21:14:00.000-04:00

this just ruined my Monday night:

Hey Bachelor fans! The Eagles are playing Monday night on 6abc, but you can still catch the 2 hour premiere of:
The Bachelor: Rome
Just set your VCR/DVR to 6abc Tuesday night at 1:05am, for 2 hours of romance.
You catch The Bachelor: Rome at its regular time - Monday at 9pm the following week.
So don't forget...the 2-hour Premiere of The Bachelor: Rome - late night Tuesday, on 6abc.

what? tuesday is after monday, and, are you sure that you mean Tuesday night, because methinks you mean Monday morning....

either way, its
not.
right.
now.

Fuck your TiVo. i want my rome-mance.

Desperate Times

2006-09-26T08:28:00.000-04:00

i rode/road my bike into work today. it is a decent haul - about 43 blocks. and it is kind of ridinginthefall day where you climb on to your bike lamenting about not enough layers on your torso, hop off feeling kissed by the wind mixing with browsweat.

i even saw the same crossing guard waiting to cross kiddies at 7th and spruce. the same woman who was there last school year - always seeming to be at the end of her shift (she is never crossing anyone, just gazing off into traffic... thinking about her next job? does she go inside the school and become a hall monitor? or does she do something totally unrelated like, go to her own office, the one that is especially there for her because she is the CEO? it's gotta be something in between. i wish i had the attention span to be a short story writer.).

hop(p)ing off of my bike with these thoughts: generating bodycozywarm through muscle movement. same crossing guard, different season = same me, different season. big lungs/big words/big stories/not so big attention span.

those thoughts are in my head/heart when a guy approaches me. Very, very blue eyes. he says:

"can i wha wha nert far wha wzrt?"

(me) "hmm"

(him, gesturing with hands and forearms now, which are dirty and scared. or, come to think of it, maybe just dirty. or just scared.) "can i wha wha nert far wha wzrt?"

(me, stepping into him one step closer, by kind of with the safety restraint stance i learned at the group home - front leg and foot pointing toward the person, your weight on your back leg, with its foot perpendicular. good balance this way...) "wait. say again?"

(him, head down) "i thank you for you humor. i'm sorry. i don't know how to do this. i am working cleaning out these buildings here. and, well (hands shaking now, as well as his voice...) and, well, someone stole my lock box and, i'm sorry but, i need to get back and....

(me - a bit impatient, a bit get to the point, a bit not being about to handle this guys shame at his situation - say...) "what can i do for you bud?"

a pause is required here. because, i know that anyone that i ever, ever, lived in a city, can really just insert their own location, day, time and dialogue into this situation, and get to the same point, and come to the same set of swirly and twirly questions:

do i give this guy money?

is he shaking out of nervousness because, as he says, he has "never had to do this before," (i.e. ask for spare change)?

or is he shaking because he is an addict?

let's return to the dialogue:

(me - a bit impatient, a bit get to the point, a bit not being about to handle this guys shame at his situation - say...) "what can i do for you, bud?"

(him) "well, i really just want to get back to (location uttered indecipherably, something about north philly...)."

(me) "i can give ya a couple of bucks" (sticking my hand in my pocket, pulling out a five and handing it to him)

(him) "How can i return this to you"

(me, putting my hand gently on his upper arm) "just get home safe, ok?" (turning, walking away)

what he needed it for, i will never be sure. but i was feeling like giving, and he was clearly in pain. and feeling very ashamed. maybe he will get high. maybe he will get on a bus.

and either way, disastrously, he will, alas, get home.

and then. to my inbox:

To: All ISD

Subject: Panhandler – beware

High priority

This morning on Market street a panhandler tried to go after and grab a man who would not give him money. He then came after me. I did report him to the police but he ran down Market street. I have also seen him in this area before panhandling.

He is about 6' 2" and is wearing a white baseball hat, light blue tshirt, dark blue shorts and white sneakers and is carrying a dark blue tote bag. He also has very blue eyes.

