Hermetically Sealed

When you are born with a pussy, sooner or later someone is going to try to shove something in it. Whether it be their expectations, their rules, their big throbbing dick because “you look like you need it, girl.” Because we women are seen as empty unless filled by someone else. Because our minds and bodies aren’t supposed to be enough on their own. Because we are a “bitch” or a “Feminazi” if we have the audacity to believe are fine just the way we are. Full stop.

Because having a pussy in this world means you have a scar. A deep and dark trench. A bloody gash. A broken chip that’s been reglued.

It holds momentary value when it produces a child. Or an orgasm. But even then, it’s still a scar sputtering the remnants of it’s damage.

We with pussies are taught to take it. To accept what the world shoves in us. To “make it work”. To make a child. To make them cum.

We are reduced to receptacles.

They tell us from birth that we are empty. That our hollowed out existence finds purpose in servitude. That our lives need to be filled, to be made whole.

They are wrong.

There is never a creature so lithe and limber as a woman who arches her back under the needs of the world.

Women are at the ready. Necks bent in submission to the demands, the suggestions, the tiny, tinny desires of other people. Chomping at the bit to lay down on the rocky ground so that someone else will have an easier path to walk even as they smash into our livers or our ovaries.

Women sleep less because they lay awake at night dreaming of ways to fix the problems of their sons and daughters, their lovers, their boss, their friends. We close our eyes on “maybes” and turn into a pillow made of “if I just give up myself, they can have more”.

Women walk faster, work harder, complain less, cook better, bend deeper because the world will only take us seriously when we’re on our knees.

And people wonder why we rage.

The muse is awake.

She vomited up a poem and left it dangling out there in the world in all of its rawness and she says there is more coming. She is raging in there. Stretching the sinews and sweetbreads of my guts and threatening to rip me open with those sharp little teeth.

I’ll keep screaming as long as she’s pulling the strings – All of that tingly aliveness in my fingers and ribcage says that it will be a long, long night.

I learned a very valuable lesson not so long ago.

I used to go through life pretty naively when it came to who I allowed in my space. I gave most everyone a fair chance and mostly took people at their word when they told me who they were and what they were about. I blindly accepted that most people in this world have good intentions. I still believe that on most levels.

There are, however, a small section of very, very damaged people in this world. People so damaged that the only way they know to exist is to radiate that damage out onto other people so that it will reflect something recognizable back to them. It’s the only thing they recognize – the chaos, the anger, the pain, the turbulent existence.  You can almost always spot these people by seeing who’s life is in almost constant turmoil or some form of chaos. I almost wrote a sentence here about how they can’t maintain relationships, but I have found that isn’t always true. Sometimes even the very, very damaged are able to form sociopathic bonds with others like them or, even more sadly, are able to hone in on other people’s sadness and sit in wait like a spider to be their “hero” or “savior”.

One of the things that I have come to understand is that even if you are very kind to these people, even if you show them enormous compassion, befriend them, offer a shoulder, try to show them that you care about them without their lies or grandiose stories, that they often cannot accept the love you offer because sadly, they don’t understand it. Even further, you will leave a portal in your life for their chaos by opening your heart to them.

I did this very thing hoping that showing someone, however damaged and destructive they were, my love even in times that they were lying to my face or being incredibly destructive or evil that it might put a crack in their shell of hatred and self-loathing. I had to admit to myself that people who do not want to change cannot feel love no matter what you do, what you say, or how far you try to reach into them.

I feel sorry for the two people out in this world who taught me one of my biggest lessons ever. Even though these two people entered my life at different times, they are so strikingly similar in the way they operate, it is impossible to deny the effects of damage and self-loathing and how it looks identical no matter where and in who it occurs. I feel sorrow for the fact that two human beings live such a sorrowful existence. That their families are destroyed. That they have no real friends. That they have to sit alone with their lies and deceit at night. That they will never know the joy of feeling love, compassion, and true friendship.

