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Dancing On My Own

(Silvia...)

Yes, Mickey?

(How do you call your loverboy?)

Come 'ere loverboy!

(And if he doesn't answer?) Oh, loverboy!

(And if he STILL doesn't answer?) I simply say…

I was six years old the first time I draped my father’s after-shower wrap around my waist and lip-synched for my life. In the living room of my family’s single story, ranch style home in Walnut Creek, California, I performed to “Love is Strange.” The audience, comprised of my father, stepmother, and brother, laughed hysterically at my hijinks – oh how silly to see a boy wearing a skirt and singing the woman’s part of a song! At literally the same time RuPaul was gaining notoriety working the Atlanta Circuit Parties, I, at only six years old, was slaying the Bay Area suburb living room scene and living for it, Mama!

A year later, I performed live in an oversized sweatshirt dress and leg warmers on a leather ottoman stage. Another number from this genderfuck child prodigy that resonated with my home audience was my original drag parody based on a hit Crystal Gayle song “Donuts Make My Brown Eyes Blue.” Again, I was rewarded with laughter and applause. My family truly loved me, and I was beginning to know that I was born to be a performer.

Cut to a few years later: it was a dress-up day at school for Halloween and I had no idea what to be. My stepmother came in for the heroic rescue with a waist length straight brown wig, a bandanna, a peasant skirt, and a liberal application of lipstick and eyeshadow. I looked in the mirror and instantly fell in love with myself in what would now be considered a very problematic “fortune teller” Halloween look. I can’t even imagine the accent I spoke with. Suffice it to say, if repeated today that ensemble would most definitely result in a cancel culture call out.

Year by year, I learned that I was definitely different. As a “creative” child, I was prone to talking out of turn and disrupting the class. I did not know what “being gay” was, and I had certainly never seen an “out” gay person that I knew of. The closest thing to a drag queen I knew was my Grandmother, Beatrice. She was a Portuguese powerhouse that lived larger than life in an assortment of caftans, wigs, fur coats, costume jewels, fire red fingernails, and her ever-present cocktail of choice in her hand. I lovingly called her world’s cheapest screwdriver the “Popov and Donald” after its two main ingredients: Popov Vodka and Donald Duck orange juice. The constant, comforting refrain of clinking and tinkling ice surrounded her as she stirred it steadily with her nicotine stained index finger. With parents who blasted Elton John, Neil Diamond, Bette Midler, Barry Manilow, and let’s not forget the beginning of this story, the soundtrack to “Dirty Dancing” when I was but six years old, it would seem as if the Universe was surrounding me with the perfect, magical, organic tools I would need to live my best faggotty life. Yet, In the summer of fourth grade, it all coalesced into understanding that I was truly different. Not just a creative type but there was something else, something more that separated me from the rest of the kids around me. The person who taught me this was Mr. M.

Mr. M. was my summer school theater teacher. When I saw him, I could just tell that he had the same thing that I had. That thing – the one that made me different – it was in him too. I immediately recognized it, and it was beautiful, and it made me feel so good that I wasn’t alone. It was the first time that I truly could see that there were actually adults like me too. Mr. M. had created a 4th through 6th grade summer-stock follies masterpiece that combined the story of Rapunzel with the music from Hair. It was everything my queer little heart desired rolled into a masterpiece for the stage, dusted in fairytale glitter, and laid out like a prize before me. I was cast in the dream role I could have never imagined I needed. My character was “Jacques,” Rapunzel’s best friend, confidant, and (though unspoken) very, very flamboyantly gay hairdresser. I was obviously the comedic relief – and I knew that at the time – but I didn’t care. I loved the role and despite having no idea what camp meant at the time (and certainly wouldn’t have cared if I did). I knew that this part had been created just for me, to let me shine, and I was not going to let Mr. M. down.

My stepmom stepped up like a hero again and made me look like everything that a 10-year-old, fabulous hairdresser should look like. Remember that waist length wig from my fortune teller look? Well she lovingly cut off a little 6 inch snip and braided it into the back of my big ass, blown out hair. I didn’t know or care that this was being “gay,” but I knew that I had never in my life felt more right.

In what will be a surprise to no one, I can humbly confirm that I stole the show. The audience loved me, seeing this fabulous child, living his truth, loving himself and not being afraid to shine in all his homo-glory in only the fourth grade? I was years ahead of the world and it felt amazing. In fact, before the show, we had joked in my house about the mannerisms of being gay, the flouncy walk, the limp wrists, the sassy lisp. I genuinely loved them all so much that after the performance, I began to adopt these affectations officially into my daily life, from lisping from the breakfast table: “Plleathe path the theareal” to my bedtime prayers, “in Jethus name we pray, amen”.

And that’s the moment. The moment where things changed.

“Sit down here next to me,” my father asked as he patted the bed politely. He called in my stepmother. “We should probably talk.”

After everyone assembled, my father asked thoughtfully “Do you know what homosexuality is?”

“No,” I responded quietly. I could tell immediately from his tone that 1) I was whatever that thing was and 2) that it was absolutely not okay.

“Well, it’s when two men do the things together that only a man and a woman are supposed to do together,” he lectured me. “And it is very wrong. You know how you played that part in the play, and how you have been walking and talking that way since? That’s not okay anymore. That’s how these homosexuals really act. It’s okay to act like them and laugh at them as a joke, like in the play. But it’s completely unacceptable to do those things in real life. In fact, men who do those things, well, the Bible says that they are going to hell. Do you want to go to hell?”

I did not want to go to hell. I slowly shook my head turning red, the furnace of shame stoked hot inside me.

“Good,” he said finally. “Then it’s time to stop acting like that. Back to being normal from now on.” He said goodnight, kissed me on the forehead, clicked off my bedroom light and shut the door behind him.

10…9…8… I counted down in my head. When I got to one, I thought Okay, he can’t be by the door anymore. That’s when the tears started flowing.

I still didn’t truly understand what being a homosexual was, but now I knew that I could never be one. Not only would it upset my father, but Jesus too? Well, that was just too much pressure. I was going into the fifth grade and the one thing I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt was that I did not, under any circumstances, want to go to hell.

My life was never the same from that moment on. As a child, I certainly never saw a dress or wig again. I spent the next twenty-five years pretending that I was not who I knew I was inside, trying my best to hide the traits as I got older but still knowing I had a funny voice and walk. Within a few years, I knew deep, deep inside that I was definitively the very thing I had been mandated not to be. I hid it further by marrying a woman and pretending even harder for many years that I was just a regular ol’ straight guy, just bein’ straight and actin’ straight and livin’ my best straight life. You know, lying.

I dated only women in my adolescence and finally, at age 18, I started dating my best friend. I guess we “fell in love,” though it was honestly more a relationship born of co-dependence, self-preservation, and convenience - and married at 21. For fourteen years I “played house.” To be honest, it wasn’t terrible. I had married my best friend and technically she knew I was gay as she had actually been the first and only person I had come out to up to that point. We pretended like that conversation had never happened. I thought I did an amazing job playing this role of dedicated straight husband contrary to many of the reviews on my role when I finally came out.

Everyday was a mental battle of epic proportions. Imagine a voice in your mind that has one job to do all day every day, and that job is to remind you that you are living a complete lie. I struggled with mental health issues, doing everything I could to manifest destructive patterns and catastrophes so that I could distract myself from my terrifying inner demons. As each year passed, the voice got louder and more distracting. But now I was in too deep. What would even be the value in listening to the voice and taking action? Destroying my marriage, my life and for what? I didn’t even know if what was on the other side would be better.At least I was safe in my cocoon as long as I played the part.

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I wasn’t prepared to come out, but I also knew I couldn’t keep ignoring the voice the way I had been. I just needed something to quiet the voice. At the same time, I was also looking for a new fitness regime to help get my weight under control. When I drove by Padme Yoga in Sacramento, CA on a drizzly October afternoon, it seemed like kismet. Yoga could help me with my fitness, but I had also heard lots of friends talk about how much it helped them quiet their minds. Perfect! I signed up for my first yoga class, and though I was scared shitless, I actually showed up. At the end of the class, the instructor came up to me and asked me if I enjoyed the class, which I told her I did. Then she said “Come back tomorrow, this practice will change your life.” So I did. And the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that.

The weight came off of my waist and my thighs, but there was a different kind of weight coming off of my shoulders as well. I felt happier and more joyful. People seemed to want to be around me more and I felt more authentic. I just kept showing up and my teacher from that first class was right - my life was changing. Strangely enough, the voice about my hidden sexuality was a bit quieter but I had new voices as well - ones telling me that I was perfect the way I was in that moment and that in or out of the closet, I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I began to feel this love for myself I had not felt in a very long time; not because I was skinny or more energetic, but because I was doing exactly what I needed for myself.

One Friday evening in May 2014, as I laid in pigeon pose I began to sob. People say they “ugly cry,” well I beautifully cried as years of self hate, sadness, anger, frustration, lies, manipulation, and abuse just flowed from my eyes and onto my mat. 75 minutes later, I knew I was ready. I went home, and for the first time, I let my inner knowing speak for me. I came out, for good.

The journey since has not been easy, but it has been a necessary one and I have learned so much. The best part is, I have never once been alone since. Remember that little boy, the one who went to bed that night crying, scared, and afraid that he would never be the person he was meant to be? Well amazingly enough, he woke up the moment I stepped off my yoga mat that evening. He has been by my side ever since. In fact, he is sitting right here next to me as I write this, wearing his favorite gown, loving himself, feeling beautiful and accepted. He calmly, lovingly reminds me that neither of us needs ever feel alone again.

Xavier Bettencourt is a writer and comedian currently residing in Sacramento, CA. Known for his authentic and humorous storytelling voice and unique point of view, Xavier digs deep to speak his truth and tirelessly encourages others to do the same. Follow him on Instagram for more: @thecomedybear.

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Making Less Money than My Partner is Damaging My Self Esteem and Mental Health

Capitalism has a hold over each and every one of us. For most, it offers a grueling choice: be financially stable, or be happy. Unfortunately, not many people get to have both. I know I don’t.

I quit the world of ‘stable’ work back in 2014 when I decided to become a full-time freelance writer. By stable I mean it gave me a monthly pay cheque.  I’d previously worked in retail and office environments, and both triggered severe depressive and anxious episodes for me. Verbal abuse from customers, long shifts that took time away from my university education.

I had panic attacks after sexist customers shouted at me for problems I had nothing to do with. One man called me a bitch for politely telling him the store was closing. Apparently the store “should have closed when he was done shopping.”  I threw my back out several times being told to carry boxes much too heavy for my 5 foot 99 pound frame (yes, I lifted with my legs), which caused me to miss class more often than I should have. So not only was I getting physically and emotional damage from the work, I was also failing classes. 

I didn’t feel like I was doing anything rewarding with my life either. I’d stopped writing since I didn’t have the time, and I was barely out in the sun for more than an hour or two per week. Needless to say the depression I thought was getting better, was pulling me back in. I dreaded going to work, and the mood swings began affecting everything and everyone around me.

All in all, it was just an awful time for me and for my existing mental illnesses.

I’d always been neurodivergent

I’ve had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Anxiety, and Depression for as long as I can remember. I don’t remember a time when my living situation didn’t exacerbate each of them. In fact, these conditions have always heavily affected my ability to work in public spaces. Though all of my service jobs gave me a good pay cheque, I knew if I didn’t quit immediately, I’d destroy my mental health.

That being said, the creative industry does not pay well, at the very least for emerging creatives. So in exchange for my mental safety, well-being, and happiness, I sacrificed my finances. I’ve never felt more relaxed, yet at the same time I’ve never felt so guilty. I also sacrificed the idea of financial equality between myself and my partner.

Hard work just never seems to be enough

As a neurodivergent queer writer who works solely from home, I made less than two grand last year. And this was working every single weekday on more or less a 9-5 schedule. As someone with a white collar office job, my boyfriend can make that amount in a couple of weeks. So needless to say, I’ve been dipping into my savings since my creative career began.  It has also affected how I view myself as his girlfriend; I feel incredibly guilty that I can’t contribute to the household expenses as much as he can. It’s a vicious cycle where I feel guilty and financially unsafe, therefore my mental health suffers.

I’m not the only one living pay cheque to cheque. According to PayScale.com, a part-time freelance writer salary is put somewhere in the range of $24,000 – $115,000 per year. This doesn’t sound terrible at first for take home pay, but this doesn’t take into account the lack of medical insurance, pensions, and other benefits that affect quality of life built into a 9-5 income. Those statistics also don’t take into account how much less writers of color, LGBTQIAP+ writers, and disabled writers make. These numbers? Well they’re a lot smaller.

The 50% rule

That feeling of not being able to contribute more to the household expenses is a huge strain on my mental health. My OCD symptoms in particular have increased significantly ever since I started dipping into my savings.

During my time in retail my anxiety symptoms greatly outnumbered my OCD symptoms. I was prone to crying spells, my breathing became more laboured, and heart palpitations were plenty. OCD wise I was mostly having an issue with germaphobia, as the store warehouse was very dusty. But it wasn't until I began working from home when my symptoms became a lot more tourettic. I physically twitch a lot more, I act out more specific rituals more often - such as tapping things and experiencing constant intrusive paranoia thoughts about homelessness - and all in all I feel less control of my own body.

The anxiety created over being at home alone all day, and constantly fretting about money, manifests physically. In retail it almost didn't have a chance to manifest as often as I was too busy being yelled at or lifting impossibly heavy boxes. 

At least being freelance, I feel less attacked and less stressed by the work itself. Actually, the work itself isn’t stressful at all. I adore writing, and I love social media strategy. So it always made more sense to me to do something I loved, even if it came at the cost of my finances. But in a way even this makes me feel guilty. The work isn’t stressful, but I make less money; is this even allowed? When there are people out there who would be in an even worse position than I if they quit their day jobs, why did I deserve to make that choice?

The guilt is real

For women and feminine people, this guilt is particularly tough considering society expects us to do twice as much as cishet men, for half the thanks.

My boyfriend doesn’t particularly like his job as he once described it as “it’s not terrible, but it’s sort of soul destroying.” This to me seemed like a massive contradiction in terms. But maybe he was being brave because he didn’t want to make me feel bad. We’ve discussed it a lot, but in a way I feel like he is also dealing with guilt of his own. That he feels he doesn’t have the right to complain because of his privileges. The fear that his own mental health is suffering from his work, in turn affects my own. It’s a Catch-22; I sense his anxiety, my anxiety spikes. My anxiety spikes; my OCD symptoms increase; my mood suffers. Then in turn, I can’t sleep, I get dizzy spells, and so on.

