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Thursday, June 18th, 2009
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Originally posted by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) rm here.
I live in a country where it is illegal for me to have the same rights as a cisgendered person in a heterosexual relationship. That's what the Defense of Marriage Act and a host of other laws addressing the lives of GBLTQ people mean.
But here's the thing -- and I assume this is preaching to the choir, but one never really knows who is going to stumble on my livejournal -- actually all this DoMA and related stuff effects you, the cisgendered straight people too.
Really.
Because you never, ever know what your life is going to look like.
Now, I'm not saying you're going to turn gay all of a sudden, and we certainly don't recruit. (Have you looked at my journal? When would we have time to recruit?) But I think most of us -- that's us humans -- reach a point in our lives, where we look around and we go "wow, this isn't how I thought it was all going to turn out."
Because yeah, I fell in love with a girl when I was nineteen, but I also spent years of my twenties desperately in love with men and wanting baby after baby.
I never thought I would be anything but a journalist. I never thought I would have an abortion. I never thought I'd one day put on a suit that didn't have darts and have it fit me perfectly. I never thought I'd have pets. I never thought I'd live in Harlem. I never thought I'd get diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. I never thought I'd be an athlete. I never thought that my parents would adore my same-sex partner more than any boy I ever brought home.
I never thought.
Most of us don't.
My parents certainly never thought their kid would be gay.
So whoever you are reading this, if you haven't figured it out yet, your life is going to surprise you.
And until a whole bunch of laws change, one day (if it hasn't happened yet, if it doesn't happen all the time), you're going to be sitting in a bar or at brunch or in a friend's living room or in your parents' kitchen and you're going to realize that somehow, for some reason, you and someone else in that room aren't equals under the law. And, whether you come out ahead in that equation or not, if you really take a moment to understand what that means, it's going to chill you to the bone.
I live in the United States of America. And it's illegal for me to be treated as equal to some of you.
Now, the other point I want to address -- and that's what I'm doing, addressing this so I don't go into our living room and start ranting at my girl, AGAIN, about DoMA and Obama and how much we've fought for and how much we just haven't won yet, and how we can't wait because it's not fair that people can pass through this world without even knowing the legal semblance of equality and its cultural connotation of respect -- is that my equality as a human being isn't up for discussion.
Sure, the pundits can talk about it, the churches can preach. Obama can say the country has to move together to an understanding on this issue. I can be made abstract, and I can be told I am impatient or politically immature. Hell, my government can even issue legal arguments that imply I'm a dog-fucking pedophile.
But here's the thing. My equality? Not up for the discussion. Because I am as just as good as you. I am not lesser for my nature, nor simple for the rhetorical necessity of this focus on identity. I possess the same basic animating force as anyone else.
So y'all can debate about it all you want, from morals to timelines of acceptance.
But it doesn't change anything.
Doesn't change me.
Doesn't change the fucking ferocious dignity LGBTQ learn to live with from the moment they recognize they are somehow perceived as other, eventhough, you know, we're not.
We're just like you: mundane, over-worked and forgetting to pick up milk at the grocery store. We're just like you: awed at simple beauty and the various stupid and absurd poignancies of the human condition.
So yeah, debate it all you want. But it doesn't matter. Because it's not that you're wasting our time; it's that you're wasting yours.
So let's get over it and get this shit fixed.
The thing about stuff like DoMA is this: it's embarrassing.
It diminishes us.
And by us I don't mean LGBTQ people, I mean everyone. I mean it makes us look like a nation of frightened children.
And maybe we are.
We all are, sometimes, in the dark. But sometimes the only way to deal with fear is just... to pretend we're not scared and force ourselves to breathe until the morning comes.
We can do that, can't we? The myth of America extends that far, right? Sea to shining sea? Manifest destiny? All that bullshit? Maybe equality can be the new West. Sound like a plan?
Time to get on with it then, because the fear is so deeply unbecoming both our nation and our natures, and I for one expect better than that.
Not just of me. But of you.
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Thursday, June 11th, 2009
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Original post by lienne, Aug. 19th, 2008 at 8:24 PM.
Even after two years, it's strange to remember that I know people who never met my mother.
It's even stranger, somehow, to remember I know people who didn't go to her funeral.
(LJ-cut to end of post - cut text: To give you an idea...)
To give you an idea: My mother was a part-time teacher at my high school before she got too sick to work. The administration of the school called a half-day so that any of her students who wanted to could attend her funeral. There were people there who I had never met before. I'd estimate more than a hundred, maybe more than two, maybe more than three. I don't even know. Too many to count.
Half of them were dressed in bright colours, because my mother specifically forbade people from wearing black at her funeral. She was that kind of person. She wanted people to be remembering the good times, celebrating everything she'd given them, instead of mourning her. Well, by their outfits about half the attendees didn't get that memo, but what can you do.
But because the crowd was so all-encompassing, it still surprises me sometimes to look at a good friend and have the thought, "This person never heard the story about me and speeches. This person never saw me read a poem I'd written just half an hour before in front of nearly everyone I'd ever known."
The poem, by the way, is called Forever. A few of the people organizing the funeral asked me to write something for it, so I did, right there on the bench with my mom in a box not twenty feet away. You won't have seen it anywhere, because the notebook I wrote it in is lost; I just spent twenty minutes looking for it, which explains why I'm writing this paragraph in a fit of grand frustration.
Moving on.
(I really don't take anything seriously ever, do I.)
The story about me and speeches is this: I won a short story contest sometime during the '05-'06 school year. Mum was getting sicker by the day at the time; I think she was off work, and I definitely remember that she had some trouble walking around. But, because she was an awesome person, she came with me to the little awards ceremony.
So there I am, in a roomful of a hundred-plus strangers none of whom particularly have any reason to care, and I have to make a speech about my short story.
I hate making speeches, for the record.
As a form of rebellion, and because I was still incredibly touched by Mum coming out to see this, and because I knew it would get her smiling, I made a speech along these lines:
"Hi. I'm Susan. The story I wrote is called Grandaddy's House, and it's about..."
I can't remember what I thought it was about at the time. These things change. At the moment, to me, it's about grief (how appropriate) and childhood and the nature of memory. On the surface, it's about my mother's father's house, until the end, where it's about my mother's father's death. I probably said something very like this last.
"...The thing is, I'm not good at making speeches, and I don't like it very much. And my mother's here. Mum, could you please stand up? That's her, right there. The little cute embarrassed one."
It gets hazy. I've told this story too many times. I think I can remember a sense of nervous wonderment at the fact that I was actually saying this to those hundred-plus strangers, because while I'm the type for harmless rebellions, I tend not to air them in front of large numbers of people I don't know.
"Mum's really not been feeling well at all lately, you see, and she probably shouldn't be out and about, but she came here with me today anyways because she's just that wonderful. So what I'd like you all to do, please, is clap for Mummy. Don't clap for me; she's the one who deserves it. Clap for Mummy."
And they did. A roomful of more than a hundred people, and they all applauded my mother at my word. I walked away from that podium absolutely bubbling over. There's this incredible feeling of power and acomplishment to doing something like that. It's hard to explain, especially so long after the fact (and I haven't felt quite that way since). It was the fact that, just for a moment, just for a minute or two, I had influenced a hundred strangers to do something nice for someone I love. It was a tiny reaffirmation of my faith in humanity. It was beautiful.
After the speeches were all given, when I had a chance to talk to her again, she was just as ecstatic as I had been. She was as touched by my gesture as I was by hers. We hugged. She beamed. I beamed back. She thanked me.
Half-jokingly, in that way that I sometimes do things, I made her a promise.
I said that from that point forward, whenever I was asked to give a speech, I wouldn't talk about whatever subject I was supposed to be addressing. I'd just get up there, in front of however many people. I'd tell them that story. And I'd ask them to clap for Mummy.
The more astute among you will understand where this is headed.
See, I was asked to speak at my mother's funeral.
And that is exactly what I did.
I stood at a podium in front of maybe hundreds of people, some of whom I'd known since I was born, some of whom I'd met once, some of whom I'd never even heard of.
I told them the story of that speech from start to finish, although I think I worded it better and I certainly remembered the details more clearly; it had only been a few months at the time.
Then I finished off with this, which is still a vivid memory for me after more than two years: "So now I'm going to ask you to clap for Mummy." My voice went a little funny, much as it would be doing right now if I were telling this story out loud, and I know there were tears in my eyes when I added: "And you'd damn well better."
The whole room stood up and applauded. What else would you expect? They all knew her. They all knew exactly how kickass she was, and exactly how much she deserved it.
I didn't bubble over. I wasn't ecstatic. You can't really expect ecstatic at a time like that.
But I couldn't stop smiling for what felt like ten minutes straight, even if I was also crying for most of it.
So there you go. That's it, folks. A little piece of personal history for you, out of the blue.
I remember four lines of Forever, by the way. I might as well put them here.
How long is forever?
As long as a moment
This moment stays with us
As long as we want it to last.
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"...with liberty and justice for all."
Originally posted by old_blevins, here.
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Originally posted by theuglyvolvo, here.
The train slows and the automated woman’s voice goes, “This station stop is: Pearl River.” Peering out I see a vacant lot and a dumpster overflowing with discarded, wooden-framed windows, and I immediately think how nice it would be to have them.
“Why?” Pam asks later.
“I don’t know. To make something.”
“What are you going to make out of used windows?”
I have no idea what I am going to make out of used windows. Greenhouses, maybe, even though I do not know how to build greenhouses. I have only a beginner’s carpentry set that has been used mainly to hammer nails into the walls and assemble shelving. But I could come up with something, I think. There is a full dumpster of rustic, faded-white windows that I could use for something but at this point the train is starting to move and I am watching the windows recede into the past but am still thinking, “I know where they are. When I get to my parents’ house I can borrow the car and then drive back here for them.” I press my face longingly to the train’s own window, watching the dumpster as though it were a relative I am sad to be leaving.
The train slows and the woman’s automated voice says, “This station stop is: Nanuet.” My friend pointed out that they normally have a woman’s automated voice for routine information and a man’s automated voice to warn you about things, like minding the gap and standing clear of the closing doors please. The woman’s voice says all the syllables clearly and distinctly, as if Nanuet is the final answer in a multiple-choice question that my teacher is reading aloud.
In 1863, the Civil War battle with the largest number of casualties was fought at which location:
a. Appamatox
b. Gettysburg
c. Dorney Park and Wildwater Kingdom
d. Nanuet
I grab my bag and wait by the exit, steadying myself with the tops of the high backed seats. The tan vinyl on one of the seats has been slashed and someone has fixed it by stitching it back together in a zipper pattern with light pink thread, the inch-long ends hanging frayed from either side. It looks like my knee after that time I slashed it open playing freeze tag on the blacktop and the doctor sewed it sweetly back together—close, even stitches as if he were hemming a skirt. The train pulls to a full stop and the man in his cylindrical, visored conductor’s hat says, “watch the ice” and nods and I walk down the steep train stairs to the sidewalk of the station, looking for my mother’s car. She honks and I see her and run toward the car, getting in quickly because it is freezing outside, and she says, “Hello, I love you, you can put my purse in the back if it’s in your way.” And I buckle myself in and tell her the purse is fine. The light gray interior of her car is uncluttered and calm. My mother is wearing a charcoal gray wool coat with a long, lapel, and a delicate white wool scarf that billows from her neck like an ascot. She is wearing light blue cashmere gloves, with her right hand at the top of the steering wheel, the other resting casually in it’s lower left corner.
She pulls her sunglasses from the dashboard—they are always in a small compartment in the dashboard—and puts them on and kisses me.
“It’s good to have you home,” she says. “If only for the weekend.”
“It’s good to be home.”
“Do you have a specific agenda?” she asks.
“To relax,” I tell her.
I am working at the type of office job that is inexplicably stressful and where I do not do anything that is interesting. The type of job where people say, “What do you do?” and rather than tell them what I do I tell them the name of the company I work for and they go, “Ohhhh. Aha, neat!”, as if I had answered their question. They go, “Do you like it there?” and I go, “It’s great,” and they smile and leave.
“But what DO you actually do?” a friend asked once.
“I’m not sure,” I said. Whatever it is that I do involves papers sometimes being left on my desk with dates on them, and I try, quickly, like I am playing hot potato, to finish them and get them to another person’s desk so that I do not still have them when the buzzer goes off. Whatever it is I do necessitates having a computer, I assume, since they have probably not given me one solely to check my e-mail and read the entirety of Wikipedia. I sit in my good chair with my bad posture, the gray waist-high walls encircling me like a playpen. To keep me occupied I have been given pushpins and binder clips to play with (don’t put them on your nose; they hurt) and a mobile of “things to get done today,” each written and dangling impossibly high above my head. As people walk by I reach up toward them, hoping they will slide their hands under my arms, scooping me up and putting me down somewhere more interesting.
“Are you an assistant?” my friend asks
“I might be,” I tell her. I knew when I interviewed for the job, what it was. I interviewed for the job wearing my office casual pants, which are something I own now. I stare at them sometimes, running my fingers over the tweed—the hidden inside button closure and the little metal hook that secures them to my waist. I own a suit also, and cannot put it on with out the urge to scribble a moustache on my upper lip with eyeliner pencil and pair it with one of my father’s ties. Sometimes the office that I work in goes, “Ok, everybody in the big room for a meeting,” but in a much more formal way—in an interoffice memo or an e-mail, and we all sit in front of a big screen and wait for presentations. Three or four of the executives will get to talk, decided amongst themselves either by a round of rock paper scissors or, more likely, by taking a vote for who is the most boring. I sit politely, crossing and uncrossing my legs, thinking of ways to make their Powerpoints more engaging and their speeches less soporific. My best idea, which I have not shared with my co-workers, is draping the people in the three front rows in plastic and putting the first quarter sales figures inside a watermelon and then smashing the watermelon. Everyone has to run around trying to pick up pieces of information and it will make the room smell like watermelon, which is a nice smell. And everyone would run home from work excited, going, “You’ll never believe what they did with the first quarter sales figures!” It was crazy!”
“When we get home will you help me get the groceries out of the trunk?” my mother asks.
“Sure.”
“You don’t have to start putting it away. Just bring the bags upstairs and I’ll go through them.”
My mother hits the button on the garage door opener, pulling in until she hits the tennis ball that is suspended from the garage ceiling by a piece of twine. If she goes past the tennis ball the car will smash into the boxes of whatever it is that we have stored in the garage. She puts her sunglasses back into the compartment in the dashboard.
“Pop the trunk,” I say, hoping she can hear me through the windows.
She pops the trunk and I start unloading; pulling out as much as I can carry so that I can make the fewest number of trips.
“Don’t hurt your back,” she says.
“I won’t.”
“Those soda boxes are heavy. Don’t carry so many of them.”
I nod solemnly and then proceed to pick up what is probably too many soda boxes, bending my knees and keeping my back straight. I walk back and forth between the kitchen and the garage, carrying double-bagged groceries and leaving them at the foot of the island. Milk, I put in the fridge.
“God, this room,” my mother says. Her kitchen is a pastel chapel of clutter, the bright sun through the skylight illuminating uneven stacks of plastic vitamin containers and cords and recipes that she has torn out of the newspaper that someday she wants to try because ‘Look, Kelly! Pesto and Eggplant!’ but that she will inevitably stuff into a Lord and Taylor bag and forget about. The kitchen table is littered with three pairs of scissors and a stapler, a mosaic of coupons where my mother anticipates saving a dollar on an Oral B toothbrush and 75 cents on a box of Reynold’s Wrap. I clear out a downed forest of nail files and place additional grocery bags on the counter.
