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“It Starts”
The 2022--2023 school year has begun already. In the interim between summer vacation mentality and school time mentality I have not had the mental space to write or post anything.
I am 35 and have never ever once had a job I felt fit me. Most jobs made me feel stupid. Oddly, overthinking and being too careful makes one seem dumb. I couldn't even hold a job at a grocery store without getting in trouble for doing something stupid with a check. That was a severe blow to my self esteem. But now? Now I’m the librarian at my kids private school and I have never been happier or felt more at home in a job.
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The Talisman -- Jack, Wolf and Ritchie
I just finished the Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub. It was a fantastic story, but for a synopsis you’ll have to go elsewhere. ***If you don’t want some minor spoilers on the story, stop reading here.*** Jack Sawyer is described as an incredibly beautiful 12 year old boy. He calls to mind the Greeks idea of beauty and heroism. He is pure and beautiful and tender. Throughout the story, throughout Jack’s odyssey he is accused half a dozen times or so of being gay and he’s nearly picked up by a pedophile a few times. At least one boy at the Sunshine Home for delinquent boys is said to be wrestling with the idea that he has a crush on Jack.
There is no sex in this book, but there doesn’t have to be sex for this theme to play out. I did not find the book weird or inappropriate for a 12 year old kid--but there is something to be said for the intensity of both his relationship with Wolf, and later his relationship with Ritchie. It reminds me of that song that King David sang after his best “friend” Jonathon died, he says, “Your love for me was more wonderful than the love of a woman.” There is something so sweet and tender in the pages of the Talisman between Jack and Wolf especially and then Jack and Ritchie. Jack kisses Wolf and Ritchie several times on the cheek and at least once or twice they hold hands too. He’s not at all self conscious about it. It’s pure and lovely. It’s sexual only in the sense of hinting at an orientation, but not sensual. It’s open and free. It brought me a sense of peace and satisfaction.
In the film version of “IT,” it’s revealed that Ritchie Tozier has a crush on and loves Eddie Kaspbrack throughout their childhood but he never comes out and says anything about it. I would love to reread “IT,” and see if I just missed that in the book or if it was something they put in the movie for a little more depth.
#stephen king#the talisman#it#lgbtq#lgbt writers#love#relationships#movies#books#friendship#bromance#sexuality#writers on tumblr#writer#peter straub#horror#fantasy#the oddyssey#king david and jonathon#wolf#werewolves#spoilers#jack sawyer#jack and ritchie#richard sloat#jack and richard#jack and wolf
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In the dark...
I had no idea where I was. The floor was glossy and smooth but chilly and hard like concrete. The room was dark except for an EXIT sign which floated over a doorway that led into more solid darkness. The light the sign cast washed the floor in an eerie alien glow. There was no one in the room with me nor was there any furniture to signify what the room might function as. It felt like a basement, though it was dry and didn’t smell musty. I was dressed in sweat pants and a tee shirt and had nothing but socks on. My hands hung heavily by my sides and I felt locked into place and disorganized in my thoughts. I couldn’t remember how I had gotten to be in this utterly alien room. All I could really do was look around me and try to will the room into making sense to me, to force the answers to come from the darkness—as if by focusing my eyes the strangeness would become familiar. But it didn’t. No matter how long I stood in the dark, I was still standing in the middle of a dark empty room.
I was scared in a dumb kind of way. Not like in a heart-racing-palms-sweating-hyperventilating-tears streaming down my face-kind of way. It was very muted and muffled. It was like a spiritual aspect of myself was on the outside observing how I felt, observing my condition and experiencing things second hand. (This has been a recurring thing for me and I’ve yet to meet someone who understands what the hell I’m talking about.)
There was only one place to go, only one place to try—I had to go into that even darker hallway where I didn’t even have the freaky, hellish ambiance to light my way. I didn’t hesitate that long. I was bored of standing there motionless and suddenly found I was very tired and wanted to go to bed. I pressed into the envelope of darkness, not sure if I wanted to keep my hand touching the walls or not—what if I felt something scary?—and took small steps into the hallway. It wasn’t long before I stepped into another open space and there was a soft light coming in from a bathroom. There was a carpet and sleeping bags everywhere with human-sized lumps in them. I still wasn’t sure where I belonged in all of this or if I knew these people or not. I stood there for a minute and took in this new room. There was light coming in from high basement windows and a bright half moon that looked like the Cheshire cat’s smile filtered down through.
Remembrance broke over my head like a sudden anointing. I remembered then that earlier that day I had set my sleeping bag up in the corner by the wall next to my friend, Chrys. We were at an Assemblies of God summer camp which was hosted by Zion Bible College. We were in the basement of one of the dormitories. Oriented now, I was able to find my sleeping bag and gratefully and fell back asleep.
I have always slept walked. I warn people when I spend the night at their house for the first time that I might get out of bed and seem confused. Sleep walking is dominated by a feeling of confusion. That’s the anxiety of it, which is always layered on top of whatever stress you think is actually happening. For instance, once I had a dream that my dresser fell on top of a boy and I was trying to lift it so that I could rescue him. When I finally figured out that it was only a dream and I could put my dresser down my hands hurt from the heavy wood cutting into my skin and my heart was racing.