The desire to pay 50% of everything is strong, especially with a feminist partner such as myself. Personally I find myself trying to make up for it in other ways, by beating him to the dishes when we’ve finished dinner. Taking out the trash before he gets home, overly apologising for how the apartment isn’t 100% spotless.  I know he’s had a long hard day in the office, so if I can’t give him 50% of the rent then I can sure as hell give him 100% of the housework. But that in and of itself seems so unfeminist to me. I’m taking time away from my own poorly paid work to spend extra time on the housework. I’m taking on the role of a housewife, rather than a partner. In a perfect world, I’d hope we could split all of that 50/50 too.

People don’t really understand

People kept telling me “You have a degree in psychology, why not do something in that field? And do writing on the side?” But why is my chosen career deemed as a hobby? I don’t want to ‘do it on the side.’

Creative jobs are always deemed no better than a hobby, but as soon as you become successful that’s suddenly not the case anymore. No one would tell the Russo brothers “Yeah the Avengers films are cool, but is it a realistic career? Why don’t you make the next one on the side of a bank job?” No one tells JK Rowling, “You’d be better getting a PHD, save the latest Harry Potter prequel for your free time!” 

This is because they’ve already made it, and because the art these people create is already in the zeitgeist. Countless artists quit their day jobs to pursue a life of creation, it’s very common. And a lot of people make it big. JK Rowling, originally a single mother who lived on welfare benefits, is now said to earn a whopping £142 per minute from Harry Potter royalties. 

These are special circumstances, and they often happen to people with (white cishet) privilege. The average artist, and particularly marginalised artists, wade through mountains of debt and awful pay cheques before they get anywhere. How much money these franchises eventually generate is a huge factor in how ‘valuable’ they are deemed. 

But when it comes to up and coming artists, they’re suddenly all starving artists that are taking advantage of those around them. JK Rowling would have been deemed a so called welfare thief, if the world hadn’t fallen in love with the Boy Who Lived. And if Hollywood hadn’t seen what a great money making machine it turned out to be. 

I just want to make a stable wage. I don’t need Harry Potter levels of fame and fortune. Yet it seems that is too much to ask.

So, what can I do now?

Luckily my partner understands that my career has to move slowly right now. So in order to help my anxiety, I know I have to get in that same mindset. Otherwise my symptoms will just get worse.

I don’t want to take advantage of my boyfriend, to pay only a quarter of the rent, I want to pay 50% of everything. We can share other responsibilities; the cooking, the cleaning, helping each other out emotionally. One day at a time. But until the industry pays better, and until my mental health sorts itself out, I just have to accept that this is all I can contribute financially. And that’s okay.

May is a feminist writer from the UK. She enjoys reading, gaming, and protesting.

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Still Standing: Celebrating Pride When You Don’t Feel Like It

I’ve been giving a lot of thought about what I want to say about Pride this year, or whether or not I need to say anything at all. The truth is that I’ve been wallowing a bit lately, specifically about what my life would look like if the current state of our world didn’t feel so bleak. With climate change, impending war, reproductive rights restrictions, it can feel like every day comes with a new wound, a new barrage of thoughtless comments, and injustices to deal with.

As someone who cares a lot about my writing, this often means thinking about how much more I could accomplish if I didn’t have to deal with the daily awfulness that comes from witnessing the rise of public acts of homophobia, racism, and sexism.  

Of course I recognize how privileged I am. I can pass as straight, and I am lucky enough to call     two really special cities home. New York and Los Angeles can be more inclusive than most places in the United States. However, over the past four years, it doesn’t always feel that way. This year has been particularly tough with random moments of aggression. As I was leaving the local grocery store in my normally very warm neighborhood, a passerby called me something incredibly racist and sexist. Recently, a Pride flag was burned outside of a gay bar near where I live. 

While moments like these are rough, what stuck out this time was the fact that, when I got home, it was difficult for me to focus on anything else. I was exhausted from the experience. An encounter which only took about 30 seconds ended up wiping me out for the rest of the day. 

And I’m one of the lucky ones! There are people who are dealing with oppression based on class, education, gender identity, and disability who have to deal with so much more than I do. 

One of the things that people tend not to factor into their understanding of the reality of inequality is the amount of emotional energy it takes just to get through the day. That moment of racism (even a casual one) takes time to process and move past. Living as someone different in this world means having a lot of baggage to carry, whether I am carrying the weight of something that happened to me, something that happened to a friend, or something I have heard happen on the news.

 As reports of hate crimes are rising in New York and the Trump administration is rolling back Obama era legislation, just getting through each day seems to be the best thing we can do. But I’m still stuck on the question of what we could be capable of if we didn’t have to bear the staggering weight of injustices that most everyone else refuses to acknowledge? 

There’s been a lot of talk about what Stonewall 50- World Pride is supposed to be on the anniversary of a riot led by brave trans women of color putting their lives on the line, specifically on whether or not it is appropriate for the leather community to attend or for there to be so much corporate commercialization of the event. These are really important conversations to be having, and I’m glad that they’re being had. But my mind hasn’t really been there. Instead, I’ve been thinking about what Pride represents for me.

My first Pride took place on the morning after the Pulse shooting in Orlando. I had only been out for a couple years at that point, and it was the first year that I felt ready to reach out and be a part of the community. In a lot of ways, it ended up being a funeral march, and I realized that being a part of this community means feeling and facing adversity together.      

Over the past fifty years, New York Pride has grown to become something celebratory, which I think is wonderful. In world that flattens our difference, I think it is important to have a time to celebrate our complexity in the varied lives we lead. But I haven’t been feeling very celebratory. I’ve been feeling tired. 

I was pretty conflicted when deciding whether or not I should go to the big Stonewall 50- World Pride event this year. I could just picture the amount of difficulty it would be to get downtown, to brave the heat and the inevitable Bad Experience that always seems to happen when so many people gather in one place (DC Pride’s recent active shooter scare for example). More importantly, I wasn’t quite sure what the point of my attending would be. I normally do tabling work for a non-profit I volunteer for, but this year there isn’t going to be a table. And I don’t      want to go with friends and end up being a dampener their celebration because I don’t feel like wearing glitter this year. 

 Yet, after remembering my first Pride and the importance of experiencing things together, I’ve decided to go anyway. I’m still not sure how I will feel when I attend, but I ended up realizing that it’s okay to have mixed feelings.  

Our lives are going to be filled with good and bad days. We can’t sit around waiting for the bad days to end before we begin our lives because of the possibility the bad days will never really go away. Addressing those bad days together with our community will always be better than addressing them alone. 

It’s important to take time to mourn the parts of ourselves that are lost because of what we sacrifice to survive. However, it is equally important to recognize in the face of violence, societal inequality, homophobia (both external and internalized), racism, and sexism, we’ve created our chosen families. We’re resilient and we exist despite all the people who want us to go away. 

We’re still breathing and singing and writing and living. And whether or not it feels like a win in the moment—it is, and we should take the time to acknowledge that and celebrate it.      

So that’s my theme for Pride month this year.

And since I just went to see the truly splendid Rocketman, this is going to be my theme song.

Tiffany Babb is a New York based writer. Her poetry has been published in Argot Magazine, Third Wednesday, and is forthcoming in Cardiff Review. Her comics criticism has been published in PanelxPanel, The MNT, and Women Write About Comics. You can find more of her work at www.tiffanybabb.com

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Hysto

I had my reproductive organs voluntarily removed at twenty-two years-old. I’d like to imagine they’re pickled and floating in a jar waiting to be dissected. This is not the first time the distance between myself and my body has become literal; my perfectly healthy flesh and blood are my own worst enemy. My body is company I can only hold at this distance, like a prism against the ceiling light, a spectrum full of indecipherable color. A piece of me, somewhere, is gone.

There’s a lot of hand-wringing about what it means for a transgender person to have surgery. I had to refuse any and all food and liquid, a seemingly impossible task for raging coffee-addict. I gingerly walked up the women’s and infant’s clinic front-desk alone, and told them that I was indeed, the patient being operated on this afternoon. To any passing stranger, I was a young man asking about his partner, wife, child. The reality was I stumbled over my words, with sweat on my forehead as the clerk found my name and said I needed to sign paperwork.

“Are you the patient?” the clerk asked me. I don’t recall anything unique about her. She looked me over with the type of familiarity she might give an unpleasant co-worker’s child.

I say yes. At this point, there’s no going back.

Cue me being asked to follow the dotted yellow lines into a room where I’m met with a dark hallway—not unlike the one from Barton Fink. It was surreal and slightly off-putting, like a dim forgotten corner of a movie set. I walked into the office to sign the consent forms and am asked to follow more yellow dotted lines to another department. In a matter of hours, I would be put to a sleep and operated on, as if none of this preamble ever happened.

I couldn’t help but be reminded of the yellow-brick road Judy Garland and her dog dutifully traveled on to see the wizard, a mystical hermit in his emerald towers. The Wizard of Oz was an obsession in my single-parent household. The stripes on the floor are intended to guide patients and their families, but I went through this all alone, feeling like Dorothy after her house crashed on top of a poor witch. I want to apologize for intruding, for bringing this body into a women’s space, but because of my sex this is where the surgery must take place. It’s frustrating introducing myself; I’m ready as I’ll ever be for the procedure.

When a trans body enters a hospital, it’s as easy as being sucked up into a tornado. It’s swept away from a sepia-hued world into a hyper-visible, technicolor land of prying eyes and confused stares. It’s enough to give anyone cold feet. But there are medical fees for that. There are dollar signs flying like winged-monkeys everywhere. Legal paperwork saying I’m someone else might as well be a house dropping down on my head. That it clearly says they have the wrong patient.

But I had a letter saying I was supposed to be here, for this, I emphasized to the clerk, being as vague as possible. The surgery. I’m piss-broke and have just signed away a significant amount of money to pay for a surgery I would never be able to afford without my Ivy League college insurance.

Nice people get what they want and I wanted to have my organs removed to become a better, more whole person because of it. I was determined to find my ruby slippers, slap them together, and walk out to attend class next week like nothing happened. In retrospect, this is the apex of the overachiever mentality: going in for major surgery on Friday and talking about Foucault the following Monday.

I was used to trying to appeal to others for respect, so I smiled and nodded with every well- intentioned “miss” and “m’am” knowing all too well that the clinical description of “gender identity disorder” was stamped on every page of my paperwork. This was the nature of the beast, and I was lost in this Oz world, stumbling my way along, doing my best not to make myself too noticeable. All I wanted was to go home, metaphorically, into a body I could better recognize myself in. I had a big house crash in on my life and it was the body I lived in.

The DSM-5 now calls “gender identity disorder” “gender dysphoria disorder,” which supposedly lessens the stigma attached to transgender people. But bodies are messy and on principal, they’re subject to change regardless of how we choose to talk about them. This is inherently a problem with language and how culture violently twists and depicts trans bodies. I’m not here to entertain baseless arguments about people wanting to cut off limbs because they “think they should be an amputee.” Here was the brick wall in my transition: squishy organs, ripe for the picking.

Fixating on what people ought to do to their body isn’t new or exciting. I’m interested in the visceral messiness of the experience, the bureaucratic ritualism that preludes any endeavor to present ourselves to medical institutions. The mechanical process of sex-related surgery isn’t exciting. I doubt those other than the morbidly curious and skeptical would find the technicalities illuminating. It’s boring being a transgender person going under the knife. Waiting for surgery is like watching grass grow—nothing ever happens. It’s miles upon miles of dotted lines, signatures, and the sound of your own urine splashing against a measurement cup minutes before you’re on the gurney.

I spent my recovery watching gross, schlocky movies. It’s comforting losing myself in the screen, doing my best to get into another person’s head. It’s a good enough distraction from picturing the sinews of my abdomen healing together, my pelvic muscles recoiling after being sliced open for the surgery to take place. My gruesome tendencies go wild—I want to imagine all sorts of morbid transformations taking place where my uterus once was. I pictured it like the scene in The Fly, where Jeff Goldblum realizes he’s growing tiny insectoid feelers on his forearms. This scene is not unlike my own discoveries of individual chin hairs after years of injecting testosterone.

Compared to most transgender men, I’m about as masculine as a naked mole-rat. My body will now require synthetic hormones to be injected on a weekly basis in order to maintain itself. This is something I of course discussed at lengths for months with my doctor. There’s no problem here—I became obsessed with my own boredom waiting for my body to heal. I felt abnormally well.

I fantasized about a creature inside of me ready to burst out like an Alien parasite, announcing that I’m here, finally in this new home I call my meat and flesh. But no abomination will come tearing me open from the inside-out. Only my own ennui ready to swallow itself whole like Ouroboros.

The monster analogies are easy—Frankenstein, Chimera, test-tube creatures. Walking through the world with this body is the equivalent of hiding the fact you are, partially, the product of someone else’s handiwork. This is how I’ve come to terms with own sense of monstrosity, the jagged edges of my body that don’t quite all fit together.

Scholar Susan Stryker describes the trans body in her essay/performance piece My Words To Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix:

“The transsexual body is an unnatural body. It is the product of medical science. It is a technological construction. It is flesh torn apart and sewn together again in a shape other than that in which it was born.”

The trans body is both the site of medical and technological impact, crashing into each other violently to make beautiful results. The Frankenstein-qualities of a body that will need hormones to survive is admirable to me—it’s a powerful announcement of my own autonomy, the desire to live in a world constantly trying to kill me. I cut ties with the old biological demands of my old body for a new one, tailored to fit, in a form from “flesh torn apart.” This cycle began when I had chest reconstruction surgery and my hysterectomy is another symbolic middle-finger to the world. I have the agency to sew this body back together, transform it an optimized, beautiful living being.

When I inject my weekly hormones, I feel euphoria. I feel my body re-organize itself when I complete a dose. It’s an all-consuming experience that demands a concentrated up-keep of syringes, doses, needles, and gauges. To reject what I was given, I reach out for the tools at hand, become my own cyborg, someone who builds out of what’s despised.

From Testo Junkie by Paul B. Preciado:

“I’m not taking testosterone to change myself into a man or as a physical strategy of transsexualism; I take it to foil what society wanted to make of me, so that I can write, fuck, feel a form of pleasure that is post-pornographic, add a molecular prostheses to my low-tech transgender identity composed of dildos, texts, and moving images; I do it to avenge your death.”