I feel deep pity for them even as they throw their negativity into a vacuum on a continual basis because I have to believe that nobody would choose to live their life that way. I have to believe it is just a sad example of what happens to people who are unable to work out their damage in healthy ways.

I am unapologetically thankful that these beings have crossed paths with my life. They have given me a touchstone for what true sadness looks like and a primal urge to continue valuing all of the joy that surrounds me. I live an amazing life with an amazing partner, an amazing home, amazing friends, an amazing job, and an amazing ability to love, learn, and laugh. There is nothing in this world better than that.

For all of those out there who need it, I wish you peace and healing. And as Whitney said, “Above all this, I wish you love…”

“…and all the while I was one busted rubber away from being the Queen of someone’s double-wide trailer with 3 screaming kids, no future and no hope.”

“What made you wake up?”

“I looked in the mirror one day when I was 19 years old and saw an old woman. I was wearing someone else’s clothes and living someone else’s life. The next evening, I put on a black bra and went to a Lesbian bar. I came home at 4 o’clock the next morning a different woman.”

There comes a time when there is nothing more to say, when the days of waiting by the window for the flaming-haired muse to come traipsing up the dirt path to your home are too long, too sad, and too wasteful when there are so many other practical things waiting to be done.

So we wash and scrub, we write checks and do figures, we talk on phones and through keyboards, and still the muse, she does not come.

We watch as the orbit of our world makes one final slow rotation before finally coming to a rest at our feet, without fanfare or tears, but merely a deafening silence.  Our fingers reach out to grasp the rails, hoping to feel the warmth of a recently departed soul but there is nothing but the icy coolness under our outstretched tips. Evidence that the vacancy has stretched like sinew through the fall and into the winter before finally snapping with a powdery rip.

When the amendment  allowing Gay Marriage in California first passed, I waited for the collective sigh of relief that was sure to come from the LGBTQ community. It mostly did come, but not without a few hiccups.

It took exactly five minutes for posts to start appearing on my Facebook wall saying things like, “Pardon me while I don’t dance in the streets that we can finally marry in California. It’s racist to demand marriage rights for Gays as long as People of Color are still being discriminated against!”, and “Gay marriage doesn’t matter while girls are still being circumsized against their will in parts of Africa!”

Or my personal favorite, “I will not be getting Gay-Married because Gay people need to focus on things that REALLY matter instead of seeking heteronormative institutions!”

I was saddened but not surprised to see that people in the Queer community didn’t wholly embrace the small victory that California had handed down. After all, we Queers don’t all think alike yanno. My sadness mainly centered around the negative statements being hurled at friends of mine who were Queer and had decided to get married by Queer friends of mine who had not decided to get married for some of the reasons listed above.

Such judgment. Such aggressive posturing.

Fast forward to this morning. I woke up with an extra pep in my step because I knew that President Obama was going to sign into law the bill allowing my Gay and Lesbian Brothers and Sisters to openly serve in the Military. Without hiding who they were, without shame.

The end to a 17-year-long journey toward equality in the Military.

I was and am so very proud of President Obama for having the gumption to take a stand for equal rights and for pushing through all of the adversity to get this bill passed. What an amazing achievement for our President and our country.

Fast forward just a few hours more. I log into my Facebook account and see various friends sharing the news story about President Obama signing this bill into law. There are lots of “likes” and comments and thankful rejoicing.

This time, however, it took exactly one hour for someone from my own Queer community to start sqwuaking about how GLBTQ soldiers being allowed to openly serve wasnt necessarily something to celebrate, because “Queer soldiers are still agents of genocide.”

And here we go again with the olympics of how GLBTQ people can’t be happy when we gain just a sliver of equality or a crumb of equal rights because “someone else either has it worse than we do” or because we really are just “buying into the system by demanding equal rights in the first place”.

I am so SICK of Gay people subjugating themselves and their own rights at the feet of the oppression olympics beast. It seems that within our own community, it has become passe to celebrate any achievement of equality, lest we step on the oppression of another, even if the person’s oppression on which we step overlaps heavily and cosmically with our own as Gay people.