I punched a hole through my window once thinking there was a fire in my room and woke up to the sound of my sister screaming in a way I had never heard her scream---in fear. I had not recoiled or drawn my arm back and that’s what kept me from getting cut. I wasn’t sure if the glass breaking was real or not so I just laid back down and went to sleep. When it was daylight again, I saw the hole in the glass and couldn’t believe I had actually done something so violent.
In the first few months after I had had any of my babies I would constantly dream that I was holding them in my arms, but as I began to wake, the form of the baby in my arms would dematerialize and I would think that I had put them down in the bed. Stricken with panic, I feverishly looked around in the blankets and tried to roll my husband over looking for the baby I was sure had been smothered. This is the chief reason I cannot co-sleep with children.
A man came into my room to rape me when I was in high school and I very cooly and logically tried to talk him out of it. Abruptly, he disappeared and I realized he had never been there.
I become convinced in a false reality because my senses are telling me that something is true. I trust what I see and hear. In the waking world, I would never doubt that, but even though I have been sleepwalking for more than 25 years, when I am in the middle of a dream I am 100% sold on it’s veracity. My husband tells me I am not very nice in my sleep, especially when he tries to tell me I’m sleeping. I am curt and short tempered. I get mad at him because he challenges what I believe is reality and tries to tell me that what I’m experiencing isn’t real.
“There aren’t any dinosaurs in our bedroom.”
“Yes there are and they’re going to rip our lips off! Why won’t you believe me!”
It’s a really sickening feeling to realize you’ve been duped by your own mind. Sometimes it’s embarrassing. I’ve tried to fight with Colby in my sleep about something and genuinely made him upset with whatever I said—things I’m not likely to say while awake. When I did wake up I and felt so blackly angry at Colby but I couldn’t remember why. My body and soul are routinely hijacked by emotions and dreams that I can’t control.
My experience with Christianity has been a lot like sleep walking. For the last ten years I’ve been in an ugly process of awakening and departure from Christianity. I feel like Juliet must have felt when she woke up in the Capulet crypt. I’m awake and everyone else is inert and oblivious.
Just months before I had ever heard of Covid, a few days before New Years Eve I promised myself to do the hard work of facing the doubts and questions and untouchable subjects to once and for all figure out if God exists. I wasn’t sure where to start philosophically, and at the time I didn’t consider myself smart enough to process it. However, I grew up under the doctrine of Ken Ham that says that Young Earth Creation, (God created the world in literal six days about 6,000 years ago)--is fundamentally critical to believing the rest of the bible. It’s the foundation upon which everything else stands and that’s why he advocates for it so hard. If it was so important, then learning about what science actually had to say about Evolution was where I should start. If Evolution had enough proof, then God didn’t exist or at least the Genesis account wasn’t literal and there was a lot more wiggle room in the bible than I had thought. It doesn’t make a great amount of sense, but I just needed to give myself permission to touch the evil and taboo subject of Evolution. I started with Richard Dawkins. I read nothing else for months. It was exhilarating. I was ravenous for truth. At the end of six months I was convinced God didn’t exist.
Being an atheist changed my perspective on so many things. It was like an unexpected brisk slap to the face. It impacted everything: my diet, politics, sexuality my thoughts on the environment. It touched everything. It softened things. I truly understood the pro-choice position for the first time in my life. My sister, Micah is gay and I could finally wholly accept that part of her. In addition, it gave me the impetus to fully examine my own sexuality in a way I had never done before. I had been repressing and hiding for so long and I could finally look it full in the face and throw the closet door open.
I don’t want to paint an unrealistically rosy picture because severing myself from my church community and my family was also one of the most painful experiences in my life. I felt a deep sense of loss. I grieved. I felt like I had wasted my life. For the first time, I felt afraid to die. I was anxious and depressed. True, coming to the conclusions I had come to was exhilarating and liberating in a way. But it brought its own problems.
#atheisim#atheist#christianity#religion#lgbt writers#lgbtq community#lgbtq#closeted#enneagram 4#infj#writers on tumblr#writer
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It’s my Birthday, damn it!
A surprising and disappointing thing about being an adult in wicked conservative Yankeeland is that no one celebrates birthdays. No one talks about their birthdays or mentions it’s coming up. I love birthdays. I like to be treated special and I enjoy making other people feel special. I like cake and ice cream and candles and balloons and presents damn it! There are 365 days in a year and its perfectly fine to let one of those days be a celebration of your having completed another circuit around the damn sun. I think maybe it’s tied into the heavy Baptist presence in my area. Most everyone is a Baptist. All the Baptists I know are emotionally reserved and self-effacing. You can’t make much of yourself. I understand this isn’t purely a Baptist thing because we are rooted in Yankee, puritanical moral values and that’s a part of this culture whether you’re churched or not.
I enjoy making much of my loved ones on their birthday. At the very least, I make sure we save space in the day and do a little cake, ice cream and a thoughtful present. I like picking presents that let the recipient know I listen to them when they talk and I pay attention to them.