Letting myself be used, medically, is an act of freedom. In his introduction to Testo Junkie, Preciado announces an “low-tech transgender identity” in conversation with the death of those he knows and loves. The consequences of dying, either on or off the surgery table, are all the same: the muscles give out and the body finally rests. Preciado and Stryker speak on the dissociation and pain of the trans body better than I ever could—the body isn’t one object, but a collection of “Frankenstein-qualities” and “dildos, texts, and moving images.” It’s an amalgamation of lost pieces sewn back together to make a façade that lasts just long enough, a shelter that endures just enough rough weather to survive. It’s a house, albeit one that crashed from the sky long ago.

Strewn on my bed, with my flesh bending itself back into shape, I couldn’t help but return to the image of bloodied meat. The recovery process is blinding, painful, and full of medication. My mind wandered to Elvira Weishaupt’s monologue in the climatic slaughterhouse scene of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s In a Year of 13 Moons, in which a transgender woman recounts her childhood nostalgia with a friend. The scene is brutal, with vivid, long shots of cows being partially decapitated, their bloody flesh bare as Elvira speaks. Elvira is abused and traumatized by the men in her life after genital confirmation surgery, after which she commits suicide. The film, released in 1978—only one year before Janice Raymond published her hateful The Transexual Empire—explicitly associates the transformation of Elvira’s body with the carnage and violence that comes with production-line slaughterhouses. The transgender body is a site of mutilation and damage—surgeries only leave emotional and physical gashes that cannot heal, according to Fassbinder. The sentiment of the film is not empowering nor approving of transgender people’s autonomy in determining their own biology. It’s a moment of disgust and the re-opening of traumatic wounds by recollecting memories of a past body, one that the speaker cannot cling on to anymore.

The body is easily destroyed. It is also easily rebuilt, as sinews and connecting tissue regrow, the body regenerates itself, waking up again after being dormant. It’s amazingly resilient. A new flesh can spawn from the shrivel and bloodied remains of the last occupant—the meat of the body isn’t a dying thing. It grows and becomes—my scars now are just that now, only scars.

I still don’t know what the proper response is when people ask about the surgery.

It’s just a pinch, I want to tell them. A snap of the wrists. A crack of the skull.

A bullet to the heart. A fist to the eye.

That word, transsexual, hanging heavy and wet on a company’s tongue, because you had the dollar to your name and the will to live. Sticks and stones.

My body is vetting itself down the yellow brick road, hitting all the speed bumps along the way. It’s as good as broken. I like it this way.

Blake Planty loves crawling the web at the witching hour. He has fiction and essays published and forthcoming in Nat Brut, DREGINALD, Heavy Feather Review, Waxwing, The Fanzine, Tenderness Lit, and more. Find him talking about cyborgs and coffee at @_dispossessed on Twitter and online at catboy.club.

[argotmagazine-blog]

Book Review: Nora Samaran's Turn This World Inside Out

You may have heard of Nora Samaran from her essay “The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture,” which went viral in early 2016. In it, Samaran claims “violence is nurturance turned backwards” and extrapolates the nuance of rape culture that pervades our lives in imperceptible ways. Whether it is the weight of emotional labor performed by women, femmes, and nonbinary people, movement building with masculine identified people working on cultivating empathy, or navigating how to move forward from a culture of call-outs and cancellations, Samaran’s essay is incredibly prescient to our world today where previously culturally mandated silences are being broken.

With the book release of Turn This World Inside Out, Samaran expands on her viral essay to construct almost a manual, a how-to guide, to heal the dominant culture we live in and also show examples of how this work is being utilized by activists and individuals who are implementing nurturance culture in their daily lives. Interspersed between essays on topical issues close to the cultural pulse in America and other Western cultures today, such as “On Gaslighting” and apologizing for when harm does occur with “Own, Apologize, Repair: Coming Back to Integrity,” are dialogues conducted between Samaran and other activists who are trying to answer these questions in their own work. Presented as “dialogues” rather than interviews, Samaran engages with the pitfalls of her work with the very people who are being affected by the implications of putting nurturance culture into practice.  

As a cis white writer, Samaran does not shy away from her own blind spots that could hinder the fullness of her argument for nurturance culture, engaging with the blossoming complexity that arises when we try to take on these tangled power structures. For example, in the dialogue “Turning Gender Inside Out,” Samaran speaks with Serena Bhandar, a writer, activist, and educator who also happens to be transgender. While “The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture” essay that starts the book focuses on men, “men [who] do not talk to one another about nurturance skills...the codes of masculinity makes doing so frightening,” Bhandar addresses how transgender people are not explicitly centered in the work and converses with Samaran on how that can be corrected. Bhandar states

“A lot of writing I have seen reduces violence to a cis male-cis female dynamic, where it is presented as though there is nothing beyond and nothing between. Any arguments directed toward a trans audience are tacked on, even though trans folks, and trans women in particular, face disproportionate and severe levels of violence...instead transness should be built right into the argument from its conception, especially since everybody has the potential to be trans...Putting transness at the center of our understanding of gender makes apparent that cisness has also always been complicated.”

Rather than defend her work as trans-inclusive, Samaran’s response is refreshing in a world that often focuses on the shame that arises from being educated or corrected and the fear that comes up with being “wrong.” “Yes, that makes sense,” Samaran responds “I can see how the piece adds trans readers on, as you have described, rather than writing in a way that builds transness right into the fundamental way of thinking about gender.” Samaran demonstrates in this dialogue a core piece of nurturance culture: to disrupt the harm systems perpetuate against us, it's imperative that we expand ourselves to listen to people, analysis, and arguments that result in empathy to transcend our own ego, so that we can work to dismantle the systems in operation around us. Ultimately, Samaran acknowledges that the bulk of this work is often done by women, femmes, Black, Indigenous, and other feminists of color, feminists who organize and theorize about these systems and doesn’t present her work at the solution to these issues. Rather, Turn This World Inside Out is the guide for those who may resist and not have engaged with this work before.  

I truly appreciate how Samaran builds off the theoretical movements before her with utilization of attachment theory from psychology schools of thought, gender studies, critical race theory, and postcolonial theory. As we learn about power structures and oppressions inherent in those structures, Turn This World Inside Out asks what kind of world can we create when we nurture each other, rather than Western individualism that is fed by imperialism and capitalism, focusing on who can be the best from the rest. Rather than offering a one size fits all solution to care and accountability that distinguishes itself from call out and cancel culture, Turn This World Inside Out acknowledges that this work is something that is different for everyone but also necessary to conduct. In the dialogue “Building Strength Through Movement and Afrofuturism,” with Ruby Smith Diaz, Diaz states

“We often inhabit and replicate the toxic behaviors of the society and the state we live in. We need to be able to understand what is happening to us and heal ourselves so we don’t perpetuate those toxic behaviors and ways of being.” This is something that is happening on an unconscious level that takes conscious effort to unpack and correct.

 With that said, Samaran steps into academic and colloquial language seamlessly in a way that makes complex theoretical ideas digestible for a wider audience outside of the academic spaces these theories initially originated in. On gaslighting, which despite the etymology of the phrase, isn’t about throwing a match on petroleum fuel, Samaran writes “Do you understand the depth of the harm of making someone question their sanity? This is serious shit….It is poking a hole in someone’s fundamental capacity to engage with reality...Our capacity to know ourselves is powerful - and power in people who are situated as abject is squashed at every turn for the very reason that it has the force to overturn injustice” (emphasis mine). By acknowledging the very real harm in a normalized activity that is inherent in thousands of day-to-day interactions outside of opaque academic jargon, Samara is truly working to engage the reader into nurturance culture and increase accessibility.  

Ultimately, Turn This World Inside Out is an imperative text for our modern times. Samaran deftly demonstrates the need for this type of book throughout her essays and dialogues. This slender tome will be sure to draw readers in for providing answers to the questions people in positions of privilege have. I only hope that it can live up to its title.

 Dena Rod is an Iranian American writer, editor, and poet. They're a graduate of San Francisco State University, where they received a Master’s Degree in English Literature. You can find more of their work in CCSF’s Forum Literary Magazine, Endangered Species, Enduring Values: An Anthology of San Francisco Area Writers and Artists of Color, and the upcoming anthology My Shadow is My Skin (Spring 2020). You can reach them at denarod.com and Twitter.

[argotmagazine-blog]

Shimmering in Sequins: What It's Like To Be A Belly Dancer

As a little girl, my family frequented Pharaoh’s, a dumpy Egyptian restaurant located in a strip mall. Despite its outward appearance, Pharaoh’s had the best falafels this side of the Nile, and brought in belly dancers to perform every weekend. It was my father’s way of exposing my sister, Nadia, and I to our Egyptian roots, which was difficult to come by in Orange County, CA.

I speak roughly three words of Arabic, so I never understood what my baba was saying to the owner. What I did understand was the belly dancer. I wanted to be her. She wore a glittering scarlet costume adorned with sequins, and every inch of her shimmered. Her stomach was bare and her skin was golden. Her raven colored hair flowed down her back, and golden bangles swung from her wrists. In my eyes, she was a princess.

She would teach Nadia and I basic ways to shake our hips, and put the gold bangles on our wrists. She once folded a dollar bill with her stomach and gave it to Nadia. The belly dancer  was always met with cheers, claps, and smiles--everyone loved her. I swore that one day, I would be rewarded with cheers, claps, and smiles, and wear a costume where every inch of me shined.

*

A few years ago, I traveled with my baba to visit Egypt, our original homeland. Our cousins set up a cruise along the Nile River for us, where our tour guide Ahmed educated us on faceless Gods, ancient burial methods, and hieroglyphics. None of which baba remembered and would have to be repeated to him every day. On our final day on the cruise, Ahmed informed us that we would be receiving a real treat: belly dancers.

This sent the other tourists into a tizzy. I presumed--based on their excited chatter--that most had never seen a belly dancer before. I wasn’t so much excited but curious, since I had fulfilled my dream and become a belly dancer. I wondered how a dancer in the homeland would differ from one in America.

Baba, Ahmed, and I took our seats around a cramped table while we waited for the show to begin..

“Have you seen belly dancers before, Yasmina?” Ahmed asked, motioning for a waiter to bring us some tea. My father grinned at the tourists, who were currently trying to belly dance.

“Yes, well I actually am one. I’m trained in Egyptian cabaret,” I replied.

“Oh?” Ahmed raised his eyebrows. “Does your baba know about this?”

“He does, and he’s not happy about it,” I replied, graciously accepting a cup of tea. I noticed out of the corner of my eye one of the tourists successfully managed a shimmy.

“Oh, well you know how Egyptian men are.” Ahmed squeezed a bit of lemon into his tea. “They love to watch belly dancers, but Allah forbid their own wives or daughters are one.”

“I find that ironic, considering Egyptians invented belly dancing.”

Ahmed nodded. “Well, Egypt is still a rather conservative country.”

*

From what I understand, belly dancing, aka raqs sharqi, originated in Egypt thousands of years ago. The term “belly dance” actually originates from French, danse du ventre, which means “dance of the stomach”. Although belly dancing is often associated with early pagan rituals for fertility, but there is no concrete evidence for this. In fact, it’s rather difficult to trace the history of belly dancing. However, belly dancing does help strengthen the muscles needed for childbirth.

The dance was not designed to arouse or entice men — women would perform the dance for other women, never in front of men. Many of the movements in belly dance appear to come from India (such as the sliding of the head) and traditional African dance.

As time went on, men began to belly dance as well (especially in Egypt). Their dance form was a bit different from the women’s, and frequently included canes and swords. During the 1800s, a group called ghawazi would perform outside of coffee shops and in streets. As more foreigners came to visit Egypt, the dance style itself changed. Since more Europeans traveled to Egypt, ballet and ballroom dance was incorporated. By the 1920s, numerous dance clubs hosted belly dancers, whose costumes had changed to match the motif--dancers began to wear glittery costumes that was far less traditional.

In 1893, belly dancing made its way to America. A dancer nicknamed “Little Egypt” made her debut at the Chicago World’s Fair, where her movements were interpreted to be rather vulgar. Thus belly dancing began to get confused with burlesque. However, during the 1970s and 80s, American women began to embrace belly dance as a more feminist movement. Despite this, the dance still frequently has sensual undertones associated with it, especially in America. Americans tend to be rather awkward around belly dancers. I have had quite a few men shy away when I danced close to them. They buried their heads into their phones, much like a gopher burrowing into a hole. This reaction is preferable to leers and jeers, which is never appropriate at a belly dancing show.

*

The first dancer took the stage. His skirts were made up of the Egyptian flag. I became dizzy as he spun and spun, ripping off each skirt to reveal another flag. The crowd roared with every spun.

“He’s a guy belly dancing!” Baba exclaimed, clapping along with the crowd.

“Apt observation,” I muttered. Ahmed hid a smirk.

“I’ve never seen a man belly dance,” Baba continued, still amazed.

“There are male belly dancers, I’ve danced with a few.”

“In America you have male belly dancers?” Ahmed is now surprised.

“Yes, well we have far more women. But I’ve met a few men who dance. There was a boy in my first dance class.”

“When did you first start dancing?”

“In college. I just really liked it.”

“Of course you were good at it,” Ahmed grins, “You’re Egyptian. It’s in your roots.” I can’t help but blush at this comment.

*

While I had always dreamed of being a belly dancer, it wasn’t something I had actively sought. It was difficult to find classes for girls, and my parents were adamantly against the idea. Baba wanted me to continue swimming, just I always had, and my mother did not have the money to pay for them.

When I got to college my academic advisor proclaimed that I needed an elective. He whipped through the course booklet, his eyes darting from course to course. He stamped his finger on one and let out a triumphant yell.

“Belly dancing! I’m going to sign you up for belly dancing!”

“Ah…” I didn’t want to say no. He was in control of my academic future, and I still wasn’t sure if he was capable of murder. “Okay.”

“You’re Egyptian! You’ll be great at it! Plus you need another outlet besides writing, writing can be quite draining.” He sprung to his feet and began to move his hips like a wounded hippo. “Look at how fun it is! You’ll love it!”