The bags are heavy. Olives, kidney beans, rice, garbanzos. Progresso canned soups. One bag is filled entirely with 4-packs of Chicken of the Sea, solid albacore tuna in water.
“Tuna was on sale,” she says.
“Apparently,” I say. “And toilet paper and olive oil.” I pull out seven bottles of Tide, placing them labels out, in a row on the counter. “And detergent.”
“I had coupons.”
“And canned tomatoes,” I say, assessing. “And Brillo. And ten-packs of 100 Grand bars.”
“Each of those was only a dollar,” my mother says. She holds the long, thin package aloft, as if she were the statue of liberty, her other hand clenching a box of Low-Sodium Triscuits. “A dollar!”
A dollar is a good deal. I would buy the ten pack candy bars for my office sometimes. Or cookies. A lot of days I would run next door to Duane Reade and buy a pack of ten molasses cookies for a dollar and everyone walking by my desk would go, “Cookies!” and get really excited, like I had given them the rest of the day off or their supervisor had announced that it was a beautiful day and we would be having work “outside,” sending faxes from the park and signing memos under the trees. And someone from another department would take one of our cookies and would hand me a small-fonted form covered in lines of black text and suddenly the cookie would feel like gravel in my mouth, as if the paper were emblazoned with news of apocalyptic proportions.
Some say the world will end in fire.
Some say in ice.
Actually it will end in W-4 forms and copyright infringement lawsuits.
Please sign here to indicate that you have read and understood this poem and agree to its terms and conditions.
Signature ____________________________________
Print name____________________________________
“A little dramatic, are we?” my mother says. “No one likes forms.”
“I’m not being dramatic. I hate them. They make my throat close up.”
“Thank you Sarah Bernhardt,” my mother says.
I do try. I always try to read the forms but I can’t. In grammar school our librarian taught us the five-word rule, which means if you read the first page of something and there are more than five words you don’t understand, it might be a little bit above your reading level. There is no rule for when you understand all of the words on the page—contractual, stipulate, aforementioned, equity—and continue to sit silently, your head spinning, as if you are a five year-old who has been asked to write a summation of a James Joyce novel. “Your homework,” the teacher says, “is to read and summarize the first 14 chapters of Portrait of an artist as a young, young, young, sad, confused man who doesn’t like reading profit and loss statements and wishes he had a different job.”
There are thirteen brown paper bags lining the kitchen, as if someone has packed lunches for a family of giants.
“Where do these go?”
I am holding up three cans of kidney beans—holding two in one hand and one in the other, and there are 14 additional cans of kidney beans on the table.
“I don’t know,” my mother says. “Just put them anywhere for now and I’ll figure it out later.”
“Where do you have your other canned stuff?”
“I just sort of put it where it fits.” My mother is taking off her long overcoat and untucking her scarf to reveal a neatly ironed shirt she bought at Boscovs and wool pants that have a crease down the center of each leg. She is wearing a sweater but takes it off because she is always hot in the house.
“Is it hot in here or is it hot in here?” she’ll ask, fanning herself with her hand or a sheaf of papers from the counter. My mother used to say “Is it hot in here or is it me?” but stopped because Pam would always reply, “It’s you.”
“It’s me?” she’d ask, incredulous.
“It’s you,” Pam will reply dryly. “You’re going through menopause. Also,” she adds, “you’re crazy.”
“You’re not hot?” My mother would fan her face at close range, adjusting the thermostat.
“We’re freezing,” Pam would say. “Look at dad. He’s using a down comforter for his legs.”
My mother leaves to lay her sweater on the bed and then returns to the kitchen, biting her thumbnail, standing next to me. We stare at the clutter and she asks if there is anything I can do, as if her kitchen is an inoperable tumor and I am her last hope. I open the pantry doors by their brass knobs, each of us peering into a confused Narnia of dry goods and lost items. Peroxi-care toothpaste stares shyly from a nest of condensed milk.
“It’s overwhelming,” my mother says, smoothing out her shirt with her hands. Her nails are carefully shaped and buffed and painted clear.
“I know,” I say. “Everything is overwhelming.”
I am the person at my office who organizes the supply closet. It is one of the few parts of my job that I enjoy and that I am really good at.
“At which you are really good. Or, at which you excel,” my mother says. “It is one of the few parts of your job at which you excel.”
Here are my cardinal rules for organizing a work space:
1. If you use things a lot, have them easily accessible.
2. Keep pushpins near the bulletin board
3. Do not put things in containers with lids, because you are too lazy to unscrew a lid, take out a paperclip, and then put a lid back on.
“I don’t think I’m that lazy,” my mother says.
4. A lot of times you will think you are not that lazy, but you are.
5. Avoid junk drawers. They enable you to keep things you don’t need.
“I’m just—” she says. “I’m still stuck on the jars with lids thing. I don’t like that you’re using the word ‘lazy.’ It sounds like I’m intentionally slacking off.”
“Mom, I’m trying to do a bullet point list.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll stop. Finish your list.”
6. Keep a pad and pen by the phone, fastened to the desk if possible.
7. Have a large desk area clear for working.
8. Everything should have a place. If having a label maker helps you remember what goes where, buy one.
9. If something does not have a place and you do not need it enough to create a place for it, throw it out.
10. If things are still unorganized, adjust and adapt your workspace to the ways you discover you work. The definition of crazy is to do the exact same thing, expecting a different result. Be open to change.
“Let’s start,” I say, “with things that have no business being in a pantry.”
“Ok.”
“These,” I say, handing my mother a bag of deflated beach balls. “Why do you have these?”
“We got them at work,” she says.
“Why are you keeping them?”
My mother looks at me, smiling. To the questions of why she is keeping innumerable unused items, including (but not limited to) the beach balls, the candle shaped like an Irish Setter, the Fisher Price paintbrush, the ceramic jelly bean container, the used marbles, the broken wind chimes, and the sandwich bags full of dice, she will respond with one of the following:
• “For if I have grandkids someday.”
• “I like it.”
• “You don’t think it’s cute?”
• “I thought maybe someone would want it.”
• “It was a gift.”
• “You don’t think it’s cute?” (pause) “Really?”
• “Oh this? This I use sometimes.”
“When?”
“Sometimes,” she says, putting it back on the shelf.
I sigh, tugging on the pulls of my hooded sweatshirt. I walk toward the kitchen island—a light blue slab whose beaches are littered with thumbtacks and Reader’s Digests and photos that my mother prints out onto 8 ½ x11 computer paper. I grab a small garbage can and hoist it toward the counter.
“Don’t throw out the coupons!” she says, and she scuttles over toward me, her shirt coming slightly untucked. She is holding a green M&M dispenser to her chest like a baby.
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, through my nose. I never remember if you are supposed to let the breath out through your nose or if you take the deep breath through just your nose and then let it out regularly. I walk into the living room and sit down in my father’s chair, pulling the down comforter up over my legs.
“I’m sorry,” my mother says from the doorframe.
“It’s fine,” I say.
“No it’s not,” she says. “We don’t get to see you that often. You came home to relax, not clean the kitchen.”
“ I am relaxing,” I tell her. “Being away from the city is relaxing.”
“Ok,” she says. “In your e-mails you sounded like your job was stressing you out. I just want you to have a place to unwind. I don’t want coming home to feel like work.”
“Coming home never feels like work,” I tell her.
“Or if you hate your job that much, you should find a new one. Look on Craigslist, or Monster—I always see these commercials at night for job websites.”
“I might,” I say.
It would be nice, I think, to have a new job that is not in an office and does not have gray walls and fluorescent lighting. It would be nice not to have to wear business casual brown pants and not to own nylons. It would be nice to have a room with a window, where I could see the people walking around on the sidewalks and I would know if the sun was shining. I think briefly of the dumpster overflowing with windows at the Pearl River station and debate mentioning it to my mother.
“What do you need them for?” Pam asks later in the evening, sitting upright in our father’s chair with the down comforter over her legs. “What are you going to make out of used windows?”
“I don’t know what I’m making,” I said. “I’ll build a house across the street from mom and dad’s house and I’ll live in it.”
“I mean, I’m not saying you shouldn’t take a few,” she says. “I just didn’t know if you had something specific you wanted them for.”
“I don’t know yet,” I say, “I just thought they were beautiful. Maybe I’ll go back tomorrow to see if they’re still there.”
“If you girls are going somewhere,” my mother offers, “take my car. I moved it to the driveway so your father can use the garage.”
I walk downstairs to my father’s tool bench, which is organized very efficiently—tools arranged on a pegboard, the most frequently used within easy reach. I wrap my wide hand around a hammer but then re-think the order in which I will need the tools and pull the saw from its perch.
I will live, maybe, in a house made of windows down the street from my parents, where it is always warm and beautiful and I am always in a good mood. The house will be very organized and well-stocked with cookies and ten packs of 100 Grand bars and people will go there to relax and work through their problems.
“If you make the whole thing out of windows there’s going to be a lot of glare,” my mother warns.
“I don’t mind the glare.”
“You don’t think you will, but it can get bad,” my mother says. “And when it snows and the glare reflects off the snow? Hold on.” And putting on her overcoat and white scarf even though she is only walking outside for a second, she grabs her keys and hits the button that beeps and makes the lights flash and unlocks the car. Opening the car door she reaches for her sunglasses, which are always in a compartment in the dashboard.
“Wear these,” she says, “When the glare gets really bad, these will help.”
I thank her and put on the sunglasses. I will wear these to work on Monday, I think. I will saunter in to the office in my mother’s sunglasses, holding an idyllic wood-framed window, which I will set on the wall of my cubicle, propped against a bookcase. I will leave it open—it is nice to have windows, but it is nicer, sometimes, to have open windows; to feel a little bit of air on your face.
I will leave the window open and the wind will rush through. It will blow the smell of cookies back into the far corners of the office, where people on other floors will suddenly realize that they are hungry, and it will blow the papers from my inbox—shooting them out in sheaves out onto 49th street, leaving the air hung with forms—white and blinding and precipitating like snow.
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Originally posted by rm, here.
The first time I worked clinic defense was the month after I turned eighteen. Now, most people stood in a particular phalanx by the clinic door, especially during the worst of the protests. The phalanx was designed to make sure protesters couldn't crawl through our legs, that there would still be a barrier if they stuck us with pins, which, yes, they did. Then, there were the people stationed inside the clinic, if it had interior doors. Sometimes women would pose as patients and lock themselves to the interior doors, blocking them. Finally, there were the people who escorted the women in and out of the clinic.
I did all three of those jobs at various times, but mostly I either guarded the inside doors of the clinics or escorted patients.
Mostly, the women didn't talk. But sometimes they did, either about nothing in particular or dark humour. It was strange, responding to them, and always being so careful not to reveal any particular sentiment to them.
"I hate this," one woman said. I couldn't but nod, because "this" could have been anything.
She kept talking. "Always being escorted, like I can't go to the doctor by myself."
"I'm sorry, sometimes the protesters pose as patients, it's for everyone's safety."
"But I feel like a child."
*
A woman's life is like that. We are always escorted: by our friends to the ladies and by our fathers down the aisle. It is what is expected of us. My debutante friends had to choose escorts -- one civilian and one military -- for the coming out ball and my high school dates always had to pick me up and drop me off at home, even as I was often older and more equipped to handle the world without such boys.
When I was engaged at 24, every professional service I talked to about the wedding planning wanted to speak to my fiance or my parents. When I called my bank today to discuss an issue they asked -- merely as a matter of security, but I know how it felt -- if there was a cosigner on an account.
There's a reason it's women and children first. It's because in the eyes of history and habit, we've long been mostly the same.
At least married you get the force of your husband's authority, if not your own.
*
Gay rights are, among other things, a feminist issue. If we did not hate and infantilize women, would we so question the masculinity and competency of gay men on the grounds that they must somehow be feminized by their romantic and sexual preference for males? If we did not hate and infantilize women, would we so condemn women who are not available to men, because they'd rather be with each other?
*
In the mid-90s, I traveled to Ireland with that man I was engaged to. Because I made all the hotel reservations, I quickly became Mrs. Maltese and he was referred to as Mr. Maltese. We learned quickly not to question this.
A vote was going on in the country then about whether to legalize divorce. The posters that supported divorce availability showed a photo of a woman and asked, "doesn't she deserve a second chance?" The posters against divorce also showed a woman and asked, "doesn't a man have the right to a family?"
The point of this is not that I was outraged. The point of this is that I am outraged now because my dominant reaction at the time, beyond anger and incredulity, was simply the quiet recognition of what I had always known as a woman: to be property is to be loved; to be married is the closest you will ever be to becoming an adult.
*
I never got married.
*
I'm 37 now. I'm not supposed to tell people that. After all, as perpetual children, women are also supposed to look perpetually young. Maybe if I looked my age I'd be more careful about it. Maybe I just don't care anymore.
I've got a lot more sense than I used to. I'm less complicated now in some ways. And way more complicated in others.
And in the great gay marriage debate, I keep coming back to this feeling that in the end this whole clusterfuck national debate on my humanity is really a secret, subconscious referendum on whether women can ever be adults, can ever be unescorted, can ever look like something that wasn't designed for the male gaze, can ever possess their own desire. It is also, it seems for many people, a referendum on whether masculinity can exist without the perpetual female child present to confirm its existence.
*
I've been an adult since I left home, because I've had to be. That was twenty years ago. Sometimes I've succeeded. Often I've failed. But I've continued on, and I've tried to do better. I don't regret much, but there was certainly some stuff I could have done without; I just didn't know it at the time.
That the world has both changed and that I'm a little bit crazy is so clear to me the more I meet people who have never felt all this, who have never had to.
That's hope.
So is the way much of this is just a pretty far gone memory to me now, like the butcher shop we got our meat at when I was a child.
*
In the late '90s I had an abortion. There were no protesters. The doorman in the fancy building on the Upper West Side smiled at me, and the man involved in the matter came with me, as was appropriate.
Which means I was once escorted.
In this particular lexicon of being, I wish I didn't know what that means.
*
Prop 8 and its ilk are not referenda on me as a gay person or as a woman, although they are the first overtly and the second covertly.
These votes and discussions and debates and decisions are referenda on what we deem an adult human to be or not be.
It really is that simple.
*
Sometimes people ask me what it's like to be bisexual or gay or whatever word we're using today. They'll ask how I knew. Or what's going on with my genderqueer stuff. Or for advice on speaking to others about these same issues. And I'm mostly happy to answer, because, let's face it, I'll run my mouth about anything if I have the time.
But I have things I want to know too: what's it like not always having to connect the dots about what people really think of you before you even walk into the bloody room?
Sometimes, people ask why I'm so public on my journal or why I want so badly to be famous and successful. There are flip answers to that, that you've surely heard me give. Oh, you know, like everyone in this business, my mother never loved me enough or No secrets, no blackmail are two of my favorites.
But there's a third answer. A truer answer. With a female body and a queer heart, my life was always going to be public anyway.
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Thursday, April 30th, 2009
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originally posted by amazoniowan, here. Note that there is quite a bit of formatting in this; I've tried to replicate it as well as I can.
(This is cross-posted from the blog Dan and I run to chronicle the progress of same-sex marriage in Iowa. I thought I'd put it here as well.)