I’m self aware enough to know that I give people this treatment because I want this treatment in return. It’s very hard for me to act excited when the gift I am given is a bag of coffee....literally the same coffee I buy every week at the grocery store. It’s just kind of lazy and do they even know me? All I wanted was a book or pens and a notepad. Something catered to me, not something you’d bring to a White Elephant or a Yankee Swap because you didn’t know what else to get.
#new england#birthdays#celebrations#enneagram 4#infj#infj thoughts#rant#christianity#baptist#deconstruction#tantrum
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Katie’s Kiss
One summer night, a few years after graduating high school, I went to Katie’s house with a pint of “Phish Food” and “Cherry Garcia,” to watch 10 Things I Hate About You. Katie’s brother was a shy redhead who reminded me of a more athletic, better looking version of Ron Weasley. Her mom was nice enough but seemed wheedling and manipulative. We never really talked much. Her dad wasn’t a very nice person, he was always on the recliner when he was home and never sounded kind. He never did more than nod at me in greeting and wasn’t super nice to Katie.
When I got there that night I was relieved that the only car in the driveway was Katie’s. The heavy kitchen door was open and I pressed my face against the screen. I hallooed shrilly. I heard a faint string of words coming from upstairs that was presumedly an invitation to come in. The kitchen was in its usual disarray and it smelled like a can of Campbell’s soup had been open on the counter all day. I trounced through the living room and headed upstairs. I always felt like I was breaking the rules going up there, like her mom would be mad at her for letting me.
Katie was laying on her bed reading a book. Like a dope I’d brought the ice cream upstairs instead of putting it in the freezer. I asked her about her book which was for school and not very interesting looking and I stared at her amazing book shelves that were floor to ceiling and framed in a writing desk. I never get tired of looking at people’s personal book shelves. It’s so insightful.
“You realize you’re not getting out of it this time,” she said.
“I know, I know. Thus the Phish Food. I will watch as much of the movie as it takes for me to get through this pint of ice cream.” I said.
“It’s a spin on the Taming of the Shrew. You have to watch it. Listen: ‘Ten things I hate about you’…’The taming of the shrew’….it sounds the same—”
“—they call that rhyming.” I said, chuckling.
“—And it has the same number of syllables.” She said.
“I do like Julia Stiles.” I said, thinking of that cool dance finale with the chair at the end of Save the Last Dance.
Suddenly she popped up off the pillow and kissed me right on the lips, snatched the grocery bag out of my hands and bounded off the bed and down the stairs like a blond little elf-bunny. I sat there dumbly for a second, the kiss having erased my mental capacity for coherent thought never mind lively banter. My heart was pounding the entire rest of the evening as I overanalyzed every possible angle of what the kiss meant and why she did it and what I should do. I really wanted to ask her about it but I chickened out. I couldn’t do it. What if it meant nothing? What if it meant something?
As I got into my car at the end of the night and put the key in the ignition I couldn’t get that kiss, that little peck, out of my minds eye. I kept replaying it over and over and over. I thought about my heart racing and how buzzed I was the rest of the night. I was electrified. And confused.
I thought about being in Master’s Commission and the gripping way I felt about Nan. I thought about the obsessions I’ve had over the years—Jennifer Garner, Kristen Stewart, Sandra Bullock, Ellen Page. They were crushes. I acknowledged that they were crushes and that’s why I watched every single thing I could find them in. I didn’t fantasize about Christian Bale and his washboard abs and tighty whities—I fantasized about what it would be like to kiss Jennifer Lawrence.
True, I had dated a Ivan towards the end of high school. He was the only boy who had ever shown an interest in me and he wasn’t ugly by any means. I didn’t find him sexually attractive, just—pleasant looking. But it’s not supposed to be about that right? I was flattered. For a long time though I told him I didn’t want to kiss him until we got married and I held out a pretty long time. But one day, I went to his house when no one else was there. We were going to go to dinner with some of his friends and he had on these wind pants, the kind that swishes when you walk. I was all dressed up compared to how I usually dressed.
“Aren’t you going to go get dressed?” I asked Ivan as he came towards me, put his hands on my hips and drew me to him so that he stood over me. He pulled me that last two inches to press against his body and I could feel his erection poking into my hip and I felt a lot of confusing feelings. Proud that I was pretty enough, sexual enough, to do that to him; ashamed that I did do that to him, and kind of weirded out that his penis was touching me. I didn’t want his penis to touch me. That was a red flag….like, what the hell am I doing with him? I broke it off pretty soon after that.
Katie’s quick little kiss meant more to me than any other I’d ever had. For one thing, it was sweet, and for another it helped me understand myself better. I was scared about what that meant and thought I would never do anything about it. I couldn’t’ break my parents hearts like that. Could I?
#closeted#lgbt writers#lgbtq#writing#writer#true story#christianity#conservative family#deconstruction#enneagram 4#infj
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Dissonance
I feel weight on my chest and tension in my throat. I’m drinking too much. Not eating in a way that I know helps me lose weight—a diet that I know works for me—-why can’t I follow it?