To my surprise, he was right. I was a natural at belly dancing. I had never taken a dance class before, yet belly dance felt as natural to me as walking. I quickly became one of the star performers and my teacher took me under her wing, grooming me into the dancer she wanted. From that moment on I was hooked, I was on my way to becoming the shining dancer I had always wanted to be.

*

The male belly dancer finished one last spin. The audience, now on its feet, was ready for the next dancer. A squatter Asian woman rounded the corner. Her pink costume twinkled under the lights. Her stomach was bare, revealing luminescent skin. Like any dancer, her face was caked in makeup. I was a bit disappointed by her costume. I knew that she wasn’t properly trained in Egypt. If she was, she would be wearing netting and a far more conservative costume.

“She’s a bit too fat to dance,” Baba blurted out. Ahmed buried his face in his hands. “Aren’t dancers usually skinny?”

“Baba!”

“What? It’s true. She’s chubby.”

“Well, belly dancers come in all shapes and sizes. There isn’t a particular body type for it, that’s what makes it such an inclusive dance.”

“Huh. Well I think she’s too fat for that costume.”

“Just stop talking please.”

The crowd wasn’t as enthused with this dancer as they were with the first. I couldn’t blame them, her moves weren’t precise. She dropped her hips on the wrong beat, her feet were not pointed, her shimmies were not exaggerated. She had been trained, but not properly. I was surprised to realize that I was a better dancer than the one in Egypt.

“She’s off,” I muttered to Ahmed. “She’s not hitting the moves correctly.”

“You should get up there and show her how it’s done,” Ahmed teased. Baba was now looking at his phone.

“No, I’ve never danced in front of Baba. He might kill me.”

Ahmed laughed at this. I wasn’t joking. Baba was not keen on my choice of dance. Once he realized he couldn’t deter me from dance, he tried to sway me towards ballet. I have done a little ballet, but I find it to be far more difficult. This may have to do with the feet placement (in ballet your feet point out, whereas in belly dancing they point in) or due to the fact that a crowd at a ballet is simply not as spirited. I have also noted that not all body types are accepted in ballet, which is rather strange for me.

Our belly dancer was now pulling random tourists up to the stage, most of which were more than happy to oblige. Baba, Ahmed, and I snickered as they attempted to sway their hips as smoothly as she was, only to look like the hippos from Fantasia. This did not seem to bother them, as they laughed and tumbled into one another.

“Are you going to dance, Baba?” I teased. I’ve never seen Baba dance. Even at weddings, he shuffles in the background, staying close to the cake.

“No,” He grinned. “I prefer watching this. But I do know how to dance. I will dance with you at your wedding, you will see.”

Ahmed and I exchange a brief smirk. “How do Americans handle belly dancers?” Ahmed asked, as Baba resumed playing with his phone. “Do they like them?”

*

I didn’t want to reveal that my best audience in America was actually a group of pugs. For a while, I danced with a charity group called “Raqs for Paws,” where we danced to raise money for animal shelters. We were asked to perform at an event called “Pugtoberfest,” where every pug owner in the Orange County area dressed their pugs up and brought them out to socialize (the pugs even had a costume contest; Batpug won). As I twirled on stage, a rogue pug broke free from his owner and circled me. They barked their approval and tried to lick my toes. The pug eventually ran back to his owner, and I greeted my admirer when I finished dancing. They gave me a sloppy kiss on the cheek.

“Have you ever danced anywhere other than America?” Ahmed continues. The dance floor is getting crowded now. The tourists have stopped caring whether or not they look like hippos and are busting out their best moves, which seems to consist of shuffling side to side and dabbing.

“Yes, Australia. They are the opposite of Americans. They love belly dancers. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a crowd love belly dancing so much!”

During my stay in Australia, I joined a theater troupe. The one skill I had that no one else did was the ability to make a figure eight with my chest, a skill that wowed my troupe. They began to call me “Hollywood” and would frequently comment on how hot I was. I was amused by this, as no American had ever found my dancing to be this intriguing. When I finally danced at our theater showcase, the crowd was on their feet. They cheered, whistled, and clapped--not a single person shied away. The Aussies were living for my dance, and I wasn’t quite sure how to handle it. I smiled and swayed, hoping no one tried to swoop me up and carry me out. At the end of my number, they gave me a standing ovation. Flattered, but unsure of what to do with such attention, I ran backstage and hid.

“Oi!” One of our stage hands approached me. I was not hidden properly. “My mate thinks you’re hot. Wants ya numbah.”

“Oh! Well, I have a boyfriend.” This wasn’t a lie. I also wasn’t used to men being this direct.

“Thass alright, I’ll tell him to piss off then.” I peeped from the side door as the stage hand approached his friend, who was watching a number from Wicked.

“She’s got a boyfriend, so piss off then!” The stage hand smacked his friend’s head.

The dancing was beginning to wind down. The tourists had grown tired. They shuffled back to their seats, ready for some tea and baklava.

I sat back, remembering one last time I had danced. A group of little girls, dressed in pink tutus and crowns, oooh’ed at my own costume, a glittering scarlet costume adorned with sequins. Gold bracelets dangled from my wrists.

“Oooo look at her!” A chubby finger pointed at me. “She is beautiful!”

“She looks like a princess,” Another swayed from side to side.

“Are you a princess?”

I bend down to their level. The girls grab my skirt and run it through their fingers. I take off one of my bangles and slide it one of their wrists.

“No, I’m not a princess. I’m a belly dancer. If you keep dancing, you might get to become a belly dancer too.”

S.M. Mikesell is a writer living in Los Angeles. She has written for Huffington Post, HelloGiggles, and been a featured writer for Plume. She loves to travel and eat. Most of her travels are based on where she can eat delicious food.

[argotmagazine-blog]

Dear Worrier Princess: On Polyamory Pickles and College Coming Out Conundrums

Queery #1: Last summer I (32, queer) met someone (26, baby dyke) at the farmers market near my house, she lives in a town 2 hours away near the farm she works at. We started hanging out as friends and realized we had giant crushes on each other. We saw each other on & off through the winter. Now it’s April, & we really like each other, and have had fun sex a couple of times. The thing is: she says she doesn’t want a relationship—she’s busy farming, working 60+ hrs/wk and can’t commit to being in touch or making time to visit me. She also says she’s still processing her last relationship (5 yrs! her first queer relash!) so she needs to figure some stuff out. I totally get it. However, her actions are different from her words: she stays in touch a BUNCH and when we are together, she says a lotta stuff that feels VERY girlfriendy to me.

We both have established that we love hanging out, we feel fun and comfortable, we care a lot about each other, and we learn a lot from each other. I feel a lotta love between us although we haven’t said ILY but rn it doesn’t feel like we need that. For me, I really like her, I love hanging out w her. At the same time, I DO want to be in a relationship, but I don’t think a monogamous long-distance relationship would work for me. If I’m going to date someone I have needs! and want to have a lot of sex!! And only seeing someone like every other week *at most* doesn't feel enough, and if we’re monogamous, maybe there’d be a lot of pressure on those times to have a good time.

She is not comfortable with polyamory, specifically with me having sex with other people in the same time period as with her.  My question is about ethics, tact, care, and timing:: Should I break up with her now, knowing that inevitably I will be boning some local person? There is no one else in the picture right now but I would like to be dating people; I also really don’t want her to feel like a “placeholder,” you know? That would feel like a shitty dynamic.  Or, should we continue to “love each other while we can”? We’ve tried being just friends before and it was sad, there’s like this string that keeps wrapping each other together. Should I keep hanging out with her until it gets to a point where I am seeing another local person and want to bone them too? I’m feeling stuck between a rock & a hard spot, & it feels like an ethical decision which i don’t have the answer for. I want to be responsible and not be a douchebag.

I did not expect to see the words “she lives in a town 2 hours away” followed by “long-distance relationship.” As a lesbian from the Midwest, I have driven two hours for really good beef jerky and that is NOT a double-entendre. Two hours is not long-distance in my book, but I digress. We’re talking about you, not me and my horndog travels.

You’re in a pickle—an organic, free-range pickle from the farmers market, but still a pickle. You want an open relationship. Your farm boo does not. You want to spend more time together, but she’s overwhelmed by a semi-recent heartbreak and intense farming schedule. Neither of you are willing to compromise. This is a situation I see all the time here at Dear Worrier Princess: two people recognize that fundamental aspects of relationship aren’t working, but they stay together because the relationship is familiar and has redeeming qualities like good sex, rapport, or mutual love and care.

To be honest, it sounds like your farm boo is someone who wants what she wants when she wants it. The following sentences set off some alarms for me: “she can’t commit to being in touch or making time to visit me” followed by “she stays in touch a BUNCH and when we are together, she says a lotta stuff that feels VERY girlfriendy.” This is a boundaries issue and it’s 100% something you should discuss with her. Say something like, “It’s confusing for me when you say our relationship is one way, but then you text me frequently and say things like [EXAMPLE 1] and [EXAMPLE 2].” Similarly, you keep deciding to be friends and sliding back into romance-territory. This doesn’t mean you’re fated to be together, it means you need better boundaries and a solid chunk of time without any contact. I’m also wondering, during these stretches when you’re supposed to be friends, who escalates things? Who sends the first sext? Might be something to think about.

Is it wrong to date someone you don’t want to be with forever? No. I think most relationships fall into this camp. As long as you’re mindful not create a placeholder dynamic (which I interpret to mean becoming a dismissive or callous partner), it’s fine to see an end on the horizon. However, it’s never as simple as, “we’ll just date until things naturally end.” Even in the best of circumstances, breakups are hard. What if you meet someone available and local, but you’re still raw from the breakup? What if you struggle to establish post-breakup boundaries with your farm boo and this causes tension in your new relationship?

My advice is to set a course towards friendship, though I also understand how difficult it can be to end a relationship without the solid impetus of a fight or someone new. Ask yourself: if I end this relationship now, will I regret not spending more time together? If I keep seeing her, will my feelings become stronger and make it more difficult to separate? Is the agony is worth the ecstasy? Only you can decide.

Queery #2: Last semester (my first semester of college) I was pretty into this girl I thought was straight or at least very closeted. Almost immediately after returning to school after winter break we both got very drunk and ended up hooking up that night. Since then we've continued to see each other and the relationship seems to be getting more and more serious; however, only as long as we are in very private spaces. The only people who know about it are my friends and her friends all seem to believe that I am tragically in love with her, a straight girl. I have never been in any sort of serious relationship, I only first hooked up with a girl last semester but I've been out and open about my sexuality with those close to me for the past three years. I've tried to initiate conversations with her about this, which is hard as she freezes up with any sort of difficult topic that requires talking about ones emotions. We've gotten a little better at these conversations lately and it seems like she also wants a more serious relationship and wants to be able to be more public about it. In the past few weeks she has told one of the people she is living with as well as a close friend but it still seems like we're stuck in this strange place. I don't want to pressure her to do anything she feels very uncomfortable doing and I also recognize that feeling like I am, in a way, going back into the closet to be there with her is unhealthy for me. How do I keep my frustration for our current situation from clouding the good parts, if that's possible? Lately this is about all I think about or want to talk about and I find myself often getting stuck on these negative aspects. How can I best support her without damaging my own wellbeing?

While reading this queery, I realized that my first semester of college was TEN YEARS AGO. My mom drove me to Staples to buy an ethernet cable because my my dorm didn’t have wifi—that’s how we lived in 2009. I can confirm, in extreme retrospect, that your first year of college is overwhelming. It’s no small thing to leave home for the first time, make new friends, and balance coursework/relationships/a job. And then, on top of all that, your girlfriend is smacked with her own queerness and everything it entails. It’s a lot!

It doesn’t help that “coming out" is one of those those terms like “hooking up” or “middle class”—we pretend it’s this definite thing, when it actually means something different to everyone. As a femme lesbian, I come out to new people when it feels safe and pertinent. My butch friends, on the other hand, rarely get to come out on their own terms. Some people take years to come out, others make a snap decision and tell the world via Facebook. I have friends who are openly gay in the United States, but are closeted to their parents and extended families in their countries-of-origin. Sometimes I get DMs from women who say Instagram is their only queer outlet because marriage and other life circumstances make coming out impossible. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I meet a lot of young people who grew up in affirming homes and were exposed to queer adults and culture at an early age. All this to say that I totally agree with you: you can’t pressure your girlfriend to come out before she’s ready. I applaud you for recognizing that her life and decisions are hers and hers alone.

None of this changes the fact that your relationship makes you feel Bad. When you’ve escaped the deep closet, dating someone who’s struggling with self-acceptance can dredge up all sorts of insecurities and painful memories. It feels shitty to be someone’s secret; it implies that your sexuality is shameful and wrong. Like, have you ever had a friend who body-shamed themselves constantly and said stuff like “I’m so fat and disgusting”? Even though their comments aren’t directed at you, you come away feeling self-conscious and weird. Shame is contagious like that.

All relationships require compromise, but how do you know when you’re compromising too much? What do you owe yourself and what do you owe your partner? I ask myself these questions all the time. Kind of recently, I dated someone who habitually snapped at me. Like one time, we were walking dogs in a snowstorm and I joked that I could kick snow over the poop and it would be the perfect crime. They were full-on like, “THAT WILL CONTAMINATE OUR WATER SUPPLY.” It stung. Despite all this, I liked them a lot. I was in extreme cuffing mode and really, really wanted to be in a relationship. We talked it over and I left the conversation feeling hopeful. They acknowledged their outbursts and apologized, but the snapping kept happening to varying degrees. I could still feel the worst part of our relationship wearing me down. I kept second-guessing myself: “am I annoying? Am I difficult to spend time with? Is everything I say stupid and destructive to Wisconsin waterways?”

I turned to a friend for advice. L, who recently ended a complicated and bittersweet relationship, had the perfect response. I’m going to leave you with the text she sent me: “It’s your choice to stay in an imperfect relationship. Just make sure you’re staying because y’all are communicating openly and making the necessary changes. Stay cause you have a plan and solid reasons to believe things will get better, NOT cause you’re afraid of hurting her or afraid of being alone.”

dear worrier princess answers your qs about love and strife in relationships in this complex and modern queer world.

shoot an email to worrierprincess@argotmagazine.com or fill out the form below.

Maddy Court is an artist and writer based in Madison, WI. Keep up with her on Twitter @worrierprincess, or on instagram @xenaworrierprincess.

