what matters.

what matters is the color of the floor
unwashed and sticky
blackness between the boards, the
sweat beading salty and
wet on my hands,
the shape of her brow
as she smiles at me
more than she frowns and
the times when I can say
‘this is how I feel’ ask
‘how did you see it’ and actually
listen to the words unwashed
and porous slipping from her mouth…

what matters are the curtains
pale and see-through that I
fold back in her room to let
her know that yes,
this is hard, and yes,
I love you…

what matters is the white, creamy
leaf my friend made in the hot chocolate
on the way here, how we
stood awkwardly and I felt
as excited as if she
were a candy shop, and I
a child…

what matters is the space between
words, a call and answer
to the place where weeping
has a meaning through the years,
a deepening of tears caught like
lightening bugs in a jar, beating their
insistent wings against the clear place
where once, there was sky…

what matters is -
the words, caught
frozen unheard, thawing to
a thick, churning blur, a
modern testament to the
heaving vestment cast off
like light
in the dark…

what matters is the waking, sweaty, aching
need tumbling through muscle through
bone through blood pumping to
places it’s never known, what
matters is that we never travel too far
from our own, what matters is
getting us all to see that there is more
than just me, and what matters
is the screaming released motion
of emotion throttled by the
prayers of our peers trying to save reputation through
indigestible classification, ad personification
of the american dream, a
“straight god on vacation”
sipping cocktails in another nation
while we sit at home
eat alone
and forget what it’s like
outside this life protected dome…

what matters is the cool
blue of her eyes when we were
walking
muddied, crunching through the late
winter snow, and she
looked at me
as if we could both
see, in that moment,
what mattered.

He stands

He stands
wider than anyone else on the stage.
Takes the
chosen time to regal us
with tired words of
women-hate.
Crazy hurled around like an
electric shock
keeping me in place.
He attacks their clothes,
looks to their bodies as signs of
own-ability and flirts
to get his way - in.


I want to shove his face
back out of place
because this is not the space
he belongs in.
He will never belong in.
It is our space,
and he has, disgraced
himself here with his own
presence.


I imagine him stripped.
Stuck beneath the gaze of
biological treason
value declared and taken,
never having heard the word consent
or its implication.
Hailed for their strength
and protected by their penetration -
what would he say then?
Born from generations of men who
scoff at women -
laugh at their rages and
belittle their pains
as if they were not
the ones who
put them there in
the first place?
I want to come
on his face
make him smell
the years of abase-ment
when she was locked
in a base-ment
because her Daddy said
she was too dirty
to be seen.


But we've not all been raped.


Some of us have asked
for what we got,
just like she asked
for your laughter as she invited you
in, barbed screens of
resiliency
coming to a pace
that you could never win.
Just like she asked
for your judgmental and, demeaning
silence as she dared
to bare her
un-naired legs,
revealing a coat
of thick, beautiful
hair.
Just like she asked
you to pin her on the street,
undress her and point to the
forbidden place to say
here.
Here -
is where you are different.
Here -
is what you lack.
Then pile generations of
cancer-causing cosmetics, scented tampons and razors
strong enough for a man, but made for a woman,
to clean her body and make it ready
for you
to come
back.


It has been years.
Years. since
we first raised up, reclaimed our
own bodies, our silenced voices, our
disregarded choices and
screamed
Get Out!
We don't need you or your
sadistic doctor's machines.
We have un-sewn
the holes you left for us to clean,
shoved our fists back
in your disbelieving face,
and helped each other define
our own space.


So as you stand here,
privileged with this time
and place
to read -
I am churning.


You have silenced your own right
to be seen.

my no-no square

so, what is the obsession with policing our bodies?

from deeming certain consensual sex acts illegal, to the endless assault on abortion, to dictating who can and cannot marry, to don't ask don't tell, to victim blaming in dv and sexual assault situations, to ignoring illegal and criminal assaults/harassment against pro-choicers, fat-identified folks, women, and queer - trans - and gender-non-conforming folk, to the bombardment of fat jokes and "lose weight now" miracle ads, to the racially and gender biased workplace rules dictating appropriate appearance and attire, to the use of shapely youth images to promote sexuality, to abstinence-only education and to the recent Grenada Middle School cheerleaders and their lovely abstinence cheer "Stop, don't touch me there! You know this is my no-no square!"