My libido is very low although I miss intimacy with my husband, it certainly is not about the sex. If anything, sex is almost purely spiritual. It’s about us being together. It’s about making him feel loved. He’s my best friend. I love him. But I don’t have sex because I want to. I don’t want to. I could be celibate and perfectly happy.
Because I’m not eating as well, I’ve gained weight. For this and the fact that I’m somewhere on the spectrum between bisexual and a lesbian—-I am plagued by the notion that he deserves so much better than me. Someone thin who looks like they belong in summer dresses that exposes their shoulders, wears make up and lets their hair down. Someone who compliments him. Someone who, when people see them together would’t ever have to wonder if they were married or not or just friends. I wonder sometimes if I embarrass him but I don’t want to ask because I don’t want to hear the answer.
I feel a dissonance between reality and who I am. I always thought I was this one person. But I am not that person. However, I am cast in that other person’s roll and I’m here to stay. I can’t unmake the decisions I’ve made nor do I really want to because wouldn’t that be like saying I’m not grateful for this amazing life I have? I am grateful. I love my children. I love this house. I love that this is my job.
Here’s something stuck in my craw lately. (I’m speaking generally, because I suspect this is common for a lot of people…but not sure.) The fact that you can have a wrong idea about yourself is scary. The fact that you can think people perceive you as one way and it’s not at all like that—that’s frightening. For instance, when I was in Massachusetts I was teasing my mom about the fact that she can be intimidating to people because she walks in to a place like she owns it and demands things. She is strong and very opinionated, she has a very strong sense of the ways ought to be and people sense that she expects to get what she wants. People sense she is dominant. (None of that was funny, but I said all this in a funny way, impersonating how she walks and talks so she’d see I wasn’t trying to criticize, just observing.) She said, laughing, that she always considered herself a….I wish I could remember her exact phrasing….but something to do with a flower….like delicate flower or some such and I burst out laughing because no one would ever see her that way. Ever.
Though this anecdote is funny it’s also disheartening. Maybe at it’s core it’s because if we don’t ourselves really know who we are, who can? How do we figure out ourselves? How do I make myself the person I want to be if I don’t know why I’m doing what I’m doing? How do I know what I’m saying or thinking or feeling is really the truth? Delusion is frightening. Like sleep walking and watching the world you’ve accepted to be true melt into something else.
How do I know what I know is true — this goes for the world around me: facts, beliefs about the world, spirituality etc. How do I know what I know about myself is true: about who I am? My identity.
#christianity#lgbt discourse#lgbtq#lgbt writers#closeted#marriedlife#writers on tumblr#queer writers#writers#deconstruction#philosophy#philosophical#journal#identity#motherhood#enneagram 4#infj confessions
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Christianity, Sexuality and Gender: My journey
In childhood, I always thought it a dreadful bore to be a girl. In all my games I pretended to be a male character either from books or movies, or made up entirely. In movies the boys got to race around and climb trees and shoot guns and have adventures! But the girls had to wear dresses and corsets and be polite and proper and sew things. If they were rough and tumble they were most of the time an aberration. Or they were often the side kick or a minor character. Girls who wanted adventure had to dress like boys or even pretend to be boys.
I read a book when I was a kid about this woman named Deborah Sampson who lived in Massachusetts and dressed up as a man so that she could fight for the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War. I can still remember the pictures. She was lauded for being brave and fearless. I admired that she was so confident that she didn’t belong churning butter during war time that she got a uniform, and went to find battle so that she could participate and possibly die or be horribly mangled for a cause she believed in. I’d probably be all pissed off but still churning butter and milking cows on the farm.
I was homeschooled in fourth and fifth grade back when we lived out in the sticks of ______________. Homeschooling allowed us to distill the academics down so we could finish much earlier in the day than public schoolers and be outside more often.
My sisters and I, particularly Micah and I were always outside when the weather was nice and sometimes even when it wasn’t. I am the oldest, then Mic is two years younger, and Emma was two years younger than Mic. When you’re all under ten years old four years is a big difference. I never actually asked Emma, but my perception was that she didn’t like playing outside as much, but maybe she just couldn’t keep up and we didn’t slow down, I don’t know. It makes me sad that we left her behind.
My mom was really great at making sure we had opportunities to be social and interact with other kids while also participating in cool educational opportunities. I think the highlight was, one time she got the entire digestive system of a pig from a butcher, laid it out on a couple card tables on black trash bags under the shade of this big tree in the front yard and invited a few other home schooling families over to come over and dissect it with us. I wish I had been there when she had to get it all out of the bag and lay it out—to see her flopping pig organs around and getting the ass end down and sorting it out. That must have been a sight. Another time she got a pig heart for us to dissect and that was pretty cool too. Kudos to my mom.
