Missouri

Thinking about riverboats and Christmases
girls in the backroom playing Avon Lady
and boys on the backsteps playing Rock School till dark
out where the outhouses used to be
where our moms chased out roaches with lanterns and scared summer feet
while she cooked chicken n dumplings or turkey inside
and the way she said my name, Elizabeth always
and snorted as she laughed
watched her stories like religion and Cardinals games
with a can of cold beer and a red skirt lucky charm on

Everything’s different, Missouri, everything’s changed

Remembering the Virgin Mary and Santa Claus
came on the same day in her living room
but St. Nicholas, 19 days before
and 5 days after the first Lenten candle lit
In her living room, a tree built into an old television, floor model
but you’d never know by the looks of it
my grandfather, the other carpenter, upholsterer
magic-maker, fashioned it for his girls, all four
so the Baby Jesus had somewhere important looking to lay
when he came to St. Louis
Two white horses made of stone stared from either side
of her front porch onto Michigan Avenue
we’d climb onto their snowy thick backs
and ride the bricks that hugged those steps to
where three generations had lived with dreams of four and five
But no one lives there anymore

Where did you go? I wanted you to stay
The Missouri that I remember
wouldn’t leave without goodbyes
in her living room, at the front door, on the porch, at the car
again through the window rolled down winter wind
kisses on the lips, “god bless you” again and again
And when you go you know you’ll be back next year this time
And when you leave you know she’ll look just the same next time
And next time when you come back she’ll be waiting at the door
And next time when you come back she’ll be waiting at the door

Everything’s different, Missouri, everything’s changed.

Reading at The Garage Theater, SF

Epiphany

Whenever I go visit my parents in retired people paradise (Monterey), I almost always find some time to run on the path that snakes along about 4 or 5 miles of some of the most beautiful coastline on the Pacific. Sometimes alone, sometimes with my parents, who in their mid-sixties, can outrun me any day of the week.

Last week on my visit down to mark the end of my summer vacation, my parents weren’t up for a run so they decided to walk Reina along the path while I got my fitness on. Running sans-dog is an effing awesome luxury, that I rarely get to enjoy. My baby bear snaggletoothed princess chiweenie (chihuahua-dacshund mix), Reina, is a great exercise partner but often gets distracted by anything that moves or has to stop to go to the bathroom etc., meaning I don’t get to move at my own pace entirely or without something extra in-tow. So I had this amazing run on my favorite stretch of the Monterey Peninsula coast, tons of new music on my ipod, and I’m lost, dreaming, breathing, moving stronger faster better than two years ago when I spent a summer here trying to save myself from the aftermath of a deep deep betrayal and the unraveling of a long relationship, or fantasy of a relationship, who’s to say.

I spent that summer there alone (my parents were traveling for 2 months), in a military town where I had no friends, family, community, or a sense of belonging (and only one gay bar in a fifty mile radius, don’t ask don’t tell kids), and tried to find myself again, as cheesy as it sounds. I managed to do that by writing, staying off the internet(not stalking the ex or the gf he had behind my back for a year), cooking fresh, healthy meals, and working out (sometimes twice a day). I did all of these things, ritualistically, every single day. My routine was my sanity. Everything I wrote that summer was lost when my laptop was stolen a few weeks after I returned to SF, so as it turned out, it didn’t really matter the end result or product of the routine, but the routine itself. It made me feel tough and ready for each day, stronger with every one that passed, finding my way out of, and sometimes back into, the rage, desire, sadness and self-loathing that comes along with trying to heal from an abusive and toxic relationship. Sure, I nursed my wounds with a Craigslist hookup here and there (including a particularly sexy and noteworthy affair with a navel officer’s wife), but for the most part, I spent two months alone, sitting with my weakness and rediscovering my strength.