 All illustrations for this column are done by Sid Champagne. Sid is a freelance illustrator based in Baltimore by way of the Gulf Coast. You can find them on Twitter @sid_champagne, or Instagram (more cat pics) @sidchampagne

[argotmagazine-blog]

They, as in

They, as in

you just like to go by micro labels, he says, because you are a girl, you want individuality within the community.

i say i don’t mind she—prefer they, not individuality nor singularity. no, as in, plurality—

they, as in,

they nestled into the meat between my ribcage, tendrils slipping into my aorta, through the alveoli, down into the tips of my fingernails, take control of the small movements the body makes when it is stable,

as in,

at least twenty-three different voices layered over the other every time i try to speak—we speak, the rasp of this voice through the soft petals of our lips hurting the other’s ears. we have been so many versions of ourselves, jigsawed together, fit into place.we don’t hate ourselves this way,

as in,

neither feminine nor masculine, but still: the curve of hips and thighs marked in stripes, petite feet and gentle hands that cup the rounded breast of this body we can’t connect with,

as in,

we used to be simple. easy. call us by your name. your label. whatever makes you comfortable and falls from your lips on first sight,

as in,

that time in dungeons & dragons, the boys kept saying she, and the tendrils coiled, brought fingers into fists, staggered the blood pumping through our body, and the many voices buried inside us silenced because only one of us was laughing,

as in,

a coward’s way out—call us she. but we have never been a she, not when we thought if only we could be a man or when we wrapped four sports bras around our chest until we couldn’t breathe, the air in our alveoli freezing in the chill left behind by this, whatever this is, this sensation to kill whatever vision  others have built up for us, to hope that someday we don’t have to build on speculation,

as in,

no, i say, not separate. we have been community long before you found words to name us.

Sarah Denise Johnson is a graduate student at SFASU. They've been featured in multiple journals, such as Thrice Fiction, 2River, and Fearsome Critters. 

[argotmagazine-blog]

Music Is a Miracle

When I hear a song I can travel back in time to a specific place. Sometimes I travel back feeling tender and sore. Other times I arrive and feel all the freedom and glory of being four years old again. I’ve gathered some songs here that have the time machine magic ability to send me reeling back to specific memories. This mixed cd essay provides a snapshot into periods of my life where major and minor events happened on a scale from joy and love to violence, depression and confusion. When I hear any of these songs I can remember the textures and tones of what I was wearing, or what conversations were being had above my head, or how I felt at the time hearing the song.

1. Don’t Stop the Music, Yarbrough & Peoples (23 years old, San Francisco, CA) When I show up to my somatic therapy session and the two chairs that usually face each other are nowhere in sight, my stomach almost falls out of my butt. My therapist asks me to play a song on the small iPod speaker so that we can move around to it during the session and I choose “Don’t Stop the Music.” I turn my back to her and sob the entire time it plays, full to the brim with anger at her (even though she told me we would begin to transition to embodiment/movement in our sessions). I was also ready to punch myself in the face out of anger and disgust because I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t dance while someone else watched. It was the beginning of my journey to understanding the shame I carry in my body and the trigger of being watched. Later that year, I am confronted with the question, what if you never remember what happened to you? Then I understand I need to begin with being at peace with the fact (the absolute blessing and absolute curse) that I might not ever remember exactly who harmed me, when, or how often. My body remembers, and that has to be enough to begin the process of healing.

2. Paper Planes, M.I.A. (18 years old, New York, NY) I am dancing on top of a bar in an old brownstone on 114th St. between Amsterdam & Broadway in what is formerly known as Harlem and currently colonized as Columbia University. I am a freshman in college and it’s Fall semester. I often overhear people I consider to be kids (like me) talking about drycleaning and credit limits and other things I didn’t have access to on the elevator of my freshman dorm. It is probably my second or third time being drunk in my life. The party is beach-themed and there is real sand on the floor of the brownstone occupied by a white fraternity. There is “jungle juice” being squirted out of super soakers at people as they dance. As soon as I hear Paper Planes starting up with it’s repetitive electric guitar riff, I dart from my group of 15th floor friends dancing in a circle and demand someone help hoist me onto the bar. I’m dancing to the song when the police come into the house to break up the party. It’s the most nonviolent I’ve ever seen police in my life.

3. House Every Weekend, David Zowie (24 years old, London, England) I am in Camden Town at a dark bar. Everyone’s drinking something called a ‘Stevie Wonder.’  It comes in a squat round glass with a brown sugar cube balanced in the middle by a long toothpick, served with the sugar cube set on fire. Some dude with a bald head and a gold tooth in the front (not Slick Rick) wears a brown leather jacket with shearling wool around the collar. He seems to be friends with everyone. I never figure out if he works for the club or if he’s a dope dealer. This is my second time traveling alone and my first trip ever to London. I chill on a couch with the bald dude with his gold tooth and some of his friends; they are girls my age and one guy who is a muscle meatball. All of them are messily drunk and predictably simple in the way they talk to each other about themselves and other people. I assess they are not smart enough to be a danger to me. They invite me to an after hours party and I ride in a cab with them; we pass Big Ben and the London Eye to get there. They are playing House Every Weekend when we walk into the club. It’s probably my sixth time hearing it that night between the two clubs. After two hours of declining the flirtatious advances of the bald head, I go to the bathroom and return to find that the group of people I came with are gone. I grab my coat from coat check and go outside. I see the sun rising and the group of them negotiating with a cab driver. Bald head looks mortified as I approach. I give him a good old fashioned Black American cuss out for trying to abandon me and shake him down for cab fare. He comes up with the money. I ride back to my hostel alone in my own cab, satisfied with myself that I’m safe and alone. I’m fucking proud of not taking anybody’s shit—not in America, and damn sure not in London. I wake up the next afternoon hungover to someone blasting Back to Black by Amy Winehouse. It’s her birthday.

4. Silly Love Songs, Disco Duck Dance Party (5 years old, San Francisco, CA) I am little, (maybe in kindergarten, maybe younger) dancing in the daycare at my Nana’s house. It’s my turn to choose a record on the record player and I choose the Disco Duck Dance Party sleeve with the two yellow ducks with blonde wigs dancing on the cover. When Silly Love Songs comes on, I grab arms with another small person and we spin and we spin and we spin on the carpet. The carpet has a gray roads pattern on it that is great for playing on with tiny toy cars. I pull the bottom of my shirt low and flip it over the top of the neckline to make a crop top like a hoochie mama with my belly out. It’s okay, it’s fun, it’s funny, and we all do it. Our round pale and ashy bellies under ribs showing and we can’t stop laughing at ourselves, at each other.

5. The Good Life, Kanye West ft. T-Pain (16 years old, Aguacate, southeast of Tatumbla, Honduras) I am sixteen, going on seventeen. I am in Honduras for the summer living in a homestay and volunteering with a program called Amigos de las Americas. The program is made up of primarily rich white kids who enroll to volunteer so they can write in their college application essays that ‘they helped’ and ‘learned so much about life from poor people’. It’s the summer people touch my hair and it’s affirmed that I’m Black in a way that doesn’t feel good. It’s the summer the entire village laughs at me because I say I’m from the United States. They laugh because they assure me that there are no Black people in the United States and they think I’m out of my mind when I tell them that later that year there will, hopefully, be a Black president elected to office. I leave in late summer and never learn what they think of Barack Obama. One night in my cot as I lay suffering and scratching from scabies on my way to sleep, a rat skids underneath my already low to the ground cot. I nearly lose my shit as I’m quietly listening to my walkman play Kanye and T-Pain’s The Good Life. The walkman breaks on the floor in my shock and stays broken for the larger part of the trip. I am so happy to see my Black family when I get home. When it is time to write my personal statement for my college application, I am advised by college counselors and mentors to choose between writing about my incarcerated parent or my schizophrenic parent. Guess I didn’t need to go to Honduras after all.

6. A Rose Is Still A Rose, Aretha Franklin (7 years old, San Francisco, CA) I learn intuition by being sensitive to the pitches, tones, scents, and temperatures of our house. We get bars on our windows. The fish dies. Again. Our neighbors are a nuisance. We seem to have to share everything with them. Consequently, we know about their stealing geese from Golden Gate Park and eating them for a celebration one year because we see them two-to-a-bag waddling in our shared backyard. Carrots and peas come up through our tub drain from the pipes we share. My mother tells us to bang on the walls with her high-heeled shoes when they sing Vietnamese karaoke too late into the night for our liking. I know my mother’s every scent. She does my hair in ways I don’t like, but she tries. I’ve already begun losing hair on either side of my temples. A Rose is Still A Rose is a precursor for my mother breaking glasses or me sneaking white wine out of the box in the refrigerator by putting my head under the spout. It’s a wonder how the wine makes my chest feel hot even though it’s cold. A Rose is Still A Rose plays and my mother is having a Tupperware party with a sweet Filipina saleswoman on our black couch with the seemingly spray-painted teal and magenta colors across it. A Rose is Still a Rose is on and I’m in first grade memorizing my crush’s phone number from his emergency card. I go home to call it and hang up, call it and hang up, call it and hang up. Until his mother calls our house back via *69 and I am completely mortified when I pick up.

7. One More Time, Daft Punk (6 years old, Concord, CA) I am wearing a pink (or is it strawberry?) one-piece swimsuit at Waterworld. The water slides  loom high above me. There is music playing on the loudspeaker throughout the water park. The station playing is Wild 94.9, the song is One More Time and it’s sung by robots. I’ve never heard anything like it. I am clear that this is not our music—music from our house, from our family. I’m becoming aware that our house and our music might be different than the outside world. I am curious about whose house this music belongs to. I’m curious about who this sounds like home to. I’m curious if there is an entire other world of music made by robots or other human beings that has existed outside of my knowledge. I go to sit down in my hot plastic lounge chair and flinch from the burn. Instead I choose to stand beside it and step my foot to the quick rhythm as I dry off.

8. Dontcha, The Internet (22 years old, Oakland, CA) I’m in the toothpaste aisle at Safeway on an errand for my family when she tells me she ‘loves me loves me’ over the phone. I feel like there are colors flying off of my back in the wind like Pocahontas, I’m so damn happy. I’m living at my family’s house on a couch less than a year out of college and I feel pathetic when the flirtationship ends, because I don’t even have my own bed to have a good teenage girl cry in. I cry in my car while listening to Dontcha often. Until less than a month later, my car gets broken into because I accidentally leave a nearly empty backpack peeking from under the backseat. The backpack contains my one pair of prescription glasses, a good pair of earrings, and an old letter from my flirtmate written before we parted ways. The letter had both of our names and addresses on it—it was a love note containing a fictional lesbian erotica scene starring the two of us.

12. Ain’t Too Proud to Beg, The Temptations (4 years old, San Francisco, CA) I have a small microphone in my hand that has a metal coil in it that vibrates and echoes my voice when I sing into it. My grandpa teaches me Ain’t Too Proud to Beg and the two of us take turns singing it into the microphone. He loves the way I sing “sim-puh-tee” not knowing the word ‘sympathy’ or how to pronounce it. I learn to love The Temptations. I grow to love performing. Soon I begin to have awful night terrors that wake everyone in the house while I kick and scream. My grandma goes to an herbalist to get some little red pills that have a sweet coating on them. I remember coming-to once in the light of the hallway with my grandparents on either side of me to give me a dose of the recommended herbs, but I have no recollection of my dream beforehand.

9. Push It, Rick Ross (16 years old, San Francisco, CA) I am driving my mom’s Black Isuzu with a provisional license. I have two jobs after school. Nearly all of my classes are AP classes. I want to be like the white kids I go to school with. I want to have an allowance, have a lunch prepared for me, have breakfast before I leave the house. I want to go thrift shopping and wear other people’s clothes and roll my eyes when my parents listen to talk radio and read books not required for class. Despite my trying, I feel a barrier that I can’t name or identify when trying to fit in. The cowboy boots I buy are not theirs because mine are too expensive. My sense of books or music or movies is not theirs because my sense of humor is not nuanced enough. I sit in a classroom of majority white kids and watch Do the Right Thing for the first time. It disturbs me in language I don’t have to observe white people watch my culture in rooms where we are minimally present. I wear a mask to be accepted at school but it’s not a well-constructed one. One day while walking to return an overdue film at my library, I decide that I’m going to begin selling weed despite never having smoked it myself.

I sell a teensy bag of weed to a kid at my school and it’s way too little for what he’s paid me. He sends another friend to my math class to get his money back. He thinks I’ve punked his friend but really, I don’t know what I’m doing. I drive to St. Francis Wood bumping Rick Ross’ Push It in my mama’s car to sell a petty amount of weed to another kid who doesn’t give me enough money on purpose. The following day at lunch, I come behind him in line at Mollie Stone’s and scoop up all $20 of his change. He looks at me in disbelief without protesting—he is afraid of me. I learn that people want me to play a role—a good one or a bad one. They like it when I prove them right and I have to work extra hard to prove them wrong (because they hate being wrong).

My weed-selling days last a week or two in total. That week on my way home from an after-school job downtown, I descend into the Powell Street station and there are officers with dogs harassing people and smelling their stuff. I race back up the stairs and wait for the bus with weed in a small coffee container in my backpack. In a freaked out haze, I get on the next bus, which ends up being the 9x (when what I really needed was the 9). As I notice the bus turning onto the freeway, I vow to never sell weed again, to stop trying to fit in with white people, and to never take the 9x (unless I have exhausted all other options).

10. Sweetest Taboo, Sade (26 years old, Southernmost Point Key West, Florida) I am alone, turning twenty six years old in the Florida Key. I take myself out to birthday dinner at a restaurant on the beach and eat fresh fish and key lime pie for dessert. There is a family of a mom and dad and two daughters at the table across from mine. They’re discussing a younger family member who is trans. The parents at the table are loud in their determination not to call the person by their name or respect their pronouns. The waiters come and sing Happy Birthday to me at my table of one. I drink my glass of champagne, raising it to my mouth instead of answering when the mommy jackass from the other table ask if it’s my birthday. After dinner, I go down to the beach and get in the water up to my knees. Looking out into the shining black of the water, the sky, and the moon reflecting, I listen and dance to Sweetest Taboo by Sade playing on my phone clutched in my hand. The entire trip is a get-well-soon trip to myself. I do all of the sweet things the usual me would like for the me that has been sick, depressed, dissociating, and not feeling anything. I go home to the Airbnb I’m staying at on Sugarloaf Key and I masturbate for the first time with my hands. I have an orgasm and I cry and cry and cry. Ashamed-cry, scared-cry, confused-cry, something-is-breaking-away-cry, something-is-becoming-cry, how-long-has-that-been-there-cry, why-cry, I-just-did-that-and-I’m-proud-cry, why-don’t-I-know-what-happened-to-me-cry. I don’t give up on myself. I don’t give up on interrogating and pursuing my pleasure despite it’s seemingly stitched-together relationship to shame.