*
There is, of course, so much to report from yesterday that it’s not possible to catch it all. But a nice place to begin is The Des Moines Register, where you can scan the photo gallery. It’s a riot of hugging and smiling and lines and lines of same-sex couples wanting to be married. There are a few protesters in there as well, but not many, because mostly yesterday was about the marriage licenses. There were petitions delivered at many County Recorder offices, but these were, thankfully, simply delivered. I have yet to hear substantiated reports of any serious tussles over granting licenses, and I hope that I don’t. You can see an interactive map of which counties granted licenses and how many here.
This article, also from The Des Moines Register, sums up both sides rather well, I think. It reports same-sex couples feeling relief that the legal issues are resolved and enjoying the validation, and then you have statements like this:
“We just feel this type of judicial decision not only doesn’t reflect what most Iowans believe, but it’s also harmful to our state and to our country,” said Kurt Korver, 42, an Orange City doctor. “If a neighborhood is filled with homosexual couples, you wouldn’t want to have kids in that neighborhood. The purpose of government is to restrain bad behavior for the good of society.”
As outrageous as this statement is to any marriage rights advocate (and hopefully to many who identify as neutral/undecided as well), it is worth examining because it illustrates the most difficult hurdle ahead of LGBT rights and peace among Iowans in general on this issue. There is absolutely no logical or practical leap between a change in legal status for couples already living, working, and parenting in Iowa and a sudden state of neighborhoods “filled with homosexual couples.” And if we were lucky enough to have this happen, we know very well we would soon see our neighborhoods either looking very much the same except that we’d be inviting over Jane and Sara or Bob and Dave instead of Jane and Bob and Sara and Dave for barbeque or any other boring, normal everyday events. But this isn’t how the opposition sees the LGBT community, and nothing short of living through decades where they realize their fears have not come to pass will convince them it has not, but even then they might find it hard to let go.
Yesterday I volunteered at the Story County Recorder. I was there to pass out information from One Iowa and Lambda Legal, to answer questions, and to provide moral support. The Story County Recorder was absolutely, one-hundred percent supportive. They had no “gay agenda,” but they did have a human agenda. Nine same-sex couples registered in that office yesterday, and one opposite-sex couple, and they were all treated exactly the same. The staff were helpful and patient and took time to answer all questions. They smiled. They made reassuring eye contact. They were not over-eager. They made no judgments of any kind. They looked, in fact, often very pleased to be helping people get married. I suspect that’s a high perk of that job. They were even patient with the press, allowing them back behind the counter to get better photographs of the event.
The couples themselves were, overall, quiet, eager, and happy. Some were very nervous. Several applicants had children. One couple was Mark Kassis and Terry Lowman, whom I know from Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames, and because of their high community profile and long-term status, came with high media coverage and a full cadre of supporters, though they were there mostly to finish the paperwork they hadn’t been allowed to finish in 2007.
One woman was slipping over on her lunch break at work and was simply picking up the paperwork, as her partner was still in Kansas City and would be moving up in May. She came into the administration building and bee-lined for me, asking, “Are you with One Iowa?” She was a competent, professional woman, but she was clearly glad for support at this moment. She was excited to move her family to Ames, hoping to find a house for their four foster children, eager to be married and make their union legal. This was all. She had no designs on anyone else’s marriage. She had no desire to rewrite anyone’s belief systems. She just wanted to get married, get a house, raise her children, and love her partner with full legal security.
A lawyer who works nearby kept popping over to “get the news” and see how the day was progressing, and she summed the day up best. “It’s all so very normal,” she said, a smile spreading across her face. And she’s right. When I look at the online photos, I see the couples going to register, and it is so very normal. There’s nothing special about it, because they’re just people in love like everyone else. It’s so Iowa.
I think a number of marriage opponents in the Midwest fear is that cultures they see and imagine from elsewhere in the world or even in time will somehow appear in their backyard. I think they imagine narrow, shadowy shades of gay nightclubs, painted from bad news reports and their own imaginations, and they mix it in with carnal, delicious and terrifying ideas of what bathhouses must be like. So much of this, still, is about sex. The midwest, more than anywhere else, is a place where we don’t discuss sex, and for the most die-hard marriage opponents here, there is no erasing the image of gay men as anything but Sodom and Gomorrah in the worst possible Biblical interpretation. It doesn’t matter that this image was never true, or that even when it has been, it has been so in small, isolated places, and was often born out of backlash of prejudice and discrimination. It doesn’t matter that every single couple who registered yesterday was completely interchangeable with any couple registering on any other day except that these couples were made up of same-sex couples. There is a mental programming of what “gay” means in the minds of many, and it will be long, hard work to make it go away.
Mark and Terry were married yesterday. They were, in fact, married in 2007, and they have been more married than most of us have for a long, long time now. They have been business partners and parents for decades. They are friends. They are lovers. They are everything that all of us wish we could have when we dream of being partnered in a relationship. They are prominent members of a community. They are leaders. They are examples. They are devoted, but they are, of course, Iowans, so they really aren’t showy about it. They are practical. They are kind, and generous, and human. They are, in short, just like the rest of us, except to be honest they do a great deal of it better than most of us, because they’re one of Those couples, for whom it just comes so naturally. And yet Mark and Terry and the countless other Mark and Terrys, visible and invisible in Iowa, are not enough to stop comments like the one I cited above, which goes to show us that very little will be able to stop them except time and patience. Even despite commentary like this, you have but to read the comment section to see it falls on deaf ears. Those who want to believe gay marriage is a threat will accept nothing but the threat, even when it doesn’t materialize.
Iowa has had its two days in the sun. We will get a bit of spotlight again during the next caucus cycle, but beyond this, it is over. We have had our days as civil rights leaders, and we are now a little higher on the international Cool Index. But I have news for Mr. Korver, and Mr. Hurley, and all the other people panicking and waiting for the rain of fire to begin: it won’t. The lawyer was right. Iowa is, as ever, pathologically normal. Even when we are the third state to legalize same-sex marriage, we are still normal. We will still be the butt of corn and pig jokes. We will still be told there is nothing to do here. We will still have weather that is too hot and too cold and usually in the same week. We will still eat too much of Things On Sticks at the Iowa State Fair, and it will still be so hot you nearly pass out while we do it. There will still be chronic construction on Interstate 80. There will still be morel mushrooms in the spring, which someone will pick off your land before you have a chance to get out there yourself.
We will still have floods and famines. We will still have tornadoes. We will still have fires and crises and calamities and sorrows. And we will still, as we have always done, help each other through them. We will volunteer and bake things and have fundraisers. There will still be jello with fruit in it at every church function--even Unitarian. The only thing that will change because of yesterday will be that, slowly, quietly, and probably with a bit of Iowa hesitation, straight people will begin to notice that there have been loving committed homosexual and bisexual couples around them all along. Which, once they get over their surprise, they will realize means that there is more community, and because everyone is recognized, it is a stronger community.
So normal. So very, very normal.
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originally posted by slammerkinbabe, here.
"I'm dead! I'm dead!"
The words came from a grizzled old man in a tan baseball cap, hollering at people through a few crooked yellow teeth. It was a beautiful day out, and I'd gone for a walk on the Commons on my lunch break. The grass was full of people lounging with sunglasses on and backpacks under their heads, or with kids and toys spread around them on blankets; the fountains were on in the Frog Pond, and children leapt through the water.
Until I came across the man I had been thinking how nice it was to be out on a day like this, the weather making everyone a little happier, the people around me getting the same lift I was from the sun and the breeze and the pretty surroundings. I heard the man yelling and my thoughts froze up a little bit, but my feet kept walking. Near me a child asked her mother, "Why is that man yelling?" The mother said comfortingly, "It's all right. He's just talking out loud."
"I'm dead! I'm dead!"
I was maybe twenty feet past him when I stopped, my back to him. The words he was shouting pulled me into a place I didn't want to be in, a dark place with rough walls where the air was dirty and got clogged in your lungs. I stopped because I'd been there before. Oh, I've never been dead. But I know what it is to feel that way. I knew he was shouting at the world that so much of what lived inside him had died that it didn't matter anymore that his body hadn't caught up.
I'm bipolar -- bipolar I, with psychotic features. I don't know if all my readers know that. If you don't you should know it now. I'm crazy, and so was the guy in the park. So I stopped, and looked the other way, and waited to see what I was going to do.
I must have stood there for five minutes, with his shouts of "I'm dead!" ringing out behind me every ten seconds or so. I had been planning on doubling around the park and stopping at McDonald's for a package of apple slices to go with my lunch. I felt in my pocket; one bill. Didn't matter what it was. I couldn't give it to him and still get my apples. And besides, giving him money wouldn't help. He needed a soup kitchen, a place to stay, a hospital. Something.
I looked around. None of those things were around.
I thought about it. If I gave him the money and gave him directions for how to get to a hospital on the T, would he go? Check into the psych ward through the ER? Not likely.
What if I walked him with me to the McDonald's, bought him something to eat? But I couldn't stay with him -- I had to get back to work, and I'd seen too recently what happens to crazy people in reputable establishments.
Part of me -- a big part of me -- wanted to go back and talk to him. And another part of me -- another big part of me -- wanted to walk away. λ's and my financial situation is tight right now; we have to be watching every dollar we spend, and the money in my pocket wasn't mine alone to give. And the guy was scary. He was crazy. He was sitting on a bench shouting at people and he could lash out if I approached him. As I thought about it, I heard him yell the word "Faggot!" I thought it was "I'm a faggot!", actually, but I couldn't be sure. Another time I thought I might have heard "Cunt!", but again, I couldn't be sure. The only words that were coming out clear were the ones he kept repeating: "I'm dead!"
And somehow I turned around and started walking back. Scared, feeling stupid, but feeling impelled. Something about the words touched me in a way I couldn't even fully explain, and still can't. He was dead. He wanted the world to know he was dead. He was breathing, and he was dead. I needed him to come out of that space in his head. I needed him to know he wasn't dead. I needed him to be better.
So I walked up to him. Very cautiously. I said, "Hey, guy, what's going on?"
His face took on a look of alarm. "Hey, no, I'm not --" he said, garbling the words. He thought I was somebody in authority, come to tell him to move along. So much for my being afraid of him -- he was afraid of me, and, I realized, probably with better reason than I had.
"No, it's okay, it's okay," I said, as reassuringly as I could. "I just wanted to ask what's going on."
He stopped shouting immediately. Tilted his head toward me. His whole expression changed. In one second he'd gone from angry and raving to polite and open, putting social manners on as you might adjust your jacket and straighten your tie.
"I'm Joe Haskins,"* he said to me. His speech was twisted and slurred, but there was no smell of alcohol off him, no bottles around him. Whatever was wrong with his speech was part of what was wrong with him. I didn't, and don't, think he was drunk.
"Hi," I said.
"I need you to know something," he told me.
"What's that?" I asked.
He pondered for a long moment. "I'm Joe Haskins," he said.
"Hi," I said again. Then, "It seems like you're having a bad day."
"You know what, little lady?" he said.
"What's that?"
"I need to tell you something. I really need you to know this."
"Okay."
"You are..." He paused, thinking about it. "You're my brother. My sister," he added. Still caught on "brother," I didn't respond. "And let me tell you something else. I'd kill for you."
Um, okay. "No, it's okay. I'm glad to meet you." I started to say, "I don't want you to kill anybody for me," but stopped myself. He was not going to kill anybody for me; that wasn't the situation, it had nothing to do with what was going on. I didn't feel like letting him know that my first impulse had been "oh, God, please don't act homicidal."
"I'd..." He lost track of his thoughts again. "I'm Joe Haskins. And you... let me tell you, little sister..."
"What's that?"
I couldn't understand his reply.
"Hey," I said, "I'd like you to feel better today. Can --"
He was already shaking his head vehemently. "No, no, no," he said, angry and sad. "No, no."
"No? That's not going to happen, huh?"
"No, no, no."
"I'll pray for you," I said, not that sure why, except that a lot of the homeless people I see seem to find solace in religious paraphernalia.
He shook his head again, as firmly as before. "No."
I went back to my original plan. "Is there someplace you can go?" I asked. "Someplace you can stay?"
He smiled at me, big. "I own this spot."
"Okay." I had no idea how the lives of the homeless worked, especially not in Boston Common, where their presence seems to be tolerated as a simple fact, as just part of the way things are in the city. I was gathering myself up to ask if he'd ever been to a hospital, and, if so, if he wanted to go, when another guy walked up and gave Joe a half-smoked cigarette. "Hey, Joe, how's it going?" he said.
I turned to the guy. "You know him?" I said.
"I'm his brother," the other guy told me.
"Oh, good," I said, immensely relieved. "Look, is he okay? Is he --"
"Well, not like that, but you know. We're brothers out here."
"Oh," I said, getting it. "You two look out for one another?"
He shrugged. "We do what we can, you know?" He reached out to shake my hand. "Sam."
"Hi, Sam." We shook, and he wandered off for a bit.
"Sister," Joe said suddenly, "I love you."
I smiled, but didn't say it back. How was I supposed to say it back? I liked him, cared about him, but I didn't love him. I have a lot of love in my life, a lot of people who love me and whom I love. It's only now that I'm fully realizing that I don't need the love of strangers -- I don't need them to love me, and I don't need to love them, either. It's only now that I'm fully realizing that Joe needs both.
"I'm really glad I met you, and I hope I see you around again," I said to him. I reached into my pocket for the money. He might have seen me do it, I don't know.
"Can I ask you a question?" he said. I said, "Sure," and he repeated it a few times -- "I gotta ask you a question. Can I ask you something? I just gotta ask. Honestly." Whatever it was, it wasn't too easy for him to say. "Sure," I told him, several more times.
"Do you have any money?"
Funny, since I'd been aiming to give him money all along. He hadn't been begging for it, I should add; he didn't have a cup out, wasn't asking for spare change. I pulled the bill out of my pocket, saw that it was a five rather than the ten I'd thought it was. I was relieved. We can afford five bucks more easily than ten. I pressed it into his palm.
"Little sister... I gotta tell you..." He seemed overwhelmed. The conversation went in some loops, more "I love yous," more affirmations of brotherhood. He stretched out two fingers -- I wasn't sure if it was a peace sign or an attempt to reach out to me. I pressed two fingers to his, like I was in E.T. or something.
He leaned in close. "Do you want it back?"
"No, no," I told him. "I want you to have it."
And he bent his head and started crying. Brittle, choking, broken sobs. The ashes from the cigarette Sam had given him scattered down his shirt front. He grabbed my hand and held it compulsively, shaking, sobbing, the brim of his cap covering his face. He glanced up once. "I'm dying," he told me, and I didn't know whether he meant that he was truly terminally ill -- he didn't look it, but how the hell do I know? -- or just that he could not see any way that a life like the one he was living could go on for much longer. "I'm sorry," I told him, watching my heart crack a bit from a long way off.
"I've got to go," I told him eventually, watching his hand over mine, the gnarled knuckles and yellow nails. "I have a job and I have to get back there or they won't be happy. I hope I'll see you again, okay?"
He looked up, his eyes dry. "I'm Joe Haskins," he said. "What's your name?"
I told him my first name.
"Kylie," he said. "Thank you."
I have not made any of this conversation up. It sounds saccharine, scripted, like an anecdote out of Chicken Soup for the Soul. But it's not. Sometimes I exaggerate stories for effect, mostly when I'm telling a funny story, but not now. I've rendered this as exactly as I can remember it because I need to convey that this was a man who was sane once, who once knew how to interact normally, who knew to say "Thank you" and how to introduce himself politely to a stranger and how to refuse offers of money if the giver can't afford them. If you'd been there you could have seen it in his face, like the flip of a switch when I started speaking to him. If he'd had all his teeth and had been able to speak straight, in that moment, you wouldn't have thought him any different from you and me.