Because last I checked, Queer people are People of Color, differently-abled, differently classed, educationally disadvataged, addicted, discriminated against, beaten, raped, robbed, marginalized, and subjected to all of the -isms that most of the world encounters. Because Gay and Lesbian people are not all White, upper middle class, able, and aware. Because those Queer folks of color want to get Gay Married and serve openly as well. Because those Queers who are poor put just as much stock into getting married and serving openly as they do trying to get ahead.

Because being able to marry your partner and serve openly doesn’t make us racist or insensitive to the oppression of others. It makes us a group of people who are finally seeing a pinprick of light in a very dark chasm of oppression after a very, very long time.

My point is this: In the Queer world, we often brainwash each other into giving up our joy over things like this. We often waggle virtual fingers at each other about how “we’re not doing it right” by writing manifestos about how Gay folks who want to get Gay married are hurting their fellow Queers and buying into racism. We refuse to dance when our Lesbian cousin who has been serving in the Navy under super-oppressive conditions can finally exhale all of that silence and just be.

We don’t raise our hands together in victory.

Instead, we apologize to the world and to each other for demanding better than we have been given and we sabotage each other’s happiness and, by default, ruin our cohesiveness as a Queer community by gobbling  up those heaping spoonfuls of shame with both hands.

Because it IS shame, ladies and gentlemen, when we take a step forward in our collective journey toward freedom and can’t appreciate where we are because we are either too busy pontificating about how we don’t deserve to take that step, or we’re looking across the way, trying to figure out how to make someone else’s path easier.

And if that isn’t buying into what the Patriarchy expects of us? I don’t know what is.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that Queer folks do have a huge responsibility to look at other forms of oppression and try to combat them since all oppression is pretty well linked.  I sometimes feel, though, that Queer folks have deemed themselves to be the “United States” of the world and come to everyone’s rescue, no matter the cost to our own community.

I’m still doing some thinking around this and why it pisses me off so deeply. Trying to check my White Privilege while doing this thinking is hard but necessary.

In the meantime, I rejoice over the repeal of DADT and I don’t give a damn which of my Queer friends thinks I’m a bad, bad Queer for doing it.

Awake
Before Dawn
Hot tea, Internet, NPR
Me and my world,
a secret date
ending when the rest of them
wake up.

I was flipping channels the other night and happened to land on TLC – The Learning Channel. There was a show on called “The Little Couple” which featured the daily lives of two Little People. Not “little people” as in cute little people, but rather Little People. Capital “L”, Capital “P”. Some folks call them “dwarves”. Some folks use a term that starts with an “M” that is kinda like the “N” word of the Little People world.

Little People. On TV. Eating dinner. Dating. Driving cars.

I asked myself why anyone would want to watch a show about two people who really weren’t all that interesting aside from their height. The female half of the couple was some kind of Doctor, not particularly funny or beautiful. The male half of the couple was a, pardon my bluntness here,…he was an asshole.  And irritating. And I did not like him one bit.

So I flipped channels and glazed over immediately to a “The Nanny” rerun. In between Fran Dresher’s nasally whines and snorty laughs, my mind kept returning to the Little couple and why TLC thought it was a good idea to give them a show. Do people really think Little People are all that interesting?

I flipped back to TLC and turned on the guide for that channel.

Imagine my surprise (dismay) when I discovered that TLC has TWO shows about Little People.

TWO SHOWS. On LITTLE PEOPLE.

I scrolled to the right and discovered no less than THREE shows on multiple births (Kate Plus 8, 19 Kids and Counting, and Quints by Surprise).

I scrolled further and discovered:

A show on Hoarders

A show on people who didn’t know they were pregnant and often got caught in ridiculous situations because of it (I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant)

A show on Polygamy (Sister Wives).

TWO shows about people who work in tattoo shops (Miami Ink and LA Ink)

A show on those crazy (and creepy) child beauty pageants and the compulsory “Smothering Stage Mom”.