I don't want to alarm anyone but just be on the lookout.

Thanks.

mr. customerservice

i'm going to spend some time on this site today:
The Philadelphia Committee to End Homelessness

epidermic claustrophobia

2006-05-25T19:20:00.000-04:00

but on days, like today, when i feel like i want to fucking crawl out of my skin, i get to write things like what is below (at the bottom. in italics). i have been asked starting to write a weekly "editior's pick" for The Porn Company's "for her" site. I will be writing about movies for the "for women-->by women" and the "fetish" categories.

so i have to remember that on days when i want to crawl out of my skin. that is literally the feeling, by the way. epidermic claustrophobia , i have nicknamed it.

(definition by 'wordnet,' or some such shit)...: claustrophobia n : a morbid fear of being closed in a confined space

.morbidity.

so this feels like a coming out a bit. about my day to day. about back pain. about my anxiety. about the repetitions in my head. about how i can fucking love and fucking hate a part of myself so much. oh, and about what my ovaries have to do with all of it. about how i could write all of these words but never, never, hear my voice say them out loud.

that would just be too much.

oh, here's that review/description i wrote:
The first time I saw Take This Down I needed to know more about the creator, Anna Span. This was porn like I had never seen before - real bodies and stylized bodies, real-type situations as fantasy, and real, hard dyke sex. Turns out, she started out as anti-pornography, and I think her discriminating eye was born out of that history - she wanted a world where womens sexuality is valued and catered to, and Take This Down does just that.
Take This Down taps into the power-plays that give a charge to every day relationships between women - a Butch and a Femme, a manager of a coffee shop and a barista, a star and her assistant, a temporary secretary and her boss, and a rental agent and a potential renter - and lets the sexual energy bubble over enough to get everything sticky and wet. Real-life fantasy and pleasure, big time fucking and sucking from a womans perspective, Anna Spans Take This Down revels in aspects of sex not often shown in mainstream porn - flirting as a sexy prelude to nasty fucking, domination and submission minus the whips, chains and leather, and lots and lots of orgasms.

.yes.

Porn Lesson 1

2006-04-24T20:27:00.000-04:00

penises are like snow flakes -
each one is different.

-->today's favorite: Shay Sights' "Sex Illusions"

the anxious papers -- chapter one

2006-04-19T20:40:00.000-04:00

.anxiety is

an isolated space.

ears and boundaries

2006-03-14T10:59:00.000-05:00

my birthday was on sunday. for some reason, it always feels like it falls on a sunday. i prefer the birthday weekend approach; it allows for me to not feel like i have to pack all celebration and reflection into my birthday proper.and it is also spring-ish here in philly.

now, i'm a good northeastener, too, and i know that it is going to go back down to 40 degrees sometime this week. but, while it was warm, and for the first time in 2006, me and T had sweaty sex. the kind that smells different. the kind that makes belly stick together and hair matte. i had my first girl-on-girl sexual experience during the springtime, so spring sex has a special place in my heart. and my mangina. it makes me feel whole.

and i've also been fairly anxious. i am sure that the communication and programming difficulties at the group home are part of it, and my lack of income. but there was also this strange conversation that i had with my grandfather that has conjured the "imdoingnothingright" personality of my Anxious Andy.

I called to thank him and my grandmother for sending me a birthday card. mind you, the conversation i usually have with my grandfather is very brief, because he and i are impaired in the commonality of having nothing to talk about. it's usually him sweetly competing about how his new location (east coast of Florida, 3 years) has better weather than his homeland (yonkers, ny, 75 years). but in the conversation yesterday, he says "you sound good..." and i say "i feel good" because i did, walking west on walnut to catch the bus home from a work meeting. then he says to me "give me a big kiss." huh? just as i give a kiss to the phone, i hurry and hang up because the bus coming.