When I would run that stretch of coastline every day that summer, sometimes I would feel like I just couldn’t run anymore, like I was going to trip and fall, my lungs were going to explode, the skin on my face was going to crack, or my knees might give out, and every time I had those thoughts, I dug deep, imagined myself as a woman so strong, so fierce, that the next time my ex-lover saw me, he would never even recognize me – he would walk past me on the street and not have the slightest idea he’d just brushed shoulders with the woman (or one of the women, as it turns out) he had spent so much time loving, lying to, manipulating, and betraying. And in that moment, my stilettos banging out my heartbeat on the sidewalk, I would know that I had grown so far beyond the smallness I had embodied in the 3 years he knew me. So far in fact, that I was operating on an entirely different plain, and I was not even visible to his naked eye. I know a lot of women in my situation would have imagined revenge, and don’t think I didn’t, late at night lying in bed with my thoughts racing through the silence of my parents’ small duplex, but when I was out on that trail, in the sun, my face and chest flushed with the uphill climb, I only thought about my strength, how I’d lived tougher lives than this already in 28 years, and had always managed to grit my teeth, bear down into this earth, and find another incarnation of myself. I would just keep moving and faster.

Last week when I was out on that trail, I had a flash of myself two years ago on that same path and how even though, at the time, I was working out twice a day every day and my body was bangin (!), in its best shape since high school, I felt so much stronger now, not just mentally, but in my joints and muscle fibers and core. I was thinking about how in the last two years, I’d picked myself up after that betrayal and walked away without spending an ounce of energy in revenge or paybacks, how I’d fought for a job and a salary I deserved, got myself insured for the first time since I was 18, built a program out of nothing for an amazing community of kids and families that have blessed me with so much more love and knowledge than I can even begin to expound on, learned how to have real relationships with people and MYSELF, moved to another city and found a home, a family and a community that holds me with so much sweetness it makes my teeth ache, and have come into myself (body and spirit) through these relationships more than I ever imagine was possible, and I turned 30! Holler! As I was thinking about these things, gorgeous visions of words and images started flooding into my mind, and each one of them was a tattoo already in its place on my skin. I saw four very clear, very lucid tattoos.

I have one tattoo from the past, from right before I moved to the Bay. I knew I wanted more, but had waited till my mid-twenties to get my first for very real reasons. I am HELLA indecisive, impulsive, reactionary, and need instant gratification when it comes to many things (anyone reading this that’s thinking about putting the moves on me, don’t worry, I’m in therapy and working rilly hard on all of that ) When these 4 images came to me though, there was no question in my mind, I was 100%. The first of the 4 is about femmeness, namely mine and my journey to it, as well as queer femininity in general. So I texted my femme bff Rosie and was all “I’m driving back from Monterey in 3 hours, meet me in SF, I need a tattoo and a new harness, stat.” Unfortunately, Rosie had unbreakable plans and couldn’t meet me, and I ended up getting stuck in traffic on the way back anyways and didn’t have enough time to get inked by the time I hit the city…but the leather shop was still open for an hour or so:) P.S. Leather, Etc., Folsom and 8th = great deals! make everything in house and half the price of tons of other shops I’ve been in in the Yarea. http://www.leatheretc.com

I used this past week to figure out the font that I wanted for the first of four and waited till I had some free time to make it mine. So this week, the Oakland Unified School District subjected myself and all the other After School Program site coordinators in the district to an entire week of trainings/workshops and by Thursday, I was about to choke somebody. I needed to play hookie and I needed to get INKed! It was no coincidence that I was also making my return to the stage after two years that evening @ the Garage in SF, opening for Sherilyn Connelley’s one-woman show, The Last Dog and Pony Show, as part of The Queer Girl Theater Project’s summer performance series. I was all nerves and felt like getting tatted before the show would make me feel tougher about it. So I headed over to SF and did a walk in at Lyle Tuttle’s in North Beach, one of the oldest shops in SF and also woman owned and operated. Tanja and her dog, The Roo, greeted me with PJ Harvey and Thom York crooning on the stereo, I tell/show her my idea, and we get to work. Turns out she’s a writer, a surfer, a musician, and a serious shit-kicking bitch (imagine that in a tattoo artist) and we have a great time chatting it up while she works on me. She asked for my blog address, so if yr reading this, What’s Up Tanja! She’s an amazing artist and a hella smart, creative, sweet person. Please go give her some business if you need ink!! http://www.lyletuttletattooing.com

Here’s the ink, in-process and afterwards:

So it means a lot of things to me..here’s the shortlist, enjoy the photos, and stay tuned for Tattoo Epiphany Part Duex:

l’autre femme means “the other woman” in French, and for those that are unfamiliar, the queer community borrowed the French word for woman long ago to name feminine queer woman-identified people.
Reasons it gives me a boner, or what it means to me:
1. the “other” or “othered” woman, one being the queer woman
2. the other femme – as in not yr mama’s femme, as in a femme that will cut u with a hair flip, change yr oil, yr tire, yr life, look fierce in stilettos and lipstick or cutoffs and a beater-no-bra, run the show, cook u a bomb ass meal, pay the fucking bills, strap it on and rock yr world inside out, and maybe, if yr lucky, love u till it hurts, among other things.
3. I like anything that people assume are one thing on the surface, but really they are something completely different underneath/inside. The literal translation of this phrase is an age-old negative heteronormative stereotype of a woman who is a slut, skank, homewrecker, temptress, etc., but my idea of sexually free women and femininity in general is something entirely different.
4. It’s the name of a Collete novel. Collete was a queer french novelist who had all kinds of wild and inappropriate love affairs with movie starletts, singers, and other such notables.

know what you know

But who am I to know what you know?
See what you see?
There are those of us who live in the light of day
And those of us who creep by night
Between back alley entrances
And neon lights
Living loving fucking as we go
As we come into being with ourselves
Crawling between the sheets
Of our big girl beds
Our big girl lives
And even still, there are those of us
Who remain in shadows and gray
Not having a choice or the words to say
“I want to choose.”
So we tell each other our stories
Swap ancestors and identities
Sacrifice things
Our grandmothers sold themselves for
And claim solidarity for communities
We barely understand as our own
Cuz really, who am I to know what you know?
Be what you be
See what you say
Doesn’t mean the same thing to me, It never could
I live in the light of day, these days
And in ways, I always have

Small Marvel

My friend Jessika, a wonderful writer, educator, soon-to-be-expressive-art-therapy grad student, and all around amazing human being, has a new website that you need to check out…especially since the latest post is about me

here’s her direct link: http://small-marvel.com/ (also on my blogroll)

the post about yours truly is also on feministing.com @ http://community.feministing.com/

The Spectator

photo

Originally uploaded by elatty

The Reina (a.k.a. Rhino) keeps me company while I write. She’s really into Biological Warfare, but she wishes I’d write about something more fun than my boring ass mom issues…like hot femme chihuahuas (think tinkerbelle) who have a thing for little chocolate genderqueer mutts.

Biological Warfare (con’t)

this is the 2nd installment of this piece i’ve posted on this blog….to read the first half, click on July 2007 in my archives (can’t get a direct link to work right now for some lame reason?)

1. My mother just sat there for a moment, dumbfounded, silent and heavy as an abortion and when she opened her mouth to speak, a thick sludge oozed out and filled the tiny hotel room with the stench of rotten garbage. I jumped up and leapt out of its way so I wouldn’t get compromised by her insides.

“Godamnit bitch! Look what you’ve done now!! “I screamed at her, angrily shaking off a morsel of sludge that had fallen on my hand.

“I’m sorry…I’m so sorry,” she said between hot tears and sniffling. “I didn’t mean to.”

She looked pathetic, covered in her own sludge and tears, snot beginning to run from one nostril. I almost felt sorry for her, but then I remembered how much she couldn’t love me and I wanted her to die.

I’d never thought about killing her before she’d decided I wasn’t any better as a grown up than when I was a baby. I could understand being young and scared and not wanting to be that person – that teenage mother from a white trash town, Section 8 housing and a rusted out Grand Am in the driveway, her body so full of anger and regret, scorning her offspring with every flick of burned-down cigarette for the life they had stolen from her, the life that would’ve taken her outta this place and made something of her. So she gave me away. I could understand it like a bad movie, like a piece of Americana, like people who put ketchup on their eggs. But after I found her, after searching for years, and she said she wanted me and her whole family wanted me, and then she had the nerve to know me, to touch me, and then turn around and leave all over again? Now that shit was personal.

Since I had her sitting there on the bed all scared, I figured I was finally going to get some answers out of this tight-lipped bitch. She’d never tell me anything before. I didn’t understand why. I’d ask her stuff about herself or my dad or whatever and she’d always just change the subject. Or not even bother to change the subject! Just flat out pretend she didn’t even hear me. I must have asked her 10 times when her birthday was, but she’d never answer. Why can’t I know my own mom’s birthday?! What’s the big fucking deal here????

