katie's leaving to-day

Katie leaves today. Katie. Like, Katie. Like, how will the Women's Center even pretend to exist without her? Like, the first time I walked into this place that taught me what home means, there she was, laughing and probably being inappropriate with bp. Katie, whose office I used to go into when there was really no where else to go and no one else to talk to. Katie, who took me into her home when I had none. Katie, who helped me through something I thought I’d never survive. Katie, who followed me out into the hallway after I’d said goodbye to the Anarchist Sowing Circle and hugged me as I cried telling me I’d always have a home with her and that my real home is with the people I love who love me right back and that I could always call her. Katie, who followed me out of the Social Justice Seder when I walked in and was so overwhelmed with all of it I started crying, and she followed me outside, and hugged me as I cried. Katie, who’d probably follow me anywhere if she thought I was even the least bit sad.

To Katie, who I’ll follow up to Chicago, just so I can say hi. Because she’s followed me enough, maybe it’s high time I step out on my own, or even go to her. I’m tired of making people run after me. I do it because I’m scared they’re going to leave, or not going to want me once I get there, but everyone always leaves anyway, so it’s time to stop being so fucking scared all the time and start at least enjoying my friends while they’re around.

Last night I rolled away and didn’t sleep well and it was all because if no one can get close then it won’t hurt when they leave. At least that’s what I tell myself. But I tried to not be too close to Katie. Even with all that she did for me. I was scared. And now she’s leaving. Today. I already said goodbye. A teary goodbye she couldn’t follow me on.

Oh fuck this. I’m going to lunch. I don’t even care how this reads. I hate it. I hate Columbia. I can’t live in this city where everyone fucking leaves, but where the fuck else am I supposed to go? I only know how to be happy (or at least happy-ish) in this town.

I’m not hungry. I’m going to lunch.

at least a mix of two

a big deleted post of bullshit.

And that's why I'm a tired mess

Remember when I saw Peaches last night with fucking JD Samson of Le Tigre and Radio Sloan of The Need and The Circuitside as the band? Awesome.

Um, excuse me World, but why the fuck is that not being advertised?! Hello! It's JD Samson and Radio Sloan (and sorry, I just couldn't find good pictures of her and don't have time to search; believe me, she's hot).

Here's a picture that will give you a very slight and minimal idea of the sexy crazy show: HOT-T-T-T-T!

(Seriously, it's more than worth your while to click on that link. But for the show I saw, replace the black leather with silver...and then pink/sparkly/bejeweled bra with metallic pink bottoms...and then...well, it was a good show.)

A Set of Unanswerable Questions

Questions that just keep repeating in my head, non-stop, making me go crazy. And this won't even be all of them.

- Why do I miss Jessa sooooooo much?
- Why doesn't The Ex ever call? Wasn't one of the downfalls of our relationship that we would never compromise our friendship? That we would undyingly be friends forever?
- Why does my first girlfriend keep acting so fucking weird around me? It was for three months fucking 5 years ago. Smile and be polite! We were each other's fucking firsts in so many ways. And she's now engaged. Again, smile and be polite!
- Why do I care about how my first girlfriend reacts to me so much?
- Why am I so anti-social lately? All I want to do is go home, lock the door, turn off my phone, and re-watch OC DVDs.
- Why is everyone moving?
- Why do I miss Jessa soooooo much? So much that I'm thinking about all these options that have never before crossed my mind.
- Why do I really believe that Jessa is the best sex I'll ever have? And that I'm not ready to give it up yet?

And the kicker:
- Why is my psychologist out of town for so fucking long that I can't go to her and get all the answers? I know the answers are in me, and I even know some of them (a bit), but it's hard work to own and figure out my shit, and dude, she's my coach. I need her help.

And I'm off. Have a great weekend everybody.

I Love My Job, But...

Who’s heard of the “new version” of the word “gay”? Apparently it’s spelled g-a-i-e (pronounced the same way) and as long as you’re using that version of the "word"—it’s an adjective—then you’re not being offensive when you call, say, the chair you’re sitting in “gaie”.

Who had to hear about this "word" while trying to actually work in her office today?

Yes, a student I just met and now, y’know, hate, came in and explained to my boss (note: the man in charge of multicultural issues at my institution) the “word” in reference to a story about a woman who he thinks is now mad at him because, gasp, she objected to his use of “gaie”.

Who had to hear her boss’ response to this tantalizing new vocabulary story be, if you can imagine, almost as offensive as the idea itself? After a painful lack of commenting on the clear absurdity of this “new word”, the big, bad, power-hungry boss said only, “C’mon, be a man about it. Talk to her.”