and because i felt gross. did i mention that i am 29? did i mention that this is a phone call? this is the same grandfather that used to "nibble" on my ears when i was younger. take the whole ear into his mouth and suck on it really. later in my life, it made me never sit on the couch next to him at Thanksgiving. the couch was where he would sometimes grab me and do it (was i 5? was i 10? i don't know....) and i always hug him hello or goodbye strategically hiding my ear. and i became notoriously shy. before this, after this, as a result of this, i don't know. but i became very very shy. around strangers, which in a family like mine, came to mean most of my extended bloodline.

but this was something i have already remembered. and it comes up for me every once in a while when i am having sex, or while i am sitting cuddly on a couch. or just when ever it fucking feels like showing up. but what i remembered after this conversation was that i had told my mom and dad that Pop-Pop was biting on my ears and that i would try to squirm away from it and that he wouldn't let me and that it made me feel bad. and they were not hearing it. and they told me that i need to respect my elders, and that he was just showing that he loved me, and that i should stop being so shy and rude. and so when he said "give me a big kiss," i felt paralyzed. like there was nothing i could do. like i would be being disrespectful to not succumb to his requests.

it's funny how we have this cultural stereotype about the overbearing Aunt: she's gonna pinch your cheeks, and she's gonna call you "baby boy" in front of your friends, and she's gonna give you hugs that squish your boyhood. but i bet there are way more "father figures" out there that cant fucking handle themselves around little girls, that don't know what to do with their daughters, nieces, granddaughters once puberty starts turning everything batty. or don't know what to do with us was before that. and that when a kid expresses discomfort about a family member, they are just told they are shy or rude or mistaken or exaggerating or otherwise dismissed. if it is addressed at all. and when you are a kid, and you learn this dynamic early, you associate discomfort with love and care. you feel guilty about not wanting to do something, even though it doesn't feel right at that moment. at least i have had to work through something like that.

listen.

framed

2006-02-20T11:04:00.000-05:00

what ever you do, do not look at the newly released pictures of the gross fucked up torture shit at Abu Ghraib. sick sad shit. it made me nauseas. the only way that you can look at them is if you pretend they are not real.

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Salon_obtains_entirety_of_Abu_Ghraib_0216.html

and who gives a shit about the timeline of when Cheney decided to release the news that his drunkass shot his rich buddy in the face? it is just a distraction to real crimes.

regarding beautiful welfare

2006-02-03T00:36:00.000-05:00

i learned (at least) five things tonight while working at the group home -->

regarding clients:
one, is that talking loud when you are trying to reason with someone just scares people.
and

two; that when restricting someones activities, you must always explain that it is the consequence of irresponsible behavior.

three; especially when you talk to teens that have been removed from their chaotic homes, talking loud and not explaining consequences will just cause them to say, "don't talk to me like i am a child. you are NOT my momma." and they will stop talking to you for the rest of your shift. and they will be totally justified in saying and doing so.

regarding supervisors:
four; i will often say no to something if it is not in my job description.

regarding myself:
five; that i can make mistakes and not be a horrible person. or, rather, just because i am learning, doesn't have to mean i have no clue. and always, always, apologies when you have treated someone unfairly. and that's what i plan on doing when i see this client again.

i also walked a (altogether not the same as above) client through reading a sentance today. a 16 year old kid. one solitary american english sentence. and no, english is not his second language; he comes from an environment when spanish and english are spoken simultaniously. and he hasen't been in school in over a year. and when he was, he was in the inadequate understaffed and underfunded Philly school system.
the amount of frustration that you can see drip off of someone who can not read is amazing. and the amount of fantasic coping strategies folks use to navigate through the world without emphasizing language is amazing, and really quite genius. but it seems so hard to advocate for yourself. and it appears difficult to understand your rights. and you always have to depend on others.
so tonight, when i was going over the resident handbook with a new client that i knew had a difficult time reading -- after he told me "i can't read. i mean, i can read. just not good. and this ain't gonna work, me trin' to read this" -- i explained everything to him. and he was zoning out, and asking questions, and trying to look at the booklet as i was reading sentences, me trying to explain their meaning so he could comprehend it. and finally, when we got to the end, there is this part when the client has to sign, and it goes something like this: "I, ____________, have read, understand and was able to ask questions about the policies and procedures contained in this handbook." and we read the sentence together. and we sounded things out. and we broke words a part. and we read it once. and then we read it again. and when he saw that i was not getting frustrated at his frustration, we read it a third time. and then he read it himself. the whole fucking sentence. all by himself.