“So why’d you do it? Why’d you leave me?” I asked her.

“Because I loved you,” she said with her head hung low.

“No, the second time,” I said.

“Because I loved you.”

“Doesn’t seem like love to me; seems like a chicken shit move someone who can’t grow up and look at their own mistakes might make. Seems like someone who can’t be woman enough to face her own demons, meet another grown woman half way, and figure out a really fucked up situation, because it’s the right thing to do.” I glared at her, half expecting her to vanish into thin air if I focused hard enough.

“When you sent me that letter….,” she trailed off.

“Ahh yes, the letter…the infamous letter”

“When you sent me that letter, you said, every time you didn’t hear back from me for awhile, it was like reopening the wound over and over again.”

I laughed! “Well, sometimes I can be a little dramatic, I admit.”

“I never saw your wound before then. I mean, I figured there might be one, I thought you might hate me and never want anything to do with me, but I just…I never saw the wound, and had to look at it, and know I’d done that,” she said as she looked past me.

“So, you thought the best thing at that point would be for you to tear it wide open with your teeth and spit in it,” more finishing her story than posing a question.

“No, I thought the best thing at that point for you was not me.

3. This is how my memory works: with every stranglehold twist and turn of my insides, in floods a new vision, most often dark and painful, which could be a direct reflection of the physical pain I’m experiencing, although my father(adopted) says to me “You only ever remember the bad things,” so perhaps I’m just genetically predisposed to bad. If you gutted me and stretched my intestines out on a sidewalk, you could meander along 30 feet of rotten memories and pre-verbal trauma.

This is what I know to be true: when your brain doesn’t have the capacity to hold or process memories, because it’s not fully developed yet, as in infancy, or because it’s practicing self-preservation and won’t let anything stick long enough to take you down, they get stored somewhere else in your body. The memories burrow their way into some cellular location (chosen at random or not, I do not know) and begin to asphyxiate themselves. It’s a slow death, usually about 18-25 years in duration, of which the host body is entirely unaware. Because God hates me, or maybe something a little more scientific, my memories decided to take up space and die in my abdomen, where they could eventually wreak havoc on everything from my diet to my sex life.

Interestingly enough, once the memories die inside you, they begin to rot. It is not unlike the decomposition of a human corpse, in that it occurs in quiet, yet horrifying and putrid stages. And while the memories are quietly rotting away in your body cells, they are emitting toxic fumes and gases that seep through to your surface and begin to manifest in all kinds of tangible symptoms.

As mentioned before, this happens in stages, so while you might be a carefree tot consumed with visions of finger paints and dance class, somewhere deep inside, the smell of unavoidable and inexplicable sadness begins to rise. You find yourself taking to your bedroom every year on your birthday, beginning at age three, to cry enormous tears for a woman who never knew you, wondering if she is thinking about you right now too. They try to lure you out with brightly colored gifts and cakes, but they mean nothing to you without her. You can’t tell them why, because it will make them even sadder than you suddenly are, and you couldn’t really explain it with words anyways, even if you tried. Every song you hear reminds you of her, as if you’ve already gone through that first excruciating break up with that first real love, which you won’t really even encounter for another 17 years, but you feel that pain now as if you’d never known anything else to be true.
You are 5 and you start school and you know you are different from everyone else, but you hide your secret as best as you can and silently thank your mom for telling everyone “God,” when they ask where on earth you got your red hair from(!). You hate it, it makes you different and ugly like your bright red hair and you think they can see right through it to the insides of your head and know what’s going on in there and how much you want to disappear.

You are 10 and the sad smell has turned to angry and when you get mad at home you spit venom that sounds like, “You’re not my real mom, so I don’t really care!” and similar sentiments to anyone who will listen. A girl at school finds out your secret from her mom, who’s friends with your mom, and the girl and her crew come up to you one day sneering and say tauntingly, “I know something about you. I know you’re adopted and nobody wanted you and nobody loves you.” Fists fly, hair is torn, and you fuck her up real good – your first fight.
Your anger becomes rageful and scares people throughout your adolescence and you often skip school because your stomach hurts and your head won’t shut up. Therapy is suggested, but your parents are fearful of you, so when you refuse, nothing is done about it – you run the show.