(ok, for the record, i'm totally co'opting this cheer. i think i've found my pride costume!)

it seems like there is a never-ending catalogue of things we may and may not do, with our own bodies. as a survivor of societal and personal assaults and abuse around my gender and sexuality (and really - who isn't), it took me a long time until i (very recently) began to realize - it is not my body that betrayed me at all - it was "them".

them. the people policing my body, telling me how i should dress, talk, look, act, date, have sex (or not have sex) AND the people harassing my body for falling outside of these norms- the people dishing out the "consequences" of my "transgressions". but what, exactly, is the point of all these rules in the first place?

at my job, we recently had an outside facilitator run a group with the young people i work with based on spirituality and LGBT sexuality. she led us in a role play where we all pretended to be families from before-the-bible-days. we lived in neighboring communities with a certain amount of land, children and good/bad reputations (based entirely on the women's ability to produce boys, and the children's ability to refrain from getting diseases). she led us through how whole families and communities could die if their children did things such as tattoo themselves (hello fatal infections) and come out as gay (effectively stopping the needed production of child-workers for the farm). and so, she explained, a lot of rules got put in the bible that reflected the perceived survival needs of the time (NOT to mention the biased opinions of the writers) that are completely irrelevant today. she reflected that although it was very oppressive, this was the why around how it started. the next question is then, why is it still going on?

i can only imagine this to begin with a deep and collective fear about our bodies. our bodies tell us a lot of things we maybe don't want to know - like when we have a feeling we're not "supposed" to have, or a longing for something that we're taught is "bad", or even the basic insecurity that comes along when you experience someone or something that is different from you.

bodies are unpredictable things, try as you might - you just cannot control them. you can be in command of your body (ie - express your anger in a way that does not hurt or jeopardize the well-being of others), but you can't make it not feel things. you can't un-gay yourself, no matter how many exgay-camps (and come on - it's got the word camp in it people, did you really think it would work?!) you go to. but (so it seems) you can legally try to control other peoples bodies. this is a great way to deal with your discomfort about your own body and your own feelings, because you magically get to displace them on others.

feeling uncomfortable? great! choose someone with less power than you to blame it on, and you're good to go!

unfortunately this body-policing has generational consequences that are not so easily erased. we still carry with us the expectations and oppressions that the communities before us faced, only it just gets more complicated and insidious as we go on making it harder to recognize - and harder to fight (a great book to read about this idea is "Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights" by Kenji Yoshino). though depressingly enough, alongside these more subtle oppressions, there are still many unreported (and reported), extremely violent, in-your-face crimes still happening.

so - maybe the "why" of this doesn't matter, except to begin to realize that, actually, it's not your fault. that your body is yours - and should be respected and celebrated as an integral part of you. regardless of the current laws and societal consequences of the assertion.

shopping in my closet

lately i've been thinking a lot about clothing.

i've gone through many wardrobe changes in my life - i like to imagine them as different costumes for the different roles i've had to play. there were the first years - lacy, frilly, all matching, already refusing to eat - a nice, sweet little pollyanna. innocent, and sexualized. i was loved. then i got older, fatter, more interested in lots of colors and loud, clashing patterns . i like to call this my punky brewster phase - a personal fav. but, i was "ugly" (ie - no longer a doll) and so - unloved. this realization brought on the stlye-depressed, no-interest-in-clothes-or-appearance phase - unloved and now invisible. i soon realized i was never going to get anywhere being the "ugly" girl, stopped eating all-together and wore all belly shirts, synthetic bright orange and brown shirts that clung to my body and the perfume "charlie's white" (after my father's name). i wasn't loved... but i was sexy again. high school brought on the all-american girl phase (otherwise known as i-want-to-be-like-andie-mcphee-from-"dawson's creek" phase) - loved. in college it was 50's style dresses with white sneakers (while i dreamed of pumps) - loved. JCrew perfection - loved. all-black-all-the-time depression (opposite of the pollyanna i started with) -unloved but sexy. and finally the pop-punk pierced eyebrow with dyed hair phase (the grown-up punky brewster!) -unloved, and sexy.

all of these styles... and i just couldn't cut it! perhaps i wasn't meant to be a woman, i thought. everything i wore, every look i made got me a role to live out. i was either the loved but non-self-empowered girl next door waiting for the right man, the "ugly" invisible girl, or unloved but interesting and skanky slut. virgin/whore complex with an invisible in between.