and i thanked him for sharing with me. and i praised him for getting through it and succeeding.

and he said, sheepishly, "sure. no problem. maybe we can talk about the GREs sometime......" and got up from the table and went to do his evening chore.

that, my dears, is what i can wrap my self around. this is beautiful welfare. and i am humbled.

bitter idealist

2006-01-31T23:16:00.000-05:00

let me tell you something. and i think i have said it here before. looking for a job sucks. its just long days with you and your fucking qualifications. and you don't actually talk to anyone. but you are constantly in conversation with unnamed people, faceless evaluators that will read your email and them throw the fucking thing out.

and. and. i don't talk to anyone all day.... and then my lady comes home from working with 22 (spell it out and count 'em: twentytwo!) 4 year olds, and she is tired of course, and i'm all, "i saw this great job today" and " can you read this cover letter" and "i don't suck as much as my resume says, do i?" and she's all eyelids closing, but trying to make them stay open because she loves me and wants to be there for me. and i want to talk, because i haven't used my vocal cords all day, and she wants to nap, because she's had to calmly and relentlessly exercise them.
but tomorrow i send out a resume and cover letter i've been working on all day. and i feel good about it. although there is something about including salary requirments, and i have no fucking idea where to stick that information. and since thinking sometimes prevents me from doing, i just bet i will spend a good part of the morning trying to figure it out.

p.s. bush said tonight in his state of the union address that he wanted to dump a shit load of money into math and science education, so we can be on the cutting edge of creative technology. thanks georgie -- fuck art, eh? the only important education is math and science education? and this, my friends, is why i need to get back into school. to work in the study of the arts and humanities and make it political and pleasurable. give me an illuminated manuscript any day.

beautiful welfare

2006-01-25T16:00:00.000-05:00

It seems that everyone that i know right now is either working in social services and/or going to school for social work. and even though i am currently working in child welfare, i sometimes feel like an interloper. there is something very un-beautiful about this kind of work. (for me. for me.) and it brings me to this question: is beauty a luxury? or is introducing a sense of beauty a grand act of social welfare? and am i just channeling charles dickens right now, with all of his morally righteous poverty stricken icky kind of romanticism?

i ran across this idea of theraputic writing the other day. i really believe in the power of writing: to release, to feel forgivness, to repair a hurt soul. and i also believe that it is important to study the narratives of our lives, whether it be the victimized self-defense revenge fantasy narrative of the bush administration, or why it is that really gorey horror movies are coming back into the mainstream.

so it's clear that i like to think. and i'm definately not paid to think at my current job. which is why if i were to stay in the social services field, i think i would really have to do policy or administration. i love me some thinking and questioning; and if i dont get to do it, it becomes really self-destructive. but the current task, for real, is to find more of a job. the part time doesn't cut it. and thinking isnt going to do shit to help me with that.

cowmadonna, cowgays, and cowpresidents

2006-01-25T15:53:00.000-05:00

so way back in 2000, Madonna releases this album that has this cowboy theme. and its, like, so gay, as is everything that Madonna does. and for me, the theme came out of no where. unlike the geisha thing: totally makes sense for Madonna, even in its colonizing gesture (is it post-modern or is it colonizing? when is imitation flattery and when is it, well, fucked up) -- she's totally into the Asian thing, and seems to be all spiritual about it, but still does ads for sweatshop GAP, where craploads of women Asian women are forced to work. (i do have a hard time remembering that she is still a mainstream business woman superstar personality and, yes, not everything she does will be feminist.)