In addition to the epic anatomy lessons, we had routine social gatherings as well and mostly they were fun. Time is all screwy to me now when I look back—I have no idea how long we were going there—but we used to go to the Lawson’s house for music and gym. They Lawson’s comprised Tim, the father, who was very tall and had a wonderful sense of humor. I loved hearing him tell stories and he was always breaking into song. Pam was his wife, she was always baking and cooking and making interesting things. Her kitchen always smelled like blueberry muffins. She was also very funny and also sang a lot. I really enjoyed watching her interact with her kids. They seemed relaxed in a way that my parents weren’t and I enjoyed being there.
Their kids were Thadryan (Thay-dree-an, emphasis on first syllabul), whose name Tim made up playing Dungeons and Dragons, Tyler, Toby and Tessa. Thadryan was my age and I thought he was really cool. He wasn’t very demonstrative or emotive and he was pretty tough. He was sporty and enjoyed baseball a lot but we played all kinds of make pretend games outside. We played a lot of Spider-man. His brothers were various degrees of whiny and fussy but they played too. Emma and Tessa were always off doing who knows what and we generally made a practice of running away from them and making them the bad guys whenever they came around. I didn’t really like sports, but Thadryan made whiffle ball fun.
Years later through snippets of conversations with my mom I gathered that my mom and Pam may not have gotten along. My mom is always very direct with her opinions up to and including politics and religion. When people disagree with her the look on her face and body language suggests surprise that people could be dumb enough to think something different. Knowing what I know now, I understand that Pam was more liberal. My mom gets this shocked tone in voice and it always puts my teeth on edge. I’m amazed we went over there as often as we did and left the two of them inside alone. I bet the topic of homeschooling and having kids to talk about made it civil, but what a trooper for her to do that every week for hours a day when she may have not enjoyed it. She said to me that we loved it and that’s why we did it. I am not that cool of a mom.
The one homeschooling extracurricular activity I dreaded was going to the McNally house for choir. They lived “in town” in Orange, Massachusetts. (Oh by the way, the Stephen King show, “Castle Rock” was filmed within walking distance of the McNally and Lawson house. Super cool. I love Stephen King.) There were houses very close on either side and behind them. Their backyard was a steep slope downwards. Their yard on both sides of their house, front yard and porch was full of appliances and boxes and forgotten broken toys, old yard equipment, and junk. Inside the house it always smelled like a combination of leftover spaghetti sauce and a musty thrift store. And everything seemed green, the outside of the house was painted pine tree green, the furniture was green. The house seemed too dark and there were always too many people there.
The McNally kids were a whole gaggle. There were eight of the ranging from fourteenths down to a baby who was just sitting up. The eldest two were girls and the rest of them were boys. From eavesdropping I learned that Mrs. McNally had all her children in their bedroom upstairs and didn’t go to the doctor for ultrasounds or anything so they never knew the gender of the babies before they were born. For the last one, the eldest had been in the house, sitting on the steps when the baby was born and when they found out he was a boy she cried.
The McNally’s were a conservative family. They were all homeschooled too and the girls had to wear dresses and skirts all the time and kept their hair really really long. I’m pretty sure the girls clothes were home made. The boys wore whatever they wanted.
This was my first time recognizing a feeling of “other.” They seemed poor and dirty and unlucky to have to be dressed like that all the time. I was always happy to leave and always dreaded to go. Their girls seemed so constrained and constricted by their situation and their dress. I felt very masculine in comparison to them and took a measure of pride in being tougher than they were.
I equate dressing “like a boy” with being comfortable and feeling at home. Since my early days dressing “like a girl” in frilly things were always for other people’s benefit. I couldn’t sit how I wanted, couldn’t play like I wanted. It was boring.
Nothing much changed as I grew into a woman’s body. Jeans and a tee shirt means relaxation, casualness, organic play and rough housing, the ability to get dirty any time for any reason and not worrying about the clothes. I don’t have to think at all about how I look. Put me in a shirt that is below the little “u” where my clavicles meet and all I can think about is not letting anyone see down my shirt or my boobs hanging out. I can’t have fun because I’m too preoccupied thinking about boobs. This isn’t even taking into account body image issues and feeling insecure, though the heavier I got the more it did. How can I think big thoughts or enjoy my rich inner life if I am distracted by boring stuff like smearing my mascara, not letting anyone see too much cleavage or sitting like a lady?
Another element in the mix was that I got this idea from my particular brand of Christian culture that as a woman my body can cause men to have certain feelings and embarrassing physical reactions. In Christian circles this is bad unless the person you are arousing is your husband. Therefore even when I did feel pretty I also felt guilty (with a dash of empowerment….a confusing feeling overall and one I didn’t really like.) My mentality was that I should protect my “brothers in Christ” by not being immodest so that they didn’t get tripped up by my foxiness and accidentally get aroused.
I had a conversation with Nan about this once when we were in our 20s and she has always been very confident in her sexuality. She said that she actually enjoyed making out with a guy and and then just walking away and leaving him in his aroused state. So typical of Nan. I always felt embarrassed about my sexuality and uncomfortable. Once I was at my ex-boyfriend’s house alone. I had come to his house dressed “nicely” to go out to dinner. We were standing in his kitchen and he was standing really close to me. I think at the time I wasn’t even kissing him yet because I told him I wasn’t allowed to and wanted to wait for marriage. (That didn’t last very long, but kissing was as far as we ever got.) He was standing as close as you can really stand next to someone with his face hovering over mine with that sultry, squinty puppy look tempting me and hoping I’d kiss him, but I felt something poking me softly in the hip and I was very weirded out….but also….empowered and flattered.