You’re 16 and they drive you to the towering, apocalyptic-looking mental hospital on Sheldon Road after you throw a glass at your mom’s head, try to run away from home (again) and when your brother tries to stop you in the driveway, you run him down with your car – he was in your way. He escapes with cuts and bruises, your car is fucked, and now you’re in the parking lot of the looneybin with an ultimatum: we can check you in here or you can come home and you’re grounded indefinitely, you pay for everything you damaged, and we get you some help. You tell them what they want to hear because you don’t need another cage and you know they don’t have the balls to follow through anyway. They take you home.

You’re 17 and you come out of the closet to your brother who says it’s fine cuz you’re his sister, but if you were his brother, he’d hang you. He also tells you never to tell your parents, you agree, but rage intervenes. You blurt it out mid-fight with your mom in retaliation to some homophobic, Jesus-loving radio show she’s listening to in the kitchen. She makes you tell Dad and after they decide that: a. you’re sick, b. you like girls because of your Attachment Disorder (i.e. you’re adopted and mommy left you), and c. they love Jesus way more than you anyhow, you figure out the quickest way out of town.

By the end of this stage of interior memory rot, your body has created enough toxins to numb you out and so you unconsciously help it along for several years by self-medicating with booze and drugs and sex and abusive relationships that run you around and around in the same exact circle of shitty betrayal and abandonment until the ground beneath you becomes a canyon, far too deep or wide for anyone to hear you screaming for help at the bottom, that is if anyone even bothered to try and see if you were alive or not, which they didn’t because most of the time you looked like you didn’t give a fuck and were having the time of your life. You are the life of the party, the storyteller, the funny one, ready for whatever, whenever. On the inside, self-pity and self-loathing are king.

2. After two and a half years with my biological mom fading in and out of my life, I decided to confront her and tell her I just couldn’t do it anymore unless something changed. I didn’t need her to be my best friend or my mother, I just needed us to figure out what kind of relationship we were capable of, and have some kind of consistency within that.

The computer I wrote that letter on was destroyed years later during a period where I no longer allowed myself to remember I had ever written such a letter, and as a result, I still don’t really know what I said to her. I had a therapist that admonished me for writing the letter and ultimately convinced me that I forced my mom to reject me again because I had too high of expectations and not enough compassion for her situation. Or maybe I came to that conclusion myself and just blamed it on my therapist.

I still think about that letter all the time. What was my tone? What did I really ask of her? I was angry and sad and confused and alone and everything that had died inside me long ago was being resurrected against my will. I felt like I was asking for what I needed, being honest about my situation, adult in my approach, but was I? I don’t know, maybe it was my fault, maybe I could have tried to be more understanding of what she was going through, maybe I didn’t have to be so hyper-sensitive all the time, so urgent, so demanding. Whatever it was I said in that letter, I never heard from her again.

3. And then something happens…something altogether different. You’re 21 and you start to get sick, really physically sick. You can’t eat, and even when you can, nothing stays in you long enough to nourish you – you’re wasting away. Friends/roommates think it’s cuz you drink too much and they know about the pills from your ex-girlfriend too cuz the boy who likes you walked in on you in your bedroom once snorting some. They don’t really worry about it because it’s nothing compared to their heroin and meth habits, though they do find it strange you would hide it from them, considering you were in perfectly good company to do just about anything right out in the open.

You lose your job for calling in sick and going home sick way too much and you don’t leave your apartment for four months except to go across the street to the packy to buy more white rice, crackers and Gatorade, which now make up the sole ingredients of your diet. You want to die, but luckily everyone around you is killing themselves right before your eyes and it doesn’t actually look as fun as you think it might feel, so you decide to stick around a little while longer. You are experiencing more physical pain than you ever have before, whether you eat or not, and you know the drugs and booze don’t really help, but you can’t think of anything else to do and at least they bring temporary relief, occasionally. You spend countless nights fucked up in your bedroom getting lost in the woodgrain of the floor and the pages of your writing (illegible for the most part, sniveling at best).
They come in to check on you once in awhile and even develop a roommate safety system for when you draw a bath and disappear into the bathroom with a bottle of whiskey, but it’s not until you’ve lost close to 20 lbs (you’re petite and it shows and it’s not pretty), that your best friend drags you to the hospital. They take vials and vials of blood, even though you warn them about the malnutrition. The nurse with the needle looks at the piercings in your face and says you shouldn’t be so squeamish; you do it to yourself all the time. You pass out.