so, that's madonna; progressive sometimes, often not, but ALWAYS mainstream. but what's with the cowboys. the in the urban ghetto rural videos. beefcake cowboys in front of the the video for "Don't Tell Me" (which is, incidentally my favorite on the album). flash forward to 2006, and there's that gay cowboy movie. that's "Brokeback Moutain;" progressive sometimes, often not, but ALWAYS mainstream. here's thought number one for the day: what use, The Mainstream, for us activists and advocates and public intellectuals?
but in the meantime, for those of you that have seen the film, check out these Madonna lyrics. If you could watch the video too at http://www.madonna.com/spin/album/Music/Dont_Tell_Me/, that would be even better, but .....

Don't Tell Me

Words and Music by Madonna Ciccone and Mirwais Ahmadzarsquo and Joe Henry

Don't tell me to stop
Tell the rain not to drop
Tell the wind not to blow '
Cause you said so, mmm
Tell the sun not to shine
Not to get up this time, no, no
Let it fall by the way
But don't leave me where I lay down

Chorus:
Tell me love isn't true
It's just something that we do
Tell me everything I'm not
(first time:) But please don't tell me to stop
(all other times:) But don't ever tell me to stop

Tell the leaves not to turn
But don't ever tell me I'll learn, no, no
Take the black off a crow
But don't tell me I have to go
Tell the bed not to lay L
ike the open mouth of a grave, yeah
Not to stare up at me
Like a calf down on its knees
(chorus)

(chorus, prefixing 1st and 3rd lines with "Don't you ever")

[Don't you ever]
Please don't
Please don't
Please don't tell me to stop

[Don't you ever]
Don't you ever
Don't ever tell me to stop
[Tell the rain not to drop]

Tell the bed not to lay
Like a open mouth of a grave, yeah
Not to stare up at me
Like a calf down on its knees

how about that shit? how about that chorus!?! Tell the leaves not to turn/But don't ever tell me I'll learn, no, no/Take the black off a crow/But don't tell me I have to go !?! Like a calf down on its knees!!! beauitful!

so, i guess what i want to think about #2 is this: why this return to the cowboy as a trope: the president, the mainstream music, the mainstream film? what does it mean for gender and/or sexuality when we begin the the 21st century with the iconic cowboy in our white house, on our radio and TV, and in our movietheaters? what exists at this matrix of masculinity, american imperialism, homoeroticism in all male cultures, and masochism?

social work

2005-12-13T21:53:00.000-05:00

i'm having a hard time writing latedly, and i'm not sure why. i have some ideas, though. (i always have ideas). i've been doing a lot of listening lately at this new job. (oh, an update is in order .... i am a youth care worker for a lgbtq foster care home. it is a 24 hour place. it's not open yet, but the kids the kids are going to be 14 -18 and self-identified as lgbtq. their goal is to be reunified with family. iv'e never done anything like this before).

and, you know what, my girolfriend just came homw. and i am prioritizing human interaction vs. computer interaction. i'll tell you more tomorrow.

for november

2005-11-03T19:13:00.000-05:00

come on dream catcher

2005-10-20T20:42:00.000-04:00

panopticon

2005-10-20T20:16:00.000-04:00

i am suddenly feeling paralized by the very publicness of this blog. can i talk about how ive been _________ lately? or that i've been thinking about how ___________ effects my life? can i write about intimate relationships? am i willing for my life to be that public?

ugh.

this is all of the thinking that keeps me from writing in the first place. but im not quite sure how to get around it.

sometimes you see someone that you once knew, but you dont anymore and it feels like you are watching a flashback of something that never happened. and im glad i finally have a descripter for that feeling -- a flashback of something that never happened. Freud called this "uncanny." hot little etymological study he did about that word. the realized that if you run through the roots, it means both a home-like thing and something that is foreign. and that is exactly the feeling of uncanny, i think. and it is sortof where ive been at lately.