And don’t even get me started on the crapfest that is “Sarah Palin’s Alaska”. And in all honesty, they should have called this show, “I am going to run for President and thought it would be a good idea to make people forget how very ignorant about any and all political issues I am by showing them that I can shoot a gun, say “You Betcha” 5 times an hour, and lament the woes of how the entire country is out ta’ get me!” Oh, and I tan, a LOT.  My ENTIRE FAMILY tans! As a matter of fact, we live in the coldest, most desolate part of the United States but my body is as golden brown as a Thanksgiving turkey (that I shot from my helicopter)!

In short, TLC is your sideshow stop on the cable channel guide. All they are missing is a show about bearded ladies and maybe a show dedicated to people born with flippers for arms. Seriously. What the crap?

I understand why it works. I think that people often want to feel more normal by “othering” other people. Because those Little People? Not all that interesting.

The fact that TLC built not one, but TWO, shows around Little People and their mostly boring lives says a lot about their faith in America still being willing to pay a quarter to see the World’s Fattest Lady or the Sword-swallowing Albino.

It says that we still dehumanize each other based on differences. It says that TLC is willing to buy into that. It says that, on some level, the people IN these shows are willing to sell out to the side show.

Admittedly, I’m a “Hoarders” fan, and I fully admit to sitting in stunned horror when they start clearing out 6-foot mounds of garbage and discover the inevitable “smashed cat” or opossum skeleton. On the surface, I’m terrified of that ever being my home so I am often tempted to go on cleaning sprees after watching that show. Deeper still is the way the show reminds me that folks normalize their hoards. They see it every day and it no longer looks like a mound of garbage but rather, a “thing” that just needs to be “organized”.

In a weird way, I’m sitting here wondering if TLC is not doing much the same way with folks who are exceptional. I would venture to guess that a great many people would goggle inappropriately if they encountered a couple comprised of Little People. A man and his 6 wives walking down the aisles at Wal-Mart. A woman with 8 children in tow.

Or maybe not.

It’s a TLC world we live in. Until we flip the channel.

People like having blogs. Vanity blogs. I like having this one even if nobody reads it. It’s like fishing, throwing your pole out and thinking that something might bite and that even if it doesn’t, you got to sit in the sun and make mental lists or think about your first kiss anyway.

I’m very jealous right now of a girl I used to know because she has a vanity blog and posts pictures of incredible artwork that she is creating. After I am done rolling around in her beautiful pictures, I often wonder where she finds the time. Where in the world she finds what must be several hours a week to take photos, to make words, to paint. She is in a relationship and has a kid for fucks sake! And still, I see these incredible images and I go even further and wonder how she has the brain capacity to store these bits of wonderment until she sits down at the canvas. How, with a kid and a house full of pets, she can steal enough uninterrupted time to mix ochre and ultramarine before it forms a paste and sets, unusable.

I envy her in beautiful ways. It is tempting to take stock of my own life and hold it up against hers – a swatch of hair, comparing the length, the color, the smell. Perhaps I would find split ends or gray roots, perhaps a tangle. Somewhere deep in the comparison I would remember that I work 80 hours a week and run a full-time website, that my projects often consist of wrangling extended family, keeping a house, and managing mountains of paperwork. That even sleeping uninterrupted is a luxury.

And again I wonder, would she envy me? Me, a driven white-collar woman with an office and a briefcase. Would she yearn for a career, financial freedom, and progressive education? Would she want to put her hair into a stiff french knot and click down the hallway in a giant corporate complex balanced on dagger-like heels while skinny women lashed out with hateful stares because a fat woman dares to be beautiful. I dont know. And is that even my life? Because some days my feet stink inside of cheap shoes and my whispy hair escapes neat knots and looks more haggard than sleek. Some days I drone away at a keyboard while staring out the window at my secret whisper tree waiting for the clock to land on the magic ’5′.

Some days, though, I am a magic speeding bullet darting across the landscape of Unix code and php scripts and racing around curves made of ASCII letters and binary bends. Some days I cross the finish line and the fanfare is overwhelming.

We aren’t that different, she and I. She lives through pigment and I, through electronic symbol. We weave and bend and there is magic at the end.