Maybe I’ll decide to be ‘man enough’ to quit. I do, after all, only work in a Multicultural Center and I guess, should expect offensive language to be thrown all around. Yes, maybe I could find a better fit somewhere else.

Or maybe that’d just be “gaie”.

Fortune Teller

November 30, 2005: "I'm going to enjoy this before we really get attached and into each other and she sees more of the crazy and I have to tell her all these things I hate telling people and she sees me cry and gets pissed off when I turn away for my own fucked up reasons. Right now, we're still okay and happy with each other and excited to get to know one another and figuring out what it's like to be with and around one another and well, I don't know."

She sees more of the crazy and I have to tell her all these things I hate telling people and she sees me cry and gets pissed off when I turn away for my own fucked up reasons.

Last night she saw me cry and got pissed off when I turned away for my own fucked up reasons. Pissed off and confused and hurt.

I mean, I showed up for my own fucked up reasons. And I think she was glad. She was glad. But I cried. And I turned away. And today, I came across those words I wrote so long ago and I guess I was further along in the healing process than I thought because this pattern and cycle that I'm in, it's not new or exciting or shocking, I knew it was coming.

I'm not taking all of the blame. I'm tired of complaining about her. I need to stop pretending. I'm the one who turned away. I'm the one who turns away.

I am the one who turns away.

Yes, another letter to another ex

Hello electronic world. Are you out there? (Not that I actually want to know, but isn't it interesting that I write all this stuff and assume that it's read, but wouldn't know except for the occasional complimentary email--thanks again by the way.) It's just such a strange set up we've made for ourselves with these internet lives. I'm not on myspacebookster or any of that stuff, but I do have this and really, what's the difference? I mean, if I had pictures, more people would come, but I'm not sure I want them to. I purposely don't tell many people about this because this really started as a place to put all those emails my friends got tired of reading. Oft-referenced quote directly ahead: Joan Didion once said, "I don't know what I think until I write it down." Strangely, some of my friends got tired of reading through my thought processes, but I still needed to somehow figure out what the fuck I was thinking. So I still wrote it down. And to make it more real, I published it. I put it out in the world for (somewhat) public consumption and I do hope that people read this stuff and I genuinely hope that you all like it.

Anyway. The first post I ever made on this blog was a beautifully written (in my opinion) letter to The Ex. If you haven't read it and are bored, please feel free to go back in the archives. (And a quick note on The Ex. While my psychologist supports me in respecting her privacy and closeted status, she totally called me out on trying to turn her into some sort of literary character rather than real human being who caused (causes?) me pain by always referring to her as The Ex. Yep, even in therapy. My psychologist is so good it pisses me off sometimes. (And who am I kidding with that question mark?))

-----------

Then right here I wrote a paragraph about how I was going to post a letter I had written to Jessa, and then I copied and pasted it, and then I read it over, and I can't post that letter. I can't post it because, unlike the original letter with The (original) Ex, I didn't just write to the letter to Jessa, I actually wrote it for her too. Not that I'm planning on giving it to her, I'm not, but I did write it both to and for her. Not to this internet world. And not for me (which is clearly the case with the other "letter"). It's honest, and if I'm going to respect The Ex's desire to not have me say her name, I'm going to respect Jessa enough to have the words I wrote for and to her truly be to and for her, even if she never receives them.

Have a good weekend everybody.

AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOFO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Blogger's Homophobic?! Nooooo....

So I wrote "Don't Just Read The Cues, Understand Them", used spellcheck, and then I wrote this. I sent it in as a quasi-letter-to-the-editor but don't expect anything to come of it. I'm not even sure I sent it to the right place, but it felt like something had to be said. And usually when I'm having that "something needs to be said but I don't know who to say it to" feeling, I just write it down. So here it is.

In the "About" section on blogger's official website, the wrap-up of their humble beginnings leaves off with a mission statement of sorts: "Now we're a small (but slightly bigger than before) team in Google focusing on helping people have their own voice on the web and organizing the world's information from the personal perspective. Which has pretty much always been our whole deal."

I have been a blogger and google user for many years. I jumped on the blog bandwagon relatively early and through this became one of the first gmail users, much to the chagrin of many of my computer science major friends! (That was back when we either had no invites at all, or as few as six. It was as if gmail invites became a new status ranking among friends.)