1. “So let me get this straight? Even though I had already told you what would be best for me in the letter, and explained to you, at length, exactly why that would be best for me, you thought the exact opposite of what I had said was actually best for me and went ahead with that plan instead? Oh, wait, and you figured you wouldn’t even bother to tell me either!?” (my voice mounting) “You just never fucking contacted me ever again!?!”

“Well look, you put me in a hard situation. I mean, what was I supposed to do? I knew I couldn’t give you what you needed and it was becoming clear to me that you weren’t really as stable as you thought you were.

“What do you mean by that? I wasn’t as stable as I thought I was?”

“You kept saying you weren’t looking for anything from me, but that wasn’t true at all. You were asking a lot from me.”

“Well if you couldn’t give me anything, then you should have turned me away when I first found you! I mean, what did you think was going to happen?”

“I didn’t know, it was just one of those things that you have to do because you know you’ll regret it someday if you don’t.”

“So it was just curiosity and not an actual desire to know me?”

“I don’t know, maybe. I mean, what could I be for you now? I can’t change what happened or make it go away.”

“You’re right, you can’t.”

“So what now?” she stares me dead in the face.

“We figure out who isn’t leaving this room alive,” I tell her.

“You’ve got to be kidding.” she says, but it’s not a question.

3. You’re 22 and you wake up in New Orleans; cold, nearly dead, almost unresponsive. Three weeks prior you’d convinced you’re best friend/occasional-lover-but-not-girlfriend to leave everything she knew to drive with you to San Diego because you had a dream where you were sitting on the beach in cut-off camo fatigues, a wife beater and DC skate shoes. You were happier on that beach than you’d ever been and you had no idea why. So you wake from the dream knowing nothing more real and you call your best friend/occasional-lover-but-not-girlfriend and convince her to leave everything she knows for a summer to pack everything she/you had into her VW Golf with some storage apparatus strapped to the roof, and head West in search of your dream, but what you end up finding is vampires, misery, and alcohol poisoning. Mother fucker, what you find is the top of the bottom and years of backwards climbing to come.

this belongs to desire

She imagined love where there was no love. She put on their clothes and had imaginary conversations with them when they weren’t around – often in public, on the bus where there were people. When she said she loved you, it was a noose, loose around the neck. And when she left you barely noticed. She conjured faith where there was no belief, truth in spite of distance, transcended make-believe, rebuked cold, hard evidence. Every morning was an emergency and she frequently was heard saying, “I’m really not like that,” over and over and over again. Her mistakes were like fire and her defenses, outdated. I can’t remember a time when she really ever learned her lessons. She operated from inside a fantasy and was forever getting attached to the outcome. He humiliated her with his indifference, his gray areas. She felt shame older than twice her age. She needed bookends to match the middle; hold her as if it mattered.

a letter to you

Dear far away you,

i miss the memory of cold fury and unfiltered hesitation whistling through your mouth when you ask me if things will ever be the same and if she still loves you and how long should you go, even though that’s not how i remember you. i miss the punctuation of your intellect on my sentimentality and the way you never thought i was sentimental because that’s the way i made you feel. do you think if enough time passes, we’ll be on our respective ways back home, and think of each other in passing a neon light or a back hallway entrance, as fixtures in a narrative we never wanted to write or remember, but cherish because without it we are only outlines and bullet points? I worry.

I hope you are well.

Yours,

DG

why

Because we don’t want to see our mothers
for who they really are
or how far they have stretched
knowing they could never go back
Because we carry the weight
of the secrets they were forced to
wrap around hips, shoulders and backs
wrapped tightly hugged against breasts
babies for whom no one would claim
responsibility for or likeness to
Because we left a legacy of
girl too fast becoming womanchild
while underneath her skirt
still burns the fire of innocent intoxication
Because our fathers had the luxury
of sleeping on their stomachs
being ambiguous or unknown
while we waited, tenderfooted and swollen
to be unnamed