He's certainly not that different from me. A tip of the wheel of fate -- born into a different family, not enough money, lousy luck in finding qualified mental health professionals (and I should add, an ability to find qualified mental health professionals who can save a life like mine from a fate like Joe's is not a foregone conclusion for even a middle-class girl) -- and I could have been exactly like Joe. That's what I see whenever I see a mentally ill homeless person on the street. I see myself hunched over a grocery cart, with wild hair and tattered clothes, loaded down with plastic bags and a battered sleeping roll.
Joe was beginning to let go of me when another guy showed up. "Hey, Joe," he said. He looked at me questioningly.
"You two know each other?"
"Know each other? I'm his father," the new guy said, settling down. "Jack Haskins the Fourth. Nice to meet you." I waved. "No, it's true, I really am," he said. I nodded. Meanwhile, another guy came up from the left. "Hey, guys." He reached out to shake my hand. "Paul Dowd. I'm his cousin."
"Okay. You guys will all look out for each other, right?" I addressed Paul, who seemed as sane and pulled-together as anyone else you'd happen to meet. "He'll be all right? Joe?"
Paul nodded. "Oh sure. Sometimes he just gets liquored up and he gets to feeling sorry for himself. He'll be fine."
"Thanks," I said. I addressed myself to Joe. "Bye now. Maybe I'll see you around again."
I don't remember what his reply was. I was already walking back to my job.
Walking back I thought about a lot of things. I knew, after the conversation, that if I'd tried to save Joe by bringing him to a hospital or a shelter or a soup kitchen or anywhere else, it wouldn't have mattered. He had his bench, his bench that he owned as far as he or anyone else was concerned. He had his family. I took a great deal of comfort from the family he had around him, his brother and his father and his cousin. As I'd left there had been a woman in a wheelchair coming over to join the group, a woman with an oxygen tube running through her nose. She had a family too. I had never known that. I had always thought homeless people lived entirely alone, cut off from the rest of the world. Now I know that at least in Boston Common, they have their own world. My assumption that the world of non-indigent, bustling, "normal" nine-to-fivers was the only world had turned out to be incorrect. Homeless people may be exiled from "polite" society, but some of them, at least, build their own societies to support their own lives.
And I thought about how I had always been scared of giving too much of myself to homeless people -- giving money whenever I saw them, even talking to them and putting that emotional investment into it -- because I thought they would take and take and take until I didn't know how to stop myself from bleeding dry. I thought of how little Joe had needed. His manner had changed the moment I'd spoken a kind word to him. It was very clear that no one had spoken kindly to him for a very long time. And maybe his short-term memory is shot and that's why he can't remember the last time someone was kind, but I don't think so. I think people are scared and uncomfortable and they don't think they can help and so they walk on by. And he kept shouting, kept shouting, "I'm dead".
And I don't know how long he'll remember me or whether he'll remember me at all, but I don't care. And I know he'll almost certainly use that five bucks I gave him for alcohol and I don't care about that either. The five bucks was not about getting him to a better place. Unless a miracle happens, he will never be in a better place than he is in now. He's settled, with a bench he calls his own and an adopted family around him, and change is too hard and too scary to even attempt when you have any kind of security at all. Five bucks was never going to change anything material, but when I gave it to him what it meant was that I cared, and my God but did he need that.
I am not telling this story to be boastful. I walk past dozens of homeless people a day and do nothing. I will come out and say something I didn't think I was going to confess publicly, that if he had been a black guy instead of a white guy I would not have felt comfortable approaching him, and I would have done nothing. I am not laying claim to sainthood. The only reason I did what I did was because I empathized with him because I am myself mentally ill.
But I needed to write the story for LJ, because I needed to tell people that there is a person in there and that person is as familiar as you or I. Not just "as human as you or I" -- I mean, duh. But as familiar. At some point when he was younger he had no idea he was going to end up where he is now, and neither did anyone around him. If things had been a little different he would have a life like yours or mine. And all of that was right under the surface. I mean, right under the surface.
There are plenty of mentally ill people who are violent and scary, and approaching them wouldn't have this effect -- I doubt most of them would lash out at someone who approached them kindly, or they'd be in jail already (prisons are full of untreated mentally ill people, and the court systems are not terribly lenient when it comes to homeless indigents who attack everyday upstanding citizens), but some would no doubt continue to yell aggressively. I'm not sure how it was that I evaluated Joe as someone who wouldn't do that. It wasn't just a guess and it was more than a hunch, but I couldn't explain it, so I can't pass on any advice, either. Other people will have to judge for themselves whether it feels safe to show kindness to people like Joe when they encounter them.
But I needed to have it known. Joe really, really, really needed someone to be kind to him, and it was so easy to show him that. Really. All the time I spent agonizing and pondering, I figured it would be this big damn deal to try and talk to this guy without getting hit or robbed or pleaded with endlessly, and the only thing he wanted was for someone to act like he was not a piece of shit they needed to scrape off their shoe.
I just needed to say it. I hope somebody who reads this will be in a situation at some point where they feel comfortable reaching out to someone who needs it.
I don't think I'll pray for Joe, because he told me not to. I'll keep thinking of him though. Maybe in some way it's the same thing.
*Not his real name.
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Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
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Originally posted by amenquohi, here.
It was Saturday, and we were bouncing.
Yes, bouncing. A local place down the road opened up with giant inflatable moon bounces, slides and obstacle courses – an indoor playground full of cushioned fun and energy-burning action. In short, it was a kid’s paradise and it only cost us $10 a head. Normal entry is $8 for a bounce-all-day pass, but we paid an extra $2 as part of the fundraiser. I caught the sign as I drove by on my way to work Friday morning: “BOUNCE FOR AUTISM 10-2 SAT”. Bouncing? For a cause I have a direct relationship to? I’m there.
So there we were, me, my kids, and a bunch of other people’s kids, some autistic, some not. At the center of the room was a woman in a black T-shirt, standing near a table with source materials on it. Lots of posters and pamphlets and papers – many of which were vehement in their branding of vaccinations as evil and full of information on hundreds of different vitamin supplements and alternative therapies like acupuncture and chiropractic work that can all help overcome autism.
*Sigh*
Maybe it’s because I’m just not a person who sees things in black and white, but I’m just not what you’d call an Autism Nazi. Do I think vaccinations play a part in autism? Maybe. For some kids. But not for all. Not for mine, I know. Tony showed signs of his disability almost from birth, though I didn’t recognize them at the time. Do I think cutting off his dairy or wheat intake will change him radically? No. It didn’t. But I do know of autistic kids that did better on a gluten and dairy free diet. I also know kids, like Tony, who didn’t benefit at all. Would I try alternative therapies on my son? Maybe. I’d have to evaluate them for myself and find out what they might have to offer. I’d certainly consider it. Who wouldn’t? I’m not going to delude myself that any of this will “cure” him, but if I can find things that make a difference for the better, however minor, I’ll go with it.
I’m not about to get into a militant discussion of stringent therapies and offer to protest vaccination clinics, but I am willing to talk to this woman, this woman who has a son trapped as mine is trapped, and offer her my support, my shoulder, and just plain let her know she’s not alone. I head over and introduce myself to her, and to the two other mothers she’s standing with. They all have newly diagnosed children, two boys and a girl, ages 2 ½ to 3, and they’re all, quite frankly, terrified.
What if their child never gets “better”? What if they can’t go to school? Or play soccer or football or join the band? What if it was something I did that made him this way? Or something I didn’t do? What if , what if, what if. I could spend a lifetime on what if. I’ve been there, done that, and wondered if I should have gotten a different colored tee shirt, if it would have made a difference. It is what it is, and our job, rotten and hard as it is, is to work through what it is to what it will be. Whatever that is. The hard part is, you know this is a lifelong journey for us, and for our children. That lifetime can stretch before you endlessly some days.
Just then, Tony runs by and I grab him by the hand, pulling him over to me. His attention is a million miles away. He wants to bounce, not talk. I make him talk anyway.
“Tony? Tony, this is Miss Andrea. And this is her son, Dylan. Can you say ‘Hi’ to Dylan?”
Tony glances at Dylan for a nanosecond, raises his hand and says “Hi Dylan! Mommy! I bounce!”
“I know, I saw you bouncing! Are you having fun?”
“Fun Tony! I bounce!” He’s trying to pull away, so I let him go. He runs a few steps, then turns back to me. “C’mon Mommy! Mommy! Bounce!”
“In a minute, Bubby. Mommy’s talking.”
“Bounce, Mommy!”
“Five minutes. Okay, Tony? Five minutes.”
He holds up a hand, showing five fingers. “Five minutes,” he repeats. “Bye!” And he’s gone, chasing after his sister, screaming her name.
I turn back to the other women, and they’re staring at me. I wonder what I did – was I not attentive enough? Did I not use the proper applied behavioral therapy listening techniques? Funny how you get so used to people judging you with your child that it becomes second nature. Finally, one of the other Moms breaks the ice.
“You just had a conversation.”
She says it like it’s hard for her to believe, and suddenly, I was spiraling back in time, to two years ago, when I wouldn’t have believed it either. Two years ago, that kind of back-and-forth was something I’d only hoped and dreamed we’d someday be doing. And now here it is, someday, and I take it for granted. I shake my head at myself.
“I know. It’s normal for me now, but two years ago it wasn’t. Two years ago, he didn’t talk. Not more than a word or two, anyway. Two years ago, he screamed and pointed and screamed some more. Or he shut down and ignored us all.” I look over to where he bounced, chasing his sister around, laughing and shouting and enjoying himself immensely, and I smile. I smile big.
“He called you ‘Mommy’”, says another mother. The longing in her voice cuts into me. “Mine can’t even say ‘Mommy’.” Her voice catches and she looks up at the fluorescent lights, blinking hard. I step forward, wrap my arms around her and I say “Oh, honey, he will. He will, and it will be so worth waiting for. I promise.”
We chat some more, about therapies and food and tantrums and other kids and what works and what doesn’t and why it’s all so damn hard. Pretty soon it’s time to go, and as I’m rounding up the kids, I see a very tired, very frustrated mother at the end of her rope, her child in front of her on the floor, locked in a tantrum of epic proportions because he spilled water on his pants and can’t bear the sensation of an inch-wide wet patch on his leg. She looks up apologetically and says “I’m sorry….he’s so loud, I know.” I smile gently and I say “Not as loud as mine. And don’t apologize. You have to know we’ve all been there. Do what you need to do.” She thanks me for my understanding, and gathers him in her arms, crooning and rocking and trying to distract him. No one rushes forward to tell her how to parent her child or what she should do to fix this because we all know that our kids are all individuals, and that Mom knows what works and what doesn’t. It’s kind of refreshing being with a group of people who get that.
I manage to get Tony’s coat on him, which is no easy task because he and Bella are so busy tickling each other and running in circles around me. I can barely get him to stop long enough to do it. We head for the door and he turns to look over his shoulder at the boy he just met.
“Bye, Dylan! Bye! Bye, Dylan! See ya later!”
Dylan and his Mom and all the other Moms wave, and I wave back with the papers in my hand, papers with hastily scribbled email addresses and phone numbers. I look down at Tony – who just became a sign of hope and doesn’t even know it - and I smile and say: “You’ve come a long way, baby” as I tweak his nose.
And I realize – it isn’t just him I’m talking to.
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Wednesday, March 11th, 2009
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So, today, IP and I built a neighborhood.
Well, technically, we helped build one.
We got called to an address in one of the quieter parts of the City for a patient that had fallen. Third-party call, no further information. We rolled up to the address, but ended up walking down a couple of houses to see a group of people waving us over. It should be noted that it's warm today (nearly 70 degrees) so all of the snow is gone and people are outside enjoying the weather. But this group of people is not out just to enjoy weather, they are helping.
Mrs X, one of the elderly neighbors has fallen in the doorway and cannot get up. Because she's sitting in the doorway, all of the people outside walking and sunning and weathering can see her. They called 911, because no one really knows anyone that well, and no one knew what else to do.
IP and I stood her up, popped her into a chair on the porch, and asked the $64 million question: "Would you like us to take you to the hospital?"
She paused, and sighed. "I probably should," she said sadly. "I've been sick lately and if I fall again when no one can see me or help me, I don't know what I'd do. I wonder what my doctor thinks I ought to do."
I produce a cell phone and offer to call the doctor, which gets done.
Neighbors are not drifting off now that the excitement is over. In fact, more are arriving. It's a 'hey, I wonder what's going on here?' scenario. As we wait for the doctor to call us back, a few neighbors creep closer and begin to ask questions about what happened. IP and Mrs X address them, while I go to answer the phone, since the doctor has called us back.
The doctor would prefer that she not go to the hospital. "If she does," the doctor said sadly, "I may never be able to get her out. The hospital will push her into a nursing home, and what she needs is to be as independent and mobile as possible. She just needs some help until she gets over this bug."
We now have a mission: keep Mrs X out of the hospital.
IP explains how the 911 call came about as I tell him what the doctor and I discussed. Apparently, Mrs X fell in the doorway, and one of her neighbors was out running, saw her, and found another neighbor doing yardwork, and asked yardwork-neighbor to call 911. A couple of other neighbors saw the two other neighbors talking, and came over to see what was up. None of them could figure out how to get Mrs X up, so they agreed to stay until the ambulance arrived. More neighbors came, and eventually the number increased to a fairly substantial number. I looked around, evaluating my resources and options, and decided to do what I do best: make things work.
"ALL RIGHT, EVERYONE! LISTEN UP!" I said from the top porch step. "I NEED YOUR HELP!"
Neighbors look eager. This is good. The Tao has not let me wrong on this one. IP eases over to back me up, looking rather like a very tall bodyguard. I suddenly realize that this is going to work.
"Folks, Mrs X is ill. She's got a pretty bad cold, and being sick and being on antibiotics has made her a little weak. So, that's why she fell. Her doctor does not want her in the hospital, because they will try to push her into a nursing home. The best thing for Mrs X is to stay mobile and independent. But since she's got this cold, she needs help. Which is why I need your help."
The neighbors lean forward. Excellent.
"Here's what I need you all to do," I begin to explain, starting to pace like Patton debriefing the troops. "Mrs X lives alone. This is her son, Bob." I point to Bob, who waves nervously. "Bob lives about fifteen minutes away. You all live right here. So, here's the plan..."
If only I had a flipchart.
"Bob is going to call Mrs X every couple of hours. If Mrs X doesn't answer, Bob will come and check on her. During the night, if she needs help, she will call Bob or she will call us. What I need you folks to do is just help keep an eye on her. Wave and say hi, or stop in just to make sure she's all right in between the phone calls. If you don't see her, come and check on her. Is that all right with everyone?"
Murmured nods of assent ruffle the assembly.
Excellent. My plan is working perfectly. "Who lives next door?" The next-door neighbor steps up, and I gather her into my Cunning and Clever Plan. "Okay, here's something I need you to do, if you're willing. Mrs X has a spare house key. IP here is going to hide it somewhere. He's going to tell Mrs X, Bob, and you where it's hidden. That way, if anything happens while her door is locked and, God forbid, us or the Fire Department need to get inside, we can do that without breaking down the door. You can run over and tell us where the key is hidden if you're here. Is that all right?"