My dad was an elder at church and he liked to greet people and chat with them near the entrance of the sanctuary. My church was a very affectionate church--everyone gave hugs to everyone. I was doing what everyone else was doing and would always give hugs in greeting too. I was as proud of giving good strong hugs as I was of giving good strong handshakes. I was even complimented on my hugs once or twice. However, I was in my early teens when swift mortification befell my naive heart when my dad told me that I couldn’t hug men like that because I had breasts now. Thus the side-hug or not hugging at all. I felt like the guy in the Western who gets shot in the chest with an arrow all of a sudden and looks down quizzically before falling over. (My dad was also the one to say, while the family was eating some delicious fried chicken at the dinner table that I had to start wearing a bra.)
Once when I was at youth group I went to give my friend’s dad a hug (because everyone was doing the same exact thing) and he literally put his hands up to keep me back and said, “I only hug my wife.” I know I’ve already used the word “mortified” a million times now, but if I’m stand offish about hugs now this is fucking why. I am so tired of that. So, whatever, I was just doing what other people seemed to do because I thought we were all a big fucking family.
Another very uncomfortable thing for me was, one morning I put on my moms perfume, Beautiful by Este Laude, and my dad got into the truck to take me to school and we hadn’t even made it a half mile from the house and he said I couldn’t wear Mom’s perfume because it “did things for him.” Gross.
In general, my femininity has been a big embarrassment and come between me and my dad. I used to be really close to my dad. I love the guy, but it’s not the same. My growing up put a wedge between us. Fucking boobs. He got all formal and awkward. Don’t get me wrong he is a fantastic guy, he’s one of the most generous, helpful people you will ever meet. He genuinely loves people and he loves me. I just had more fun with dad when I wasn’t a woman.
When I was a preschool age kid I had these big huge strawberry blonde banana curls. As my hair got longer and heavier my mom started to French braid my hair so I could play without it getting all tangled and gnarly. But I played hard all day and my mom was always complaining about my hair. I sure as heck didn’t do anything to take care of it. Finally, when I was eight or so mom took me to get a “Dorothy Hamel” haircut—or a bob. I was thrilled.
In my mom’s opinion, the haircut was a disaster. She didn’t even tell me that at the time, I pieced it together later, but she was really mad at how badly it came out. I looked like the little kid from The Santa Clause and Dunstun Checks In—classic 90’s boy cut. I guess that’s what you get when your aunt who mostly cuts the hair of octogenarians tries to give you a trendy cut.
I loved it, though. On the way home, I couldn’t stop looking at my hair in the side view mirror. If only I wasn’t wearing thick prescription glasses. Not quite coke bottle but heading in that direction.
That was in the third grade and I was going to a public elementary school. I was really into X-Men and being a mutant at the time. One day soon after I got my haircut, at recess, I was playing with some action figures (Wolverine and Gambit against a Mr. Sinister who was double their size and Aladdin--he was good for collateral damage or hostage taking.) This boy came and sat down in the sand with me and said he wanted to play and I said sure. He asked me if I was a boy or a girl and what my name was. I said my name was Tom and we played until the bell rang.
I have never liked clothes shopping. It is such a waste of precious doing-anything-else-in-the-world time. Even back in the day when everything fit me I hated it. I remember school shopping with my mom in Wal-mart around this Dorothy Hamel haircut period and we were picking our way ever so slowly through the girls area of the store.
“Do you like this?” She said and it either had a flower print all over it or poofy shoulders or lace or have a neckline lower than my throat and I made this squinchy face and she pursed her lips into a thin line of impatience and disapproval and put it back on the rack. But I felt like I couldn’t say no to everything so the ones I could tolerate a little more I’d say, “I guess so.”
“Are you going to wear it? She’d say, annunciating overmuch and with her eyebrows brushing the fluorescent lighting over our heads.
“Sure.” I’d say.
And then…from across the aisle I’d see—a black tee shirt with Darth Vader on it and a Tie Fighter in the foreground that looked like it was flying right at you. It said, “Join the Dark Side.” I begged and begged and finally she conceded. I wore it all the time. It disappeared after a while and I suspect it ended up in the wood stove downstairs.
In high school especially I knew I didn’t dress like the other girls. I recognized it but it didn’t occur to me to go out and get clothes like everyone else. I knew I wouldn’t be happy in what everyone else was wearing. I registered that they looked cute and even admired them, but whenever I tried to be like them I felt like an imposter.