instant karma's gonna git you

2005-10-16T13:58:00.000-04:00

right after that last post i was feelin fine, fine, fine. i felt like i got out some thoughts, realsized how silly some of it was, and was excited for a good night sleep. i went to turn off the lights and get into bed with my lady, and i tripped over a fucking shoe and broke my toe. had to call out of work for two days. no healh insurance. my lady believes that it is my body telling me to slow the fuck down. i have to agree. its like all of my negative thoughts broke my toe.

so, iv'e basically been sitting around the house. and i have to say that i like it here. and i feel kinda well rested. i just have to figure out how to do that when im, you know, working. i've been reading this book, Feeling Good, (did you catch that title, Pisces....) and it is basically a cognitive therapy approach to depression. when i first started reading it, it was all "all feelings come from negative thoughts" and i saw the blinking lights of Patriarchy. it made me feel like i was supposed to deny my feeling and just Think Rationally, Son! but i recognised that as an old narrative. i know now that my feelings are very valid. what i need is a way for them to not be overwhelming. and the part that made sense in the book was that unrealistic and totalizing thoughts feed the monster of depression.

i'm so glad i broke my toe....

2005-10-13T23:53:00.000-04:00

i really fucking hate my job. and sometimes i get really mad. like, unreasonably mad. and i just want to break something. i never want to hurt some one (other than the fact that punching something until my hand is bloody seems like it will make the anger go away sometimes). it is a feeling of desiring destruction, though. annihilation. which i realize right now has the word "nihilist" in it. hmm.

ni·hil·ism ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-lzm, n-)n.

Philosophy.
An extreme form of skepticism that denies all existence.
A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.
Rejection of all distinctions in moral or religious value and a willingness to repudiate all previous theories of morality or religious belief.
The belief that destruction of existing political or social institutions is necessary for future improvement.

also Nihilism A diffuse, revolutionary movement of mid 19th-century Russia that scorned authority and tradition and believed in reason, materialism, and radical change in society and government through terrorism and assassination.
Psychiatry. A delusion, experienced in some mental disorders, that the world or one's mind, body, or self does not exist.

[Latin nihil, nothing; see ne in Indo-European Roots + -ism.]
nihil·ist n. nihil·istic adj. nihil·isti·cal·ly adv.

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth EditionCopyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

nihilist

n 1: someone who rejects all theories of morality or religious belief 2: an advocate of anarchism [syn: anarchist, syndicalist]
Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University

that's pretty bleak, eh. i mean, i believe in stuff. but i do think somethings need to be destroyed. what would it mean if someone who advocates destruction starts taking yoga? even more, what would it means for someone whose world is so much about destruction, what would it mean for that person to have a job where they actually like what they are doing. can i use my powers of destruction for good, rather than evil. tune in next time, folks -- same bat time, same bat..... oh, fuck this. sleep already, damnit.

these spin me right round, baby, right round.....

2005-10-12T08:24:00.000-04:00

.... like a record, baby, right round, right round.

here are some words.
nefarious
narcissistic

oh, and there was another one damnit. and it was a noun. and so itbecame this wonderous 3-word phrase that was written on my hand all day yesterday.

ta da!

2005-10-05T22:47:00.000-04:00

i explain a lot.

.ugh.

2005-10-03T16:27:00.000-04:00

of course, within 45 minutes of that post, i get a "comment" which is an advert for penile implants. gosh, how DOES capitalism know so well how to solve all of my problems. uncanny really, simply uncanny!

waining words

2005-10-03T14:48:00.000-04:00

i used to write all of these love poems. real sonnet sequence-like. all "you comeplete me, girl." i cringe to read some of them sometimes. maybe its just the lonelyness i felt that makes me shift in my seat when i revisit them. or the desperate need for connection and acceptance, even from those who were abusive to me. some of them are clearly not about the person i thought i was writing about, but, rather, like a good pisces, i was dreaming of other lands, other ways of connecting, the girl who would complete me, the one who would show me how to dance and lick my wounds and to never let one destract from the other.