11. Get it Together, India Arie (19 years old, New York, NY) I make a mixed CD and mail it to my mother. She is in rehab in San Francisco and I am in college, a world apart in New York City. Maybe I am a sophomore, maybe I am a junior. I have finally come out of denial about my mother’s drug use. I call her one day and I’m furious about her lying to me. And I’m furious at my family for lying to me. I’m furious for the whole world acting like everything is okay. I’m furious that she stole my money, lied about it and sold my guitar before I could learn to play it. I’m furious that she put my sisters through hell. I’m furious because I am ashamed. I’m furious because I’m afraid. I’m afraid of addiction. I’m afraid she’ll never shake it. I’m afraid my sisters will live in shame because of it. I’m afraid I will be addicted. I’m afraid nothing will ever be okay again. My mother enrolls in detox and then enrolls in rehab. She stays there. She lives there for six months before transitioning to a halfway house. While she’s in rehab, I send her a mixed CD with Get it Together by India Arie on it. I’m walking between one class and the next when she calls to tell me that she’s three months sober and really enjoys the CD I made her. I’m grateful she’s sober. I’m furious. I’m hopelessly confused and sorry and fucking sad. And I can’t tell her anything except “congratulations” with a full throat, out of fear of breaking her sobriety.

12. We Belong Together, Mariah Carey (16 years old, San Francisco, CA) I am sixteen in the passenger’s seat of my grandpa’s Ford Expedition as we drive with a car full of grandkids to the movies. He loved Mariah Carey’s We Belong Together since he first heard it and has insisted my grandmother put it on a cd for him—ALL. EIGHTEEN. TRACKS. I seem to be the only one tired of it, all of the other kids get a kick out of belting it out again when it comes on deck the next time. Later this year my grandpa gets the truck washed and detailed and insists that I take my driver’s license test in it. Everyone else is lined up behind me for their license test appointment at the DMV in tiny cars. When I pass the test, my grandpa kisses me on the head and I realize that he is showing me confidence and pride in my ability. I feel special and capable and trusted. When he says, “I knew you would do it!” I realize I knew I would too.

13. The Storm is Over Now, Kirk Franklin (14 years old, Phoenix, AZ) I am in the backseat of my great aunt’s Cadillac in Arizona after meeting her for the second time in my life. I’ve just come from seeing my paternal grandfather die from cancer the day after meeting him in the hospice center for the first time. In his sickness, he sent for my sister and me to come from California. He wanted to meet us before he died. That night, my great aunt armed with silver-purple hair and a hug big enough for my sister and me to fit in at once, drives us to the hospice center directly from the airport. When we walk into the room, my grandfather has a large knot at the top of his bald head and he is barely responsive to us. But he closes his eyes tight or nods very slightly as my great aunt talks to him loudly, letting him know his grandbabies are there. I meet my all of my aunts and great aunts for the first time. I meet all these people who look like me. Early early the next morning, we get a call notifying us that my grandfather has died. When we go to see his lifeless body in the hospice center, I don’t remember who prays with us around him. When we head back, The Storm is Over Now plays in the car, and I cry because it’s an awfully timely song. The sky opens up after raining and the light comes through like a slice. We all agree that it’s confirmation he’s been accepted into heaven.

14. Deep in the Bottom, Black Coffee (27 years old, San Francisco, CA) I am on-time to therapy. I walk over from work. When my therapist asks if I have music to move to, I select the therapy playlist I’ve been practicing to. Deep in the Bottom comes on the speakers. I begin moving around the room. My hips and back want to be rolled, I let them. My feet want to keep time. My chest wants to expand and contract. My neck rolls and tries to loosen. I think to myself that half of the work is choosing music that I can’t help but move to. The other half is reminding myself that I am not in danger. I remind myself that this is the work. I try to keep my head up as I move. I try to catch my own eye in the mirror when I can bear to. I try to let the self-deprecating thoughts pass. I remind myself that reclaiming intimacy through movement, eye contact, physical touch, walking without bracing all of my organs—all of it, is a healing practice. Today I move and dance like I never have before. I dance like everybody's watching and I don’t care.  

Tanea Lunsford Lynx is a fourth generation Black San Franciscan on both sides. She is currently at work on her first novel. She has more than 10 years of experience as a performing artist, curator, activist and educator in San Francisco.

[argotmagazine-blog]

Dispensary Diaries: Stuck in the Pre-Roll

The Dispensary Diaries is a new column by Shireen Sabzi, chronicling her experience in the medical cannabis industry before it was legal for adult use in California. She will explore the nuances of being one of the few afab employees in the back of house staff, the shifting culture of cannabis in California, its quasi-legal status during an age of Trump, and the intersection of technology booming in San Francisco leading to mass gentrification.

“Take this joint and just smoke it,” my manager said as he passed the unlabeled pre-roll to me. I was on my way to a ten-minute break after hauling the last shipment of packaged cannabis products from our processing facility up in the Emerald Triangle. “Let me know how it smokes right out of the package. Product doesn’t want you to do all the fancy things that the rest of the budtenders do.”

“Seriously?” I asked. “I can’t just put it in the Volcano?” The Storz & Bickel vaporizer was my personal favorite way to consume without the added carcinogens of combustion.

“Nope,” he retorted as my hand clutched around the plastic wrapper. “It’s R&D. Don’t massage it, flick it or pack it down.”

R&D, or Research and Development, in another office might be testing prototypes for a new consumer product launch, like a new iPhone. In this case, one of our consumer products were pre-rolled joints that we charged $10. The return rate on the pre-rolls was abysmally high as patients would run around the corner to smoke (as our lounge was vaporizing only) and marched back in the doors with a half-charred stub. They complained our joints burned black, kept going out, and generally was a subpar smoking experience. I didn’t blame them.

I sighed and nodded in agreement. The things I do for this company, I thought.

Pre-rolls, as they’re often called in industry speak, are rarely comprised of the top shelf flowers fetching the $60 an eighth price. In fact, they’re usually packed with the remaining sugar leaf trim left behind after the large frosted colas are packaged and pretty. Depending on the processing line at the grow house, after the kief was collected, you would be left with a selection of small buds, stems, and leaf. Ground down into a packable material using a food processor, it’s no wonder these joints smoked terribly.

I would inevitably empty my end of shift token pre-rolls into a volcano bowl, my PAX vaporizer, or break them up and re-roll them with other flowers I preferred. Anything but smoke them straight out of the damn package like a fool who paid $10 for a trim pre-roll. After all, I knew better.

As I walked out the dispensary, passing by the line of patients in our lounge waiting to be served by the next rep, I broke the joint out of its green tube. It was unlabeled with the strain so I was seriously hoping that it wasn’t a Sativa since my parasympathetic nervous system didn’t need any more stimulants. It smelled grassy and dry.

By the time I had walked down the busy streets of San Francisco, passing transient people displaced to the new tech elite, waiting in line for their social services, and actual drug dealers slinging crack and heroin, to tuck myself into an alleyway to spark up this R&D, my break was halfway over.

It was my third year of working for this dispensary in 2017 and the clock was ticking down to legalization on 01/01/2018. Trump was President and the Attorney General was the most anti-cannabis one we’ve had since the 2011 Obama administration supervised raids on dispensaries. I knew I had to find a way out of this industry eventually, I just didn’t know where to go or what to do otherwise.

As I finally inhaled the branded joint, its paper emblazoned with our dispensary’s logo, I contemplated my future.

I needed to get out of weed. I desired no movement into upper management as the idea of being responsible for counting thousands of dollars of cash on site while trying to maintain a herd of lackadaisical staff didn’t appeal to me. My job counting all the inventory had grown stale, just like the joint I was struggling to smoke as it went out for the third time. I had worked every position at the dispensary and the only other places I could really go would be into cultivation. But I didn’t want to move up North, where aging hippies and conservative attitudes ran rampant. So where next?

One of the reasons why I stayed in the cannabis industry for so long is it’s proximity to transgression and rebellion, and quite frankly, what our product marketing team called the “Cool Factor” (air quotes included).

As a patient walking into a dispensary; depending on your comfort with cannabis, you may be asking “what is it like to work in a place like this?” When you first see the flurry of movement of the Volcano bags inflating in the lounge, contrasting with the frosted glass window facade outside, and Petri dishes of cured buds under LED lights, it’s all a far cry from purchasing a ten sack from a high school acquaintance’s basement studio apartment.  Standing behind a sleek metal and wood counter, it looked glamorous talking about different strains like vintages of wine and the myriad ways in which you could get cannabinoids into your body.

But I soon realized, that working in weed is still work. There is the fine line that blurs where you turn your passion into your profession and the point where it’s no longer pleasurable to talk about the modulating effects of the endocannabinoid system to someone who is trying to go toe to toe with you on weed facts. It was still work scanning in the piles of paperwork of collective contracts, the thin piece of paper that was our shield against any government crackdowns and accusations of noncompliance. At the end of the day, budtending was really a customer focused retail service job paying $15 an hour. There was no swimming pool full of cash and weed like people perceived from the curated Instagram feeds.

However, the awe at working in a medical cannabis dispensary (MCD for short) was often misplaced. As a patient, before I started slanging eighths behind the counter, I had the same questions myself. What really happened behind the closed doors of the dispensary? Where did you draw the line at work versus play when weed often means play for so many of us? Is it really medicinal or we all just playing the game required to get legal weed?

My joint went out. It was time to go back to work.

Shireen Sabzi is a former bud tender who worked in the California medical cannabis industry before adult legalization. With a passion for safe access and harm reduction, Shireen believes with education and decriminalization cannabis can heal the world. Her favorite strains are Sweet Tooth, Holy Grail, and Ancient OG.

[argotmagazine-blog]

Dreaming in Silver

There is a figure at the edge of the playground, standing perfectly still and silent. Were it not for the little tells—the way the October wind teases her hair, ripples her dress—she very well might be part of the architecture, like the benches or the swing set. That’s the trouble with being human. There will always be little clues that reveal our humanity.

There is only one family remaining at the park. The time for visiting parks is nearly over; winter is just around the corner. Yet the children run, shouting and laughing while they skin their knees. At first, they do not pay the figure any mind. After a while, the oldest child, a girl of about ten, stops and stares.

“Holy shit,” she says. Her mother shouts “Young lady!” from the picnic table where she watches, wearily and warily. “Sorry, Momma!” the girl responds.

As she approaches the figure, there is wonder in her eyes. “You’re real,” she says. More a statement of fact, than a question.

The figure does not move, does not respond. She is tall, silver from head to toe, her face hidden behind a masquerade mask. A basket is clutched in her hands, and at her feet, a bowl with a few loose bills inside.

By this point, her three brothers have joined her. They stand in wonder around the figure.

“Move!” says the youngest, his pudgy cheeks flushed with excitement.

“She can’t move,” the sister responds. “She’s one of those statue things.”

“I’m gonna kick her,” says one of the middle children, matter-of-factly and without malice.

The sister shoots an arm out, glaring at her brother. “Don’t you touch her.”

“But she won’t move!”

“That’s her job, dummy!”

They stand around her for a while, debating the finer points of the statue’s existence, with particular focus on what kind of weirdo would go stand in an almost-empty park painted head-to-toe in silver? They lose interest after a while, and they return to the playground. That’s one of the joys of childhood; things may be transient, may hold attention for only a moment, but children lose none of their joy from the friction of brevity.

Soon enough with his siblings distracted, the youngest child approaches. He looks up at the silver woman. There is real wonder on his face.

“She’s a fairy,” he says to no one in particular, his voice painted with awe. His grubby fist unclenches, releasing a handful of pennies and one nickel hitting the bottom of the bowl.

Slowly, the statue lowers herself down to the boy’s level, reaching into her basket. There, on her outstretched palm, is a small scroll tied with a purple ribbon. He takes it in the greedily curious way of children. The statue smiles, putting a finger to her lips, and then returns to the same pose she has held all morning.

Of course, he does not heed her request for secrecy. He runs towards his older siblings, shouting, “She moved, she moved!”

“Bullshit!” says his sister, earning another “Young lady!” from their mother, this one more forceful. “Sorry, Momma, but he’s lyin’ again!”

“I ain’t lyin’, she moved!” he insists. “She gave me this!”

As the siblings gather around to look at the little scroll and she is sure that there are no wandering eyes to witness, the corners of the silver woman’s lips—my lips—turn into a smile once again.

***

When I was a little kid, I went to California for the first time. I remember two things about that trip. The first was I was told I would earn “my wings” on the flight. Three-year-old me was dazzled by visions of getting to run around San Francisco with full-size Buzz Lightyear wings. It was a bit of a blow to discover said “wings” comprised of a little metal pin. Nonetheless, I wore it with pride. Besides, I got to see inside the cockpit and even sit in the pilot’s seat, which was a pretty great consolation prize.

The second thing that I remember was the statue. There standing near a fountain, surrounded by pigeons, was a man. He was painted bronze from the tip of his top hat to the toes of his shoes, and he stood stock-still. One of my parents slid a dollar into my hand and told me to offer it to him.

Timidly, I held out my open palm, and the statue jolted to life. He smiled down at me, performed a robotic dance during which he plucked the dollar from my hand. Then he returned to his stationary pose.

I was enchanted standing there with the statue towering above me, once again silent and still. I was in love.

Love later found me sharing a bed with another woman for nearly five years.  I figured my life was as good as over when I suddenly found myself sleeping on my best friend’s couch instead. A three-year engagement had crumbled nearly overnight. Now I was living out of a backpack and stealing food from Western Michigan University. I had not attended Western in three years, but that didn’t stop me from smuggling gallon freezer bags into their dining halls and walking out with enough spaghetti and stir fry to feed the multitudes outside Bethsaida.

To say I was somewhat despondent for the first few days would be an understatement. But soon after I had a revelation. My life falling apart meant my life no longer had any boundaries. I had nothing to lose. I was free to do all of the stupid, wonderful bullshit I always wanted to do and never been able to due to domestic obligation. So, I ordered a silver wig and makeup online, took a trip to Goodwill for clothes which I then covered in silver spray paint. I was reborn.