The next-door neighbor grins and nods. She is more than willing to help. Fantastic. In fact, the neighbor goes over to Mrs X, and introduces herself. They've never actually met before. Names are exchanged, and I decide to get everyone in on this.
"Do you people actually know each other?"
Obviously, they don't. People are looking around and frowning. They've seen each other in a casual, 'oh, don't you live in the green house halfway down the block?' kind of way. But they do not know each other. I can fix this.
"Well, start saying hello. I'll go first. I'm Nemi, a Paramedic with the City. This is my Filthy Assistant, IP. We don't live in your neighborhood, but we're here to help you. We're both also firefighters. Now, you all try it."
And it's beautiful. People are going around, shaking hands. Rumbles of "I'm Mike" and "I'm Stephanie" and descriptions of who lives in which house are going across the assembly on the front walk. Bess the Dog is recognized, and someone admits to owning Ted the cat (the orange tabby that leaves chipmunks on peoples' porches). The three little red-haired girls belong to Amy and Trip, who live in the white house with the gray shutters. People come up onto the porch to greet Mrs X and Bob. A few come up and introduce themselves to us. They are no longer a collection of strangers living in the same geographical space. They are a community.
Paper is called for, and IP heads for the truck. He returns with a sheaf of blank paper and a hand full of pens. People take the initiative, and a neighbor phone list begins to form. Numbers are exchanged, addresses are noted. IP, Bob, and Next-Door Neighbor, Missy, head off to hide the door key. Someone on the porch notices that the front foyer of Mrs X's house has a lot of stuff in it from where she fell and tried to stand up. Would she mind if they straighten it up for her? She said she didn't mind at all, and three neighbors (and the eldest red-haired girl) get to it. Someone mentions that it's getting close to dinner-time. Another person says it is, and he'd planned to grill because of the lovely weather. Someone else had planned to grill, too. Hey, we live a couple houses down; why don't I grill this, and you grill that, and we'll eat together? I have a big table on the back porch. Oh, a third neighbor has no grill, but has two tables that will seat eight each; why don't we all get together, and non-grill-owning neighbor will provide a salad? Another neighbor has a couple of cases of soda and a couple cases of beer; would that be welcome at dinner? Absolutely. Neighbors begin making dinner plans, and would Mrs X and Bob feel like joining them? Soon, there will be a neighborhood block party at the blue house which is third down on the right (where the big tables are located), the couple from the corner will bring their camping table and some chairs, along with some fresh bread they picked up earlier, some other neighbors will bring lawn chairs and tiki torches, and everyone can bring food. One grill-owning neighbor's grill is mobile; why not just push it a couple of doors down, and they can talk and grill? A capital idea!
IP returns from playing Hide-the-Door-Key, and Bob is shocked when his mother's neighbors invite him to join them for dinner at the block party. He timidly agrees, and asks if his mother feels up to this.
Mrs X, sitting on her chair on the porch, is grinning. She absolutely feels up to this.
As the neighbors begin to shift - some go to move grills, some go to grab things from their kitchens, a bunch begins to wander from house to house collecting chairs and tables, and several remain on the walk chatting about shared professions or hobbies - I kneel down beside Mrs X. "Are you feeling up to this?" I ask her gently, knowing that she has a cold and this could weaken her further.
She looks around at her neighbors, and smiles. "I feel better than I have in years."
I look up and see what she sees: not just random people she nods at when they pass, but a community of neighbors who can say "Good morning!" and shake hands. They now know names, faces, homes, and professions. Their children are playing in the yards, and their families are getting to know one another. Maybe, over time, this new bond will grow and people will become friends. Men are chuckling, women are laughing, and children are having a ball. Bess the dog is made much of, and Ted the cat makes a brief appearance before deciding that Bess the dog and he are not likely to be bosom chums any time soon. A couple of guys come up and offer to help Mrs X over to the house where dinner is being had, and Bob is engaged to come and give his opinion as to whether the grilling neighbors should grill the chicken with lemon or with barbecue sauce.
One of the neighbors asks if IP and I would like to stay for dinner. IP assures them that we'd love to, but we're working. But if we're needed, they may certainly call us. Another neighbor asks if they can call and actually ask for us. We assure them that they may, although we might not be working. I give them the number to the main desk, and our names. IP (who is a better liar than myself) assures them that all of our colleagues are very skilled people who are lovely and good and willing to help. (Hint: that's a lie.) If help is needed, and IP and I are available, we will come. If not, our colleagues are just as lovely as we are. (Hint: that's another lie.) Mrs X stops her progress to hug us both and declare us "lovely young people" and some of the neighbors shake our hands, and we take our leave.
Upon arriving at our next post, Captain Farvo (whom I still do not want to see), arrives to ask us why a simple lift assist took us over an hour. IP and I both realize that explaining it to Captain Farvo is a lost cause. He will not understand why it was important, and he will not realize that sometimes, our job is not about saving lives and stamping out disease. Occasionally, our job is about preventing us having to go out and do the saving-lives-and-stamping-out-disease routine. Because we spent an hour doing this, one block in the City is a little safer, a little more educated, and is a better place. One resident of the City did not have to go to the hospital, and a whole bunch of people are having a pretty good time right about now. This is not something that Captain Farvo understands, so we didn't bother trying.
After EOT, I told LT and Cute-as-a-Button Supervisor what had transpired. Cute-as-a-Button Supervisor grinned and chalked it up to "Nemi's Endlessly Sunny Outlook on Life," my supreme cuteness and the fact that I am ridiculously sweet. LT waited until everyone left the office and hugged me very tightly. As I got hugged, he gave me my kiss-on-the-head and declared that things like that make him so very proud of me. I'm pretty proud of me, too.
The killer moment was when Girl Supervisor came in and said that someone had called in a compliment about IP and I. LT very nearly popped a button due to pride, and Girl Supervisor wrote it up for our jackets. Apparently, having an entire neighborhood call in a compliment is fairly cool. Mrs X's son had done it, at the urging of Mrs X and some of the neighbors. He also asked Girl Supervisor if we could come back after we left work and have dinner. She'd told him that we were out on another call (we were dealing with a 'chest pain' patient who actually had leg and arm pain because he ran out of medication for gout and wanted us to take him to the ER to get more) but that she'd pass along the compliment.
The supervisors played rock-paper-scissors to see who signed the compliment. In the end, Smooth Supervisor and Girl Supervisor signed it, seeing as Cute-as-a-Button Supervisor and LT get to write my yearly reviews. I got more hugs, and I headed home for some much-needed sleep.
Life's good, queridos. Life is damned good.
Originally posted by degeneratelyre on March 7th, 2009, here
Edited to Add: Since I posted this, degeneratelyre has locked the entry back to Friends Only for job-related reasons. Comments will be allowed on this post by request.
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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Friday, February 13th, 2009
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Originally posted February 11, 2009 by apiphile.
HEY GUYS IT'S NEARLY TIME TO EXPRESS YOUR AFFECTION FOR SOMEONE ON THE MANDATED DAY THROUGH THE CAREFULLY COMMERCIAL BARRIER OF TACKY PRESENTS AND IMPERSONAL CARDS!
About three years ago I wrote this:
[...] a pretty big step towards acquiring my [heart] is wanting to. Be interested. Want to be near me. If this reads to you like demanding worship then I worry about your relationships - I'd always thought that liking someone was a weighty prerequisite in the dating them field. Hell yes I want attention, for that's what relationships ARE - mutual attention and affection. Jesus. Think about me when I'm gone. Miss me when I'm not there. Be pleased to see me, because you know damn well I do the same about you.
I'd also like adventure and excitement (and really wild things), intelligent conversation, and not to feel like you're settling for me because you think someone better - usually one of my friends, as it happens - would turn you down. Sure, find other people attractive. Want to screw famous men or women. Go "Phwoar" when you see someone fit in the street. But like me. Find me attractive, even if I think it's absurd. Don't wish for my mind in someone else's body. Don't regret my scars, because I don't. They're mine. They're me. Admire my tattoos, be impressed by my sewing, laugh at my atrocious jokes. Be delighted, be charmed, be happy to be in my company and hope to make me feel the same about you.
I'm not remotely close to perfect, and neither are the people I love and have loved. I find flaws exciting, interesting, individual and above all, loveable. Someone (probably my mother) once told me that to love someone not instead of their defects but because of them is giving them permission to be at peace with themselves.
And now, in the run-up to Commercially Dictated Affection Day I'm afraid something else needs to be added to it. That's how I'd want to be loved, that's how I want to love people, even if I probably get it wrong, thinking about it like that. I've done some fucking stupid things in the name of love and, embarrassing and occasionally damaging though they were, and inconclusive though many of them are in the end, I don't think I want to make myself regret them.
I'm not cool. I don't get to be commitmentphobic or aloof or mope about claiming I have no idea how it feels love someone, my heart is a cold stone oh if only someone could change me, god my life is so hard. I'm a giant messy red-hot idiot and I fall in love like I'm going to war and it's amazing and stupid and giddying and horrible and life-affirming every single time. It's like base-jumping, I think; you know you're going to hit the bottom at some point, you know you're going to hurt either a little or a lot, you don't know that you're necessarily going to survive it, but the seconds before the impact are the most incredible rush. Sometimes you don't even need someone to love you back, sometimes it's just enough to turn your heart inside out and let go.
I have done enormous things for love, stupid things, ridiculous, mockworthy things. I've written letters most people would want burnt, I've said things that would make you want to swallow your own tongue in sympathy. I've bled of it and yelled for it and drunk myself unconscious for it, punched walls and mirrors and doors and myself in the head. I've chased it, clung to it, prostrated myself before it, lied for it and tried all manner of absurd gestures to convince the object of whichever affections that I'm sincere. That I mean it. Because I always mean it. And I won't be made to regret that because a retarded majority of people would rather be afraid than happy, would rather be dignified than content, would rather pull tiny threads until the whole possible edifice of joy unravels before their eyes than just fling themselves off the precipice and embrace the madness of it occasionally.
Perhaps your love is small things, remembering birthdays and finding the car keys or letting someone sleep in by five minutes. I'd call that basic consideration. You don't have to be wildly and impossibly smitten with someone to pick up their dry-cleaning, just kind. Perhaps your love is Third Tuesday Of The Month Carefully Timed Dates, perhaps it's just something that slides in beside your busy schedule of clubs and societies. Good for you and good for your order and neatness.
Mine isn't, and I'm not going to be made to regret the fact that it's chaotic and consuming and sporadic and unwieldy. I am a bloody romantic, in the worst possible sense. Not a pragmatist, not a I Think We Should End This Relationship Because It Won't Allow Our Careers To Blossom Fully And Doesn't Fit With My Life Plan person, but an unattractive moron who slumps on your fucking doorstep before you're awake. Yeah, love like this is childish and impractical and terrifying and unpredictable. It makes you feel ALIVE. If the only thing I can afford to do is drag you to the top of the tallest hill in the city and introduce the most beautiful person I know to the most beautiful thing I can think of - London at night spread out like a blanket of living souls - and see the one reflected in each other, that's my present.
I'm not going to be made to regret taking someone I'd never met before to Paris for five days and trailing dog stupid behind her the whole time; I'm not going to be made to regret stacks of frankly purple letters, I'm not going to be made to regret travelling half the country on a whim, and I'm not going to claim that love's not worth it on the measure of several broken hearts, or scars that may never fade, or getting stuck in Exeter bus station at 2am, several hundred miles from home. Sacrifices like that are always worth it.
Love is not a fucking INVESTMENT for your shiny achievement future, it is its own end, its own purpose, its own destination. Even when it doesn't work out - especially when it doesn't work out - it was always worth it.
I would like to stop having to see people who are otherwise worthy of respect cheering themselves on for being too self-absorbed to take that dive. Faux-is-me whining about how you just don't seem to be able to love any one is bad enough; denying that you ever did is shameful and pathetic. Own your goddamn infatuations. Hold your sodding head up and say, "Yeah, I was crazy about her and she didn't love me back. it was amazing and I wouldn't change that or the hurt for the world".
And btw, every living person on this planet "deserves" it, if worthiness is your pissing concern. It's self-reflexive: loving someone makes them worthy of being loved. You do, I do, the kindest and most sainted human beings and the biggest murdering assholes all "deserve" love from someone, most of all themselves. Ourselves.
No, wait. Go ahead and argue with me on this one if you want to, but I am fucking right.
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Wednesday, February 11th, 2009
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While the Large Hadron Collider may in fact not have destroyed the world yet, the very existence of it is to blame for some very strange anomalies.
For example, a miniature black hole seems to have formed not so long ago directly beneath my couch. What's peculiar about it is not that it's there - theoretically, miniature black holes can pop in and out of existence anywhere and any time - no, what's interesting is that it is a very selective and stable miniature black hole.
Most miniature black holes, you see, are indiscriminant about the nature of the matter and energy they attract and give off radiation at a rate faster than that at which they absorb energy. So, they appear, suck up a little bit of whatever is around, and promptly disappear in a puff of logic.
This one is stubborn. It's too small to absorb matter - otherwise the couch would be gone by now. I suppose it absorbs light to a certain extent since it is pretty dark under the couch. And it does attract dust bunnies and cat toys. But any ordinary miniature black hole could do that too.
Unlike your typical black hole, which radiates x-rays, this one emits exclusively gluons, the sub-atomic particles that cause protons and neutrons to stick to each other tightly enough to form atomic nuclei. Furthermore, this particular miniature black hole seems to only attract "bottom" quarks.
These two anomalies are what is responsible for the fact that as soon as I get home after work and briefly sit down on the couch, the gluon emissions attract my "bottom" quarks and keep me firmly planted there for the rest of the evening. It's a problem since there are plenty of things I think of during the day which need doing when I get home, but once there I seem to cross the event horizon and no subsequent events transpire. Sure, I am able to move my fingers a little, but hardly more than Steven Hawking, resulting only in a change in the channel on the TV. Once in a while I manage to establish an oblong, elliptical orbit between the couch and either the kitchen or bathroom, but the couch is a gravitational well I just can't escape.
It is only the formidable attraction to my wife, who gets home from work close to midnight, that helps me break free and escape to the relative safety of bed. I've lost count of the number of times she has saved me from a fate worse than death - having my "bottom" quarks collapse into a quantum singularity, rendering me a Higgs boson for the relative infinity preceding the unavoidable heat-death of the Universe.
It's yet another of the myriad reasons I love my wife. She has complete control over space-time.
Originally posted by jabber, here.
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Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
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Original post by pecunium, here.
I want to expand a bit on something I said in my last post. “This is not the country I signed up to defend. It’s not the country I, with reservations, went to war to serve.” Ignoring that there are no idealists in foxholes (atheists can be found), I did enlist (in part) from a desire to serve.
Not to “defend liberty”. No. That’s too plastic, and abusable a concept to be worthy of claiming it as an ideal. I signed up because I believed in the bedrock issues of the Declaration of Independence, their implementation in the Constitution, and their explication in the Gettysburg Address.
Really, the third is the one which had the greatest suasive power to my enlisting.
The Gettysburg Address was about the why of that war. Right up front: Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
That’s what the war was about. It wasn't about states' rights. It was about whether a democracy, based on the idea of equality, could “long endure.” That’s what I signed up to defend. I don’t give a rat’s ass about “spreading democracy.” I like to see equality spread. If that means democracy (which seems the best bet) then so be it.
The “War on Terror” has to change. It has to become what it ought to have been from the beginning. A police action. Not in the fictional, "we aren’t in a war in Viet-nam” sort of way, but the “arrest the bad guys who are planning to rob the bank” sort of way.