but there is this one poem that i have been thinking about a lot lately. mostly because ive been thinking really hard about the word "woman," how i connect with it and how i dont. some thing with the word "transgender." i'm very foucaultian in this way -- i think through the world through words. which sometimes makes it hard to move because you can think about words forever, especially if you are me. but have been thinking about how the word "butch" feels more like my gender than the word "woman" and then i thought of this poem. or, rather, a line of a poem. my own words swirl in my head sometimes. i sould take this as a signal that i need to go back to those pieces. so it is the first line of the following poem that came to me.

Constitution

"For of the soul the body form doth take;

and soul is for doth the body make"

-- Edmund Spencer

i am a curiously boyish woman
with intentions and perceptions.
things about me not readily seen
in my lips or
in my eyes or
in my gait or

maybe in my eyes

but their language
is harder to decipher than
i might wish for some.

i am within my body
gloriously throughout my budy.
times,
certain times,
i can
feel i can
taste i am

present
with every cell in my body

that i am
curiously boyish and
that i am
strangely furryish and
that i am
not neccessarily drunk
when i laugh
except off anticipation,
and fear of condemnation.

you know, there was more about the girl in there but i'm realiozing that so much of these words are really not about the people that i was thinking of at the time. and i wonder if i could reconnect with them better if i thought about me rather that what this person was doing or not doing for me. i guess this is the begining of that project. which makes me think of a poem i wrote more recently.

to move from resentment
to empowerment,
would be my greatest joy.
to exist in multiple worlds,
masculine,
feminine,
working class kid,
college educated adult,

.bi-cultural.

a knight amdist re-mission

2005-05-18T22:02:00.000-04:00

i am a recovering anxiety addict;
released with only a few new
found sense in my pocket,
no more desire to use my sword,
and a lost ability to squint.

just a queer girlboy
open
trying to make it in the straight world.

and i dont want to assume
you are going to attack me, darlin',
but sometimes without my trusty
rusty piercing-blade, and in the midst of my withdrawl,
i cant help but employ my sheild, taking
on a defensive stance.
and with mostly a history of
being done wrong behind
to prepare me,
and the current everyday
dense fog of abusive strangers eyes to betry me,
i only see that
you will strike me,
and wound me,
and then disown me.

so i seek out the drama of the fight,
comfortable in my discomfort.
and without my cutting-edge,
i hold up my sheild
and say, through the thick, lost in recovery,
and waiting to bare your cuts:
"Come On. Hit Me. I Deserve It."

i stand naked and addicted to the saftey of defense
looking to be
blindsided by manipulation or condemnation

unable to take in, that,

.instead.

you always resist my guarded advance --
your approach is of your knowing
my newfound form longs to be held,
or that you might want to
take me
crosswise and upsidedown with
kind words and gracious
loving arms.

i dont want to
assume you are going to attack me, darlin'
but sometimes i cant
find my way behind this protection.
i dont want to assume i am corrupt
behind this chainmail, babe,
but i often cant find how to embrace this exposure.

and i want to be
strong without all that metal;

a knight
without condemning chivalry.

i want to
assume you will hold me close,
even though my under-skin and bones
are tender and brittle
from lack of light and loving touch.

no rest for the wicked

2005-04-14T02:40:00.000-04:00

when spring
time comes;
and the buds begin their sky reach
and my leatherjacketarmor gets shelved,
with only a white tee-shirt over
two twin tank top undershirts to protect
my breasts from the rest of the world;
it transforms my buyingacupofcoffee transactions.

some, who are used to my wintery skins,
adjust their glasses from across the countertop
to try to understand my form;
eyes fliting back and forth, as they are can'tconcentrateon pouring,
inspecting from my haired chin to my sideburns to my chest
and forth and back
again, their confusion betrayed by
the spilling of my hot drink.