I remember the odd looks I got the first day I dressed up; the bus driver looking at me with suspicion as I, silver from top to bottom, sat with a basket full of scrolls in my lap. Kalamazoo, Michigan is a pretty small city so far as cities go. While you see plenty of weird things on the buses—I once saw a woman carrying a stack of no less than five VCRs—my appearance was certainly novel.

For someone who’s always wormed her way into the spotlight, I’ve always had a hard time when it comes to being noticed. I used to hide those insecurities behind eccentricities, things like wearing a top hat casually. Oddness had always been a shield. However as I felt people’s eyes trying to peel back my metallic layers, I realized that this was different. This new face that I had painted on, this new identity, was no shield. It was a shelter. The only difference, I realized, between a bridge and a wall is the angle from which it is built. I was no longer a stranger in a strange land, but part of the architecture of our world. I was humbled.

The first day, I decided to establish myself on Western’s campus. There was a certain kind of cosmic rhyme, I thought, returning to the school I had left. Only this time, I returned not as a student but as part of the campus landscape.

One of the interesting things about standing completely still, your only interaction with the world in your direct line of sight, is that you realize how little other people notice. As I stood by the flagpoles in the center of campus, hundreds of students passed me. Only a handful noticed me. I even saw one of my friends, who passed by less than ten feet away. When I asked him later about the statue, his puzzled response was “What statue?”

There’s something about the lack of acknowledgment that makes any attention or response morph into a holy act, a kind of communion. I stood there on the first day for maybe four or five hours and earned about ten dollars. Each rumpled bill was worth far more than any paycheck I ever received.

On the way back to my friend’s apartment, I was accosted by a group of Jehovah's Witnesses who were apparently delighted by me. They laughed and tried to get me to talk. My silence only seemed to excite them more. They didn’t offer any change, but eventually they did give me some literature. The concern for my mortal soul did not go unappreciated.

When I arrived back at my friend’s apartment, I began to sob, my tears cutting streaks through my silver makeup. They were not the hard, razor-edged tears that I cried every night since the breakup, but a fountain of raw joy. It was, I realized, the first time I had really felt alive in more than a year.

And so she came to be.

The original name I came up with was “The Tarnished Poet.” But after my best friend posted a blurry picture of me walking through her backyard with no context online, the good people of Facebook bestowed upon me a much simpler (and far less pretentious) moniker. “The Silver Lady.”

My first name came from the core of my performance. I would go to the used bookstore in the basement of the library, find poetry books that looked as if they had been there the longest. I especially enjoyed finding local poetry collections that had been printed, and then forgotten, years ago. My favorite was a chapbook of poems by fifth graders that had been published sometime in the early Aughts. I would then gently tear out each poem, roll it into a scroll, and tie it with a ribbon. For everything that was placed in the bowl at my feet, be it a handful of bills or a single penny, I would hand the person a poem. One day, a child gave me a piece of candy. They received a poem in return.

Art does not exist in isolation. It is a metaphysical conversation. Acting as a gateway for these fragments of writing, the little pieces of themselves strangers poured onto paper, made me feel connected to everything around me in a new and humbling way. For as long as I could remember, it had been my dream to change the world. There in those moments handing out scrolls, I realized we change the world every day. It’s not the magnitude of our impact, but the grace with which we move.

On perhaps the second or third day, a girl timidly dropped a dollar into my bowl. She shuffled away quickly as soon as I handed her a poem. About a half hour or so later, she returned. Tears shone in her eyes as she smiled and met my gaze, which she had not done before. She said “thank you” before dropping a five dollar bill at my feet and scuttling off. It was the only money I made that afternoon. I never felt richer than I did that day.

However as nice as it would be to pretend the money didn’t matter at all, we unfortunately live in a reality where that is not the case. My attempts to find an actual job were fruitless. With no steady income, there was no way for me to get an apartment of my own. Ultimately, I ended up in the homeless shelter due to my presence in my best friend’s apartment causing conflicts with her roommate. The details of that stay are a tale for another day. Suffice it to say it was a nightmare. Yet there was a shimmer of hope even then. As I left the shelter each morning, I would don my true refuge, painting my face and putting on my mask and stepping out into the cold. Even as the first winds of winter whipped around me, I felt safe in my silver skin.

My body had long been a source of shame and fear for as far as my memory reaches back; a treacherous scrapyard I needed to navigate with care to avoid slicing myself open against my own sharp edges. The dysphoria flowing through my veins turned my body into a broken down carnival of fear and loathing.

But to stand there, silver, silent and still, my only purpose simply being, was an exercise in existence. I could feel my atoms touch those of everything around me. For the first time I did not feel apart from the world, but a part of it. I felt like a tiny grain of sand somewhere along the shores of time. That smallness did not make me feel worthless or insignificant. It made me feel humbled.

There were no screams of anguish from between my legs, no worries about how much I weighed or how my body occupied space. After all, a statue’s only purpose is to exist, to take up space, to be exactly what it is. For the first time, my body became not a straight-jacket but an instrument. I had been acting and performing since high school, but this was something different. It was a becoming, a transfiguration. I was not playing a statue. I was the statue, a sculpture I carved from my own flesh. I transformed the raw elements of my body into something that made me feel real and beautiful.

After I secured an actual job, I did not stop standing on street corners. When I eventually did, it was due to the weather when it became too frigid to perform safely. I’ll admit there were a few days where I should not have been out in the elements but gave myself freely to them nonetheless. It was my statueing, in conjunction with a fundraiser one of my friends set up, that allowed me to finally escape the shelter. At the shelter, we were required to relinquish our paychecks to the management. So I carefully kept the money I made performing in a folded sock. Eventually, I scraped together enough for a down payment on a place. Hand in hand with my silver lover, we broke free.

We made plans to take the bus to Chicago and perform there, but they were cut short by an accident. I landed in a wheelchair for about four months. As a result, I still walk with a cane, and it has left our future together an uncertain. I do not know if I will ever be able to stand unfettered the way I once did before. But I know that I trust her to guide me where I am supposed to go.

She is a part of me, of course. There is no Silver Lady without a V.F. Thompson. But she is also something far greater than an outward manifestation of myself. She is my savior. She danced my way in a metallic dream and offered her palm. It would be easy to say that she saved my life, but I think that’s only half-true. In many ways she killed me. I am not the woman I was when I first painted my face and stepped out into the world. Nor is the life I am living the life I lived then. She taught me that we live and die a thousand times before we leave this world. It’s how we come back to life that truly defines us.

The first time I dipped a sponge in silver powder and put it to my lips, her mouth pressed against mine and breathed the universe into my lungs. Every beat of my heart sends liquid metal swirling through my veins.

What a joy it is, she whispered to me, to simply be.

V.F. Thompson is a Mid Michigan-based writer of odd curiosities and curious oddities. Though she lives mostly in the realm of fantasy, she occasionally dabbles in real life. When not writing, she enjoys comic books, trying new recipes, and a well-brewed cup of Earl Grey. She currently resides in Kalamazoo, which she assures you is a real place. Follow her on Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook.

[argotmagazine-blog]

This Is What We Learned

Content Warning: Sexual Assault and Child Sexual Assault

The Friday before Thanksgiving 2018, Secretary Betsy DeVos and the Department of Education quietly released new guidelines for Title IX sexual assault investigations, effectively rolling back guidelines enacted by her predecessor during the Obama administration. These changes are ostensibly meant to support the main goal of Title IX: to prevent sex and gender-based discrimination from infringing on the ability of all students to learn and thrive in public schools. The new guidelines boil down to three main changes: establishing a narrower definition of sexual misconduct, removing certain protections for the accusing party, and relaxing some requirements placed on educational institutions.

Under the new restricted definition, the conduct must be “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive” to qualify as sexual misconduct. An administrator need only follow through with an investigation if the allegation satisfies these criteria. Additionally, the new proposal will only require institutions to investigate incidents that occur within campus-sanctioned events or activities.

Reading through the new guidelines, I consider these changes in the context of my own experiences, my own body. I hold them up to certain events I witnessed through my own education and examine if they would fit. Nearly all my experiences that I would label Title IX violations, the new guidelines would not consider them as such under the constricted parameters. Consequentially examining these memories, I question my own judgment, what I’ve experienced and witnessed, my reactions, my silence. I question if these things truly infringed on students’ ability to learn. I questioned the validity of my own beliefs and memories.

I question myself like society questions victims of sexual assault.

Because this is what we learned.

Isn’t school where we first learn the state of affairs that govern our bodies, communicated and reinforced by teachers, administrators, and other adults? As early as preschool, if not sooner, adults start imposing sexuality on children, joking about Emily and Johnny falling in love. In elementary school, parents and teachers laugh at the “innocent” recess flirtation when Chris kissed Jenny and Jenny got mad. In middle school, administrators wave off young boys’ inappropriate behaviors; boys will by boys.

When I was in 6th grade, Brent Oswald kept kicking me in math class and shoving me on the playground. I wasn’t a stranger to bullying, but normally the bullies were girls armed with verbal attacks. I didn’t know how to ignore someone regularly kicking my shins during class and it was becoming difficult to focus. I asked the teacher for help. “Oh he probably just has a crush on you,” she told me. “It’s a compliment!” When I pressed more, I got a new assigned seat away from Brent and hid in the library during recess.

At the end of 6th grade, we had a school dance celebrating our graduation to middle school. As the last slow song played, Brent came up and asked me to dance. We hadn’t spoken in months. Brent looked at me expectantly, his shiny green tie loosened, lying slack around his neck. As *NSYNC’s “Little More Time on You" played over the loudspeakers, all I could say was “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, I want to dance with you,” he replied.

“You spent half the year kicking me.”

“Because I like you,” Brent admitted.

Incredulous, I asked, “Why would you kick someone you like?”

Brent paused. As he searched for an answer, his hands rustled in his pockets like the right response might be hiding inside. Finding none, he said finally, “I dunno.” The song was almost halfway over and his window of opportunity was closing.

“Well I think that’s dumb,” I replied. With that I turned and walked away. It would be an admirable power move if it weren’t for the fact that I spent the next year or so wondering if I did the wrong thing.

Before we were old enough to question it, Brent and I learned males are entitled to female bodies and the female body is a commodity for men to possess. We learned our superiors are entitled to our bodies and they may control our bodies. With Brent kicking my shins, I learned my body was not my own. With my teacher’s hand-waving I learned I should accept when a man tried to possess my body. Brent learned that, as a male, he could demand access to the female body. I learned that I owed men my body.

In classrooms, teachers told us to “sit like ladies” and scolded tomboys who rough housed with the boys.  In hallways, administrators enforced school dress codes that focus almost exclusively on girls’ clothing. A student could be disciplined if her sleeveless shirt had straps narrower than two fingers or be asked to prove that a skirt was long enough by kneeling on the ground. They taught us that we weren’t in control of our bodies.

In my second week of eighth grade, we learned that a beloved gym teacher and coach at our all-girls school had impregnated a 12-year-old girl in our class. He groomed her for this over many years, culminating in having sex for at least a year. My classmate carried the pregnancy to term. The baby was adopted by the girl’s aunt and uncle and raised as his own mother’s cousin.

The gym teacher was charged with six counts each of rape and unlawful sexual conduct with a minor. He pled guilty to four counts of rape and was sentenced to 16 years in prison. He appealed the sentencing as “unduly harsh.” In a separate hearing, the judge ruled that this man – a man who had at least a yearlong sexual relationship with a girl he had groomed from age 9 – was not a sexual predator, because it was one girl, rather than a pattern of girls. He was released August 2018, just prior to his child’s 16th birthday.

In researching this piece, I learned that a couple years earlier, a civil suit was filed against the school alleging a relationship between the same man and a 15 year-old student. The suit alleged that when the family first raised the issue with the school, the school administrators worked “to portray (the girl) and her parents as the problem, rather than the coach; and to foreclose further controversy, by any means necessary.” The suit never went to trial though; the family dropped it for the emotional wellbeing of the child. The man retained his job at the all-girls school. A year later, a 12 year-old girl was pregnant.

When I think back to these events, I’m disturbed to remember my own reactions. I was not shocked to hear that a grown man was having sex regularly with a 12 year-old. I was not appalled to learn that a trusted adult had impregnated a girl my own age. I was not scared or concerned that a student had a sexual relationship with a teacher. I was surprised the girl had been able to hide the pregnancy from everyone for so long; she was a very slender child. I had yet to learn about adults’ deft ability to ignore reality. I was shocked that she would actually carry the baby to term. I couldn’t believe her hips would be large enough to deliver a baby. I was jealous that she had gotten her period; mine had yet to arrive. Everything else made sense. I didn’t realize how unusual, how corrupted this entire situation was until I was much older.

None of the adults paid any attention until the girl missed school. Some even worked to protect the man. This teacher at an elite, private school had been defended at the expense of a 15 year-old girl and only dismissed when the incontrovertible evidence of a pregnant child appeared. Even then, the adults shamed and blamed the girl. The students at this all-girls school were subtly encouraged to believe that this was her fault and not the fault of the teacher, the grown man. We were covertly urged to consider her a “woman of loose morals,” that this child was a “slut.”

Certainly, this was “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive” as the new Title IX guidelines stipulate but it was not part of a school sanctioned event or activity. It must have infringed on the girl’s ability to learn, maybe some peers, but the events took place off campus. By Secretary DeVos’s criteria, this situation could elude any Title IX investigation.

Years after the gym teacher scandal faded, a different teacher at the same school had a sexual relationship. This time the student was 18 years old and in high school.  My initial reaction was not to question the teacher’s actions, but the girl’s. I remember thinking “But he’s so gross.” I wondered if it was motivated by grades as I would have liked that option; his class was difficult.

When I was in high school, there were certain male teachers that we just assumed had inappropriate relationships with students. Why was this our assumption? Was it what we saw in media? News reports of romance between teacher and student like Mary Kay Letourneau. Films like Kirsten Dunst’s Election or American Beauty showing Kevin Spacey lusting over Mena Suvari. Was it the way the men acted? Were our assumptions based on fact or at least a kernel of truth? Why we were so confident in the affairs of these men and why we were not more disturbed these men would be attracted to the bodies of minors, the bodies of their students?