These are great services. One of the reasons I've enjoyed using blogger in particular all these years, is my ability to be honest on my blog. I think this openness and honesty is a common advantage for many in the blog world. Today while blogging however--on one of my three remaining blogs (I've had six altogether throughout the years)--I had the impulse to be lazy and simply click on the spellcheck icon instead of thoroughly reading through my post. To my shock and horror, besides forgetting yet again that "embarrassed" has both two "s"'s and two "r"'s, I saw that most of the common language used to describe a huge part of my identity wasn't even recognized in the spellcheck program. Even the basic "gay" was singled out as incorrect; spellcheck told me it must be some sort of proper noun I've never come across because it needed to be capitalized. Similarly, "dyke" was not recognized, even though it has at least three working definitions (a sort of mini-levy, a negative term/offensive slang used against lesbians and queer women, and a reclaimed identity used by many queer women today). Perhaps the most disturbing to me was that "homophobic" was so unrecognizable there wasn't even a suggested replacement.

In a society where so many people are so different, and so often opressed for their differences, I'm shocked that blogger, and by default google, have such an outdated spellcheck. I know it's only a small portion of the program, but can still imagine myself coming out not so many years ago and the many high school and college aged students I work with today feeling alienated and wrong from yet another facet of society. And this facet being a place where open expression of one's self should be reveled in, not certain aspects singled out as literally unrecognizable.

I can't imagine or believe that google or blogger are anything but LGBTQ friendly, but they need to update their software to match. How can "people have their own voice on the web and organiz[e] the world's information from [their] personal perspective" if they can't use today's common language to comment on it. If I could choose to not recognize the word and therefore have it no longer be a part of my life, I would, but I can't, and I'd like blogger to recognize homophobic tendenicies, if not openly in our larger society and world, then at least in their spellcheck program.

Don't Just Read The Cues, Understand Them

Okay. I'm not going to yet again talk about my love/hate relationship with the Midwest. I'm at the point where I'm tired to writing and talking about it, so anyone who knows me must be sick of reading and hearing about it.

I get pissed at the Midwest for not reading my gender expression and freaking out if/when they read me as a man. I know I look boyish sometimes. I even do it on purpose! But I do get really annoyed with the Midwest for thinking I'm a boy and then thinking it's the worst insult they ever could have come up with and apologizing profusely. Let's not even get into the inherent sexism in that trait. (Y'know, that the only worth of a woman is how she looks and I clearly don't look womanly and am therefore void of worth. Fuck You Gender Binary.)

But for all my irritation at being read as a man and then the following confusion and disgust when I smile up at this member of the public and my feminine is read, I must say, the other day I think I got it worse--or at least got something new and different to piss me off. It's pretty clear for most (it seems) that these people are embarrassed for me and obviously think I'm a lesbian, because what other women would look like men? So they're sorry they called me "sir" and then they want to get away because I must be weird and a dyke.

For all my complaints, I think I prefer the open homophobia (nothing pointed at me has ever been vicious or overt, just looks and awkward discomfort and never making small talk, stuff like that) to the absolute oblivion I experienced last week.

So I'm at work, where it's a safe zone and everyone is comfortable and we have rules about no hate speech and so many students come to come out and find a safe space and be able to speak openly about who they are, etc etc. A woman who came in last fall semester to get help starting a student organization and whom I helped throughout the year came in with another favor. She needs a place for her group (which has taken off well, good for her) to have meetings next semester and wanted to know about our lounge. I said I'd have to check into it and chatted with her a bit because I've been her student-group-go-to-gal with any questions throughout the year. I helped find her an advisor and basically just get started. So at the end of our visit (only a couple minutes), I took down all her info again on one of our message sheets. I got her name again, her phone number, her email, and I started to write down the title of her group. As I'm writing, she told me that she changed the name. So she gives me the new acronym, I compliment her on it because it is a good one, and she explains that she wanted to change the name because "the old name was, y'know ... gay."

Yes. With the ellipsis. No shit. And then she said "gay" anyway, because it was--in her mind--clearly the only option to explain properly what she was getting at. (Of course, I have no idea the true connotation of what she means, but know it's baaaaad.)

Really? Look at my haircut. I mean, really? But look at my haircut. Look at where we are. I'm not wearing heels. Look at this shirt I'm wearing at work. Did you know I bought it in the little boy's section? Come on.

And then she said "gay." In that negative descriptor way. Really? To me?

So yeah, it sucks to be read as a man and then have people look at me funny because they assume I'm a big lez, but dude, I'd rather that they get it and are open about their ignorant homophobia than being openly homophobic in front of me.

Three final points:
- Don't give me any 'it's just a part of the lexicon' bullshit. And don't give it to yourself either.
- I feel a need to quote the shirt my friend was wearing the other day: "Not gay as in happy. Queer as in Fuck You." (Situations like this are what make a market for shirts like that.)
- And finally, dude, a huge shout out to my Lovely Femmes, because damn, they don't have my haircut and they do wear heels and I'm this pissed after one misread. No, they don't get called men, but they have men hit on them. Riddle me this, what's worse? I know my answer.