Because the "War on Terror" is proving corrosive to the idea that all men are created equal. There is no way to reconcile that with the idea of indefinite detention of whomever the president wants to declare an enemy combatant. No way.
The meat of the Declaration of Independence (when one gets past the first bit) is really straightforward too. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
There you go. All men. Not all men who happen to be white. Not all Americans. Not all people who live in a country we like.
Everyone, full stop.
We used to act on that principle. Not perfectly, but it was the basis for our laws. The idea that the President can wave his hand and erase those rights is anathema.
That’s why leaving Iraq isn’t a big deal to me. We’ve blown it. I don’t see any way we can make it better. So why keep spending our blood and treasure to screw the pooch even worse? When the blowback starts to work toward making the President a kingly figure?
People like to say we can’t quit, because that dishonors the dead. We can’t let their sacrifice be in vain.
The last part of the Gettysburg Address answers that. ”It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
I’ve got the campaign medal for this little adventure. I knew some of the 4,222 (last I checked) of those honored dead. Three of them were in the battalion I was with in theater. One of them was from my battalion (but later). Some I knew. At Charlie Co. Dining Ins we toast them. Their memories go into the grog bowl, and silly-buggers in their honor come out of it.
They don’t die in vain if we “lose” Iraq. They die in vain if we start to let people have privilege. When we start to turn abuses into normal operating procedures. When we forget the mayors, governors, assembly members, representatives, senators and presidents are, at best, primus inter pares for a sum of years, and more often just the hired help.
They, as much (and perhaps more) than any others need to be reminded the law is even-handed, and no one is exempt from it.
That’s why I want investigations, impeachments and prison for those who are convicted. Because I have dead friends who deserve no less. Because they gave that “last full measure of devotion” for that idea.
Because they were right to do so. Because to do any less is to spit on their graves and tarnish their memory.
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Monday, December 15th, 2008
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Originally posted by steelbrassnwood. The original post is friends-locked; comments are enabled here by request of the author.
Buddy died last week. I'd known Buddy my whole life. He lived down the block from us in a small green house with dark blue trim and multiple cars in the driveway. He was a repairman, a gruff guy with a big birthmark on his face who loved baseball and had an opinion about everything. He knew a lot about cars -- he knew a lot about everything, practical things anyway, I don't think he had graduated high school -- and he wasn't afraid to tell you what you thought you should be doing.
I didn't like him. I didn't like anyone on my block, pretty much, and they didn't think much of me either. I was an introvert who read books and didn't like sports. I tended to stay inside when most of the other kids were playing, not least because they often beat me up. My parents were the only college-educated couple on the block, the only ones with white collar jobs, probably the only ones to read books to their kids. None of us completely fit in but I was the worst of all. Buddy would mock my attempts at playing catch, ask me what the hell I was doing inside on a beautiful day like this, or tease me in a way that I was too young and insecure to understand was his rough form of affection.
Buddy fit in completely. He had grown up on the block; he still lived in the house he had been born in. And yes, I think he had been born in that house, not in a hospital. He was a presence at every block party, and you wouldn't be outside working very long before Buddy would come over to help or kibitz. Like most of the men on the block he did his own work on his house, and helped everyone else on theirs. I bet there's not a single house on the block that doesn't have some of Buddy's handiwork in it somewhere.
Despite their many differences my Dad was very close to Buddy. If my dad wasn't around the house, chances were he was at Buddy's. Sitting on the steps and drinking a beer, helping with one of Buddy's endless home improvement projects, or vainly attempting to set Buddy straight about some misconception or other that he wouldn't let go of. He saw the essential goodness under Buddy's exterior faults, although you could also say he put up with a lot of shit for not-entirely-comprehensible reasons. I once saw it only the latter way, but now I can see the former, and I have been thinking a lot about my attitude towards the people I grew up with.
Let's be clear. My neighborhood was insular, racist, and not very friendly to a kid with more brains than social skills. My life as a child was more segregated than that of anyone my age (or frankly any age) who grew up down south, most of the priests at my church as cruel and close-minded as any stereotypical southern preacher, the distance from my block to the bookstores and intellectual life of Manhattan as long as the trip into town from a family farm. More than one kid from my block ended up in jail, and none of them went to college or now have anything other than blue-collar jobs, or the kinds of sinecures (running a cop bar, for instance) available to white working-class thugs with the right connections.
So, with some good reason, I had as little as possible to do with Buddy or anyone else on the block and was relieved to finally move away. I would see him or the other neighbors once in a great while when I came back to visit my parents but I had little to say them or them to me. He tried to be friendly, and as I got older I could enjoy socializing with him and the others, but it was always strained. I had no way of knowing anymore whether he disliked me or whether he was just responding to what had probably been my apparent disdain over the years.
Earlier this year, my father's mother died. She lived a few neighborhoods away, but everyone on my block knew her from her frequent visits and appearances at the block parties. Everyone from the block came to her wake. That's what they do for each other. Buddy didn't look well. He walked slowly and had to sit down, breathing hard, after walking up the few short stairs from the parking lot. But he clasped my hand and said he was sorry and talked with genuine affection about what a tough lady my grandmother was. And when they were leaving, he turned to me, and said, "Stop by when you're visiting your parents. Don't be a stranger."
Needless to say, I didn't. I wouldn't have known what to say. I never knew what to say, when I would walk past all the guys standing around in front of someone's house, drinking beer and joking around. I didn't care much about baseball and the Yankees, and discussing politics or current events wouldn't have been a good idea with that crowd. I had no connection with them at all. No connection except that they'd known me for my whole life.
Buddy died suddenly. Everyone on the block said, "I saw him a few days ago. He was fine." They'd gone over to borrow a tool, or just to shoot the breeze, or to see how his dining room renovation was going. As sick as he was, he was still working on the house. I went to his wake, because it would mean something to his family, and because it would mean something to my mom and dad who were so close to him for so long.
And there, as at my grandmother's wake, I had the feeling that I had missed something very important when I was growing up. That I had missed the good side of my neighborhood. Yes, it was a bad place for me. But they were my people, they were where I come from, and for better or worse they shaped who I am. Not just in their abuse, but in their self-reliance and ability to get things done and their values. I turned my back on them angrily and arrogantly, and not without reason, but by doing so I cut myself off from a community that would have accepted me, as weird as I was, as one of them, for better or worse.
They say that home is the place, that when you go there, they have to take you in. I could have had a home on that block, in that neighborhood. At my grandmother's wake, my brother was surrounded by friends from the neighborhood. Not the thugs, but guys with college degrees, who have their own houses now, their own families, kids who go to the same elementary school that we went to. I had no friends at that wake. I know almost no one from my neighborhood now, and it would have been too long a trip for people from where I live now, even if I'd invited them which I hadn't. I didn't even recognize some of the kids I'd grown up with.
My brother is long gone from the neighborhood too. He lives across the country, his world is academia, and he has great friends there who don't run bars and don't have prison records. But he made more of an effort to fit in our block, and as result, he still has more of a home there. And he can go into the bar run by a guy who used to be one of the block's worst thugs, and be welcomed. I have never walked into that bar, and I don't know what would happen if I did. But, as was probably true when I walked quickly past the guys in someone's front yard, it might be better than I imagine, if I at least made some kind of effort. I'm not sure that effort is worth it now, and those connections are so long lost there may be nothing left to rebuild or retrieve. I'm not even sure why I would bother, but perhaps I should have thought more, years ago, about what it meant to turn your back on your home.
*It was last month, actually; it took me a while to write this.
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008
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Originally posted by rejeneration, here.
Ryan is nine when she is seven.
She cries quietly the entire drive. Mommy doesn’t like traffic and she yells when Kara cries, so she’s a good girl and tries to keep quiet, but she’s still sad she had to give up Pete. Mommy says she can see Pete when she sees Daddy again. She’s sad she had to give up Daddy, too.
Their new home, the apartment, looks like all the other buildings around it for as far as she can see. The only thing that makes Kara’s special is the little boy on her stoop.
“Hi, I’m Ryan,” he says as she makes her way past, trying to keep her backpack and her Holly Hobby suitcase out of the dirt. She wonders if maybe Ryan has a puppy he might let her pet.
- - - - -
Ryan is twelve when she is ten.
She climbs a tree, wind carding through her long, blonde hair. They have their places, her and Ryan. The overpass by the Mobile, the hill over by the school, and the spotty edge of poplars separating town from country.
There’s a bruise on the inside of her thigh, a secret place. Ryan straddles the branch beside her and puts his hand over it. The touch scares her. More than the one that left it there.
“I’ll race you to the library,” Ryan says. Today they’re reading Encyclopedia Brown. As always, Ryan’s a big cheat because he can jump to the ground. She’s always got so far to climb.
- - - - -
Ryan is fifteen when she is thirteen.
She stares at him before the tears come. The shock, as they fall, is that it’s really no shock at all. He doesn’t want her around, so Ryan picks today to hit her, open-handed, palm to cheek. The smack is still ringing in her ears.
“Oh, God, Kara,” Ryan says, shaking. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
She wants to say it’s okay, she understands. It’s a day in May when Ryan tries on the shoes of the only role model he’s ever known. It’s not his fault. He’s just emulating his step-dad.
She wants to say it’s okay, but his handprint burns against the side of her face and there’s no way he could have known about the one before it—the one that never bruised but still stings.
The betrayal is the tears she cries, they don’t belong to Ryan, and that’s the biggest betrayal of all.
- - - - -
Ryan is eighteen when she is sixteen.
“Lemme see,” he says. She turns away, but Ryan’s strong and fast, grabs her wrist as she mumbles, “S’nothing.”
“Dammit, Kara,” he sighs over smudgy, dying bruises and a burn that’s the obvious size of a pencil-tip eraser.
Kara lights a cigarette, breathes in a chest full of nicotine and tar. “I just gotta be more careful,” she laughs, flicking ash into a soda can.
“That’s bullshit and you know it.” Ryan shakes his head, thumbs lightly across the scars above it. “I’m leaving, Kara.” She already knew. She was just waiting for him to say. He whispers, “I wish you could come with me,” against her neck, holding her close. She doesn’t really believe him, but for a few seconds she’s willing to accept the lie.
- - - - -
Ryan is twenty when she is eighteen.
She hasn’t seen him in almost a year, but his mom dies and Ryan shows up on her doorstep at two AM with bloodshot eyes and whiskey breath. He kisses her hard and slow, soft skin shredding over the brute force of teeth, his tongue inside her mouth where it’s hot and wet. “I miss you,” he pants, her hair in his fists. “Come with me,” he says, so she takes his keys and drives them out of town, no place to go, but he looks at her on the outskirts and says, “I mean it, Kara. Come with me.”
She could. She could leave it all behind.
No one would really miss her.
- - - - -
Ryan is twenty-three when she is twenty-one.
He moves inside her, hips scraping hers, long, quick thrusts. “Let me hear you,” he begs, shifting, trying to push it out of her, sounds she’s not willing to make. He kisses her as she breathes, his face shadowed in darkness above her. There’s something there that’s better-left unseen. “I love you,” he whispers, pressing his mouth to her throat, his hands down the bird-bone arch of her back.
No matter how many times it’s said, she’ll never believe it.
- - - - -
Ryan is dead two weeks before she’s twenty-two.
The accident isn’t his fault, but it’s still an accident -- two sobbing teenagers who were just on their way to the mall.
“Ryan asked us to show you this,” a grey-haired attorney tells her, putting a DVD into the player. Ryan pops up on the screen, smiles like she’s known since she was seven, gives a nervous wave. “Hi, baby,” he says. “Figured after you told me, should anything,” he shrugs, “happen—well, I figured we should be prepared for the worst. These nice men, they’ll take care of everything, okay? It’s all yours. Remember, I love you.” Ryan looks past the camera, asks if his first take was a’right and the screen goes blank.
She spreads his ashes underneath their tree.
- - - - -
Ryan is two weeks old when she is twenty-two.
Kara’s going to get him a puppy. She hopes he likes the name Pete.
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Monday, November 17th, 2008
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Original post by filthspigot, @ 2008-11-12 15:33:00
Re: Goldendoodles.
(LJ Cut, to end of entry: "Perhaps you should reconsider purchasing a Goldendoodle for your daughters") To President-Elect Obama
Thank you for the time, effort, and dedication you have shown thus far in your campaign and early presidency. I am enthusiastic about your upcoming term in office and am hopeful for the future of my country for the first time in many years.
With that said, the new puppy you’re planning to bring into the White House?
Don’t get a Goldendoodle.
In 2006, my parents went to work in London. Their dog, a two-year-old male Goldendoodle named Toby, was sent to live with us until my father retires and comes home. As I write this letter, Toby is currently slamming his head into my office window in the hopes of catching a cat across the street.
Toby has changed my view of dogs. Nineteen months ago, I believed that there were no bad dogs, only bad owners. Now, after nearly two thousand dollars worth of damage to my home and yard, and alienating every single person in our neighborhood, I’ve revised this slightly.
There are bad owners, but Goldendoodles are bad dogs.
I’m sure the first coupling of a Golden Retriever with a poodle was an accident, and likely the fault of the dogs themselves. Then, some idiot without a social conscience thought the puppies were cute so they decided to make more of them. And then sold them by saying that a Doodle’s* hair is hypoallergenic and that the dog is similar to a Golden Retriever, only smarter. Well, they might not have allergens but if you don’t bathe them every single week, they start to smell like dirt and rancid oil. Their coats become sticky to the touch. Their odor starts to get in the carpets and the other fabrics of the house, and there’s nothing you can do to remove it.
A smarter Golden Retriever? This just means that you have a dog that is obsessive-compulsive about retrieving to the point where nothing else exists. Nothing. They don't want affection, they want to chase a ball. Toby plays fetch while he’s eating – he has his own personal game of jacks where he drops his ball, grabs a mouthful of food, drops the food on the floor, and eats however many kibbles he can before the ball stops bouncing (For science, I once threw a ball while he was taking a dump. … if you do acquire a Doodle I strongly advise against this).
I know your children are growing up, but they are still small enough to have problems with larger dogs. Doodles can get pretty big – Toby is eighty pounds – and he is not good with children. The neighborhood kids used to use our yard as a shortcut to get from a small forest to the street. My own dog, a nine-year-old male Rottweiler, would come up to them for a nice ear scratch, if he bothered to get up off of the porch at all. Now, any child who comes anywhere near my yard sees a frothing blond hairball leaping up and down behind the fence, barking and salivating for a taste of delicious free-range meat (Actually, I’m not entirely sure this is true. I might have managed to train him out of attacking children, but this isn’t exactly something I can test. I’m sure we’ll learn someday, though, as the dog looks like a big floppy muppet and children are compelled to hug him.).
Many of the maintenance problems associated with dogs will not be yours to manage, as is your due as President. For the next four years – with hard work and good fortune, the next eight - you and your family will not be responsible for the constant filth generated by a Doodle. But because you seem to be a compassionate man and are no doubt concerned about the welfare of your staff, I’ll briefly note the tedious minutia of cleaning that will accompany ownership of a Doodle.