and trying to give my change,

;careful of the change;

working not to brush their hand against mine,
unsure if they want to touch the
unsure springtimeme they are just
sure just bloomed before their eyes.

but i always tip them anyway,
regardless and more for me than them;
because i know that
i have made change
in that brief moment --
that's what i repeat to myself, hypnotically and emphatically, as i sit down --
i have survived the rough and seasoned edges
of the commonplace interactions
that swirl and twirl,
tornado-like,
in my daily gender revolutions.

writing desire

2005-04-11T16:37:00.000-04:00

i don't even know where to begin with this machine anymore. i havent typed something in what feels like months and probably is. and blogness is new. and writing where people can see is newer still. but ive been thinking lately, if i write and no one sees it am i really writing? just a variation of the "if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it ..." theme. but my fingers could get used to this typing again, i can feel it. they are starting to remember where the keys are a bit with out me looking. and it is faster than the ol' pen on paper method. but i dont know that i would get used to not having the smell of pen and paper, or the feel of my palm bushing across the writing surface when i make my frantic blocklettered thoughts.

but i miss not making sounds with my words, miss not making waves with my words, and the taptaptap of the keyboard is reminding me of all the other sensory possibilities of words. and the shit is flowing and my hands are shaking from borrowing writing time, always feeling like i am borrowing writing time from other parts of my life. like it is a luxury that i cannot afford. like i have to hurry up before someone catches me indulging in my words. like it can all be taken away at a moments notice. why is pleasure like that -- something that we experience as that which can be taken away? maybe its that lose myself in writing, there is a literal loss of self. this is ecstasy, this is desire; pleasure to the point of losing myself. Tantalizing and terrifying.

if i am writing about writing am i writing? what is being desired when i am writing about desire? and why are all of my words curlycues today, swating at and chasing each others tales? maybe its about growing my beard for the first time, not as a 13 year old bioboy as you might expect, but as a 28 year old transgenderedbutch. because the beard puts me in that same place of pleasure and desire, standing in the middle of terrifying ecstasy. so when i go to the college where i used to teach to pick up my w-2 form, and the person at the counter says, "can i help you, ... Ma'am(?!?)," its a good thing that the sun is shining and i am well rested and i've had a cup of coffee, because that combination makes me feel those ellipsis make me a genderwarrior, like my body is startin' a revolution. like that the persons searching for words, in-between space, is somewhere i live, and i have to, and i must, like it is a gift to be woman-identified and have a beard. a privlege to make peple pause at a glance. like this is no inbetween space at all, but a home, and a home that has a shifting genderscape. like iam not in between binary genders, trying to quick and scurry to one team or the other, but i constantly in a state of becominggender. the counterpersons ellipsis become the space within which i exist to the outside non-queer world. i become a pause. my body (my beard + my walki + my hips + my voice + my baseball cap + ...) makes the world have to pause, pause for me, because i am taking up space, because that which should be read-ily and without thought intelligable becomes something that has to be meditated on, deliberated on. and a choice is forced. i force choices. i dont even care about that so much as a care about forcing deliberation on gender. i have a fantasy that when i left that office today, that they had to think about me. maybe they even talked about me.

"was that a boy or a girl?"
"it was a girl..."
"but it had facial hair"
("but i have facial hair and i am a girl. mine just isnt so dark..." she thinks to herself as she strokes her downy blonde chinwhiskers)
"well, whatever, i say her ID and it said female, so there you go."

and so they might come to some safe conclusion about gender. and maybe they just went back to their computers and went on with their underpaidandoverworked lives. but they were forced to deliberate. deliberation. and so thats what i am going to do here; deliberate on desire and pleasure and gender and medieval knights and how i like to fuck and be fucked and how i like to have deleriously delighfully tender sex and how i like my beard and fear it and how words are intractable from all of that. you know, all that inbetween stuff that we desire but never let ourselves sit with, meditate on or monkout about because we just might lose ourselves in the pleasure of it all.