i felt like screaming - i can't be a woman!! i HATE being a woman!! it's too complicated!!! i felt so restricted, constrained, like so many essential parts of me were completely wiped out by virtue of my gender. i didn't even KNOW what i wanted anymore, let alone how to get it. i began a quest to uncover my own sexuality, finally coming out as a lesbian. but this only served to make my style more androgynous, because all the dykes i knew (which were... looking back... a very limited few) were too cool for femininity. i swore off all things feminine - stopped shaving my legs and armpits, shaved off all the hair on my head (which actually made me more feminine - which i secretly loved!), cast away all makeup, dresses, perfume, jewelry and cute shoes that i owned (the HORROR)- all the things i loved and cherished. i felt i could finally be visible and valued, if only i dressed more like a man.

but where was my vision of me in all of this? where was i?

i was - hiding. simultaneously trying to embrace and dress away from my femininity, and - in turn - my sexuality.

as a little girl i was very aware of the attention i received for being tiny, cute and well-dressed, as well as the societal expectations that went a long with it. good girls wore pastels, lace and matching shoe-purse combinations. good girls had high voices that were never shrill or demanding, always soft and musical. good girls had blonde hair. good girls had bodies that were visible to and owned by others, but never themselves. good girls gave their selves to those who needed them. good girls never talked about what good girls do.

from all the eroticizing looks and harassment i received for my body and the way i dressed (even before i dressed myself) - i learned i had two choices as woman. either dress away from your body and be worthless - or dress to your body and be powerless. the years i dressed feminine brought approval, fetishizing and a internalized fear of being found out - i was not as perfect/put-together/innocent/naive/weak/giggly/helpless as i was supposed to be! the years i dressed sexy brought visibility, pride and a paralyzing fear of what i would have to do in my new role as "whore". the years i dressed down, when all i wanted was to disappear from beneath those eyes that were always staring and undressing, these years gave a marked difference in attention. i was the committer of the ultimate crime as a woman, being "ugly". this made me completely invisible, showing me that my worth lay entirely in my ability to attract (and keep) sexual attention.

when i began to come to terms with my sexuality - realized i actually did have desire and could act on that desire - i decided to dress where i saw the power to be all along - in masculinity. i incorrectly assumed that the only way i could gain power was to entirely cut off my femininity and embrace the masculinity that had dominated me in the past. i tried to become less female, more male.

i realized that there was no safe or right choice. when i was visible as a feminine person, my body and psyche were in danger. when i was invisible (ie - "ugly") my worth as a person was attacked and dismissed. when i tried to reclaim my own desire - i could see no other way of doing it then by looking like the people who had taken it away in the first place, the people who seemed to have all the power.

the desire, the longing (so deep in me) to embrace femininity - by my own definitions and meanings, was a danger to my self. the lived experience that femininity is simultaneously despised by and hungered for by others - the feeling when a person looks right through you and sees only the societal markings of your clothing and your body - they way people make choices on how to treat you based solely on how they react to what they see. these are experiences that come up again and again for me.

how can i be present in my presentation of myself? how can i redefine the meanings that have become synonymous with my clothing choices, my way of celebrating and presenting my body in the world? how can i feel powerful in a flowery skirt? loud in an elegant black dress? playful and shy in a sexy, red slip dress?

i can re-claim my femininity - call myself femme - but that is only the beginnings of breaking down the stereotypes surrounding it, inhabiting it, inhabiting me. i want to wear a skirt just for the experience of wearing, and being seen in, a skirt - and not have to deal with the automatic assumptions and oppressive power dynamics that so often go hand-in-hand with that. i want the power to make my own identity, to craft my own meanings. i want to embrace my femininity and my sexuality - and not lose my self in the process.

beginnings

on her knees.

she began on her knees, kneeling, the caustic brutality of silenced suffocation, felt experience of all that was uncontrollable, non-consensual, ferociously pervasive yet able to produce the pivotal moment of interest - what would keep her here? what would let her go?

the rebellious unbending of elbow, of knee, the wet crinkle of eyelashes parting, the grasping, gasp, of breath as throat embraces air, a turning of the tables and then - a life, unfurled. standing.

she chooses, when to kneel. how to kneel. and for whom. she chooses - kneeling.



"our visions begin with our desires" ~audre lorde

this blog is about un-covering and dis-covering, claiming and celebrating - desire. the defiant stance of saying it is my human right to desire. and to pursue that desire. in a safe, sane and consensual way.

to embrace the lived-in words of bodies.