In the past nineteen months, Toby has caused no less than two thousand dollars worth of damage to our home. He has a unique habit of rolling his balls in any fabric he finds lying around, such as draperies, door mats, towels, jeans, very expensive jackets, the bed sheets, and a green wool blanket that’s been in my family for at least thirty years. He uses this fabric to play a little game with himself, as he promptly forgets where he hid his ball and will then run around the house looking for it. When he “finds” it hidden in the cloth, he’ll rip it open and fling the ball across the room to retrieve it. Sometimes, the ball hits breakable objects. Other times, Toby tries to pounce on it but crashes into the wall and gouges long claw marks into the paint and the drywall. Not having a ball in the house isn’t an option, as he will sit and cry or will find a substitute plaything. This surrogate could be a shoe, or a piece of computer equipment, or a ceramic plate - it really doesn’t matter as long as costs more than a ball and is within five feet of the ground.
Oh, that Dog Whisperer technique where you exercise your dog for an hour a day and then it is the happiest, most well-mannered dog on the planet? Bullshit. That just helps increase energy and builds endurance.
Keep lids on your trash cans. Expect serious damage to occur to any objects of value including pottery and flat-screen televisions. Doodles have a fondness for chewing through electrical cords, so make sure these are hidden or expect to make yet another late-night call to Rebecca, the night technician at the emergency vet’s. Also, things that you wouldn’t think have any appeal to man or beast will still be tasted and spat out, such as reams of computer paper, candles, toilet wands, and vacuums.
Over the last nineteen months, I have reached a first-name basis with my local carpet cleaner. Do you order “the regular” with your carpet guy? You will, because these dogs have a chronic case of poo foot, a self-explanatory condition that can be treated through scouring the back yard every single day but cannot be cured and reoccurs at least three times a week. Similarly, keep your toilet seats down. For God’s sake, Mister President, keep your toilet seats down! I’ve seen some things, man… horrible, horrible things…!
And heaven forbid you try to do any home improvement. Don’t do any gardening, since Doodles thrive on a steady diet of mud and earthworms, which they will then vomit all over your freshly-cleaned carpets. Oh, once, I painted a floor. Having understood by then that I was not harboring a canine but a small demon in dog form, I blocked off the only door to the room. The dog still managed to walk in the paint and then played a game of fetch with himself. All over the house. The paint, mind you, was bright blue. Not that I think you have painted floors at the White House, but this is information you need to know– right! The porch. I don’t know if the White House has a wooden porch, but if you ever have to stain one, the dog will promptly roll in the fresh stained areas. You will then have to strip and restain the deck, and shave the dog.
Yes, you will find yourself shaving your dog far, far more often than you ever thought possible, because a buzz cut is easier to manage than the Doodle's thick fluffy coat. You will find yourself growing angry at your groomer’s if they did not do a good job of shaving your dog, and you will make absurd threats such as “Leave enough so he doesn’t freeze to death or I’ll shave you.”
And Doodles bark. Constantly. Unendingly. In a deep, carrying bellow that would be really useful if the house were being robbed, but not so much at three in the morning when it isn't. I can’t imagine that your administration would benefit from a dog that never shuts up, although it might speed negotiations forward when visiting Heads of State grow annoyed and want to leave as quickly as possible before inciting war.
If I were reading this, I might mistakenly think this was a single problem dog or a the complaints of an owner who was in over her head with a dog she couldn’t manage. Putting aside the fact that I’ve had my elderly Rottweiler since he was a puppy and he’s quite likely the best dog on earth, I’ll tell you two stories. The first is from my boyfriend’s coworker, who owns a Doodle and lets the dog run free on three acres of fenced-in land. The Doodle spends his days playing in the fields and the small lake on the property. Each night, the dog returns to his owner’s home, puts several freshly-caught perch on the deck, and shreds them into bits. His owner thinks the dog likes to make pretty pictures with the fish guts by throwing the pieces at the house to see where they stick.
The second story is of a Doodle who belongs to my friend’s aunt. She purchased her Doodle as a puppy and spent almost four years fighting with the dog. In spite of training, puppy classes, and advice from other dog owners, her Doodle never learned to walk on a leash, or obey, or listen at all. Until one magical day when she took the dog for its daily walk – rather than dancing and straining at the end of its leash, the Doodle was at perfect heal. My friend’s aunt was delighted! She took it for an extra-long walk, thinking that the Doodle had finally outgrown the puppy phase and had become the dog she had always wanted. When they returned home, the Doodle sat when asked, had its leash removed, and waited patiently until she gave it permission to move. Then the dog walked over to its bed, lay down, crossed its front paws, and spat out a live squirrel. And then, the Doodle chased the squirrel.
I have said all I can about this, except the shelters are filled with mutts that might not have a designer pedigree but won’t reduce the White House to ruins. I have heard your daughter is allergic to dogs, as I am, although I am lucky enough to develop a tolerance to most dogs if I receive medication for the first few weeks. But if you are still considering a Doodle, then do what we told my parents to do when they missed Toby those first few days – go find a well-used yellow bath mat and wrap it around an alarm clock set to go off at three in the morning.
* A Doodle. Doodle. Doodle. This word alone should stand as a giant red flag - nothing good can come from a Doodle.
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Saturday, November 15th, 2008
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Original post by ursulav @ 2008-11-14 10:28:00
So last night, Kevin and I went to a reception/dinner for the Iraqi sculptor and journalist, Ahmed Fadaam.
For those of you who don't follow NPR obsessively, he was an artist, a native of Baghdad, who saw his studio and life's work destroyed in the looting following the overthrow of Saddam, and began working as a journalist and translator, reporting the collapse of Baghdad and the attempts at rebuilding for NPR and the New York Times. You can read a much more detailed account than I can give--it's a fascinating, frequently painful story, and his first-hand reports from Baghdad, "Ahmed's Diary" would wake grief in a heart of adamant.
When Kevin found out that he had come to the US and was having an art reception, knowing how much I admired the man's work, he got us tickets. I have mentioned before, I think, that Kevin is a keeper.
It was a lovely dinner, and--well, "moving" doesn't even cover it. He was speaking about his latest sculpture, a copy of which is now on my bookcase, called "Grieving Woman." The inspiration was simple--on his beat, he would often see between sixty and a hundred dead bodies a day, and most of them were men. He said that at the morgue, or at the site of the car bombs, he would find their wives grieving, an image that got burned into his brain week after week, and which he tried finally to excise by sculpting it.
At one point in the dinner, as various people on the staff were chatting with the various guests, it came up in the usual fashion that I did comic books, and one of the producers said "Oh! You have to talk to Ahmed--he just got a deal with DC to turn the diaries into a graphic novel!" So when an opportunity presented itself, I went up and introduced myself, and congratulated him on the deal with DC.
This may sound like an insipid conversation starter, given the man's life, but it's very hard to fangirl over someone's pain. Besides, I don't know crap about war, or atrocity. Nobody has ever wanted to kill me. I make a living as an artist, but my hamsters-wearing-hats is so far from the sort of art this man is doing that calling them both by the same name is a tragedy of language.
Comics, though, I know. Comics I can talk about with anybody, anywhere, with enthusiasm.
And this quiet, soft-spoken man, who had been telling us matter-of-factly, without emotion, about the horrors of life in occupied Iraq, cracked a huge grin and practically bounced on his feet, and began telling me how excited he was, because he'd grown up on Superman and Batman, and to be working on a comic for those people...!
Here's a guy who slept with an AK-47 next to his bed, in anticipation of somebody breaking into the house at any moment to kill him and his family. Here's a guy who has seen more death and ruin come to his home than any human should see in a dozen lifetimes. Here's a guy who had to flee his country because of death threats against him as a Western collaborator, who had been speaking about the resentment Iraqis feel towards Americans, who hasn't seen his family in months, and cannot go and visit them because he will be denied reentry to the US if he leaves.
And he was excited to be doing a comic.
More than excited, he was suddenly animated, telling me about his art submissions for the proposal DC had sent him, and how he had taught figure drawing and how they were having to work out the art style for the comic, and then there was much mutual commiseration over illustration deadlines. "A hundred illustrations? Brutal!" "Eighty in six weeks? How could you see afterwards?"
This is the power of comics.
I have said before that readers will give you more and forgive you more, and feel with you more in comics than any other medium. And I still don't know why that is. I'm an artist, even if most of it IS hamsters wearing little hats, and I'm a writer, and I have stared at the process from both ends, and three volumes of Digger* and an Eisner nomination and a graphic novel for kids with Penguin later, I still don't know why. Whatever bizarre alchemy occurs between the word and the art, I cannot point to it and say "There. That bit. That's why it works."All I know is that it works, and comics have power. I gave up believing in magic--mostly--long ago, but if I had to point to something in the world that's magic, it would be comics. They shouldn't have such power. They shouldn't be able to change the world. But they do.
Thank god.
*Four, once I get everything mailed off...
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Friday, November 14th, 2008
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Originally posted by intrepia, here.
I am tired of a society that believes that sanctity depends on exclusion. I am tired of the discrimination, the intolerance, the disdain.
When I marry - if I marry - I want a marriage that's sacred not because other people are not allowed to marry, but because of the content and character of my own relationship, my own love.
I am a heterosexual female who has been blessed enough never to have struggled with my sexual orientation or gender identity, and I am tired of straight people who don't recognize or understand how lucky they are to be able to express and experience love freely, without fear of recrimination.
I am tired of people who think that civil unions are fine for gay couples, but who want marriage for themselves. I am a writer, and I don't believe that a word like "marriage" is so sacred that you want to grant the same legal rights under two different names, depending on who is to receive them. Because, look, it's not called something different if you have green eyes instead of brown; it's not called something different if you're 50 years old rather than 25; it's not called something different because of your height, your ethnicity, your shoe size, or your favorite ice cream flavor, so why should it be called something different because of your gender and the gender of the person you love?
I am tired of people who have never been truly discriminated against discriminating against others, and I am even more tired of people who have experienced discrimination because of their race or their gender or their age or their disabilities or any other unshakeable characteristic about themselves, and they still think it's okay to deprive other human beings of the same fairness and freedoms they want for themselves.
I am tired of straight people who have gay friends but who still somehow manage to reconcile this with the belief that their friends should not be recognized as equals to themselves under the law. Because what kind of friend are you if you can hang out, share meals, go shopping, play games, take walks, have long conversations, and yet you don't think that your friends' love should be recognized in the same way that yours is?
I am tired of the argument that banning same-sex marriage is necessary to "protect marriage" and "restore the meaning of marriage." Let me tell you, if you need to prevent loving, committed couples from marrying in order to restore the meaning of your own marriage, your marriage is in deep doo-doo. And if you think the way to protect marriage is only to let people who need to prevent loving, committed couples from marrying in order to restore the meaning of their own marriage marry, well, then, I don't even know what to say to you.
I am tired of people talking about the "gay lifestyle," as though it were a choice and the same for everyone. There is a "gay lifestyle" about as much as there is a "lifestyle of people with type O+ blood."
I am tired of the argument that gay marriage must be banned in order to "protect our children." What are you trying to protect your children from? A non-homogenized world? I think you are exploiting your children as a front to protect your own narrow-minded intolerance.
I am disgusted by the argument that Proposition 8 was "not an attack on gays." Yeah, it's not an attack the way it wouldn't be an attack if someone came and tried to take away YOUR civil rights and the strongest legal recognition of YOUR relationship and YOUR love. It's not an attack if denigrating an entire group of people to being second-class citizens and second-class human beings isn't an attack.
In my mind, someone's sexual orientation is my business in these circumstances and these circumstances alone:
1. They want me to know their sexual orientation.
2. They are of my preferred gender, and I want to know whether there is any chance for me to have a romantic relationship with them.
That's all. Someone's sexual orientation is not my business if they are my teacher, or my children's teacher, my classmate, my co-worker, my boss, my neighbor, or my grocery store cashier. But at the same time, no one should feel like they have to hide their sexual orientation from me because of fear of rejection.
I am tired of people who justify their intolerance by their upbringing, because even if you can't control or change the way you were raised, you have the ability - and the responsibility as someone with a brain and not just grey pudding between your ears - to make your own evaluations and conclusions about life.
I've heard that people's objections to same-sex marriage are based on their moral values, but I genuinely do not understand a morality of exclusion. How is it any more morally acceptable to say that only heterosexual couples can marry than it is to say that only brown-eyed children can attend school or only people with a certain blood type can find a job?
I am tired of this. I am sickened, I am appalled, and I am angry.
I am sickened that so many people in my country treat my friends like second-class citizens, and I am so sad that these friends sometimes feel like they are second-class human beings. I am angry because I have seen them go through the struggle to be who they are in a society where who they are is unacceptable - the pain, isolation, and self-recrimination of being afraid to confess a vital part of themselves that isn't your business but should never have to be hidden.
The friends I am talking about are warm, generous, loving people. They are not deficient in any way, and they never asked for or chose their sexual orientation. They dream of becoming artists, teachers, scientists, political leaders; they dream of finding a lasting and reciprocated love. The world is at their fingertips. But in 48 states in what is supposed to be the greatest country on earth, they are not allowed to marry - and I will never have enough words to express how heartbreakingly wrong this is.
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Originally posted by city_of_dis, here.
There’s nothing like being ahead of the curve to give one a lifetime of sighing, head-shaking and waiting for everyone else to catch up. If you know me well, you probably already know what I’m on about, as I do a slightly varied version of this rant every year or so: I’m talking about the puerile, backhanded little bitch of a community that is largely accepted as gay “culture.”
We should be clear and distinct here; when I say ”gay culture,” I’m referring to all gay people, everywhere. Queer men and women, growing in the world’s Petri dish, diverse, individually unique, unpredictable and glorious. I’m honored to be a part of that culture, which is hardly a culture at all, so much as an aggregate of individuals, leading individual lives, the individual triumphs of each of which, we can all point to as another chalk mark on the wall that brings us closer to freedom from hatred’s cell block.
When I talk about gay “culture,”, I’m talking about a minority of queer people, who have hijacked the face of the community, caked it with gaudy make-up and danced up and down the streets wearing it like a mask. To them, gay culture is party and club-based. To them, gay culture culminates each year in a gay pride parade. To them, anyone who finds their clothing, their soirees, or their behavior not to their liking, is homophobic. I’ll have none of that, and no amount of incognizant attempts to villainize me because I’m not fond of tacky, showy, self-conscious partying will change the fact that I’ve consistently met hordes of homos, thirsting for something better.
I’m just old enough to have seen a handful of generations younger than myself come of age, and with each new wave of gay kids, I’ve had a little cadre of queer youth who’ve turned to me as a kind of mentor. Not because I’m some kind of wise, world-worn guru or because I know better than everyone else, but because me, my life and my unapologetic refusal to tow the line even in the gay world, are things that they can relate to. For a lot of gay kids, myself included when I WAS a gay kid, there’s a glaringly obvious hypocrisy involved in helping the youth down off the cross of heteronormative expectations, and then asking them to lay down and take it like a pro when they’re nailed to the cross of homonormative expectations.
Don’t like drag as a performance medium? You can expect to be called a bad faggot. Not too into the Indigo Girls? You might want to prepare yourself for some lesbians calling you a traitor. Hate the color pink? Hunny, get the fuck outta here. It’s like one group of kids made a tree house, declared it THE tree house, and will only accept club members who adhere to a list of seemingly arbitrary rules. What’s stranger is that these kids are in the minority within their minority, but their flamboyance, talent for attracting attention, and their ability to show folks a raucously uninhibited party seems to trump all else. These people are not the gay community, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find people who think otherwise, be they gay, straight, allies or enemies.