I did have some “fashion” influences, if you can even call it that. The first person that was an influence on my dress and sense of style was Becky Hastings. I looked up to her and admired her. I thought she was the coolest person I had ever met. She was very pretty. She wore bandanas in her hair that she stuck there with bobby pins. She had gauges in her ears and a pierced nose. She wore camouflage cargo shorts and converse sneakers and listened to Christian rock and heavy metal bands like August Burns Red, Under Oath, and Demon Hunter. I wasn’t ready for heavy metal of any kind at the time but she introduced me to Thousand Foot Krutch and Pillar and holy shit I felt so cool listening to that driving my car with my newly acquired winter-hat-but-its-cooler-when-you-call-it-a-beanie. I loved the way she talked, the way she laughed at things then said, “Right?”
One day she was driving me home from hanging out with her at her house and she was wearing her gray, black and white cargo shorts and I had my first fully formed sexual inkling about her legs and how I’d like to touch them.
Becky made it okay to not be churchy, but still be a Christian. She made me feel good embracing the styles I preferred. What I liked was very much still in development and it would take me more than a decade to begin to be comfortable with it—but that journey really began with Becky and the realization that I wasn’t the only anomaly.
The second big style influence was a little gem written by Diablo Cody and directed by Jason Reitman called Juno (2007), starring Ellen Page, Jennifer Garner, Allison Janney, Michael Cera and Jason Bateman. But all I really cared about was Ellen Page. The whole cast is great though. I’ve listened to the audio commentary at least twice and watched the movie a half dozen times. It took me a while to get to the movie because everyone was talking about it all the time and I don’t like bandwagons. In part, I might be a little bit of a snob when it comes to books and movies, but also, I think I don’t want to think about a really good experience being shared by so many people in the exact same way.
Anyways, for a few years I worked at this trash heap of a store called Videos Videos Videos back in the day when people went out to rent movies. They also sold gift baskets there and helium balloons. And pornography. The store was really dingy and dusty and smelled like what would happen if you took a whole dustpan full of dust and cobwebs and baked it in the oven for three hours at four hundred degrees. When I first started there they had VHS tapes. I worked under the table there for cash. I was pretty proud of myself. That was the longest lasting job I ever had. I loved going through all the movies and making sure they were alphabetized and facing the right way. I loved when people asked me for recommendations or if such and such was a good movie. I loved thinking about what movie I should play on the television when people came into the store and that it was a nice quiet job and I could do homework and stuff when it wasn’t busy. The best part of the job though, was employees could rent as many movies as they wanted as long as they had been older than three months.
Juno rocked my world. One, it was written by a woman who was working as a stripper at the time. How cool is that? Two, it has no equal to it’s style in writing. It was so hilarious, so fun to listen to and quote and listen to again.
Juno MacGuff wasn’t trying to sound like anyone else, she just was who she was and lived there. It encouraged me to find my own sense of self and style and own it. I also loved the wardrobe in the movie, something I had never paid attention to before. She was happy to be an oddball and probably rocked thrift stores and found cool stuff. If I could be patient and tolerate the gross smells, maybe I could find cool stuff too. Juno encouraged me to develop my own sense of humor and to not be afraid to drop references from movies, books, pop culture or history and if other people got them, cool, if not oh well, that’s not the point. The point is, this is me. Deal with it. Juno gave me a sense that I was the cool one and everyone else around me was boring. For good or ill, this revolutionized my persona and made me much less of a Timid Tina/Awkward Anna. On good days this is what I tapped into.
I bet 75% of popularity or beauty is confidence. If you’re going to get glasses or a unique hair cut and never lift your eyes up off the ground than it automatically puts a target on your back. But if you put your shoulders back and look people in the eye and think in your head, “Why the fuck aren’t YOU wearing coke bottle glasses,” it’s like an Instagram filter that makes you 10x cooler or more beautiful than if you didn’t. Juno gave me training wheels for developing that filter.
A third big style influence in my life (and that of my sisters and mom), was introduced to me by Katie the summer before we went to college, and that was the Gilmore Girls. She had the first few seasons on DVD and we went through the first season together. I think the first two seasons are the best of the whole series writing-wise. I took them home with me and my sisters and my mom and I watched it and none of us were ever the same.
We were never allowed to watch “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” growing up, if we had I suspect that what the “Gilmore Girls” did for us would have probably happened a lot earlier in the life of our female lives. The Gilmore’s (+ Suki) were very smart, well-read, well versed in movies and music and culture, were hilarious and had quick wits and a gift for banter. At the time, it too was a show where the writing set it apart. We were funny before the Gilmore’s, but it seems like after this show came out we reached a new dimension.
In the beginning of the show, Rory wasn’t boy crazy, she wasn’t on the phone constantly, she wasn’t obsessed with her nail color or plucking her eye brows. She actually genuinely enjoyed school, had clearly defined goals for her life and liked reading and studying. She was a breath of fresh air. She made me feel better about myself because that’s exactly how I was. Whenever my ninth grade teacher would put the next book we were reading on our desk it felt like he had just slapped a treasure chest down on my desk, or a holy relic of some kind.
A lesser influence in my life was Jennifer Garner’s Sydney Bristow from “Alias.” She was really smart, worked hard at school (until becoming a spy…then it got crazy) and she was beautiful and sexy. I admired her work ethic. Plus she was going to be an English Lit major like me before the SD-6 fucked up her life.
