Your Mission

Hello.
I am sitting in my favorite coffeeshop in LiberalCity, RedState. TP is reading "Genderqueer" sitting next to me, and reading me tidbits occasionally, and I also have a HUGE cafe au lait next to me. This femme hasn't been happier for some time.

If you haven't been following the anti-transwoman stuff happening *all over the place* (but start with brownfemipower). Check it out. Bonus points to reading Winter's post, which deserves a hearty AMEN at the end of it. On Tuesday, there is a discussion on TransFeminism at the local feminist center for thought, and this has all given me plenty to think (and vent) about.

In April I am going to be the "feature" at the QueerOpenMic. This is really exciting, and a little bit terrifying. First I have to have enough stuff to read to fill 15 minutes. Really this won't be that hard, I have pages and pages of things. Honestly, I haven't even really processed what featuring will feel like. But before I even get around to writing more things or editing things I've written I'm faced with THE HARDEST WRITING ASSIGNMENT EVER. So I'm passing the buck.

Here is your mission:
Write my bio. Post it to the comments or email it to me: corinneblogger at gmail dot com

I hate writing this kind of thing, and I know that everyone hates writing this kind of thing. Generally though I wouldn't mind writing other people's bios. So write mine. My mother thinks it should be written with some magical realism. Since few of you actually know me. I'm very curious to see what you come up with.

Greetings from the Outpost

Hello All,

I'm holed up in IdyllicAncestralHome, with my extended family. Today is our "Christmas Eve" because Sister, MD has to work in the hospital on Monday, and Sister Esq. and her partner are leaving to celebrate with her partner's family. Our time together is a little shorter this year as a result, but we are making up for it by making those traditional Christmas cocktails.... Ginger Margaritas and Dark n' Stormies.

Later we will read children's books and go to bed and try hard to fall asleep so that Santa can come. In truth, after the food and booze, we may have no trouble at all falling asleep, and I'm so full of anxiety about the quality and quantity of the presents I'm giving that part of me just wants the whole thing to be over.

I love my family and Christmas, but it does seem like every year it gets just a little bit more stressful. As we all grow up and pull away in our own ways it gets harder to pull it all back together without tension over the holidays. I think that by the time Wednesday rolls around I will be more than happy to leave on a jetplane for the RedState and a much anticipated visit with TP.

Things I will blog about before vacation is over:
1. Exciting QueerOpenMic news.
2. The potential of outing my true identity here
3. Work, maybe.
4. Most likely some more holiday angst.
5. The hardest writing assignment ever... that y'all are going to do for me.

Also, I owe some of you personal emails that I *swear* will be forthcoming. Until then, I hope that each of you are doing whatever makes you happy this weekend. But, really, I hope that you are doing that everyday.

I'm being called into cocktail hour. Wish me luck.

Oh, also. I will be attending at least one Catholic mass between now and Wednesday, and maybe connecting with an old friend from high school.

Queer OpenMic Night Priorities

I've chosen my outfit, put on my makeup, poured myself a drink, and now I'm sitting down to edit the piece I'm reading...

Yes, I have my priorities in the right place.

Butch/Femme -- Continuing Thoughts

A bit I read at QueerOpenMic last month:

You leave shit here all the time, and I never know what is important to you, or what to throw away. I know that you want me to keep your zippo lighter, you don't smoke, but you like the feel of it in your hands, you like the weight in your pocket. Sometimes when you are drunk you smoke, but more because you like to wave a cigarette around as you talk, loose-jointed in your tipsiness and talking a bluestreak of queer theory and flirtation that has had me hooked for two years, solid. What you want is a cigarette holder. The kind used by femmes and faggots in the 30s to make your cigarette longer, your gestures wider, and everything more elegant. I want to find one for you and give it to you with a pack of candy cigarettes, since you berate me for my one cigarette a month habit I feel like yours should be made out of sugar - to cut down on hypocrisy in the world. I know that it would be ok with you if I threw away the gum wrappers and the gum that you leave on the shelf I clear for you in the closet, but I can't bring myself to do it, quite. I do, but first I bunch them in my fingers and think about how they smell like kissing you, especially since they have sat there on the shelf that will always smell like you because of the cologne you spilled there.