And so it is that year after year, I get letters, e-mails and messages from gay kids as they come of age, expressing their trepidation with the “culture” into which they’ve suddenly been thrust. Not quite fitting in for most of their lives, they had expected to find themselves fitting in nicely with gay culture. They thought they’d finally be home, that they’d feel content and fulfilled with “their own” and that even if they continued to be rejected by straights at large, they’d always have a home in the gay world. For many, it didn’t take long for them to figure out that while gay “culture” with its bars and parades will definitely protect them from the more bitter outside world, they didn’t really find much within it that made it (for them) worth staying in.
I try to serve as a bit of a beacon for these kinds of kids. I want them all to know that they have choices beyond staying in the closet or waving a feather boa on a float. Thankfully, with each new generation of queers, our youth are recognizing that their sexuality is only one part of their persona; something to be celebrated and embraced, to be sure, but not the whole of their identity. More and more kids are coming of age with a recognition that one can be out and unabashedly unashamed of who they are, without having to dive headlong into the Pride Pool. Living an openly gay life is something that happens in the supermarket, in the classroom, the workplace, the family holiday gathering, the city council meeting and when mowing the front yard. It isn’t something that needs to or should be sequestered to certain neighborhoods or events; it’s something that permeates all aspects of our lives, but rules none of them.
Coming to this realization is something natural for some of us. It’s just obvious. For others, it’s more of a struggle, and for a whole other set of others, it’s damn near impossible. I should be clear about that: Some people really NEED gay “culture,” for whatever personal reasons, reasons which will vary from person to person. Maybe their family has utterly rejected them and they want a new-found family that is completely antithetical to those that set them adrift. Maybe they just love the hell out of glitter and bitchy-snark humor. Nothing wrong with that. Maybe they’re a wee bit insecure and need to be surrounded by similar people in order to feel comfortable. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with that, either. We all need support and encouragement, sometimes. But some of us have found that we can get it from any circle of supportive friends. They needn’t be wearing platform shoes or stiletto heels.
It’s for this reason that I’ll gladly be seen as an asshole to make a point. This is why I sometimes go out of my way to stir up shit. I don’t stand idly by and let complacency or homogeneity take unmitigated root in the queer world. I won’t. And fuck you if that bothers your queer sensibilities. Not all gay people have to like Madonna, or Kiley, or RuPaul or The Golden Girls. There is no universal queer handbook, which insists that they all like to dance, or that they should all be fashionable, in great shape, and ready to party. When a gay person says that they want to distance themselves from gay “culture,” that is not a sign of internal homophobia or weakness.
In fact, it’s probably quite the opposite. It probably means that they’re secure enough in who they are that they don’t feel a need to surround themselves with people who are similar to them in that one way. They’re not saying “You shouldn’t do that/act like that,” they’re saying, “I see no reason to do that/act like that just because I’m gay.” They’re taking a stand and speaking from the heart. Gay “culture” seems constructed, regulated, and off-putting to them. They not only feel no need to “fit in” in the straight world, they don’t see a need to do so anywhere. The fact that they make this clear is not anything remotely akin to self-hatred. It’s exactly the antithesis. They see who they are as more valuable than who they would become if they just swallowed their pride and marched in a Pride parade.
I’ll never stop saying it: Pride in anything over which you have no control is taking the credit for something you didn’t do. Similarly, shame in anything over which you have no control is taking the blame for something you didn’t do. If you go around assuming that my fellow self-righteous homos are ashamed simply because they’ve got a lion’s share of very valuable humility, well I’m sorry to say that you’re the one I think we should feel sorry for.
Now, I know that many of my readers are big ol’ nelly queens, who love them their spangles and garters. I know that many of you look forward to each new Pride with fondness and you have yourself a fuckfest of a blast, topping last year’s grandeur with this year’s fabulousity and then some. That’s beautiful and you should keep it up. But if a single one of you pink bitches gives one of my oddball homos a hard time because they’re not into that, you’ll find my foot way up in your intestines with a spiked toe.
To help you put it into perspective, look at it this way: Imagine if you came out of the closet and jumped into the throng of gay culture, only to discover that it was all about NASCAR, drag races instead of drag queens, and football instead of footwear. Imagine that in order to be seen as part of mainstream gay culture, you had to be flamboyantly and loudly macho. Imagine that you were expected to chew tobacco and spit it out of the side of your mouth. Imagine that you even tried to jive with that out of a sense of solidarity, but holy fucking damn, you just couldn’t do it. That wasn’t who you were. That isn’t who you are. You find that shit to be distasteful, useless or vapid. Why should you partake in it, just because one cluster of fags claims that this is the way it is?
You shouldn’t. You should be yourself, and if your true self has any kind of integrity, you’ll point to that stuff and say “That? That shit? No, that ain’t me, no way, no how, I hereby dissociate myself from that.” Which is what me and my tiny little army of post-queer gays have done in the face of lipsincing men in mascara, thumpingly repetitive music and chest-waxing. It’s not our thing. We’re cool with it being your thing, but we’ve got to keep yelling to the hills that it’s not us, because every time we turn around, friends and foes assume that it is. We’re the ones who have to constantly remind straight people that, no, they are not allowed to assume that all or even most gays are like that. Saying so forcefully, in public, and often, does not mean that we hate ourselves or that we hate you.
It means that we hate stereotypes. We don’t embody them or even relate to them. If you feel like embracing them because they feel natural to you, that’s awesome, but we have to demonstrate the diversity in our ranks, or each new generation will include some sad homos who go along with it because they don’t know they can go another way. If a black man tells you that he hates rap, that does not make him self-hating, it makes him rap-hating. We are not ants. We do not have a group consciousness. We are individuals and expressing as much is the pinnacle of loving oneself. Don’t oppress your own, simply because you were oppressed. Truly celebrate diversity and whatever floats someone’s goat is grand, so long as they don’t try to stop others from floating theirs.
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Tuesday, November 11th, 2008
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Originally posted by brightflashes as part of the LJ Idol competition, here.
In the far reaches of the southern part of the Amazon rain forest in a place where human feet have not tread there is a clearing with a lone tree in the center.
In early spring, with a rush of excitement coupled by a yearning that escapes human understanding a new leaf is born. She is simply a sprinkle of green on the otherwise barren branches and she watches eagerly to find others like her. She contemplates the sensation of being brought into this glorious world. The last crisp and cool breezes of winter cause her to tremble, and she rides on it back and forth and learns its dance. What a wonderful thing to feel, she thinks. What a beautiful thing to do; to dance with the wind. "That was so tiring. It's so cold and miserable and the wind is going to be the end of me, I tell you!" A new leaf is born on the same branch. One by one, new leaves are born "That was so hard", one says while another laments, "What an awful thing to endure and now this wind!". Some higher, some lower, and our first leaf is silent while listening to the complaints of the energy it takes to bloom and the unwelcoming air. She says to her self, thank you, wind, for teaching me when I need to bow and ride things out.
The sun becomes warmer, and our first leaf feels a longing. She wants to grow higher and higher and touch the sun. She has become bigger and stronger and strains to a beckoning that the human heart can only contemplate. "Move out of my way. You're hogging up all the space! Just let me get a head." Our new leaf has been pushed aside by a more aggressive leaf. How odd, she thinks that someone would ever want to use meanness just to get a little forward. More and more leaves, with the same urgency fight and yell to feel the sun's pleasant sting. The hunger inside of our little leaf is not satiated and she looks towards the sun, opening herself wide for its nurture and one day notices that she is among the top most leaves on the tree. She says to herself, thank you, sun, for teaching me that I can get to the top without tossing anyone else aside with a good attitude. Thank you, sun for showing me that some people will toss you aside.
And so it goes that the rain falls hard night after night and all the leaves are drenched by its fury. "How overwhelming!" someone says while another says, "This is the worst yet. This world is so very cruel!" while still another says, "What misery this world holds for me." And our little leaf bows. She is beat down and soaking wet and miserable, too. And she says to herself, thank you, rain, for teaching me that some things in this world I can't over come. Some things are just so much bigger than I am. Thank you, rain, for teaching me that I can't control everything.
The rain has stopped and a stillness endures and a lone flying person sits on one of our leaf's neighbors. "Get off of me!" this leaf shrieks, "What are you doing to me? I refuse to be used by you!" Other leaves join in protest while our little leaf remains still and silent. When the flying person lands on her, she feels a prick and a tingle and finds that once the flying person leaves, a part of her is gone. The flying person buzzes quietly to the leaf, "Thank you for your sweet nourishment that I may live another day." And the leaf says to herself, thank you darling bug for letting me give a little of myself so that your life is easier. Thank you for teaching me self-sacrifice.
Next come the scalding hot temperatures. "I worked so hard to get up here and now for this? Damn this wretched sun! It's killing me!" A chorus of misery erupts around our little leaf and she remains silent and contemplates, sometimes getting to the top isn't necessarily the best thing. When good things happen, sometimes bad things are unavoidable. Thank you again sun for this valuable lesson.
"Look at you," a leaf speaks to our little leaf, "You are so ugly. You're brown all over and you have an awful hole on you where you let that creature eat you." The leaf is silent and looks towards her neighbor. This leaf is also brown, she thinks, but doesn't say anything. There are other brown leaves everywhere she looks. They aren't ugly; they're just brown and what an uninteresting life if she could only live to be green. She's glad to have experienced being brown, too. "I hate you, I hate you, I do!" the neighboring leaf cries. A gentle wind blows and our little leaf watches this neighbor snap and fall to the ground, still saying, "I hate you." And she says to herself, Thank you, angry leaf for showing me that there are multiple perspectives on what is ugly and what is not. Thank you for hating me so that I could love you even more.
There is terror at this event and the leaves all theorize what this means. Every day more leaves fall, all screaming in fear for what comes next. The other leaves are scared. It's almost impossible to escape the terror of what is to come and our little leaf, brown and corroded, broken apart and weak thinks to herself, I think it's quite pleasant that there could be another place to go. Thank you, neighbors, for showing me that some things are inevitable no matter if you worry or not.
A beautiful day comes where the sky is so blue that it hurts and the breeze is just so that it's cold, but not too cold. Our little leaf is among one of the lone leaves still left and she feels a sense of serenity as she allows the wind to let her fly. She sees things she would have never seen otherwise. There are other trees and other leaves!, her heart cries with marvel. And look, the sun is moving farther and farther away, and I recognize my neighbors here. The leaf is laid to rest beside a root at the base of the tree. Around her, many of the leaves are silent and some are crumpled beyond recognition. The ones who aren't silent howl and complain and scream, "What a terrible life to have lived! I, too, will be crumpled and I, too, will stop like the others. Am I dying? What does it mean to die? Will I cease to be or will I continue on somehow? Dear Lord what will become of me? I worked hard to get to the top! How dare anyone throw me back down farther than where I started. If only the sun would shine brighter! If only those rains had been more gentle! If only the wind had blown softer!" Our little leaf turns away from her neighbors and instead listens to the root. She sees with her soul that the root is using the butchered fallen for nourishment. She realizes that she will one spring return to this tree that gave her life and be born into this world and what a wonderful thing that will be!
It's so very hard to hear her among the screaming, the terror, the frenzy and the uproar, but she says softly, "Thank you, thank you, thank you, for all that life has taught me. Thank you that it was hard. Thank you for the challenge." And now she is silent and she feels a sense of immense gratitude. She can feel herself becoming more and more weathered. A tear here and there, she crumples along with the rest. And she says to herself, It's kind of like going to sleep.
Written by Kassi Kennedy for ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) therealljidol
Special thanks goes out to Felix Salten and Ecclesiastes: 3 for inspiration.
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Sunday, November 9th, 2008
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Originally posted by copperwise, here.
As happy as I am, one person I loved wasn't here to see it, and that makes it bittersweet.
Let me tell you about my Uncle Ray.
When I was in junior high school, my aunt eloped. She married a long time friend whom she'd fallen in love with. It was her second marriage, and she didn't want all of the uproar. They just wanted to be married.
She sent us honeymoon pictures from Mexico, a movie-star blonde snuggled up to her new husband, both beaming with joy.
My parents and I looked at the pictures and said "oh, hey, he's black" and didn't give it a second thought.
My grandparents looked at the pictures and said "OMFGWTFBBQeleventyone!!1" (Same people who found my father less-than-acceptable because his parents were Ukrainian immigrants. But at least my dad wasn't -- hushed voice -- colored...)
That summer we drove down to California to spend a couple of weeks with Judy and Ray.
Ray tried to make me comfortable with our differences. We were alone for a few minutes and he made a couple of disarming jests about the curl of his hair and the darkness of his skin, something about sunburn...and I knew what he was doing. I was 12 going on 30, then.
I looked at him and said "Uncle Ray, you don't have to make jokes. I'm not like Gramma and Grampa."
He looked at me and smiled, and swept me up in a huge bear hug, and from then on we were best friends.
Uncle Ray was born in the Deep South, to a family of sharecroppers, hard working but very poor. He fought for his country in an all-black military unit, back when our military was still segregated and you could die for your country, you just couldn't eat at its lunch counters.
He fought for his civil rights. He told me about the dogs, and the firehoses. His stories made me cry and made me sick and made me proud.
He put himself through school and became a professional, a dentist, and he practiced in California. He knew people. He was talented. He jammed on his flugelhorn with the Marsalis brothers. He hobnobbed with Hollywood folk. He was one of those people that everyone loved and wanted to have around them. He treated everyone like they mattered, rich or poor, celebrity or unknown.
Ray had several homes, one in the hills of Humboldt county. There's a very poor Hoopa Reservation there, and a leftover hippie commune from the '60s. He would go up on weekends, to both places, and do their dental work. He got paid in fish and chickens and vegetables. He would have done it without so much as a tomato in return, because he believed in giving back to the world.
He taught me that.
He taught me about "isms" and living your life the best way you can, even when the world is against you. He told me that he couldn't spend his life assuming everyone he met would be a racist, because you can't assume that people are evil. You have to assume they are good, and deal with individual issues as they come up, and keep fighting for what's right even when it's hard to imagine that things will get better.
He started his life drinking from "colored only" water fountains and ended always having the best tables in the best restaurants. And yet, he and Judy still couldn't hold hands when they went to visit his people in Mississippi.
He told me that on one side some people called him an "uppity nigger" and on the other some people called him an "Uncle Tom" and he had to live his life with integrity and not worry about who was calling him what, because some people just need someone, anyone, to be angry at.
Uncle Ray played music and collected art and was good to people.
He loved me. He was the only adult in my family who loved me just the way I was. When Judy pressured me to lose weight, he told me I was beautiful. When the grandparents complained that I was supposed to be a genius and should be going to law school or medical school and not "wasting my life," he told me -- and them -- that I was brilliant and I was going to change the world in my very own way, and that they should appreciate however I chose to do it.
When my aunt and parents and grandparents got going on all the things wrong with me, Uncle Ray would look at me across the room and smile and shake his head, and I knew that someone really, truly loved me.
I infuriated my father once, when I told him that I wished Uncle Ray was my dad instead of him.
But it was true.
Uncle Ray had a big deep voice with a rich Southern drawl, and told the best stories, and gave the best hugs, and was one of the best human beings I've ever known in my life.
He died, over 10 years ago. I still miss him every day.
In Eureka, California, there's a little botanical park attached to a small zoo. In the gardens there is a memorial plaque. It says "Raymond Rucker, A Man For All Seasons."
He really was.
And watching the election results, seeing Jesse Jackson weep, I wept too...because Uncle Ray was part of the long long fight that got Obama to the White House, and I wish, I so wish, that he could have been here to see this.
I love you, Uncle Ray. Wish you were here.
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pensive.