From middle school through college, I encountered teachers who were known “creeps.” Before we entered their classrooms, we knew to always make sure our cleavage was covered, (unless we thought it might help). It was seen as so commonplace and accepted that today I can’t even remember which teachers these were. Just that they were always men (we all knew which ones), and we knew to try to protect ourselves around them.

This happened on school property, during a school-sanctioned activity, but was it “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive”? How could we have proved it? Did it impact our ability to learn? It’s hard to say. We had felt the male gaze at least since our girls’ bodies started to become women’s bodies.

By the time I got to college, it seemed totally normal for the male educators to have reputations as predators. Rob, the director of my undergraduate program, a middle-aged, white man was one of those men.

When I interviewed for the program, I was 17 years old and in my spring semester of my senior year of high school. Rob invited me to a cast party after I attended a performance at the school. He gave me all the beer I wanted at the party. Later Rob offered me weed, which I turned down. I panicked for days that by rejecting the weed I had offended him and put my chances for admission into jeopardy.

My sister, who had gone through the same program before me, counseled me about Rob and his reputation before I moved to campus. Someone else had warned her; I suspect so long as males have felt entitled to female’s bodies, women have had these whisper networks, quietly warning each other of the men who cannot be trusted, of the men who will try to control the bodies and lives of women. My sister warned me to stay on his good side, but never get too close. She told me he wasn’t someone I wanted as an enemy, but I also didn’t want to be among his acolytes. Rob had a pattern of picking a special student, typically a handsome young man who he would mentor. We all knew about this ‘mentorship’ but there was no real proof of anything beyond a very close relationship; only suspicion and rumor. The rest of the students watched this mentorship and its curious, impenetrable intimacy with a mixture of relief and jealousy.

More than once, Rob was formally accused of carrying on affairs with students. He would get a stern administrative talking-to and continue with his ways. While I was a student of his, Rob wrote a play about the accusations, a thinly veiled dramatization whose script practically confessed to the affairs. I was invited to a private reading of the play during its development, along with other attendees who were mainly his acolytes. The special student of my class read the role of his fictionalized self. As we sat on patio furniture, arranged in a circle, we read the love story of these men for over two hours. As I listened, fidgeting in my chair as I emptied bottles of Shiner Bock to dull the metallic taste of anxiety in my mouth. I was grasping desperately trying to find some feedback that wasn’t “Why did you write a play about your relationship with Brian?” I was in awe of the boldness, or blindness, that empowered him to pen this play for public consumption.

Everything happened outside of school-sanctioned events, behind closed doors. Only Ryan had any solid claim at “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive” but he was “consenting,” as much as a student can consent to such activities with a professor despite the inherent power differences. It’s safe to presume these events may have impacted students’ ability to learn, but it’s hard to argue or prove.

Halfway through my degree, I transferred to a different school. My department head was Doc, another white man known to openly favor his male students. A not-so-secret open secret as it was known throughout the department. It wasn’t a rumored bias, but a quantifiable one. Once, a friend and I had the exact same grade in Doc’s class, point for point. Yet my friend got an A on his report card and I got a B+. When I mentioned it to other women in the program, they all confirmed that this was a regular occurrence. With a shrug, one said, “What can you do? You need him. You need his signature to graduate and for every scholarship. He’s the one who writes the recommendations and makes professional connections.” I was furious with the injustice of it, incensed with the continuance of misogyny in these “modern” times. And yet I knew there was nothing I could do about it. My classmate was right, I needed him and if I gave him reason to dislike me, I also gave him reason to impede my success.

Another open secret was that male students were invited to Doc’s off campus house, where he plied boys not yet of age with alcohol and party drugs. Doc was open with his affection for wrestling in its many forms and consequently had a “wrestling room” in the attic of his home. Once sufficiently intoxicated, Doc guided the young men upstairs to the wrestling room for activities that went beyond those of Hulk Hogan and The Undertaker; there were rumors Doc would maneuver these boys into sexual situations. It was understood they would not normally engage in these activities with another man, or with anyone at all.

Doc is no longer in charge of the department. Whispers say it’s due to these off-campus activities. Yet he still teaches every semester. He’s tenured, so the administration could remove him as director of the department but not as professor. Doc can’t be charged with any criminal wrongdoing; these boys willingly went to his home and drank his alcohol. In their shoes, I’m not sure I would have been able to say no, to put up a fight. In fact, I’m quite sure I would not have been able to say no, not to such a powerful man. Now he is a man who could wreak havoc on my career and professional clout, then he had the power to crush any progress or success entirely. I still interact with this man. He wrote me recommendations for grad school, in the midst of #MeToo. Like my classmate said, “What can you do?”

As I graduated and went on to grad school, a third theatre program also run by an older white gay man, Frank, I assumed he would be a predator as well. I agonized about attending the first off campus party held at Frank’s house. Should I avoid it? Will I risk more by attending or not attending? Are one-on-one off campus meetings safe? It wasn’t until after I left that program I realized Frank had never done anything even slightly untoward to me or to any of my peers. I was so conditioned to expect the men in charge to act inappropriately that it took months to realize that for once the man in charge had done nothing wrong.

When I later chose a new graduate program, I ultimately had the choice of two quite disparate programs. One was a fully funded program chaired by a white man. The program as a whole had near gender parity among professors. However, I would spend the majority of my time with three male professors, one of whom was on leave at the time due to a Title IX investigation into sexual misconduct. The other program was partially funded and out of ten professors and staff, only three were men and only one was a white man. I would spend the bulk of my time with female professors. I ultimately decided to spend thousand of dollars I don’t have, to attend a program led largely by women than risk another inappropriate white man in power.

I have reached a point in my life where I so thoroughly distrust men in power that I made the decision to take on extra student loans to avoid answering to a man in power. Because frankly, I’m exhausted. Living in a female body is exhausting. Surviving in this male-dominated society is exhausting. Fighting for respect and basic bodily autonomy is exhausting. And I expect life with males will always feel shattering, demoralizing, and exhausting.

This is what we learned.

Théodore Fahey Pavlich is a writer and theatre artist dedicated to the craft of storytelling, inspired by the power of stories to fuel cultural unity and growth. Théo is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at St. Mary's College of California where they are the 2018-20 Lambda Literary Fellow.

[argotmagazine-blog]

Avra Margariti: Two Poems

Grandma’s Wars

Grandma’s pantry, always full to

bursting with war’s sticky-fingered residue.

When I look for a candy bar,

I’m conditioned to think of Axis-occupied Greece.

Chocolate tasting like a paradoxical ’41.

Grandma says: During the war, we went hungry.

Only a toddler back then,

yet she still remembers hunger’s calloused

fingers digging into children stomachs

pumped full of empty winter air

like skin-and-bone balloons.

Grandma is at war with her TV

and every little Hangman figure in it.

Stupid box, she calls it,

Why do these queers have to flaunt themselves at us?

A triptych with her: the queers, the immigrants, the atheists.

Always a blame game.

Never satisfied, she says.

Always hungry for more.

Grandma tells me: It’s what’s plunged this country into ruin,

the stupid box said so.

They could use a war. Maybe they’d learn their place then.

Grandma tells me: Be a doll and take the groceries to the pantry.

I go back into the closet where her wars reside,

separate but not mutually exclusive.

I look at all shelves bent under the weight of food and trauma

heavy with children sucking on olive pits found on the roadside slush,

with mothers cooking their household pets for Christmas dinner.

What I don’t tell Grandma:

Today at the supermarket I saw a girl

who made me feel wet and open

like the overripe peaches you complained

about at the produce aisle.

How’s that for hunger?

Two Birds

The first bird burst from my throat without warning.

I coughed a few feathers, delicately,

one floating down to my rose-latticed saucer.

I stirred my tea with a brass spoon,

and you asked for a stone,

but I emptied a packet of sugar on your tongue.

We laughed, and you snatched the feather,

fashioned a quill and wrote me a note

I’d find in my pocket later while doing the laundry:

I think we should be together.

The last bird knocked against my windpipe

before exploding in pyrotechnics of feathers and gore.

While I scooped the detritus with a brass spoon,

you asked for a stone.

I handed you one, even though the birds

were dead. There was nothing left to kill.

I said, I think we should break up.

We had to tidy up before your mother got home

and found blood on her lace doilies.

She wouldn’t mind the crime scene.

It would be the sight of us together that would shock her,

two girls trying to clean the carnage they made of their

love.

Avra Margariti is a queer Social Work undergrad from Greece. She enjoys storytelling in all its forms and writes about diverse identities and experiences. Her work has appeared in Wolfpack Press, The Writing District, Dime Show Review, and Page & Spine.

[argotmagazine-blog]

Gabriel Lee Bass: Two Poems

Tributaries

the tears our mothers fed us as children

were hand-me-downs—old and bitter

drawn from a poisoned reservoir

 the multitudes behind our eyes

turned our faces into dams

holding back apocalyptic floods

 we grew hard and cold and full

of opaque stagnation that we diluted

with wine that darkened our silence

 an oil spill immune to denial

the unwept river crept over its dikes

and into our walls our works our skin

 so we fed the tears to our children

who knew not our fullness

until they learned to hurt themselves

In the Garden of Seedless Fruit

more than anything lingers the futility

the infructuous sowing of pitted peaches

the syrup at the bottom of the can

the way it feels     to be eaten alive

you possess me    for now    where

the dun mangled light   falls like hail

over our bodies full of milk and dried apricots

we swell and ache here   and we like it

you hold on to me like ivy in this

grove where everything is temporary

but the dirt

            and the pollen                 the winding

path of a serpent in the dust

            who also lives on his stomach

we give no thought

            to what he eats

our bodies tear to accommodate

            the intrusion of this

fullness     that doesn’t stay

no matter how much   we eat

until we sicken             of sweetness

            and stretch ourselves

out over the    deep earth

in wait for the serpent

                        Gabriel Lee Bass's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Into the Void Magazine, Ink in Thirds, Riggwelter, and others. He currently lives in Southeast Arkansas. 

[argotmagazine-blog]

Alone Week: Happy Lonely Hearts Day!

Inspired by my yearly routine of being single, dateless, and bored out of my mind! I've never been in a relationship, so I aways felt like I was missing out on something. After a while, I learned to take the day in stride. Instead of focusing on the fact I’m alone, I take time to take care of myself that day. Treating myself, buying my own chocolate, making fun of sappy romance movies, and checking social media for all the memes other lonely hearts have made. Valentine's day can be the day I feel the most lonely, but it's also the day I show myself some appreciation as well.

Chyna Jones. Illustrator and Multi-media artist stationed in Detroit, MI. Instagram: @fluff_punk

[argotmagazine-blog]

Carl C: Three Poems

Wasi’chu

They may not claim him as their own

as the blood rivers and the black hills

still run deep. He may endure the suffering,

 but he does not know what it means

through lineage, just as his ancestors

become stranger misgivings.

 The burden of guilt he carries,

weighed down by ancestry,

only gets heavier throughout the years.

 He promises like father not like son.

 Understand there is no middle ground--

only them and the enemy.

Even time can not heal particular wounds.

Nocturne in Black and Gold

Archaic tiles of a dark mosaic

mesh and mash on the shore of stars

where the night sky embroidered

mirrored onto thin moon water,

pooling in and laying its framework.

An artist's sigil beams, divine seams laced and woven

of a gold thread, plucked and hanging from phantom vines.

The lone figure, clothed in shadows,

stands alone and braves the cold air;

the mystery of his mind as he alone bears witness

to this miracle of a night.

The stars kissing the moon water, lapping gently

like falling angels from distant heavens--

a plume of white dust and gold sparks.

Then pierce deep within the water's dark emerald surface,

sinking to some unknown abyss--

there to remain until the end of times.

On the Nature of Dreams 

The shadow of the cypress

falls uneven with the hard rock.

Where the moonshine and the caked dirt

ethereally piece into one form.

It is as if you’re walking upon the craters of Mars,

walking upon the soils of your dream world,

planting the seeds of futile growth

for the long night and the others to come.

Between the seams of the memory house,

you reach behind the cabinet

unattached with strings. No placement, none of that,

only to pull out that one dream you always dream of

yet fail to remember.

 The touch of it--

amorphous in your hands,

cool like a drop of water

melting into your pores and the spaces within,

flowing deep through your veins.

They say every dream is not random;

it’s something you’ve thought of before.

They say it is irrelevant; it is not reality.

Wake up son, come back to your rightful home;

yet this, this is the only place you’ve belonged.

 You reach farther than the void could distance,

farther than the ship could sail,

farther than the lone swimmer’s arms could carry.

Apart from the baked clouds, hues of all colors,

draw back the curtains of the mist

and the poetic wonder is nothing more

than eternal bliss.

Carl C. is young writer living in Los Angeles, California. He has always found poetry to be therapeutic. 

[argotmagazine-blog]

Hal Y. Zhang: Three Poems

Shelly Scully

I am thinking of a sharp thing,

steel-heft, pleasure to cut with.

Fish heads, cold noodles,

sage from the garden. The umbilical

cord, some day. Ticker tape of

the

finest

parades,

gold satin for the winner only. Suddenly

they will come to take it from me,

ma’am do you have the proper

license and registration, but I deconstruct

the red tape too. Awkward silences,

reproductive tubes, the bleeding corners

of your decorative furniture snipped

in one stroke. At sundown I will score

the stars for my scrapbook, then the Earth

in half, pulling the shells apart to lick the tasty

molten

core.

litotes

the gift crow looks in your mouth

blue marble tiny planets popping

on taste buds      plucks

with plectrum of light

the silk of your sinew

fire of your      fire everlasting

come with me it says to your teeth gaps

we’ll fill the absence of sound together

as shadow and life

five forms of tigers

I tilt my head and hope

in search of the absence of sound

rushing in a shadow conch

why would he hit her?

desperate wounded things

that linger in waterlogged oubliette pores

fester, and mildew, and grow

spines out my leaning tower ear

dripping car seat so nonchalant

damp canals are perfect

concert halls for confessions

but there is only sand

find someone like me he says leaning

against the wall he didn’t punch

enough to blanket screams into

abstract sculpture looking forward

stand up straight

forward, only forward

that’s my girl

honorable, manly, all the good things

none of the bad

unbreakable steel mirror questions

your faces guileless shards

my bleeding claws

respectful, strong, dutiful

man of the house except

that one time

that doesn’t count

that didn’t happen

Hal Y. Zhang is an indistinct particle bouncing between coastal cities as a programmer, scientist, and occasional poet. She is online at halyzhang.com