I was once obsessed with Nancy McKeon from “The Facts of Life.” I had a huge crush on Jo. The whole thing with Jo was that she was a tomboy and a foil to Blaire’s character. I loved that Jo was comfortable being Jo, that she was so tough and grungy and worked on motorcycles and stuff. She was exciting and edgy.
It occurs to me as I sit here and think of the different things in my life that have influenced my dress, my speech and my ideas that I was looking for permission to be me. I knew how I did not fit in, and I wanted to fit in somewhere. I wanted a place to be made for me, but what happened was I had to make a place for myself.
There is more to it than that, but basically the above anecdotes are a constellation of things that connect to make a picture of where and what I am now. Lesbian. Having retreated back into the closet. (I’ll get to that in another entry.) Married to a man. Four kids. Going to Church even though I’m pretty sure I don’t believe in God.
#lgbtq#deconstruction#gender dysphoria#christianity#writing#catharsis#sexuality#closeted#enneagram 4#infj confessions#marriedlife#religion#juno#elliot page#gilmore girls
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Bloodletting -- An Unsent Email
Searching the shards of glass with bleeding fingers, searching bloody remains for a heart crushed to a pulp, the annihilation of who I thought we were. Dreams so sweet they are nightmares, reminding me of the deception that cut me deeper than any knife. But finally, finally over time, sweet, healing time, they fade. But then out of nowhere I see you. From far away, I see you. Wild. Uninhibited. Still resentful of any thing that wasn't as wild as you. When that was me...I was shrugged off without a backwards glance. My screams meant nothing to you. My throat cracked and raw. The cold comes flooding back again. I trusted you. I loved you with a pure fierce love that was left to freeze in the wake of your abandon. Bewildered agony choked me like a barbed wire garrotte. A weapon whose sting has made me wise.
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Zombies: An American Obsession
I love zombies. Not for hugs and kisses, mind you, but the idea of them and what they tell us about humans. More specifically what we think about evil with a capital "e" and the process by which we become unstrung and dehumanized by our choices (if they are a choice at all....).
Zombies did not originate in the heart of George Ramirez. What Ramirez did with his little Pittsburgian wonder was change the face of the zombie from the vacant staring slave of Haitian origin to the flesh-eating ambulator we see in film and television today. It started as Haitian legends of people raised from the dead by the ultimate exploiters and forced to work as slaves. This is why it is common practice in Haiti to pour cement over the tops of the graves or hold a vigil for a good month after a loved one dies to keep anyone from digging up their body until it's too decomposed to do any good to anyone anyway.
I find this very interesting. In Haiti what do people worry about? Being exploited by the wealthier landowners or employers. Working not just during the day but through the night as well, working until you feel like you may as well be dead. I think it's really about slavery in this case, maybe not literally in the sense of, I have the deed, I own you--but without me, the employer you will not feed your family tonight, so yeah you are going to work until I tell you to stop. Slavery. And perhaps, a piece of zombie legend. Wouldn't you be terrified to think that not only will you literally work yourself to death....but once your dead some jerk will disturb the rest you were probably praying for and make you work until your body decomposes beyond all use. How disgustingly horrific.
Now, travel with me to the States. Exploitation is an issue to a degree, sure. But you want to know the much bigger issue In the United States of America? Moral degeneration. And physical too, perhaps but I don't think I can make as good a case connecting literal corpulence to the figuratively corpulent soul of this country. Don't worry I'm not going to tell you why or preach to you about gun control....but I will tell you I see a growing amount of violence in virtually every demographic. A grown man going into an elementary school and mowing down little kids? Are you serious?! Is this really happening? Doesn't it scare you? What is the difference between you and that man? What is the difference between you and the guys that flew jets into the two towers? I don't think we know what the difference is. Not really.How do you quantify evil? How many degrees of separation are there between decent person to child killer or pedophile? No one can really say. Not definitively. Not in the same sense that we know gravity is what makes me trip down the stairs instead of floating to the ceiling. It's still an unknown. Why do people hurt each other? Or exploit each other? Or sell each other on the black market? Or harvest each other's organs illegally? Or set each other on fire because of the color of their skin or sexual orientation? Or live a "normal" life while keeping women in their basement as sex slaves? We don't know. And that's what scares the shit out of us. A subterranean level of your brain is pissing it's pants because evil is in all of us: in your charming elderly neighbor, in the guy taking your order at McDonald's, in your pastor, in the person sharing your bed. It's not understood, not quantified, not measurable. And you know what?
Everyone.....Every single person is.....wait for it.....infected. Ah, there it is...my point. Thus the American Zombie.
I think America is as fascinated with this facet of itself as I am but they just don't know it. It's not just the gore and the fun time on a Saturday night gorging on popcorn and finger filtering through a movie with your boyfriend.
We're seeing something that obsesses us because it IS us. It's all of us. We are all infected. (Thank you "The Walking Dead" for illustrating this so brilliantly and beautifully.)
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One of the many reasons I keep a journal.
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And that’s the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.
Khaled Hosseini (via jhbrd)
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