You keep the subway tokens in your wallet; I found one when I was down there and almost wanted to tell you to get rid of it since by the time you live here they might be totally useless, and I'm not sure when you'll make it up to HarborCity again. But I know how you like things that are small cool and hard, like your lucky bullet, how you hold them in your slender fingers. Your hands always reminds me of a bird, fast and fluttering, they are awkward as hands, not terrestrial in that way, graceful when given flight in conversation or fucking. and maybe you are like a crow hording shiny things in some nest. But then what am I? a shiny thing? No, I'm matte, on special days maybe eggshell or semi-gloss, but I can wear the clothes you leave behind. the men's jeans and button downs. they fit me better, my shoulders are still a little broader than yours so the seam sits just outside that point of bone. this is when you call me your butch. You are masculine and I am butch, it works, even when I'm femme. I am your butch when my fingers are inside; and I am your femme when my mouth is on your clit. And sometimes I do them both at the same time. I am your femme in public, even when I am being your butch, because they see my long hair and hear the cracking in your voice and think they know something about our lives, and they do. I am your femme when your fist is inside me, when your mouth is on me, when you make me coffee in the morning, and when you call me "baby". I am your butch when I have the answer for your questions. I am your femme when I straighten your tie and adjust my bra. I am your femme when I take care of you when you are sick. I am your butch, holding you as you cry. I am your butch when you say that the curtains have fallen down and you don't know what to do, and I look at them and ask for pliers and a screwdriver and for you not to hover so close when I'm balancing one foot on the chair and one foot on the windowsill. Afterwards you ask me how I knew how to pull the right tools from the box. But there is no theory to explain this skill and you kiss me and call me handy, and pull at the belt that I'm wearing, my belt on your jeans. Then we go and buy you eyeliner and I buy a bright red lipstick. My lips are red and liquid smooth, I smile at you, your eyes are smudgy and dark, but smile back. When you smile at me I am your femme, your butch. Your smile, more than anything else, unzips me from these words and either way I'm blushing. Either way when I look back at you there is no theory for this.

Also: I went out tonight; I wore tight jeans, cowboy boots, and the red lipstick, as I was heading home a new friend of mine, a man, offered to walk me home. I felt guilty, but safer saying yes, and the company was pleasant. Safer because he is bigger than me and passes pretty well and the walk is a little long for late at night. Guilty because there was part of me that felt like I should assert that I *would* be fine walking home alone. This is what I usually do, to show my independence, etc. But what is the point of asserting that to a man who grew up as a girl afraid to walk herself home?

Really? Are You Sure?

Hibernation Mode

Thank you, all, for your comments on the Self-Titled Album.

So, it's getting chilly here in HarborCity and so Sister, MD and I were in hibernation mode today:
-beef stew
-red wine
-ice cream
-television
Yes, I know that the ice cream makes no sense. But it was organic and only cost $1.29 at WholeFoods... do reasonable people say no to that kind of thing?

It was a wonderful and yummy thing. I love having my sister in this city, our conversations are not always easy, and sometimes, like tonight, we barely talked at all, but it is a joy to curl on a couch with someone you know that well, and drink wine and laugh about pop culture and share a common-ness that is *so* hard to find in other places and people.

Midnight Bridges (The Self-Titled Album)

I have never tried to articulate what a midnight bridge is, except once, the day I started this blog, in a poem to TP. I'll give you the first three lines, the next 11 (yes, I write strange sonnets) belong to TP.

"there are midnight bridges i want to build
with you, working in hard rain toward morning,
waking from nightmares for fresh cut flowers"

What is a MidnightBridge? It is the kind of connection made in the middle of the night, the kind of work that takes all night, the connection that people haven't thought about before. The combination that makes people reconsider their assumptions. It the work that we need to do personally to be who we need to be professionally, publicly, personally. It is, and has become, everything that this blog has been for me in the last nine (!) months.

And I have no idea what it, or this, will become. It would be incredibly pretentious and true to say that someday I want to reveal my real name and promote a newly minted novel from this page. It would be a little sad and true that I expect this page to dwindle as I devote myself more to both work and writing, and try to reconfigure my head so that writing can be considered both work and leisure. It is also true that this space has given me new ways to think about myself. Has made those combinations that have made me reconsider my assumptions, and that has to be a good thing, right?

Options I see before me:
A: Navel-gaze when tired and tipsy to the amusement of others
B: Write dense theory posts.
C: Try to talk about economics in ways that at least inspires me.
D: Share more workshop/journal/open mic writing-stuff.
E: Blend above with panache

Thoughts? Votes?

So what proclamation do I have tonight? What prediction for my future? What exhortation to my (~3) readers?

Go build yourselves a midnight bridge tonight. Let me know if it's a good route to somewhere awesome.